A Taboo? Too Much?

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Shada Dukal
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A Taboo? Too Much?

Postby Shada Dukal » Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:47 pm

I have always wondered why people hate Cardassians so much. Now I have the answer, they hate only military Cardassians because they can’t be placed within the Trekkie happy-go-lucky neridness. Trekkies like Garak because he supported the Federation and he was so funny, (I adore Garak but there were other Cardassian characters too – Dukat, Madred, Darhe’el, Lemec and many others), fans adore peaceful Cardassian scientists and they love dissidents because deep inside they feel better people – they could still like Cardassians without having to think of themselves as bad people – it is just wonderful. However, Cardassia is pretty militaristic but you have no guts to discuss it, understand it, or view it from Cardassian point of view. Whenever it comes to militaristic Cardassians, you all get cold feet and stick to your very Federation stances. Don’t bother, I know what you think, but why do you call yourself Cardassian fans, you can be Trekkies, that is just fine.
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Gazomg
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Re: A Taboo? Too Much?

Postby Gazomg » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:32 pm

Think the cardassians are portrayed as evil as it suits the premise of the whole trek utopia bullshit that rodenberry wanted.

Have you notice how every race that was /is considered evil like the klingons were softened over time, given the human value stuff
Same with how voyager show fucked up the borg

DS9 writers gave the cardassians more depth, hence why they became so popular to many, which some did not like
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Shada Dukal
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Re: A Taboo? Too Much?

Postby Shada Dukal » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:41 pm

Yes, I do not question the producers’ reasons. They need baddies, each story needs a conflict and opposing stances. What surprises me is that they did not create a conflict at the level of two or more opposing points of view, giving each of the sides enough screen time, abstaining from arbitration, leaving the audience to make up their minds whose angle to support. The audience was too actively guided in their reception, all the emphasis was put on the Federation characters, their opponents were bad by default, or their motives were ass-pulled and shallow, the races' peculiarities were sketchy and drown in human-centered values and this was kind of sad. It puts off the moderate viewer who wants a quality show with many facets, good acting and a convincing degree of realism in terms of character motivation. The Cardassian baddies managed to break the mould only to be ruined by reception criticism.

Apart from the Borg whose potential as baddies was not properly exploited, Voyager somehow depleted all the complexity that DS9 achieved. It was a return to the roots as though they were ashamed and afraid of DS9 and wanted to reinforce a more standard Trek message and avoid the Alpha and Beta quadrant developments. They ran away to the Delta quadrant in order to escape unpleasant question, and to give the traditional Trek audience a more commonplace product.

For example, I have always liked the clash between Gul Madred and Picard, because it was exactly that – a clash between two diametrically opposed outlooks and a warning. If the Cardassians wanted Picard dead, they had plenty of time to kill him. Madred just showed Picard how little and dispensable he was from Cardassian point of view and how all bombastic abstract nouns that Picard lavishly heaped upon the audience suddenly did not work. And fans always tend to forget that Picard was captured as a terrorist, he entered a Cardassian facility to carry out a sabotage so he was not an ordinary POW. The Cardassians simply warned the Federation that they did not subscribe to their interpretation of the facts and would adhere to theirs. It was so easily tossed away and misinterpreted, everyone commenting on the torture scenes but in fact, they were just a metaphor – in my world you are so insignificant that I can do even that so don’t piss me off.
I am the Lizard King, I can do anything!
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Gazomg
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Re: A Taboo? Too Much?

Postby Gazomg » Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:34 pm

agree you need the villians, and DS9 showed that people can be interchangable...take damar for example.

This good and evil can be a grey area,

And yes Voyager killed the borg after tng built them up.
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Shada Dukal
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Re: A Taboo? Too Much?

Postby Shada Dukal » Tue Oct 27, 2015 3:15 pm

Well, I have always wondered why Damar is considered a baddie – he was a simple crewmember on a freighter when he was introduced, then he made it to Dukat’s aide, walking after him and relating his orders to the troops. He made a Gul purely by incident, he has never struck me as a particularly ambitious person.

Even if you add the information from Memory Beta, it is not enough to regard Damar as a baddie. He had the typical life of a Cardassian soldier from his generation – he was a Gil on Terok Nor, Dukat groomed him for an aide, later his fiancée was injured in a Bajoran terrorist attack, which rendered her infertile so his engagement was canceled. After that he was sent to the Border Wars and then to serve on a freighter.

Even if he did not kill Ziyal, she would have been arrested by the Cardassian troops leaving the station, he heard what she confessed, there would have been an investigation, her role in it revealed, she would have faced charges of sabotage and high treason that even her father could not have averted, assuming he would have held his post after his failure to keep the station. So Ziyal was dead the moment she decided to oppose the Cardassians.

Even if he did not succeed Dukat and did not start the rebellion against the Dominion, he would have been an average Cardassian officer but hardly a bad person.

In fact, viewers think of him as a baddie because he was a Cardassian and a military officer. Which is rather strange because all main characters in ST are Starfleet military officers. O’Brian fought in the Border Wars too but no one considers him bad, he killed Cardassians and never stopped hating them. So either all military characters are bad because they take part in military conflicts and fight for their respective side or we have to assume that all military people kill and inflict damages when at war but this does not make them bad people per se. So being a bad person and being at war are different things.
I am the Lizard King, I can do anything!
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