Star Trek Dominion War SuperCut (Defunct)

when the changelings decided to go to war with the Federation Alliance they wanted to instill fear and dread within their enemy they wanted them to fear the Dominion fleets to be demoralized and for them to know what it was like to face their own annihilation while they lost the war they did achieve these goals in September we will be focusing on dystopian lore so let's take a look at the United Federation of Planets let's take a look at Starfleet let's take a look at the Alpha Quadrant after the Dominion war with over 1 million soldiers dead and over 90 million civilians killed the Federation was perhaps the second worst hit from the Dominion war a government that prided itself on scientific research first and everything else second it was forced to transform itself into an efficient machine of war with these losses and a complete mentality shift Starfleet would be forever changed and morphed into something different let's not forget we see officers Starfleet officers go from being the pinnacle of the highest standard of scientists of diplomats to cunning saboteurs and to aiding and abetting murder I cheated I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men [Music] I have an accessory to murder but the most damning thing about I think I can live with it [Music] and if I had to do it all over again I would Garak was right about one thing a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant so I will learn now with ships they were forced to make ships of war being openly made and a need to not only patrol the Cardassian border to keep them in line but protect them from other governments like the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire that might want to take them over the strength and power Starfleet now had would be a necessity going forward section 31 having grown due to the necessity of fighting the threat of the Dominion would continue to have Admirals to have generals and high-ranking civilians in their pocket the threat of the other alpha powers or even a return of the Dominion wouldn't just go away the need for a secret organization that could defend the populace from any threat during a cold war would be even more needed now civil strife would rise although unlikely anything near a civil war you would have citizens wanting to return to the scientific nature of the Federation but with so many dead it would be more likely that Starfleet would stay military or some amalgamation of both would begin to exist the Borg the Dominion remnant the Romulan Star Empire there were still threats out there and these threats would instill fear in the civilians of the Federation they would not easily forget beta's at being taken over in a civilization that loses over 90 million people will forever be scarred the defeat of Cardassia would mean that it would need to be patrolled and would also need to be protected the Romulans Klingons and other governments would be looking to take over the weakened state we know the borders for guard as he returned to just after the Klingon Cardassian war allowing the Klingons to keep territories gained this is still a vast network of systems that would need a proponent to protect them from pirates to protect them from other civilizations it is even possible that the Federation would provide so much infrastructure and trade that the Cardassian Union would one day join them it would be no surprise that the Federation would be better prepared for the Borg should they ever return given the advancements in the war and post-war the Federation was an ideal the one government that wanted to explore and find new things and due to the Dominion War the Alpha Quadrant would have lost that with the Federation return to being a scientifically focused Society probably not but it would be likely that they would be a military organization that focused on science and was not completely eager to fight far different from what they were before but still holding to some of the ideals and having to endure loss that would never fully recover stay tuned next week for when we look at the impact of the war on the Klingon Empire [Music] the Dominion had always used its power and influence to hire their force governments to kneel or destroy them completely this was achieved by any means necessary diplomacy subterfuge war all well-crafted weapons in the Dominion arsenal and ironically even though the Dominion would lose the war the Klingon Empire would fall into ruin this great conflict would be the final nail in the coffin the Klingon Empire that entered the war would not exist after the Federation Alliance had won let's just get into it many people will blame a large part of the Dominion War on Gul Dukat and the Cardassian Union however a good argument exists for the state of the Klingon Empire being why the Dominion got its greatest foothold in the Alpha Quadrant before we continue let's take a look at the opinion of a Starfleet officer and counselor of deep space 9 on the Klingon Empire itself the Klingon Empire is dying and I think it deserves to die I see a society that is in deep denial about itself we're talking about a warrior culture that prides itself on maintaining centuries-old traditions of honor and integrity but in reality it's willing to accept corruption at the highest level it was the last leader of the High Council that you respected has there even been one and how many times have you had to cover up the crimes of Klingon leaders because you were told that it was for the good of the Empire the truth is you have been willing to accept a government that you know is corrupt Gowron is just the latest example Worf you are the most honorable and decent man that I've ever met and if you are willing to tolerate men like Gowron then what hope is there for the Empire the Klingon Empire had once again fallen into corruption it had adopted antiquated mentalities long before the Dominion even arrived this wasn't new either it happened time and again break this information down succinctly the Klingon Empire has roughly 50 years of life left to it two months ago a Federation starship monitored an explosion on the klingon moon praxis they believed it was caused by over mining and insufficient safety precautions the moon's decimation means a deadly pollution of their ozone they will have depleted their supply of oxygen approximately 50 earth years due to their enormous military budget the Klingon economy does not have the resources we wish to combat this catastrophe animals Jim there is an historic opportunity here don't believe them don't trust them they are dying day and even after the Federation aided the Klingon Empire Starfleet only slowed down the decay not stopped it this would open up the perfect opportunity for the Dominion to manipulate the Klingons to weaken the Alpha Quadrant the first major result of this would be the Klingon Cardassian war unknowingly coerced by dominions the Klingons would attack the Cardassians fearing that their leaders had been replaced by changelings the war would go well for the Klingons initially severely weakening the Cardassian Union however the Federation refused to legitimize the war and would not support their allies this came to a head when the Cardassian leadership the de Thapa Council fled and sought refuge on ds9 Chancellor Gowron head of the Klingon Empire promptly attacked the space station the Chancellor's invasion fleet would be repelled and the Klingons would briefly withdraw but that would not last after the Federation Council refused to cede certain sectors the Klingons would invade the United Federation of Planets this would ultimately prove to be fatal as the Klingons now had two fronts to fight on the initial attack went well but Starfleet was able to counter-attack deep into Klingon territory both the Klingons and the Federation would take heavy losses to the point that Starfleet analysts determined that they no longer had the ability to defeat the Dominion that it would be impossible to win a war the Klingons success against the Cardassian Union and the Maquis would be vital to the Dominion plans the Klingons ensured that the only way for Cardassia to survive would to become a part of the Dominion with the Klingon and Federation fleets crippled the Dominion now entered on the side of the Cardassian Union the Klingons would lose all of their initial victories all of their initial territory and have to fall back to ds9 for help before they would retreat completely to the Klingon Empire sporters losing 1/3 of their fleet the Klingons were being crushed under the onslaught of the fresh Dominion troops and ships they had to fight ultimately this would be how the Klingon Empire would enter the Dominion war a third of their fleet destroyed and internal corruptions the Klingons would fight alongside their Federation allies but take heavy casualties over the stretch of the war itself this would only be exacerbated when the Breen entered the war and the Klingon Defense Force had the only technology that could resist the energy draining weapon the Breen had the ships would be put on the frontlines in an attempt to keep the Dominion off-balance so that the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't be overtaken during its time of weakness but even in these dire times the corruption of the Klingon Empire would present a problem Gowron fearing that Martok was becoming too influential would take control of the Klingon Defense Forces sending warriors to glorious missions that would end up with unnecessary losses his fear of losing power almost cost the Alpha Quadrant the war luckily he would be killed by a Klingon Starfleet officer and the role of Chancellor given to Martok a tactician who had kept the Dominion at bay while both the Romulans and Starfleet looked at ways of overcoming the Breen weapon Martok would in the short-term stabilized the Klingon Empire to finish the war the battles would return to being more precise and have less loss of life and ships the Klingons would be integral in the push for Cardassia but it would come at a heavy price as well the Breen would use suicide tactics to destroy or disable Klingon ships the Klingon Empire would leave the war completely broken the Klingon Empire lost over 200,000 warriors in the Dominion war alone a third of the fleet was lost in the Klingon Cardassian war so possibly another fifty to a hundred thousand and as many in the Federation Klingon war section 31 estimated that the Klingons would be rebuilding their empire for decades they would not become a threat for a long long time and that's even assuming that the Klingon Empire persevered it is very likely that the Empire would have imploded upon itself like we saw with the Ferengi the Klingon Empire had outdated systems mass corruption within the ranks sources show us that the Romulans would soon take advantage of this and continue to assist in destabilizing a vital Federation like many great warrior based societies the civil war would fall to the Great Houses as they vied for power if we assume Martok was the Chancellor the Klingon Empire needed he would rally the troops well the troops that he could using what little Klingon defense fleet he still had to crush the traitors this would require a modernization of the Klingon Empire however more progressive ideas would slowly start to seep into the culture this would be needed for the Klingon Empire to survive but not without resistance best-case scenario the Klingon Empire would eventually look more like a militarized Federation than it had in any years of war and conquest as with the evolution of all societies they would move away from their warrior hat into an actual diverse civilization that allowed multiple races to become part of the fold and while unlikely for many generations it's possible that the Klingon Empire would even join the Federation after essentially being turned into them but that's just my opinion what do you guys think let me know in the comments below at the end of the Dominion War most Alpha Quadrant powers had been completely crippled the Federation had lost so much in morale and manpower the corrupted nature of the Klingon Empire left it fractured and near annihilation the Cardassian Union was broken fractured desolate and the Dominion had its first major defeat it was removed entirely from the Alpha Quadrant but one government while still haven't taken heavy casualties would emerge as perhaps the most influential in the quadrant at least for the short term let's take a look at the Romulan Star Empire the day after the Dominion war the two dominant powers left in the Alpha Quadrant would be the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire this is an irony given the losses of the Romulan Star Empire before the war the Dominion was a concern for all of the Alpha Quadrant there was a fear of the malevolent juggernaut it was out of this fear that the Tau Chi are from the Romulan Star Empire and the Obsidian order from the Cardassian Union combined forces to attack the founders homeworld ironically this only showed how militarized the Federation had become because while they turned a blind eye to this obvious attack and genocide but sir that could plunge Romulus and Cardassia into war with the Dominion only if he fails lieutenant his plan looks like it's got a fair chance of success he's commanding a fleet of 20 ships manned by combat veterans they know the location of the founders homeworld and they've modified their cloaks so the gem the dark can't detect their approach it sounds like you're hoping tain will succeed I never hope for a war major but if it comes I'd rather see the Dominion on the losing side however we have to plan for the worst Ben I want you to evacuate ds9 of all non-essential personnel and put the Defiant on standby alert unfortunately the Romulans and Cardassians had been tricked the Tau Chi R and obsidian order were caught completely off-guard by a surprise JEM Hadar attack the planet was not the founders home world it was a ploy to draw out the two organizations that had the best chance of defeating the Dominion the founders had believed this would [ __ ] and destroy the Tau Chi are in Obsidian order the towel she are in the Obsidian order are both ruthless efficient organizations a definite threat to us but not after today after today the only real threat to us from the Alpha Quadrant are the Klingons and the federation and i doubt that either of them will be a threat for much longer despite their best attempts we know that the founders did fail at their mission we know that at least the Tau er persisted on after this battle it was however severely weakened allowing section 31 and the federation to ensure a sympathetic individual would head the Tau Chi our Alamos Kaval been working for Starfleet he's been providing the Federation with critical military intelligence for over a year when he started working with section 31 I don't know but in any case we have our mole working for us at the top levels of Romulan government good for us though the loss did cause the Romulans great pause after seeing they could not use brute strength to get their way they took a wait-and-see approach the Romulan Star Empire did not enter the war alongside the federal and the Klingons they negotiated a separate peace with the Dominion and would turn a blind eye when the Dominion encroached into their territory to attack Federation ships after the Federation assisted in the assassination of a Romulan diplomat and forged documents that incriminating the Dominion the Romulans entered the war however this was a year after the war had begun entering the war in 2374 with the aid of the Romulans the Federation Alliance would take the chin taka system though they wouldn't hold chin taka for long as the Breen entered the war with the Dominion and retook the chin taka system from the Federation Alliance the other largest loss of Romulan life would be at the Battle of Cardassia though it would be fairly light in comparison to the Federation and Klingon losses the day after the Dominion war would find the Romulans in the best position relatively the Klingon Empire was in tatters and destabilized the Romulans would continue to destabilize them through continued sabotage Starfleet would now be militarized and stronger true but would also have the duties of taking care of the Cardassian Union the Cardassian Union could not survive on its own and the Federation would be duty-bound to ensure that it wasn't picked apart by other empires or governments beige or becoming a part of the Federation and the wormhole would require a larger focus there as well to protect the Federation against the Dominion or any other government that came through this would mean that the Romulan Star Empire would be a powerful player militarily and diplomatically the Romulans did not take near the losses the Cardassians the Dominion or the Federation did the losses were estimated at about 200 thousand and up unfortunately there are no official Canon resources for the losses but we do know that they took less than well again the Federation Cardassian and Dominion additionally they entered the war late and so did not have as much of the shell-shocked and weary morale that the other governments did now it would be unlikely that the Romulan Empire could ultimately win any major conflict against the Federation additionally the war did take its toll on the people and the Romulan Star Empire probably did not want another major conflict so soon however given that they posed the largest threat the Romulans would have a lot of political capital and clout with they could spread their influence relations between the Federation and Romulan would become icy very quickly the two were always more apt to be enemies the Federation embargo restored very shortly after the winning of the war there was no reason that another cold war wouldn't start however the downfall of the Romulan Star Empire would not come from outside but from within Shinzon was a part of a slave race known as the Riemann's within the Romulan Star Empire Shinzon and the Riemann's had fought valiantly against the Dominion after the Dominion War the Riemann's had won in freedom and began fighting against the Romulans there was even a contingent of the military that believed that Shinzon and the Riemann's should become a part of the Romulan Star Empire if not allies Shinzon sued for peace and the Romulans ultimately denied it when it was opposed in the Senate the military element that had backed Shinzon helped assassinate the entire Imperial Senate Shinzon took over the Romulan Star Empire government and said in plan an action to make war on the Federation by destroying its capital it became obvious quickly that the Riemann's were not suited for government work mismanaging the Empire under Shinzon's rule Shinzon and the Riemann's were ultimately thwarted by segments of the Romulan military and the USS Enterprise this brief coup was detrimental to both the infrastructure and political clout of the Romulans the Federation would find the Romulan Star Empire much more pliable as it attempted to rebuild its infrastructure and respond to the calls of other Alpha Quadrant powers to rein in their programs of mass destruction the Romulans ability to impress their influence would all but be destroyed when their homeworld was annihilated but that's a story for another time it is ironic that the Romulan Star Empire perhaps held the most influenced past the war given the almost near annihilation of the Tau Chi R by the Dominion and then their cautious approach while being a part of the war it's a tragedy that they would end up being one of the weakest powers only a decade later due to internal struggles and destruction of their homeworld as the Romulan Star Empire joined the war the Federation Alliance was now poised to take the fight back to the Dominion with their bolstered forces they were able to gain the chin taka system the first time the Alliance was able to take and hold a minion territory the Alliance was now on the offensive the tide was turning every price that had been paid up to now was worth it the Dominion was on the defensive that was until an empire that had never truly been on good terms with the Federation would rear its head they would conduct a suicidal attack that would have little military gain but caused terror and hurt morale within the Federation they would push the Alliance out of Dominion space they would take the light shown by the Romulan victories and cover the Alpha Quadrant back into darkness let's take a look at the Berean I'm gonna be honest with everyone the Breen don't have much in the way of cannon so I will attempt to use what's available but may have to pull from other sources such as books Star Trek Online and other sources that aren't strictly considered in universe no matter what source I pull from though not much is really known about the Breen what we do know is that their interactions generally run from lukewarm to hostile with Starfleet we are also able to conclude that the Federation has had enough dealings with them to know their battle tactics the Breen have outposts in this sector the attack on the Vico is consistent with their battle tactics and their level of technology thank you data when the Romulans joined the Federation Alliance the Dominion was finally on the defensive this all changed though with the Breen the Breen introduced themselves by doing a suicidal strike upon Starfleet HQ there was no military advantage here the attack lost more for the Breen than it gained however it had a chilling morale impact to the civilians to Starfleet to the Federation overall even the Klingons respected the attack [Music] I have a lot of friends in those buildings Starfleet was able to destroy most of the Breen attack force but by then most of the damage had been done it was to give the enemy credit to launch an attack on Starfleet headquarters even my people never attempted that the Breen liked the Dominion were willing to do whatever it took including suicide runs at the very heart of the Federation itself this attack was followed up with a sound of feet at the chin taka system the Breen introduced a new weapon seemingly never before used or seen by any of the Alpha Quadrant powers [Music] [Music] most power to the helm the coms out so our weapons primary computer systems are offline I can't get anything back online some other training all with their energy dampening weapon fear once again spread throughout the Alpha Quadrant though this wouldn't last long as a Cardassian rebellion aided in the Federation Alliance finding a fix against the Breen weapon the Breen would find themselves marginalized after their weapon had been made obsolete the Dominion would use them as cannon fodder to slow the tide but not much else after the war what is surprising is the lack of any real punishment of the Breen they're not even mentioned unless you consider the words or other allies in the treaty of beige or you don't even see them at the signing though it is assumed that they'd be required to return to their borders because the Breen entered so late in the war we have no evidence that any incursions occurred into Breen territory this means that the entirety of the Breen infrastructure would be left intact we can assume that the Breen probably did take heavy fleet losses as the Dominion began using their forces recklessly but they'd be able to rebuild quite easily in comparison to the other powers well not in Canon it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that some requirements would be imposed upon the Breen though they'd be required to stay within their own space we probably see patrols of the Alpha Quadrant powers along their borders if not into their territory but beyond that we don't know much more about what occurred the Breen would be relatively unscathed though not as influential given the loss of the war loss of their forces and relative size the Alpha Quadrant powers and yes I know that the Romulans and Klingons are also a part of the beta quadrant yadda yadda yadda but they are all kohli Quilly known as the Alpha Quadrant powers would keep a steady eye on the Breen but would leave them alone as they apparently always have before the Battle of Wolf 359 Starfleet had been one of exploration and scientific research they had defensive capabilities true but most Federation ships were far far weaker than the Federation had the capability of making the ships would be able to defend their borders just barely the Federation had forgotten how to truly defend themselves against a real threat and because of this they would be ill-prepared for the slaughter at Wolf five nine let's take a look at one of the defining moments in Starfleet history so during the Dominion War series there has been a lot of conversation talk about Starfleet and when it really was militarized is it military is it exploratory is it both a lot of people have called me an idiot and that I don't know what I'm talking about when I say that Starfleet was not a military some even think I don't look into this stuff when about two to three hours is dedicated to research alone you want to see where I get my proof that Starfleet isn't a military you want see my evidence the next generation made it quite clear that Starfleet wasn't a military but don't take my word for it Captain Picard it is my understanding that you initially resisted Starfleet's a request for the simulation yes I know why Starfleet is not a military organization its purpose is exploration I prefer brains over brawn as well I think it's a waste of effort to test our combat skills it's a minor province and the makeup of a starship captain TMG is very adamant that Starfleet was not a military full stop but wait there's more let's see what Captain Sisko said about Starfleet belong to the Federation it does not mean that they are sinks excuse me do you know what the trouble is no but trouble is earth really on earth there is no poverty no crime no war you look up the window of Starfleet headquarters and you see paradise well it's easy to be a saint in paradise but the Maquis do not live in paradise out there in the Demilitarized Zone other problems haven't been solved yet out there there are no Saints just people angry scared determined people who are going to do whatever it takes to survive whether it meets with the Federation approval or not make sense to me this combined with what the creator said Gene Roddenberry I don't think it's unreasonable for anyone to come to the conclusion that Starfleet was exploratory only however the more we discuss and have conversation back and forth because that's what this channel is it's a conversation the more I'm becoming Vin's that perhaps Picard Riker and most all of the Enterprise crew and other Starfleet personnel we're wrong here's my new hypothesis based on our talks we see Starfleet though modeled after a navy they are quite specific on being exploratory only throughout the enterprise series the ship would move from exploration to a sharper focus on combat and defense we see the shift going from explorers to soldiers though it happens in small degrees and then we have the show of enterprise moving on to the show of the original series and this shift just continues the enterprise was mainly an exploratory vessel but it was also used for combat purposes the fighting in the Cold War with the Klingons would see Starfleet come fully into a militarized state yes they did still do exploration but they were also ready for an all-out shooting war with the Klingons and then Starfleet won the Klingon Federation Cold War and dismantled its defensive fleet they still had the military structure they still had the technology they still use ships capable of defense but they honed them for science and exploration the need for a focus on war was no longer apparent so time progresses and then we get to the next generation and we see a federation that is a paradise like Cisco said everyone believes that the entire galaxy is peaceful and that war is an antiquated notion the ships would reflect this they would have families on them there would be huge shopping malls effectively the ships would become more focused on scientific research and less focus on combat defensive systems would be downgraded we would see a lack of training would Starfleet still be a military sure would they be an efficient or effective one most assuredly not in essence the Federation would have forgotten how to war and then the Borg Starfleet only sent 40 ships to fight the Borg 40 it has been suggested that Starfleet had thousands that they could have used let's assume that's true Starfleet with thousands upon thousands of ships could only pull together 40 for the defense of Earth these ships weren't even the best and some were specifically not suited for combat and this was the defense of the core of the Federation earth Vulcan other planets that made up the core of what the Federation was were in jeopardy whether 40 ships was the bulk of the Federation fleet and I'll admit I think I was wrong on that or all they had available to defend the core it shows the ineptness and lack of combat readiness of this military organization so if I was to be 100% kind and not argue on some ship designs where it may be sketchy if they were completely science-based or not if I only gave in on ships completely known to be made only for scientific research in this defense fleet sent to defend Earth quite a few ships had no business being there this included the USS buon stall which was an Oberth class vessel as well as ship designs that were so old they dated back to the original series the USS Melbourne excelsior class you also had a constitution class ship and most other ships were derivatives of the Excelsior and Constitution class so going back to what I said given all this I think it's fair to say that Starfleet was a military organization but they had lost their edge however the Borg Wolf 359 it changed all that it was interesting to see the divide that occurred you'd have one side and jean-luc Picard who would take a sip of his Earl Grey tea and consider everything that occurred to him and then you'd have others like Cisco who would look at his losses and go back to create a ship that would be designed to do one thing kill Borg but even with those who would still want to stay scientific who would still want to be explorers and be peaceful let's see the impact on them let's play a little more of that clip I played earlier and include a couple of pieces I left out stop it is not a military organisation its purpose is exploration with the Borg threat I decided that my officers and I needed to hone our tactical skills in a crisis situation this prudent to have several options I prefer brains over brawn as well I think it's a waste of effort to test our combat skills it's a minor province and the makeup of a starship captain so I'd have to say that I should have been more precise in my discussions before and that I was both right and wrong it'd be more apt to say that Starfleet started out as exploration though they did model themselves after a navy and that the universe forced them to become a military organization they faced the threats as humanity and the Federation always did and then they won and then after they won they stopped trying to be a military the disarmament with the Klingons would show them to be weak they'd become so dedicated to science that many believed that war was a thing of the past that it was unnecessary and then Q would introduce them to the Borg [Music] in the 24th century the founding of the Federation would be remembered as a time of different species coming together putting aside their trivial controversies and creating something better than themselves they would create a government that would stand for freedom it would stand for truth it would stand for justice it would want to make the galaxy a better place this was ironically far from the actual reason the original reason being mutual defense against the Romulan threat but still it was something that the galaxy needed it was hope but the Federation was naive most citizens felt that they lived in a galaxy that played by their rules that wanted the same thing they did for everyone to be happy for everyone to be free for everyone to follow their own goals an easy mistake to make in paradise and they were wrong the towie are the Obsidian order the Dominion the Borg they didn't live in a safe galaxy and they would need protecting so let's go ahead and take a look at section 31 so if you can believe it section 31 has just barely more information about it in Canon than the Breen this means that I will be pulling from areas that are not solidified in stone when I can it will come directly from the shows I will also be using material that jives with the continuity of the shows that means that you may find some errant book or book series that will contradict what I bring here so congratulations this is one of the reasons why the powers that be of the intellectual property don't consider any books canon many equate the creation of section 31 with the founding of the Federation this isn't unreasonable but it is inaccurate section 31 existed before the Federation charter when humans called their government the United Earth we don't know exactly what was put into article 14 section 31 when they created Starfleet but we do know that it allows for a bending some might say complete disregard for the rules and times of extreme need when Starfleet was created so was section 31 the organization had been acting autonomously though with the support from elements within the civilian government and Starfleet ever since section 31 like most shadow brokers that thriving would only see mass expansion during wars that earth would be involved in this expansion would be seen during the four earth xin wars a large expansion not usurped until the Dominion war and that usually happens when your enemy eats the meat of their enemies we would also see it happening during the earth Romulan conflict interestingly section 31 generally seems to be under operation by humans I was not able to find a section 31 operative that wasn't human at least in officially-licensed sources during the next generation we can only assume that the power and use of section 31 would have waned we do have issues that would have to be resolved though most assuredly the conflict with the Cardassians and Romulans would warrant a closer look by section 31 but these conflicts would not nearly be the scale for an expansion or justification of the most extreme measures a lot of my subscribers believe that the reason for the lack of any significant fleet or any ship worth anything during the Battle of Wolf 359 was because of section 31 they knew of the threat of the Borg and sent technology that would gain the Borg little to nothing this is to my mind deeply flawed first off even if we assume that the information gained by enterprise during the enterprise series was co-opted by section 31 and deleted from history the cube got to earth this meant that all of the technological advancements would be assimilated had the cube been successful so only sending ships that couldn't defeat it would ultimately fail they would need to send ships that you know could actually win a fight with the Borg secondly and most importantly there is no reason to believe that this is true I could barely find fan theories on section 31 and Wolf 359 let alone anything official it wouldn't be a logical move for a highly effective organization and there is literally no source on planet earth that supports it though I look forward to having to redact that last statement when someone finds an obscure reference by Roddenberry or someone at the very least so comment below and let me know where I've messed up the largest expansion to date at least would be during the Dominion War section 31 would see an explosion and not only growth but acceptance good men of character would be willing to accept to section 31 s methods if not to just stop the war to stop the death murder sabotage genocide whether it was to a Romulan ally or the Dominion it didn't matter when they wanted to infect the founders and commit genocide Admirals staff clerks doctors lab technicians Starfleet security everyone was willing to assist the Federation at the highest echelons would be committing genocide and assisting section 31 to do it section 31 would become ingrained during the Dominion War and you know what Starfleet was just fine with that now what happens after the Dominion war will be based on the person there is no straight cannon if you're an optimist and believe that Bashir would ultimately defeat section 31 then you would enjoy a line of books where he becomes a head of Starfleet medical and brain section 31 to their knees ensuring that everyone who was a part of it would face trial if you prefer a more pessimistic view and in my opinion pragmatic then you would subscribe to what I do section 31 would come out of the Dominion War the most powerful shadow broker of the Alpha Quadrant they now had the tower are as a puppet organization for them the Obsidian order is destroyed and they have risen in both power and prestige within and without of the Federation it is unlikely that Starfleet would ever recognize them as an official part of the Federation but it is likely that during the darkest hours of the Federation section 31 would be there to ensure the safety of all of the Federation itself waiting and watching according to the oxford dictionary the phrase useful idiot was termed by linen to mean useful tools it could also be a term that the Dominion would assign to the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets leading up to the conflict let's take a look at the Cardassian before the Dominion War now let me be absolutely clear I am NOT saying that the Dominion War was caused by the Federation nor the Klingons I am not blaming anything on them the Cardassians made their choice both the civilian and military entities within the government however nothing ever occurs in a vacuum every choice that is made will impact everything else both the decision to act or not to act but first let's take a look at the kardashians the kardashians found themselves in an area with well very poor resources the only real way to grow was through expansion and unlike the Federation they decided to expand through military might so the Cardassian would expand taking system after system and draining that system of its resources they would continue on using their power to subjugate other species this would include many like beige or so we already know that the mentality and the culture of the Cardassians played a huge part but let's see how other galactic governments interacted with them let's consider one of the earliest confrontations with the United Federation of Planets and the chance that Starfleet could have had to make a difference the federation Cardassian war also known as the border wars was a prolonged conflict between the United Federation of Planets and the Cardassian Union I think this war honestly highlights how ineffective and incompetent the Federation was which led to the Cardassians joining the Dominion let's take a look at Federation technology versus Cardassian technology and ship designs the pursuing ship is the Phoenix and the other it appears to be a Cardassian supply ship how would you know that we are able to make that determination err you can read our transponder codes the important thing of the moment is of one of your ships may be in jeopardy mr. Worf has there been any answer to our communication no captain put out a repeating message in all subspace channels priority one communiqué break off your pursuit immediately aye sir Thomas ed you see we are doing everything in our power to reach the Phoenix yes and accomplishing nothing I'm sorry to say can you show me the location of our other ships mr. Beddoe there you see we have a warship which could intercept the Phoenix before it's too late if you will give us the transponder frequency or are you going to stand there while our ship is destroyed captain sir the Cardassian warship is moving on the Phoenix mr. data overlay weapon ranges are the two ships the worship is 300,000 kilometers from the Phoenix it is opening fire the Phoenix has taken a direct hit the Phoenix is beginning evasive maneuvers it has positioned itself outside the weapons range of the opposing shift the Phoenix has powered up both phasers and photon torpedoes Phoenix is firing photon torpedoes [Music] he has destroyed our warship [Music] does the supply ship have any weapons they limited certainly not enough to defeat a nebula class starship sir the Phoenix is firing on them so the Federation could read their transponders not exactly cutting-edge technology and the Cardassians considered the nebula class to be a threat the nebula class let's explore the nebula class shall we the armaments of a nebula class included a torpedo launcher in the secondary hull and if they really wanted to fight they really meant business they'd have a two-hole torpedo launchers and two phaser positions on the forward-most part of the primary and secondary hull wow truly a juggernaut of epic proportions if we contrast that against the galaxy class which had 10 to 11 phaser banks and up to two or more torpedo launchers there's not really a contest you can see why I find the Federation to be less than all that impressive they barely built any Galaxy class ships and used vessels like the nebula class starship to fight their wars and let's remember they came to a stalemate with the Cardassians they utilized weaker ships to fight a war they could have won with more powerful ships and they had the ability to make these more powerful ships brilliant so instead of victory and more lives saved they came to a stalemate created what is basically a neutral zone and helped with the birth of the Maquis had the Federation decided to actually build more galaxy-class ships or even start to build ships similar to the Defiant or acura class they might have been able to push the Cardassians back into their own space or even prevented the Cardassians from being able to become a more powerful galactic government and yeah I get it this is 20/20 hindsight sure but you can't really sit there and defend the military might of the Federation nor really say that it wasn't complicit in helping to cause the conditions that created the Dominion war by choosing to not use the force that they had available Cardassia was emboldened and continued to grow and expand the Demilitarized Zone creates the Maquis a terrorist organization that will plague the Cardassian Union all the way up to just right before the Dominion or the next major note would be the Klingon Cardassian war a war brought on by the Dominion who had successfully infiltrated the Klingon Empire the Klingons fearing Dominion interference in Cardassian affairs attacked the Cardassian borders the Cardassians take heavy losses in both military assets and internal infrastructure the Maquis of course took advantage of this an attack as well the Maquis effectively pushed the Cardassian Union out of the Demilitarized Zone the Klingons were brutally destroying the Cardassians and the United Federation of Planets just talked the Cardassians were only able to slow the Klingon Empire down by committing hit-and-run attacks this would be another time that the United Federation of Planets had a choice they could choose to assist the Cardassians who were obviously under attack without due cause they could assist their allies and destroy the Cardassians and they chose to sit back and talk they would assist some convoys true but it was too little too late while the Federation certainly had the ability help stem the tide the Maquis and Klingons played their parts let's look at the opinion of Benjamin Sisko Nanaki were never much of a threat to the Federation but we were a threat to you we were a stain on your record and you couldn't have that you were so busy measuring yourself for a trolls uniform you were to blame me for what happened to the Maquis bye go ahead blame me blame Starfleet blame the Federation blame everyone except Michael Arrington the Maquis won its greatest victories under my leadership your leadership your shining moment of glory Michael Eddington gets to take off his gold uniform and play hero that's what you always want it to lead troops and a glorious cause well you've had your chance and look where you led them right into their graves they died because I wasn't there when they needed me most because you put me in jail they died because you filled their heads with balls hopes sold them dreams of a military victory and what they needed was a negotiated peace we had the Cardassians on the run and they ran right to the arms of the Dominion end of story it's honestly not surprising that the Cardassian Union would embrace the Dominion the Dominion complemented their culture at least from a PR perspective but let's more consider the position of the Cardassian Union and the people in it they were broken from war they went from being a huge galactic power down to what effectively is a third world power prestige completely gone the Dominion offered them a place at the table again and a chance to bring vengeance on their enemies it's not surprising that they took it and again the United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire did not start the war the Cardassian Union did make their own bed but Starfleet and the Klingons had a choice they could have stopped this they could have stopped it at the border wars they could have stopped it during the Cardassian Klingon war but they did they chose to do what they always did and ultimately the entire quadrant paid the price the Dominion entered the Alpha Quadrant wishing to impose its will upon the solids they wish to bring them all under the banner of the Dominion it is ironic I think that the Dominion entered into a fractured Alpha Quadrant a quadrant of Cardassians of Klingons of Romulans of the Federation they wanted to bring a singular focus to these groups a single voice and they would obtain that goal it's just that most powers if not all would become members under the banner of the Federation and not the Dominion as we discussed last week the pacifism of the United Federation of Planets and the brutality of the Klingon Empire helped shape the decision that Cardassia would make an opinion I've held historically and still hold to this day is that Cardassia during the era of TNG was pretty weak when you compare it to the other Alpha Quadrant powers some sources even say that Federation technology was at least fifty years ahead of that of Cardassian technology the pacifistic beliefs of the Federation would ultimately result in the cease fire of the border wars which would not only allow Cardassia to still expand but was the direct cause of the creation of the Maquis from the sources that I could gather most of the fighting of the border wars occurred between 2347 and ended in the late 23:00 50s there would be skirmishes between Cardassia and the Federation true but that would be considered all-out war after that point the finalization of a treaty wouldn't happen until 2370 is logical to assume and seems to align with Canon that the Cardassians would build up after the mainstay of fighting ended in the 23 50s the Cardassians would work to expand in all other directions they would see a jump in intelligence and technological advancements during this time while I don't believe the Cardassians ever advanced to the same level of tech as the Federation or even the Klingons I do believe that they were given enough time to become a threat in the early 23:00 60s I believe that the Federation probably began putting more political pressure upon the Cardassians this would cause internal pressures which is probably why the occupation of Bajor ended in 2369 again only one year before the final signing of the treaty for the border wars I also believe this because Vader was put under the protection of the Federation at this time during the next few years we see how dangerous and efficient the Cardassians have become as an example when issues began to arise in the Demilitarized Zone Gould Takata teamed up with commander Sisko to determine exactly what was occurring while Sisko took all measures to prevent two caught from seeing what the interface of the runabout looks like that they were in later the goal admitted that he had seen the schematics of the ship before it had even been mass-produced the Obsidian order had spies within Utopia Planitia fleet yards all of this to say something that most might disagree with I think that before the Dominion War and before the Klingon Cardassian war Cardassia was making such strides that they were becoming the equal of the Alpha Quadrant powers you could see this in the way the Federation interacted with Cardassians and with their ability to handle the Defiant after it had been hijacked it's my contention that the Dominion saw that their window for exploiting the Cardassian people was closing so they moved up operations to cause the Klingon Cardassian war this would have the changeling infiltrator push a bit harder making it easier for him to be identified one Scot Gowron even pointed out that the changeling infiltrator had pushed very hard for the war but regardless of whether the Cardassians were becoming an Alpha Quadrant powerhouse or not happened the Klingon Cardassian war did resulting in the fracturing of the Federation Klingon Alliance and the complete decimation of the Cardassian Union the Klingons had been so effective caught the Cardassian so off guard that even though the Union had some warning Cardassian border x' were pushed back and the Cardassians were always playing a defensive game the Maquis of course took advantage of this and began extreme advances into Cardassian territory you know many hate Dukat alliance with the Dominion many find him to be a traitor of the highest order but joining the Dominion wasn't necessarily the wrong decision I mean what was the Federation doing nothing standing back while the Cardassians were being slaughtered by the Klingons the Klingons had waged war and still wanted the territories that belonged rightfully to Cardassia the infrastructure of Cardassia had been annihilated the Dominion changed all that they came in restored order and saved the Cardassian people they gave back what the klingons had taken and the Federation let happen they were also treated like equals through a large part of the war if you look at the interactions between the Dominion and the Cardassians we only see the Dominion begin to treat the Cardassians poorly towards the end when the war was being lost now had they won with the Cardassians still be put in such a high place I don't know I'm inclined to think that initially they would but ultimately would probably fall out of favor as the Cardassian usefulness would begin to wane we never get to see this eventualities Oh as the Dominion war would turn against the Dominion and we'd see the Dominion and Cardassians defeated the attempted genocide of the Cardassians by the JEM Hadar would ensure that the Cardassian military turn against their once former allies this would be a saving grace after the war for the Cardassians but after the war with over 7 million Cardassian troops dead and 800 million Cardassian civilians gone Cardassia would be more broken than even at the Cardassian Klingon war and additionally the land ceded to the Klingons during the Klingon Cardassian war would stay with the Klingons we don't know a lot about what happened after certainly there are books on the matter but you all know that I rarely use books since writers of the Star Trek shows don't really care about them and there are so many that I would not be able to keep the cannon straight but I see one of two eventualities happening here again Cardassia would be fractured unable to expand at all this would mean that they would have to make do with the resources they had and there wasn't enough resources as discussed in previous episodes the Romulans would be more powerful right now with the ability to push their sway around the Klingons would have to rebuild and hope not to fall into civil war and the biggest dog would be a militarized Starfleet one that had more of its focus on war than on scientific research for the moment at least this would eventually move back to the other way around Cardassia would not be able to survive without the help of the other powers it makes the most sense that the Federation would be more than willing to create trade and offer supplies for free they would ultimately make the Cardassians completely dependent upon them whether this was done on purpose or a natural consequence we can leave to the viewer to decide but the Cardassian would not be self-sustaining I doubt they'd ever be self-sustaining again this to my mind would mean that the people would begin to become so reliant on the Federation that they would think of them as more strong allies er or even brothers and naturally at some point the Cardassians would become a member of the Federation it would make perfect sense why wouldn't they the Federation had always been there for them after the war had always taken care of them the only problem I could see is that perhaps there would be an internal struggle perhaps holdouts that would want to split off but even the split off factions would still forever be beholding to the Federation for resources so the one to stay independent would be more bluster than reality with the destruction of their homeworld the Romulans would not be in a position to so much discontent between the Cardassian and Federation governments so there would be no one to stand in their way Cardassia would ultimately become a very strong member of the Federation Council we know that the Klingons ultimately become a part of the council as well and as Sisko was saying to the Romulans about the Dominion there's one word for that when everyone is on the same side a part of the same government surrounded it would make sense that perhaps even the Romulans would become a part of the Federation if for nothing more than to work within the Federation so that it wouldn't ever be able to really impress any power upon the Romulans themselves I'll admit Romulans joining the Federation Council just because of this is far-fetched but it is possible and if happened the Dominion would have won almost the entirety of the Alpha Quadrant would be under one power they would have turned the alpha quadrant from green from red from yellow to only blue to adequately analyze and discuss the Dominion we need to take a look at the Federation it is intriguing to consider a pre Dominion war Alpha Quadrant and compare that to the Delta Quadrant and Gamma Quadrant certainly the power of quadrants was spread more among the empires in the Alpha Quadrant than any of the other two quadrants when thinking about the galaxy in Trek I would have to say that I agree with SF debris when he says that the Federation worked as an X Factor unlike in the Delta and gamma quadrant the Federation was a stabilizing force and even deterrent for any one empire to take over without the Federation it is quite possible the Alpha Quadrant would be majority Romulan or Klingon or Tholian or any number of other races the Federation offered something that most other quadrants didn't a certain amount of diversity after the Dominion War I think this premise becomes debatable as the Federation effectively absorbs a lot of the other powers but we're currently comparing the Federation to the Dominion as of 23 73 now depending on which way on you want to believe the Dominion had existed for anywhere from two thousand to ten thousand years in that time again if we believe we own the Dominion had never known defeat or surrender the creation of the Dominion was based on one thing fear the founders given the name changelings as a slur by the solids had been severely mistreated they were different and people treat things that are different harshly it was this mistreatment that moved them to create an empire so that they would never be challenged never be harmed again they decided to breed their own solids for their own needs we can't be completely sure if the Vorta and JEM Hadar were created from existing species though way Owen tells a story of how a board has saved a changeling or if they were created from scratch in a lab but we do know that once the founders created the Vorta and the JEM Hadar they were bred to be absolutely obedient the Vorta and JEM Hadar believed that the founders were their gods not completely inaccurate in some ways as the arbiters of the founders the Vorta and JEM Hadar were sent out to gain territory through either diplomacy or conquest and they were really good at what they did hundreds of races would come under the domain of the Dominion for better or worse the races would serve the Dominion making everything for the totalitarian government whether it was weapons food or other requirements with no entity like the Federation strong enough to stand in their way the Gamma Quadrant would become the playground of the founders and then the discovery of the wormhole by the Federation and Bajoran x' you know it has been claimed that the Dominion is my favorite villain in Shrek not unreasonable Deep Space nine is my favorite series but it's simply not true that I favor the Dominion I don't hate the Dominion I think they are a perfect foil for the Federation but they aren't my favorite but what I do like about the Dominion is that they are like the Borg in that they have a technological edge over the Federation in almost every way but also know how to play the game diplomatically unlike other enemies Starfleet has faced the Dominion isn't afraid to utilize other governments and sow discord within the Federation itself indeed this is how the Dominion first began their plans to take over the Alpha Quadrant without even knowing it the Federation would enter into a type of cold war with the Dominion the Alpha Quadrant powers would begin to explore the Gamma Quadrant and the Dominion would sit back and wait they would watch from afar stay elusive they would gather an immense amount of information even before first contact when Sisko was captured by the Dominion for the first time the JEM Hadar would comment on the Federation Cardassian treaty they would talk about Klingons and other races it would be startling how much was known by this mysterious enemy the capture of Sisko would be where the founders would first show their hand the Dominion would move to destroy several ships and colonies in the Gamma Quadrant a Jem'Hadar ship would exit the wormhole and beam through the shields of deep space 9 when force fields were erected around the JEM Hadar the JEM Hadar would walk right through them providing a Bajoran datapad with a list of what had been destroyed the Dominion made it clear no more ships into the Gamma Quadrant and Alpha Quadrant powers were to stay on their side of the wormhole in response the USS Odyssey a refit galaxy-class ship unloaded all civilian and non-essential personnel onto Deep Space nine and then was dispatched with runabouts to retrieve Cisco three JEM Hadar attack ships would devastate the Odyssey and runabouts ultimately resulting in a suicide run by a Jem'Hadar ship to destroy the Odyssey itself the beginning of the Cold War would become known to the Federation in the death of up to fifteen thousand Starfleet officers not wanting all-out war but wanting to protect its assets the Federation recommissioned the USS Defiant one of the first warships created by Starfleet no real scientific purpose defiant class ship was originally designed to fight and kill Borg under the command of Benjamin Sisko the Defiant was sent in to establish direct communications with the Dominion the founders would use this as another piece in their chess game the Defiant would be ambushed and the crew placed into a simulation to determine how Starfleet officers would react to the Dominions overt attempts to overthrow the Alpha Quadrant powers this information would be invaluable to the Dominion they would determine that an attempt to immediately take over the Alpha Quadrant would be fruitless the crew was returned to the Defiant and ship allowed back to the Alpha Quadrant thanks to chief security oh no a changeling himself at this point the Dominion would seemingly back off the Federation would set up listening outposts on the other side of the Gamma Quadrant and ships would continue to explore while starships especially Starfleet starships would go missing it would seem the Dominion were more bluster than action nothing could have been further from the truth though as the Dominion began to secretly infiltrate the Federation and other Alpha Quadrant powers the Dominion would identify all of the possible threats that could actually harm them among these threats would be the Tau Chi R and obsidian order ironically they would somehow have missed section 31 ultimately a fatal mistake the founders would infiltrate the Tau Shiar and obsidian where they would then push the leaders in those organizations to move forward with a plan to destroy the Dominion when both organizations attempted a surprise attack they would find themselves in an ambush this would result in the near destruction of the Tau Chi r and probable complete destruction of the Obsidian order the founders believed these organizations would have caused problems for the minion stopping them from moving forward with their plans to take over the Alpha Quadrant they may actually have been right stay tuned next week as we take a look at the Dominions destabilization of the Alpha Quadrant is in kathie Federation war Federation Civil War Klingon Cardassian war Klingon Federation war all plots that either succeeded or came close to it we'll see you guys then when people think about the Dominion war they generally remember how powerful the Dominion was when the Federation first encountered them and then they remember the war itself however I think people miss a vital piece of the Dominion war arc and that's the disabled ization of the Alpha Quadrant with the war lost the destabilization of the Alpha Quadrant before one shot was fired in the war was perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the Dominion the Dominion was so powerful that just the threat of them almost destroyed entire governments that had prospered for hundreds of years I'll have to ask your forgiveness somewhat as I go against the norm in this series instead of an overview let's go a bit more in depth on some of the things that happened during the destabilization specifically let's take a look at what I like to call the Leighton conspiracy also known as the failed Starfleet coup on stardate four nine one seven Oh a terrorist attack was carried out on earth during the Antwerp conference the conference was a high-level meeting between both the Romulan Star Empire and the United Federation of Planets additionally we know that several other dignitaries were there as well as an example the Tholians were also present without warning a bomb exploded at the conference killing many investigations showed conclusive evidence that the attack on the conference had been a terrorist attack orchestrated by a changeling I think it's very important to realise the consequences and impact of a terrorist attack on the United earth well I don't say this lightly I do think it's reasonable to say that people in the world today have become somewhat desensitized to terrorist attacks we know that our governments can't protect us all the time and terrorist attacks are unfortunately something that we have to deal with it's not an uncommon occurrence now but this wasn't so for the Federation especially at the Capitol the United Earth was home base of the Federation in Starfleet it was paradise these things didn't happen on earth until now and once more not only was there a terrorist attack but high-level officials for the Romulans and Tholians were killed no wonder both governments signed non-aggression packs the Federation certainly couldn't defend them after the attack the defense of Earth and the Federation from Dominion attacks fell to Vice Admiral Leyton Layton was a decorated officer from the Federation's in Kathi war and was well respected among his peers and those under his command in order to form strategies to fight the Dominion Layton would recall Captain Benjamin Sisko and chief of ds9 security odo to earth they would begin to work meticulously to develop strategies that would allow them to prevent changelings from infiltrating Starfleet again these measures would be drastic and overreaching this would include phaser systems installed in every room of Starfleet and set phaser settings of at least 3.5 rooms would be regularly sweep with phaser technology and any changeling in the room would be forced to revert out of its transformed state you would also see blood tests of Starfleet personnel and their families and this was just the beginning however it wouldn't be enough odo while discussing the impressiveness of Starfleet Command was able to ascertain that the man claiming to be Admiral Leyton in front of him was in fact a changeling commander Benteen a protege of Vice Admiral Leyton later lamented how long she had been with the impostor and how articulate and convincing he was it is interesting to see how dangerous the Dominion and specifically the changelings are Starfleet had revamped all of its security all of its codes it added new countermeasures and it wasn't enough Vice Admiral Leyton himself the man who was supposed to keep everyone safe they had been able to act as if they were him and possibly all of Layton's information everything he knew was now compromised phaser sweeps blood samples everything had failed in these countermeasures that would need to be made even stricter were beginning to be resisted by the populace Benjamin Sisko zone father Joseph Sisko was arrested for not allowing a sample of his blood to be taken and what's worrying is that even Benjamin Sisko thinks his father is being unreasonable in this for not wanting to be searched Ben even offers to have his own blood taken I mean who cares right it's for everyone's safety why wouldn't you be willing to give up a little freedom to keep everyone safe Benjamin's father points out how stupid it is how you could fool the system and that personal rights were more important Benjamin's father point out how stupid is how the Dominion could still fool the system and they just lost personal rights with no gain it really points out how the Federation was becoming even more totalitarian something they claim to fight against and this is where we begin to see the schism the Federation beacon of personal rights while relatively was beginning to ignore its own principles in the name of safety and it wasn't just Starfleet citizens began to question each other family members wondered if their own brother or sister were changelings neighbor against neighbor everyone was scared and confused and then in the middle of this hysteria the entirety of the United Earth global power grid was compromised all of earth went dark and that included planetary defenses it also meant that possibly a Dominion strike force was already on its way this of course spurred more militant elements of Starfleet into action Admiral Leyton with the assistance of Captain Sisko approached the President of the United Federation of Planets and was able to convince him to do even more sweeping legislation who's convinced that they even needed to do a more thorough crackdown on individual rights the President had been resistant to this before not wanting to move earth into a military state the fact that the changelings would be able to infiltrate and disable Earth's defenses so easily changed his mind and then citizens of the United Earth started seeing armed Federation officers on their streets the security measures placed earth on lockdown earth was secured with phaser rifles and random blood sample tests with the exception of the Borg crisis a state of emergency on the scale of what earth was currently seeing had not occurred in over a hundred years and it was welcomed Starfleet the Federation everyone wanted it to happen there's only a short while after the power outage that odo and Captain Sisko became suspicious after looking into things they ultimately determined that the Dominion had not in fact sabotage the power grid they questioned the Dominion agents ability to disable the entire grid so efficiently and that if the goal was to weaken earth the exact opposite was accomplished it had been fortified ultimately Sisko would discover that everything had been orchestrated by Layton that a group of cadets had been utilized to disable the grid that had all been a ploy to give more control to Starfleet he went to the president who lamented that any action against the Admiral would be political suicide this is what the United Earth wanted in order for the president to do anything he would need undeniable facts so odo and Benjamin did more research and discovered that Layton had been planning this for a while Layton had made transfers of over 400 officers that he could trust in two key positions there was no question that Layton was planning something major with all of this evidence in hand Sisko approached the federation president again only to find Layton there Sisko was given a blood test and it showed that he himself was a changeling infiltrator and now with a Starfleet coup in progress Benjamin Sisko would be locked up as an agent of the Dominion with no way to stop what was about to happen the problem with ideologies that are fueled by hate fueled by fear is that they usually have some legitimate basis some very small nugget of truth this small nugget of truth would be something that the arbiters of bigotry and malice will twist to justify their actions and to corrupt others and when it comes to truth I think so too you can say this about the Layton conspiracy the Starfleet coup wasn't without merit do I agree with his attempt to overthrow the legitimate elected civilian government of the Federation by force no do I agree with what the Federation was doing to continue to be pacifistic and allow the Dominion to continue to build up in the Alpha Quadrant while they looked for peaceful resolutions absolutely not both Layton and the Federation civilian government were right and both of them were wrong a federation under a military dictatorship is no better than the Dominion even if it is safer but you only serve to hurt yourself and others to not use your military assets to safeguard your citizens sometimes looking for peace can go too far I wish we could have seen someone more in the middle perhaps after Layton failed we would have seen Sisko go the middle ground not subtly but pushing to have a more militaristic stance against the Dominion certainly when the war was started we see this from Cisco but not before then and it would have been nice to have maybe a few episodes where he laments about how Layton had some good ideas perhaps it was a lost opportunity or maybe I'm just crazy but what did happen was that after attempting to stop Layton Captain Benjamin Sisko would be framed as a changeling infiltrator and locked up the irony in this is palpable Sisko had talked to an actual changeling infiltrator just shortly before being arrested the changeling infiltrator had advised him that only three changelings were on the planet which was more than enough the changelings didn't need to do much to cause the destruction of the federation just a nudge here another nudge there and ultimately the changeling was proven right Sisko said in a cell while a Starfleet coup was in progress they didn't have to do much they just had to inspire fear the federation was already tearing itself apart and the changelings had barely done anything to the united earth relatively speaking not one shot had been fired and the Dominion was close to winning a war that hadn't even began yet and so Benjamin Sisko sat in the brig being watched by security around the clock now here's a question they know that certain phaser levels will force a changeling to revert back to its original form why didn't they try that on Benjamin it's possible that Layton had his people watching Sisko but their dialogue during the incarceration makes it seem like they actually thought he was a changeling additionally he could have challenged the president to do the same phaser trick okay Layton says I'm a changeling here's a test shoot me with a phaser on heavy stun let's see what happens I suppose you could come up with a contrivance but it just seems like a bit of a plot hole in any circumstance Sisko is visited by Layton who once again will immense what has to be done I like this about Layton he truly thinks he's doing what's best but knows that it's wrong he considers himself a patriot someone who is wanting to help Starfleet against the Dominion but ultimately is doing something that at his core he knows is going to change the Federation completely and yet some hope remains that maybe they'll still make it after this maybe it won't be a Starfleet dictatorship maybe they'll defeat the Dominion and then put it back in the box go back to being a democracy but I also think he knows he's lying to himself on that score ultimately the to square off with neither side really seeing the other's point in Layton leaves with nothing really gained for either of the but the contrasting viewpoints ohto would ultimately free Cisco and they would initiate a plan to stop Layton the two would contact Deep Space nine and the Defiant would be dispatched to earth with evidence that Layton had been manipulating the wormhole to make it seem like a cloaked fleet of JEM Hadar ships were on the way they would also have additional evidence that would help show how Layton was attempting to take over the Federation the Defiant would however be intercepted by the USS Lakota under the command of Captain Erica Benteen the crew of the Lakota had been told that the Defiant had been commandeered by changeling infiltrators and needed to be stopped before it was able to get to earth so after taking a look at the fighting between the Defiant in the Lakota I don't have enough for an actual battle breakdown only a few clips with very little context so I'll have to be even more general than I usually am when it comes to this the general armaments of an Excelsior class starship include type 8 phaser emitters with five dual bank emplacements on the forward saucer section it would also have several in placement --sf or photon torpedoes however during the fight with the Defiant we find that the Lakota has had several refits we can't be sure what the updated systems were in the fight but I sincerely believe that it had to be typed in phasers in order to even cause a dent in the Defiant and of course they also updated the system to allow photon and quantum torpedoes it would make sense for these armaments to become the standard for future vessels during the Dominion War battle breakdowns the armament of the Defiant won't be any surprise phaser cannons phaser emitters photon and quantum torpedo launchers it also had upgraded deflector shields at this point we know that for the moment the USS Defiant specifically was the only ship of its class to have a blade of armor and a cloaking device though there is evidence to believe ablative armor would become standard for the Defiant class ships in the future when the battle first begins I questioned why the Defiant hadn't simply cloaked after re-watching this was addressed thankfully the fight comes out of warp and ultimately comes within weapons range of the Lakota not believing that the ship would fire on them and then well the Lakota does fire on them and they would have to drop shields in order to bring up their cloak so it makes sense that they wouldn't be doing that I do believe that in this battle both ships would be pulling their punches I don't really believe we see a true battle per se both ships would move to disable the other and when presented with weak points would not engage or take the advantage from the footage we have we do see the Defiant running circles around the Lakota though with the firing arcs of the Lakota refit it doesn't really matter as I stated before both the Lakota and the Defiant are given opportunities for a kill shot a weakness in the Lakota shielding and the cache of quantum torpedoes for the Lakota respectively neither side takes the advantage ultimately after having communications with both Layton and Benjamin Sisko the Lakota would stand down and allow the Defiant to continue to earth the battle between the two ships would cost 26 Starfleet officers lives and again this was all from a fear of the Dominion not even the Dominion themselves Starfleet officers would have killed Starfleet officers because they were afraid of something that hadn't even occurred yet unlike the build-up the cooze ultimate failure would not be as tense as its Genesis while I am reticent to show the scene on this video I think it's worthy of at least going to Netflix and re watching the back-and-forth between Layton and Sisko as I stated when I began this video both of them aren't wrong perhaps Sisko is more right than Layton but the pacifism of Earth would ultimately give a foothold to the Dominion and the Dominion would take advantage of that one of the unfortunate things about this interaction is that we don't really see the ripple effects Layton specifically states that he could try to make a fight of it to actually plunge the Federation into civil war Sisko counters that not many would follow him if any but I think this was more a tactic I do believe some would have followed Layton it would just be a matter of who and how many we see Starfleet officers so disenfranchised with the mishandling of the Demilitarized Zone and the Cardassians I can't believe that we wouldn't see similar ripples with the attempt at Starfleet coup and unfortunately we don't see the outward schism effect you would think that there would be Starfleet officers willing to fight to change the federation so that it could defend against what the Dominion was doing but unfortunately we wouldn't see anything more when it comes to this specific attempt which is unfortunate but Layton wouldn't be the only one to give up his ideals come back Wednesday when I do a doubleheader for the Dominion War series and we break down in a pale moonlight in early 2374 Benjamin Sisko would slam a data pad on his desk that had been given to him by dr. Bashir and state that the Federation would never surrender to the Dominion surrender would never happen on Cisco's watch when pushed further by Bashir who wanted to save lives Captain Sisko said if we are to lose let's go down fighting so that our descendants will know what we are made of you know it's interesting to see how appalled and self-righteous Captain Sisko is to Julian Bashir here he could not fathom surrendering even to save lives and then not long after in mid 2375 on stardate 5:1 7 to 1.3 he would begin to lament about what he had done and he had done it in an attempt to save lives every Friday Captain Benjamin Sisko of deep space 9 would post a listing of Starfleet personnel killed wounded or missing those very lives he could have saved with bashir if he had only listened the Friday posting wasn't only a grim reminder of the losses being incurred but that actual people who the crew of Deep Space nine cared about were dying again it's interesting to look at the man from in a pale moonlight and the man from statistical probabilities I'm not saying that Ben is inconsistent here but the changes of the war that have happened to him the death count hadn't taken as bad a toll on him yet in statistical probabilities than it would in a pale moonlight with the death count getting ever closer to that 900 billion mark Sisko would resolve that something had to give that the Federation no longer had any chance to win this war if it continued in order for any kind of victory that wasn't a surrender the Romulans would need to enter the war willingly or otherwise after he resolved to do something about it Sisko would employ the services of elam Garak he would contact mr. Garak so that mr. Garak could use his own resources to find evidence that the Dominion were planning to invade the Romulan Star Empire here's an intriguing thought Sisko assumes that the Dominion were planning to invade the Romulan Star Empire while I'll admit it does seem probable there's a chance that this wouldn't have happened at least immediately and for a very long long time after a bloody conflict with the other alpha and beta quadrant powers the Dominion might be very apt just to let the Romulans be at least for the time being I've also seen very convincing arguments that the Romulans never really intended to let the Dominion win that they were content to sit back and let their enemies pummel each other until a decent amount of damage on both sides had been done and then entered the war this honestly seems most likely the Romulans were always big on manipulation and letting two sides absolutely tear each other apart before becoming the saviors well honestly never know though as Garak agrees to Cisco's bidding in this messy business the great thing about this episode to me at least is that Sisko comments about the road to Hell being paved one brick at a time you can really see that here when he first starts with Garrett gets an espionage mission it's risky for sure but nothing that wouldn't be out of the ordinary for the war but every time he interacts with Garak there's a movement I'll be at a small one but a slight shift in what needs to be done and while Sisko would never immediately go from wanting to bring the Romulans into the war by having a man killed he does get they're all the same this is just a slow fade back to the episode as Garak is about his business we learn of another devastating defeat for the Federation the Dominion have invaded beta Zed I've been looking into it and I do intend to do a breakdown of the battle of beta Z though it'll be non cannon lore as alpha cannon doesn't exist for it yet but for the purposes of this breakdown let's focus more on the psychological impacts upon Sisko as I've said a couple of times every Friday he would bring lists of thousands of people who were most likely dead and now betas it had been invaded the founding member worlds of the Federation were within the grasp of the Dominion it's never mentioned but looking at a map this ultimately includes the United Earth going back to the analogy of bricks being paved to hell while I would say that the first brick was laid when he spoke to Garak for the first time certainly the mortar and building plans for the road were founded during the mission briefing on how beta Zed fell imagine that you started a war where tens to hundreds of thousands of people were dying and you just got the news that a vital piece of your government had just been invaded people were dying they were suffering and then imagine remembering that you could have saved all of those lives by simply listening to Bashir and surrendering and now you aren't even in a position to do that after this news cisco returns to inquire with Garak about their operation he finds out that all of the operatives are now dead which is honestly quite amazing that the Dominion would be so efficient you can see how Cisco is still leaning towards the light here Cisco for all intents and purposes got several operatives killed and they probably had families you can see how gray Cisco is here how he is not the perfect evolved human but somewhere in the middle Cisco for all intents and purposes got several operatives killed and they probably had families this is answered with a sigh and an apology and then he moves to return to his duties death was a normal part of his life now it was unfortunate but nothing he would necessarily lose sleep about at least not when it comes to the lives lost before he can leave though Garrick suggests that instead of finding the plans that they assume would be there to invade Romulus they just fabricate them this would be the second stone on that road and you can see the shift slowly in Cisco he fights with himself in this episode the federation in him the evolved human in him knows that this is not the way of war at least not the way the federation does it this isn't what you should do but pragmatically it's necessary this is what you would have to do if you wanted to shield paradise another damning piece of this is that Cisco didn't do this in a vacuum the highest level of Starfleet Command agreed to it not only was Benjamin culpable but the highest levels of Starfleet the supposed pinnacle of evolved humans were willing to make this happen and then the third brick would be laid captain Cisco would also have to help free a man a man named gray --then tolar the man would be awaiting execution in a Klingon cell for well we never really know what he did I suppose us for the best Cisco has him freed and here's yet another brick that is laid cisco advises a man that he will be making a special holoprogram that he is not working for Starfleet Command but Cisco and Garrick upon hearing the name Garrick gray --then is immediately put off knowing there is more to this than meets the eye he even seems visibly scared Cisco doesn't react much here but we know through the dialogue in his personal log that he knows he's continuing down at path for the next part I'll be honest I find it contrived when great that apparently attempts to kill quark after a failed attempt at what seems near sexual assault I rolled my eyes even on the first viewing this was just an obstacle to highlight the darkness in Sisko the man had just went through months two years of being held up in a Klingon cell told he would die every day to put himself in a position where he would go back to that seems unlikely I think it would have been much better if perhaps instead of him doing anything he was perhaps recognized by somebody maybe he killed a person's loved one and then quark could come in noticing that this is impacting Sisko and something had to be done and could offer to make the issue go away for a price of course you get the same scene between the two which I think is wonderful and it makes more sense but looking at what had actually happened in the show Sisko does indeed lay another brick he is forced to not only bribe someone but quark of all people quark the person he always acted superior to the person who he held himself in higher regard to his Federation background and now he's giving quark a bribe and he was showing that even humans would follow the rules of acquisition if they had to but if this was the road he was building was the pathway to hell Sisko was just starting to build the driveway he hadn't even gotten onto the road proper stay tuned next week when Sisko goes from definitively grey to definitively black death of multiple people death of a senator conspiracy to pull the Romulans into the war and all that blood on his hands in the last episode we had discussed how Benjamin Sisko had effectively set the foundation for what he would have to do to pull the Romulans into the war you know it's rather curious to me when Yuri watch in the pale moonlight there's a point where he desperately tries to justify what he's doing he says quite emphatically people are dying out there every day worlds are struggling for their freedom and Here I am debating the finer points of morality in the last episode when I brought up Bashir Zestimate a casualty list from statistical probabilities and theorized how much this weighed on Cisco quite a few people got very angry assuming that I was trying to justify why should have surrendered one even called me a cook which is awesome great job I'm sure your mom is proud of whom you've become but it really wasn't that I thought Sisko should have agreed with the surrender the previous episode really builds on his character here he is desperately justifying the man he has become and I think that the fact that he knows the numbers given by Julian Bashir previously really weighed on him pushed him to make those decisions to become the man we see today but as I said last time everything he had done up to this point was just a precursor to what was to come the next real test the first truly moral bankrupt choice would be in his agreement to give biomimetic gel a highly regulated material to someone he didn't even know and had no idea what that man was going to do this gel could be used for anything from cloning to weapons it was so highly regulated that even attempting to obtain it was a felony in the Federation the biomimetic gel would be exchanged for a genuine Cardassian optelec data rod which apparently is even far rarer than the gel these rods were used for official business only and could only be recorded over once to retrieve one is apparently a minor miracle this was in my opinion when Sisko moved from any ambiguity of still possibly holding to Starfleet ideals into a man who would do anything to win the war to do what was necessary and forgo any real perception of being an evolved human after getting the opto lithic rod Garrick and Sisko would have great and tolar the man that was freed from Klingon prison to create a hollow program a forgery that would make it appear that the Dominion had been planning to attack the Romulans all along once the forgery was complete gray Thawne would attempt to leave immediately Sisko would slam him against the bulkhead and tell him that he would stay until the data rod was accepted or he would be going back to prison threatening a man breaking the deal he had made just another brick in that road though hopefully this would be all worth it this fall from grace would be justified everything was leading up to this the entire point of the venture was to trick the Romulan Star Empire into joining the war to that end Sisko invited senator vreenak the main architects of the piece with Dominion to give the data rod to this would be what the entire endeavor was about he was attempting to lie to a Romulan senator so that that senator could put thousands to hundreds of thousands of loyal Romulan citizens right in front of the Dominion war machine as the senator would arrive on Deep Space nine Garrick would take his leave noting that he would do a quick search of the senator ship for any possible Intel of course Cisco would advise him not to get caught and Garrick assured him that he wouldn't to say the senator was smug is an understatement Cisco actually does really well with this his performance and acting like everything was legitimate is spectacular it's true that this story is from his perspective so perhaps he thinks he did a lot better than he did but still of course Cisco would show the rod to the senator and he would want to examine it and this is where we see Cisco do something completely unusual for him worried he would worry if this mission was successful or not unfortunately vreenak would discover that it was a forgery and told him that in no uncertain terms that he would expose the treachery of the Federation to the Alpha Quadrant everything that had happened everything that Cisco had done that he had become and it was all for nothing senator vreenak would leave said upon telling the Alpha Quadrant about what had happened and Cisco would go back to his duties Cisco would expect the worst until it was discovered that senator vreenak shuttle was destroyed the tower would of course point to the Dominion for this attack realizing what had happened almost immediately Cisco would confront Garrick by pummeling him yeah he'd he'd beat the crap out of him but here's where it all came to a head Garrick would admit that he killed the senator and gray Thor and he had made it so that the data rod would be discovered the Romulans would find it and any imperfections would be assumed to be a part of the destruction of the ship and the Romulans would enter the war the Alpha Quadrant would most likely be saved and all it took was the death of one senator one skeezy criminal and the self-respect of a Starfleet officer and ultimately at the end of this episode Cisco would agree it was absolutely worth it Captain Benjamin Sisko was a criminal now he had helped with murder the transport of illegal chances and bribery the mighty had fallen but still it was worth it the Romulans had entered the war and the Alpha Quadrant had won Sisko was justified I wanted to take a moment to discuss genes vision and Captain Benjamin Sisko a lot of people do see this as a betrayal of what gene had wanted but honestly for my money I don't I think Deep Space nine is as realistic - genes vision as you can get take these evolved humans idealized and then bump them up against evil and see what happens in Deep Space 9 we see humans become what they are fighting to win but we also see them regret it hate it despise what they have to do they're acting very human this is fantastic to me this only shows that genes vision lives on and that even if it has to be abandoned in the short-term it's what people want and fight for that even when they become evil they want to be a part of the light I don't know maybe I'm rationalizing here but I honestly think it epitomizes what gene was going for the Klingon Federation war was a conflict that had been orchestrated ultimately by the Dominion its goal of which it was successful was to turn long-standing allies namely the Federation and Klingon Empire against each other how the war started is somewhat complicated but ultimately it would be a result of the destruction of the Obsidian order after their attempted surprise attack upon the founders with the Obsidian orders spy network now dismantled Cardassian dissident groups within the Cardassian Union would be able to overthrow the current government in stating a more stable and citizen friendly regime Martok a changeling infiltrator within the Klingon Empire would push High Chancellor Gowron into believing that the new Cardassian government was actually a Dominion plot to destabilize the Alpha Quadrant he would further convince Chiron that the leading body the de topic council had all been replaced with changelings the Klingons would declare war upon the Cardassian Union and call on their allies the Federation to assist them instead of joining the Klingons and what the Klingons thought was a war against the Dominion the Federation would condemn the actions of the Klingon Empire and sue for peace between the two Alpha Quadrant powers this would growing tensions as Starfleet would refuse to assist the Klingons before the war even began Klingon ships would begin striking Federation outposts this included the first battle of deep space nine where gal ron demanded that Captain Benjamin Sisko turn over the two top accounts 'el even after Benjamin had proven the council had no changeling infiltrators in it a battle ensued between Deep Space nine and gal Ron's forces a battle breakdown of the first battle of Deep Space nine is outside the purview of this lore episode but if you want to see the breakdown then check out the community tab as the battle is currently an option for Friday December the 1st if it wins I'll do the breakdown then Klingon a Starfleet forces would continue to fight off and on without any formal declarations of war an example of this would be Starfleet wanting to defend Cardassian ships during humanitarian requests an example of this would be the convoys that were bound 4-pin death interestingly enough we would see the Klingons use subterfuge here as they would try to claim one of the captains of the Starfleet ships destroyed a freighter with Klingon civilians on it the Klingon Empire would be exposed as having orchestrated it to stop Starfleet assistance of the Cardassians however only further weakening their position there would also be other acts of war and which Starfleet would not respond including the Klingon attempt to place cloaked mines to separate the Bajoran sector from the Alpha Quadrant this would be thwarted by Starfleet personnel but no decrees of war would happen just yet the war proper wouldn't begin until the tail end of 2372 possibly early 23 73 to be honest the war seems a little sketchy on the exact date that it happened Gowron would make demands of the Federation to cede all military installations and star bases in the Arcana sector and return it to the Klingon Empire curiously people on both sides would clamor for war after this Clennon would want glorious battle against their former ally who had failed to be at their side and federation outposts and colonies near the Klingon border would demand a preemptive strike for their own safety under the advisement of Martok who was as noted a changeling infiltrator Garen dispatched a task force to conquer our canis and advise Starfleet they would have ten days to pull out Starfleet would use these 10 days to prepare for war as the Federation would not be ceding the arcana's sector back to the Klingons the padorin Republic declared on the side of the Federation and we begin to assist in preparations to repel the Klingon invaders in case the Bajoran sector came under fire in 23 73 the Klingon Empire would commit the entirety of its resources and evade across the Federation Klingon border the line of attack appears to be as far from our Camus to beige or not surprisingly high tensions and being able to prepare 10 days before the actual attack Starfleet was still not able to resist the Klingon onslaught and was pushed back on a one-to-one basis of the same class generally Starfleet technology was superior at this time to that of Klingon technology the only ship that was superior in most respects would be that of the negev arm which ironically was designed in part due to Starfleet engineers helping Klingon engineers I earnestly remember seeing and reading at some point that the Federation did a counter-attack into Klingon territory and was just wiping the floor with the Klingons this would have been consistent with what was seen in the ds9 episode sons of mogh where current aux about how the Empire would not be able to win a sustained fight with the Federation even though I would sincerely doubt that the Klingon Empire during this era could win a sustained war with the Federation I have no real alpha canon evidence to prove so for the moment at least so we'll have to leave that up in the air to the throws of debate on who would win and who would not regardless peace would occur when Starfleet sent a special task force to uncover a changeling infiltrator even though Martok had been exposed as a changeling infiltrator Gowron still did not initially want peace unless Arcana s-- and other territories were relinquished to the Klingons Captain Benjamin Sisko doubted that the Federation would agree with these terms while we ultimately don't know the outcome of our Kanis we do know that the ceasefire and peace talks began between the Klingons and the Federation and with the exception of a few battles the two would not engage in combat again however the damage was done it was estimated that both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire were so badly weakened by the war that a prolonged engagement with the Dominion would result in a Starfleet loss the Dominion had achieved its goal the Dominion war would be all but lost for the Federation now or at least this is what both sides believe in 2374 up to seventy three thousand nine hundred and ten soldiers of the Federation Alliance would engage 688 JEM Hadar these Jim Hadar would be supported by card as orbital weapons platforms of the Federation Alliance it would lose up to 28 percent of its overall fleet and personnel with the JEM Hadar they would be completely eradicated ultimately a federation decisive victory the Dominion would show what was required in order to win this war with the exception of operation return which was the assault to retake deep space 9 the Federation had largely found itself on the defensive in a losing war both beta Zed and bins are were invaded and now under Dominion control vulcan alpha centauri earth antoria multiple founding member planets of the federation were now within range of the Dominion invasion forces the earth Romulan war the Klingon War the Cardassian border wars nothing like this was comparable in Federation history even the board never held territory the Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers were losing and they were losing badly an offensive into Dominion space was needed not only to stop the Dominion and reverse their momentum but also to inspire confidence and help with morale the sudden entry of the Romulan Star Empire after it was discovered that apparently the Dominion were planning to invade Romulus would be what was needed it would be the opportunity to strike back while we have reason to believe multiple systems were being considered by the Alliance command ultimately it would be the chin taka system that they would invade the Dominion was reeling from the unexpected Romulan attack after they had joined the war which honestly would seem odd if the Dominion were planning to invade the star Empire you think they'd have forces ready because well you know they were going to invade funny how no one questioned that either way only about 16 or so Jim Hadar squadrons would be defending the chin taka system however Allied intelligence would discover that the Cardassian Union had developed powerful weapons platforms for the defense of the system allied command would agree that it would be imperative to attack as quick as possible before the weapons platforms became operational before we get into the battle proper as always let's take a look at the ships present you can skip to the timestamp below to get the battle prop but if you stay you'll get to see me antagonize some Trekkies who have unrealistic beliefs about the akhirah class ship so you know incentive for this battle the Dominion would be filling the JEM Hadar attack ships the JEM Hadar attack fighter was the front line attack vessel for the Dominion their weapons included phased polar on beams disruptors and torpedoes both the shields and weapons were initially considered to be the superior of Federation technology but due to Starfleet innovation they would now become equal to that of their Starfleet counterparts additionally the Cardassian weapon platforms were automated turrets with regenerative force fields and heavy disruptors it has also said that they could filled up to a thousand plasma torpedoes the bulk of the Federation and Romulan losses would be due to these orbital weapon platforms the Federation Alliance would be filled in a much larger fleet which included at least one defiant class ship the standard Defiant class ship came with four phaser cannons up to three phaser emitters photon and quantum torpedoes as well as the ability to turn the deflector array into a phaser emitter in a pinch the ship at this battle though was the USS Defiant which would also have the additional benefit of a blade of armor and cloaking technology at least five a cure class ships would also be in the battle the ikiru class ship would have up to 10 phaser emitters and ok let's talk about it based on several sources including the non-canon Deep Space 9 technical manual and what we see in the movie and TV series we can at least tell that the akira class would have up to 4 photon torpedo launchers apparently if the akira class doesn't have 600 photon torpedo launchers strapped to it the fan base isn't happy I have said in the past and I still claim now I see no in universe evidence that the ship would have 15 launchers it is also very counterintuitive to how combat and the Star Trek universe generally works while it's not always the case combat would work similar to this a ship would use phasers to drain the shields and then torpedoes or quantum torpedoes to do the death shot this was originally meant to mimic submarine combat however I will be doing a full breakdown of Federation ships late December early January and I intend to know more about the akyurek last ship than even the person came up with its concept so for now I'm at least willing to say the ship has at least six typed in phaser emitters and up to 15 photon torpedo launchers and I will be the first to make a video apologizing and say I was wrong should the in-universe cannon prove me wrong moving from there at least five galaxy-class starships would be in the fight but the galaxy-class ship would be deployed with anywhere from a thousand officers to up to six thousand officers at this point it would be most likely that the galaxy-class ship would be armed with up to fifteen phaser arrays and two torpedo launchers with a galaxy-class ship able to carry up to 250 photon torpedoes and antimatter mines fans of the channel will know i am highly critical of the galaxy class from a combat stance during the next generation era however Dominion era Galaxy class ships are pretty stout they would still have the disadvantage of absolutely no armor but their weapons and shield rating for the Dominion war made them a formidable threat definitely not a flying apartment complex in space there would be at least one ambassador class ship which would come upgraded with over 10 phaser arrays and two photon torpedo launchers from what I can tell this class was pretty stout as well and was only held back by its base design unlike the Maranda class the Ambassador class apparently was much less customizable which is interesting because it is a newer model versus the Maranda class there would be at least six excelsior class ships of the ships designed in the 23rd century the excelsior class was perhaps the most customizable it was used extensively throughout the 23rd and 24th century and was prominent in the Dominion war the ship could boast up to 5 to 10 phaser banks and arrays of refit of the ship would allow it to have improved phaser technology possibly type 9 or type 10 phaser banks and both quantum and photon torpedoes while I would stand by the fact that any true fight which we need defiant class in an Excelsior class would result in the sound defeat of the Excelsior class ship the refit version of the Excelsior would ensure that the Defiant class would not get out of combat unscathed as a note the defensive shielding of the Excelsior would also be extensively upgraded even able to resist the polar on tech ecology of the Dominion there would be over 20 Klingon birds of prey in the fleet these destroyers of galaxies and Oberth classes would sport at least two photon torpedo launchers and two disruptor cannons with some variants having phasers at least eight vor'cha class ships would join the combat the vorcha class ship was one of the more deadly ships in the Klingon Defense Force having up to 18 ship mounted disruptor cannons including one large forward disruptor and three torpedo launchers the Romulans would have no less than eleven Dodaro decks class ships the frontline of the Romulan military and one of the more deadly ships in the alpha and beta quadrant the deidara decks boasts six ship mounted disruptors and two photon torpedo launchers I've also read in a few places that the Dodaro decks could have phaser technology but I have never seen a daddario decks class use phasers so I'm not going to say that's canon at this point of the ships in the fleet the ones that are named that we know of are the USS Defiant defiant class USS galaxy galaxy class USS hood excelsior class USS Nautilus Maranda class the IKS rotarran Klingon bird-of-prey the USS shakaar Maranda class the USS Thien and Men Maranda class the USS Valley Forge excelsior class and the USS venture galaxy class when we look at the battle itself the initial strike into the chin taka system would go very well the system for all intents and purposes was undefended the Klingon fleet would take the bulk of the damages as the JEM Hadar would either do brazen strafing runs or ram the Klingon ships altogether the Klingon Defense Force was able to destroy the JEM Hadar ships but only after having 15 ships either disabled or destroyed on their side the Federation Alliance would then make for the weapons platform and begin attempting to dismantle it before the system would be able to come online the fleet would find itself heavily outmatched and much worse in between them and caught in a crossfire when the weapons platforms became active now I'll be honest this piece doesn't make a lot of sense to me I get that you want to destroy the weapons platforms that makes sense but why not stay on the outer edges and begin attacking from afar just in case the system does come online it prevent what we saw happen while there would be Klingon ships that would get hit by the platform the bulk of the losses from the weapons platforms themselves would be by the Federation and the Romulans ultimately the crew of the USS Defiant would determine that the only way to defeat the platforms while armed would be to have them fire on their own power source the platform's themselves apparently did not have their own power source but were being fueled by a stationary asteroid the USS Defiant would be able to trick the weapons platforms into attacking the power source and destroying it this would result in the weapons platforms losing power and thus the fleet would be able to destroy them at their leisure in terms of the battle I think it's important to remember that this was a devastating battle in terms of losses for the Federation Alliance over 20,000 people would lose their life and the fleet's of the Federation Romulans and the Klingons would be crippled severely in most other situations this battle would be something that Starfleet Command would have grimly justified as necessary but given that this was the first time the Alliance had been able to take Dominion territory and the fact that it was done while it was still looking like the Federation would lose was cause for celebration morale would skyrocket and Starfleet would be emboldened by all rights this was not a turning point in fact chin taka would be a hotbed the Federation Alliance would never comfortably hold the system they would be under constant attack and just to keep this foothold would require heavy resources from all of the Alpha Quadrant and beta quadrant powers but sometimes in war it's about winning the battle and not the cost of the battle that would be what's necessary many times in real history we see that winning battles is more important in the ground that has actually gained for the moment this certainly was true the Battle of chin taka proved one thing to the Dominion and the Federation the Dominion could actually lose ground the Alliance finally had something from this battle you couldn't gain with technology or brute force they had hope hoped that they could actually win the siege of a r58 is one of the only conflicts that involve troops on the ground in Trek that we have while doing research on a r5 v 8 it's interesting to consider the location itself a r5 v 8 was either an asteroid or a planet in Chin'toka system while people talk about and celebrate the episode where the Federation successfully invades the Chin'toka system itself what many forget is that the Chin'toka system was never considered safe and never solidly under the control of the alpha or beta quadrant powers Klingons Romulans and even Starfleet were constantly under attack having to resupply and reinforce the system on a daily basis it was taking a lot of effort and resources to simply hold chin taka and this is emphasized on ar5 5-8 again a planet or asteroid that was considered so useless they hadn't even given it a proper name in 2374 Starfleet and our allies would successfully take the Chin'toka system once Starfleet forces gained control of AR 55:8 they realized there was a Dominion subspace communications hub on it with this hub Starfleet might be able to tap into Dominion communications and have an edge against Dominion forces realizing this potential breach into their network Dominion forces constantly attacked AR 55:8 making it one of the most dangerous areas in the Chin'toka system in 2375 shortly before the loss of chin taka to a Breen Dominion Alliance the garrison would barely be holding on this federation engineers continued to work tirelessly on the subspace communications hub ar 55:8 was so volatile that this space around it would change hands between Dominion and Starfleet forces all the time it made resupplying AR 5 5 8 almost an impossibility as the Dominion continued its attempts to retake AR 5 5 8 they would be able to transport down at least two columns of JEM Hadar that would relentlessly attacked the garrison there would only be a hundred and forty-seven Starfleet officers defending the communication hub at the garrison itself the continued attacks would result in the death of at least a hundred and four soldiers almost two-thirds of their unit wiped out when officers from the USS Defiant transported down to the area where the garrison was the forces of AR 55:8 began firing on them lieutenant Larkin commander of the garrison quickly realized they were firing on Starfleet officers and ordered her men to stop the personnel of the USS Defiant began to assist with medical emergencies and providing supplies both the captain and XO of AR 55:8 had been killed and possibly even more senior officers were killed until lieutenant Larkin would ultimately be the one in command the soldiers of AR 55:8 were on the edge yelling at each other insubordinate even to the captain of the defiant Starfleet regulations required that soldiers fighting on the front line be rotated out every thirty days Sisko arrived on roughly day 150 of their tour and there was no end in sight for them while continuing resupply operations the Defiant would come under attack and commander Worf would advise Sisko that they would need to transport now to get off AR 5 5 8 Benjamin Sisko ordered the Defiant to take evasive action Worf warned him that he didn't know when they would be able to return and Sisko reiterated that the Defiant was to retreat the five members of the Defiant crew left on a our five five eight would reinforce the garrison this would make Sisko the highest-ranking officer on a r5 5 8 and when asked for his orders he only had one hold the Starfleet garrison had multiple issues to contend with the Dominion had left behind anti-personnel mines that were able to slip in and out of subspace making them impossible to find the mines would sit in subspace until they were ready to come out randomly appear and kill whomever was in their way more Jim had our reinforcements were being transported onto a r55 eight every day and worse they didn't know where their base was both of these issues would need to be remedied of course for the garrison to continue to operate effectively lieutenant Larkin would be instrumental in assisting Captain Sisko in providing both information and operations while it's outside the scope of this battle breakdown it's worth noting quarks opinion on humans I wish I could really play it here but won't be able to he discusses how humans are great people as long as they have their creature comforts that humans can be the best of humanity but if you remove the creature comforts put them in danger torture them they can be the most dangerous in the galaxy I will be doing a separate video in the future discussing this but needless to say whether you agree or disagree it's something worthy of conversation while assessing the relative strength of their enemy and trying to determine what can be done to defend the subspace communications relay the Starfleet garrison would come under attack by Jem'Hadar soldiers however ultimately this would be determined to be at as the Dominion had utilized holographic technology they made it look like they were attacking when they weren't the trick worked it had given away the positions of Starfleet personnel had given away how many people they had and wasted Federation ammunition things continued to get worse and worse in order to determine what the enemy forces were filled in cisco ordered a recon of the area neither side could utilize scanners due to jamming technology so he sent out a team of three including nog a Ferengi that could utilize his ears to find and identify the threat they were up against nog lieutenant Larkin and Reese would be able to determine where the JEM Hadar are and their position unfortunately the team would be ambushed lieutenant Larkin would be killed and nog would lose his leg but these losses would be worth it the Starfleet officers would be able to identify over two columns of Jim Adar and their exact location they now knew where the enemy was how many and how they would be attacking the garrison the subspace mines also known as Houdini's would be another problem ultimately engineers would be able to rig their equipment to break through the jamming technology and identify the subspace mines so now the garrison knew where the Dominion mines were they knew where the enemy base camp was and how many soldiers were stationed there lieutenant Larkin was dead and now they had nog who would be out of the battle and would ultimately lose his leg interestingly enough everything up to now was a prelude to the battle that would decide who kept AR five five eight which if you can believe it has so much to break down that I'll be putting it into a part two however it's safe to assume that we'll have much more death more tragedy and ultimately even the garrison would be overrun stay tuned next week when we break down the rest of the battle in the last video we discussed the pre loo to the final confrontation at least for now in the siege of AR five five eight if you haven't go ahead and check the video in the top right corner because if you don't watch it it's going to seem like I'm glossing over things and when you comment I'm going to point out I've already discussed that as we talked about the Starfleet garrison was in dire straits sub space mines that would kill randomly and indiscriminately severely undermanned outgunned and lacking any real siblings of morale and on top of that a recent scouting mission had identified where the JEM Hadar were true but it resulted in the death of the second most senior officer lieutenant Larkin and another Starfleet officer nog would lose his leg so now they had even more wounded to care for as they had to fend off the JEM Hadar there has been quite a bit of criticism on Starfleet when you consider the situation the officers were in a lot of people point to this in scoff as Starfleet apparently didn't have any form of Marines or know how to conduct ground combat well I think this is probably an issue on the writing and yet another example of how Starfleet was a very poor military allow me to present a possible explanation of what we see here we know that when Starfleet took the base they were a hundred and fifty officers strong it is possible that most of these officers were in fact Starfleet Marines it would make sense when you consider you land roughly a hundred Marines and fifty Starfleet personnel the Marines would be in charge of protecting Starfleet personnel as Starfleet tried to break through the security of the Subspace hub the Starfleet personnel would be mostly engineers but you would have some Starfleet security there as well to back up the Marines and deal with the more mundane issues of the base that way you have the Marines on the front line and Starfleet in a supporting role when AR 55:8 became a hotbed and Starfleet cannot reliably provide support then you would slowly see the frontline elements the Marines chipped away one by one as stated before Chin'toka was never solidly within Federation control resources were tight there wasn't an area of Chin'toka that didn't badly need men in technology so when everyone is screaming how they need emergency supplies then ultimately everyone is on an even scale when it comes to who gets it first and the hub might not be given as much priority as you think they hadn't cracked it yet and even if they did there was no guarantee that they would get anything it was a maybe there were real gains in Chin'toka and other places were moving forward on their fronts this hub might help but it might not it was a risk and one apparently Starfleet wasn't willing to make a huge investment in and they would be proven right when Shin taka was taken only a few months later in the hub had yielded nothing so seeing Starfleet soldiers in normal Starfleet uniforms and most officers without knives and a severe lack of what you need to survive a confrontation like this can all be explained away if you consider that the garrison had been so heavily attacked that anyone who knew ground combat used camouflage or knew how to use the tech to survive was dead again there are some holes in my theory but it seems the most reasonable as we had discussed before there were two issues the JEM Hadar base and the subspace mines also known as Houdini's Starfleet engineers would ultimately be able to identify where the Houdini's are additionally they did find out and know how the JEM Hadar would attack the base so they did the most logical thing they got the Houdini's and they placed them in a spot where they would kill Jim Hadar and they would kill as many Jim Hadar as they could one thing I did like is there was an interesting moment where Starfleet officers would question the use of the Houdini's that it was an evil technology that only the Dominion would use and I love the moral questions in this again it goes back to talks before the Dominion was evil to the Federation ruthless killers that use genocide and subspace mines to exact their order but in war real war total war the Federation was no better and they were about to prove it in more ways than one so the Houdini's would be reset in the ravine so that they could kill Dominion soldiers not Starfleet let's go ahead and move on to the tactics that were used here the Dominion base was on one side of the caves and the Starfleet garrison was on the other the Dominion would have to pass through a ravine and then run at Starfleet full throttle in order to overrun the garrison and take it let's address a few of the issues I've read that people have with the episode why not set up force fields to block the JEM Hadar the Dominion that has been known to be able to bypass Federation shielding they could beam through shield walk right past force fields and treat most tech by the Federation to stop them as if it didn't exist there was no guarantee that the ground force field would be as effective as ship shielding additionally setting up force fields would take time and people we don't know that they didn't try this and the men sent out were just killed why not either side use transporters we see the Defiant crew beam down well we know that the transport scramblers exists and it would follow that engineers would find a way of identifying frequencies to allow allies to transport down but not enemies both sides could be utilizing this technique which would mean transporting was out of the question additionally both sides were using scramblers that made scanners go wild so in theory you might be able to use technology to secure a small area where you could get a lock but outside of that you just as easily remote area lies inside of a rock than in a safe area what about grenades again we know that there were a hundred and fifty men originally perhaps they had used up all of these reserves and the Defiant didn't bring any more now about the phaser rifles why not use wide beam at first I was like many why not use this when I watched the battle again not five minutes ago I saw the folly in this tactic let me say this Federation ground technology is idiotic at best the phaser rifles are terribly terribly inept they have a slow rate of fire in comparison to Dominion technology or hell even a tommy gun and they had a huge energy drain additionally in another episode we see cure discuss how touchy they were so sophisticated that they could easily break and then the terrain the Dominion was coming from had a lot of nooks and crevices to defend them so even if we assumed you could have a wide beam set to kill or a wide beam stun that would work on Jim Hadar the first wave of Jim and arm might get hit but then the Dominion would just duck behind something and let the energy get used up the setting was a massive drain they couldn't use it too many times before they would have to use their Power Packs and during that time the Dominion could get closer no straight kill setting with single beam fire was the only way the Federation had any chance of winning this battle why wouldn't the Jim and our shroud an attack this one isn't as easy to really determine we know that they had to use resources to shroud that they couldn't just do it because they wanted to so if I was a betting man I would say that the Jim Hadar had similar resources restraints as the Federation did after all resources being at a critical low goes both ways neither side could really resupply off and so they simply didn't have the ability we also have to consider how many Jim had our they were fighting two columns that sounds like a lot except it's not in that two columns isn't a number it's a formation a column is also generally used in movement operations and not attacks because as far as I can tell it's walking in a line they weren't doing that obviously and again two columns could in theory be just six guys in a Humvee I tried to look for alpha cannon to try and find out how many Jem'Hadar may have been at a are five five eight and I really couldn't find anything we know that the two columns were supposed to be significant we know that the Houdini's would take a large swath of them out and we'd still see a lot of JEM Hadar for the purposes of this conversation let's say they had two companies comprising three platoons each this would give them in excess of 260 soldiers out matching the federation eleven to one this would to my mind justify how hopeless it felt when Sisko found out now on to the battle itself it's really curious watching the soldiers before the engagement talking among each other how nervous they are how much pent-up energy there is for someone who has never been in the military or in a combat situation it certainly felt like something that would occur though how true to life it was I couldn't tell you and then in the distance they would hear the Houdini's starting to go off one by one the bright flashes of the bomb signifying the death of one of the JEM Hadar if not more a life that was bred to die in a war they ultimately would not have even gotten into if not for their superiors and then again silence it's interesting one of the soldiers would hope that the JEM Hadar had turned back or that they were all dead but of course the JEM Hadar wouldn't be and they would begin to rush the Federation forces even with the Houdini's the Federation forces were significantly outmatched within minutes the JEM Hadar would breach the federation lines and fighting would occur both within the line and the JEM Hadar still rushing forward to call it chaos would be an understatement it would be ultimately hard to tell what was happening or who was winning it would quickly devolve and hand-to-hand combat with fists using your rifle as a weapon or even knives Starfleet officers would fire on a gym Hodari to save their friend only to be shot in the back and fall to the ground dead well we can't be sure it's a very good indication that the entire garrison was overrun and Starfleet had lost control again I've never been in combat but it would make sense to me to put the wounded in a secure area as far away as reasonably possible from the fighting we know that the JEM Hadar had access we're running through the base as quark would have to turn and use his weapon on a gem Adar who made it that far as decide pork had done a speech about humans without creature comforts something will dedicate an entire video to soon and when his back was against the wall when his nephew and his life were in danger without even thinking he grabbed a phaser and killed a man in cold blood now this was completely justified it was self-defense but very curious to consider his actions here and his opinions on humans we don't know everything that happens in the battle because it cuts out when Sisko is knocked out it's ironic in a sad way that Sisko is awoken to the words are you still alive but it's true most people were dead very few were still alive Sisko would wake up to moans and crying he would look as his friends would be cradling dead Starfleet officers other friends who were now gone for a hub that they hoped would work would help and ultimately wouldn't the lives on AR 55:8 would be lost in vain as far as I can tell the subspace hub never gained any edge in the chin taka along with the hub would be retaken by Dominion forces in only a few short months for me I think the perfect ending to this episode would have been with Sisko standing in the devastation looking all around him and as he looked his communicator would come to life with warf warf would say the defiant and veracruz had arrived and troops were now being transported down to hang on help was on the way Sisko would thank mr. Worf and then sigh he would state we held and Reese behind him would say those were our orders sir fade to black in 23 73 a combined gym Hadar and Cardassian fleet would attack deep space 9 and what would be the first official battle of the Dominion war weeks before the initial attack the Dominion would send convoys of ships and troops to reinforce the Cardassian border the strengthening of this foothold in the Alpha Quadrant would ultimately result in small skirmishes between Dominion and Alpha Quadrant powers Dominion ships would slip across the Cardassian border and attack both Klingon and Federation ships destroying them Dominion would also attempt to isolate the Federation by agreeing to non-aggression pacts with the Romulan Star Empire Aeolian Assembly and even the pejorative a would not be able to win a war if the Dominion was able to continue reinforcing the Cardassian border Starfleet would utilize the Defiant to place cloaked self-replicating mines that would prevent any ships from coming into or going out of the Bajoran wormhole the Dominion would consider this a major provocation would declare war upon the Federation the Klingon Empire would affirm its loyalty to Starfleet and Ally with the Federation while all other powers including the Bajoran government would either sign a non-aggression pact with the Dominion or remain neutral the Dominion would launch a massive fleet against Deep Space nine in an attempt to prevent Starfleet from activating the minds as the Dominion fleet was on its way the Federation and Klingon Empire would not reinforce Deep Space nine leaving only the station the USS Defiant and the IKS rotarran to defend the area before we get into the battle proper it would only be appropriate to breakdown the type of ships that would be present you can feel free to go to this time stamp to skip but it would behoove you to see what was filtered by both sides for the Federation they would have Deep Space nine originally Terok Nor was a Cardassian station built by Bajoran slave labor a standard crew of deep space nine could be anywhere from 300 members to over 2,000 the maximum capacity of the station was 7,000 people originally used to ensure the suppression of the Bajoran people Deep Space nine would ultimately become one of the most historic sites and vital interests of both the Bajoran people and the United Federation of Planets the station is located near the Bajoran wormhole which connects the Alpha Quadrant with the Gamma Quadrant and was the site of multiple battles after the station's refit it would boast over 48 phasers on rotary mounts 36 phaser emitters on stationary mounts three phaser emitters on sliding mounts and 48 torpedo Watchers that have over 5,000 photon torpedoes the Defiant class starship publicly classified as an escort vessel though in reality was one of the first real warships of Starfleet was developed in 2366 due to design issues the ship would initially be mothballed the Dominion threat would have it again relaunched in 2371 the ship was designed for one purpose to fight and to kill the board the armaments of the ship allowed it to complement other ships such as the acura class this design would allow it to work in tandem with other ships in order to defeat the board cube and other Borg ships the armaments of the ship included phaser cannon assemblies located in forward-facing locations at least three phaser emitters one place on the forward and aft of the ship to give full range of attack as well as one behind the bridge on the dorsal surface the deflector arrays could also be refitted into a makeshift phaser emitter though they would only be able to use at once defiant class ships also had a total of up to six torpedo launchers four forward and two aft the ship was used extensively both at the Battle of sector 0:01 and throughout the Dominion War the Defiant would become a staple of a post Dominion war federation being used to engage a variety of foes the Klingon bird-of-prey was a warship of the Klingon Empire that has been in service since the 23rd century in various iterations the most basic type of this ship has anywhere from six to twelve crew and can hold up to four prisoners whereas the cruiser type can hold up to 1500 crew and troops the ship has been used as a scout Raider patrol ship and Cruiser the different iterations of the ship include the cavort class the rail class and d12 class all iterations have been observed with a maximum warp of eight but the speed can be increased to nine point eight during a slingshot effect when you literally slingshot around a Sun most all iterations of the ship would have to ship mounted disruptor cannons one torpedo launcher and the more advanced ships would sport for ship mounted disruptor cannons and two torpedo launchers the Dominion ships included the JEM Hadar battle cruiser was considered one of the larger battleships during the Dominion war well we can't be sure when they went into service we know they definitively were an active service during the 23 seventies a battle cruiser was armed with directed-energy weapons and torpedoes the main weapon of the battle cruiser was a forward torpedo launcher that could launch multiple torpedoes at once in 20 373 a single battle cruiser was considered a significant threat to even Deep Space 9 a Cardassian station the Jim Adar fighter was a patrol ship that was the mainstay of the Dominion forces Jem'Hadar attack ships were prominent for looking somewhat insect in design the ships were both powerful and highly resilient many times it is observed when the ship would crash land on a planet and still stay intact the ship was able to achieve warp 7 and was highly maneuverable versus most Starfleet contemporary ships the JEM Hadar fighter boasted a primary directed energy array located in the forward section of the ship itself the vessel was seen using anything from disruptors to phased polaron beams these weapons were initially able to easily breach the shields of the federation another tactic that was widely used by the JEM Hadar in these ships was to commit kamikaze runs against enemy belligerents as Dominion ships arrived in the Bajoran sector major cura nerese demanded that Starfleet relinquish command of the station to the Bajoran Republic and filed an official protest of its use in the battle Captain Sisko would decline to relinquish the station to major Kira and she would move to her duty station the Defiant would not be able to assist in the defense of deep space 9 as it would be laying the mines at the wormhole goal dekat would request Sisko to surrender and of course Captain Sisko would decline when the ships arrived the goal would order five Jem'Hadar attack wings to destroy the Defiant while the rest of the fleet attacks deep space nine two-way own surprise the shields of Deep Space nine would hold against the Dominion weapons Dominion technology had generally been considered more powerful than what Starfleet could field Dukat would not seem surprised honestly and advised Weyoun to never underestimate Federation engineers nor Sisko Jim had our fighters would continue attack runs on the Defiant as it attempted to lay the mines Jadzia Dax commander of the Defiant at the time advised chief O'Brien that she needed to initiate evasive maneuvers but was quickly told that if she did it could detonate the mines and kill them all luckily the fight would be saved by general Martok who was commanding the IKS rotarran which would engage the strike groups and provide cover for the Defiant class vessel deep space knives weapons unloaded on the Dominion fleet and attempted to stop any ship that made its way towards the Defiant the Dominion fleet continued its attack on the station causing some damage but ultimately not breaching the shields interestingly enough watching this battle after having watched the first battle of Deep Space nine not too long ago I was struck at how fast Klingon ships were being destroyed versus the Dominion incurred asking counterparts of course this could be plot armor but it's as likely that the Cardassian fleet had been upgraded to meet Dominion standards Deep Space nine shredded Klingon ships whereas they were causing damage here true but you don't see the destruction you saw before now while we do see ships destroyed the fleet seems to sustain the losses much better than the Klingon fleet did having not breached the shields yet gold ticket ordered the ships to focus fire on section 17 of the outer docking ring this would be a successful tactic as it disabled the main power for the shield's auxilary power would kick in but there was no guarantee how long it would hold it was at this time that the Defiant would be done and immediately activate the mines seeing the mines activated gold ikot ordered the reserves for a final assault at this point deep space 9 would detect additional enemy ships entering into the Bajoran sector Captain Sisko ordered all Starfleet hands to abandon ship and Starfleet personnel would begin evacuation procedures during the evacuation Sisko spoke to everyone on the station noting that the reason no reinforcements were at the station was due to them being used in a Joint Task Force a task force of Starfleet and the Klingon Empire Strikes deep into Dominion territory they were able to destroy the Dominion shipyards on Taurus 3 this would be a major blow to the Dominions production abilities the USS Defiant and IKS rotarran cloaked and escaped the incoming Dominion forces major cura would activate a failsafe on deep space 9 causing electrical outlets to blow all over destroying most vital systems of deep space 9 s command and control the battle of deep space 9 would be a strategic victory for the Dominion we don't know how many ships were at the battle but we do know that at least 50 Dominion ships were lost and deep space 9 was captured this battle would be the beginning of a very long losing streak for the Federation activated analyze it's complete like most things I research when taking a look at an event such as operation return you have to look at what precipitated it it's easy to forget that operation return was executed early in the war the conflict had only been going on for a few months and Starfleet was losing incredibly badly if Basheer's to be believed the federation only had a 37.2% chance of winning hell when the 7th fleet was sent in with a hundred and twelve ships to stop the Dominion curb stop of the Federation and score a much-needed victory only 14 ships survived the seventh Fleet had lost over 87 percent of its fighting force sir fleet had been pushed back so far that in fact there were discussions on how fighting had been occurring on the Vulcan border even if we are generous and say that Tamar was talking about the borders of the Vulcan sector this would put the Dominion probably right around here deep in Federation space to say the least additionally let's add on that the Dominion was not appearing to be the conquerors that the Federation had proclaimed and now you have a very bad situation major had signed a mutual agreement of friendship with Dominion and the Dominion was holding its bargain as far as any other power could see major was their friend it looked to both the Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers that the Dominion could be trusted and that their argument was with the Federation in the Klingon Empire only for many governments this was all looking up and up the Federation was being destabilized and the new quote-unquote superpower apparently was willing to play nice with its neighbors and now you have this war where both sides pummel each other into oblivion who loses this was also starting to have an impact on Starfleet officers morale was at an all-time low within the ranks even though I think Jeff Xia was probably being a little bit hyperbolic she would be noted as saying even the Klingons are starting to wonder if we can defeat the Dominion now I don't think that would have been the Klingon mentality but I do think that the Klingons probably were beginning to look towards a glorious death versus a glorious victory I know I keep laboring this but the Federation in Klingon Empire were about to lose the Dominion war within months of its starting and arguably being started by the Federation so something did have to be done I mean low morale can be as much of a defeater for a military as much as any in tactics so there had to be a victory and a major one at that the Dominion would need to suffer a major defeat to show that Starfleet wouldn't be destroyed so easily so a plan was put together and conceived by Benjamin Sisko and it would do just that Benjamin suggested taking the bulk of the defensive fleet and making an all-out attack on deep space 9 the objective was to retake the station the Admiralty was understandably pretty trepidatious about this the attack would pull fleets from strategic borders leaving earth open to attack well it's not stated we do know that fleets were also pulled from Vulcans so I believe that Vulcan was probably a pretty prime target as well and if Vulcan an earth fell that would leave much of the Federation open for conquering this plan was betting everything on black and having nothing left if you lose he'll this plan was so daring that even the Klingon Empire didn't want to dedicate forces to the battle it would drain resources from too many other fronts though Sisko did argue correctly that while earth was the capital of the Federation and of course the Klingons had other fronts they had to protect these weren't the keys to alpha and beta quadrant the Dominion could take earth the dominion could take Vulcan but if they lost the wormhole they've lost any chance of reinforcements ultimately Benjamin would be able to persuade the Admirals of how vital Deep Space 9 was it would be semi fortunate that the fleet's were gathering when they received word that the Dominion had found a way to bring the mine field that was stopping the near limitless amount of JEM Hadar down I say it'd be semi fortunate because the Federation Alliance would not be completely ready Starfleet's ninth fleet would not be there in time nor would the Klingons Starfleet had run out of options they would push with the forces they currently had the fleet of the Federation would find itself outmatched two-to-one 1254 Dominion ships would bear down on two Starfleet's meager 627 Benjamin Sisko would order the fleet forward they had to punch a hole through the Dominion ranks and make for the wormhole stay tuned guys because I'm gonna be doing a complete breakdown on this battle on the next lor reloaded hey guys check the playlist in the top right-hand corner to watch the complete series on operation return this is the second video in a complete breakdown from a political social and tactical aspect if you haven't seen it it's worth watching the first episode and then come back don't worry I'll wait as we discussed before operation return an all-out attack on Deep Space nine to retake the station and wormhole and an attempt to ensure the Dominion reinforcements cannot arrive and effectively when the war was rushed when Starfleet had gained intelligence that Dominion forces had found a way to disable the minefield that was within the wormhole itself this would allow the Dominion to be reinforced and if these reinforcements were able to arrive everything would be lost for the Federation because of this Starfleet would have to rush the operation that meant they would be leaving behind the ninth fleet as well as the Klingons what remained would attack at less than full strength as the Federation Armada quickly approached the Dominion fleet that would try to stop them Starfleet ships would continue to fall back for repairs at least eleven ships would have to fall back thinning the lines even more and when Starfleet arrived it would be outnumbered two to one 627 Starfleet vessels would be pitted against a fleet of 1254 Dominion ships everything was on the side of the Dominion the Dominion arguably still had better technology than Starfleet and all the Dominion would need to do was hold the line Starfleet would not only have to attack but break through the lines at great cost to their forces and then those damaged ships that actually got through would be expected to assault Deep Space nine some have argued that Starfleet should have broken off into Task Forces attacking from different directions after considering everything at stake in the various outcomes I think this would have been a mistake first it would have been a harder sell for Sisko as a part of the pitch for operation return would be that a large fleet would require a large response and thus the Dominion could not attack Earth various task forces would allow the Dominion to split up its forces and thus have an actual chance of attacking earth with a moderate to large fleet additionally task forces would be much much easier to pick off individually there was strength in Federation numbers as well as the diversity of ships that they had so a large fleet would most likely be the best option now when you look at memory alpha it will tell you that the battle lasted about five hours or so this is in large part due to the back-and-forth we see between the fleet battle in deep space nine scenes we would see a part of the battle and then we would see a hard cut to dekat or other characters whom would talk about how much time has passed going from eight hours to six hours to four and so forth really have any good arguments for why this isn't the case it just feels a bit off but again I can't really justify why memory alpha would be wrong so for the purposes of this breakdown will assume that the timeline is correct though I would argue the battle took upwards of eight hours if we're going to assume the timelines are one-to-one Starfleet forces wouldn't break through until after the fall of the minefield which would be eight hours back to the battle proper Captain Benjamin Sisko knew that the Dominion forces before him would be too powerful to punch a hole through with brute strength they would have to use other tactics if they were going to succeed he would order Federation fighter wings Peregrine class ships to attack the Cardassian line and attempt to go the ships into breaking ranks and attacking the fighters his specific orders would be to focus on Cardassian ships this in large part due to the Cardassian lack of military discipline in comparison to the regimented gym Adar who were specifically bred for battle for two hours the Peregrine Wings would beat on Cardassian ships with the massive military fleet staying just outside of each other's weapons range the Cardassians would not take the bait in Sisko would order more and more Peregrine class ships to attack ultimately the Cardassian ships would break formation and attack the squadrons however Sisko and the crew the Defiant realized that it was a trap set by Golda Cobb Dukat ordered the ships to break ranks bringing up the lures so that when Star Fleet ships entered into the fray they could close behind the ships and the Federation fleet would be surrounded however Sisko didn't have any other choice he would order two galaxy-class wings to handle the Caloris and then order the entirety of the federation forces to punch a hole through the enemy lines any ship that got through was ordered to make immediately for deep space 9 the Federation ships would slam into the Dominion line and with Starfleet now completely surrounded the Dominion pulled its ace card the Dominion would block all communications this was to my mind ingenious without the ability to work with each other through comms Starfleet ships would find themselves completely isolated if you haven't watched the episode I would encourage you to go back and take a look you can see the Starfleet ranks completely disintegrate in the background Starfleet vessels would be left to fight on their own either fighting by themselves or grouping into smaller formations to try to push the Dominion back from what I can tell Starfleet was completely unprepared for a situation in which they could not communicate with each other while I wouldn't say that Starfleet officers began to fight uh every man for themselves mentality you can definitely tell that the battle stop being one large battle and moved into several smaller fights it would be late into the battle that communications would be restored and Starfleet begin to regroup though if SAR fleet had been alone it probably would have been too late the saving grace of the battle would be the arrival of the Klingons attacking from the top down and at an angle that would squeeze the Dominion fleet the Dominion was caught completely off-guard in a large swath of Dominion ships would be destroyed instantly the Klingon Armada would decimate the ships in front of them but even with Klingon support the regimens the lines of the Dominion would prevent any ships say for the Defiant to break through what occurs after with the Defiant will be covered in future videos but for now let's focus on the battle and about the battle yeah we don't really see it again we do know that the Klingon surprise-attack would ultimately allow the Federation to regroup and smash through the Dominion ranks they would then make for deep space 9 after deep space 9 had been saved so taking a look at the results I'm going to be kind here it said that 200 Allied ships break through the enemy lines let's assume that every one of those ships was a federation ship even though it's likely a large contingent where Klingon vessels now remember the orders every ship was to break through the lines and then run no one stays to fight so if only 200 vessels makes it through that means that Starfleet would take losses of upwards of 69 percent meaning tens of thousands of officers and hundreds upon hundreds of Starfleet ships destroyed now to be fair 69 percent was much lower in losses than every other fleet battle that had occurred which was measured in the 80 to 90 percentile so things are looking up even with that I think we can all agree that this was a Pyrrhic victory a Pyrrhic victory is still a parent victory nonetheless and would do a lot to improve the morale of the troops it would also show that Starfleet could defeat the Dominion that they could win this would be one of the most vital if not the most vital battle of the Dominion war unfortunately we don't know a lot about the birth of the Dominion what little we do know is only piece together from inferences of throwaway lines and an inconsistent Weyoun for instance the Dominions Genesis started with the changelings whom claimed they were hated and thus created an entire government to protect themselves this being truthful isn't necessarily unreasonable either bigotry is something we know both in Shrek and real life however a people that were constantly on the run and being hunted down like dogs would probably not be able to gather the resources needed to bioengineer to different races it's possible but what seems more likely to me is that the changelings probably have their own thriving civilization and then like they said they came into conflict with another civilization a species of solids it could also be possible that their people were a smaller civilization and that in the Gamma Quadrant it was a sin to be different a sin to not be a solid whether it was because of bigotry or due to a war we won't ever know unless there's another series that explores the idea however I would enjoy seeing a genesis of the Dominion a galactic war with both changelings and solids and during this entire war maybe on a planet the changelings would run into the Vorta who would help them win a battle or even the planet itself that would be an interesting twist on the story we are given by way own I also like the idea of the Dominion being a benevolent Empire at the beginning maybe even a coalition when another Empire attacked them leaving them in ruins and the changelings were forced to change into something different regardless of whether it was a group of changelings constantly on the run or a system to sector-wide war we do know that the changelings would win and expand their empire across the Gamma Quadrant they would use genetically modified Vorta who would be set upon a policy of expansion through diplomacy and then if that failed the JEM Hadar would utilize force something that always seems lost in translation is the fact that the Dominion very much used the carrot and the stick approach the Dominion was more than happy to let a government thrive and be a subject able to do whatever it wanted as long as it bent the knee to the Dominion and provided what the Dominion needed in fact they would provide advantages to being a part of the Dominion the Vorta would offer things to the governments to allow them to raise up within their own small part of the galaxy there was a good side to the Dominion if you can leave it the changelings fear of the solids or perhaps their hatred for them would mean that the Vorta and the JEM Hadar were the faces of the Dominion itself most Gamma Quadrant species would not only not know about the changelings but would refer to them as the founders and assume that they were a myth or God and would have never seen them depending on which way on you believe Dominion would have prospered anywhere from two thousand to ten thousand years personally I feel that the 2000 mark is probably more likely this is because when Whelan was speaking about the Dominion not losing a war in the last 10,000 years he was probably more being fuelled by ego and blustering and technically if they never lost a battle in the 2,000 years that they existed then they didn't lose a war in 10,000 years either it's really hard to lose a war when you don't exist by the time Starfleet discovered the Dominion hundreds of species would already be subjects curiously the evidence we have for the technological advancements of the Dominion would lead me to believe that when the Dominion was in its early years it was really innovative they probably had the best technology that the quadrant had ever seen and then as the years went on and became decades and decades became centuries and centuries became millenniums that self innovation by the Dominion itself would begin to stagnate the Dominion would rely on its subjects to innovate and provide the technology they would use a lot of people get upset when I say that but it makes sense when you have dominated most of the quadrant it's much cheaper to make your subjects make the weapons for you and then when you rarely had to use your weapons the need to innovate isn't necessary ask the T and G era Federation on that score okay let's take a look at it like this as an example we know one of the Dominion subjects the Kurama would construct weapons for the Dominion military additionally during the Dominion War the Dominion would be unable to continue to innovate the Federation would be able to match and even hopscotch their technology in fact the Dominion would rely on the brain to use superior technology to regain the edge most of the weapons we see in the Dominion War on the Dominion side is from the Cardassians many have theorized and really considered the gods gospel that the Dominion was aware of the Federation for at least 200 years before the Federation discovered the demand that is not canonized anywhere in any series that I could find there is some evidence but I find it unlikely they had so much for knowledge about the Federation and yes I know it was stated by one of the producers but as I constantly say just because a producer says it or someone who created the ship says it doesn't mean it's actually true but let's look at the evidence that we do have and the evidence we do have is that when talking to Sisko in the early stages of the dominion cold war a Jem'Hadar would ask about the Cardassian border wars and laments not meeting a Klingon we know that the Dominion would send out young changelings who would have to find their way back which doesn't make a ton of sense to me if I'm honest given how much they fear the solids and in some episodes in TNG were given the perception that Starfleet may have sent probes into the Delta and gamma quadrant but all of this evidence is flaky and circumstantial and for me at least it's not reasonable to assume that they would be able to gain such knowledge with what's presented to us it's more likely that the Jim Hadar would have been able to track and do reconnaissance on Starfleet once the Bajoran wormhole was discovered especially so since the Federation began to send ships through it like they own the whole goddamn galaxy but again that's just my opinion it doesn't seem likely given what we see on screen and on screen alone let me know what you guys think on that once discovered things would turn icy really really fast when the Federation and the Dominion make first contact everything would be primed we would have a galactic power that was every bit the equal of the Federation and even the Federation in Klingons combined and now this entity was made aware of something that could possibly destabilize their order or at least was now aware that the Federation which they didn't expect to see in 200 years was a lot closer the Dominion would now have to determine how it could bring these new empires into their fold next week we'll delve into the intricacies of espionage outright battles and being on the brink of outright conflict when we delve into the Dominion Cold War needless to say Starfleet will make Chamberlain very very proud unfortunately we don't have a lot of alpha cannon when it comes to the Klingon Cardassian war the information is so sparse that I almost didn't do a video however as I continued the Dominion War series I realized how integral this event was to the war itself I really couldn't do a video on the Dominion justice if I first didn't break down these events additionally when it comes to determining when the first real Domino was pushed over for the point of no return for the war I think the most reasonable event to point to would be the Klingon Cardassian war itself now sure you could point to events that caused the Klingon Cardassian war and then the events that caused those events ad infinitum but I would think it's reasonable to say that this event this event right here started the dominoes that would not be able to be stopped until the Dominion war was concluded let's go ahead and take a look at it in 2371 the Battle of the Oh Marian nebula would Herald the complete destruction of the Obsidian order Cardassian Central Command the ruling body of the Cardassian Union and the Obsidian order had always had an antagonistic relationship but ultimately one did rely on the other with the Obsidian order destroyed the distant movement within the civilian population would thrive and ultimately overthrow the military dictatorship the central command had long relied on the Obsidian order to oppress the Cardassian people interestingly while we don't have the complete picture the context clues that we receive lead me to believe that the civilian government under the de topic Council would have had a much more benign Cardassian Union it would seem that the aggressive and duplicitous nature of the Cardassians was not necessarily a trait of the race but more of the government which existed over them we see that the de topic Council was more focused on listening to the needs of its people and even when presented with an advantage against the Klingons during the war wanted to work towards a negotiated peace I wonder if the Maquis would have been able to come to some kind of agreement with the two top accounts Alif they had given them a chance it's quite possible that the Cardassians would have ultimately had a social revolution into something that was more akin to the Federation will never know however as over a hundred Klingon vessels at least one-third of the Klingon Defense Force invaded Cardassian space in an attempt to effectively light strike Cardassia destroying Cardassian forces quickly and installing a Klingon overseer the Federation Council would condemn this attack and Gowron and response would cut ties with the Klingons strongest ally Starfleet would be ordered to do nothing as envoys from the United Federation of Planets would attempt to reopen dialog with gal Ron this would mean Klingon ships would simply pass by Starfleet vessels and bases unopposed into Cardassian space even though ordered not to assist Starfleet would still help in some small ways the commander of deep space 9 was vital to ensuring the attack by the Klingons was discovered by the de Taba council which would allow Cardassian forces to mount a larger defence and resist the Klingon Empire though Klingon forces would continue to push further and further into Cardassian territory even with this resistance ultimately the commander of deep space 9 would save the disciplic council once he realized the Klingons were on their way to Cardassian would be there in under 52 hours this would lead to the first battle of deep space 9 which by the by I do have the first battle of deep space 9 so if you're interested in that take a look in the top right hand corner during this battle Starfleet would defend the de topic council from being executed by the forces of the Klingon Empire ultimately Benjamin Sisko the commander of deep space 9 and a Starfleet officer would persuade Chancellor Gowron to stop any meaningful advance into Cardassian territory at the loss of the first battle of deep space 9 the Klingons would move to just holding the territory they had gained Gowron would declare victory and move his efforts on to other endeavors though Klingons would continue to move in and out of Cardassian territory attacking civilian and military targets alike the war while stalemated was still on the Maquis would assist the Klingons with cloaking technology provided by the Klingons themselves and do their own strikes into Cardassian territory they were able to completely conquer the Demilitarized Zone the infrastructure of the Cardassian Union would continue to crumble under the attacks and stress of the Klingon Empire Starfleet would assist of course in infrastructure and medical aid but would find themselves being attacked by Klingon task forces or Maquis raids the de topic council wanting to end the struggle was so strong that even when presented with the ability to strike vital Klingon targets such as when a Klingon bird-of-prey had been captured vital information on Klingon locations in the Cardassian border they would opt to sue for a negotiated peace the collapse of the Cardassian Union would be all but certain that is until Dukat would mediate an agreement between the Cardassian Union and the Dominion to become a member of the Dominion itself Dominion forces would arrive from the Gamma Quadrant at least 50 ships at a time once a week within a few days of the first convoy arriving the Klingon Cardassian war would be a decisive victory for the Dominion the Klingons would be driven out of Cardassian space and the Maquis would be completely wiped out these major defeats would force Chiron to reinstate the Khitomer Accords forging the Federation Klingon alliance once more and halting the Dominion advance as it would mean a war with both the Federation and the Klingons the war itself would be significant and it's allowing the Dominion to have a foothold within the Alpha Quadrant without the need of a battle at Deep Space nine and honestly there isn't much more to it than that as I stated before it was vital that I talked through the different impacts that the Dominion would have before the war even began [Music]

Channel: Lore Reloaded

Views: 1,327,880

Keywords: Lore, Lore Reloaded, Lore Master, Memory Alpha, dominion war final battle, dominion war battle, dominion war peace treaty, star trek dominion war final battle, star trek dominion war battle, star trek dominion war lore reloaded, star trek dominion war explained, star trek dominion war end, star trek dominion war space battle, Star Trek Cardassians, Star Trek Dominion, Star Trek Starfleet, Star Trek Breen, Star Trek bajorans

Id: Akg522NhUzw

Length: 159min 19sec (9559 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019