The Jem'Hadar, Vorta and the Hunters

[JRoss]

So what are everyone's feelings on the Hunters and the Dominion? According to the producers, they wer originally supposed to be shown in later episodes, as officers of the Dominion.

This makes sense, as the Tosk seem to be basically prototype Jem'Hadar. We know that the Vorta are genetic upllifts, and that the Jem'Hadar are an engineered race. I'd posit that the Hunters (or Drai, as the concept art originally called them), are the ones who did that for the Dominion.

These guys run around the Gamma Quadrant and have crazy-powerful ships, plus invasive transporters and personal force fields. No way do the Founders let this happen unless they're part of the Dominion.

I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that they're part of it. The fact that they don't mention them much doesn't mean a lot. The Changelings use a ruse that makes species think that the Vorta are the Founders in order to take attention away from them, so they clearly like to misdirect people about thee nature of the Dominion.

TO be able to have such a privilege of the hunt, the Hunters have to hold a place of honor in the Dominion. So, i asusme that they're the genetic engineers who created the Jem'Hadar (from weaponized Tosk stock) and who uplifted the Vorta.

 

[Riker'sMailbox]

Could be.

Or, the Hunters were good subjects of the Dominion and behaved and the Founders rewarded them with the fun recreational activity of hunting Tosk. We have seen them reward and punish species.

 

[JRoss]

I've thought about that one, too. The reasons that I go with the "makers of the Jem'Hadar" bit is that the Hunters have some crazy powerful technology. They made a mockery of the station's shields and the security team. I can't imagine the Founders allowing their members to have that kind of tech and weaponry unless they were involved in the military.,

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

AFAIK, the Hunters are the designated navigators and trackers of the Dominion. (Every race in the Dominion has a specific purpose - well, this is theirs.)

The Tosk were genetically engineered for them (by the Founders) as a gift, so that the Hunters could continuously hone their skills. And the same "original" race produced both the Tosk and the Jem'Hadar.

FWIW, in the scene in "Broken Link" where a Jem'Hadar takes the helm of the Defiant (on the way to the Founders' homeworld) - that was originally supposed to be a Hunter.

 

[MAGolding]

What makes you think that there is any connection between the Hunters and the Dominion?

The writers didn't think of the Dominion until planning for the second season. Thus they couldn't have any Gamma Quadrant aliens mention the Dominion in the first season. None of the Gamma Quadrant aliens in the first season cared enough about the Dominion to mention it at all. The Hunters never mentioned being members of the mighty Dominion to get their way on DS9.

The script for "The Jem'Hadar" allegedly connected the Hunters with the Dominion, but those lines were not in the episode that aired, and thus are not canon. There is no canon evidence that there is any connection between the Hunters and the Dominion.

These guys run around the Gamma Quadrant and have crazy-powerful ships, plus invasive transporters and personal force fields. No way do the Founders let this happen unless they're part of the Dominion.

That is illogical. If a region of space is 10 light years outside the borders of the Dominion, the Dominion has no more control over what happens in that region of space than they have over a region of space 10,000 light years beyond their borders, or in a region of space 10,000,000 light years beyond their borders, or in a region of space 10,000,000,000 light years beyond their borders.

There is no more reason to believe that the Dominion rules the entire Gamma Quadrant than to believe that the Federation rules the entire Delta Quadrant. There should be about 50,000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000 stars in the Gamma Quadrant, and probably about 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 million inhabitable planets in the Gamma Quadrant. If the Dominion is vast enough and industrialized enough and populous enough to build a million new space battleships, and crew them with a thousand persons each, every month, they would still need to rule only a tiny proportion of the Gamma Quadrant.

When the Dominion ordered the Federation to stay out of the Gamma Quadrant in "The Jem'Hadar", the Federation refused to do so. The Federation would have no right to do so if the Dominion ruled the space including the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole. The only legal reasons for the Federation to ignore the Dominion demand would be if the Dominion was arrogantly ordering the Federation to stay out of space which the Dominion didn't rule and which was occupied by space travelling species already having diplomatic relations with the Federation.

And none of the Gamma Quadrant societies living near the mouth of the wormhole bothered to mention the Dominion to Federation citizens during the first season, because the Dominion was far away at the time. And that includes the hunters and the Tosk.

The DS9 writers may have wanted and intended to write a connection between the Hunters and Tosk and the Dominion, but they never did. What they actually did write indicates that such a connection would be very unlikely.

 

[EyalM]

It's too bad the hunters weren't utilized later. For a supposedly huge empire, we kept running into the same three Dominion species. This could have helped flesh them out more.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

We have no canon evidence the hunters and Dominion are linked but there's circumstantial reasons to suspect they are. Not the least of which is the Tosk being a GMO with the ability to shroud.

My other argument would be that setting up a hunting game for entertainment is just the sort of thing an absent dictator would endorse. We know from other episodes like Rules of Acquisition and Starship Down that most planets under Dominion rule don't see the Dominion very often. If you see the Dominion at all, it's probably because they came to destroy you. They seem to encourage commerce, and violent entertainment is not a huge stretch either. They might use the hunt just like the Roman Colosseum to manage the emotions of the mob.

Also the Dominion seems to control the area directly around the wormhole.

None of this is hard evidence, but there's a stronger argument they are part of the Dominion than they aren't.

 

[MAGolding]

We have no canon evidence the hunters and Dominion are linked but there's circumstantial reasons to suspect they are. Not the least of which is the Tosk being a GMO with the ability to shroud.

My other argument would be that setting up a hunting game for entertainment is just the sort of thing an absent dictator would endorse. We know from other episodes like Rules of Acquisition and Starship Down that most planets under Dominion rule don't see the Dominion very often. If you see the Dominion at all, it's probably because they came to destroy you. They seem to encourage commerce, and violent entertainment is not a huge stretch either. They might use the hunt just like the Roman Colosseum to manage the emotions of the mob.

Also the Dominion seems to control the area directly around the wormhole.

None of this is hard evidence, but there's a stronger argument they are part of the Dominion than they aren't.

My argument is that the Dominion was nowhere near the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole in the first season and probably all of the second season as well. None of the Gamma Quadrant aliens in the first season mentioned the Dominion. I think that if they were members of the Dominion they would believe that it was their duty to mention that to any aliens they contacted in order to avoid visits by the Jem'hadar. If Dominion citizens met Alpha Quadrant people they would have told the Alpha Quadrant people that they were citizens of the Dominion, and that the Alpha Quadrantians should not go through the wormhole without permission from the Dominion.

In "Hippocratic Oath", in the fourth season, Bashir and O'Brien make a routine trip to the Gamma Quadrant.

Medical Officer's log, stardate 49066.5 Chief O'Brien and I have concluded our bio-survey of Merik Three in the Gamma Quadrant. We're on course back to the wormhole and should arrive at the station two days ahead of schedule.

So I suppose the routine bio-survey of Merik Three in the Gamma Quadrant might have been scheduled for four days and completed in two, thus putting them two days ahead of schedule. And considering how cramped the runabouts are, they probably spent no more than one or two days travelling each way to and from Merik Three. So they probably were not anywhere near the latest reported borders of Dominion space anytime during their trip.

O'BRIEN: I wish I was on this trip with someone else, that's what I wish.
(beep)
O'BRIEN: We're picking up a subspace magneton pulse, bearing zero nine zero mark one one five. The Bopak system.

They travel an unspecified distance to the Bopak system for an unspecified length of time.

O'BRIEN: I'm having trouble pinpointing the source of the plasma surge. Too much EM interference in the atmosphere. But it's definitely down there somewhere.
BASHIR: According to our records, Bopak Three is uninhabited. The nearest Dominion outpost is six weeks away and this system is well off the established trade routes in the Gamma Quadrant.

If Bopack Three is 6 weeks away from the nearest Dominion outpost and probably close to the mouth of the wormhole, the nearest Dominion outpost must be weeks away from the mouth of the wormhole, despite all that the Dominion might have done to expand toward the mouth of the wormhole in the years after it's discovery.

If the Dominion ruled space around the wormhole before "Emissary" they would have made it known as soon as they heard about visitors from the Alpha Quadrant. They would have set up a space station and space battleships with border, customs, and immigration control officers right at the mouth of the wormhole and begun building Jem'hadar bases in the nearest solar systems. Every ship that emerged from the wormhole would have to comply with Dominion entry rules or be blasted.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

My argument is that the Dominion was nowhere near the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole in the first season and probably all of the second season as well. None of the Gamma Quadrant aliens in the first season mentioned the Dominion. I think that if they were members of the Dominion they would believe that it was their duty to mention that to any aliens they contacted in order to avoid visits by the Jem'hadar. If Dominion citizens met Alpha Quadrant people they would have told the Alpha Quadrant people that they were citizens of the Dominion, and that the Alpha Quadrantians should not go through the wormhole without permission from the Dominion.

That is not my impression of the ruling style of the Dominion.

The Founders couldn't care less about the day to day management of their member worlds. To them, those are just Solid concerns. They only care about one thing, that the quadrant is orderly and nobody poses any kind of threat to them. They didn't mention the Dominion because the Dominion is something feared, not discussed. And because the Dominion is a way of life for them, just an assumption that everybody knows about. Everyone in the gamma quadrant knows what they can and what they can not do and are used to everyone else just knowing. Enforcing the Dominions policies is not their job. The gem'hadar enforce them, and they enforce them in one terrifying way.

 

[Farscape One]

Add to that the fact that the intelligence on the nearest outpost being six weeks away could have been faulty, or deliberately made to be false. And six weeks could mean anything... 6 weeks at warp 8, or six weeks at warp 1. No light years distance was given for comparison.

I do think the Dominion's borders were not right by the wormhole, but I think they were close enough to be a stone's throw away.

 

[iliescu]

Those guys are tough as nails, The Dominion Wars are the most interesting arc in Deep Space 9 to here.

 

[STR]

They didn't mention the Dominion because the Dominion is something feared, not discussed.

He/they who shall not be named is a (melo)dramatic thing in fiction. Nobody, ever, does that in real life. When someone has their boot on your back, EVERYTHING becomes a discussion about the person wearing the boot. Especially when the people wearing those boots also drop planet-wide plagues on those who trouble them on occasion, or simply kick people off their homeworld. Those are big, dramatic moves designed to instill fear and part of that fear is keeping people talking about the Jemhadar or the SS or whatever state security force rules your neighborhood.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

"All I know is the Vorta tell you to do something and you do it...because if you do not, they will send in the Jem'Hadar. And then you DIE." - Some character played by John Fleck

 

[DarKush]

I wish they had brought back the Hunters and I wish they had made them part of the Dominion. I hadn't thought of the connection until reading about those intentions on Memory Alpha and then I really wished they had done that. It would've been cool to add another layer to the Dominion and also bring back the Hunters. In any event, I wish they had revisited them and built them up more. They would've been a nice adversary as part of the Dominion or as a run-up to the Dominion War.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I wish they had brought back the Hunters and I wish they had made them part of the Dominion.

Well that's the beauty of it: Since the Hunters haven't been brought back, there's nothing to contradict their being part of the Dominion (and as I said, there were plans to make them so), so we're free to put that in our head-canon.

 

[Spot261]

Given that we see no on screen connection between the dominion and the hunters, nor do we hear of the hunters again, the canon answer is no, there is no connection until one is demonstrated. A crucial question in universe would be "If the hunters with their ubertech were members of the Dominion, why do we never see any other branch of the Dominion use that tech?"

As for whether the Dominion holds the wormhole or not, arguably it seems irrelevant really given the hunter's tactical capabilities, I can't help but suspect they'd have no difficulty bypassing any security measures in place and the Dominion would have little incentive to really invest in preventing them. Therefore they'd likely use the wormhole with relative impunity in either case.