Was Weyoun mentioning the station's shield upgrades to Dukat a reference back to anything? For those that don't remember he makes a point of saying to Dukat that it's unusual the shields withstood their first volley b/c in the past they'd had no trouble breaking through. The line just seemed out of place to not have a deeper meaning. Perhaps an inside joke about how much the Dominion had been toned down since their first appearance?
DS9 upgrades in Call to Arms
- Thread starter erastus25
- Start date
I think the line means just that, Weyoun was suprised that the Federation shields could now withstand Dominion weapons.
The dialouge is
WEYOUN: Impossible. Federation shields have always proven useless against our weapons.
DUKAT: I've found it wise never to underestimate the Federation's technical skill or Captain Sisko's resourcefulness.
Dukat provides the answer the Federation had simply mamanged to upgrade their shields to withsand Dominion weapons.
The dialouge is
WEYOUN: Impossible. Federation shields have always proven useless against our weapons.
DUKAT: I've found it wise never to underestimate the Federation's technical skill or Captain Sisko's resourcefulness.
Dukat provides the answer the Federation had simply mamanged to upgrade their shields to withsand Dominion weapons.
...And it appears that Starfleet did what always is done in situations like this: it saved the big surprise for the big battle. Which means everybody engaged in "little battles" pretending that the shields still are weak. How many starships were sacrificed to keep the secret?
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Not sure of the timeline right now, but didn't DS-9 get major upgrades before 'The Way of the Warrior'?
It did, but whether the Dominion had authentic knowledge of those, we don't know for sure.
Sisko did in that episode bring aboard members of the Cardassian Detapa Council, and Klingons were convinced those were Changeling infiltrators. If they were, they would have been able to monitor the battle in which the upgraded weapons were used - sneaking out of their designated protective rooms would have been simple enough.
Whether the shields were upgraded at that time already or not, we don't know for sure...
I doubt O'Brien had much to do with the shield upgrade, though. Why would the janitor of a wayside space station decipher the mystery of protecting against phased polaron beams, and not some research team back on Earth or Vulcan Arcturus?
Of course, we have to remember that one of the station's runabouts took ppb hits way back in "The Die is Cast" already, and survived. But those might have been glancing hits, or deliberately pulled punches to merely stop rather than kill Odo. Hits taken by the Defiant might not count, as she has this ablative armor thing in addition to the possibly still useless standard shields.
Timo Saloniemi
Sisko did in that episode bring aboard members of the Cardassian Detapa Council, and Klingons were convinced those were Changeling infiltrators. If they were, they would have been able to monitor the battle in which the upgraded weapons were used - sneaking out of their designated protective rooms would have been simple enough.
Whether the shields were upgraded at that time already or not, we don't know for sure...
I doubt O'Brien had much to do with the shield upgrade, though. Why would the janitor of a wayside space station decipher the mystery of protecting against phased polaron beams, and not some research team back on Earth or Vulcan Arcturus?
Of course, we have to remember that one of the station's runabouts took ppb hits way back in "The Die is Cast" already, and survived. But those might have been glancing hits, or deliberately pulled punches to merely stop rather than kill Odo. Hits taken by the Defiant might not count, as she has this ablative armor thing in addition to the possibly still useless standard shields.
Timo Saloniemi
During, in reaction to improved budget for season 4 now that TNG was off the air. Err, I mean increased dominion threat.
However Call to Arms was nearly 2 years later. Before call to arms had the dominion even fired at Starfleet (rather than the Marquis) since "The Search Part 1"?
Also in Jem'Hadar the Dominion could cut right through the shields, so they needed to justify the shields holding up now.
The ship was just a runabout, and they may not even have had the shields up in the first place, but yes I'd forgotten Starship Down. The Defiant had shields at this point, and took a pounding. From memory the Jem Hadar didn't live to tell the tale.
As such, I assume
* Season 2 Shields: don't work against Dominion polaron beams
* Start of season 3, this is reported back to the federation science council. A year later they come up with a fix.
* Upgrades go immediately to DS9, which we saw in Way of the Warrior. The upgraded sheilds the station (and presumably the defiant and other ships later) fixed the polaron beam problem
* The only time after this that the Dominion fired on the Federation between The Search and Call to Arms were "The Ship" (runabout, probably with shields down), and "Starship Down". In the later, the fact the Defiant's shields worked never filtered back to the rest of the dominion before the ships got destroyed (the dominion ships went into the gas giant pretty quickly, and long-range comms didn't work there)
I don' t think that Weyoun is expressing surprise that the station's shields had been upgraded--that should have been taken as a given. Rather, he is surprised that the upgrades are effective. Indeed, there should have been opportunities for the Dominion to learn about improvements to Federation ships: the changeling impersonating Leytoun could easily learn about upgrades to ships like the Lakota. And Amat'igan was positioned to size up the Defiant's defense abilities at that time.
Well, Call to Arms was the start of the war, so there hadn't really been many "little battles" until now.
I always assumed it was a result of Starfleet taking apart the Jem'Hadar bug they captured in The Ship, combined with some Starfleet ingenuity. Just like the later Breen weapon.
The real reason, of course, was to make the Dominion less overpowered compared with the Federation, otherwise the war would have been over in weeks.
There is a gap of several months between S5 and S6 so it's possible there have actually been quite a few line battles by then.
No, that's not the issue. Timo was suggesting Starfleet sacrificed ships before A Call to Arms to keep secret their new shields. My point is that very few ships, if any, were lost because the war hadn't started. The attack on DS9 was the opening engagement of the war, so Starfleet had no advantage in not using the new shields.
Besides, the DS9 battle was always just a delaying, diversionary tactic to cover a strategic withdrawal and the attack on the Cardassian shipyards!
If I might suggest another perspective: this is another area in which DS9 broke from the standards of Trek story telling.
It seems to me that various races enjoy distinct technology advantages, which are rarely overcome. The Klingons and the Romulans have cloaking devices, but the Federation could never develop its own or understand how to overcome them (despite having stolen one as well as a ship equiped with one). The Borg have personal shields that only seem to kick in after a few drones have died. The Kazon don't have the Federation's "unique technologies" (replicators, primarily). It seems to be an oversimplification that each species is locked into a specific set of technologies, or that no species can make technologies headways against the others. And striving to create such an advantage takes up a lot of plot, like the deflector dish weapon in BOBW (which proved to be a dud in context).
DS9 is merely bucking that way of thinking. Federation ships can't have cloaks because of a treaty? Make some convoluted secret agreement with the Romulans in which they not only let it have a cloak, but give them one. And one by one, strip away all the objections and limitations until it can use the cloak all it wants. The Federation doesn't make ships to wage war? Well, the Borg threat made them rethink. The Federation uses the same torpedo weapon for a hundred years. Well, now the Defiant has "quantum torpedoes."
In the end, it's more DS9's style to limit the explanations about how improvements were made and how technical advantages were overcome. THe show would not invest the same
It seems to me that various races enjoy distinct technology advantages, which are rarely overcome. The Klingons and the Romulans have cloaking devices, but the Federation could never develop its own or understand how to overcome them (despite having stolen one as well as a ship equiped with one). The Borg have personal shields that only seem to kick in after a few drones have died. The Kazon don't have the Federation's "unique technologies" (replicators, primarily). It seems to be an oversimplification that each species is locked into a specific set of technologies, or that no species can make technologies headways against the others. And striving to create such an advantage takes up a lot of plot, like the deflector dish weapon in BOBW (which proved to be a dud in context).
DS9 is merely bucking that way of thinking. Federation ships can't have cloaks because of a treaty? Make some convoluted secret agreement with the Romulans in which they not only let it have a cloak, but give them one. And one by one, strip away all the objections and limitations until it can use the cloak all it wants. The Federation doesn't make ships to wage war? Well, the Borg threat made them rethink. The Federation uses the same torpedo weapon for a hundred years. Well, now the Defiant has "quantum torpedoes."
In the end, it's more DS9's style to limit the explanations about how improvements were made and how technical advantages were overcome. THe show would not invest the same
The preceding "In the Cards" mentions that the Tian An Men has gone missing, with Dominion the suspected reason. And that's said to be the third in the past three weeks, with possibly other victims earlier on.
In fact, that ship later again fights in the ranks of Starfleet, so apparently the Dominion did not destroy her. But it would be incidents like that where Starfleet would need to hold back in order to retain the element of surprise. Did the crews of the other two ships die to keep the secret?
The surprise appearance of the shields would be just what the doctor proscribed for such delaying action, too: the Dominion would dedicate specific forces to deal with the mission in specific time based on ill-informed calculations, and would be crucially delayed and perhaps prompted to divert more forces when the truth was revealed.
Just think of it: the Dominion would have known for a long time that taking DS9 should be their opening move. Now Sisko is dictating the timetable by threatening to mine the wormhole, so the Dominion will have to respond by sending the takeover fleet it had already prepared. And then it turns out this isn't enough for the crucial operation! So there will be panicky reactions and reshuffling on the Dominion side, making the task of the Starfleet invasion force easier.
Timo Saloniemi
Similar threads
