What if Garak had beaten Worf in "broken link"?

[at Quark's]

Memory alpha has a short description of the scene so I'll paste it here for convenience:

"Worf catches Garak in an attempt to control the Defiant's phasers and torpedoes. His plan is to commit genocide by destroying the Founders' homeworld; although the Defiant and its crew would not survive, Garak argues that it would be a small price to destroy the Dominion threat and save the Alpha Quadrant. Worf beats Garak in hand-to-hand combat, commenting that he fights well... for a tailor."

My question is: what would have happened if he had beaten Worf in that scene ? Obviously, he would have fired the torpedoes, and the immediate reaction of the Jem' Hadar would probably have been the obliteration of the Defiant.

But then? Would he, as he claims, have saved the Alpha Quadrant by it ? Would the Dominion have crumbled immediately by that act ? Or would the Vorta/Jem' Hadar have launched an all-out retaliation attack, the Dominion only to crumble later, after several or all Federation capital worlds were ashes -- or not crumble at all, the Vorta , (or remaining Founders) smoothly taking over ultimate control?

How many Founders would be left ? (It seems extremely improbable every last one of them was on the planet at that moment, right ?)

 

[Bad Thoughts]

What if Annikan destroyed the Droid Control Ship? Would the droids keep fighting, or power down?

The notion of the decapitation strike is somewhat fanciful and mostly fantasy. For the sake of argument, let's say all the founders were destroyed in one attack. The Vorta and the Jem'hadar were capable of operating on their own with the intentions of the founders in mind. Indeed, the Jem'hadar were already anticipating a war and seeing Starfleet as the enemy far earlier than To The Death, and they possessed an innate combativeness and drive to prove their physical superiority. The Vorta would remain as an effective administration with their own concepts of order. I'm sure the two could keep the Dominion going on its own, without the Founders.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Memory alpha has a short description of the scene so I'll paste it here for convenience:

"Worf catches Garak in an attempt to control the Defiant's phasers and torpedoes. His plan is to commit genocide by destroying the Founders' homeworld; although the Defiant and its crew would not survive, Garak argues that it would be a small price to destroy the Dominion threat and save the Alpha Quadrant. Worf beats Garak in hand-to-hand combat, commenting that he fights well... for a tailor."

My question is: what would have happened if he had beaten Worf in that scene ? Obviously, he would have fired the torpedoes, and the immediate reaction of the Jem' Hadar would probably have been the obliteration of the Defiant.

But then? Would he, as he claims, have saved the Alpha Quadrant by it ? Would the Dominion have crumbled immediately by that act ? Or would the Vorta/Jem' Hadar have launched an all-out retaliation attack, the Dominion only to crumble later, after several or all Federation capital worlds were ashes -- or not crumble at all, the Vorta , (or remaining Founders) smoothly taking over ultimate control?

How many Founders would be left ? (It seems extremely improbable every last one of them was on the planet at that moment, right ?)

Well, we know for a fact that they couldn't all be on the planet. At the very least, there are those baby changelings they sent out into the universe. They may not know about the Dominion, but if they came back and found out about what had happened then you can bet the Dominion would probably follow them anyway. Not to mention there almost certainly would've already been at least a few changelings in the Alpha Quadrant gathering intelligence.

Also, it's doubtful how much the Jem'Hadar would even believe if anyone tried to tell them what happened. After all, the Founders are gods to them and most Jem'Hadar probably never see a Founder to begin with. As long as the Vorta held it together and maintained the production of the white and the illusion of the founders, the Dominion probably wouldn't even need to have any actually living changelings in order to continue functioning normally.

Although a real changeling genocide could've made for a very interesting story - some Jem'Hadar find out that the Vorta are no longer taking orders from the gods and start a civil war where both sides claim to be restoring the 'order of things' and neither side is psychologically prepared to admit that their gods are all dead...

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Also, it's doubtful how much the Jem'Hadar would even believe if anyone tried to tell them what happened. After all, the Founders are gods to them and most Jem'Hadar probably never see a Founder to begin with. As long as the Vorta held it together and maintained the production of the white and the illusion of the founders, the Dominion probably wouldn't even need to have any actually living changelings in order to continue functioning normally.

Although a real changeling genocide could've made for a very interesting story - some Jem'Hadar find out that the Vorta are no longer taking orders from the gods and start a civil war where both sides claim to be restoring the 'order of things' and neither side is psychologically prepared to admit that their gods are all dead...

This does sound plausible...at least narratively within the Trek universe. And if this could have also happened later in the timeline had Bashir been unable to obtain the cure to the Section 31 disease.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Also, it's doubtful how much the Jem'Hadar would even believe if anyone tried to tell them what happened. After all, the Founders are gods to them and most Jem'Hadar probably never see a Founder to begin with. As long as the Vorta held it together and maintained the production of the white and the illusion of the founders, the Dominion probably wouldn't even need to have any actually living changelings in order to continue functioning normally.

Although a real changeling genocide could've made for a very interesting story - some Jem'Hadar find out that the Vorta are no longer taking orders from the gods and start a civil war where both sides claim to be restoring the 'order of things' and neither side is psychologically prepared to admit that their gods are all dead...

This does sound plausible...at least narratively within the Trek universe. And if this could have also happened later in the timeline had Bashir been unable to obtain the cure to the Section 31 disease.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, as well.

 

[Timo]

Would the Jem'Hadar have been able to achieve much if they were forced to go to war in "Broken Link" already? They still lacked a beachhead in the Alpha Quadrant, and collapsing of the wormhole could have been done at the drop of a hat by any scared Lieutenant left to guard the station (when in doubt, act like the manual says and in the fashion that will save your own butt, instead of stopping to ponder the possible religious ramifications of the act on an alien culture, or the commercial ones on interquadrant trade, or whatnot!).

On the other hand, would the Vorta have been interested in having a war of vengeance? With most of the Founders gone, the Vorta might have seen it advantageous to keep business running as usual, perhaps even collapsing the wormhole from their side to eliminate variables. When the few surviving Founders returned, the Vorta might be told to act against the Federation, but it would be too late, then.

For all we know, the Vorta might welcome each returning Changeling with an apology and a phaser blast, eliminating the survivors one by one so that the Dominion could keep on going. Who needs Founders? Real, living ones, that is. We have seen plenty of examples of the famous Vorta loyalty being overridden by concerns of survival...

However, while the early episodes did suggest that few Jem'Hadar would have direct contact with the Founders, the actual war did put many of them in such contact, and made it seem almost routine - making the scenarios of a Founder-free Dominion less likely, and scenarios of Jem'Hadar rampage uncontrollable by the Vorta or even directed against Vorta treachery more likely.

Timo Saloniemi