www.ditl.org

Are the vast military conflicts that arrise from the collision of vast Galactic political entities in Star Trek DS9 contrary to the Star Trek ethos laid down by Gene Roddenberry in TOS and TNG?
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry appears to have thought so whe she was alive. Is she correct in her assesment or is she just woefully ignorent of basic social facts and what makes good drama?

Ive always considered DS9 to be fascinating examination by the shows writers on Gene's concept of a utopian society.
Can a relatively peacefull and benevolent culture flourish indefinately? Is pacifism the funeral wreath of freedom?
A fine example is Bajor. If the Bajorans were not so timid and peaceful, perhaps they could have thwarted Cardassia's plan to annex thier planet, thus preventing the deaths of some 60 million people?
It seems no matter how good the quality of life is or how pure your intentions are there shall always be cultures like the Dominion and Cardassia, who percieve benevolence as weakness.
And through DS9 we see the Federation "(Dancing) in the pale Moonlight.. (.with the Devil)" and ignoring established law and Justice because according to Admiral Ross "Inter arma enim silent leges" meaning "For among [times of] arms, the laws fall mute.
So.. Perhaps Q was right all along in his assesment of manking being a "childlike race who would only conflict with other Species". Because forgeting certain Laws because thier suddenly not convenient, to me, certainly sounds childlike..

So in conclusion, is the excuse that its ok to commit a small amount of evil to destroy a greater evil, valid?

The writers of Star Trek DS9 seem to think so.. Sorry Majel, but i agree with them!

Social Utopia + Military Pacifism = stagnation and eventual collapse

Gene had a vision that seemed terribly naive and pie-in-the-sky hopeful, but was shaped in part by his experience of war. However, I don't think DS9 was contrary to that so much as tangential to it. DS9 never made itself out to be a new version of the original 'Trek vision (as TNG did.) As such, I don't think there's a discrepancy.

I've heard that there was a degree of argument about how militaristic DS9 got. Apparently there were high level discussions about whether they were going to be allowed to do the Dominion war, especially as they wanted a full on war lasting years - Rick Berman was arguing that it should last three or four episodes, and both he and Majel Barrett said Gene would never have supported Star Trek showing an ongoing war.

Gene wanted Trek to be about a very optimistic future. We can argue about the realism of that, but that's what his vision of it was, so yeah, DS9 did pretty much drift away from that at least in some respects. Personally I don't think that's a particularly bad thing. We'd had TOS already, and TNG was essentially "The Trek he always wanted to make", both made along those lines. No bad thing to mix it up a bit.

I'm not really sure I see the philosophical difference between the TOS and TNG per episode conflict that pits the crew vs some strange alien whats-it, and the DS9 per episode conflict that pits the crew vs some strange alien whats-it, that happened to be connected to a greater over arching story line involving the dominion.

TOS and TNG were more than willing to solve their problems with violence when the situation required it. Both had their times when they ignored the general beliefs of the Federation due to necessity (the poor Prime Directive). DS9 just pumped up the scale from individual one on one encounters to a full out war.

It's not really against it because even a society thet lives in paradise will eventually become the envy of another. There will always be something to defend against.

Gene's utopian vision only works if all species not just humans and the Federation are part of that vision.

So it's only natural that other powers may go to war with the Federation despite how peaceloving that government may be. Not to mention, the Federation has to have a military to protect that utopia.

What I was trying to say, just better phrased.

I don't think DS9 went against the Trek ethos, by far and large it was the most humane of the Treks and certainly had the most interesting reoccuring aliens. Garak, Dukat, Odo, Quark, Rom and Nog......sorry but by and large the other Treks cannot hold a candle to them in this department, especially Voyager.

That is why some probably felt it went against the Trek ethos, because it had far more aliens than any other trek which, naturally, did not act like the rest of the 24th century humans. And as for them, well sure Sisko and Co. did maybe some morally questionable stuff....but so did Kirk, Picard and do we even have to talk about Janeway?

As for the Dominion War arc........I don't mind it per se, altough there are certain problems with it imho. I did not like the huge starship inflation and the devaluation of the dominion ships, which went from menacing to TIE FIGHTER in short order. Fleet battles are cool no question but it just wasn't consistent with what we had seen so far up until that moment. (Oh, martial law on earth during the changeling crisis and still only one ship, the Lakota, in orbit and suddenly they have enough ships that a whole fleet was caught offguard protecting Betazed.......)

The other thing which bugged my was the ending of the Dominion war, which on one hand felt anticlimactic to me and on the other hand I always felt that it shouldn't have ended with the ending of the Dominion war, simply because doing a war is easy, the narrative and epic battles write themselves but what follows is FAR more interesting. How did they treat the cardassians after that, how did they handle the dominion in the gamma-quadrant? How soon are the resuming the exploration through the wormhole?

As I said, smashing things in a war is easy, but how you handle yourself and your former enemies afterwards is far more challenging and interesting to write and the DS9 crew had qualitiy enough to pull it off (contrary to the Voyager staff imho), so imho there was still room for at least another couple of seasons evenmoreso that, while they did tried to tie all things up neatly, the ending felt rather rushed and unsatisfying imho.