So while massive war fleets are obliterating each other, Betazed is being conquered, Section 31 is attempting genocide, there are representatives sitting peacefully in a room discussing surrender? Doesn't ring true to me.
Where was the Enterprise during the Dominion War?
- Thread starter Trekkie27
- Start date
We know that both the Dominion and the Alpha Axis were indeed doing such negotiations, in "Statistical Probabilities".
But "Statistical Probabilities" also demonstrates to the Alphans that such negotiations would do them no good - the Dominion had no interest in negotiating in good faith about armistices or the like, but was only trying to secure the resources necessary for victory. To keep on negotiating after that would be odd: even if the Alphans wanted to give the enemy another chance, the Dominion would see little point in persisting with a strategy that had already been exposed and foiled.
After a war is when you negotiate with your former enemies, and when you attempt to gain new allies. Or at least this is what happened after the recent world wars around here, but did not happen during them to any significant degree.
Also, after a war is when you trust Nazi or Son'a scientists with your national defenses, not during!
Timo Saloniemi
But "Statistical Probabilities" also demonstrates to the Alphans that such negotiations would do them no good - the Dominion had no interest in negotiating in good faith about armistices or the like, but was only trying to secure the resources necessary for victory. To keep on negotiating after that would be odd: even if the Alphans wanted to give the enemy another chance, the Dominion would see little point in persisting with a strategy that had already been exposed and foiled.
After a war is when you negotiate with your former enemies, and when you attempt to gain new allies. Or at least this is what happened after the recent world wars around here, but did not happen during them to any significant degree.
Also, after a war is when you trust Nazi or Son'a scientists with your national defenses, not during!
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed, we know there were negotiations going back to at least the 6th season. Both sides were probably engaged in some diplomacy, even during the war. And that's not uncommon. For instance negotiations went on for years prior to the end of the Vietnam war. I don't think negotiations=the war being ended.
And look, Berman era Trek was pretty predictable when it came to the timeline. They didn't do tricky stuff like shows do today. All the shows at the time AND movies that were released took place concurrently to one another. We know Generations took place during season 3 of DS9 and 1 of Voyager, First Contact, which was released 2 years later took place 2 years after Generations and was concurrent with the then current season 5 of DS9 and season 3 of Voyager, and Nemesis took place 6 years after First Contact and 2 years after the conclusion of Voyager. I find it hard to believe that Insurrection was the lone outlier--that it was released in the middle of the 7th season of DS9 yet it was the one time that something they filmed actually took place at least 6 months in the future---after the end of DS9 which hadn't occurred yet (and probably wasn't even conceived of as of yet when Insurrection is written)---that is outside your obvious time travel stories. Insurrection was released in the middle of season 7 of DS9---I believe that is when it took place. Never once did I think it took place in the future of when it was released relative to the other concurrent Star Trek shows.
And what would be the reason for placing Insurrection 6 months in the future of what was then the current ongoing storyline on DS9? For a single line about "Dominion negotiations"? That makes no sense. Berman era Trek ran in a pretty linear timeline. One year of real time=one year of story time. That's how they rolled. It makes no sense that they would break their own precedent up to that point just to use the term "Dominion negotiations". It was a throwaway line to basically say that the writers of Insurrection didn't forget about the war---that while Insurrection had almost nothing to do with the war, that yes, it was part of the same universe.
Lots of things ... exchange of prisoners - as happened with one episode, treatment of prisoners in POW camps, temporary ceasefire to evacuate the wounded from the battle zones, temporary ceasefire during other times, for various reasons, and so on.
Well, of course not. "Moving" the movie would be done exactly so that there would be no war to complicate the story that had nothing to do with a war.
Of course, the story then ends up taking on elements that only make sense postwar, such as close cooperation with a known enemy in the war. An enemy that, as we learn from DS9 *, remains an enemy till the very last, no less!
But the story never takes on elements that would support a war going on, because the writers would be actively avoiding such - war would be their enemy. Hence all references to fighting are absent, even if the existence of this recent war is fully acknowledged, and commented on in the past tense by hero and villain alike.
1) Picard speaks of losses to the Borg and the Dominion, associating a known past event with the Dominion event.
2) Rua'fo speaks of the Borg, the Cardassians and the Dominion having challenged the UFP in the past 24 months, again associating past events with the Dominion one, and now with a bit of telltale dating, too.
The Borg were a menace long before the stated two years, but yes, there's necessarily a Borg challenge within 24 months of the war's end, too: ST:FC is towards the end of the stardate year 50000 in 2373, while the war concludes exactly two years later at the end of the stardate year 52000 in 2375, this indeed being the apparent in-universe reason for Rua'fo specifying "24 months" and starting out with the Borg. The Cardassian and Dominion offensive would soon follow.
Were the movie "intended" to be in the middle of the war, the specifying of 24 months (not even "two years" but a specific number of months) would make zero sense in- or out-universe: Rua'fo would want to present as recent a timetable for the humiliation of the UFP as possible, and the writers wouldn't be ignorant of what they were doing.
Naturally, different writers may intend different things even for the same piece of writing. But the movie has nothing at all to contradict the intent apparent here.
Timo Saloniemi
*) "Penumbra", an episode written in early 1999, maintains that the Son'a are enemies, while ST:INS, a movie written in mid-1998, concludes in them no longer being (not to mention opens up with them being supposed if uneasy allies). So even DS9 writers would seem to be doing their own active bit to establish that ST:INS is postwar!
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Even if ST:INS was after the Dominion War, it still doesn't answer the original question: "Where was the Enterprise-E during the Dominion War?" Arguments that it was too valuable to use in war are dumb. It's like saying that we can't use our aircraft carriers during WWII. These WERE the most valuable capital ships, AND the primary target for every Zero in the air. Vice Admiral Halsey and his flagship Enterprise WAS the primary target for the Japanese, and was the key warship to all raids against the Japanese. To protect the most valuable capital ship (be it an aircraft carrier or the Enterprise-E), you make it the center of a task force surrounded by battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Then you send it at the enemy.
What we can learn from ST:INS is that whatever Picard and pals did, they weren't out there exploring, as that's the thing they think they are missing out on...
Everything else is up to grabs. It makes sense for some starships to have missed the action altogether in the roughly year-long surprise war of DSC, for having been too distant from the battlefields. The Dominion War was twice as long, and not a surprise to Starfleet - but the E-E might have been even farther out than the E-nil. Not exploring, though, or else our heroes have really short attention spans. And they do the exact opposite of Pike as regards a war somebody else fought: they don't miss it a bit.
If we assume the Star Trek universe always works on dramatic terms (and why wouldn't it?), the E-E must have accomplished great things. She didn't bring down the all-seeing Dominion sensor of "Behind the Lines", and the repeated successful Starfleet attacks on Dominion shipyards apparently didn't decide the outcome of the war so they are not dramatic enough. Something like the DS9 novelette Behind Enemy Lines, then, with the TNG heroes valiantly stopping the Dominion from opening a second wormhole, or otherwise preventing bad things from happening? Nothing to show for their efforts, then, but the big drama is still there.
Timo Saloniemi
Everything else is up to grabs. It makes sense for some starships to have missed the action altogether in the roughly year-long surprise war of DSC, for having been too distant from the battlefields. The Dominion War was twice as long, and not a surprise to Starfleet - but the E-E might have been even farther out than the E-nil. Not exploring, though, or else our heroes have really short attention spans. And they do the exact opposite of Pike as regards a war somebody else fought: they don't miss it a bit.
If we assume the Star Trek universe always works on dramatic terms (and why wouldn't it?), the E-E must have accomplished great things. She didn't bring down the all-seeing Dominion sensor of "Behind the Lines", and the repeated successful Starfleet attacks on Dominion shipyards apparently didn't decide the outcome of the war so they are not dramatic enough. Something like the DS9 novelette Behind Enemy Lines, then, with the TNG heroes valiantly stopping the Dominion from opening a second wormhole, or otherwise preventing bad things from happening? Nothing to show for their efforts, then, but the big drama is still there.
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, I don't think you could say the line about 'dominion negotiations' means the war was over. There are plenty of examples in 'real' history of negotiations taking place during wartime for various reasons. That single line really means nothing as far as whether the war was still raging or not.
But look, if some people want to believe Insurrection took place 6 months to a year later than what was currently going on in the Star Trek universe at the time then have at it. I made my arguments for why I feel it takes place when it does. It really doesn't make any difference to me. I mean, I love a good debate but I feel like I'm beating a dead horse at this point. At least in my case I'm at the point where I'm not going to convince people of my viewpoint nor vice versa.
Well, I do believe that the Enterprise was likely involved with the war. There are a few TNG novels that depict the Enterprise engaged in missions regarding the war, which is just as good to go with as anything. I don't read comics but I believe there may even be comic book stories. Even if Insurrection takes place during the war, that's just a small segment of time. There's plenty of time for the Enterprise to be engaged with the Dominion War in some fashion. And as to why it was not seen on DS9 ever? I just figured space was big. We've heard about a number of battles on DS9 that we never actually saw. And we know in the 2 battles for Deep Space Nine during the war other than the Defiant there were no other Starfleet vessels there. Now once DS9 was liberated the Dominion seemed to have lost interest in the station itself. Probably because once they realized the wormhole was out, the sector lost it's strategic importance to the Dominion (that and the Allies probably fortified their defenses around the sector).
Still, we saw a few crossover episodes early in the show. It would have been nice to see the Enterprise either docked or nearby the station, and maybe a visitor from TNG even.
Could have E-E screwed up the time travel back to their future time from ST:FC, i.e. overshot it and missed the whole war? When they get "back", we never see their return on film. Was their chronological time correctly established? 
Here's the end of ST:FC:
Here's the end of ST:FC:And talk about the Federation situations in the beginning of ST:INS:
Sounds like the Dominion War is wrapping up. Here's a good chance E-E arrived back near the end of the Dominion War, and by the time they ripped out the Borg tech and repaired the ship, the war ended.
Picard refused to take the Enterprise into combat, insisting that Starfleet wasn't a military.
Nah. While he'd prefer to be an explore he's taken the Enterprise in battle plenty of times. And sometimes war, while undesirable, is necessary. The Dominion threatened everything the Federation stood for. I have no doubt he would fight for that (in fact, I sort of inferred his line toward the end of Insurrection about not abandoning the Federation to people who would destroy it as a subtle reference to the Dominion, and not just the Federation Council).
Even though Insurrection seems a bit of an anomaly, it wasn't months and months...what was it, at most a few days or a week. There's plenty of time for the Enterprise to be engaged in 'off-screen' battles and actions pertaining to the war. As an avid novel reader I've read books about the war from TNG's and the Enterprise's point of view. Taking that into account the Enterprise was very much involved with the war. But being one ship it can't be involved in every action of the war.
One thing I forgot was they were actually on their way to a system to mediate a dispute. The actions in the Briar Patch delayed that mission (a mission which would have delayed their archaeological expedition to the 'monsoon' season as Picard noted).
The only other reason I can think of for the Enterprise to be involved with disputes and archaeological digs is even on DS9, the war waxed and waned. At times on DS9 even Sisko noted the war seemed far away....and there were periods of time over the 2 years where the Dominion retreated back into Cardassian territory to 'lick its wounds'. There wasn't continuous battles going on. The Enterprise may simply have been sent to take care of some other business during one of those lulls. We have no idea where these systems were in relation to the war. It's possible the Enterprise could have been called into quick action should the need have arisen. There are plenty of ships to 'stand guard' at the border. They wouldn't waste the Enterprise and it's vast resources just guarding the border. Other ships would take on that responsibility.
Unless the Hanoran Two monsoon season predictably starts within the week. The monsoon season on Earth is fairly predictable to the day sometimes.
In any case, Picard seems to be hoping to conclude his mission before the rains come. What sort of archaeology works like that? I mean, yes, you can decide to have a dig that terminates when the bad weather comes in, but you can't guarantee you get any sort of results from that dig - so why does Picard even bother? If he in turn is merely intent on reaping the benefits of a longer project, why would the weather worry him, when he can pick the Slaver Stasis Box or whatever neatly from the tent of the Chief Digger?
It doesn't really sound as if the starship visit would play any significant role in the dig in the end. Picard just wants to sightsee a bit before he needs a boat for it. No wonder Starfleet found him better things to do. (Just not war-related things!)
Timo Saloniemi
It doesn't really sound as if the starship visit would play any significant role in the dig in the end. Picard just wants to sightsee a bit before he needs a boat for it. No wonder Starfleet found him better things to do. (Just not war-related things!)
Timo Saloniemi
I have narrowed down the events of Insurrection. In the DS9 episode "Penumbra," we get a reference to the Sona, and a stardate. This episode takes place before the movie:
If Stardate 52000 is the beginning of the year 2375, then 52576.2 is about 7 months in (365/1000=3.65 *576=210 days(7 months, or around June 29th)
Worf and Ezri are captured in this episode. The next Stardate is in "Extreme Measures"(52645- 25 days later, or late July)
The next and final stardate of the season is in the penultimate episode "Dogs of War"(52861.3- 104 days from "Penumbra," or mid October. The war ends in the next episode. So Worf helped the Baku sometime after his capture by the Breen and escape, and likely before his planned settlement on Qonos.
From Penumbra said:
If Stardate 52000 is the beginning of the year 2375, then 52576.2 is about 7 months in (365/1000=3.65 *576=210 days(7 months, or around June 29th)
Worf and Ezri are captured in this episode. The next Stardate is in "Extreme Measures"(52645- 25 days later, or late July)
The next and final stardate of the season is in the penultimate episode "Dogs of War"(52861.3- 104 days from "Penumbra," or mid October. The war ends in the next episode. So Worf helped the Baku sometime after his capture by the Breen and escape, and likely before his planned settlement on Qonos.
...And as discussed, there's a time window within "What You Leave Behind" for Worf to do ST:INS after the war ends but before he has a severe bout of flashbacks and leaves for Qo'noS. This would fit well within the mopping-up phase of the conflict.
Then again, Worf never is shown going to Qo'noS in that post-flashback scene, or stating that he's about to go there. It isn't even established that he would be leaving the station for anything more than a brief mission or leave or whatever. For all we know, he was leaving for the mission he aborts in favor of joining Picard in ST:INS.
(Generally, stardates don't roll over on January 1st, but fall more or less in synch with the Paramount season whenever we get a reference to an Earth date - First Contact Day or Thanksgiving, say. So 52000 might be the late summer of 2374 instead. This doesn't affect the above logic, though.)
Timo Saloniemi
Then again, Worf never is shown going to Qo'noS in that post-flashback scene, or stating that he's about to go there. It isn't even established that he would be leaving the station for anything more than a brief mission or leave or whatever. For all we know, he was leaving for the mission he aborts in favor of joining Picard in ST:INS.
(Generally, stardates don't roll over on January 1st, but fall more or less in synch with the Paramount season whenever we get a reference to an Earth date - First Contact Day or Thanksgiving, say. So 52000 might be the late summer of 2374 instead. This doesn't affect the above logic, though.)
Timo Saloniemi
Yup, this is how it ought to work given the use of the Son'a in the writing of the movie and the show. Placing the movie before "Penumbra" really takes some mental juggling.
Although I guess it could be done. The Son'a/Ba'ku in the movie are nothing if not factionated, and this is not limited to them being two halves or a former single colony - there's also their original home to consider. Perhaps the "taming" of the Son'a in the movie did not touch much upon the "other Son'a", these perhaps being those technocrats at the original home the Ba'ku fled from, and also staunch allies of the Dominion in "Penumbra" still.
Timo Saloniemi
Although I guess it could be done. The Son'a/Ba'ku in the movie are nothing if not factionated, and this is not limited to them being two halves or a former single colony - there's also their original home to consider. Perhaps the "taming" of the Son'a in the movie did not touch much upon the "other Son'a", these perhaps being those technocrats at the original home the Ba'ku fled from, and also staunch allies of the Dominion in "Penumbra" still.
Timo Saloniemi
I used to go with the view that Insurrection took place during the war, as that's when it was released, but it really makes more sense after the fighting is over.
A big hint is the details about the Son'a from DS9 - they were a Dominion ally, or at least a neutral supplier of Ketracel White, which is what Riker and Troi learn in the film. She asks "Why would we be involved with these people", which is a good question if the war is ongoing, but working closely with an old enemy to find new friends is an incredibly Federation thing to do. "We need all the friends we can get" is another bit of foreshadowing - the Federation Council is desperate to avoid making new enemies, so they'll make friends with any ex-Nazis to further peace.
The line about "Dominion negotiations" makes no sense during the war as Timo says, but makes a whole lot of sense after. The signing ceremony in WYLB was probably just the ceasefire, not the final treaty, which would have taken much longer to arrange. They also have the matter of asking the Prophets not to disappear all the Dominion ships trying to go home through the wormhole...
Worf's status is neither here nor there. He leaves with Martok at the end of WYLB, but that might just be for a holiday. Maybe he's off to the Manzar Colony to sort out their orbital defences? In any case, since when does Martok get to pick the Federation's ambassador? The Federation and their current ambassador might have something to say.
But it's the overall context of the film that places the film after the end of the war. The Federation has just been through a brutal war. There must be hundreds of thousands of injured people who would benefit from the Baku Fountain of Youth. If it could grow Geordi eyes he never had, surely it could grow Nog a new leg?
Dougherty and Ru'afo are pretty much explicit about that - the Federation has been beaten up for years of conflict, and this is an opportunity to make things better at minimal cost. The Federation Council that sanctioned genocide and the murder of a Romulan Senator would sign off on moving 600 people. They even do it in a really nice, friendly way.
As for what the Enterprise was doing in the war, I assume they were fighting. Maybe they were at the front of the assault on the Torros III shipyards on day one? Perhaps Picard was in charge of that fleet that was supposed to be protecting Betazed? There are plenty of books touching on this.
But in the start of Insurrection, Picard is just doing the same things he did on TNG - minor diplomatic contacts, archaeological digs and settling disputes. To me that points to a return to business as usual.
A big hint is the details about the Son'a from DS9 - they were a Dominion ally, or at least a neutral supplier of Ketracel White, which is what Riker and Troi learn in the film. She asks "Why would we be involved with these people", which is a good question if the war is ongoing, but working closely with an old enemy to find new friends is an incredibly Federation thing to do. "We need all the friends we can get" is another bit of foreshadowing - the Federation Council is desperate to avoid making new enemies, so they'll make friends with any ex-Nazis to further peace.
The line about "Dominion negotiations" makes no sense during the war as Timo says, but makes a whole lot of sense after. The signing ceremony in WYLB was probably just the ceasefire, not the final treaty, which would have taken much longer to arrange. They also have the matter of asking the Prophets not to disappear all the Dominion ships trying to go home through the wormhole...
Worf's status is neither here nor there. He leaves with Martok at the end of WYLB, but that might just be for a holiday. Maybe he's off to the Manzar Colony to sort out their orbital defences? In any case, since when does Martok get to pick the Federation's ambassador? The Federation and their current ambassador might have something to say.
But it's the overall context of the film that places the film after the end of the war. The Federation has just been through a brutal war. There must be hundreds of thousands of injured people who would benefit from the Baku Fountain of Youth. If it could grow Geordi eyes he never had, surely it could grow Nog a new leg?
Dougherty and Ru'afo are pretty much explicit about that - the Federation has been beaten up for years of conflict, and this is an opportunity to make things better at minimal cost. The Federation Council that sanctioned genocide and the murder of a Romulan Senator would sign off on moving 600 people. They even do it in a really nice, friendly way.
As for what the Enterprise was doing in the war, I assume they were fighting. Maybe they were at the front of the assault on the Torros III shipyards on day one? Perhaps Picard was in charge of that fleet that was supposed to be protecting Betazed? There are plenty of books touching on this.
But in the start of Insurrection, Picard is just doing the same things he did on TNG - minor diplomatic contacts, archaeological digs and settling disputes. To me that points to a return to business as usual.
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