There's a reason why the Breen promptly ran away not long after this. In part it was because the Dominion were losing, but in part I suspect that even the Breen were horrified by the attempted genocide of the Cardassian people.
They state the Romulan flagship was destroyed. Odds are they were still sorting out who was in command and opted to defer to their allies. Then again, it's the Romulans we're talking about. It would no doubt difficult to change their minds regardless of the situation.
I've noticed even in ST video games that the Romulans get treated like adopted children. Like, they have to have *some* clout, but it just seems like they're there just to provide some balance, if balance is the right word, to the Klingon/Federation love-hate relationship.
@@NahualliUoxtitla I preferred them back in "the old days" of Trek, when they were this kind of secretive, lurking threat with unique technology like the cloaking device, and the plasma torpedo. TNG just kind of recycled them into Klingons v2.0, with disruptors and phasers. They were really cool in Star Fleet Battles; they, the Gorns, and the Interstellar Concordium all used plasma torpedoes, but only Romulans had cloak.
There is a good argument to be made that the female changeling was not in her right mind at this point in time. Section 31's disease was preventing her from reverting to her liquid form (Changeling equivalent to sleeping) so she was suffering from sleep deprivation, extreme physical pain and the psychological pressure of her entire species being about to go extinct.
No argument there. But at the same time, they genetically engineered slave species. They would definitely have genocided ALL solids without batting an eye.
That's not really a good argument though. The Founders ruled over their subjects with an iron fist. If a member species kept in line with the Founders, they'd be treated well and would have the protection of the Dominion. Those who fell out of favour were subject to needlessly excessive, callous, and cruel punishments, to be made an example of to other members. A perfect example being the what they did to the Teplans. They infected them with the "Blight", a virus that eventually causes an extremely painful death.
Remember in "Broken Link" what she told Garak after he asked her about Cardassian survivors from the attack on the Founders homeworld ("The Die Is Cast'): "They're dead, you're dead, Cardassia is dead. Your people were doomed the moment they attacked us."
Dominion are very intelligent but make really really dumb mistakes. Like the Cardassian fleet would remain loyal when they found out their allies bombed their own families.
Dominion is just a single lady in alpha quadrant. She lacks the intelligence and wisdom of the collective. With her being sick, made solid she is flawed and scared. The longer she stayed like that the worse her decisions became.
I never understood why the Dominion didn't retreat to Breen territory. If they had done so, the Cardassians would have been wiped out much more easily by an orbital bombardment.
Dominion are far from being intelligent or even smart in any way. They are by far the most stupid of the galactic powers on the trek universe. Their ships are better. Or actually, their ships are design exclusively for war, their resources are an entire quadrant vast with a subserviant population that will do anything for their so called gods. That's why they have the edge at first. They are a race of changellings. They could have infiltrated the dominion, used the cardasians, without make them one of them, just as pawns, to create a cardasian-klingon, go far and create a federation-klingon-cardasian war and ending with introducing the romulans into the mix. Destroy the entire alpha quadrant without even firing a single shot, or using any ship at all. That's what someone intelligent would attempt. Someone maquiavelic will also secure, as the federation, klingons, cardasians and romulans fight among themselves important objectives and resources to stablish a well defended base and reinforce those position in secret, while at the same time contact with the breen and make them allies, again, in secret. Instead, they just bashed with their liquid dicks in the hand yelling "mine is bigger solid" throwing everything against the federation, allowing them to banner the entire alpha cuadrant against the dominion. Bashing and destroying everything, that's not even a tactic, is what some brute with half brain does. Founders are, by far, the most idiotic beings on the galaxy. That's what happens when you believe your own divine bullshit.
Kira's story arch has to be one of the greatest in all of sci-fi. Former freedom fighter who despised the Cardassians, ends up becoming a freedom fighter, fighting to free Cardassia. If you had told Kira at the start of her journey, where she would be at the end, she would have laughed in your face. A truly unbelievable timeline.
doofkos I had a theory that the Breen are a semi-gelatinous species that require cold temperatures to maintain solid forms. This physical similarity could act as the catalyst for the Breen-Dominion alliance. It could also give the Breen a claim to the Founder’s place in the event of their near/complete extinction.
@@nicrosilmind non-canon states the breen as a mix of many sub-species of a larger whole. Similar to the Xindi. Bashir and Sarina go on an undercover mission and see some Breen for the first time without their helmets.
@@develynseether4426 I remember reading about that. If I remember correctly, this non-canon novel said that the reason for the suits was to present a picture of unity to outsiders. Personally, I don't think it's a satisfactory explanation for the refrigeration suits. Eventually, a deviant Breen would leak the secret and spoil the expensive, inconvenient illusion.
Changeling leader: "This biggest ever conflict is turning against us, requiring maximum focus to avoid total defeat. I know - let's divert scarce manpower, time, and resources away from the war effort and over to a huge genocide campaign within the territory we control. Surely there are no historical parallels pointing to this as a bad idea."
Lol. You know if you look back at all her decisions critically, just doing ONE differently probably means the dominion wins the war. It’s pretty amazing actually.
It’s not about victory or defeat for the Female Founder. It’s just pure spite. They betrayed the changelings time and time again, they turned Odo against the Link, and they poisoned the Link with the fatal virus. She knew they would lose, but she planned to take as many of them with her. Such is her hatred for the solids that doomed their race to extinction.
I feel the dominion always planned to exterminate the cardassian race. Remember what she told Garak. All of cardassia was dead the moment they tried to kill the founders. Sure they were not above playing nice to use them but if they had won the war they would have then killed them off. With the war coming to an end and the cardassians in open revolt it was now or never to try and kill them off.
IMHO, the great Salome Jens is portraying one of the all-time greatest sci-fi villains. Mark Alaimo's Gul Dukat is fantastic as well. How I miss this show!
I've always preferred... how shall I put it... "intelligent" villains that don't go full-throttle into insanity. Dukat _was_ that kind of villain for a while, until they turned him literally insane for season 7 with the whole pa'wraiths thing. The female changeling had _some_ potential early on, but she very quickly showed her true colours and just filled the "it's a N*zi concentration camp torturer, there is literally nothing that we can't do to it that would make us the bad guys" role. No hint of grey, just pure black, which makes even the most dark grey look bright in comparison. Look at Babylon 5 instead, especially Bester. Incredibly callous towards anyone not "on his side", to the point of where I'd call him truly evil, but there is always _something_ redeeming about him. There isn't anything redeeming about the female changeling here. Showing mercy towards her is simply a way to uplift the good guys even more.
The female Changeling knew the game was over but opted to do as much damage as she could before the end to get revenge, to keep the Alpha Quadrant races from invading the Gamma Quadrant and destroy the Great Link /in her mind/ and to deter the Dominion's subject races in the Gamma Quadrant from rebelling against them. Luckily, Odo told her about the cure to the Changeling disease that Section 31 infected them with through Odo and got her to end the war peacefully in exchange for Odo returning to the Great Link and curing their people.
I think that when the genocide of Cardassians was ordered, the Breen realized that the Dominion is not worth getting mixed up with, lest someday the same happen to the Breen.
Forget which book it was but yes, the Breen warped right past Cardassia and went home lol. That was right after the Breen told the founder they were going to the front lines. Nope. They knew it was over.
@@rowlandbuck2703 Admiral Ross: We’re picking up a transmission from the Breen… ensign run that through the universal translator again that can’t be right. (Pause) Well forgive my language but it says “Fuck this shit, we’re out. We just signed up for territorial gains and to acquire slave labour not motherfucking genocide. Go get those dickless assholes and their crusty bitch.”
That and they were already losing at this point anyway. They had a strong position until the Cardassian fleet switched sides - but after it just wasn't going to happen so they knew the best they could do was run hard and fast away before the destruction of Cardassia and all of its citizens landed on them too. As it is I don't think that they would realistically have long before the Klingons and Cardassians and Romulans showed up at their borders with their own separate grievances.
She was just an unwise villain, it makes literally no sense strategically to do a great deal of the things she ended up doing that caused the loss for their side. Inhabiting a subjigated capital and then trying to scare a proud/militaristic race into obeying by TK'ing in the middle of their own territory, during a conflict is beyond the point of reasonable writing and puts down there with other ignorant, non thinking villains. Her fate was worse than most one off characters as far as satisfaction goes.
There is a good argument to be made that she was not in her right mind, section 31's disease was preventing her from reverting to her liquid form (Changeling equivalent to sleeping) so she was suffering from sleep deprivation, extreme physical pain and having to face the Extermination of her entire species.
"Me?? Betray you?? Never!!!" The true declaration of a puppet, and thus one only interested in saving his own skin! I do like the Breen watching the exchange in the background. That head twitch to look at Weyoun when the female founder says she wants them all killed.....its like he's thinking "Shit, she serious??" Then......the way he slowly turns and skulks back to his console @ 1:27 its almost like "shiiiiiiiiit, she's crazy, I really don't want to piss her off!!" hahahahahah
Also he wasn't very intelligent, influential or charismatic as his predecessors. Dukat & Damar knew to always make themselves useful as well as they weren't much of a puppet since they cared about Cardasia first & would drop the Dominion if they saw the war turning badly for their home planet. This idiot Cardassian did not have the latest Intel telling him that Cardasia has decided to punch back & he should have snuck out of the station an hour ago & joined the new rebellion.
@@jakep1979 I get the feeling he was also chosen deliberately. One thing about Weyoun is that he's not stupid. After Damar's betrayal, they wanted someone easy to control. Someone meek. Legate Broka was perfect, the consummate puppet. But men like him are weak minded, easily swayed one way or another. Weyoun recognised if given the chance, Broka would likely betray them, and given the full scale rebellion had broken out it was simpler to kill him and be done with it. Of course......the Female Changeling is rather sore over the whole incident and goes one step further with mass genocide.
In a way, the Dominion did one thing right. It made an enemy of everyone and everyone was able to join forces. If they could work together once they could do it again.
Not everyone. The Breen were still their allies, they just knew that the Dominion were losing and didn't want to stick around to be blamed for Cardassia being destroyed and the associated genocide.
I burst out laughing at the Breen's remark when learning the Cardassian fleet turned against the Dominion: "What the f*** is going on?" Even aliens know Earth's swear words!
I wish Roddenberry were alive to see the Federation depicted at war. His utopia standing up on its own two feet against a threat that makes it necessary to abandon certain… morals. Would he poke plotholes? Would he be dissapointed? Dissatisfied? Or would he love it?
Each iteration of StarTrek was a child of it's time. TOS came out with the Peace Movement, rejecting violence and dreaming of a peaceful future. TNG still was influenced by this idea. With DS9 a few years later, the situation fundamentally had changed, with the end of the cold war and all of that...
Looks fine. Star trek remasters always change things, they have always gone beyond remastering and add new sfx and alter old model shots with cheap cgi.
Wow, the Changelings are literally the closest thing to pure evil in the ST universe. Anyone who defies them is to have their entire species eradicated!! 💀💀💀💀💀🦹♀️🦹♀️🦹♀️🦹♀️🦹♀️🦹♀️🦹♀️
The Breen 'translations' are perfect. I hope the Corporate types of whoever ends up owning Star Trek considers it when they finally release DS9 on BluRay. Hint. Hint.
Ever since the Carsassians accepted the native people in Season 7 Episode 20 of TNG... Ive always had this loyalty for them... which is why as a Native American I never thought i would cry out... FOR CARDASSIA!!!
The Cardassians probably don't even see native people as separate from any other humans. After all as a literal alien race what would slight regional physical differences in apperance and differing cultures matter. They respected humans in general as the founders of the Federation.
But realistically the alliance was exhausted after fighting a portion of dominion forces in the alpha quadrant, they were in no shape to take the fight to the gamma quadrant and the changeling home world, they realised that they should quit while they’re ahead
And the Breen. They escaped justice too. But that's the kind of thing not even DS9 federation would do. In this show the federation may be more "flexible" with certain stuff, but retain their spirits of being a force of peace and progress.
Always surprised the Breen didn't also just pack up and leave at this moment. Surely they must have realized that if the Founders would order the extinction of the Cardassian people than the same could easily happen to them.
@@maryhlad5277 Why though? Why would the Founder trust the Breen when her own delusion was making her disregard Weyoun? I think it's 1 of 2 resons. Theory #1: That Breen was a founder impersonating the breen to control their fleet. This lines up with Dominion tactics and explains why she still trust the "breen" because they're really a changling. It also explains why the Breen got off so easy in the war if their entire alliance was orchestrated by impostors without their knowledge. Theory #2: The Breen actually earned the Dominions respect because they're just that badass. Since they all dress the same anyway, being able to change-shape and look like anyone isn't actually a useful trait for infiltrating.
For some reason I find it hilarious when she says "I don't think so". Even better is when she says I want the Cardassians exterminated & Weyoun says "which ones?"
Did you happen to notice the formations around the orbital weapons platforms. Additionally the are spread out in layers. I doubt the federation would have been able to breach them so easily...while JemHadar are doing kamakazi runs and the Breen flying around taking pot shots.
The war carries the show. But the emissary arch ending with Ki Winn and Gul Dukat isn’t even worth a second watch. The series has a lot of flaws, but I understand why people think it’s the best one. I don’t argue with them.
Remember that episode where the Romulans tried to destroy the wormhole, and also DS9 to eliminate any witnesses? When you look at the aftermath of the Dominion War, starting to think the Romulans had the right idea.