History Characters / StarTrekDeepSpaceNineGulDukat

One of the major recurring antagonists of the series. Dukat was formerly the prefect of Bajor during the Cardassian occupation, and commander of the space station Terok Nor, the Cardassian name for Deep Space Nine. With the occupation over he is "merely" a captain, but in practice acts as a ''de facto'' ambassador between Cardassia and the DS9 crew.

Over the series Dukat wavers between AntiVillain, PunchClockVillain, NominalHero, and shades between them. Eventually his repeated failures and humiliations [[BreakTheHaughty break him]] and drive him mad, but he's still sane enough to be a competent and dangerous wild card. Dukat decides to embrace his role as the villain of the little narrative he's cooking up in his own head, and he becomes a Dark Messiah dedicated to the absolute destruction of his enemies, including Bajor, Deep Space Nine, and especially Benjamin Sisko.

The eventual BigBad. His backstory involves overseeing the brutal occupation of Bajor. Wavered between KickTheDog and PetTheDog moments (especially with his daughter) before things transpired to make him nice and crazy, at which point he embraces his role as a villain, eventually seeing himself as a DarkMessiah, especially from the end of Season 6 onward.

* DidntSeeThatComing: Only three times in the show is he ever really taken by surprise. One is when Weyoun chugs down some poisonous kanar (Weyoun then informs him [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity Vorta are immune to most poisons]]. The second is when [[ItMakesSenseInContext he's informed Major Kira is pregnant with O'Brien's baby]]. The third is when he tries to beam off a station while a "Bajoran riot" was in progress (actually an automated defense system the DS9 crew accidentally activated), only for the defense system turn out to have been hacked by his superior, who calls him a coward, revokes his access, and tells him to die with some dignity.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: He ''did'' genuinely try to make the occupation less brutal during his time as prefect, lowering work quotas for Bajoran slaves and abolishing child labor, among other things. His problem is that he thinks this makes him an underappreciated hero of the occupation, and thus entitled to the Bajorans' gratitude, while failing to acknowledge that he was still presiding over a brutal, genocidal campaign and is responsible for many atrocities against the Bajoran people.

* DeadAlternateCounterpart: In the [[Series/StarTrekPicard Confederation timeline]] his skull is one of many displayed in Picard's trophy case. He died fighting for Cardassia, suggesting he was a better person in that timeline, or at least a much lesser of two evils.

* DidntSeeThatComing: Only three in the show is he ever really taken by surprise. One is when Weyoun chugs down some poisonous kanar (Weyoun then informs him [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity Vorta are immune to most poisons]]. The second is when [[ItMakesSenseInContext he's informed Major Kira is pregnant with O'Brien's baby]]. The third is when he tries to beam off a station while a "Bajoran riot" was in progress (actually an automated defense system the DS9 crew accidentally activated), only for the defense system turn out to have been hacked by his superior, who calls him a coward, revokes his access, and tells him to die with some dignity.

* AdventurerArchaeologist: After the prison ship escorting him to Earth is shot down by [[HeKnowsTooMuch his old Dominion cohorts]], Dukat drops completely off the map. He becomes an archeologist in the interim, learning all he can about the Pah-Wraiths.
* AffablyEvil: Dukat can be quite charming when he wants to be. He is perhaps the most likable version of Hitler ever put on TV. Marc Alaimo deserves a lot of credit for making a murdering dictator into someone who you could legitimately cheer for. Case-in-point, in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E05Indiscretion Indiscretion]]" he makes trying to kill his half-Bajoran love child sympathetic.

* BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad: After allowing a pah-wraith to possess him, he said he could feel it’s love for the Bajoran people. Everyone else who had ever been possessed by a pah-wraith, described feeling nothing but hatred.

* DidntSeeThatComing: Only twice in the show is he ever really taken by surprise. One is when Weyoun chugs down some poisonous kanar (Weyoun then informs him [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity Vorta are immune to most poisons]]. The other is when [[ItMakesSenseInContext he's informed Major Kira is pregnant with O'Brien's baby]].

** Dukat could also be seen as a {{Deconstruction}} of the trope. He demonstrates himself to be a fully fleshed-out character, capable of respect, friendship, compassion, and even love. But the fact he's able to ''be'' a good person underscores how awful it is when he instead chooses to be evil instead. Further, because he's a [[AliensAreBastards Cardassian]], Dukat over-values his virtuous traits: he ''is'' better than a lot of Cardassians and he thinks his enemies ought to be grateful to him for that. He doesn't understand that no matter his morality compared to the rest of his species, he's ''still'' a brutal, fascist tyrant, and no amount of niceties on his part will wash that out.

* IBangedYourMom: He kept Kira's mother as part of a harem of sex slaves during the occupation of Bajor, and then just kind of drops the revelation on her years later almost randomly as a power move in his predatory relationship with her. Kira, understanably, does not take it well.

* DarkMessiah: When he decides to throw in with the Pah-Wraiths, he becomes essentially the Space Antichrist to Sisko's Space Jesus. Although he's still scheming, his belief in them seems sincere.

* DarkMessiah: When he decides to throw in with the Pah-Wraiths. Although he's still scheming, his belief in them seems sincere.

* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: At which point the writers threw up their hands and said, "Fine! He's Hitler."

* MoralEventHorizon: The [[spoiler: simultaneous death of Ziyal and Dukat's fall from power]] drive him mad and strip away his (already twisted and self-serving) sense of morality, focusing his hatred on the people who first defied him: the Bajorans.
--> '''Dukat''': I should have turned their planet into a graveyard, the likes of which the galaxy had never ''seen''! I should have killed them ''all''.

** Dukat could also be seen as a {{Deconstruction}} of the trope. He demonstrates himself to be a fully fleshed-out character, capable of respect, friendship, compassion, and even love. But the fact he is able to ''be'' a good person underscores how awful it is when he instead chooses to be evil instead. Further, because he's a [[AliensAreBastards Cardassian]], Dukat over-values his virtuous traits: he ''is'' better than a lot of Cardassians and he thinks his enemies ought to be grateful to him for that. He doesn't understand that no matter his morality compared to the rest of his species, he's ''still'' a brutal, fascist tyrant, and no amount of niceties on his part will wash that out.

* RaceFetish: It would not take a tremendous leap of the imagination to conclude that Gul Dukat has a somewhat creepy fetish for [[RubberForeheadAliens Bajoran]] women. With the exception of his Cardassian wife, who is occasionally mentioned but never shown onscreen, the only women we see him involved with or interested in are Bajoran.

* DemonicPossession : Serves as a willing vessel for the Pah-Wraiths more than once.

* PuppetKing: Dukat willingly became the pitchman for Dominion control in the Alpha Quadrant. As a reward, he became the de facto ruler of Cardassia, followed in quick succession by Damar and Broca. Each of these dudes were stooges of absolutely no importance to the Female Changeling. This is somewhat downplayed with Dukat who was genuinely in charge of most of the Dominion military forces in the Alpha Quadrant, with Weyoon and the female Changeling keeping him in check. However once Dukat loses DS9, Damar, his replacement, is rapidly sidelined with little responsibility but rubber stamping Dominion orders. Broca gets even less power and is mostly just a yes man.

** Early in the series, Dukat gets more than a few sympathetic moments, which rather insidiously distract from the evils he has committed both before and during the show. This is a reason why he became a darker character later on; according to the showrunners, viewers ''liked'' him too much when he was supposed to be one of the main antagonists, so they took his character in a more sinister direction to ruin that likeable image. He demonstrates himself to be a fully fleshed-out character, capable of respect, friendship, compassion, and even love. But the fact he is able to ''be'' a good person underscores how awful it is when he instead chooses to be evil instead. Further, because he's a [[AliensAreBastards Cardassian]], Dukat over-values his virtuous traits: he ''is'' better than a lot of Cardassians and he thinks his enemies ought to be grateful to him for that. He doesn't understand that no matter his morality compared to the rest of his species, he's ''still'' a brutal, fascist tyrant, and no amount of niceties on his part will wash that out.
** Dukat could also be seen as a {{Deconstruction}} of the trope.

* PetTheDog: Early in the series, Dukat gets a few sympathetic moments, which rather insidiously distract from the evils he has committed both before and during the show. According to WordOfGod, viewers were becoming [[MisaimedFandom a little too fond of him]], which is why he turns much darker towards the end.

-->-- "Waltz"

* AffablyEvil: Dukat can be quite charming when he wants to be. He is perhaps the most likable version of Hitler ever put on TV. Marc Alaimo deserves a lot of credit for making a murdering dictator into someone who you could legitimately cheer for. Case-in-point, in "Indiscretion" he makes trying to kill his half-Bajoran love child sympathetic.

* AxCrazy: In "Waltz", Dukat is shown in the throes of psychosis. He fires weapons at his hallucinations and beats an injured Sisko with a pipe.

** In "Waltz", Dukat saves Sisko and transports him to a desert planet after the ''Honshu'' is destroyed. We later learn that Dukat saved Sisko so that he could demand his respect before killing him.

* BelievingTheirOwnLies: From the subtle (turning a single game of kalevian montar in which he cheated into a regular thing with Odo, "Duet") to the blatant (his rambling breakdown in "Waltz",) Dukat repeatedly demonstrates that the famed Cardassian photographic memory is capable of being quite selective. He has a very revealing conversation with Weyoun in "Sacrifice of Angels", where Dukat all but admits that the thing he hates most about the Bajorans is not [[FantasticRacism their inferior culture]], but the fact that they're not ''grateful'' for [[ItsAllAboutMe all the things he did for them]] during the Occupation.
* BeyondRedemption: Because of Sisko’s belief that the universe was all different shades of gray, he believed that Dukat was not as evil as the Bajorans said that he was. Come the episode "Waltz", when they’re trapped on a desolate planet, and when Dukat goes completely insane from the hallucinations that he saw throughout the episode, Sisko comes to realize that there really are people like Dukat who are completely evil. Because of this, when Sisko is brought aboard the ''Defiant'', he vows that he will eliminate Dukat the next time they meet.

* BondVillainStupidity: Lays it all out in "Sacrifice of Angels", when Weyoun suggested that they [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim just eradicate Earth's population and be done]]. And skip all of the genuflecting and begging? No way.

* ConArtist: Essentially how he pulled Bajoran women during the Occupation, with an apparently fool-proof system. Step 1; get a younger officer to harass one of them. Step 2; intervene and punch the guy. Step 3; turn on the ol' Dukat charm and apologize to the lady for her poor treatment. Step 4; take her back to his quarters. During "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night", an older Cardassian watching this play out quotes the script to an incredulous Kira, having seen it several times already.
* CrazyPrepared: His prerecorded CannedOrdersOverLoudspeaker in "Civil Defense". When Cardassian security programs take control of the station, he beams in purely to be as smug as possible before beaming out. [[TooCleverByHalf Then he finds out that he can't.]]

** In "Defiant," Dukat remarks he was supposed to take his son Mekor to a fair, but can't because of the current crisis. Sisko's attempt to tell him that Mekor will understand one day doesn't work.

* EvilIsPetty: His rant against Bajorans in "Waltz" includes this rather revealing comment: "Of course I hated them! I hated everything ''about'' them. Their smug superiority and their stiff-necked obstinacy. [[FantasticRacism Their earrings, and their broken wrinkled noses!]]"

* EvilerThanThou: Winn Adami poisoned him and offered his limp form as a sacrifice to the Pah-Wraiths in exchange for becoming their "Emissary." [[ZigZaggingTrope Zigged Zagged]] when Dukat sprang back to life and set her on fire. Unlike the conflicted Winn, Dukat's hatred for the Bajorans was beyond peer.

* FantasticRacism: Dukat describes the Bajorans as children in need of Cardassian guidance, and clearly deeply resents that they don't ''appreciate'' him. In "Waltz", however, he reveals his true hatred of the Bajoran people. He can't even contemplate accepting them as equals, and if they won't worship him, he would rather they were, every one of them, dead.

** [[SmugSnake Pride]]: Dukat has HUGE Pride issues. During the Dominion occupation of Deep Space Nine, Dukat oozes pride. He's overconfident in the Cardassians' ability to hold off Federation forces and deactivate the self-replicating mine field. However, when Federation and Klingon forces reach Deep Space Nine and no Dominion reinforcements emerge from the wormhole, he's blindsided. He also spends most of "Favor The Bold" / "Sacrifice of Angels" not doing much to oppose the Federation because he's so sure of his own greatness and victory, that he can't even entertain the notion that he might lose, and thus takes no step to avert it. Similarly he's obsessed with being seen as a good man who does no evil. He's fully deluded himself that he did good for the Bajorans during the occupation, despite managing ''death camps'' and ordering executions of civilians and relatives of known resistance members. It's even his Pride that leads him to throw his lot with the Dominion, on the condition they install him as their PuppetKing on Cardassia Prime.

* HearingVoices: In "Waltz", Dukat starts behaving a lot like [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Gollum]]. He hallucinates that Damar, Weyoun, and Kira are mocking him.

* HistoryRepeats: His time as a cult leader on Empok Nor in "Covenant" was a thinly veiled attempt to recreate the days of the Occupation again, with him serving as the kindly "master" of a new [=Terok Nor/Deep=] Space Nine with a flock of Bajorans who worshipped him as the Emissary of the Pah-Wraiths. But just like the Occupation, his desire to bang Bajoran women (birthing yet another half-Cardassian love child with a married woman) and his hypocritcal suicide pact with his followers, not to mention his obsession with bringing Kira Nerys into his fan club, causes the whole thing to implode, sending him fleeing in disgrace once again.
* {{Homage}}: Since Dukat was the first recurring arch-villain of the franchise followed by the Borg Queen(s), it seems appropriate that he and Sisko have their Reichenbach Fall moment. Also like Holmes and Moriarty, there is an impression that Dukat and Sisko were long term adversaries when really, Dukat purposely never crossed paths with him for a year after "Waltz." Oh, and like "The Final Problem" the hero survives the fall.

** He believes that the occupation made the Bajoran people stronger, and ultimately left them better off. He was clearly just rationalizing away his culpability, but the episode “Accession” showed that the occupation forced the Bajorans to abandon their FantasticCasteSystem, and that they were indeed better off without it.

** Everything he does in regards to the Bajoran people is a twisted attempt to get them to see why they should adore and worship him. He tries it with the Bajorans during the occupation, then with Kira, later with the Bajoran followers of the Pah Wraiths, and then finally with Kai Winn. All of them reject him when his charm ultimately fails and they come to recognize him for disgusting monster he really is. It's doubly damning when in "Waltz", Dukat admits that he'd always hated the Bajorans with a white hot fury because he could never fool and charm them into loving him.

* KneelBeforeZod: The Bajorans stubbornly refused to, which enraged him. In "What You Leave Behind", Dukat uses his telekinesis to force the Emissary -- Bajor incarnate -- to bow before him.

* MaskOfSanity: After Ziyal's death he has a complete FreakOut VillainousBreakdown where he lost his mind. Afterwards he had a "miraculous recovery" according to the doctors. Of course, he keeps pretending that he isn't having hallucinations and delusions... which involve [[NightmareFuel Weyoun, of all people]]. It only gets worse from there, although he somehow manages to pretend that he's sane a lot of the time. The fact that he's about a hair's-width away from being a gibbering catatonic is ''not'' comforting when he goes completely AxCrazy and becomes the BigBad. The fact that he honestly and truly believes that he and Benjamin are old friends who are simply rivals, and is actually hurt by Ben's cold demeanor in "Waltz" should say something about his state of mind. That he might have deluded himself enough to believe this for quite a while should say something about his overall state of sanity ''before'' he went insane.

** In "Waltz", he finally admits to Sisko that this is the reason why he thinks Cardassia was right to invade Bajor in the first place; the fact that they were a century ahead of Bajor on a military, cultural and technological level is what gave Cardassia the moral authority to rule over them. The fact that Bajorans were eventually able to force Cardassia to back off quite thoroughly bother Dukat for this exact reason. It's such an issue in his mind that he actively deludes himself into thinking the high command was mistaken about withdrawing.

* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: His [[PipePain administration of a pipe]] is mostly implied rather than shown, but from Sisko’s cold shivering you can see how brutal it must have been. This is likely a shout out to ''{{Literature/Misery}}'' ("Waltz")

* OffingTheOffspring: Dukat intends to do this to Ziyal in "Indiscretion" so that no one back home learns what he's done. He can't go through with it, though.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: How he saw himself during the Occupation of Bajor. If only those ungrateful Bajorans had submitted to his rule, then there would have been no need for any mass executions, and things would have run smoothly. In relative terms though, he actually ''was'' genuinely this by Cardassian standards: in the episode "Waltz", he talks about how he ordered all labor camp quotas reduced by fifty percent and abolished child labor. He then raised food rations and improved medical care, resulting in a twenty percent drop in mortality. In another case, after 200 Cardassians were killed by Bajoran insurgents, he had 200 suspected resistance members rounded up and shot - as opposed to enacting a "X civilians killed for every one of my soldiers" policy as many real world military dictators would.

* VillainousBreakdown: In "Sacrifice of Angels," Dukat loses it when Dominion reinforcements don't emerge from the wormhole, forcing a retreat from an advancing Federation/Klingon fleet. It gets even worse when [[spoiler:Ziyal is fatally shot in front of him]].

* WeWillMeetAgain: He goes underground following the events of "Waltz", vowing revenge against Bajor and Sisko.

* YouTalkTooMuch: Even the Dominion grew weary of his yapping. Weyoun buried him after the "Sacrifice of Angels" fiasco, telling the Founders that he was all hat and no cattle.
** Kira's line in "Indiscretion" ("Captain Sisko's right; you ''are'' in love with your own voice.") was added as an [[BitingTheHandHumour in-joke]] regarding Dukat in general and Marc Alaimo in particular.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: To Kira. Initially PlayedForLaughs[[note]]to Nana Visitor's chagrin, thanks to the UnfortunateImplications[[/note]], but then played much more darkly. The reveal late in the series that [[spoiler:he had kept her mother as a mistress/willing-prisoner/willing-SexSlave for several years during the occupation]] adds a few new layers of creepiness.

* BeyondRedemption: Because of Sisko’s belief that the universe was all different shades of gray, he believed that Dukat was not as evil as the Bajorans said that he was. Come the episode ''Waltz'', when they’re trapped on a desolate planet, and when Dukat goes completely insane from the hallucinations that he saw throughout the episode, Sisko comes to realize that there really are people like Dukat who are completely evil. Because of this, when Sisko is brought aboard the ''Defiant'', he vows that he will eliminate Dukat the next time they meet.

* EvilIsPetty: His rant against Bajorans in ''Waltz'' includes this rather revealing comment: "Of course I hated them! I hated everything ''about'' them. Their smug superiority and their stiff-necked obstinacy. [[FantasticRacism Their earrings, and their broken wrinkled noses!]]"

* HearingVoices: In ''Waltz'', Dukat starts behaving a lot like [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Gollum]]. He hallucinates that Damar, Weyoun, and Kira are mocking him.

** {{Pride}}: Dukat has HUGE Pride issues. He spends most of "Favor The Bold" / "Sacrifice of Angels" not doing much to oppose the Federation because he's so sure of his own greatness and victory, that he can't even entertain the notion that he might lose, and thus takes no step to avert it. Similarly he's obsessed with being seen as a good man who does no evil. He's fully deluded himself that he did good for the Bajorans during the occupation, despite managing ''death camps'' and ordering executions of civilians and relatives of known resistance members. It's even his Pride that leads him to throw his lot with the Dominion, on the condition they install him as their PuppetKing on Cardassia Prime.

* {{Pride}}: During the Dominion occupation of Deep Space Nine, Dukat oozes pride. He's overconfident in the Cardassians' ability to hold off Federation forces and deactivate the self-replicating mine field. However, when Federation and Klingon forces reach Deep Space Nine and no Dominion reinforcements emerge from the wormhole, he's blindsided.

** In "Waltz", he finally admits to Sisko that this is the reason why he thinks Cardassia was right to invade Bajor in the first place; the fact that they were a century ahead of Bajor on a military, cultural and technological level is what gave Cardassia the moral authority to rule over them.

* NoNameGiven: Dukat's first name is never stated in canon, though the non-canonical first name of "Skrain" has been adopted by many fans. At one point he identifies himself as "Dukat, S.G." though it's been suggested by WordOfGod that this is a title (like Ph.D., M.D., or R.N.).

* PuppetKing: Dukat willingly became the pitchman for Dominion control in the Alpha Quadrant. As a reward, he became the de facto ruler of Cardassia, followed in quick succession by Damar and Broca. Each of these dudes were stooges of absolutely no importance to the Female Changeling.