Ron Moore

[Durandal_1707]

I feel like something a lot of DS9's detractors on the 'Federation has flaws' issue overlook is that, ultimately, what ended the Dominion War was Odo - who knew full well Section 31 had tried to wipe out his entire species - nonetheless convinced the Female Changeling that the Federation can be trusted, and did so by linking, where (one assumes) she wasn't just being told words, she was seeing what he truly believed. Seven years of living and working with Federation people made him believe in them that much, even after personally experiencing the worst the Federation is capable of. As you say, Federation spirit intact - really pretty powerfully, in fact. Brutality and ruthlessness got them to the last hurdle in orbit of Cardassia, but trust and friendship got the Dominion fleet to stand down without a shot fired, and a peace treaty signed between Alpha and Gamma rather than just wiping out what they'd sent and hoping the ensuing chaos on their side kept them from having another go anytime soon.

Well, either that, or it was a pragmatic decision, since Odo did have a cure, and without a peace treaty, there was no way in hell he'd ever be able to deliver it to his people in time. If the Founders care more about one Changeling like Odo than they do about the entire Alpha Quadrant, then they'd have to care way more about the entire Changeling race than the Alpha Quadrant. Ending the war at that point would have been the only real decision even if the Federation had been a bunch of friggin' Nazis. You know?

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Re: Moore's cynicism. The darkness is one of the things that interests me about his writing. Obviously in a lot of stories, the dramatic structure is going to demand a "lowest point" for the characters. The point of greatest despair. What sets Moore apart from a lot of other writers is that the lowest point is not just "It looks like the bad guys are going to win", but the characters hit a philosophical/spiritual low point. Characters have to go through a "dark night of the soul." As is so often the case with lapsed Catholics, you can see the influence of Catholic theology in Moore's writing. It turns a lot of people off, but I admire that he doesn't hold back at all. I admit that at times it can get to the point of wallowing, but the situation in both DS9 and BSG were incredibly dire. And ultimately, I still don't consider Moore to be pessimistic writer, since there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Moral fortitude is rewarded eventually.

Re: Section 31. It's interesting to me how much focus is centered on an organization that shows up in three episodes of DS9. To me, it shows that a "dark side to the Federation" was something that took too long in coming. Anyone who reads any history knows that even a nation (or organization) that has great ideals does not always live up to those ideals. Their ideals will conflict with their self-interest and sense of self-preservation. The balance DS9 struck was much more rewarding than what we saw of the Federation in TNG. The Federation's ideals, the optimism, it does pay off. If the Federation wasn't trustworthy, I don't think they could have united the Alpha quadrant in the way that they did. And of course, that's the paradox we see in In the Pale Moonlight- Sisko knows that the Federation's way of life is worth preserving, and that's why he's willing to do anything to protect it.

[MissKittyFantastico]

Well, either that, or it was a pragmatic decision, since Odo did have a cure, and without a peace treaty, there was no way in hell he'd ever be able to deliver it to his people in time.

That's true. I feel the timing of the conversation frames it as more about ideals than pragmatism though - you have Odo urging the Female to put her faith in the 'solids', that even after the Dominion's aggression the Federation isn't interested in conquest, before they even mention the disease. Granted the cure is a huge incentive (and Odo's clearly planning to offer it, as he asks Kira to trust him beforehand, probably having a shrewd notion that Garak would be ready to try to stop him) but that exchange just seems to me like it's based on the Female not believing the Federation can be trusted - that the only way the Federation won't keep attacking, and take the war into the Gamma Quadrant (probably taking away whatever slight hope she still has that the other Founders will come up with a cure on their own), is if she cripples enough of Starfleet at Cardassia that they can't - and Odo saying no, they're not like that.

I like that the cure is part of it, mind (and along with it, the Founders' established zeal to have Odo return to them) - without that it would've all felt a bit too early-TNG, dazzling the poor ignorant aliens with humanity's magnificent perfection so they say, wow, obviously your way is right, how could we have been so dumb? But I think both elements matter to the finale - it's not just peace through superior firepower, but nor is it monologuing at the aliens until they realise what asses they've been and shuffle off ashamed of themselves (I love B5, but Coriana VI... I guess at least it wasn't the aliens monologuing at us, followed by "now do you want the Vorlons to leave through red, green, or blue jump points?"). "Perhaps if Praxis has not exploded, his idealism would not have found expression" - Gorkon couldn't have just showed up in the council chambers one morning and gone "Hey guys, d'you think maybe we've got this whole 'war is awesome' thing wrong?", but without him the Federation only 'wins' by virtue of the Klingons being broken beyond repair. And then where'd Picard be? "Hey Gowron, pretty sure we're about to sail into a Romulan trap, can you send us some backup?" "Well lemme see, we've got two Birds of Prey still working, they're both eighty years old, one of them doesn't have any weapons, the other can't go above Warp 3 and the cloaking device only works on the starboard wing, oh yeah and we don't have any antimatter facilities so we'll need you to pay for gas."

[Beastro]

I feel like something a lot of DS9's detractors on the 'Federation has flaws' issue overlook is that, ultimately, what ended the Dominion War was Odo - who knew full well Section 31 had tried to wipe out his entire species - nonetheless convinced the Female Changeling that the Federation can be trusted, and did so by linking, where (one assumes) she wasn't just being told words, she was seeing what he truly believed.

But linking in the past didn't convince her of that. I'd rather say being on the verge of being wiped out brought them to the table when they otherwise wouldn't have. Odo's offer was the last thing they had, and they for their own part, seemed to honestly try to believe it for once.

I'd still like to see how the decades to come would pan out as their heads got further away from the proverbial noose and they feel safer. In the end I'd hope they'd at least leave the AQ the hell alone.

but trust and friendship got the Dominion fleet to stand down without a shot fired, and a peace treaty signed between Alpha and Gamma rather than just wiping out what they'd sent and hoping the ensuing chaos on their side kept them from having another go anytime soon.

I don't see it, at all. The end of the war was effectively a stalemate with the Dominion unable to get through the wormhole and the AQ powers just wanting them gone from their corner of the universe. Had the Founders not been threatened so existentially to listen to Odo for once, then it would have developed into a long war as the Dominion tried to find other ways of attacking them without going through the one choke point.

Those two things can maintain peace after the war though as the Dominion gets to see exactly how the AQ acts in the years to come. IMO, I'd think they'd find the Fed a good counter to support against the Romulans and Klingons, especially given how much the Romulans would be gunning for the Fed after reading into Spocks disappearance treachery on the Feds part when they needed their help the most (IMO, the only good thing that the Abrams Trek has contributed to the canon, it inadvertently have the main timeline the perfect opportunity for the Roms to become a fully fleshed out and motivated threat).

I don't know that Sloan really saw it this way, but I feel his line to Bashir about the Federation is telling: the Federation needs men like Bashir ("men who can sleep at night"), and they need men like Sloan. On the surface it's "you idealist types would be helpless without us protecting you," and that's got truth in it - but at the same time, the Federation needs 'men of principle'. I like to imagine the Federation's founders, whoever secretly set up Section 31, saw it as 31 working in the shadows to protect the rest of the Federation not so the Federation could live the quiet life in safety, but so they could pursue all the high-minded goals the Federation is supposed to represent, exploring, learning, inspiring each other and everyone they meet, forming alliances, extending the hand of friendship to today's enemies so they become friends tomorrow, all that jazz. By Sloan's time maybe they've become cynical and jaded, and repeated their founders' statements about how vital the idealists were while actually regarding them as just noble weaklings - although Sloan himself always had some ambiguity about him, so who knows? - but that's how I like to picture their 'mission statement' at the beginning.

And it's one that has very good arguments going for it. How the Fed handled the Dominion War is an indication of it working, IMO. The problem is the idealistic side thinks it on its own is all the Fed needs.

I'd really like to see the post-Dominion Federation discovering Section 31 and having to come to terms with the fact that even they need ugly men guarding the walls of their country. It would mesh well with the feel I get that we need to see the Federation in decline given that it is now effectively the undisputed hegemony of the AQ, all other major powers now have a lack of interest in aligning with them save for the Cardassians and their weakened state. It's the perfect opportunity to finally have a non-Federation Trek series, like one following some Romulans or another race that isn't make-up intensive like the Klingons are.

On a meta level I can see that being support of outsiders bringing new blood into the franchise and the fact that when Trek has been at its worst, it's always been when it followed Gene's vision too closely.

"Perhaps if Praxis has not exploded, his idealism would not have found expression" - Gorkon couldn't have just showed up in the council chambers one morning and gone "Hey guys, d'you think maybe we've got this whole 'war is awesome' thing wrong?", but without him the Federation only 'wins' by virtue of the Klingons being broken beyond repair.

The whole Praxis thing has never really fit the canon outside of the Undiscovered Country. We never see the Empire weakened and still recovering in TNG so it leads you to assume that whatever damage it inflicted upon them was overcome before the new era.

The whole warrior culture thing. I'd like to see it put into the perspective that the Ghazw is to Islam, and how the Ghazi mentality in Islam continues to cause them problems, which is what ISIS and modern Islamist terrorism is built around: People who do not want to build a peaceful world, but conquer it from others in a manner which fits a traditional role in their culture and religion.

For the Klingons, it is one massively over-represented element of their culture because of the role militarism played in driving the Hurq out and in forging the Empire, one that is now inappropriate and causes far more problems than it solves. I'd also like to see the Empire being less of a monolithic, centralized figure like it usually is portrayed and instead military commanders, and even private citizens, take it upon themselves to lead military expeditions in order to expand the Empire and are rewarded based upon their success in much the same way the Imperial Japanese Army and British Royal Navy dealt with insubordination, that if you were successful you were rewarded, if you failed you were treated as a rogue element and put down mercilessly.

Put that in the post-Dominion AQ and you'd have the Fed and Empire wanting peace, but a large enough (and violently motivated) segment of the Empire refusing it and instead taking it upon themselves to destabilize relations with other races all over the place. You could also throw in maybe the Emperor getting tired of playing figurehead and capitalizing on the upsurge of militancy in order to discredit the Chancellorship and return the Empire back to an Absolute Monarchy.

[MissKittyFantastico]

But linking in the past didn't convince her of that.

The Female Changeling was winning her war at that point, and seemingly linking with Odo more to seduce him to her point of view than out of any interest in his; linking obviously doesn't share everything every time both ways, and I kind of feel like at that stage she wouldn't even really be interested in what he thought of solids (except to convince him he's wrong), let alone seriously analyse his beliefs. By the end, desperation opened her up to the possibility that maybe he did have a point, and with her people's future on the line she could have delved into Odo's beliefs much more deeply than she'd ever bothered to before.

There's also, I think, a fairly strong possibility that Odo's belief in solids wasn't as fully fleshed-out two years earlier - pining for Kira probably put some pretty major (pardon the pun) biases into everything he thought, which'd be obvious to a more impartial (or biased the other way) observer like the Female. Coming face to face with what Section 31 did to him and his people, his relationship with Kira being a real thing rather than a pipe dream, and I think encountering Laas, may well have made him analyse what he believed much more thoroughly, in a way that'd make it more convincing to the Female on linking that he knows what he's talking about, not just being naive.

I don't see it, at all. The end of the war was effectively a stalemate with the Dominion unable to get through the wormhole and the AQ powers just wanting them gone from their corner of the universe. Had the Founders not been threatened so existentially to listen to Odo for once, then it would have developed into a long war as the Dominion tried to find other ways of attacking them without going through the one choke point.

Long term perhaps - I'm thinking mainly of the immediate situation at Cardassia, where the Female intended to have the remaining (still fairly gigantic) Dominion force go down swinging and inflict horrendous casualties on the Feds in the process. No doubt she was motivated partly by stubbornness and spite, but I still read at least a fig leaf of strategic thinking in that - rough Starfleet up badly enough and even if they take Cardassia and the Dominion had nothing left on that side of the wormhole, they're not going to be able to launch a fresh offensive into the Gamma Quadrant. It seemed like the Founders didn't really consider the possibility that the Federation wouldn't try to take out the Dominion as a matter of policy - if not today, then tomorrow - and I feel like Odo changed her mind on that.

The whole Praxis thing has never really fit the canon outside of the Undiscovered Country. We never see the Empire weakened and still recovering in TNG so it leads you to assume that whatever damage it inflicted upon them was overcome before the new era.

Well, 80-something years is a long time for a technologically sophisticated society (heck, it's a long time for us now) - get some industrial replicators (or whatever lower-tech equivalent existed at the time of TUC) going and rebuilding from a self-inflicted natural disaster could happen pretty fast. And there's wiggle room in just what kind of 'weak' they're talking about with regard to the Klingons - Spock and Kirk talk about them dying en masse, but elsewhere in the briefing they talk about the Empire, not the species, having 50 years left, and it being 'unremitting hostility' that they can't afford. If maintaining their war fleets along the Neutral Zone was a major diversion of resources (presumably), then being able to stand those fleets down to a peacetime setting could've made it feasible for the Empire to prop itself up until the crisis was past, rather than spiral further towards collapse.

It's 'Yesterday's Enterprise' that throws me for a bit of a loop - whatever degree of recovery the Empire had managed by the time of Narendra, it's enough that they can bring the Federation to its knees in a couple of decades. It's not impossible - there's about 50 years between Khitomer and Narendra, plenty of time for the Empire to get back on its feet industrially - but I have to kind of assume a lot of complacency on the Federation's part in the early years of the new war, to let an enemy they'd used to keep pretty reliably in check get so badly out of hand. Of course, if the Federation in those years was anything like Picard and co. in season one, that's quite plausible. (I figure something similar must've gone on with the Cardassian War - for the Cardassians it was all-hands-on-deck total warfare, but the Federation kept believing it was just a border dispute that'd get settled in peaceful negotiation any day now, and let it drag on for two years of scrappy fighting instead of just telling a few dozen Excelsiors to shelve their gaseous anomaly missions for a few weeks and carve a path to Cardassia Prime with 'Humanity F*** Yeah' playing on hailing frequencies to give Central Command a strong hint that they'd better knock off the funny business.)

[SuccubusYuri]

To the Praxis stuff; I'd say we skipped over the decline. The Empire in the TOS era was talked about like it WAS an Empire, with subject planets and alien nationals and an interstellar expansion program. They weren't often shown because budget, but the references were there to the fact there was this expanding front SOMEWHERE. And Spock says the Empire has "50 years of life" in TUC, when we flash forward about seventy to TNG, so it seems likely he meant the Empire "as we know it".

In the TNG era that is pretty absent, being Empire-in-name-only as there really aren't any indicators to citizens who aren't "ethnically Klingon", and no lingering fears about Klingon expansion until, well, DS9 gives them an actual expansion. Kind of like the Soviet break up, but in time you get to see the tribute band stuff taking place. The Klingons weren't in any danger of "dying out", but the massive state-operated machine that kept their tributaries and subject peoples in check had to be dismantled with an economy and environment that could no longer prop it up, so they withdrew their support from their puppet governments and receded to "their own" territory, so their way of life as they knew it DID come to an end. Which is fitting as it was a giant metaphor for The Wall.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

We obviously don't know exactly what happened, but I think we can guess at a few of the changes that were caused by Praxis. Most obvious is the fact that the Federation and Klingons are at peace. As Spock pointed out in TUC, after Praxis the Klingons couldn't afford to be enemies. As much resistance to the Federation as there had been and would continue to be, it's pretty safe to assume that a stronger Klingon empire would have made peace less likely.

Secondly, the deep divisions within the Klingon Empire could very well be due in part to their weakening over the years. That's just speculation, but it would be a pretty natural development.

With all that said, it does seem that the Klingon Empire has recovered by the TNG era, which seems natural enough. I certainly don't see it as a continuity gaffe or anything. One thing that makes speculation more difficult is that we don't really get an inside look at Klingon culture until the TNG era. I'd say Kang in TOS is the closest we see to a TNG era Klingon, but the entire overemphasis on honor and glory in battle doesn't come into focus until TNG.

[Admiral X]

Actually, the expansion in TOS could have been a sign of decline in the empire. The Romans tended to go conquering when things were getting crappy back home to reaffirm to everyone how awesome they were.

[ScreamingDoom]

Actually, the expansion in TOS could have been a sign of decline in the empire. The Romans tended to go conquering when things were getting crappy back home to reaffirm to everyone how awesome they were.

And also when the budget got thin.

A lot of the late Empire Roman conquests were all about trying to keep the massive Imperial bureaucracy ticking over for a while by looting some neighbours to shove a few more shekels into that vast financial black hole.

[Shuboy07]

I honestly would love to see Robert Hewitt Wolfe work on Outlander given his work on DS9 but I think he's doing pretty well on Elementary (which is another show created/developed by a former Trek writer).