What happened to the Female Changeling after the war?

[Photon]

Apparently the Romulans were having success after they entered. In the meeting on DS9 between Feds/Klingons/Romulans (Tears, the Romulan senator spoke to keep letting the Dominion forces send their units against them and they will continue to defeat them. That's when Worf spoke up about breeding JH and building ships faster than the Allies.

 

[yammerhead]

I always thought the ending of DS9 was rushed and completely illogical. Timo is right; the Federation Alliance did not decisively win the war. It's pretty clear that they were going for that whole WW2 vibe, but the situation was hardly the same. To me, the whole war seemed more like the War of 1812, with the Federation and its Allies representing the US, and the Dominion representing the British Empire. Despite the popular opinion that the United States "won" the war of 1812, the British only began to take the war seriously after Waterloo...providing a loose analogue to the Gamma/Alpha split in the Dominion forces. Of course, the show had to end with a Federation victory, no matter how implausible.

 

[AlphaMan]

I haven't watched my DVDs in a while now and this thread has reoriented me to the brilliance of DS9.

 

[Nebusj]

I think they sentenced her to be the goo in a lava lamp for at least twenty years.

 

[eastman23]

Deckerd said:
Was it ever established that the Federation did sanction the infection of the changelings?

Not as such, but in "The Dogs of War", Sisko told Odo that the Federation Council considered handing over the cure but decided against it. That could be seen as an "after-the-fact" sanction of the infection.

Timo said:
Technically, Sisko was the first to commit a mutually agreed-upon act of war when he mined the wormhole. Prior to that, both sides fought in cold war terms, sabotaging and killing by proxy or in secret or in shady circumstances.

How is mining the entrance to the wormhole in Bajoran space an act of war against the Dominion? An aggressive act designed to tick them off of course, but not an act of war in itself. If anything the Federation committed an act of war against Bajor by setting a minefield in their territory (assuming they didn't get permission) and the Dominion was committing an act of war against Bajor by trespassing in their space.

 

[Sci]

Navaros said:

Clym said:
The Fereration's done some shady stuff, but nothing like the genocide of 800 million Cardassians that the Founder ordered. Plus, the Dominion did start the war in the first place...

The Federation also ordered and had every intention to carry out a genocide on the Founders (when one puts aside semantics).

It's not semantics to point out that a criminal conspiracy of individuals outside of the Federation government committed the attempted genocide of the Founders. The Federation government is hardly responsible for the actions of criminals.

Further, it was a Federation officer who acquired the cure to the disease, and a Bajoran Militia officer who worked on a Federation starbase who distributed it. Those are fairly important circumstances.

The worst you can say about the Federation is that it refused to act to prevent an attempted genocide being committed by other political actors.

It's also debatable whether the Dominion started the war in the first place.

Not really. The Republic of Bajor owns and has the legal right to control the Alpha Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran Wormhole, not the Dominion. Ergo, when the Federation (in the form of Captain Sisko) had the AQ terminus mined, he legally committed an act of war against the Republic of Bajor, not the Dominion. The Dominion had a treaty of neutrality with Bajor, so they had no legal right to intervene in what should have been a Federation-Bajoran conflict. (Further, the Bajoran government didn't really object to the Federation's mining of the Wormhole, they only pretended to -- so, really, the act of war against Bajor was de jure, not de facto.)

The Dominion fired the first shot. They took aggressive action, firing upon a Federation starbase and a Federation starship. They were the aggressors; they started the war.

 

[yammerhead]

Steven said:
...the Dominion was committing an act of war against Bajor by trespassing in their space.

In that case, the Dominion certainly had casus belli for beginning hostilities with the Federation, since Starfleet had been poking around Dominion territory for some time before the actual war began, right?

 

[Sci]

yammerhead said:

Steven said:
...the Dominion was committing an act of war against Bajor by trespassing in their space.

In that case, the Dominion certainly had casus belli for beginning hostilities with the Federation, since Starfleet had been poking around Dominion territory for some time before the actual war began, right?

Starfleet entered Dominion space once without their permission, and did so with the intent of attempting to peacefully contact the Dominion government to negotiate peace.

 

[yammerhead]

Sci said:

Starfleet entered Dominion space once without their permission, and did so with the intent of attempting to peacefully contact the Dominion government to negotiate peace.

I'll have to trust you on that, because my memory is faulty. But even so, the Cardassian Union was Dominion territory...so how does the Federation or Bajor have the right to mine the only logistically sound passageway from the heart of the Dominion to one of its territories? The Dominion isn't going to sit back and let the Federation tell them to take the 75 year scenic route...it's in their interest to keep the wormhole open.

And to get back to the original point: trespassing is trespassing. The Dominion was under no obligation to honor a so-called peaceful contact attempt by the Federation, made by what was undoubtedly a heavily-armed ship. Sounds like gunboat diplomacy to me...

 

[Timo]

Aren't we seeing this from a rather biased point of view? We're arguing that Sisko obeyed Federation law and treaties, but why should the Dominion be concerned with Federation law and treaties? Their own law is just as important in the conflict, if not more so.

The Federation first knowlingly trespassed in "Jem'Hadar", when the Odyssey was sent through the wormhole against the explicit notice of the Dominion that the Gamma side was their sovereign territory. By their own laws, the Jem'Hadar were quite within their rights to fire on the intruding warship, and to laugh at the Federation Mickey Mouse "laws" that upheld the pretension that the Dominion wasn't the sovereign master of that space. If the Feds try to bring their laws into Dominion space, that's called conquest, and cannot be tolerated.

Also, Weyoun made it explicit that mining or otherwise blockading the wormhole would be an act of war. Even if UFP lawyers tried to have a differing viewpoint, this could and should be ignored: criminals don't get to formulate law to their advantage. "It's an internal affair of ours" is the classic defense of oppressors and warmongers, and one that had little factual basis in the case of blockading the wormhole.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[yammerhead]

I don't understand the strategic value of the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion. If the Federation and its allies pose such a threat, why not conquer the rest of the galaxy and save the Federation for last? It's not like they have to worry about the Borg anymore, right?

If the Federation leaders had any brains, they would have released the female Founder as a gesture of goodwill towards the Dominion, arranged for some kind of massive "accident" to befall the wormhole, and started working on uniting the Alpha Quadrant so that the next time the Dominion was encountered, they could face them a bit more equally. After all, you're not always going to have the crew of a tiny space station to save you.

 

[Sci]

yammerhead said:

Sci said:
Starfleet entered Dominion space once without their permission, and did so with the intent of attempting to peacefully contact the Dominion government to negotiate peace.

I'll have to trust you on that, because my memory is faulty. But even so, the Cardassian Union was Dominion territory...so how does the Federation or Bajor have the right to mine the only logistically sound passageway from the heart of the Dominion to one of its territories?

The Federation does not, but Bajor does, because it is their terminus. The Dominion does not have any inherent right to use that particular terminus, only Bajor does; use of the terminus is a privilege that Bajor extends or withdraws at its pleasure, legally-speaking.

The Dominion isn't going to sit back and let the Federation tell them to take the 75 year scenic route...it's in their interest to keep the wormhole open.

Yes, but that doesn't make their actions legal or non-hostile.

And to get back to the original point: trespassing is trespassing. The Dominion was under no obligation to honor a so-called peaceful contact attempt by the Federation, made by what was undoubtedly a heavily-armed ship. Sounds like gunboat diplomacy to me...

And yet they didn't start a war over it, but instead over the mining of the Bajoran Wormhole's AQ terminus.

Timo said:
Aren't we seeing this from a rather biased point of view? We're arguing that Sisko obeyed Federation law and treaties, but why should the Dominion be concerned with Federation law and treaties? Their own law is just as important in the conflict, if not more so.

I don't see why Dominion law would be any more important than Federation law. However, I'm not even convinced there is a such thing as Dominion "law." The Dominion just does what it wants.

The Federation first knowlingly trespassed in "Jem'Hadar", when the Odyssey was sent through the wormhole against the explicit notice of the Dominion that the Gamma side was their sovereign territory.

Not exactly. The Dominion never made any territorial claims over the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran Wormhole. They simply declared that they would not allow Alpha Quadranters to be in the Gamma Quadrant anymore, and would use force in response to such a presence. They never made any territorial claims. It would be the equivalent of the United States declaring that it would no longer allow European citizens to be present in the Americas; it's not a claim of ownership of all of North and South America, but, rather, an act of rank bullying.

Also, Weyoun made it explicit that mining or otherwise blockading the wormhole would be an act of war. Even if UFP lawyers tried to have a differing viewpoint, this could and should be ignored: criminals don't get to formulate law to their advantage. "It's an internal affair of ours" is the classic defense of oppressors and warmongers, and one that had little factual basis in the case of blockading the wormhole.

Except that the Dominion had no ownership, nor did it claim such, of the Bajoran Wormhole. The Wormhole terminus was the property of the Bajoran government, and the Federation's act against it constituted an act of aggression against Bajor, not the Dominion. The Dominion violated its own neutrality agreement by then retaliating against the Federation for its act "against" Bajor.

 

[Photon]

And more: (Jem'Hadar)-3rd Telekan (whatever)gave Kira the list of ships the Dominion had destroyed in the GQ AND told her about the invasion of New Bajor-"they fought well, for a spiritual ppl" Technicaly that's when the war started.

Still, if you watch the battle at the end-the Dominion BattleBugs fired the first shots, when trying to extract Sisko, Quark and the boys

 

[Sci]

Photon said:
And more: (Jem'Hadar)-3rd Telekan (whatever)gave Kira the list of ships the Dominion had destroyed in the GQ AND told her about the invasion of New Bajor-"they fought well, for a spiritual ppl" Technicaly that's when the war started.

No it's not. The Dominion and Bajor never went to war for the rest of the series, and the Federation and the Dominion did not go to war until years later. That may have been when the rivalry between the Dominion and Federation began, but it's not when the war began.

 

[Photon]

I usually agree w/ya Sci, but not on this one.

 

[Jono]

yammerhead said:
I don't understand the strategic value of the Federation and the Alpha Quadrant to the Dominion. If the Federation and its allies pose such a threat, why not conquer the rest of the galaxy and save the Federation for last? It's not like they have to worry about the Borg anymore, right?

The Founders are extremely paranoid. They pretty much believe because of what happened to them in the past that they cannot peacefully coexist with solids and therefore the only way for them to be safe is if they can exert their will over any solids they find.

So after thousands of years of this successful policy they find out that is an area of space that contains four large solid empires that are aggressive and at just about on par with Dominion technology. Given their paranoid nature you can see how they would consider this a huge threat and one that should be dealt with promptly.

The Dominion's paranoia proved somewhat correct with three out of the four powers attempting (by proxy) to commit genocide against the Founders.

 

[yammerhead]

rofeta said:

The Founders are extremely paranoid. They pretty much believe because of what happened to them in the past that they cannot peacefully coexist with solids and therefore the only way for them to be safe is if they can exert their will over any solids they find.

So after thousands of years of this successful policy they find out that is an area of space that contains four large solid empires that are aggressive and at just about on par with Dominion technology. Given their paranoid nature you can see how they would consider this a huge threat and one that should be dealt with promptly.

But the Dominion didn't deal with the threat. They called it quits and went home--and left their viceroy in the Alpha Quadrant for punishment. Unfortunately, the decisiveness of the final battle over Cardassia didn't ring true...the war ended because it was the series finale. To place it in a historical context, it's like declaring the Pacific war over at Midway...there was still plenty of fight left in the Japanese.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

It's never clear how much the Dominion lost in the wormhole and what portion of that was their overall force, didn't they even lose contact with their listening posts? How much did the "prophets" do to them? Was their fleet disintegrated? Displaced?

The Allies won, with DS9 in allied hands and later Sisko with the prophets, short of transwarp, no Dominion reinforcements could come from Gamma. They'd go *poof* or slam into a reestablished mine field.

 

[yammerhead]

Of course, that means that the Alpha Dominion forces would have to go back through the wormhole (unless they were made to go around, in which case they might as well have just continued the war)...so the Prophets would only eliminate the Dominion fleet if they were a direct threat to Bajor and Bajor only? Wow. Talk about winning the cosmic lottery.

 

[Hofner]

They never explained whether the Prophet intervention getting rid of the Jem'Hadar fleet was a one-time thing or not but I assume it was a one-time thing.

After retaking DS9 I assume (again!?) that Starfleet took whatever means necessary to make sure no more Dominion forces comes throgh the wormhole. It would be extremely stupid not to.

Robert