Sandbox / Star Trek Cardassians

Cardassians

Debut: TNG, "The Wounded"

Homeworld: Cardassia Prime

"Cardassians are like… timber wolves – predators… bold in large numbers… cautious by themselves… and with an instinctive need to establish a dominant position in any social gathering."

The Cardassians embody the lizard brain: merciless, conniving, and xenophobic. Their society is depicted as being Kafkaesque, with criminal trials where the defendant is presumed guilty and the sentence is already decided before the trial begins. In Cardassian mystery novels, everyone is always guilty, the puzzle to work out being who is guilty of what. They claim to abhor violence and talk in five-dollar words, but they are dangerously smart and underestimating them is foolish.

In General

• Affably Evil: The Cardassians aren't thugs like the Klingons, or ice-blooded professionals like the Romulans, or even brutal logicians like the Borg. These are people who can carry on an intelligent conversation and are deeply interested in charming you... so they can insert a knife later. Even if they genuinely consider you a friend, it doesn't make them any less dangerous. A Romulan will stab you in the back, and if you ask why, will smirk haughtily and say "For the Glory of Romulus" or something to that effect. A Cardassian will stab you in the back... then apologize profusely. If you ask them why they did it, they'll look at you funny and earnestly reply, "...Because it needed stabbing, obviously?"
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Averted. Due to a strong Blue-and-Orange Morality, it's mentioned that Cardassians are bored with Shakespearean tragedies because they can figure out who's going to kill who in the first five pages, and Cardassian Enigmas aren't liked by humans because everyone's guilty.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted. The Cardassians were not always a race of cunning, ruthless expansionists. Indeed, the main reason why they resorted to interstellar conquest in the first place was to overcome resource scarcity on their homeworld. Many Cardassians feel remorse for what their empire did and some are instrumental in preventing a similar takeover from the Dominion. It's not surprising that Bajorans and their other victims see them this way, though.
• Always Need What You Gave Up: The Cardassians are naturally chagrined at the discovery of a stable wormhole in Bajoran space after they have already pulled out from Bajor. They're constantly waiting to swoop back in and take it. All under the guise of helping the new Commander find his sea legs, of course.
• Always Someone Better: The Obsidian Order prided itself on being the best damn spy service in the Alpha Quadrant, knowing everything about a person right down to their favourite food. The Dominion still has them beat, as Garak painfully learns. Within a day of contacting some old friends on Dominion-run Cardassia, Garak finds they've all caught a bad case of dead.
• Armies Are Evil: The military, led by Gul Dukat, extended an olive branch to the Dominion in exchange for their share of the Alpha Quadrant once it was conquered. This didn't work out so well.
• Art Evolution: The weird headgear that the Cardassians wear in their first scene. It looks like Gul Macet goes to work in bondage gear which doesn't exactly convey terror. The body armor is much blockier than normal, and a Cardassian with mutton chops is just wrong. In their first appearance the Cardassians are also far more flesh-tone in color, than the more grey-ish skin they'd have in DS9.
• Authority in Name Only: Cardassia operates under a tripartite system of the civilian government (Detapa Council) the ruling junta (Central Command) and the intelligence service (Obsidian Order); in practice however, the Council was completely toothless and allowed the other two to operate in complete autonomy.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: In the end, the Cardassians were forced to become this: guerrilla fighters struggling to take back their planet from a brutal occupation.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The females of their species are turned on by argumentative males. O'Brien learns this the hard way after getting into a spat with a Cardassian engineer. ("I'm very fertile.")
• Big Brother Is Watching: It was said that the average Cardassian could not sit down to dinner without the contents of the meal being noted and logged by the Order.
  Dr. Bashir: And if people eat something that doesn't meet with their approval?
  Odo: People have been known to disappear for less.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Cardassians evolved on a hot planet and prefer temperatures that humans find sweltering. When the Federation takes control of Deep Space Nine, they discover that the Cardassians set the station's temperature around 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit). Several Cardassian and half-Cardassian characters complain that the station is too cold.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • The Cardassian justice system is radically different than those of Federation civilizations; whereas the Federation operates under the assumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, the accused in Cardassian courts is assumed to be guilty by default, since the alternative is the suggestion that the all-powerful, all-knowing benevolent state might potentially have made some sort of mistake while investigating the alleged crime, with the trial simply being a formality to explain why the accused is guilty, publically, before they are sentenced. The defense council for the accused is not supposed to actually get their client acquitted; to succeed in getting their client free is practically career suicide, or worse, actual suicide.
  • Cardassian popular culture has different standards than those of Federation civilizations. A popular genre of novel for Cardassians is "Enigma", mystery novels detailing the trials of the accused who are always declared guilty, with the appeal being in determining who is guilty of what crime. Federation citizens don't see the appeal, just as how Cardassians fail to see the appeal of Shakespeare's tragedies, since they can guess who is going to die by whose hand and don't see how, for instance, there is tragedy in Julius Caesar when Caesar is killed by his best friend.
• Boisterous Weakling: While the Cardassian Union is considered a major power in the Alpha Quadrant, alongside the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire, it is also by far the weakest of the four. This is highlighted with the Klingon-Cardassian War in DS9. While the war degenerated into a stalemate, it took just about everything the Cardassians had to keep the Klingons at bay; by contrast, the Klingon invasion force consisted of little more than one third of their total strength. Similarly, the Great Offscreen War between the Federation and Cardassia is implied to have been a rout given the technology disparity between the two powers, Federation pacifism being the only reason their empire even survived the conflict. Nevertheless, this didn't stop the Cardassians from attempting to provoke open war with the Federation again, albeit not before using subterfuge to gain an advantage first.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Cardassian technology is not as flashy or as sophisticated as that of the Federation, but it tends to be reliable for the purpose that it was designed for. Cardassian phase-disruptor rifles, for example, are well-regarded for their simplicity and ruggedness. In a clear analogy to the M16 vs AK-47 debate, Kira favourably compares them to the Starfleet Type-3, noting that they were more powerful and far less complex, only possessing two settings compared to the latter's sixteen, and can still fire after being dragged through the mud. The Federation rifle may have a whole host of features, but you don't need all those to kill someone.
  • That said, there is something of a subversion in that it is not nearly as advanced either. Unless in numbers, Cardassian warships were rarely a threat to newer Starfleet vessels in TNG and DS9. Similarly, a number of throwaway remarks reinforce the idea that Federation technology is generally well ahead of its Cardassian counterpart. In "The Wounded", a rogue captain flying around their space on a vendetta required them to ask the Federation for help, because they simply couldn't stop him themselves.
  • The Cardassian fleet in general seems to be this trope. No Superweapon Surprise like the Breen, no gigantic uber-ships like the Borg Cubes or the Dominion battleships, no cloaking devices like the Klingons or Romulans. Just lots and lots (and lots) of medium-sized Galor-class cruisers. However, the fact that they lack anything like a Federation Galaxy-class starship or Romulan D'Deridex warbird implies that they are simply incapable of creating larger, more sophisticated vessels. The Keldon-class cruiser, which represents their most advanced warship, is built on little more than a modified Galor spaceframe.
• Bread and Circuses:
  • Cardassia Prime is run by an authoritarian military junta which lets the civilians have their say (the Detapa Council) and then does whatever it wants to anyway, with the Council serving as a sort of steam valve for popular discontent and opinion but not exercising any actual governance over the country. This changes rapidly, and later forms the basis for a resistance movement against the Founders.
  • Televised treason trials are constant and serve as the planet's most-watched form of entertainment. The proceedings are crafted to maximize drama and Schadenfreude, such as prodding the weeping families of the accused to renounce their husbands/fathers/sons and testify against them, to discouraging private conferences between consul (which the viewing audience can't overhear). Odo exploited this flaw in the system by staging continual Courtroom Antics to drag O'Brien's trial out until he could be exonerated by evidence.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: Exterior shots of Cardassia Prime always include a giant Jumbotron barking out slogans to the populace.
• Cannon Fodder: Weyoun barely stifles a yawn as Damar (the Dominion figurehead) protests the sacrifices that Cardassia has made and how not one family hasn't lost somebody in the war. As far as the Dominion is concerned, the Cardassians are meat shields — the first wave of troops sent into every battle to cushion the blow for the Dominion ships behind.
• Can't Catch Up: Up until TNG, the Cardassians could achieve local parity in the Federation's backyard, though the best they could manage was a stalemate. However, over the course of DS9, it becomes apparent that they simply cannot compete with other Alpha Quadrant powers on a material level, which leads them (or at least Gul Dukat) to seek out an alliance with the Dominion that doesn't work out for them so well in the end.
• Complexity Addiction: Something of a species hat: they have a liking for contrived drama. Their mystery genre has all of the suspects known from the beginning, with only the exact nature of their crimes being unknown to the reader. A popular Cardassian board game is Kotra, which, as Garak describes it, favors bold tactical maneuvers over defensive play; hence his annoyance at a Ferengi's attempts to stockpile his 'assets' during their match. Trials are all televised for popular consumption, even though the verdict is always guilty, because it leaves the population reassured that justice always prevails. This is also evident in battle, as seen in "Soldiers of the Empire" where a Klingon speaks admiringly of Cardassian adversaries who always had "a plan within a plan within a plan leading to a trap".
• Daycare Nightmare: The Cardassians pride themselves on having the best education system in the Alpha Quadrant. At the age of three, Cardassian children were placed under such intense mental training that by the time they reached high school age they had perfect recall and could resist a Vulcan mind meld. Exactly what kind of hell the poor buggers are put through to achieve this has not been disclosed, but it can be inferred from Dukat's statement that "Education is power; joy is vulnerability."
• Deadly Graduation: Within the Obsidian Order, at any rate, having to torture a loved one or close acquaintance is used as a test of loyalty for New Meat recruits.
• Deal with the Devil: Dukat makes a deal with the Dominion, supposedly to restore his people to glory, but really just for his own sake, where Cardassia and the Dominion become best buds. And then the war starts dragging on, and Cardassian casualties just keep mounting. The Cardassians reach their breaking point when the Founders stop treating them even as second-class citizens: now they're third-class citizens behind the Breen. Unbelievably a secret itemized treaty is drafted offering territorial concession from Cardassia to the Breen but it doesn't list what they are. The Dominion is literally giving chunks of the Empire away. Damar realizes he has to act soon to preserve his peoples' dignity.
• Dumb Is Good: They are meticulous record keepers, even training other worlds on the art of bookkeeping. Like most imperial powers, their art and sciences are second to none. Finally, the Cardassians trained themselves to have photographic memories, which means you can't even trust them glancing at a document or piece of technology for a second.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • They were originally called the Cardassian Empire, but this was changed to the Cardassion "Union" (a name which drips with blancmage) much later on, presumably to differentiate them from the Klingon and Romulan Empires.
  • On a related note, the Obsidian Order were caught building a fleet of next-generation ships in the barren Orias System in "Defiant". Dukat mentioned that the Order never approved of the peace treaty with the Federation, and were planning to re-invade the Badlands with those ships, going entirely over the heads of the Central Command in the process (presumably to set up a kind of "CIA Evil, FBI Good" scenario). Later on in the season, Enabran Tain explains the fleet is part of a joint-operation with the Tal Shiar to launch a first strike on the Changeling's homeworld. This is slightly more in line with the Obsidian Order's organizational functions of maintaining security and carrying out espionage.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Cardassian literature often confounds humans, and vice versa. Garak complains that any fool can figure out during the first act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that Brutus is going to betray him, and cannot understand why Caesar doesn't figure this out (or is willfully blind to an impending coup d'état) until the knives are literally coming at him from all directions. Likewise, most Agatha Christie novels cause Cardassians great difficulty; whilst the idea of a VIP being killed under mysterious circumstances appeals, they can't grasp how one person carried out the deed without any help.
• Evil Colonialist:
  • Despite the frequent Nazi allusions made throughout the series, the Cardassians' actual crimes as a whole are far more reminiscent of nineteenth century European imperialism. This is, perhaps, most obvious in Gul Dukat's attitude towards the Bajorans: as a 'lesser culture' that the Cardassians were 'helping' by imposing Cardassian customs and exploiting them to the benefit of Cardassia itself, similar to opinions expressed by British civil servants about the British Raj. The goal of the Occupation does not seem to have been the wholesale extinction of the Bajoran people, but rather the complete subjugation of the planet to Cardassian rule and the exploitation of its resources — in short, exactly what colonial powers did to Africa and much of Asia throughout the nineteenth century.
  • Similar to the above, one could see the Cardassian Union as an analogue for Imperial Japan, with both being imperialist polities whose expansionism and militarism — compelled by resource scarcity — brings them into conflict with larger and more powerful liberal democracies, in this case the Federation. Bajor can be seen as a stand-in for Korea, subjected to systematic exploitation of its population and resources. Furthermore, comparisons to atrocities often credited to Imperial Japan — forced labour camps, comfort women, medical experimentation and so forth — are also evident. Allusions to Japanese torture of prisoners during the Second World War, as depicted in "Chain of Command", are barely disguised.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Cardassia is a dry planet and the cold-blooded denizens prefer warm climates and dimmed lighting. What humans consider to be room temperature is frigid to a Cardassian.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: What humans or Bajorans consider to be suitable lighting is far too much for sensitive Cardassian eyes. This means whenever we see Terok Nor in flashbacks, dimmer lighting helps add to the oppressive feel of the place, compared to the much more cheerful-looking DS9.
• Evil Virtues: Cardassian culture is fervently patriotic, and while the ugly facist side of that all-consuming fixation on dutiful obedience is frequently noted, their willingness to endure misery and misfortune in the name of duty is often admired.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Not so much in culture as in role, but the Cardassian empire as of DS9 actually slides very well into the slot of Benito Mussolini's Italy:
  • It's a repressive fascist state which claims to be restoring imperial glory after a period of ossification among its people, that engages in very aggressive foreign policy against much weaker neighbors, partly as a result of an inferiority complex due to being "the least of the great powers", clearly inferior to the more advanced economies it derides as weak and decadent.
  • Their policy in Bajor, while it draws many Nazi or Soviet comparisons out of universe, is actually more similar to the Italian methods of colonization in the Balkans and Africa (especially Ethiopia), with a less overtly-genocidal aim that nonetheless involves mass repression, reprisal executions, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps. Also, the occupation of Bajor seemingly had no economic utility for Cardassia compared to its cost; in a similar way, Italy never profited from its empire and impoverished itself with unsustainable military spending that caused economic and political isolation, with the the conquests being more about prestige than anything.
  • Cardassia/Italy ends up allying with a bordering expansionistic military superpower (after initial hostility) in the Dominion/Nazi Germany, hoping to get back lands it felt itself owed but denied by Federation/Allied intervention, and tempted with the idea of ruling their own lesser empire in the Alpha Quadrant/Mediterranean while their bigger ally takes the rest. They end up jumping head first into defeat after defeat as a result.
  • The finale of the Dominion War is even rather similar to the end of the Italian Campaign of World War II - Cardassia/Italy gets forcibly subsumed into a puppet state by its senior partner after too many failures, leading to a split between the puppet government and rebels largely made up of Former Regime Personnel; the rebels then proceed to ally with the anti-Dominion alliance/Allies against the puppet government and the occupiers, causing the occupiers to institute mass destruction and executions in reprisals for the rebels' "disloyalty."
  • This all culminates in a final allied offensive against the withered and depleted occupiers at the end of a long war, which also corresponds with a mass uprising by the resurgent rebels which drives the occupiers out and leaves the country/planet devastated but on the road to a new non-fascist path. They eventually integrate into the system of the Federation/Allies.
• Family Values Villains: In theory. Cardassian culture is for the most part a deeply nurturing and family-oriented culture, but there are many ugly exceptions to the rule.
  Picard: When children are taught to devalue others, they learn to devalue everything else. Including their parents.
• Fantastic Racism: Dubbed "Cardies" and "Spoonheads" by veterans of the Occupation of Bajor and the Cardassian-Federation war. The Cardassian government clearly had a much worse racism against Bajorans, tormenting them in huge numbers in Holocaust-type death camps.
• False Reassurance: Cardassian jurists are more like father confessors. The Judge presiding over the Miles O'Brien case assured his Captain that the Chief was enjoying "the most efficient criminal investigation system in the quadrant" and "the best counsel in all Cardassia." Sounds great, but run it through the Newspeak translator and you soon discover what Cardassian "efficiency" really means.
  O'Brien: Have you ever won a case?
  Public Conservator: Winning isn't everything!
• Fascist, but Inefficient:
  • Zigzagged. On one hand, Cardassians exemplify a certain orderly efficiency: the Obsidian Order is truly one of the most efficient intelligence services in the Alpha Quadrant, their schooling system is second to none, they suffer from considerably less infighting than either the Romulans or the Klingons, and their record-keeping is impeccable. On the other hand, they also demonstrate a number of inefficiencies that are characteristic of fascist regimes. For one, Cardassians regularly suffer resource shortages that are virtually unheard of in most other warp-capable civilizations. Their government exists in a similarly precarious state: while the Central Command holds the most power in Cardassian society, it is ultimately illegitimate and is dependent on the Obsidian Order to maintain control over the general population. When the Obsidian Order is Lured into a Trap and decimated, it doesn't take long for the civilian Detapa Council to supplant the Central Command. Then of course, there's their species' hat of Complexity Addiction. Throughout TNG and DS9, the Cardassians repeatedly indulge in convoluted plots intended to discredit the Federation... which generally tend to blow up in their faces.
  • Cardassians make extensive use of slave labor that is primitive by the standards of today, to say nothing of the 24th century. The workers are basically equipped with pick axes and buckets to mine with like they're in ancient Egypt. Keep in mind that Cardassians are a warp-capable civilization. There's basically no real reason they should rely on this as much as they do other than the fact they enjoy oppressing species perceived as "lesser". Even Terok Nor, a space station, was super reliant on slaves doing back-breaking labor for its ore processing when the Cardassians could've easily automated much of the process. It's made worse because it is mentioned several times that yields and productivity were a concern, but at no point did the Cardassians ever consider moving to more efficient methods. Another effect of this is that Cardassians have to waste resources keeping their slaves in line. In the first episode of Season 2 of DS9, they have an entire labor camp for 12 prisoners (and that camp has two Galor class ships as reinforcements). Terok Nor itself had to be programmed with layers upon layers of security systems in the case of a slave uprising - the last level of which served basically to keep the station commander from retreating if the slaves were not put down so he'd die at his post.
• Foreign Queasine:
  • According to a human that spent a while on Cardassia:
    Barry Waddle: You know what Cardassians drink in the morning? Fish juice. Hot fish juice. After six months, I was HOPING the Klingons would invade.
  • Any scene with Cardassians will likely include kanar, an alcoholic beverage served in distinctive, spiral-shaped bottles. What's strange about kanar is that it's thick as pudding and dribbles out of the bottleneck like maple syrup. The main ingredient in real life is, in fact, corn syrup, and poor Casey Biggs (DS9's resident lush) got sick from downing so many glasses of it. Kanar can be enjoyed by humans, unlike Vulcan spirits — though O'Brien warned that it seriously takes some getting used to.
• Generational Saga: One of their most revered forms of literature is the repetitive epic, the most celebrated of which is The Never-Ending Sacrifice, which traces a family throughout history, focusing on each generation's virtually identical allegiance to the state. Dr. Bashir finds it dull as dishwater.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: A good Cardassian never has a single hair out of place.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management:
  • The Central Command would not move on the issue of Dominion encroachment or the wild attacks of the Klingon Empire. The reasons for this are numerous. For one thing, the Federation's peace treaty, while skewed in Cardassia's favor, discredited the military and loosened their grip on the homeworld; the Central Command were rapidly losing authority to the Detapa Council, who wanted to move toward peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. To paraphrase Spock, the Council had the right idea, but at the wrong time. The Central Command were also afraid of losing even more territories in a war. Thirdly, opportunists like Dukat were secretly brokering an alliance with the Dominion, leaving them in an advantageous position when the Jem'Hadar finally invaded. Gowron and Garak also suggested that there might have been Changeling infiltrators on Cardassia Prime to promote a policy of non-aggression.
  • Subverted with their actual joining of the Dominion, however. The government was only willing to join in the first place because it was in a fragile position to begin with, it was dealing with constant terrorist attacks from the Maquis, and had to deal with uprisings, resistance movements, and defectors among its own people. Even then, it still took the decimation of their Obsidian Order, and the influence of Gul Dukat to push them into it. Whether they knew just how bad it would be for them, they had little reason to care, at least at the point of joining.
• Heel–Face Turn: It's not confirmed in canon if Cardassia officially joined The Federation. However, the late-32nd-century President Laira Rillak is a mix of human, Cardassian, and Bajoran, and it's noted that these races were (past tense) enemies, but no longer. In addition, a Cardassian captain is seen at HQ during one of Admiral Vance's briefings.
• Hobbes Was Right:
  • Cardassia was originally a peaceful, spiritual planet not unlike Bajor. A mass famine resulted in the junta we see today.
  • The most maddening thing about Cardassia is the unflagging pride in their culture and the attempts to 'educate' the Bajoran people. The arrogance of this race knows no bounds: they excuse the raping of a planet and its people in the name of progress.
• Hollywood Atheist: Most of Cardassia's finest religious artifacts were sold in order to beef up the military. Symbolically, this represented the Cardassians (then-known as "Hebitians") exchanging their old faith for a quasi-fanatical nationalism.
• Interservice Rivalry: There has always been friction between Central Command and the Obsidian Order as their mission statements didn't gel; the former worked to expand Cardassia's borders, and the latter fought to insulate them. This power-sharing agreement finally came to an end when the Order launched a botched attack on the Changelings' homeworld in the Omarion Nebula without permission from the military. This failure allowed the Central Command to disband the Order, but at the cost of crippling Cardassian security. This resulted in the dissident movement gaining significant ground and restoring the authority of the Detapa Council. For a time the government was concerned mostly with putting down riots all over the planet.
• Intertwined Fingers: Touching palms is the equivalent of a kiss on the cheek.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Assuming Garak is telling the truth (big "if" there), Cardassian taxmen are not above a little murder when it comes to collecting back payments.
• Kangaroo Court:
  • Court proceedings work in reverse on Cardassia. Sentencing is determined from the start, and then a sham trial is conducted on live TV for the purposes of celebrating "the wisdom of the state". The most illustrious defense attorney on Cardassia has a win/loss record like Glass Joe's.
  Chief Arkon Makbar: The offender, Miles O'Brien, human, officer of the Federation's Starfleet, has been found guilty of aiding and abetting seditious acts against the state. The sentence is death. Let the trial begin.
  • A defense lawyer who actually wins a case, even by accident, is executed for not doing their job poorly enough.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Ever since their introduction in TNG, the Cardassians generally slipped past karma's sight. However, when they were finally hit by it in the end of DS9, they were hit far harder than anybody expected.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Lured by the promise of becoming the dominant power of the Alpha Quadrant, the Cardassians sided with the far more powerful Dominion against the Federation and its allies. Over the course of the conflict however, the Dominion forced them to bear most of the war effort, consumed their resources, and even gave away their existing territories, effectively turning the Cardassian Union into little more than a client state of the Dominion.
  • When Damar led a resistance group against their "allies", the Dominion retaliated by implementing a scorched earth policy on Cardassia Prime. Luckily, the Founder in charge was taken into custody before she could kill them all. However, the ruination of their home planet set Cardassian culture back a hundred years — just as the Cardassian occupation had set back the Bajorans — with close to a tenth of its population dead and almost all of its major cities reduced to ashes. Also, the Cardassian Union is completely smashed and Garak no longer recognizes his homeworld. It's interesting the words he uses: He declares that Cardassia is "guilty as charged." For a species obsessed with law and order (or, more accurately, guilt and puishment), turning such a loaded term on his own government is a huge paradigm shift.
  • When the Dominion decides to execute the families of Cardassian resistance, Damar (whose family was executed), asks who'd order something like that. Kira bitterly replies "Yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?" as the Cardassians (and Damar himself) were fan of the tactic during the occupation of Bajor and re-taking of DS9 (Damar himself having shot Ziyal over her betrayal of Cardassia). This does ultimately serve as a wake up call for Damar that if Cardassia's to survive it can't go back to the way it was.
• Lizard Folk: Self-explanatory. We've come a long way from the Gorn. In "The Way of the Warrior", when some Klingons beat up Garak, Bashir mentions they fractured "seven of his tranverse ribs", also known as gastralia, which protect a lizard's soft underbelly. Probably a throwaway line, but it checks out.

• Meet the New Boss:
  • They could be also considered a refinement of the Romulan menace on TNG, as they were introduced just as Sela and her cohorts were phased out. Funnily enough, the Cardassian Elim Garak, no stranger to magnificent bastardry himelf, threw shade on the entire Romulan race in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges".
  • The Cardassians really are to the nineties what the Klingons and Romulans were to the sixties: While Gene's generation were scared of a monolithic 'other' threatening atomic annihilation, the nineties brought the fear of government surveillance, false flag operations and political upheaval.
  • They were also finally a believable villain for the later seasons of TNG. The Ferengi were ultimately too comical to be villains and proved to be better as comic relief characters. Meanwhile, the Borg went too far into Eldritch Abomination territory for the TNG writers to come up with a believable plot with Collective as the antagonist after Best of Both Worlds, with only a rogue group of drones under Lore's command making any further appearance during the series (Later retcons in Star Trek: First Contact at least allowed Voyager writers to feature them). Thus the Cardassians were created to serve the antagonist role.
• Men Are Uncultured: Similar to the Romulans, the Cardassians don't discriminate based on gender. However, there is some shoehorning regarding their vocation: men are expected to enlist in the military, leaving the sciences and engineering fields to the women. While we see no evidence of Cardassian men being inferior in these areas, it has given rise to a bias that men can't even replace a spark plug without help.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: As Cardassians are the first and longest-running antagonists in DS9, they frequently come off as Always Chaotic Evil. That said, DS9 was also a major deconstructor of Star Trek tropes, and as such there are many characters who rebel against their societal stereotypes. Examples include self-flagellating Death Seeker Aamin Marritza, Four-Star Badass Defector from Decadence Tekeny Ghemor, and Bajoran-Cardassian Child of Two Worlds Tora Ziyal, among others.
• Named After Their Planet: Technically named after their solar system, with their homeworld is called Cardassia Prime and the planets of Cardassia 2 through 4 existing in the system.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name:
  • While the Cardassians as a whole are not necessarily identical to Nazis (see the Evil Colonialist entry above), their occupation of Bajor and persecution of its highly spiritual population is strongly evocative of the Holocaust.
  • If the Occupation of Bajor is compared with the Holocaust (with Gallitep standing in for Auschwitz), the Cardassians never really faced their Nuremberg. They escaped justice and resumed their policy of colonial expansion. That is, until the end of DS9 when they end up a lower member of the Dominion and treated as such, some members of the military turned into rebels like their formally occupied Bajorans and their planet utterly scorched in retaliation. All in all, the Cardassians were set back a hundred years in development and even Garak, a Cardassian himself, says that they pretty much deserved it.
  • The ethics of using Nazi science are discussed in "Nothing Human" (VOY), in which the Doctor revives a Mengele-type from the Bajoran Occupation as a hologram. Naturally, the Cardassian scientist is all honey when chatting about his work. Eventually the Doctor deletes the hologram when the subject's horrors come to light.
    Doctor: Are we also going to tell them where you honed your surgical techniques? A footnote, perhaps. "For further details, see: Cardassian death camps."
• Paper Tiger: The implication throughout TNG and DS9 is that the Cardassians are a bit of this. They see themselves as a militaristic powerhouse, but clearly lag behind the big three major powers of the Alpha Quadrant: The Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. "The Wounded" shows their military hopelessly outmatched by a single Federation Nebula-class starship. The Klingons invaded and make short work of the military (though their leadership had just been ousted which helped the Klingons, but at the same time the Klingons had suffered a massive civil war but a few years ago). Even when they join the Dominion it's clear the Jem'Hadar and the Breen are the real muscle in the alliance, and when Dukat's influence vanishes the Cardassians are relegated to a junior partner.
• Planet Looters: The Occupation of Bajor has them build a giant mining station to strip-mine the planet from orbit. Or more accurately, have Bajorans build a giant mining station to strip-mine their own planet from orbit.
• Police State: It was boasted that even the poorest Cardassian citizen could walk the streets without fear... of the civilian population, that is.
• Psychic Block Defense: The Obsidian Order's agent training program is so advanced that they are made immune to most forms of interrogation, including Vulcan mind melds.
• The Quisling: Cardassia was the first Alpha Quadrant power to sign on with the Dominion, in direct opposition to the Federation. When Dukat says that everything he is doing is to make Cardassia strong again you can see a semblance of logic (there's that word again) behind selling his people out.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Played with in that they seem to combine reptilian characteristics (scaly skin, possible cold-bloodedness) with mammalian ones (e.g. hair). They are reputed to display pack-like behavior, desiring to establish — or at least determine — dominance in any social situation. They're also self-confessed xenophobes.
• Retired Monster: For the most part, the head honchos who ran the Bajoran occupation went on holiday and were never punished. Crell Moset, a virologist who performed illegal experiments on Bajoran slaves, was rewarded with a chair at a top university. Gul Darhe'el, who ran the brutal Auschwitz-like work camp where countless Bajorans perished not only escaped the Kalla-Nohra disease through a lucky break that saw him being out of the camp during the accident that caused the outbreak, but lived to a ripe old age and was buried as a hero with full military honors in a respected memorial. Garak is running a clothier's, though he was actually forced into retirement. Some of the collaborators fled to Cardassia Prime. Kubus Oak, a Bajoran official who worked closely with the occupiers, rubber-stamped extradition orders sending his countrymen to their deaths in the mines. After going into hiding on Cardassia, he decided to retire to Bajor, confident he would never be tried. Indeed, the government was forced to grant him amnesty out of embarrassment for other untold crimes.
• Rule of Symbolism: Prominent in their architecture, especially with Terok Nor. The bridge is designed so that everyone in the work pit looks up to the prefect's office with respect. Especially unsettling in their cities, which feature many curved towers that bear a disturbing resemblance to the fence posts at Auschwitz.
• Sadist: While not all Cardassians are sadists, some of their culture is sadistic. For example, when they tortured Bajorans, they'd occasionally kill or rape them for no apparent reason and seemed to enjoy it. Another example is how Cardassians invite the accused's family to court because they like to watch them cry.
• Salt the Earth: On their way out of Bajor, they trashed the station and the planet itself was ecologically devastated, almost certainly intentionally rather than general disregard. Dukat said that some in the Central Command would have preferred that Dukat wipe out every last Bajoran on the planet when they left just to spite both the Bajorans and Federation. Karma caught up with them when the Dominion tried to glass Cardassia in retaliation for the Cardassians turning on them in the final hours of the Dominion War.
• Sigil Spam: The Cardassian Union plasters its logo everywhere, and their main ship of the line, the Galor-class light cruiser, is even shaped like said logo when viewed from above.
• Slipknot Ponytail: The standard Cardassian hairstyle is severely slicked back and shiny, to compliment their reptilian features and metallic uniforms. Whenever a Cardassian gets their hair out of order, it's a sign that shit just got serious.
• The Social Darwinist: In the relaunch novels, Cardassia is a world defined by its hunger. It's a survival-at-any-price mentality and a determination to endure no matter the cost which fuels the Union.
• The Spartan Way: Cardassians favor tough-minded pragmatism over the kinder emotions. Dukat once declared, "Education is power, joy is vulnerability", the Cardassian credo for raising one's children. Gul Ghemor was a dissenter, expressing regret over his daughter abandoning her sculptures to join an intelligence outfit. "Cardassia could use more artists."
• Secret Police: Cardassia Prime has its own flavor of the Tal Shiar, the "Obsidian Order."
• Take Up My Sword: Another heartwarming Cardassian family tradition. On his deathbed, the father uses his dying breaths to read a list of names. It falls to the eldest son to ensure daddy's enemies don't go unpunished.
  • The Shri-tal is normally read to family members, but there are exceptions: Legate Ghemor told his secrets to Kira Nerys, whom he considered a surrogate daughter, even though she was Bajoran. Garak also allowed a human, Dr. Bashir, to be present during his father's dying breaths, although his father had gone blind and assumed that they were alone (plus all his enemies were already dead).
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The females have telltale blue marks on their foreheads and neck ridges. Their lips are also a darker hue.
• This Means War!: The Dominion destroys a major population center, Lakarian City, to set an example for any other would-be heroes who might support the revolution. This atrocity finally causes the Cardassian ships to break from the rest of the Dominion fleet and turn their guns on their former allies.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: Bajor was a victim of this for decades during the Cardassian occupation.
  • Many cultural artifacts were looted by the Cardassian government.
  • Horrible war crimes (including rape) were committed by the Cardassian military.
  • When the occupation ended, the Cardassian government decided to Salt the Earth, leaving even basic utilities in disrepair.
• Torture First, Ask Questions Later:
  • Torture is so ubiquitous in the C.U. that it's practically a cultural custom. If a prisoner is said to be "well-treated", you can bet that unfortunate person is getting the full treatment, all right.
  • Cardassians are known to enjoy torturing their prisoners whether there is information to be extracted or not. For instance, the Orwellian "Bureau of Identification" has the bland task of keeping dental records of all Cardassians, usually by Age 10. Non-Cardassians who commit crimes in their space are also required to hand over a molar. This is akin to being tortured by the DMV. (The supervisor's bored "would you care to make a confession?" is a nice, customer service-orientated approach to police brutality.)
  • In a nice Terry Gilliam touch, we see a Torture Technician inviting his young daughter into the chamber in a parody of Take Your Child To Work Day. The fact that he doesn't hide his work from his children is creepy but it drives home their survivalist attitude, showing humans to be squeamish and weak.
• Tsundere: Cardassian romance involves bickering at each other, as the naturally-irritable O'Brien finds out to the mutual embarrassment of both himself and the Cardassian who didn't realize he was Happily Married and just generally cranky. This revelation also heavily fuels the fandom interpretation of Garak and Bashir's relationship.
• Vestigial Empire: Dukat's assessment of the Cardassians after the Federation-Cardassian War is that they were once a race whose very name bred fear and now they are just bit players, too frightened to fight back in case they lose what little is left. Unknowingly, Dukat has put his finger on why the Cardassians are so quick to submit to the Dominion. Developments next year would see them regain some of their once mighty reputation only to watch them fall farther than ever before. By the end of the Dominion War, the Cardassian Union was effectively defunct: while the treaty ending the war effectively re-established a status quo ante bellum, the devastation of their homeworld along with the near complete collapse of their military forces and government puts their future as an interstellar empire into question.
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: Initially, the peace-loving Bajorans welcomed their Cardassian visitors. The Cardassians repaid their hospitality by occupying Bajor for fifty years, during which time they forced many Bajorans into slave labor, using them in their various mining operations.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Cardassians are fond of labor camps and slave labors for their prisoners, and basically used Bajor's population as a slave workforce to mine the planet. Their workers often equipped with very primitive equipment like pick axes and baskets to carry their ore.
• What the Romans Have Done for Us: After a catastrophic plague, Cardassia's religious leaders were overthrown by the military, who restructured their entire civilization and created an expansive empire, giving many a newfound sense of purpose. However, after Cardassia is nearly obliterated by the Dominion, Garak privately admits that it was their militarism that brought them to this point.
• Wicked Cultured:
  • The Cardassian education system is top-of-the-line, even by Federation standards. They seem to produce Magnificent Bastards at an unusually high rate.
  • Boasting about one's education and intellectual prowess is considered a form of flirting among Cardassians.
  • invokedWord of God says they were designed to be this trope crossed with Worthy Opponent.
    We introduced a new enemy that's finally able to speak on the level of Picard. They're not grunting, they're not giggling, they're not mutes or all-knowing entities. Here are the Cardassians who also graduated first in their class and they're able to carry on highly intelligent conversations with Picard, but they're sinister as hell.
• Witch Hunt: When Picard spoke of the "drumhead trials" in Earth's past, he might well have been describing Cardassia's legal system. Fake charges have also been known to happen. But that doesn't matter because there is only one verdict on Cardassia, and that verdict is always the same.
  "Whatever you've done, whatever the charges against you, none of that really matters in the long run... This trial is to demonstrate the futility of behavior contrary to good order."
• Women Are Wiser: Cardassian women don't seem to be as prominent in the military and government as men, but most of the ones we see through TNG and DS9 seem to be more level-headed and less belligerent and posturing than the men... though there are exceptions, such as the archon in charge of Miles O'Brien's court case.
• Wrench Wench:
  • The females of the species have a high aptitude for engineering, coding, and (according the novels) medicine. Whether this is by nature or nurture is up for debate.
  • The EMH on Voyager encountered a holographic Cardassian who could repair her own software and was entirely self-taught.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In addition to invading weaker worlds to 'civilize' them, Cardassians regularly pick each other off, too, seeing no need to waste resources on that which is no longer useful.
• You Talk Too Much!: Conversation might just be the best tool in their arsenal, as even the planet's head spymaster agreed. Most Cardassians love the sound of their own voice. As a downside, they find silence most unsettling. Garak once broke a man by mutely staring at him for hours.

Elim Garak

Elim Garak

Just a simple tailor.

Played By: Andrew Robinson

"Lately, I've noticed everyone seems to trust me. It's quite unnerving. I'm still trying to get used to it."

A Cardassian tailor (and magnificent bastard) with a Mysterious Past as a top-notch spy, field agent and torturer for the feared Cardassian Obsidian Order; his moral ambiguity, unique skills and network of shady contacts become rather important in later seasons.

---

• The Ace: Spy, fighter, thief, engineer, hacker, saboteur, negotiator, espionage agent, intelligence gatherer, demolitions expert, torturer, starship navigator, and a very good tailor, Garak has every war-relevant skill you can imagine, and probably a few others you'd rather not.
• Abusive Parents: When Garak eventually opens up a little bit about his childhood, it's clear he had a very troubled relationship with his father. He was often locked in a closet as punishment and spent his entire life wishing his father would give him even a small amount of approval. Later in life, particularly when we encounter him, he's come to realize-slash-hope that his father Enabran Tain might well have had a little affection for him, but didn't dare show it due to his position. On his deathbed, Tain gives in to Garak's plea to speak to him as a father rather than a mentor, and reminisces about a day (which, as Garak notes, was "the only day") in the country when as a small boy Garak persevered in riding an animal despite constantly falling off and speaks about how proud of him he was.
• Adopt the Dog: Interrogating Odo in "The Die is Cast" is a bad assignment for Garak. On the one hand he is eager to regain his standing with Tain and relishes the chance to get back to work, but on the other he clearly has respect for Odo and his time amongst the Federation has softened him somewhat. He relishes the chance to extract a nugget from the intractable Odo, but as soon as he does, Garak can't bring himself to divulge it. At the end of the story, Garak sighs as he picks his way through the charred remains of his shop, having lost any chance he had of resuming his old life.
• Agent Peacock: He may not look like much, even by Cardassian standards. But this wispy tailor managed to go toe-to-toe with Worf in close-quarters combat. He lost, but he earned Worf's grudging respect in the process.
  Worf: You fight well, for a "tailor".
• Almighty Janitor: This lowly tailor is plugged into more intelligence resources than the whole of Starfleet combined. He even gives Section 31 a run for their money.
• Ambiguously Gay: According to his actor he initially played Garak as being omnisexual. He behaved rather flirtatiously when he introduced himself to Bashir and has several ambiguous scenes, such as telling Bashir to take his (isolinear data) rod and eat it, after which Bashir offers him chocolates.
  • And then there is his absolute relish at foiling Bashir's romantic liaison in the secret agent program.
    (mugging shamelessly) "Odd. She seemed so interested in your advances just a moment ago. I wonder what scared her away. ...Oh, no! I do apologize. You must be incensed."
  • "Call to Arms" revisits this, years later, in a wry way. Garak wonders why Bashir's patients put up with his awful bedside manner, to which the Doctor bats his eyes and says it's his boyish smile. Garak, with a withering look, retorts, "Not so boyish, anymore, Doctor." Zing.
  • Garak can't help running his mouth when in trouble. In "Broken Link", when confined in a mess hall by two ornery goldshirts, Garak loudly observes that, in his professional opinion, what Starfleet uniforms really need is a nice scarf.
  • In one episode, O'Brien discovers that arguing is considered a form of courtship by Cardassians. Which puts Garak and Bashir's constant debates into perspective.
  • It's also established elsewhere that shoulders are erogenous zones for Cardassians and is roughly the equivalent of grabbing someone's ass. What's the first thing Garak does to Bashir? Put his hand on Bashir's shoulder.
  • Cardassians are established to flirt with wry, argumentative insults. Almost invariably, Garak is fascinated and grinning when Bashir returns his put-downs in kind, but frustrated and grumpy when he offers "insufferable Federation optimism."
  • Many a fanfiction has Garak and Bashir becoming a couple, and one such pieces was actually performed by Andrew Robinson and Alexander Siddig.
• Anti-Hero/ Anti-Villain: Whether you label him as either a 'hero' or a 'villain', you cannot deny that Garak is one of DS9's greatest allies in the war against the Dominion, but he also committed what could charitably be called war crimes in service of the cruel Cardassian Union, which he's still loyal to. The one thing you can be certain of is that his actions are often in service of a greater good, and he will not hesitate to sacrifice his life, honor, and dignity for that good. The problem is determining which 'good' he's serving, and which side he's really on.
• Apologetic Attacker: Practically begs for the information he needs, because he doesn't want to have to keep torturing Odo under orders from Tain.
  • In "Second Skin", he guns down another Cardassian agent and then drops this utterly savage Bond One-Liner. Perhaps the most frightening thing about it is the possibility that he might actually be telling the truth.
    Garak: Pity. I rather liked him.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: Garak delights in calling out people when they seem to mistrust him, only to then compliment them for being wise enough to do so.
• Badass Bookworm: A jovial, well-educated tailor, who survived some of the harshest espionage of the war and could gun down a room full of Jem'Hadar troops in 15 seconds flat.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Explicitly rips Sisko a new one for criticizing this at the climax of "In the Pale Moonlight" when they both know that was why Sisko came to him in the first place.
  Garak: That's why you came to me, isn't it captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Inverted — Garak once confessed that life on the station was itself torturous. Ironically, his neural implants which made him immune to pain (and depression at being exiled) eventually shorted out and caused him agony for a few days. His enthusiasm for interrogation is never the same after that experience.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The friendliest Cardassian you'll ever meet... and arguably the most dangerous by far.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He's a highly entertaining conversation partner with a gift for sarcasm and wit, but he demonstrates many, many times that you should never turn your back on him.
• Bond One-Liner: Appropriately for a ruthless superspy, he's very good at these.
  • After snidely berating an old rival Cardassian and then obliterating him with one disruptor shot:
  Garak: A pity. I rather liked him.
  • After a different rival offered him a chance to end his exile by helping capture three dissidents, only to yank the opportunity away and admit that he was going to renege on his promise as soon as the dissidents were in his hands:
  Garak: (disintegrates him) Some people should never be promoted.
• Break the Badass: As seen in the final episode, after the Dominion War he's definitely a broken man.
  Garak: Some would say we got exactly what we deserved. After all, we are not completely innocent here. And I'm not just referring to the occupation of Bajor. Our history is filled with arrogant aggression. We joined the Dominion and betrayed the entire Alpha Quadrant. Yes... we are guilty as charged.
  Bashir: But Cardassian people are strong, they will survive. Cardassia will survive...
  Garak: (hostile, but still grieving) Oh please, doctor, spare me your insufferable Federation optimism! Of course it'll survive. But not as the Cardassia I knew. We had a rich and ancient culture; our art and literature was second to none. And now look at us. So many of our best minds all... gone.
• The Butler Did It: Subverted. Everyone important on DS9 knows he is a spy. Still his supposedly lowly position allows him to work more informally then might otherwise be which can be useful when the Command Roster needs him.
• Catchphrase:
  • "There may be hope for you yet." He utters the phrase pretty much anytime he observes a principled or noble character show signs of cynicism or suspicion (particularly if they indicate they don't trust him).
  • In the early seasons, he was fond of introducing himself as "just plain, simple Garak".
• Category Traitor: In "Second Skin", Entek thinks Garak is betraying the Obsidian Order by helping Starfleet and the Bajoran Government rescue a Bajoran officer and a Cardassian dissident from the Order's clutches.
• Character Development: Garak was originally intended to be an antagonist and foil to Bashir. However, like Dukat, the writers began exploring more sympathetic sides to the character—and unlike with Dukat, the writers didn't later consider this move a mistake.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Garak is a big smiler, and it always bodes badly for somebody. Interestingly, a frown usually means that he's telling the truth.
• The Chessmaster: To a considerable degree. He even out-manipulates Sisko in the Season 6 episode "In The Pale Moonlight". Although he argues that Sisko faked it to keep his hands clean (there really wasn't any other reason to get Garak involved), and Sisko admits in the closing log entry that that may be true.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: His desire to engage in this kind of behavior becomes less and less as time goes by due to the influence of the Federation and, in particular, a couple of personal relationships mainly with Bashir and Odo.
• Claustrophobia: He suffers from an acute version that becomes a plot point on several occasions.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: One of his many areas of expertise. Though one he discovers he's lost his taste for when he's offered a chance to return to his old life.
• Combat Pragmatist
  Odo: You'd shoot a man in the back?
  Garak: Well, it's the safest way, isn't it?
• Consummate Liar: It's so difficult for most people to be able to tell when he's being truthful or lying that the default reaction is to assume he's always lying. He himself encourages this attitude. This has the useful side-effect of him being able to protect important information because he'll even lie about trivial things, resulting in people not being able to tell what's important and what's not. There are a very few who learn how to read him accurately, most notably Odo.
  Bashir: Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?
  Garak: My dear Doctor, they're all true.
  Bashir: Even the lies?
  Garak: *grinning* Especially the lies.
  • His constant lying could be considered a muscle reflex. He lies when there's no reason at all to do so, and admits he'll do it just for the practice.
• Crazy-Prepared: At one point Garak spots an assassin sent after him and deliberately blows up his own shop so security will protect him. The Crazy Prepared part? Garak builds the bomb with a specific type of pheromone trigger (that's also incredibly rare!) favored by the assassin's species to make the frame stick. Apparently he had one lying around just in case. He spotted the assassin on the morning transport, and had everything ready before lunch. Also, In the Pale Moonlight was one long example of how Crazy-Prepared Garak is capable of being.
• Crazy Cultural Comparison: Since Cardassian epics often feature scheming protagonists, Garak mentions he dislikes Julius Caesar because he feels that Shakespeare made Caesar look foolish for not realising that Brutus was obviously plotting to kill him. Given that Caesar is supposed to be a genius, he believes the play is a Farce more than a Tragedy. However, the end of the episode suggests that Garak has finally gotten the point of the play, at great cost.
  • He also stated that the moral he got out of The Boy Who Cried Wolf was "Never tell the same lie twice."
  • He insists to Bashir that a Cardassian novel written in the 'repeating epic' style (where the same storyline is repeated several times in a single novel, with only aesthetic differences between the chapters) is Cardassia's greatest form of literature.
• Cultured Badass: Practically a textbook example of this trope. He is not only highly skilled in the fine art of espionage and manipulation, but can also discuss the finer points of Cardassian literature with a refinement matched by no other.
• Curiosity Causes Conversion: According to Robinson, Garak is intrigued by Bashir's motiveless compassion for others - something totally alien to Cardassians at this point in their history.
• The Dandy: He is, by his own reluctant admission, a pretty good tailor. Garak's also the first to whine about wearing a tacky-looking disguise.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has so many, he's probably the Trekverse's most triumphant example. For example, after getting beaten up by Klingons, Garak tells Bashir that he got the better end of the deal.
  Bashir: They broke seven of your transverse ribs and fractured your clavicle.
  Garak: Ah, but I got off several cutting remarks which no doubt did serious damage to their egos! Thanks to your ministrations, I'll be back on my feet in no time, whereas the damage I did will last a lifetime.
  • At points it seems like Garak is physically incapable of not snarking, even when it's likely only to make his situation worse. Several times, when approached or straight-up ambushed by clearly hostile people, his instinctive response is to put on his most infuriating smile and say something highly inadvisable. Even his mirror universe counterpart (in many ways much less nuanced a character) can't seem to tone it down while talking to a Klingon who just stabbed him and hasn't even pulled the knife out yet.
• Decoy Backstory: Garak, the "plain, simple tailor" who's the sole Cardassian on the promenade left after his people pulled out of Bajor, claims to be just a tailor, but all onboard the station suspect him of being a spy. "The Wire" makes a plot point out of this when he starts falling ill, and Dr. Bashir discovers he has an implant in his body that they eventually learn is a device of The Obsidian Order, designed to put him in a state of euphoria if he was ever tortured. Unfortunately, Garak had been abusing it to the point that the withdrawal nearly kills him, and in a maddened state to try and get Bashir to back away from helping him, he gives three contradictory backstories behind his exile. First, he claims he destroyed an entire Cardassian ship to keep Bajoran prisoners from escaping and was exiled because one of the passengers was related to a member of the government. Then he says he refused to torture starving and battered children, and was reprimanded for his failure to duty. Then he claims it's because he tried to betray his best friend in the Order, Elim, but said friend backstabbed him first. All of these stories are only partially true, or as he puts it, "They were all true, especially the lies": he's really the illegitimate son of former Obsidian Order commander Enabran Tain, was exiled for betraying him, and "Elim" is Garak's own given name.
• Defector from Decadence: What Garak becomes after his old intelligence outfit is dissolved, leaving the corrupt military free to align themselves with Weyoun. Believing the Dominion does not have Cardassia's best interests at heart, he throws in his lot with the Federation and combines efforts with Kira and Damar to organise the resistance. He knows it will destroy the Cardassia he loves (although even he was shocked by just how thoroughly the old Cardassia was destroyed) but he does it anyway.
  • One of his (many) excuses for why he was exiled after the Cardassian withdrawal.^note Although given his state of mind at the time, it's likely the most honest. Even through the Central Command was preparing to pull out from Bajor the next morning, they still prodded Garak to interrogate some child scavengers. This was beyond the pale even for Garak: Tired, hungry, incensed at having to grill clueless children to satisfy some nebulous bureaucracy, he sprang the orphans loose and tossed them some latinum for their troubles rather than finish the interrogation and turn them over for execution.
• Determinator: It's pointed out by other characters in In Purgatory's Shadow that Garak isn't the "giving up sort". In By Inferno's Light he goes on to prove this by defying a chronically debilitating phobia to engineer everyone's escape from a Dominion internment camp. His determination even earns the respect of the Klingons.
• Dissonant Serenity: Murderous plans are as natural to Garak as breathing after his time in the Obsidian Order, so unlike, say, Sisko (who reluctantly gives his assent in "In the Pale Moonlight" and wrestles with his conscience for the rest of the episode), he approaches murder, treachery and political assassination with the same casual attitude as running up a new dress uniform for Sisko or arguing literature with Bashir.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": He insists everyone should think of him as "plain, simple Garak!". This becomes a bit of a running gag among the characters once they're used to the contradiction between his claim of simplicity and his personality, which borders on Complexity Addiction.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: The Cardassians may secretly employ him to keep eyes and ears on DS9, but they also seem to have good reasons for making sure he stays out of Cardassia.
  Kira: Don't worry, he's on our side. I think.
• The Dreaded: Several characters (most notably Grathon Tolar) freak out when they realize that they are a pawn in one of Garak's games. It's not unearned, given that Garak is incredibly amoral, amazingly well trained in many things, and freakishly well-connected in many parts of the quadrant.
• Easily Forgiven: Played with. He's gotten away with some truly dark stuff with nary a slap on the wrist. Things like torturing Odo to try and rejoin the Obsidian Order, trying to destroy the Changelings' new homeworld, murdering any number of people over the course of the series. However, while most people forgive him, they also learn to never again trust him. Nog, especially, never forgets the whole Empok Nor incident, which is something Garak himself compliments.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Downplayed and subverted. Garak's cynicism makes it very hard for him to see things from a more idealistic standpoint, and he admits he finds people like Bashir and Ziyal utterly baffling. It's for this reason he actually respects the Federation, for keeping to their virtues in spite of the brutality of the world, and it's worth noting that he has an extremely close friendship verging on implicit romantic attraction to both Bashir and Ziyal.
• Enemy Mine:
  • When the Klingons invade DS9, he and Dukat are fighting side by side protecting the civilian leaders. He later admits letting him live was probably a mistake.
  • The fate of Cardassia and the Alpha Quadrant ends up requiring Garak, Kira and Damar to put aside their three-way loathing of each other and work together. By the end of series, there are even signs of a Fire-Forged Friends beginning to form between Garak and Kira.
  • Pulling off the plan to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion requires that Sisko make use of Garak's less than legal talents and contacts.
• Enfant Terrible: We learn snippets about Garak’s youth, and it sounds like he used to have quite a temper. He would raise hell in the family home (Mila remembers him as being a horrible brat) and invent charges of treason just so he didn’t have to hear peoples' voices. Then again, maybe he hasn't changed much since there are many people he intends to "look up" when he gets back.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His relationship with Tain is... complicated, but he clearly cares for Ziyal and Mila (who, according to A Stitch In Time, also happens to be his mother) and he's devasted by their respective deaths.
• Evil Is Petty: Garak is said to have been much more vindictive in his younger days. He once invented treason charges against a Gul just for being long-winded. (This was a little much even for Tain, who called him off.)
• The Exile: He evaded taxes. No, wait, he killed some Bajoran prisoners. No, wait, he let some Bajoran prisoners escape. No, wait, he killed the daughter of a prominent Gul. No, wait... in truth, the real reason he was exiled is never revealed, but he certainly has fun lying about it. And, of course, every single version is true. Especially the lies.
• The Extremist Was Right: "In The Pale Moonlight". Killing a Romulan senator who was stonewalling an alliance with the Federation was indeed extreme, but it was necessary to save the Alpha Quadrant. Besides which, the senator wasn't particularly sympathetic to begin with.
• Face Your Fears: Battling acute claustrophobia to ensure everyone's escape from a Dominion internment camp.
• Fake Defector: A simulated version of Garak pulls this in "The Search," but it's pretty in-line with what Garak would do anyway.
  [to Jem-Hadar] "You see, I pretend to be their friend... and then I shoot you."
• Fake Guest Star: He is introduced in the second episode of the show and appears in all seven seasons. He becomes absolutely central to the plot. Yet he doesn't appear in the opening credits because Robinson asked not to.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • In "Things Past", Garak had no moral qualms with the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, despite overwhelming evidence of Cardassian atrocities. While immersed in Odo's hallucination, he remarks that Cardassians are not used to doing menial work and that Bajorans are naturally more suited for menial labor.
  • He seems to have a special hatred for the Romulans. While on a Tal Shiar ship, he calls the Romulan "pointy eared" in an attempt to provoke anger between the Romulans and the Cardassians. During the Dominion War, he's disgusted by the reality that his assistance is killing Cardassians to save Romulans.
• Fate Worse than Death: Being sentenced to running a space station clothing boutique is akin to this. The only one of his kind, humiliated by having to perform a job far beneath him, unable to use his skill set for fear of immediate arrest and execution, and forbidden to return to his homeworld ever again... And add to that the natural Cardassian aversion to other species, space station temperatures and even room lighting. No wonder he's got an addiction to his wire.
  "The temperature is always too cold. The lights always too bright. Every Bajoran on the station looks at me with loathing and contempt."
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: By the series end, all of Garak's old friends in the Order have been rubbed out... either by the Dominion, Tain, or by Garak himself. He reacts to each death as though he broke a pencil. In the seven year run of the show, only three deaths have any effect on him: Tain, Ziyal, and Mila.
• Freudian Excuse: A lot of Garak's issues stem from the fact he was trained from birth by Tain to essentially be the second coming of his father while also relentlessly abusing him. Garak is notably only able to recall one day when Tain showed him genuine parental affection.
• Freudian Excuse Denial: A case where it's actually accurate, has Erzi is treating his claustrophobia, believing it to be the result of abuse he went through as a child, when in reality it's the result of one of his "My God, What Have I Done?" moments.
• The Gadfly: Well, for starters, he pointlessly lies to people as practice. He once gets Worf to crack and agree to sponsor his application to Starfleet, claiming that he's seeking redemption. Garak turns around and mockingly suggests that he skip straight to the rank of Captain (Shades of John De Lancie!), whereupon Worf realizes he's been had.
  Garak: Lying is a skill like any other, and if you want to maintain a level of excellence you have to practice constantly.
  Worf: Practice on someone else.
• Good Is Not Soft: "Good" is actually probably stretching things a bit. Over the course of the series, it is demonstrated many, many times that just because Garak is an ally of the Federation does not mean he's going to follow their rules. People who fail to learn this lesson about him the first time usually don't get the chance to learn it a second.
• Guile Hero: With a little quick planning, and only six deaths, he managed to turn the Romulan Empire against the Dominion. Add in his saving of Martok, Worf, and Bashir, and he basically single-handedly saved the entire Alpha Quadrant.
• The Gunslinger: Multiple times throughout the series, Garak is shown to be incredibly quick on the draw with almost any kind of firearm. Perhaps the most impressive instance is in "Second Skin", where he manages to outshoot and kill another Obsidian Order agent who already managed to draw his weapon while Garak's back was turned.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Case in point: The man manages to backstab both Starfleet and the Jem'Hadar within the space of a single thirty-second scene. He seems to be a shining example of his people's hat.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: When you realise that Garak blew up his own shop to enlist Odo’s help he goes from being one of the finest magnificent bastards of Trek to the finest.
• I Did What I Had to Do: "Profit and Loss". When Quark asks Garak why he helped the dissidents escape, Garak says it was necessary, but it's not clear whether Garak's talking about helping the dissidents escape or alluding to the mysterious crime that got him exiled from Cardassia.
• I Have This Friend: In 'The Wire', as Garak is telling Bashir three contradictory stories about how he came to be exiled, he often includes a character named 'Elim', who is either an aide that Garak killed along with a transport full of Bajoran civilians, or a childhood friend and fellow Obsidian Order member whom Garak tried to frame for releasing Bajoran prisoners but was in turn betrayed and framed by Elim instead. It turns out 'Elim' is Garak's first name.
• Implausible Deniability: It's obvious from the first episode he's in that he has government connections, knowledge of terrorist operations and experience with covert activities, but he insists on denying that he's a spy. Even after Dr. Bashir has met the person who recruited him into the Obsidian Order, Garak continues to deny he was ever a member. After the first three years of the show, he does eventually drop the pretense.
  Garak: My dear doctor, I am no more a spy than you are a...
  Bashir: Doctor?
• Improbable Weapon User: He once kills an engineer with a flux coupler.
• Indispensable Scoundrel: Garak is a former member of the Cardassian Obsidian Order, who in his time has picked up an enormous skillset which includes: spy, fighter, thief, saboteur, assassin, demolitions expert, torturer... and tailor, which is his occupation on DS9. He's well known for being a Consummate Liar and Deadpan Snarker, and no one trusts him any further than they could throw him, but he becomes an integral part of the crew's efforts to stop the Dominion.
• Innocently Insensitive: In one of his more Jerkass moment, Garak attended a Bajoran convention and spent the entire time trying to extole the glories of the Cardassian occupation. It's totally lost on him why they didn't take it well.
• Ironic Fear: Garak's claustrophobia puts him in a bad spot, but he'll have to overcome his fear in order to help his friends to escape prison.
• Ironic Hell: Garak's exile on DS9 is this. He's cut off from his people, forced to work in a menial job after playing and important part of one of the most powerful espionage organizations in the quadrant, and surrounded by aliens that hate and fear him. Made worse by Garak's claustrophobia, which makes living on a confinded space even more difficult. But the real kicker for Garak? He's actually very good tailor...
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • The concept of sacrificing a few to save many is not lost on him. Sure, he could try a little harder to avert it at times, but the extremeness of the Dominion threat makes his hastiness to do so understandable. He's at least willing to sacrifice himself as well.
  • While his behavior at a Bajoran convention in "Things Past" (namely trying to extol the virtues of the Cardassian occupation) was out of line, he calls Sisko out when he tries to tell Garak the Bajorans did their best to politely engage in a discussion with him. As Garak notes, having him put on a name tag that read "Elim Garak, former Cardassian oppressor" definitely isn't all that polite or impartial.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Garak is also a big proponent of the strategic withdrawal, as seen in "Rocks and Shoals" when Nog hisses at him to keep quiet during their interrogation. Broached with the question, "Is there a Doctor in your unit?" Garak is rapidly calculating which answer is less liable to get them killed. He answers truthfully, and survives. It also comes into play in "Our Man Bashir", in which Julian insists on keeping the holo-program going at great personal risk while Garak actually gives a speech about how his surviving so long has been contingent on his "knowing when to quit!"
• Knowledge Broker: His long list of Intelligence contacts and general ability to ferret out information enable him to act as one and it's one of the reasons why Sisko's team and later the Federation find him so useful to keep around.
• Last-Name Basis: Absolutely everyone on the station calls him "Garak". This is actually a plot-point in The Wire. In By Inferno's Light, when he's muttering to himself, he even calls himself "Garak". The only two people in the entire show who ever use his first name are Mila and Tain, and even Tain doesn't use his first name all the time.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When Garak really needs to bring out the big guns, the unnatural cheer and fey mannerisms vanish instantly. Best seen in "Tacking Into The Wind", when a disguised Odo gives Garak a plasma rifle to shoot their Jem'Hadar captains, Garak goes from smiling pleasantly to ruthlessly gunning down Jem'Hadar with a stone-faced expression in literally the time it takes to raise the gun and fire.
  • Another example was "Broken Link" when the Female Changeling told Garak there were no survivors from the Cardasian and Romulan fleets attack on the Founders homeworld. Making it abundently clear to him that their species had doomed itself in this action and the Dominion was going to make them all pay. The diplomatic tailor vanished and what was seen under that mask, even if only for a split second...
• Loveable Rogue: You'd be a fool to trust a word he says, but he's so goshdarn charming and hilarious that you'll find yourself believing in his lies anyway.
• Loves Secrecy: He's a Consummate Liar who delights in befuddling other characters by dribbling out just enough information that he can then make fun of their attempts to guess the truth. We do eventually learn some solid details of his backstory despite him, though, namely that he is a disgraced former operative of the Obsidian Order (the Cardassian equivalent to the KGB) and the illegitimate son of its then-head Enabran Tain. Still, after a particularly good trolling session at Worf's expense, he remarks:
  Garak: Lying is a skill like any other, and if you want to maintain a level of excellence you have to practice constantly.
  Worf: Practice on someone else.
  Garak: Mr. Worf, you're no fun at all.
• Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: Sometimes played with since Garak, the station's tailor, also has ties to Cardassian intelligence. At one point, Sisko has Garak take his measurements during an officers' meeting in the Ward Room in order to pass on intelligence to the Cardassians.
• Multiple-Choice Past: In "The Wire", he gives Bashir three contradictory backstories (all while suffering intense withdrawal symptoms). He later claims that they're all true.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Despite being exiled, Garak clearly still reveres Cardassia, and refuses to betray them despite having all the opportunities and reasons to do so. Intellectually, even as he defends it with great fervor, he seems to feel some guilt over the atrocities he helped commit during the Bajoran occupation, and his time on DS9 with its multi-racial crew certainly develop a lot more empathy in him towards the concerns of other races.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's genuinely horrified whenever he makes a mistake, especially if it results in someone's death. After the Empok Nor incident, he asks Bashir to make sure that his victim's wife knows he's sorry, which is the only time in the series he apologizes for taking a life.
• Mysterious Past:
  • In a single episode, he gives at least three different versions of the reasons for his exile, and insists they're all true (especially the lies). He goes on to tell even more different versions in later episodes. Even by the end of the show, the full truth of him was never revealed.
  • The novel "A Stitch in Time" reveals that Garak had an affair with an old friend who was married to a prominent gul. Tain ordered him to end it and Garak refused. The gul found out, confronted Garak, and ended up dead. Tain saw this as a betrayal and refused to help him with his legal troubles.
• Odd Friendship:
  • Initially with Bashir and later with Odo as well. An odd dynamic eventually even begins to form with Worf and O'Brien as well.
  • Though it's one-sided for most of the series, he also has a high opinion of Kira and is always amiable towards her, in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that she's one of the people he knows could be a genuine threat to his life.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Garak takes such delight in creatively lying and spinning the truth that if he admits to not knowing what's going on, he's actually being honest. It also means that whatever's going on is very, very bad. Odo picks up on it when Garak doesn't give an excuse about the Flaxian assassin's ship exploding.
  • On another specific example, in "Empok Nor", Garak kills a man while under the influence of a drug that escalated the traditional Cardassian arrogance into a murderous xenophobia. When he was cured, he sincerely asked O'Brien to make sure that his victim's wife knew that he was sorry; while understandable, as this is the only time he killed someone without deliberate intent or purpose, it is still a significant moment.
• Overlord Jr.: The son of Cardassia-Prime's longest-lived, most feared spymaster. Tain himself once admitted that Garak possessed an uncanny cruelty and resourcefulness that surpasses his own and is the best liar he's ever known.
• Open Secret: Everyone knows that he's a Cardassian spy, and he rarely makes any serious effort to change their minds. The only thing that stops him from being an Overt Operative is that he doesn't make a habit of outright admitting he's a spy to the people he's spying against, even when blatantly involving them in his espionage - he prefers to keep it an Open Secret.
• Patriotic Fervor: He loves Cardassia, and speaks highly of its art and culture. That said, he recognizes when his people have crossed the line, such as in their alliance with the Dominion.
• Patriot in Exile: Exiled from Cardassia for a reason obscured by a Multiple-Choice Past, he continues to spy for the Cardassian government and has stated and shown his devotion to Cardassia on many occasions.
• Perpetual Smiler: The only time Garak usually frowns is when he's telling somebody the truth. Otherwise, an ingratiating smile is practically his default expression.
• Properly Paranoid: Played for Laughs sometimes, a plot point that makes him Crazy-Prepared at other times. As he points out to Quark, "paranoid" is something they call people who think they have threats against their life. Garak has threats against his life.
• Recurring Character: In the early years, he'd show up a few episodes a season. He is essentially a main character by the end, however.
• Red-Flag Recreation Material: Garak's love of Cardassian literary classics like The Neverending Sacrifice not only indicate that he's a proud Cardassian even in exile, but the fact that he praises the novel's borderline fascist theme of obsessive devotion to the state regardless of cost is one of many hints that he's Reformed, but Not Tamed: he may not be torturing or assassinating Bajorans anymore, but he's more than willing to do the same to Starfleet's enemies if it means saving Cardassia and the Alpha Quadrant (in that order).
• Retired Monster: Garak is a complicated subversion. He was caught and exiled for an unspecified crime (hinted to be some kind of treason or betrayal of the Obsidian Order) and he has a reputation for being a very dangerous man who shouldn't be trusted. However, as the show progresses, it's becomes less clear that this reputation is as cut-and-dried as it first seemed. Eventually, it becomes clear that he's not so much heartless about the past, and he may not easily admit it or apologise for it, but he's carrying at least some guilt about it. His motivation for everything he did in the Order was a bitter and cynical I Did What I Had to Do, and he wasn't above sacrificing his own sense of morality for his job or Shooting The Dog if he had to.
• Sarcastic Confession: In "Second Skin", used as an excuse to get himself on the bridge because he knows trouble is about to break out that he'll need to get involved in: Odo drags him there for acting suspiciously and he complains it's because the quarters on the Defiant are making him claustrophobic. No-one believes him. It's another two years before the audience (and characters) learn that he really does suffer from claustrophobia.
• Saw It in a Movie Once: Uses variations of this to explain why he has access to top-secret information. That valid code used only by the Obsidian Order? Oh, Garak overheard it while hemming someone's trousers.
• Self-Proclaimed Liar: He lies all the time is quite honesty about how often. He's a legend in his own lifetime.
• Sensei for Scoundrels: Garak always took delight in his Cardassian paranoia rubbing off on the upright, naive DS9 crewmen he had to work with. Dr. Bashir was his pet project.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: In a franchise notorious for Space Clothes, Garak was always quite dapper, as Cardassian fashion goes. He really is an excellent tailor.
• Shoot the Dog: The go-to guy for this on the station.
  That's why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing.
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Parodied. Improbable military knowledge? He reads a lot! Unusual and fancy engineering equipment? It's a common tailor's tool! Fluency in Klingonese? Overheard it while hemming a woman's dress! Expert ability to rewrite high-class military encryption software and enter in valid codes despite having been in exile for years? Any tailor can do it!
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Garak was working as a humble gardener at a Romulan embassy, several consuls died mysterious and ultimately untraceable deaths. Garak swears up and down that this has nothing to do with him.
• That Man Is Dead: Claims to be responsible for the death of his best friend, Elim (or was it Elim who framed and exiled him?). This is then revealed to actually be Garak's first name.
• Token Heroic Orc: Garak doesn't mind Cardassia's military expansionism, per se. The tipping point is when his homeworld is overrun by the Dominion due to a couple short-sighted opportunists, like Dukat.
• Token Evil Teammate: Played with; he's more of a token Anti-Villian teammate, far from unsympathetic, and generally everyone likes him up to a point, but he is still the one willing to take more controversial action as a first option where the rest of the crew would try something else first.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Deconstructed in "The Wire". Garak has a "wire" in his brain which transmutes pain into pleasure, making interrogating him useless. Years of toiling miserably on the station, however, compelled him to switch it on for hours at a time — and later indefinitely, as his body became addicted to the endorphins. Bashir had to convince him to go cold turkey.
• Torture Technician: Part of his former job as an agent of the Obsidian Order. He was an in-universe Memetic Badass in this regard. His former mentor reminisced about the time Garak broke a suspect just by staring at him for four hours straight. However, after getting the chance to return to his old life, Garak discovers this part of the job has become a deal-breaker for him, when he has to spend hours interrogating Odo and realises he doesn't have it in him to be that ruthless any more.
  Tain: Afterwards, he just kept saying "those eyes… those eyes…"
  • Speaking of those eyes, I mean, look at that profile picture...
• Tranquil Fury: In the finale, Mila - the closest thing Garak has to a family left - is shot dead in front of him, followed by her home being bombed into oblivion by the Dominion, leaving Garak nothing to mourn or bury. He clearly tries putting a face over it, but it's obvious that Garak is almost out of his mind with rage and pain.
• Trickster Mentor: He wants to help Dr. Bashir lose his naivete and become more capable of spotting lies and deception, by lying to and deceiving him.
• Undying Loyalty: Garak was stuck on a station that was a living hell to him, as described so in "The Wire," but it is clear that he could have left at most any time had he made a deal with the Federation to give them evidence on the Obsidian Order and all he knew about Cardassia. He never did so because he is still loyal to his home even after being banished. In short, Garak is loyal to Cardassia, but Cardassia is not loyal to him, and both parties know it.
• The Unfettered: If Garak has a job he wants to do, you damn well better hope it's one that benefits your side, because he will stop at nothing to get it done. He seems to take great pleasure in reminding people of this, and ridiculing them when they don't believe him. He even directly calls Sisko out on this at the climax of "In the Pale Moonlight" for pretending otherwise, saying "That's why you came to me, isn't it captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing."
  Rusot: You're still a Cardassian, Garak. You're not going to kill one of your own people for a Bajoran woman.
  Garak: How little you understand me.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: He knows Sisko won't be able to stomach the realities of what it will take to bring the Romulans into the war, so he pulls this on Sisko ensuring the Romulans do indeed enter the war on the Federation's side by virtue of keeping his true plan secret from even Sisko until Sisko (too late) works out what the real plan was.
• Vague Age: Like much of Garak's life, his age is nebulous, with one dubious story of his time during the Bajoran occupation including him being old and established enough to be a gul, then another as a younger rising star in the Obsidian Order. There are hints of a long career as a spy, but no certainty as to how much of it actually happened. Robinson was in his fifties while portraying Garak, but the actor playing his father was only fourteen years older. Garak is also treated as a peer of Dukat, who is old enough to be Kira's father. Generally, the writing leans towards him being middle-aged, but we can't be sure.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It was only on Tain's deathbed that Garak received some recognition.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sisko's realisation of the true plan leads to an aggressive confrontation between the pair. After getting sucker-punched, Garak points out that Sisko knew exactly what kind of man Garak was, therefore Sisko knew (even if only subconsciously) that Garak would kill to get the job done—as he put it, to "do those things you weren't capable of doing."
• Wild Card: Garak is loyal only to himself. He does care about his homeland, though, and as Cardassia falls under the heel of the Dominion in later seasons, Garak starts helping the Federation more actively in their war against them.
• Worthy Opponent: To Worf, at least in terms of physical combat. After the two got into a brawl, Garak proved to be one of the few people capable of going toe-to-toe with him for more then a few seconds. Worf still beats him, but then softly remarks that Garak fought well... for a tailor. He later earned the respect of Worf and General Martok for facing his claustrophobia to help them escape a Dominion prison.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: One of the finest players in Trek history. If Garak wants to get you by the balls, no amount of deception or evasion will save you. He knows how to improvise on a bad hand and come out not just on top, but leave nary a clue of his involvement.
• You Can't Go Home Again: In order to return home, Garak essentially had to assist in tearing down the central government and reducing much of his homeworld to ashes. He did revisit his childhood home and reunite with his beloved Mila, just as he'd dreamed, but the house was soon flattened by Dominion bombs and Mila was killed for harboring the rebels.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: He gets very disconcerted at the thought of people actually trusting him.

Gul Dukat

Gul Dukat

Played By: Marc Alaimo

"I have unfinished business on Bajor. They thought I was their enemy? They don't know what it is to be my enemy. But they will."

— "Waltz"

The eventual Big Bad. His backstory involves overseeing the brutal occupation of Bajor. Wavered between Kick the Dog and Pet the Dog 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 Dark Messiah, especially from the end of Season 6 onward.

For more information, see his page.

Damar

Damar

Played By: Casey Biggs

"I'd like to toss that smug little Vorta out the nearest airlock. And his Founder with him."

— "Sacrifice of Angels"

Dukat's right-hand man, whose minor role becomes gradually much more important throughout the show until he eventually becomes the leader of the Cardassian Union. He is a man both uncomfortable with power and increasingly dissatisfied with the actions of the Dominion.

---

• Actually Pretty Funny: Thinks Worf killing a Weyoun clone is HILARIOUS, so much so that he shamelessly trolls the succeeding Wayoun clone over it.
• The Alcoholic: In many appearances, he often is seen drinking a lot of Kanar. This nearly backfires on him during the occupation of DS9, when Quark gets him to spill classified information while drunk. This later morphs into Drowning My Sorrows, where he drinks to cope with being powerless to Dominion whims.
• The Atoner: Enforced. When he angrily wonders what kind of people would order his civilian wife and son assassinated, Kira reminds him that at one time, people like him gave those orders.
• Blind Obedience: As an officer under Dukat.
• Character Development: Perhaps the single most extreme example in all of Star Trek.
• The Charmer: Damar shares his boss' taste for extramarital dalliances. He tries sneaking his latest squeeze into Central Command, but Weyoun swiftly boots her out. A born politician, Damar is also seen smooth-talking Mila, who blushes and unfavorably compares Garak's manners to his.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Damar goes out of his way to seek Dukat's approval. His interactions with Ziyal make it clear that he not only disapproves of her rebelliousness, but also show that he thinks she is undeserving of the attention that Dukat heaps on her, which may well play into his decision to shoot her under the auspices of treason. Damar is later wracked with guilt over this, but it's not entirely clear if he regrets his actions or rather, the effects it had on Dukat.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Damar increasingly retreats into a bottle as his powerlessness in the Dominion grows starker.
• Easily Forgiven: Played straight and subverted with his murder of Ziyal. Dukat does, because he rationalizes it as being all Sisko's fault in the first place. Subverted with Kira, who doesn't, and Garak, who never mentions it, but circumstances require they all work together anyway. Word of God admitted that Kira and Garak's actors both wanted an episode where the three of them addressed the issue but the writers dismissed it because they were afraid Damar couldn't be redeemed to the audience if they did.
• Evil Genius: Damar shows considerable technical expertise, converting DS9's deflector into an anti-graviton beam to disable the minefield, and implied to have a hand in the Orbital Weapon Platforms that devastate the Federation fleet during the First Battle of Chin'toka. This is especially notable given the men in his race are apparently stereotyped as being tech-illiterate.
• A Father to His Men: He's utterly disgusted that Weyoun uses Cardassian troops as Cannon Fodder and is infuriated that any gains in the war will be handed over to the Breen. It's even more apparent when he leads the revolution against the Dominion, where he does is his best to support his men in the face of Kira's (deserved) criticism.
• Foil: To Dukat. Dukat is a selfish bastard while Damar, though not above using his position for some personal indulgences, still tries his best to actually lead Cardassia. For example, Dukat switched from Central Command to working with the civilian government to save his own skin, while Damar sides with the Federation Alliance in a desperate attempt to save Cardassia. Dukat also rejects his Heel Realization, while Damar embraces his.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Positive example, he becomes a nightmare to the Dominion! Goes from a dull yes-man to the hero of the Cardassian revolution.
• Good Is Not Nice: After switching sides in the war, he still remains a jerk to Kira and Garak. He does lighten up a little bit just before his death.
• Heel–Face Turn: Once he decides to rebel against the Dominion he starts providing support to the Alpha Quadrant allies.
• Heel Realisation: Damar's experiences rebelling against the Dominion give him some insight into what the Bajorans experienced during the Occupation. This realisation has a profound effect on Damar; he goes as far as to kill an old friend who suggests betraying their new allies, grimly remarking that the old Cardassia is dead.
• Heroic BSoD:
  Damar: What kind of state tolerates the murder of innocent women and children? What kind of people give those orders?
  Kira: Yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?
• Horrible Judge of Character: Believed wholeheartedly that Dukat was a great man, even after seeing the consequences of Dukat’s Deal with the Devil. He also defended Rusot, who was a detriment to Damar’s resistance.
• Jerkass: Damar is rude and snarky with Kira during the Dominion occupation of Deep Space Nine. He also insults Ziyal to her face and tries to forcibly take her back to her father, earning him a savage beating from Kira.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: He wasn't tactful about it, but Damar did try to warn Dukat that Ziyal was not loyal to Cardassia.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Damar died trying to give a rallying speech to his troops. Word of God is that originally he was simply going to die; but Casey Biggs decided he should say something. He still has no idea what the rest of sentence was going to be.
• La Résistance: After the Dominion starts treating Cardassia like an expendable resource, Damar decides to rebel against them.
• Living Legend: When the Dominion claim that Damar has been assassinated, stories start popping up that he faked his death and continues to sabotage the occupation.
• Mook Lieutenant: To Dukat until...
• Mook Promotion: Becomes the leader of Cardassia after Dukat goes nuts.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Unlike Dukat, who used Cardassia for his own selfish desires, Damar's patriotism is never shown to be anything but genuine. His switching sides in the war is because he realizes that Cardassia is doomed under the Dominion and its only hope is to join the Federation Alliance.
• No Honor Among Thieves: With Weyoun. It's hinted that Damar tried bumping him off via a "transporter accident". Vorta being what they are, though, it didn't take.
• Outliving One's Offspring: The Dominion murders Damar's wife and children as revenge for Damar's rebellion.
• Puppet King: After Dukat is expelled, Damar is made leader of the Cardassian Union, but all the actual power is held by the Dominion.
• Rage Against the Reflection: While Drowning His Sorrows after a particularly sore meeting with Weyoun, Damar catches sight of a mirror and tosses his drink at it.
• Rage Within the Machine: Before officially forming the Cardassian Resistance and separating from the Dominion.
• Red Herring Shirt: Damar was originally just a crewmember on Dukat's ship. Biggs originally thought he was just a glorified extra in his first episode. Then he became Dukat's first officer, then second-in-command of the entire Cardassian Union, then actual leader.
• Redemption Equals Death: Before the last season, his Establishing Character Moment was killing Ziyal for siding against Dukat and the Dominion. Then, during the final story arc, he has a Heel–Face Turn, and ends up rebelling against the Dominion, thus proving that Ziyal was right all along. This ultimately leads to his death.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Damar probably hates Weyoun more than Weyoun's actual enemies hate Weyoun (at least until Damar becomes one of those enemies), and the feeling is very much mutual. At least most of their actual enemies don't have to hang out with Weyoun on a near-daily basis. Best exemplified when Worf breaks one of the Weyoun's necks and Damar can barely suppress his glee in his conversation with the next Weyoun.
  Damar: (cracking up) Maybe you [Weyoun] should go talk to Worf again!
  • Damar initially ends up having this working relationship with Kira and Garak once he rebels against the Dominion. They haven't forgiven him for Ziyal's murder and he still depises Kira. But both sides recognize they have to work together to stop the Dominion.
• Undying Loyalty: Never stops being loyal to Dukat and Cardassia, not even when the former goes insane or facing immense odds in protecting the latter by betraying the Dominion. Ironically, it's a pep-talk from Dukat that helps inspire Damar to take the second action, even though Damar never recognizes (or at least doesn't acknowledge) that it was Dukat who started the whole mess.
• Wake-Up Call: The capture and execution of his family during the Cardassian Rebellion serves as a turning point in his attitude towards his people and solidifies his role as the symbol of a new, reformed Cardassia. Kira's "Not So Different" Remark to him upon receiving the news, a reminder that this is exactly the sort of state-sanctioned violence the Cardassians were known for during the Occupation, is what finally breaks him out of his illusions about who they used to be.
  Garak: Damar has a certain... romanticism about the past. He could use a dose of cold water.
  Kira: Well, I could've picked a better time.
  Garak: If he's the man to lead a new Cardassia, if he's the man we all hope him to be, then the pain of this news made him more receptive to what you said, not less.

Tora Ziyal

Tora Ziyal

Played By: Cyia Batten/ Tracy Middendorf/ Melanie Smith

"The Institute is having an exhibition of new artists next month and he might want to include my work. It's a chance to show that Bajorans and Cardassians look at the universe the same way. That's what I want to do with my work: bring people together."

Dukat's daughter by his Bajoran mistress, Tora Naprem. Despite her lineage, she is largely sane, and well-liked by most of the station's inhabitants.

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• All Girls Want Bad Boys: She falls in love with Garak right before Deep Space 9 falls to the Dominion.
• Butt-Monkey: A tragic example: the poor girl could not catch a break. Born a war bastard, faces massive Half-Breed Discrimination, lives for several years as a Breen mine slave, her father tries to kill her twice (for different reasons each time), she falls in love with Garak only to have him flee the station with the Federation as the Dominion moves in, gets into a Bajoran art school but then leaves due to aforementioned Fantastic Racism, and is finally shot dead by Damar as a traitor.
• Child of Two Worlds: Ziyal loves both of her cultures of origin and is dedicated to bringing them closer together. Unfortunately, they don't all feel the same way about her.
• Collateral Angst: She's killed so that Dukat could have his Villainous Breakdown.
• Daddy's Girl: Ziyal adores her father, and even after he throws his lot in with the Dominion, she does everything she can to see the best in him. She is likewise beloved by Dukat, who is at his most sympathetic when they interact. In the end, however, Ziyal sees her father for the power-mad despot that he is and turns against him, a decision that costs her life. Nevertheless, Ziyal posthumously remains the apple of her father's eye, although much of this is simple self-delusion on Dukat's part; he likely sees her betrayal as a mistake on Ziyal's part that would have been corrected had she lived.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Her relationship with Garak. Her father hates him, at least because of the Interservice Rivalry between the Obsidian Order and the regular military, and possibly due to some Noodle Incident involving Garak and Dukat's father.
• Half-Breed Angst: Tora Ziyal is half-Cardassian and half-Bajoran, which causes a lot of angst for her because up until very recently, Cardassians oppressed Bajorans, so she feels out of place on both planets. It says something that the only people she seems truly comfortable around are Kira, a former Bajoran freedom fighter, and Garak, an exiled Cardassian.
• The Lost Lenore: At least hinted at; after Ziyal's death, Garak reflects that he never understood why she loved him and now he never will, but in the spin-off novels he retains a certain affection for her memory even years after her death, to the point of using her memory as a moral guide as he takes up a position of authority on the new Cardassia.
• May–December Romance: It's never explicitly mentioned (and in fact denied by both parties) that she and Garak are interested romantically in each other, but you can tell they have a very close relationship. Garak, incidentally, is around the same age as Ziyal's own father.
• Missing Mom: Her mother died when the ship they were travelling in crashed on a Breen-controlled planet.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: A tragic inversion - her death drives Dukat mad.
• Morality Pet: Is this for Dukat. Ultimately, this ends badly.
  • Spin-off novels also establish her as this for Garak; after he becomes the new leader of Cardassia, he reflects that he will determine if he is doing the right thing by considering what course of action Ziyal would approve of and doing that.
• Nice Girl: Unlike her father, Ziyal is as sweet and kind as they come.
• Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Half-Cardassian, half-Bajoran.
• Odd Friendship: She's a sweet and honest half-Cardassian/half-Bajoran. Garak's a Cardassian who lies with every breath and used to torture Bajorans. Kira is a former Bajoran Resistance fighter and had no qualms with considering all Cardassians on Occupied Bajor as legitimate targets and still harbored some lingering sentiments to that end. Ziyal makes fast friends with both, and both are bereaved over her murder.
• The Other Darrin: Her original actor, Cyia Batten, was replaced after two episodes — partly because the creators felt Ziyal needed more depth, as she was becoming a recurring character, and partly because of her implied relationship with Garak, as Batten was felt to be too youthful-looking for comfort. Unfortunately the new actor — Tracy Middendorf — proved to be allergic to the prosthetics, and had to be replaced herself after just one appearance.
• Ship Tease: Has this dynamic with Garak of all people.
• Unlocking the Talent: Subverted. She was receiving mentoring off-screen for a rare artistic gift that she was deliberately keeping secret so she could earn a prestigious university place by merit rather than through her father making connections on her behalf. Experts consider her art to be a callback to both a great Bajoran artist and a great Cardassian artist. She intends to use her mixed culture and the fact people can see both Cardassian techniques and Bajoran techniques in her work as a way of trying to bring the two worlds together and the university professor thinks her talent is good enough for her dream. And then she's murdered.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Word of God has it that she is an inherently honest person. If asked a direct question she doesn't want to answer, she would change the subject or remain silent instead. The writers felt this would create an interesting dynamic in her pairing with Consummate Liar Garak.

Enabran Tain

Enabran Tain

Played By: Paul Dooley

"I think you'll find that when I have something to say, you won't have any trouble understanding it."

Head of the Obsidian Order for 20 years, he became the only head in history to ever survive long enough to actually retire. He was Garak's mentor and also directly responsible for exiling him from Cardassia. He comes out of retirement to lead a joint Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar task force in an attack on the Founders homeworld, believing it to too great a threat to the Alpha Quadrant to ignore.

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• Abusive Parent: He would discipline a young Garak by locking him in a closet. Garak developed a near crippling case of claustrophobia as a result.
• Affably Evil: Bashir is surprised to learn that one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy is a jolly old man. A jolly old man who knows everything about Bashir and will kill him and everyone he cares for in a heartbeat if the doctor makes the mistake of crossing him.
• Cruel Mercy: Tain states the reason he is willing to help Bashir save Garak's life is because Garak doesn't deserve a swift death. Tain wants Garak to grow old on that station, surrounded by people who hate him, knowing he'll never come home to Cardassia ever again. Although the later reveal that he's Garak's father, and that he thought he should have killed Garak before he was born for being a potential weakness but never did, does cast a somewhat ambiguous light on this justification.
• The Dreaded: He was one of the most feared men in the whole of Cardassia.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite exiling Garak and attempting to assassinate him, Garak still forgave him.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He was an appalling father but he was also very proud of his son. Not that he was willing to admit it until his dying breath, however.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Tain was a ruthless, unforgiving monster but even he knew the Dominion was bad news and had to be stopped at any cost.
  • Despite being the ruthless head of the Obsidian Order, even Tain was taken aback by Garak's pre-exile vicious streak. Tain once had to personally step in and stop Garak from manufacturing treason charges against a Legate... all because Garak simply couldn't stand the man's voice.
• Fat Bastard: The first heavyset Cardassian we meet, and a terrifying Retired Monster.
• Follow in My Footsteps: He raised Garak to be a mirror image of himself, although it didn't work out quite as either of them had envisaged it would. Garak initially allowed it but indicates to Bashir that he has come to regret it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: His cleverness is commented on by General Martok when explaining how Tain was able convert a life-support system into a communications console to contact Deep Space Nine.
• I Have No Son!: Or, "You're not my son!", in this case. Even when Tain was on his deathbed, Garak had to fight tooth-and-nail for reconciliation.
• Knowledge Broker: He calls it "keeping updated on current affairs."
• No-One Could Have Survived That: He was seemingly killed when his ship exploded in "The Die is Cast." But Garak had his doubts.
  "Enabran Tain was head of the Obsidian Order for twenty years. If he can survive that, he can survive anything."
• Noodle Incident: Whatever it was that happened with Dukat's father that Garak had a hand in. All we know is that he trusted Garak, and ended up on trial.
  • Also whatever caused Garak's exile. We know that Tain felt Garak betrayed him, but Garak angrily responds that he never betrayed Tain—at least not directly! Garak gives several different versions of why he was exiled over the series (not counting the obviously false ones like "tax evasion"), including letting some Bajoran street urchins go on the eve of the withdrawal. Another story had him shooting down a shuttle containing a Bajoran terrorist, killing the son of a high-ranking official who was also on it.
  • The novel "A Stitch in Time" reveals that Garak had an affair with an old friend who was married to a prominent gul. Tain ordered him to end it and Garak refused. The gul found out, confronted Garak, and ended up dead. Tain saw this as a betrayal and refused to help him with his legal troubles.
• Not So Omniscient After All: Even in retirement he stays on top of everything, right down to knowing when people have made impulsive, last minute decisions to visit him and what their favourite drinks are. In the end, he comes out of retirement to head a joint Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar task force intent on destroying the Dominion before the Dominion can destroy the Alpha Quadrant. It does not end well. Unfortunately, he didn't realise his second-in-command (the Tal Shiar leader) was actually a disguised Founder who had instigated the entire task force with the intention of wiping out both organisations as a prelude to invasion. When Tain realises what's happened, it's too late, and he observes to Garak that he's clearly lost his touch because he'd never have been deceived prior to his retirement.
• Offing the Offspring: His plan to return from retirement included assassinating the six men that knew too much about him just in case any of them ever decided to use their knowledge against him. The only one who survived the assassination attempt was his own son, who turned out to be more Crazy-Prepared than Tain had anticipated.
• Properly Paranoid: It enabled him to remain head of the Obsidian Order for 20 years and become the first head to ever survive long enough to retire. Eventually subverted: retirement dulled his wits just enough for a Changeling to out-gambit him with disastrous consequences for both Cardassia and Romulus and, eventually, the Alpha Quadrant itself.
• Retired Badass: Harder to kill than a cockroach, and exceptionally crafty even by his species' standards. One does not become the first Head of the Obsidian Order to retire without being both.
• Retired Monster: The Obsidian Order is feared throughout the Cardassian Union. They can disappear anyone at will and regularly use Cold-Blooded Torture. When Tain comes out of retirement, his first act is to have his closest former underlings killed.
• So Proud of You: He admitted it only with his dying breath. He also implies this in the incident where Garak is the only person to survive his purge of those who know too much about him.
• The Spymaster: Notably, he is the only Cardassian spymaster who lived to retirement; this should give you an idea of how good he was at it.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tain's failed attack on the Great Link sets off a castastrophic chain of events that culminates with the Dominion's extermination of 800 million Cardassians and their homeworld burned to the ground by the end of the series.
• Villain Decay: In-Universe example. Tain himself acknowledges that his years in retirement have dulled his abilities. At his prime, he would have seen the Jem'Hadar Bait-and-Switch ambush coming a mile away.

Legate Broca

Legate Broca

Played By: Mel Johnson Jr.

A Cardassian put in charge of the remaining loyalist Cardassian forces after Damar rebels

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• Asshole Victim: One of the first victims of the Dominion's purging of the Cardassian people.
• The Quisling: His defining feature, willing to betray his own species for limited power and ultimately just to stay alive.

Mila

Mila

Played By: Julianna McCarthy

"I may not be a very good cook, but I knew how to keep a secret."

Enabran Tain's housekeeper for over thirty years, not that she knows anything about his spy activities. (And if you believe that, we've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.) Mila all but brought up Garak as her own and is deeply devoted to both men.

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• First-Name Basis: Her surname is never revealed in the show. A number of fans suspect this is because it is either Tain or Garak.
• Killed Off for Real: She's killed after answering the door to a Jem'Hadar raid and thrown down the basement stairs.
• Kindly Housekeeper: Despite the person she works for and the life that entails, she's gentle, motherly and loyal.
• Lethal Chef: Her stew is so noxious that Kira needs to take a long drink of water to get rid of the taste and Damar adds a lot of strongly flavored sauce to his portion to make it palatable. Mila even freely admits she was never much of a cook.
• Old Retainer: She'd been Tain's housekeeper and confidente for over thirty years. She knew his business and kept his secrets. When he disappeared unexpectedly, she forced Garak to promise to do anything to help Tain, even though she knew the rift that existed between them. Even after Tain's death, she continued to live in and maintain his house.
• Parental Substitute: The show makes it clear she raised Garak while he was growing up in Tain's household but doesn't claim she's his actual mother, though a number of factors and oblique hints have made fans suspicious for ages. Andrew Robinson's non-canon novel of Garak's back history does, however, choose to make her his real mother.
• Secret-Keeper: She knew for decades that Tain had a son and who that son was, but she kept her mouth shut until long after Tain was dead. She also knew more about Tain than almost anyone else. When Tain killed off five of the six operatives who knew too much about him, he told the lone survivor of his assassination attempt (Garak) that he was thinking of also killing Mila because of how much she knew about him. Garak did point out that she had more than proved her loyalty by that point.
• Servile Snarker: She may be a loyal servant but she's more than willing to stick her oar in, voice her opinion and is very free with pointing out the flaws in Garak's personality. In fact, serving the rebelling leader of Cardassia, one of the most dangerous secret agents in the entire Union and one of the most competent terrorist-trained Bajoran colonels, doesn't cow her at all. When she finds them lying around the basement in a fit of depression at how dismally their resistance attempt has failed, she snarks the lot of them for giving up so easily.

Seska

Seska

Played By: Martha Hackett

"Men just get more distinguished as they get older. A few lines here, a little grey there, it adds character. Too bad their minds start to go."

A fiery member of the Maquis and Chakotay's lover. She turns out to be a surgically-altered Cardassian spy who got caught in Janeway's dragnet. Seska is caught attempting to smuggle Federation technology, then defects to the Kazon, where she climbs up the ranks by becoming pregnant with Maje Cullah's child. She was the over-arching villain of Seasons One and Two, before being killed off in the Season Three shake-up.

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• Aborted Arc: Seska talks of the Kazon-Nistrim taking Voyager and conquering the Quadrant sector by sector, which isn't a half-bad idea. The writing team of Taylor & Braga didn't care for any of the elements introduced by Michael Piller, the Kazon and Seska included. And so her reign of terror came to an abrupt close in "Basics".
  Michael Piller: this was probably one of the worst two character decisions made on ‘Voyager’ (the other being to create Kes as effectively sexless).
• Asian Baby Mama: A Cardassian, disguised as a Bajoran, who claims to have inseminated herself with Commander Chakotay's DNA and impregnated herself with the child. It was revealed at the end of the story arc to be the child of her new lover, the Kazon Culluh.
  • Originally it was supposed to be Chakotay's, but the producers changed the baby's parentage because they weren't interested in having Chakotay raise a kid for the rest of the series (a la Worf) and because they couldn't have him callously abandon his own son.
• The Baby Trap: Chakotay spared her life because of this.
• Back for the Finale: Not quite, but a stone's throw from it, at least. Chakotay mistakenly drops in on Seska (post-Kazon takover of Voyager) after the ship becomes enmeshed in a fractured time field. ("Shattered")
• Deep Cover Agent: The Cardassians are no strangers to plastic surgery. It was bad luck that one ended up in Chakotay's resistance cell.
• Dating Catwoman: Chakotay really got around on the Val Jean. (There's still some lingering tension between him and Torres.) Considering how quick Seska was to jump into the sheets with Cullah, she's probably the one who initiated the tryst with Chakotay.
• Dragon-in-Chief: With Seska whispering in his ear Cullah finally becoming an adversary worthy of Janeway. You have got to love how she uses her manipulative feminine wiles to pull his strings and get things going her way in this Quadrant; even orders around his men despite women being held as inferior in Kazon society. Both chafe at their roles, but find the other too useful to change things.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: Death by exploding console. Really. Not that this hasn't killed people in the past, mind you, but they're usually wearing red.
  Hackett: I was always grouchy about the way they killed me off … For Seska to die that way was like rolling over.
  • Which doesn't stop her from coming back twice for two episodes. (One involved a temporal fragmented Voyager and the other involved a holodeck copy of her.)
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Both Chakotay and Cullah mourn her death.
• Evil Counterpart: Seska using Federation tactics against her old crewmates. A Kazon ship punches a hole in their shields and a shuttle slips through and stabs into the hull like a knife in their belly and out pour soldiers firing like mad. It’s bold and takes the crew of Voyager, who are more used to lethargic enemies in the Delta Quadrant, entirely unawares. It is such a shame that the Kazon are all so dumb, though. There's also some talk of Seska attempting to unite all the various sects to bring down Voyager, essentially forging her own Federation (or Cardassian Union).
• Evil Makes You Ugly: In Season Two, Seska is stuck in mid-transformation from Bajoran to Cardassian.
• Femme Fatale Spy: Doesn't hesitate to use sexual manipulation, as Chakotay enjoys telling Cullah while the Kazon is beating him for information.
  Chakotay: She's quite a woman, isn't she? Does she rub your shoulders and tell you you're the most exciting man she's ever known? That's what she used to do for me. What's the matter? Didn't she tell you about us?
• Fur and Loathing: After she throws in with the Kazon-Nistrim, she starts wearing one of their fur-trimmed jackets.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Seska was of the opinion that if Voyager was to survive, they needed powerful friends. Hence why, in her view, provoking the Kazons was a bonehead move.
• In Love with the Mark: She genuinely loved Chakotay, and offers him a chance to run off with her and the baby. Unfortunately her betrayal has killed any feelings he once had for her.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In the episode where she's exposed, it's hard not to sympathize with her rant that Janeway isn't prepared to do what it takes to get her crew home, or even keep them safe.
  • Ironically, when Janeway actually does this in later seasons, the fans condemn her for it, despite sympathizing with Seska's point in the first place.
• Killer Game Master: Rewrote a Starfleet vs. Maquis holodeck program into a deathtrap for Tuvok for friends: Holo-Janeway's phaser rifle backfires on her (vaporizing her instantly), and when Tom runs to the EMH for help, the mutinous Doc prescribes him 22 cc's of nitric acid!
  Tom: Maybe we can go to the mess hall now and let the holographic Neelix burn my arm with a frying pan.
• The Lancer: Her initial characterization in the show bible; actually, the writers weren't sure to do with this character. Torres ended up filling this role.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Inverted. The only one of her kind in the Delta Quadant... and yet she still finds a way to restore her old Cardassian features.
• Manipulative Bitch: Both on the personal level and the Evil Plan level.
• Motive Rant: When cornered in her bio-bed in Sickbay, Seska starts to sound uncannily like a stereotypical Cardassian: espousing the pack mentality and cold-blooded realpolitik her species is known for.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Courtesy of Tuvok's holodeck program, prepared in the event of a Maquis takeover of the ship.. which Seska then hacked into. Uh oh.
• Paranoia Gambit: Credit where it is due, the idea of a member of the crew working against their best interest and defying protocol is an extremely unflattering one in light of the recent Stafleet-Maquis alliance. Seska pointing the finger at herself to frame Carey is a moment of genius on her part.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Willing to assist anyone and upset the balance of power in the Quadrant just to get home.
  "Federation rules, Federation nobility, Federation compassion? Do you understand that if we were on a Cardassian ship we would be home now!?"
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: By Hackett's own admission, the writers suddenly realized that they had painted themselves into a corner with Seska (she couldn't very well transfer to another ship in the fleet!), and that the cast had grown too large. It wasn't until the fourth episode that Seska was retconned into a Cardassian spy. Starfleet, Maquis and Cardassian expertise – that’s a pretty intimidating combination of training and talents.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Like all good femme fatales, she knows how to play to sympathy when suspicion is pointed at her, and Seska really lays it on thick with her sob story story about a terrible disease and a compassionate Cardassian "donor."
• You Fool!: In her Motive Rant to the show's leads, Seska sums up Janeway and Chakotay as a couple of "fools" — perfect for each other.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Chakotay has some friendly advice for Cullah. "Once Seska’s through with you…she’s gonna kill you." Ironically Cullah survives while Seska dies.

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