Between the Tal Shiar being subverted into coming under Section 31's control, the destruction of the old order of the Senate, and then the destruction of Romulous, frankly their absorption into the Federation in the 20 years after Voyager was frankly the only reasonable outcome, just as the Cardassian Union doing so in the wake of the Dominion War was the only outcome for them.
I just re-watched this one (I watch all of trek in series every year. ) This episode IS SO PVIOTAL. This is where the federation that Picard knew ended. Long before the attack on Mars. This is where the federation became in many ways no different than any other power. CAESAR CAN DO NO WRONG. I would go as far as to say that this was the true climax of DS9. Everything after it was just the actual fighting and killing of ending the war. Once the federation decided they would do whatever it took they were as quark would say worse than a bloodthirsty Klingon.
would it be better if the Federation lost the war and be conquered ? DS9 was far more realistic in how to deal with difficult choices and choosing the lesser of two evils
I'm still waiting to watch Star Trek Picard, but knowing the plot of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the threat of the Borg, the near-Civil War (USS Lakota vs USS Defiant being the closest it got), and the events afterward, it makes perfect sense that the Federation would start to break down. Even the most utopian of governments will eventually fail; when people forget the lessons of the past, people become too trusting, and too corruptible.
@@NitpickingNerd No clearly NO. Life in a federation that is less idealistic would be far better than being reduced to a slave race by the Dominion. They would likely have executed most of the species of the quadrant. Erased our records and wrote the changelings into our history and mythos so we would think of them as gods.
I never understood how the Obsidian Order was “destroyed” at the battle of the Omarion nebula. It’s an intelligence organization. Did they pull out all of their agents and put them on ships? Was every filing clerk there and every major player? If so, why?
To some degree yes, given they weren’t allowed to have warships so they probably did have to pull everyone with combat training or ship operations skills to crew them and for a mission as dangerous as that it was likely their best people too. The order probably wouldn’t have been that numerous anyway as more people=more chance for breaches or avenues for infiltration. As for those left behind the leaders likely didn’t have the political power or skills of Tain and his associates; plus given the agency’s unpopularity amongst the population and military along with Dukat’s sudden rise to power during the coup I imagine that there was something of a “night of the long knives” during it. Any survivors likely either turned on their fellows during the coup, fled or went into hiding effectively ending the order in any official capacity.
@@darman12able But thats like the CIA is confiscating a Carrier Battlegroup from the Navy without the Crew and Officers and put CIA Men on the Ships instead, it seems too weird. But a “night of the long knives” like Event is something i can see as well in the cardassian pol Scene
@@ottersirotten4290 it does seem like obsidian order agents are versed in a lot of fields given what we see with garak having skills from tailoring to starship operations, piloting, creating explosives, interrogation and assassinations. Most of which would be far beyond the standard training for most intelligence agents but I seem to recall cardassians having near eidetic memories which would make it easier and more practical to train agents quickly in multiple fields if I've remembered correctly.
Well the point was that the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar both put together a secret attack on the Founders' homeworld. The Obsidian Order was legally forbidden from having its own ships so to keep the attack secret from their own government the ships would have to be crewed entirely by their own agents. I can't believe the OO would be stupid enough to put all their agents on the ships for the mission, but if most of the top brass and most of their personnel were on board and wiped out in the battle then there'd be no organisational structure left behind to rebuild from, only fragments. Tain gambled everything on the attack and lost. And, in the aftermath of the OO failing in their surprise attack and triggering a war with the Dominion, I can't imagine that the Cardassian High Command (who themselves were weakened and would soon be overthrown in a coup) would be interested in helping the OO to rebuild. If anything they'd probably be glad to get rid of the state within a state, and the most powerful internal threat to the High Command, that the Obsidian Order was under Tain. So my head canon is that OO's brightest and best were wiped out in the battle and then the High Command used the aftermath to prevent the OO from rebuilding, and instead just used the opportunity to get rid of them once and for all (which of course was short sighted given it removed their own defences against a civilian coup).
I'll also add that, while I agree it makes no sense for the Obsidian Order to risk their whole existence should the attack fail, Tain clearly wasn't acting rationally at this point which is why he put everything into it, including leading the attack himself. He couldn't conceive of failure and so he bet the house on their success. The Tal Shiar didn't make the same mistake, which is why they survived and why the Obsidian Order was wiped out. Tain *was* the Obsidian Order, in the words of Garak, and Tain put all his resources and people into the attack. With him gone there would have been nothing left with which to rebuild because he'd have long since eliminated anyone within the order powerful enough to take over from him should he be weakened.
he was actually Silik and working for Future Guy who always wanted to destabilize the Klingon empire . he's also the one who brainwashed Geordi to try to break up the Federation Klingon alliance
I always thought that Garek could have been recruited by Section 31, they have done it long before the War. Its not unheard of for Spies to get recruited by other nations.
I never considered this but it makes so much sense. One would’ve thought that losing a single system, even the home system, wouldn’t destroy the entire Romulan Star Empire in the way that we see, and we also see in shows the Tal Shiar winning less and less especially after their destruction at the hands of the Dominion. Without the one structure the empire had invested so heavily in, makes sense that it would fall like a house of cards and an event like the destruction of Romulus would only be the visible event that took it down.
Yup, you nailed it. This is also demonstrates the organizational superiority of the Federation over the Romulans and Cardassians. By being so incredibly top-heavy they allowed their entire governments to be easily subverted. By comparison, the Founders tried to subvert the Federation, but never managed to pull it off. Because while a strict hierarchy may be *efficient* a flatter system gains stability from its inefficiency. (Also Section 31 is just plain more competent than theTal Shiar and the Obsidian Order *combined* )
I think the Romulan Star Empire had a very definite shelf life. A regime that oppressive, that suspicious and so unwilling to evolve will always be at the whims of circumstance. If the Dominion and Section 31 hadn't done it something else would have. In a way the RSE was stuck in a rut just like the Klingon Empire, with their toxic views of honor. Except with the Romulans it was about absolute control, control of information and intelligence. By believing that they could not be duped, they ensured they would be. By not evolving their society, they guaranteed that the Star Empire would be left in the dust.
Honestly if the disurction of one star system is enough to destroy a multi system empire then they had a lot of issues and likely were already heading there. It be no different then the fall of one city destroying a empire. Even the Roman empire didnt fall when the capital city it got its name from was destroyed more then once. It simply changed into a different form. If the romulan empire had means to stand strong it would of indured
its also hard to believe that klingons woldnt be like "hey, its free real estate" or that numerous romulan factions would fight over succession. Such a destruction would have tremendous geo political implications on the ST universe for sure
I definitely agree that the destruction of Romulus on its own wouldn't have completely ruined the Star Empire as it seems to have. First of all, they had years of warning -- there's no way that the Senate at least didn't evacuate on their own. (Like, they have shipyards and can build fleets of their own, right?) There's no way, realistically, that a galactic empire that is one of the three major political players in an entire quadrant of the galaxy could have been toppled just because one star went supernova. Even the star of their honeworld should not have been able to do that. But it is certainly plausible that the supernova could have been the catalyst to take down an increasingly impotent and fractured government.
This might sound a bit far fetched but what if the higher-ups Tal Shiar knew there was a problem with the Romulan sun (perhaps suspecting it was being attacked by an unknown enemy) and they were covering this up, however, because they covered this up so well that when the Tal Shiar were defeated by the Dominion and the Romulans being manipulated by Section 31 & Starfleet, the information about the Romulan sun was lost until it was too late, maybe this could also explain the Romulans isolation period that took place, which could have been directed by the Tal Shiar, as they prepared for war with this, as yet, 'unrevealed' enemy..?
Wasn’t Romulus’s destruction because of the Tal She’ar? I think in Star Trek online they say it was a weapon test gone wrong but I don’t know if it went anywhere official.
I'm sure it was coincidental that Sloan showed up a few hours later. He would have to have been on Bajor or on the station to show up so quickly. Would Sloan just hang about waiting for the right moment to show up? Earth to Bajor is a week away, even in the best scenario.
To me the tal'shar and obsidian order both had to be weekend well ahead of the Omarion nebula. Because how is it did losing a small Fleet of ships destroyed both organizations. It tells me that that have been in place long before that I think section 31 thought that they were going to at least get rid of one of if not two or three of their enemies that day. I think section 31 set them up to be defeated at the Omarion nebula battle. It seems to me did section 31 masterminded a masterful defeat of both the obsidian order and the tal shiar they just underestimated that dominion and ended up in the middle of that war.
There's one other oddity, of sorts here - If Section 31 did, in fact have influence or at least "proper" intelligence on the Star Empire..? then why didn't they make a play to co-opt Shinzon and his Reman followers? Or better yet, if they couldn't get their hands on the Scimitar, they ~could~ have copied/stolen the research on the cloaking/shielding used by the scimitar, and using thalaron radiation as a weapon. That alone would have turned the tables on the Breen weapon systems! It also would have pulled the Founder up short. (The Morphogenic Virus was bad - Thalaron..? is worse! One shot, and the target, usually an entire planet, would die! After all, a dose from a very small compact eradicated the entire Romulan Senate, including the spectators.) A quantum torpedo or the Thalaron disruptor beam on the Scimitar..? There would be CARNAGE!
The cloaking technology they had at that point was probably useless against the Feds or even the Klingons at that point due to the Feds advancing in tech so fast compared to the rest of the quadrant.
Well, thats what Trek has become all about. Every other power will absorbed or a be satelite-state to the federation sooner or later. Romulans, Klingon, Cardassians... all walking around in Starfleet Uniforms, because what can be better than being in starfleet. sharing human values? Alien in Starfleet have a hard stand. Think of Worf, think of Tuvok - They get permanently mocked over their views or their behaivour. Star Trek throw the federation are about human surpremacy above all others. And the fans living this sh... For a long time I used to love the francise... but after they simply decided to destroy Romulus out of no reasons but uncreativity, I'm more and more done with it. (Unregarded that I had expected a bit more science from that decision. In short, a Nova like Hobos destoying not only the romulan homesystem, but others too, would gravimetricly distablelise numerous other Systems. Planets being threwn out of their paths, etc.)
I think we are again overestimating section 31. We don't know any of the details about Koval and his cooperation with starfleet. Koval may have fed them some minor intel and told them he would support the anti-dominion alliance because that is what he wanted anyway. He could have simply been using them for his own political goals and gains. For example the Tal Shiar and section 31 were both noticeably absent in nemesis. Why didn't Koval warn starfleet about Shinzon? Why didn't section 31? It seems like the mighty intelligence agency was completely in the dark, again. If it wasn't for Picard, Data and the enterprise-e crew humanity would have been wiped out.
Agreed. Furthermore the only one who clearly gained anything in this episode was Koval who removed a political rival and probably guaranteed himself a seat on the Continuing Committee while keeping his own hands clean and having the Federation do his dirty work for him. It's hard to see how Federation itself actually gained anything by purging Senator Creetak (who never showed the slightest indication of wanting the Empire to break off its alliance with the Federation and was almost certainly a more trustworthy partner than Koval.)
Or thats what's section 31 wants you to think. They nudge here and there and make sure the normal federation can deal with problems. If not they probably would have intervened.
@@karlfranzemperorofmandefil5547 Lol no way. If Shizon killed or captured Picard and destroyed the enterprise earth was done for. He came really close.
@@Bitchslapper316 Sure because earth dosent have a defense fleet especially after the Dominion war. See the issue ? Should not have been a problem in the first place.
