Was "Chain of Command" on "TNG" the prelude to the Cardassian conflict on "DS9"?
- Thread starter AdamNY
- Start date
Thank you for the correction
The weapon smuggling by the Cardassians in The Wounded can be interpreted as prelude to CoC though.
...Naturally, it all does line up. After the thing later known as Central Command fucks up the Minos Korva thing, they lose political leverage and the thing later known as Detapa Council forces them to give up occupation of Bajor. Then the wormhole happens, and Central Command gets the last laugh.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Chain of Command was originally going to have scenes set on DS9. Picard was to have met Quark to get the team to Celtris.
The episodes were designed in part to bolster awareness of Cardassia in anticipation of DS9. However, it wasn't meant to be a foundation for a planned war on DS9. Indeed, it's hard to draw a straight line between Chains of Command and A Call to Arms: the Cardassians reasons for going to war have changed, and I would argue have more to do with what is presented in DS9 than in any of the TNG episodes.
In the beginning of Chain of Command, it's mentioned Cardassia has recently withdrawn from Bajor. So it wasn't in response to the Minos Korva incident, it already happened.
But CoC does establish (reinforce?) the idea that the Fed and Cardassians have a new and still-shaky peace that is still being ironed out.
Though it wasn't planned that far in advance, the idea that the Cardassians want to annex a planet from Fed control actually is very consistent with what we later learn about the conflicts over the post-war borders, as seen in "Journey's End" and all of the subsequent Maquis episodes.
There is no straight line from Chains of Command and Call to Arms. In Life Support, Cardassia signs a treaty with Bajor. In Destiny, Bajor begin intellectual exchanges. In Way of the Warrior, the fascist government is toppled and replaced by a democratic government. In Indiscretion, Bajor and Cardassia conduct a joint rescue mission. In Rejoined, Bajor sends military experts to Cardassia. In Rules of Engagement and For the Cause, Bajoran officials participate in giving aid to Cardassia to help it repair from its war with the Klingons. By Inferno's Light, Cardassia would have been considered a reforming power. That fact is reflected in Dukat's exchange with Kira, where he bemoans that Cardassians are no longer feared or respected.
Um, okay. You quoted my posted but completely ignored what I said and just re-stated your earlier post.
I never said anything about Chain of Command and "Call to Arms." I said that "Chain of Command" re-establishes the Cardassians worst qualities, which we see play out on DS9 and especially the Maquis conflict. That's literally it.
Once you look beyond that, yes, Cardassia does make slow but steady progress in becoming less hostile, more democratic, less militaristic.
And then takes a hard left turn with the Dukat/Dominion business. This is pretty abrupt, but it's not exactly unrealistic for society's to have such strong swings in the wake of disasters like the Klingon War and the on-going Maquis conflicts.
Let alone the fact that it's arguably the actual people of Cardassia arguably had little to no say in the Dukat/Dominion takeover. It was something Dukat did as a rogue agent.
So, yeah, there's really no line of any kind to "By Inferno's Light" (when the real takeover happens, not sure why you're hung up on "Call to Arms", which doesn't represent any significant change in Cardassian after
In any case, it's good to flesh out your villains in advance, regardless of the exact ways you're going to make use of them. And the writers would be anticipating diverse use, so whatever they established in these "introductory" or "tie-in" episodes would always be but a partial truth and lost in the diversity. Nice that we got the "we were soooo poor so of course we can pillage and conquer now" and "we used to be civilized Hebitians" things plus the "we care much more about family than humans" bit. And too bad the latter one didn't lead anywhere much.
To be exact, the TNG episode only speaks of troop movements in the sector, not of Cardassia letting Bajor go; perhaps the one preceded the other, like Memory Alpha prefers to put it?
(The exact date of Bajor's liberation is not known, save for it being a couple of days before Stardate 46379, while the TNG ep is in SD 46357 or thereabouts.)
Timo Saloniemi
To be exact, the TNG episode only speaks of troop movements in the sector, not of Cardassia letting Bajor go; perhaps the one preceded the other, like Memory Alpha prefers to put it?
(The exact date of Bajor's liberation is not known, save for it being a couple of days before Stardate 46379, while the TNG ep is in SD 46357 or thereabouts.)
Timo Saloniemi
OP: Does Chains of Command introduce the Cardassian Conflict?
Me: No, it serves as a background for the pilot, but what happens afterwards was entirely owned by DS9.
You: But the TNG episodes establish that the Cardassians are bad guys who want to take stuff.
Me: DS9 sets them on a trajectory away from those properties, so they end up being immaterial.
You: You aren't talking directly to me!
Me: ?
You're really splitting hairs. Troops that were "withdrawn from Bajor." If you don't think that was the writers specifically referencing the upcoming backdrop of DS9, you're crazy. It was specifically there as a wink to DS9.
"Troops that were recently withdrawn from the Bajoran sector" is a hair worth splitting, in-universe. Of course "Chain of Command" is a tie-in to DS9, but this isn't changed one iota whether Bajor gets dropped sooner or later.
Any future writer is free to choose whichever way as regards the ordering of these things. It's just that during the entire run of DS9, nobody ever chose, not even to the degree of accidentally mentioning a time interval that would turn out to be informative in in-universe analysis.
Timo Saloniemi
Any future writer is free to choose whichever way as regards the ordering of these things. It's just that during the entire run of DS9, nobody ever chose, not even to the degree of accidentally mentioning a time interval that would turn out to be informative in in-universe analysis.
Timo Saloniemi
You seem to love to trying to find wiggle room between what the writers clearly intended and gonzo scenarios of your own creation which aren't technically entirely impossible, but which fly in the face of the obvious intent of the show.
It's NOT a hair worth splitting. The writers were very obviously trying to insert a reference into the events that set-up DS9. It wasn't by accident that they said "Cardassian forces withdrawnfrom Bajor." There's no wiggle room there. There's no interpretation. They very obviously wanted the reference to tie into the events of DS9. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered at all. It's a line that had no use in the script otherwise as a bit of foreshadowing/nod to DS9.
If you have no standards for logic, you could nitpick anything and spin all kinds of alt theories, but that's a pointless exercise. Believe what you choose.
I'll be over here in a place I like to call "reality."
Or, more accurately:
OP: Does Chain of command introduce the Cardassian conflict?
You: Five full seasons later, the events of Chain of Command are immaterial.
Me: Yeah, but they're very important for the BEGINNING of DS9 as it establishes Cardassia as an antagonist as we see in DS9 later on.
You: Yeah, but Chain of Command has no direct correlation between what happens five full seasons later! Their reasons for being bad guys changed. Also, in the margins, Cardassians sometime behave kind of good.
Me: Yeah, but you're not listening. What happens five years later doesn't matter. We're talking about earlier, where Cardassia is very much an antagonist.
You: I'm going to sum up the conversation in a facile way while missing the entire point!
Me: Um, okay, once again, here's the point -
Chain of Command absolutely (re) establishes the relationship between the UFP and Cardassia, showcasing Cardassia as an antagonist race that is ambitious, underhanded and untrustworthy.
What they're doing five seasons later doesn't matter. What we're talking about is how Chain of Command directly helps create the circumstances at the BEGINNING of DS9 and through the first several seasons, where Cardassia is routinely used as an antagonist, until they're put aside in favor of the Klingon War arc, in episodes including: Emissary, Duet, The Circle Trilogy, Cardassians, Profit and Loss, The Wire, Tribunal, Civil Defense, Second Skin, Improbable Cause/Die Is Cast, et al.
So the answer to the OP is:
YES
I responded to your critique. Implicitly I disagreed. I can do that. Move on.
The occupation was never anything but vaguely drawn, which is a shame, and the end of the occupation even less so. The implication of Emissary is that the occupation has very recently ended - weeks at most. But Bajor has a Provisional Government and a military with nice uniforms all established. Did they just carry over from the Vichy government's police force?
It only needs to be the final departure from Terok Nor that took place a short time before Emissary - I'm thinking of Dukat leaving regretfully in the last Galor, like that final helicopter taking off from the roof of the Embassy in Saigon.
The Enterprise seems to have been sent pretty much directly from the McAllister Nebula to Bajor, which adds an extra kicker to Sisko bringing up Wolf 359 to a Picard who is still recovering from brutal torture.
It kind of explains why O'Brien ended up there - rather than being headhunted, he was just Johnny-on-the-spot on one of La Forge's repair crews, and ended up volunteering to stay as the as hoc Starfleet administration was established.
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