What would the series have been like without the Dominion?

How do you imagine it would have gone?

What would you have liked to see?

 

Honestly, I would imagine we would still get a prolonged war arc, but it would have involved the Cardassians reasserting their power, possibly creating an response to the Federation allying itself with the Klingons, and connecting the Breen, the Tzenkethi (sp?), and the Tholians as a bit of a power base against perceived Federation dominance in the quadrant. The Ferengi or other races might be caught in the middle as the two powers start testing each others mettle and figuring out their lines.

I would imagine we would see a lot more planet of the week type episodes, maybe even a fight over territories inside the Gamma Quadrant.

Probably a few more time travel episodes.

Definitely a lot more holodeck episodes.

 

More exploration and less war? Yes, please.

 

There probably would have still been jerks on the other side of the wormhole, just not as unified.

 

I think they’d do more with the Cardassians trying to retake Bajor and its colonies. Maybe we’d see more of life in the Union. “Tribunal” painted a chilling picture of it. Who were its leaders, and what happened to the Hibetians from before the military took over?

Would the Maquis situation lead to war? What happened to Ro? Might we find out how Sito Jaxa died?

On Bajor I’d see holy wars over the revelation of the Prophets being aliens and the identity and role of the Emissary — another alien.

I’d see DS9 being too far from the Klingons or Romulans (Orions, Tholians, etc) to include them in the series, but maybe we’d learn more about newer aliens like the Talarians, Miradorn, Breen, Jarada, Sheliak, Chalnoth, and Ferengi.

I wonder if different sections of Ferengi society could have been played with here. After setting up Quark and the Nagus and the less militaristic part of Ferengi society, if this new creative team might have taken another stab at also showing their more sinister side. Ferenginar blockading Bajor when the latter refuses to repay debts incurred during the Occuparion, or for weapons after.

Who are Odo’s people across the wormhole? Are there any left or are all that’s left fables of an ancient people who disappeared why?

Where was Tosk from? What other games do they play?

 

If you take out the Dominion I still think you have to put something in the Gamma Quadrant in their place to rationalise why they wouldn't stick a new villain race in there. Because between Seasons 1 and 2 the attitude seemed to be that the GQ was this big boring empty stretch of nothing and so when they needed to define it compared to the incoming Delta Quadrant for Voyager, which would also had the potential to be a big boring empty stretch of nothing, they ended up with designing the anti-Federation as a contrast to both that and the Alpha Quadrant. If you take the Dominion away they still need to do something with it. You could put more separate good and evil empires there, or even put another Federation there that doesn't have to be evil but just off enough that they could come in contact as antagonists every so often. Maybe some robots. A big empire of robots clanking along in big tinfoil costumes.
Even without the Dominion you still could have "Odo's people/Changelings" out there in the Gamma Quadrant and it would be interesting to do something different with them. They could be a super organism that splits itself into pieces and sends them out into space and then when the changeling returns they are absorbed back into the whole. The danger of them could be more personal to Odo in loss of self. It's a bit Borg like but this is in 1994 so they haven't used it so much yet.
Hey what ever happened to Odo's ship that brought him through the wormhole? Is it in some Cardassian lab?

 

I don’t know that the other side was empty so much as just what space actually is — vast.

One thing I think might have been interesting is if Bajor slowly becomes very wealthy (and all the social upheaval because of that) from all the traffic going through the wormhole. Every season includes different dramas from the ramifications (and twists) of all that.

Also whyy did the Prophets create a wormhole in the first place and why did they make the other end where it is? Maybe in an alternate version of DS9 we find out there’s more to it and them than we knew.

And could there have been another component to the story, a religious one where it turns out every year Bajor itself edges ever closer to the wormhole and one day it’ll be sucked in and destroyed by it. Maybe there’s a Book of Revelation story in that that comes to fruition with the series finale.

 

Given what we saw in "Parallels", and given how these things, unfortunately, often work out, one possibility is that as Bajor became self-sufficient again they'd also call for reprisals against Cardassia for the Occupation and generally become more "this will never happen to us again". I can see Winn going along with it readily enough.

 

Oh I love these. Holy crap, imagine if they'd been dropping out orbs on both sides of the Wormhole and another race had come up with other uses for them that was a bit more nasty. Use the Orb of Wisdom to develop great science or weapons, or use the Orb of Time to manipulate time until you get what you want. What does it mean when Gods reveal they have two chosen peoples?
And Revelation or Ragnarok ending, perfect. Bajor's religions has to have some diversity so even if it's part of just some minor sect, that would be great.

 

I think one thing I didn't like about the Dominion is how much it dominated the Gamma Quadrant. I got a bit of a TOS Wild West vibe to the untamed GQ in the earlier seasons, and a look at a part of the galaxy even weirder for being so far away, and I guess I wanted to see more of it before it was cut off by the overbearing Dominion.

And I did like the Dominion just fine. I liked the slow trickle of information on it and how sinister it seemed especially early on. And I liked the many species of it and how alien the Changelings were, the drop an ocean and the ocean a drop. ...I wonder if they could have gone farther with that. Like, if every time a Changeling linked it basically desolved and never came back quite the same way, if ever – Odo linking being a surprise death for the character, one that the version of him that came back would have to eschew or at least weigh carefully before doing it again.

That's interesting, I hadn't thought about Orbs on both sides, but I like that. I'd prefer a more complex set of Prophets to the Prophet-Pagh Wraith silliness. Maybe Odo's people are part of that story, a casualty of whatever happened on the other side.

The Bajorans are an interesting people, ones who have been around for tens or hundreds of thousands of years yet they're still very similar to us. I've often wondered if there's more to that than we found out. If a war with the ancient Orions and/or others (the T'Kon?) when both peoples were at the heights of their civilizations (or if something else) set them back. ...could the Changelings be what the Bajorans would have been if things didn't go awry on this side of the wormhole? And what happened on the other side to disappear the Changelings and set them sending their young out so dangerously?

Or I dunno, something completely different. In my Revelation idea, I imagined Bajor hurtling toward destruction, doubters and believers doing different dramatic things, and the ultimately the entire planet making it to the other side of the wormhole. This to save them from Federation membership – did everyone who was going to join leave the planet before certain destruction while only the crazies remained? Or to bless the Federation with a newest member now on the other side of the galaxy?

 

This is fun!

 

I don't think it would have made much of a difference, they called it the dominion war but the dominion was really just extra power to justify a war against the cardassians without having to explain why the federation and Klingons don't stomp them into the ground easily after Cardassia had been portrayed as a declining power for several years.
If it hadn't been the dominion the writers could have just brought in the Breen earlier as an ally for Cardassia for example.

 

The Orb of Time seems like a "win" button... why doesn't someone from Bajor take it back to pre-Cardassian occupation and warn Bajor beforehand? Allow them to build weapons, or maybe secure a powerful ally (like the Federation)? Might anyone have already tried that?

 

As the Prophets are playing the long game, you kind of have to assume that they didn't interfere or allow interference with the Occupation because it was a necessary step in the overall path for the Bajorans.

 

They still would have made finding Odo's people a big deal or some kind of shocking reveal, probably as baddies because plot

 

I can't really blame them there. Odo's people being antagonists opens a lot more storytelling possibilities than them being neutral or good guys, so once you commit to revealing his origins, it's not hard to guess which way things will go.

 

The Ferengi could have been revamped, hopefully so that their entire culture wasn't destroyed overnight because it was Not Politically Correct.

I don't think they could have gotten through the series without establishing female rights in some form, but maybe they could have at least tried to have it make sense. The whole Ferengi arc from "Ferengi Love Songs" on seems like something the Voyager showrunners would have put together, as opposed to the much more competent DS9 staff.

 

I mean, it's hard treated as empty space early on:
BASHIR: You're fine. In fact, you're in remarkable shape.
VASH: Thank you, Doctor. I try.
BASHIR: I, I, I mean you've managed quite well considering you've been out of contact with civilisation for over two years.
VASH: I'd hardly call the Gamma Quadrant uncivilised. Some of the cultures I've encountered have histories that date back millions of years.
BASHIR: Really? I'd love to hear about them. I mean, we have no idea what's beyond the wormhole.
VASH: Well, maybe I'll write a book.
(Q-Less)

Certainly could have a lot of things done with it, such as what Arpy discusses at length.

It's funny you mention the idea of the other end of the Wormhole. I was imagining another Bajor who treat the Prophets as part of their religion, and the resulting conflict that potential could come from that. Perhaps the Cardassians are using that conflict to sow discord between the Bajorans and the Federation, that "The Emissary" is actually for this other group. Only for Sisko to become the Bridge between the two cultures.

 

Seasons 1 and 2 were just that. Until the Season 2 finale the main story arc revolved around the aftermath of the Bajoran Occupation, Bajor's quest to join the Federation and the tense relations with the Cardassians. It was all rather compelling in its own low-key sort of way but the series clearly needed something meatier and more ambitious to keep things ticking along for multiple seasons. DS9 would have been a much poorer show without the introduction of the Dominion. The jump in quality from Season 3 onwards is in part testament to that.

 

Eh, there’s a multiverse of possibility out there, and I always found WWII: In Space! not as interesting as whatever else might have been, equally or more interesting.

I think the as you put it low-key tone of the first couple of seasons is what fans reacted to less enthusiastically than the villains. I mean, Dukat and the Cardassians were there for all of it. I think that the show could have worked without the Dominion once they realized how to shoot it/tell its story.

Plus, this is a thread about what it might have been like without the Dominion. I’m all ears (eyes) if you’ve got another villain to enter the fray in place of the Dominion if you think the show needed one. Sisko loathed the Borg from the start and Lord knows VOY used them.

And this thread is about what you would have liked to see. Other than the Dominion, what would you have liked? Heck, with the Dominion, what else would you have liked to see?