Where was the Enterprise during the Dominion War?

I wasn't sure whether Enterprise was meant to be destroyed at this point or not. I knew Enterprise was destroyed, I just wasn't sure where that event lay on the DS9 story timeline, during or after. All I knew for sure was that it wasn't destroyed in the battle of Cardassia.

 

Timeline wise it was destroyed roughly in the middle of DS9’s third season, with Worf joining the show the next year as a result.

 

There was even a stardate for the movie, most of them getting one apparently because TPTB actually liked the idea of connecting the movies and the TV shows onto one and the same timeline: ST:INS is an exception there. So it's fun to try and fine-tune this.

ST:GEN has 48632.4 as a stardate marking the middle of the action. It's around this time that DS9 starts to avoid using stardates (or warp factors, or other specific numbers), so we get to choose from a dozen stardate-free episodes between the mid-season 3 "Destiny" (SD 48543.2) and the S3 ender "The Adversary" (SD 48959.1). The earlier, the better, I guess - but perhaps only after "Visionary" where the Romulans don't bring up the fact that a Fed would recently have stolen trilithium from them...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I should have realized... Worf was the key to knowing when.

 

On Wikipedia it says "The Die is Cast" was on Stardate 48622, so Generations happens like 3 days later

Edit: Actually, it has a stardate for every episode until season 6 and 7

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine_episodes

 

Which is weird, as not only are those eps devoid of dialogue mention of stardates, many of them don't even have onscreen Okudagrams where stardates might have been "hidden".

"The Die is Cast" is a bit late in the season to really be a "XY600 episode", as opposed to, say, a "XY800" one. Then again, the following "Explorers" is "longer than it looks"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think the stardates come from the UK VHS releases, which used to have stardates on the covers even if the episode didn’t mention one. Later seasons would just say stardate: unknown on the cover IIRC, which will be why the dates are incomplete after season 5 on Wikipedia.

Not sure if they were just something Paramount UK made up or not.

 

I think Picard Knew Sisko didn't like him much. Though, they did come to a hand shake, Sisko would always blame Picard for the death of his wife Jen when Picard was a borg. So Picard asked to do his part as far away from Sisko as he could.

 

I don't think Starfleet assigns starships based on whether commanding officers like each other. They're expected to be professionals and put aside personal likes or dislikes, and all the more so in wartime when Starfleet is going to be stretched to the limit.

Besides, Sisko grew a lot in the years between "Emissary" and the war. I think Sisko was much more able to put intense grieving for Jennifer aside than he was during the borderline insubordination he displayed in "Emissary".

 

Picard may have initially found Sisko a weakling who would ill serve Bajor's interests, but this would not keep Picard away from Bajor - the very point of the two COs facing off was that Picard cared about the planet. And of course Sisko could not steer clear of Picard no matter what, as Sisko was chained to the planet and Picard was free to visit basically whenever he pleased.

Would a visit or three during the show go unmentioned? "Birthright" was essentially one of those, and Sisko made no appearance (for production reasons, but that's beside the in-universe point). Perhaps the two still were wary of each other? Possibly for different reasons than during the initial hostile meeting, though: Sisko might feel he wasn't living up to Picard's lofty standards as Bajor's champion, while Picard might think interrupting Sisko's good work would be awkward, especially if his Our Fine Emissary role was doing Bajor worlds of good but keeping it separate from his Foreign Starfleet Oppressor was a chore even without formal visits from his bosses.

As regards Picard's Locutus stigma, Sisko would not be the only one willing to punch, strangle, stab or otherwise confront him for that. Staying away from Bajor would win Picard nothing there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The very point of Sisko and Picard's confrontation was purely about showing Sisko's grief and inability to separate a man who himself was a victim from the beings who took the life of his wife. It also served to demonstrate the point the Prophets made to Sisko that he was trapped in his grief. Sisko had clearly gotten over his hostility towards Picard at the end of Emissary. And while they probably never became best friends Sisko and Picard probably would have been amicable to each other. Just because we don't see Picard sitting in Sisko's office during the crossover episodes, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

 

I'd agree that Picard's stigma would be seen by many in the fleet, considering how many ships were lost - possibly the entire fleet. But, as time passed, would any reasonable person really hold it against him? Picard had no choice - he didn't ask to be assimilated, quite the contrary, in fact.

 

One actually wonders whether Picard in fact did have a choice. Stopping to fight Starfleet makes no sense for the Borg: they could just fly right past or through the silly blockade, and concentrate on having the fight at their destination, Earth. But Picard as Locutus may have had influence within the Collective, and lured them into thinking that fighting and assimilating the fleet at Wolf 359 would be a good idea - when in fact it was but a ruse to buy time for the heroes to discover an antidote to the Borg. Likewise, stopping again and again to sightsee various attractions in the Sol system could be a Locutus move, costing thousands of lives but ultimately saving billions.

Picard might have made his tactics known in a debriefing, and well-meaning people might then have revealed those to the wider public in order to defend Picard - with the opposite effect...

The contribution of Picard to the destruction of the fleet is otherwise likely to be negligible. The ships supposedly didn't die because Picard revealed their secret passwords to the Collective, but simply because they were inferior to begin with and incapable of resisting a Borg Cube.

In-universe, Picard only ever meets Sisko because he thinks the depressed Commander needs a kick in his lower anatomy before he can be trusted with doing the right thing at Bajor. Does he not realize Sisko is a Wolf 359 survivor? His degree of being taken aback doesn't readily tell - but it would be odd for him to have failed to learn this when he decided Sisko was in need of this talk. Surely he came to that conclusion through reading Sisko's file? (Indeed, Sisko's depression and his history with the Borg would probably be directly linked in that file.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

I like to imagine the Enterprise-E, USS Prometheus and other new ships were out defending other federation territory and worlds.

Orion, Vulcan, Tellara, Andor, Betazed and all the human colonies and starbases.

Just a reference on DS9 would've been enough. VOY got to reference the Enterprise several times in their later seasons.

 

Well here's what Michael Pillar had to say on this very topic in his book "Fade In - The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection":

"On Deep Space Nine, the series which chronicles the continuing adventures of Starfleet, the Federation was involved in a desperate war for survival against the evil Dominion. It would be nice, I felt, to be consistent with the TV show. Picard and the Enterprise might be involved in combat when we find him. I called Ira who has guided the series for the last several years. "I know this is a hard question to answer," I said. "But where do you think the Federation will be next Christmas when this movie comes out?"

Ira, who enjoys exploring the darker side of Twenty-Fourth century life, laughed and answered, "This might surprise you, knowing me. But I think things will be looking up for the Federation. The war will linger on but it'll reach a stalemate probably by then and our stories will be more hopeful." It made sense. Deep Space Nine would be in the middle of its last season --the decision had been made long ago that it would run seven seasons --and certainly they'd want to end the series on an uplifting note.

So, it seemed combat wasn't the answer for Picard and as I sat there, I told myself it was probably just as well. Rick was not enthusiastic about the Dominion War plotline on Deep Space Nine and I knew he'd be reluctant to bring it to the big screen even as a tangential element. So, I decided Picard would be awash in mundane details of duties heaped upon him by Starfleet Command as the war was winding down. It would be a far more subtle 'regeneration' for our Captain but I thought I could pull it off and I thought I could do it with humor which would be more in keeping with the tone of the film."

 

Maybe I should read the book.

 

The Piller's book and the behind the scenes attitude of the producer and writing staff on the TNG movies and VOY, make the Dominion War seems like a small series of skirmishes, happening far off edges of the frontier. Whiles the big battles, long casualty lists, and frequent reference to the fall of the Alpha Quadrant being imminent on DS9. Paint the Dominion War as the most important thing to happen in Trek lore.

With TNG being a box office bread winner (prior to INS), and VOY being the flagship show of the channel UPN. It feels like DS9 was the red-headed step child of the IP.

Here's hoping Star Trek Picard will give us some details about post-Dominion Federation/Star Fleet.

 

There's really only one TNG movie that takes place around the events of the Dominion war(Insurrection), and we don't really know when exactly it happens, but as you can see in the above quote, the DS9 showrunner was consulted by the screenwriter(not writing staff. The movies have one or two screenwriters), and followed. Since Insurrection has no Stardate, it could take place at the end, or after the war. Even worse DS9's own writing staff treated the war as peripheral through much of it.

As for Voyager, it has nothing to do with the Dominion War. We get a little bit referenced as pertaining to the Maquis' fate, but by the time they can actually communicate with Starfleet, the war is long over.

That's also kind of a problem with DS9's scale. They kept saying "The entire Alpha Quadrant!" when the Federation is a small blip in the "alpha quadrant."

 

The same place it was during the Cardassian War.

 

When I read that in Piller's book, I was stunned. First of all, I was crushed as it seemed possible that ST: INS would have begun with the ENT fighting in the Dominion War, which would have been awesome, even if only as a prologue and would have given Picard adequate battle-harded weariness which would have set-up whatever emotions he went through in the rest of the movie.

Even more baffling is Ira's unbelievably off base "prediction" about what the next year of DS9 was going to look like. Seriously, he thought the war would just settle into a boring "stalemate"? That makes absolutely no sense. Thankfully, it's not what the show actually became, but sheesh...