WMG / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Dominion

In the Mirror Universe, the Dominion is a democracy.

A liberal, Utopian democracy where genetic engineering ensures food for billions of citizens of hundreds of worlds. The Dominion is a powerful trading entity, it exports it genetically engineered supercrops. The Changelings walk freely among the Solids, long ago having defended them against invasion by infiltrating the invaders. There are no Jem'hadar or Vorta, they were never created.

• No, the Vorta and Jem'Hadar still exist, but they're the result of various uplift experiments, rather than go-betweens and cannon fodder. They have full rights.
• In the Mirror Universe, the Changelings have uplifted many, many lower life forms in the Gamma Quadrant to sapient status, and are still worshiped as physical gods by their creations. Genetic engineering is to the Dominion's utopian, liberal democracy what matter replication technology is the Federation in the Prime Universe: the technology that makes Utopia possible. It has defended the Gamma Quadrant from the Borg for at least 2,000 years, and watched the Terran Empire rise and fall from a distance.
• So what was Mirror Odo doing at Mirror Terok Nor?
  • He was still sent out by the Founders to explore the galaxy, it just so happens that when he went through the wormhole he found the despotic, autocratic Alliance instead of the (comparatively less-so) Cardassians/Bajorans.
• In fact, a major point of the whole series seems to have been that the Dominion was the complete opposite of the Federation: where humanity used its unique characteristics to bring thousands of species together in racial harmony, the Dominion's founders used their species' unique abilities to conquer and redesign the other species of their quadrant to suit themselves. Where the Federation outlawed genetic tampering and augmentation, the Dominion used it extensively to reshape every species to serve it in some capacity. Since the Dominion is such a complete inversion of the Federation, it's likely that over in the morally inverted Mirror Universe, the Dominion is the Federation. It probably even calls itself that, or something like it. (The "Gamma Confederation" maybe?)
• Jossed in the EU novel Rise Like Lions. The Mirror Dominion is in fact worse than the Prime Dominion. This makes sense, as the Mirror Universe isn't really a moral inversion of the Prime, it's more like an exaggeration of its negative aspects:
  • Mirror humanity in general has our selfishness magnified.
  • Prime!Kirk's womanizing tendencies and confidence-bordering-on-arrogance get magnified into blatant sexism and Attempted Rape.
  • Prime!Sisko's cocky streak takes over his character to where he basically starts the Rebellion because he was bored of being Kira's privateer.
  • The Mirror Klingons and Cardassians have their species' asshole sides exaggerated, and Mirror Worf wasn't raised on human tales of Klingon honor so he's more like a House of Duras-style drunken asshole Klingon.
  • Point of order: that novel does not establish that the Mirror Dominion is worse, merely that it exists and is organized in the same basic way (with ketracel white-dependent Jem'Hadar cannon fodder, Vorta as the organizers/commanders, and the Founders firmly on top). The Mirror Dominion being worse comes from the Decipher Star Trek RPG, although there's nothing contradicting it in the short glimpse shown in Rise Like Lions.

The Federation wanted to start the war w/ Dominion but found themselves outclassed and outgunned when they did.

Despite numerous warning from residents of the Gamma Quadrant about the Dominion, Star Fleet kept constantly probing deeper into the Gamma Quadrant and establishing colonies until they provoked the attack that destroyed the USS Odyssey. Then the Federation attempts a poorly planned and executed "peace initiative" that ends in its delegation being captured and "brainwashed" by the Dominion. This failure wasn't followed not by a retreat from the Gamma Quadrant, but a military buildup of Deep Space Nine.

The founders are Shoggoth.

The Great Link deliberately sent out the hundred Changeling infants so that they would experience bigotry and isolation.

When the Great Link sent out one hundred infant Changelings to live among Alpha Quadrant cultures, it knew they would experience social isolation, if not outright hatred from humanoids. This was a deliberate strategy by the Great Link to ensure that future generations of Changelings shared its disdain and paranoia of "solids", thus ensuring the Dominion's status quo. Had the infants experienced Alpha Quadrant cultures differently — say, as a collective group rather than isolated individuals, or as visitors with a home among the Great Link rather than stranded orphans — they wouldn't have cultivated the necessary resentment needed to run a xenophobic empire. However, they didn't expect Odo to turn out the way he did ...

• Laas is pretty much what they imagined the hundred would all be, scorned, condescending, and dismissive of the solids' welfare. Laas wanted to create his own link, if memory serves, so their plan wasn't perfect. What made Odo so special (even if he didn't know it) was that he learned to empathize with the solids and understand their motivations, and was the only Changling to do so.

Odo's forced transformation into humanoid form in "Broken Link" was actually a reversion to the Changelings' ancient form

The Female Changeling once told Odo that the Changeling Founders were originally solids who evolved into shapeshifters. In "Broken Link", when Odo is punished by the Founders by being transformed into a humanoid, the Founders merely de-evolved him. That is, they forced him into a "throwback" humanoid form that was already encoded in his genetic material.

An alternate way the Dominion War could have ended.

p.s. not complaining about how it did, just having fun with some ideas

• Sisko fails at convincing the prophets to destroy the Dominion fleet and they win the war. ~20-30 years later, a ship resembling an Intrepid-class comes from the direction of the Delta quadrant full of powerful weapons, possibly intended against the Borg. It is able to destroy much of the Dominion fleet and get to Earth, where it begins an uprising against the Dominion and eventually restores the Federation.
• The Borg attack the Dominion, they assimilate the clone breeding centers and begin chugging out drones. The Borg determine they cannot assimilate Changelings and therefore declare an open hail that they will exterminate them. The Borg smash through the Jemhdar Wolf 359 style. To save the Founders Sisko must first pick up Captain Picard who will function as an ambassador to the Borg, if that fails Sisko is to use the Defiant to destroy the Borg cube. Sisko and his crew do everything they can to fight the borg. It ends up with just Sisko and Picard on the bridge of the Defiant throwing everything they have at the Borg...to no avail. The Borg over power the Defiant. Sisko programs in ramming speed, Picard tells him to stop and open a hail. Sisko wants to fire, Picard pulls rank and Sisko reigns himself in. Picard gives a Picard speech admitting that resistance is futile, they will win, but if there is any of me, and of the hundreds of federation citizens you've assimilated within you then you must see that there is another way, a better way. Yadda yadda he lays on the Picard speech. The Borg cube responds that it must go ponder what has been said and the Cube flies away. The crew of the Defiant beam down, and Odo rejoins his people. The Female Changeling comes up and agrees to peace.
• Actually Odo could have ended the war easily. He just had to say to the Founders I'll come home IF you remove all forces from the Alpha Quadrant and agree to a galactic peace treaty with the Federation. He puts on his tuxedo and Boom, war over.
• Admiral Ross successfully takes over the Federation in his coup. Sisko is locked away. Major Kira leads a covert commando force right into Starfleet HQ and rescues him. They go back to Bajor. The Federation now falls to infighting. The Dominion begins to pounce. Sisko activates his Emmisary card and the Bajoran government enlists the remaining Masquis to form a renegade army that goes after the Dominion themselves.
  • Along the way Worf decides to get the sword of Kales and unite the Klingons behind Sisko.
    • In the end the Defiant is piloted by the now renegade Sisko and his crew who are now more anti-hero types. The Defiant smashes through the Dominion lines and orbits the homeworld of the Founders. As the Founder gloat at him, what will one little ship be able to do against a whole planet. BOOM the Defiant fires a Genesis Torpedo! Nuff said.

The Dominion is an allegory for the United States and where they are headed

• The Jem'Hadar represent the increasingly trigger-happy Police Force; ready willing and able to put down any and all dissent at a moment's notice.
• The Vorta represent Mass Media; smug, ingratiating (And often with perfect hair), in sycophantic thrall to the leaders, which leads to...
• The Founders represent Washington; crafty and paranoid, always ready to neutralize any real or perceived threat.
• So, obviously, The Federation, as always, represents Our Ideals; the idea that we can make a better world, where violence, hatred and fear has been replaced with optimism and hope. And the Dominion War represents these ideals triumphing over the corruption that Dominates us. DS9 is often decried as falling on the Cynical side of the Sliding Scale, but it is in fact quite the opposite.

Changelings have better ethics than "real world" humans

• Humans consist of 7 billion overpowered beings that are shredding the planet at high speeds, we like cows and chickens one way, we like dogs and cats and horses another way, we've exterminated rhinos and dodos and frog species right and left, we pour millions of dollars into pest control, taking out ants and spiders and mice and rats and whatever else happens to bug us the wrong way because they're "not like us".

• The gaps are that Changelings don't have racism, gender issues, crazy cop killings, internal wars, atomic bombs, rape, theft, and jaywalking, and their species happens to have a couple questionable-relative-to-mammals-methods for raising their young. Unlike mammals, but like reptiles, they drop their young off and trust their instincts to figure it out.

The Dominion War was instigated by the Cardassians, and was part of a long-term Cardassian political strategy to infiltrate the Federation

The war was instigated by the Cardassians to make them seem like really sympathetic pawns; remember that Cardassians are long-term planners; sacrificing the dignity and comfort of a generation, not to mention millions of lives when they rebelled against the Dominion at the end of the war, is second-nature to them. Even their epic novels typically take place over several generations and involve a tradition of sacrifice and duty to the state. Their militaristic culture is practically based on Machiavellian politics. Now, as an occupied power, they've endured horrors eerily similar to what they themselves did to the Bajorans. By the end of the war, when they rebel against the Dominion, the Cardassians really look like they've been tragically screwed. But this is what they want. They want the rest of the galaxy to see them as just as sympathetic as, if not more than, the Bajorans. In the next generation, growing up after the Dominion War, the Cardassians will basically be the new Bajorans, dispossessed and broken. Then eventually they'll join the Federation, supposedly as a last resort, but this is actually in line with their greater plan: once they've got their foot in the door, they will use their superhumanoid politicking skills to take over the Federation Council, and Earth itself. They'll become the lawyers and intelligence agents of the Federation, just like Vulcans are the diplomats and scientists of the Federation. Earth will become a colony of Cardassia, and Cardassia will take over the Federation without a single shot fired.

• Works, but only if Cardassians age the same rate as everyone else. Who's to say that they age 2-5x the speed of humans so that 3 generations of Cardassians represents just two decades of human growth. Not to mention, there is probably some give-and-take between the Cardassians for Federation aid. They'd probably have some say in schooling, military, etc. Notice that Japan hasn't taken over the UN.
• Related secondary WMG based on the Cardassians' shown abilities: There is indeed such a plan amongst part of the Cardassian leadership. It will fail, because the Cardassians are not that superhumanoid in their politicking or planning, and the Federation is very good at assimilating cultures into its greater overarching culture. The Cardassians will become an influential and powerful species in the Federation, but they will not rule it (as a species. Individual Cardassians might very well end up as President from time to time) nor will Earth become a colony of Cardassia in any sense.

Why the Dominion War isn't mentioned in the Visitor.

Because the war never turned hot. They're still in a very long, uncomfortable cold war with them - without Sisko's input events happened differently. The Dominion is building up forces, possibly already aligned with Cardassia (all though without his rivalry with Sisko Dukat's motivations might have been changed slightly) and the Federation appeases them over and over again ... by the time they stand up to them it might be too late.

• An alternative, more positive, possibility is that without Sisko's involvement, the events of To the Death happened differently. Weyoun of course painted things as negatively for the Federation as possible, but in The Visitor's timeline, perhaps the events went more favourable for the Alpha Quadrant than that, triggering a civil war between a majority of loyal Jem'Hadar and a much smaller group of renegade Jem'Hadar with access to a functional Iconian gateway and therefore the immensely powerful strategic ability to strike anywhere. By the time that was sorted out, years might have passed (losing Dukat his opportunity to seize control with the Dominion's help, since no Dominion help is forthcoming for the foreseeable future), the Dominion's Gamma Quadrant forces would have been depleted and the gateway might have had to have been destroyed, leaving the Dominion to take decades to build up their forces simply to be where they were by the time of To the Death.

The Founder masquerading as Bashir murdered the baby Changeling.

The infant Changeling dies mysteriously and suddenly in the night while under Bashir's care- at a time when "Bashir" is almost certainly a Founder infiltrator. The show makes it clear fairly early on that the Founder's "No Changeling has ever killed another" philosophy is nonsense, after a different infiltrator attempts to murder Odo aboard the Defiant, and their overall attitude toward their young is almost absurdly neglectful. Founder!Bashir likely killed the baby in order to prevent the Federation from learning more about their race (which of course ended up backfiring entirely).

The Dominion War and Sisko as the Emisary were also part of Q's test and trial of humanity.

Q's appearance on DS9 was not random or as purposeless as we may think, he was checking in on Benjamin Sisko who was a sort of double blind test of humanity. Picard was the human Q chose to make aware of the test, and he put Picard through hoops that Picard knew about to judge humanity that way. The much more meaningful test was Sisko, and by extension the entire Dominion War. Check it - Omnipotent Q introduced the Enterprise to the Borg, the Borg attacked at Wolf 359, Jennifer Sisko was killed at 359, which drove Sisko out of regular duty to be posted at DS9, where he becomes the emissary and discovers the wormhole starting the war with the Dominion. Whereas Q tested Riker with the physical powers of a god, he tested Sisko with the social/ethical powers of a god by putting Sisko in a position to be worshipped as a god by another race of being, how would humanity handle that? Q tested Picard with the temporal anomaly to see if humanity could grasp a paradox. Sisko had to actually speak to non-linear and learn to communicate with them, was this a test of humanities ability to communicate on a deeper esoteric level? The Dominion was an enemy capable of plunging the peaceful Federation into a loosing war, how would humanity handle that challenge, would they rise to it, would they loose their way?

The Founders' standard appearance is an (attempted) imitation of the appearance of the original Humanoid we see in the The Next Generation episode "The Chase".

They look suspiciously similar. Of course, the female Founder is played by the same actress (Salome Jens), but the makeup is also similar (except for the ears).

• The problem with this theory is that it's canon that Odo's appearance was due to him not being very good at doing faces — and, indeed, in the episode "Children of Time" future!Odo has a slightly more humanoid (but still not perfect) face. The reason why all the other Founders look like that is because they're copying Odo.
  • What if the Bajoran people, which Odo was trying to mimic, are closer to the founders genetically.
• In one episode, Odo is visited by another changeling, Laas, who hasn't made contact with the Founders. Laas' humanoid form appears to be mimicking whatever species he grew up around, although with an Odo-esque 'smoothness' to it, with no lips or eyebrows. And Laas doesn't have the "can't do one of your noses" excuse - he's an expert shapeshifter who can turn into fire, fog, and even a freakin' warp-capable starship. This suggests there's some 'pure' Changeling-humanoid look in there somewhere. If the other Founders were purely imitating Odo, why don't they all look like the same actor?
• Alternatively, the Founders ARE the Precursors. All the evidence is there: they admit themselves that they used to be "solids", implying quite an old race, and they also state that they used to explore the galaxy, as the Precursors did. The Female Changeling looks like she does because she's acting as a mouthpiece for the Founders, like the Precursor in "The Chase", and that form was found to be most effective.

Eris (the first Vorta to appear in Deep Space Nine) was not really a Vorta, but something completely different.

Eris was able to beam away from the Station with no Dominion ships anywhere nearby (and we know that the Dominion does not use cloaking devices). If the Dominion had this technology, why do they never use it again? My guess is that Eris is not really a Vorta, but something entirely different.

• Alternatively: she beamed nowhere. She's now a discorporated mass who sent her intel she gathered already. If she's a Vorta, she's basically a disposable, replaceable clone.
• Fridge Brilliance: If you take this together with the WMG further above that Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas takes place on ancient Bajor instead of earth, you get... something extremely weird.
• She was the only Vorta to ever display telekinetic abilities.
• Maybe she was a clone of the original prototype of the Vorta species. Maybe the Vorta were originally designed with telekinetic abilities. Maybe the Vorta were originally intended to be the Dominion's footsoldiers as well as diplomats, but at some point the Founders decided that it would be better to create two weaker species which they could easily control, rather than one single "supersoldier" species: they removed the Vorta's psi powers and kept them on as administrators and diplomats, and then they engineered the Jem'Hadar as a more easily controlled species of supersoldiers without tricky psi powers that could threaten the Founders. However, every once in a while, the Dominion activated an Eris clone when they felt they needed her. She would be programmed to complete a single mission and then commit suicide in the most convenient way possible, such as by beaming into space.
• The transporter part was Jossed on-screen: Dominion transporter was stated having range of at least three light years, when enchanched with a homing transponder like the one used to kidnap Kira and move her from ''Deep Space 9'' to ''Empok Nor''◊. Maybe she had one of those in her pocket. Still doesn't explain the telekinetic abilities...
  • As someone who features Eris in his fanfiction extensively, I think she is one of a handful of Vorta who opted for telekinesis when she first became a clone.

The Dominion didn't defeat the Maquis.

The only information we have is the intelligence gathered by Starfleet's secret service. We never see it happen. Also, it's very unlikely: neither the Cardassians nor the Federation were able to defeat the Maquis, and the Dominion isn't THAT much more advanced.

• It wasn't a matter of tech. It was a matter of will and resources. The Federation doesn't (publicly) engage in atrocities, while the Cardassians didn't really have the resources to wipe them out and withstand the inevitable backlash from the Federation. The Dominion were perfectly fine with committing atrocities, and they could easily withstand any attack at that point. Also, one of the biggest sources was Mike Eddington, who was a member of the Maquis, and was trying to evacuate the last survivors of his cell in his last appearance.
• That one guy from VOY "Repression" was still around.
• We see that some Maquis raiders were in the later big battles in the war. I assume a few survivors took their ships and joined with the Federation fleets to get back a the Dominion.

Odo and the other changelings are the result of their homeworld achieving Instrumentality.

The Great Link is a far-future version of the planet where Pokémon takes place. The Changelings happened when the Ditto took over and killed everyone and everything else, after they finally got fed up with being abused as Breeding Slaves.

The Changelings' powers are really similar to those of Ditto in Pokemon, and it also explains why they have both a superiority complex over and ear of "solids." The Dominion could just be an attempt by these advanced Dittos to do to the rest of the galaxy what they first did to their homeworld.

Tosk were the basis for the Jem'Hadar.

Either that or Tosk were uplifted from the same base species but given reduced abilities. They have identical shrouding and are durable, armor-skinned warriors. Tosk need only 17 minutes of sleep a day and get all their nourishment from small amounts of liquid paste. Jem'Hadar don't need to sleep at all and get all their nourishment from ketracel white. If Tosk came about naturally then the Founders saw they were exception warriors and made them even better, with the white dependency as a control mechanism. The similarities are too much to be a coincidence.

Prophets

The Cardassians worshiped the Prophets, but under another name.

The lightship made it to a more prosperous Cardassia Prime. The pilot, unable to return to Bajor, taught the Cardassians the Bajoran religion, which became immensely popular. When the Bajorans and the Cardassians made contact, the similar religions actually became a talking point, and Bajor found out about the legend of the Bajoran pilot. Then the Cardassians became impoverished, and their government became intensely nationalistic. A combination of the Prophets never showing up and distaste towards 'foreign influences' caused the religion to dwindle into nothingness, but that still left a key aspect of their society that could potentially be traced back to another planet (not to mention one that had offered no comfort during the famine). Thus, Bajor became a target for 'uplifting', and the Occupation began.

The Sphere-Builders from Enterprise will become the Prophets

Both the Sphere-Builders and the Prophets are aliens living in a trans-dimensional realm beyond normal space and time, a realm that's depicted onscreen with all-encompassing white colour. Since the Sphere-Builders appear to be humanoids and want to conquer the physical universe, it seems likely they originally lived in this universe but were somehow trapped in the trans-dimensional realm ages ago, and wish to return to their original home. However, after their attempt to conquer the universe is thwarted and their connection to it cut, they decide to try and properly adapt to their new home. Eventually they will evolve to live fully beyond space and time, losing their physical bodies in the process, and becoming the beings Bajorans referred to as the Prophets. At some point a random wormhole opens up a new connection between the trans-dimensional realm and the physical universe, but at that point they have forgotten they'd ever existed outside their realm, and have no wish to leave it. The only exception to this is a subgroup among them called the Pah-Wraiths, who still hold on to some subconscious Sphere-Builder mentality, and who are therefore more interested in manipulating the physical universe and its inhabitants.

The Prophets was the factor that threw off the calculations of certain doom in "Statistical Probabilities"

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the Federation was supposed to lose even if both the Romulans joined the war on their side (which did happen) and the Cardassians began an anti-Dominion rebellion (which also happened, although only after the war was turning against the Dominion), and that, to all appearances, did not take into account the Breen joining when they did. So what turned the course of war towards victory? One major possibility is that it was the Dominion remaining cut-off from the Gamma Quadrant despite the minefield going down (that the minefield would go down eventually may well have been a statistical near-certainty in the calculations), which only happened because the very alien and very unknown Wormhole Aliens for once made a personal and impressive intervention in response to a desperate last-shot gamble by Sisko. The Jack Pack calculated based on it being inevitable that sooner or later the Dominion's Gamma Quadrant power could come into play, but in one swoop the Prophets ensured that would not happen — and so allowed the Federation to win the Dominion War.

• It's actually pretty heavily implied by the show (though never directly confirmed) that the Prophets and Pah-Wraiths are applying subtle influences on the course of the war, considering that the alliance gets pretty bogged down when Dukat sticks a Pah-Wraith in the wormhole. See the Deep Space Nine entry on Divine Conflict.
• They also probably did not calculate Section 31 attempting genocide. This and the Prophets not being included, showed that the Mutants calculations had many flaws because they lacked all the information.
  • And then there's the fact that they predicted a rebellion led by earth five generations down the line, when a prior episode indicated that the Dominion was planning to preemptively glass Earth to prevent exactly this eventuality.
  • I think it's actually much more likely that Sisko and the events of "In the Pale Moonlight" specifically are what threw off their war projections. The Jack Pack predicted that the Romulans would join the war against the Dominion, yes, but only after close to a year had passed (Season seven timeframe) and the Federation and the Klingons were that much weaker, and thus the alliance as a whole would have been in a weaker position. Their predictions were based on statistical analysis of the powers themselves, which would have included the Dominion not planning to invade Romulus yet specifically because they didn't want to scare the Romulans into the war, and thus the Romulans would have had no reason to join the war early (Presumably, the Jack Pack saw them joining the war in a year when the Dominion began gaining the definitive upper hand and the Romulans realized that the Klingons and Federation were really going down and they would soon find themselves facing the Dominion alone). They could have never foreseen Sisko manufacturing evidence or taking part in a deceptive plot to trick the Romulans into the war, both because their statistics don't deal with minute individual factors, and because even if it did they had no data to say that Sisko would have been willing to do such a thing (It doesn't matter how smart you are, if you don't have the right data you can't have the right conclusions). This is one of the few points in the entire series where one person really changed everything, where Sisko changed everything, and it's a point that they couldn't have predicted.

The Prophets didn't need Sisko to explain anything to them.

They were putting on a act in order to force him to come to terms with his own grief, because the Prophets work in mysterious ways.

Q doesn't bother the station much because of the Prophets.

When he shows up, he doesn't do anything truly Q-like—he basically annoys everybody because why not. He didn't do any truly spectacular things out of courtesy to the Prophets, who don't like other godlike beings playing in their backyard.

Commander Sisko created the Bajoran Religion.

The Prophets live outside of linear time. While they did send out probes, Cdr. Sisko is the first time any linear being responded to them. The Prophets then send out more probes to gather data; however, they appear at different time periods due to the Prophets living outside normal time. And since Sisko told the Prophets that they were of Bajor, the Prophets decided to fulfill their designated role as gods of Bajor. Some wanted to guide Bajor, others wanted to rule or destroy it; these later become the Pah-Wraiths.

The main evidence for this is the Prophets' behavior. They go from people who have no idea of Bajor to declaring "We are of Bajor," and performing various miracles that determine the course of Bajoran history (such as when they destroyed the invading Dominion fleet). There's also the sketchy evidence of the Bajoran symbol; when it is standing on end, it bears a vague resemblance to the Star Fleet Delta, with three points and a star. The reason the Prophets' behavior appears so contradictory is because they are operating outside of linear time; this allows them to meddle in Bajor's past as they grow more accepting of their apparent role as gods.

Rom Is an Empathic Metamorph

In the TNG episode “The Perfect Mate” an empathic metamorph is someone who not only senses the emotions of others, but emulates their personality to perfectly please whoever they’re with. Rom has displayed this behavior over the course of the series. In the early episodes, he was greedy and misogynistic like Quark, because he spent most of his time working with Quark. In the episode “The Nagus” he tried to kill Quark...because that was what Brax wanted and Rom wants whatever whoever he is associating with wants. As the series progresses Rom becomes more good-natured and altruistic because he associates with Federation and Bajoran citizens. He even goes from being cowardly when faced with death to being brave in the face of Dominion execution, and who was he spending most of his time with at that point? Major Kira. By the time Rom gets with Leeta, the Bajoran dabo girl, he’s quoting Bajoran spiritual texts and wearing the earring like a Bajoran, and only stops when someone reminds him he’s a Ferengi. Rom not only reads people, but he knows how to compensate accordingly.

Tiron and Brunt are actually the same person

At the end of Meridian, Tiron tells Quark "I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I will ruin you". They established a rich man who usually gets what he wants, but he never does anything......Until you realize that he's played by Jeffery Coombs, who also plays Brunt and Weyoun (Weyoun isn't part of this WMG as I thought of it, but that doesn't mean he can't be). Now who is Brunt? He's the person who's always had it out for Quark and even revoked his business lisance for a short time. He was also first shown in late season three, while Tiron was only shown in an episode earlier in that season. Coincidence? I think not. I say after swearing to get back at Quark, he used his vast wealth to be surgically altered to look like a ferrengi, then got himself into the FCA via some well-placed bribes and afterwards did everything he could to make Quark suffer.

Commander Shelby and Benjamin Sisko worked together

Shelby was in all likelihood the person put in charge of the Borg desk at Starfleet. She was probably Sisko's superior on the Defiant project.

• I assume she is the one who pulled the plug on the Defiant project after the third or fourth time the ship tore itself apart in trails. So when Sisko was put out to pasture at DS9 he probably harbored a lot of anger at Shelby for it, and then he had to kowtow to Locutus as well.

Continuity Gaff Apologism:

In the TNG episode "Up the Long Ladder" Worf busts out a Klingon tea set for some ceremony. The cups and pitcher used for the Klingon tea ceremony were seen again many years later in the Deep Space Nine episode "The Ship". In that episode, the Vorta Kilana brings food and drink to Sisko using this tableware.

• Obviously she studied the Federation and Sisko. Discovering that Sisko's mentor and best friend was Curzon Dax who himself was obviously a lover of Klingon culture she felt that using this Klingon tea set would display subtle diplomatic overtures that Sisko would recognize and that would prey on his softer feelings of friendship for Curzon.

Jake accidentally becomes the 24th century L.Ron Hubbard

His novel Anslem becomes the fictional work that inspires an actual religion. Of course the atheistic Federation looks at this like a bunch of primitive whacko mumbo jumbo, but the adherents point to the obvious miracles of Captain Sisko as proof. Jake hating all of this becomes a recluse and never writes anything again. Of course this just further intensifies his mystery.

• Jake's younger brother marries Tom and B'Elanna's kid, the Kuvah'magh, and the two of them eventually become the head of the church of Sisko.
  • God help us all if they get the Sword of Kahless.
• After Voyager returned Tom Paris's holoprograms became all the rage, as did Insurection Alpha. Tom tried his hand at holonovel writing and, though not very good was still famous. Tom scored big when he got permission to make the holonovel adaptation of Anslem (of course the books always better than the holonovel, we all know that). Tom got so famous from that he stopped piloting and turned to holonovel writing full time...unfortunately he was a hack at it and never produced a real hit of his own.

Bajorans would start playing baseball

To the Bajorans baseball would not only be the national pastime for the entire planet, it would actually be a religious observation. Each vedek temple would form a team to play in the league and each temple would have a baseball field, the bigger temples would be full on stadiums. Whichever temples wins The World Series gets to name the next Kai. Before each game a vedek would give a speech about the history of baseball, and how the Emissary used the lessons of baseball to explain linear time to the Prophets. Hot dogs and beer would become like the communion wafers.

• Buck Bokai and Willie Mayes would be like saints.
• The vedek temples would start ordaining ringers to make their temple teams the best.
• The Pah Wraith Cultists, atheists and half Cardassian children would have to play in a separate, unofficially recognized league.
• I assume the crew of Deep Space Nine would be an official team as well. They would also have to open a league for aliens to play in.
• In fact it would become tradition in the Bajoran sector for each ship to form a team and when the ships come in to dock at DS9 the crews play each other. These games get sent out across space and the ship crews develop sports fan followings and fame. It would become part of the tradition that the Umpire had to be a Vedic.

Jake Sisko is the 24th century Jack London

• A writer who spent his formative adolescence and early adulthood on a distant frontier outpost, played a major role in the Dominion War as a Starfleet correspondent and spy, emphatically rejected a Starfleet career to focus on his writing, turned down the Pennington School on Earth in favor of staying on the politically unstable and strategically important Deep Space Nine, has a thing for native Bajoran girls (He had a of girlfriends over the series and all of them were Bajoran), is a charmer, and a survivor. Is adventurous and the older he gets, the less he heeds his fathers' warnings to the point where his dad has to acknowledge that his son is old enough to make his own decisions... this "kid" has had enough adventures to write twenty books about life on the frontier, by the wormhole, in non-Federation space.

O'Brien's fluctuating rank

(Out-of-universe, it was a combination of Roddenberry's anti-classism ("we won't have officers and enlisted in the future!") and turning what was initially a nameless Red Shirt into an Ascended Extra. But that's no fun!)

• My theory: O'Brien was an NCO who was made an acting officer first with the rank of ensign and later lieutenant with a reassignment to the operations division. All this was probably due to his distinguished war record. He had a lot of experience that even officers lacked and either Picard, Starfleet or both saw this potential. Alternatively he may have been made an officer so he could direct much younger Academy graduates, as although he had never gone there himself, as his experience and training were still considered assets. This might have been rescinded later in the series after O'Brien had seasoned his students on board the Enterprise, but because O'Brien is an engineering genius and a war veteran, Starfleet Command had a great amount of respect for him, so when his time as an acting officer was over, even as an NCO, he got to keep his officer's privileges, pay (if Starfleet pays, that's not clear), status, etc . My personal theory, and this is based on my understanding of O'Brien's character, is that prior to accepting his transfer to Deep Space 9, he seriously considered leaving Starfleet. In fact, he tried really, really hard to leave Starfleet, but Starfleet didn't want to let him go. He and Keiko had even made plans to move to Earth, settle down in a nice neighborhood in Kyoto, and one of Keiko's relatives would set O'Brien up with a cushy job, and the O'Brien family would never set foot on a spaceship again. Then, Starfleet made O'Brien an offer he couldn't refuse: basically he'd be the highest compensated NCO in the Federation, however it is that Starfleet compensates its officers. All he had to go was travel across the Federation to an abandoned Cardassian Space Station and make it work. And as much as O'Brien wanted to leave, his engineer's instincts took over and he couldn't refuse that challenge. O'Brien even said himself in the series that he was bored on the Enterprise and much happier on Deep Space 9 because something was always going wrong and he felt more needed there. It may be that on starbases, the Chief of Operations does most of that work, and chief engineers are more like starship officers who specialize in Warp Drive and other things a ship would have that a space station or a ground installation wouldn't. So O'Brien having that authority (ordering officers around despite being an NCO) makes sense on a relatively small outpost like Deep Space 9. But given how much I suspect O'Brien wanted to leave Starfleet before accepting the Deep Space 9 transfer, they must have offered him something even better than he got for working on the Enterprise, or I doubt he would have taken such an assignment considering that it involved moving his wife and very young daughter to a politically unstable, highly disputed area of space filled with criminals, terrorists, and Cardassian military paranoids. Think back and remember how unhappy Keiko was in the first season when she and Miles' relationship seemed the most strained... I always suspected that O'Brien had tried to leave Starfleet and Keiko had worked herself up over going home, only to be disappointed.
  • I think you're close to the mark here. O'brien started out as an NCO. During the Cardassian war, he probably got a battlefield commission to Ensign (and later Lieutenant after he distinguished himself). He kept this for a time after the war ended. But once the war and the aftermath of it were clearly over, Starfleet gave him a choice of career paths, saying he could keep the commission, and start to take on officer rank and duties (leading to command), or he could keep his current duties and revert back to an NCO. I don't think O'Brien wanted his career to go to command, because it's not what he wanted to do, so he elected to revert to an NCO. All off-camera of course. This type of situation has happened a number of times in the real life military.
• I always thought that accepting posting at DS9 was one of those marriage compromises where everybody kinda got what they wanted, but kind didn't. After having Molly Keiko wanted to leave Starfleet because gallivanting around the galaxy with a child was dangerous, plus Myles had a little person thankless job on the ship. I'm sure DS9 spun life on a starbase orbiting a planet as a somewhat like settling down to make Keiko happy, and he got a real job.
  • That could be the case. My theory still pins down the fluctuating rank between low ranking officer/high ranking NCO though. In "The Wounded" (a TNG episode) O'Brien's former captain referred to him as having been a tactical officer. We've never seen anyone below the rank of ensign take tactical, ever, except for O'Brien once to cover for Worf in TNG and later in DS9 on the Defiant at times. Seems like he got a temporary field promotion during the Cardassian Wars and Starfleet decided to let him keep it for a while for whatever reason (I assume his field experience and technical abilities) until later in TNG when he was preparing to transfer to DS9 (which meant losing his field promotion but getting a better job anyway). So he went back to being a CPO and retained all the prestige than a chief engineer would on a starship. After all, Starfleet Academy wanted him as a professor of engineering and he never went to the academy himself.
• In modern militaries it is not unusual for mustang officers (officers that worked their way up from the enlisted ranks) to revert to senior non-coms (usually at an equivalent pay grade) to take certain job positions. O'Brien may have earned a commission during the war (either a field promotion or even a regular one) and was eventually promoted to Lieutenant, possibly soon after transferring to the Enterprise as he is only wearing a single pip in Encounter at Farpoint. He most likely reverted to non-com status during TNG season 2 after he became Transporter Chief, though he continues to wear his Lieutenant pips for some time after this. This may be allowed by the Starfleet uniform code for a variety of reasons. Most likely he started out as the acting transporter chief or was on probationary status until the position became permanent. Until then he retained the option of returning to the officer ranks if he choose or if the new posting didn't work out. Once he formally accepted the position he had to wear non-com insignia on his regular uniform (He may have been allowed to retain his officer's dress uniform, as he again has two pips on his collar at his wedding.)

Pure Klingons and part-Klingon hybrids have very diverse aging patterns. It has nothing to do with hybridization with humans.

This would explain Alexander, Worf, Kang, Kor and Koloth's ages. Remember that statistical variation exists within any population. It may be that Klingon individuals are subject to more varied aging patterns, such that an 8 year old Klingon could either resemble a cognitive and physic young adult, an adolescent, or even a child, depending on their individual genetics. This leaves open the possibility that Worf was in his 20's during Star Trek: The Next Generation or possibly much younger like Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran's crew (9 years old and looking like an older teen or young adult). Officially Worf was in his twenties during Next Gen, so maybe the super-aging comes from his mother's side of the family (and she was half human). But if the pattern holds, any Klingon young adult might be between 9 and 21 in human years. The onset of Klingon puberty might be much less regular or predictable among Klingons than humans or other species. Puberty could hit them at 6 or at 12-14. It depends on the individual and probably the developmental patterns in their families. If I had to guess I'd assume that Romulans and Vulcans experience something similar, since they can either look middle aged to elderly in their mid 100's, or much younger at the same age, like Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager. This might complicate Ponn Farr, though.

Worf has the Klingon version of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Compared to other Klingons, Worf is anal retentive. This was part of his own culture shock in early Next Generation episodes. He's often at odds with other Klingons. His quarters are always immaculate and he likes everything a certain way and becomes very irritable when he doesn't get what he wants. Then, there's his obsession with the details of his wedding, and just watch his interaction with General Martok (and other Klingons) in the later Deep Space 9 seasons. (Actually this is not what OCD is at all, more likely to be compulsive repetitive behaviors, but not always. It's worth reading about to educate yourself about this crippling disease)

The "Orion Syndicate" is actually the O'Ryan Syndicate, a 24th century descendant of the Irish Mob

Hence, the reason we never see any actual Orions (the green-skinned humanoids from The Original Series) in episodes that involve the Syndicate, and why humans seem to fill its higher ranks, along with a bunch of other aliens including people from other Federation planets (and non-Fed species like the Yridians). Also explains why the Federation seems so interested in it. It's not an Orion venture at all. It's the O'Ryan Syndicate!

• Is this why they're green? Oh, little green men!!!
  • No, it has to be Leprechauns...the Ferengi!

Captain Boday, a "Gallamite," is really just a human with a transparent skull.

Why not? We've never actually seen him, and the "Gallamites" could easily be a human colony, or a religious organization rather than a species. Maybe Gallamites are just humans who are really into bio-augmentation. Maybe they display their brains like status or wealth. They're not Federation citizens because they practice genetic engineering, which is banned by Federation law. But they probably trade with the Federation. Captain Boday was an often-alluded-to freighter captain.

• Maybe they were the crew of a ship called 'The Gallamite' which had some kind of terrible accident that made them transparent, like the one in the Fringe pilot.
• Unfortunately, since I like that theory, that kind of genetic modification is illegal in the federation.

Bashir's genetic enhancements were done on the order of Section 31

Bashir's parents were constantly changing jobs, so it is unlikely they would have been able to accrue enough finances to afford the expense of such intensive therapy. The therapy took place on Adigeon Prime, a planet outside the Federation, and therefore the technicians performing the operation would have required monetary compensation, not the credits that are only good within the Federation. It has been established that the ad-hoc currency between space-faring economies is gold-pressed latinum, something the average Federation citizen doesn't usually have or need, and it is unlikely the Bashirs would have access to, at least in large amounts. However, an organization as powerful and most likely as well-funded as Section 31 would be able to afford such an operation. It had also been stated by Sloan in "Inquisition" that they had been observing Bashir for a long while. Section 31 approached the Bashirs with the offer of the operations, with the agreement that they would raise their son in such a way to be amenable to joining Section 31 when they felt he was ready. Throughout the series, Bashir mentions that his parents strongly disapproved of his considering a career in tennis and their encouragement in his decision to join Starfleet (most of their recruits are from Starfleet). His interest in spy literature may have been introduced by his parents, wanting him to have a certain romanticism towards the profession. Richard and Amsha didn't accidentally reveal his enhancements to his colleagues and Zimmerman, but were ordered to by Section 31, who hoped that Bashir would become isolated and have no one to turn to but S31. However, his colleagues pretty much just shrugged and told him to throw darts from further back. Richard chose to come through for his kid and make that prison deal so Julian could live his life on his own terms, at least until Sloan came for him.

• To drive this even further: What if all recruits of Section 31 are genetically altered and then raised in such a way? (Is that a case of More than Mind Control by the way?)
  • Consider Ethan Locken, who is also genetically altered and whose catalyst for joining was instigated by S31, definitely making this More than Mind Control. Perhaps Bashir was the prototype...
• This is still very possible, although even Federation credits are not normally used on Earth, and are likely provided in limited qualities as "traveling money" to Terrans leaving the planet. However, it is likely that under the New Economic System, changing jobs is not detrimental to material or social status if you are good at the new job, and prominent citizens (which the Bashirs are implied to be, by manner if nothing else) find ways to invest in off-planet capitalism. Credits can doubtless be used to buy latinum, and the exchange rate is probably decent given that the Federation seems to be the Alpha Quadrant's richest and most stable political entity. However, genetic enhancement is probably an entirely different and more obscure sort of black market than Romulan ale or looted antiquities, and a couple of overcivilised Stage Parents likely needed a bit of help finding it...
  • Assuming the Bashirs did it on their own, they obviously went outside the Federation, or to a black market which is at least outside the legitimate federation to get the genetic engineering done. Being that credits are an administrative tool and not a currency I don't think you could use credits for illegitimate transactions. BUT being a federation citizen you could have EASY access to get materials that non-federations may find very valuable.
    • or, the federation is vast and cuts off a large section of the Alpha quadrant. Meaning over here in sector A is some being who wants substance Y which is rare to the point of non-existence. However turns out substance Y is produced in copious quantities way the fuck on the other side of the Alpha Quadrant. Well since you genetic enhancement dude live in a species that still uses currency you cannot afford such a trip, as a Federation citizen it is no problem for me to hop on a cruiser and travel way the hell over there and pick substance Y up for you and bring it back, and in exchange you genetically enhance my kid.

The wormhole aliens/Prophets are descendants of the Bajorans.

The Bajorans will evolve into them at some point in the future, at which point they'll exist at all times simultaneously. This will allow them to use the Orbs and, later, the Emissary to guide their ancestors' development. They are literally "of Bajor." "The Sisko is of Bajor" because he's half-Prophet and therefore half-Bajoran.

• Political Overcorrectness: Federation makes a big deal of saying "Wormhole Aliens"; Fed never says "Klingon Aliens" or "Cardassian Aliens". The Fed doesn't even say the word "Cardassians" The Federation is too busy rolling on its belly and saying to the Cardassian aliens "Take me big-boy!"
  • In this episode, both Sisko and Bashir call those aliens Cardassians.
  • Because "Wormholians" would sound either suggestive, wrong or just plain silly?
  • The Klingons call themselves Klingons and the Cardassians call themselves Cardassians, so that's what they're usually called. The prophets don't call themselves anything, partly because it's really hard communicating with them in the first place, so they're given a straightforward descriptive name. If the Bajorans had a name for them without the religious connotations, they'd probably use that.
  • They are also literally an alien species, bearing little resemblance to humans in any sense. A similar example is Species 8472, who are simply referred to by their Borg designation. It happens when a species is so divorced from what humans are used to that they don't even have a concrete name for them (and the species can't or won't provide one to them) - they just give it some arbitrary designation that is descriptive in some way.
  • Remember, "The Sisko is of Bajor." Now the view could loosely interpret that the Prophets mean "Bajor" to be outside the wormhole. However, given the timeywimey ball nature of their existence and that they created Sisko. Cassidy Yates is pregnant with his child in the finale. Their children and descendants live on Bajor and marry Bajorans. Their prophet-enhanced DNA spurs the Bajorans to "evolve" into the Prophets over the centuries. Since they need to live in the Wormhole they enter/create it. And then they create the Sisko....oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.
    • Makes sense to the extent that the Prophets are a product of a Stable Time Loop. To restate the case, the prophets exist unstuck in time, so they are in the future and the past simultaneously. Yet they can only exist in a limited form outside the wormhole (possessing a human body mostly). Sisko is a human who was chosen as the Emissary instead of a Bajoran. Because Sisko's mother was possessed by a Prophet, when Sisko was conceived he inherited some kind of genetic material from the Prophets. Later in his life, he impregnated Cassidy Yates, another human, and she settled on Bajor. The Bajorans love and honor Sisko and his family (Cassidy and her child) because Sisko is the Emissary. So Cassidy's child inherits some kind of genetic material from its prophet-possessed grandmother, and introduces this into the gene pool of Bajor. Many generations in the future, Bajorans with these genes develop abilities similar to Sisko's (prophetic visions of other realities, other times, vague predictions of future events) and they eventually become the Prophets themselves. The Prophets, unstuck in time, possess Sisko's mother to conceive the Emissary to ensure their own existence, and the Time Loop remains stable. To take this idea even further, because it's a loop, there is no real beginning to their existence. That is why the Prophets have a hard time comprehending linear causality.

Jake Sisko is a nine-lived enchanter, and the "writing school" in New Zealand is the twenty-fourth century equivalent of Chrestomanci Castle; he's supposed to go there to train to be the next Chrestomanci.

This is why he's the only person who doesn't have a duplicate in the mirror universe.

• Then what does it mean when he ends up not going? (It seems that the Federation is uneasy about the idea of dying for your art.)
• Partially jossed early on. Jake doesn't exist in the mirror universe because his would-be parents broke up.

The dim who gives Dax her combadge back in "Past Tense, Part II" is one of the hippies Kira and O'Brien encountered earlier in the episode — and much earlier in the timeline.

Think about it. The guy's obsessed with the idea of becoming invisible — which is how the transporter must have looked to him — and he seems to realize that the badge (just like those ones he saw back in the sixties) has something to do with it. It's unclear how he knows aliens were involved; maybe Kira was speaking Bajoran the whole time and he wasn't privy to the translation, making it clear that her language was not of this world.

(One possible objection to this theory: he seems awfully spry for the septuagenarian he must be by 2024. But assuming a strong constitution and maybe some just-over-the-horizon advances in medical care, it's within the realm of possibility.)

Kira Nerys is a Kira.

And what is more, she is the latest of a long line of Kiras. That is why she was such an effective member of La Résistance.

This did not come out in that episode where the caste system was briefly reintroduced because what government figure would want to impose that caste from above?

• If that was true, then why does Dukat stay alive for so long?
• "Dukat" is a fake name. He's a Cardassian, after all.
  • "Dukat," rather, is only his last name (His first name is "Skrain" in non-canon sources). The reason he never mentions his first name is because knew about Kira's nature all along.
  • Death Note works on humans only. If Shinigami have ways to kill other species, they haven't revealed them. So Kira maybe Kira gave it back when she found it it wouldn't work on Cardassians.

The Sufficiently Advanced Aliens in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are the Force ghosts of Jedi and Sith Lords.

At some point between the two continuities, both orders died out (or decided to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence to prevent the Borg from assimilating the secrets of the Force — even the Sith would have to acknowledge that they'd be unable to stop the Borg). They took up residence in a wormhole and continued fighting with each other and messing with the Muggles. Like the Force users, the Wormhole Aliens have a blue-good/red-evil color scheme, display the power of telekinesis while possessing humans, and are maddeningly cryptic about anything important.

During the Dominion War, there was a popular Klingon play written based on Glory.

Klingons would love that story. An officer helps those under him Level Grind in badass, and then he and many of them die in glorious combat.

They could just watch Glory if that work survived Earth's Dark Age — which is dubious, given how fragile film is as a medium. But Klingons would want the story retold in the original Klingon and with the original Klingon characters.

Quark's bar is a multi-dimensional nexus.

In the Mirror Universe, everybody has a different role than in the "normal" universe - except Mirror Quark, who also ran Deep Space Nine's bar until Mirror Kira had him executed for helping Terrans escape from the station. Maybe Quark has a bar on Deep Space Nine in every universe in which a version of Deep Space Nine exists.

Another example: In our own universe, Deep Space Nine exists as a fictional station in a TV series. Quark does exist as a character in this series's narrative and has a bar on Deep Space Nine.

• Isn't the station still in orbit around Bajor in the mirror universe? How does being located around half a star system away from its counterpart affect this theory?
  • It can be explained by stating that Quark's bar is the center of the universe. The space station isn't half a star system away from its counterpart. Instead, the counterpart's star system is half a system away from Quark's bar.

Darvin subconsciously wanted the crew of the Defiant to prevent him from changing the past.

That's why he made this remark about his statue having a tribble in his hand, thereby hinting at the location of the bomb.

In fact, that's why he told them the plan at all. If he'd waited a few hours, then he could have told them "You Are Too Late."

• He may have realized the bomb might kill or injure him if he was close enough when it went off, or that since he's a Klingon killing Kirk in a sneak attack would be very dishonorable.

O'Brien gets replaced by a replicant sometime during "Armageddon Game".

Recall that, in "Armageddon Game", O'Brien's death gets faked, and Keiko figures it out by Spotting the Thread that he never drinks coffee in the afternoon — except, as he claims at the end, he does drink coffee in the afternoon.

In "Whispers", the episode immediately following, he's been replaced by a replicant. The replicant drinks a ton of coffee.

Keiko was right. The real O'Brien doesn't drink coffee in the afternoon. It's just that, sometime on the way back from being rescued in "Armageddon Game", he was swapped for a caffeine-powered robot.

• Interesting, but then how does Miles have a (presumably) natural son with Keiko a few seasons later?
  • In "Whispers", the real O'Brien comes back in the end.
• Except "Whispers" specifically spells-out exactly where he was when the replicant was made, and it wasn't the planet in "Armageddeon Game". Your theory would have been some brilliant writing, but it's more likely that these episodes were either not originally intended to go back-to-back, or nobody thought of connecting the two.
  • Is it possible he was replaced before "Armageddon Game" but after "The Alternate"?

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas takes place on ancient Bajor.

Sinbad's ship looks like an ancient Bajoran lightship. The gate to Tartarus is, of course, the wormhole. And Eris is probably a Pah-wraith.

The Book of Peace may somehow be related to the Tears of the Prophets.

• Actually, it was produced by the Cult of the Pagh-Wraiths.
  • Eris is really a Prophet, and the wormhole being the gate to something akin to Hell would only make sense from the Pagh-Wraiths' perspective.
  • A book from Ancient Bajor with mysterious powers? The Book of Peace is clearly the Book of the Kosst Amojan.
  • The story tells how the hero ventured into the "Evil" Prophets' temple and forced them to give him the knowledge of how to release the Pagh-Wraiths.

Treasure Planet also takes place on ancient Bajor.

Morph is somehow related to the Founders. Captain Amelia is an ancestor of Kira Nerys.

Joseph Sisko spends the first few years of the show in stasis, waiting for a medical breakthrough.

Early on, Captain Sisko speaks of his father as though he was dead (though he never quite comes out and says it); sometime around the beginning of season 4, he starts referring to him in the present tense again. When Joseph appears in "Homefront", he's had a number of organ replacements and Benjamin and Jake both feel the need to nag him about his health.

We know, based on the way Bashir treats Vedek Bareil, that Starfleet medical procedure includes the option of putting a patient in indefinite stasis until their condition can be cured. Now, back in the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone," when the Enterprise ran into the cryogenic satellite, Dr. Crusher and Data referred to its occupants as dead, including those who were revived. Apparently, this applies to modern stasis techniques as well.

Presumably, Joseph Sisko was brought out of stasis during the break between seasons 3 and 4, which is why we don't hear about it on the show when it happens. Perhaps when the Enterprise-D blows up, Dr. Crusher decides to spend some time on research again...

Joseph Sisko is bisexual.

The dead father Captain Sisko mentions is actually his stepfather, whom Joseph married sometime after Sarah died.

Nagus Zek was replaced by a shapeshifter/surgically-altered Section 31 agent/surgically-altered Romulan agent sometime in season 7 — or, alternatively, he and Quark's mother were both suffering extreme dementia.

Seriously, abdicating in favor of Rom? In the unlikely event we return to the Star Trek Prime universe continuity in the future I predict it will show the Ferengi as the alien trash of the galaxy as their world and society have imploded. This will give the Dominion/Federation/Romulans/Threat Of The Week an excuse to set up in the Alpha Quadrant again to "help" rescue Ferenginar.

• Don't underestimate Rom.
• Let's not forget that there were distinct hints within the show's canon that Zek was suffering from dementia.

When it was it was discovered that Dominion had infiltrated all levels of Star Fleet,the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order,the Federation did not warn the Romulan and Cardassian governments against an attack into the Gamma Quadrant (although they knew it was imminent) and thus ensured that two of their Alpha Quadrant opponents were weakened.Finally,rather than destroying the wormhole and thus preventing an attack on the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation "dithers" and allows the a war to begin w/ an enemy that,it's later revealed to have been manufacturing bio-weapons to combat against.

A conspiracy of dunces? No...a series of actions and misdirections that lead to an intended goal: A confrontation w/ the Dominion

• Closing the wormhole was tried, but a saboteur reversed the polarity and made it too strong to destroy instead.

It was all instigated by the Cardassians to make them seem like really sympathetic pawns; remember that Cardassians are long-term planners; sacrificing the dignity and comfort of a generation, not to mention millions of lives when they rebelled against the Dominion at the end of the war, they've endured horrors eerily similar to what they did to the Bajorans. In the next generation, growing up after the Dominion War, the Cardassians will be the new Bajorans, dispossessed and broken. Then they'll join the Federation, supposedly as a last resort, but this is actually in line with their greater plan: once they've got their foot in the door, they will totally use their superhumanoid politicking skills to take over the Federation Council, and Earth itself.

Garak "betrayed" Tain by coming out of the closet.

We're never told exactly why or how Garak betrayed Tain. (And that's good, WMG is more fun than knowing.) He himself claims he did no such thing. What if Garak came out of the closet to his father as being anything other than a healthy Cardassian heterosexual? That would be a flagrant violation of the Cardassians' most sacred belief, that family comes first, since that means Tain would never have grandchildren. (Except for those leading the Obsidian Order, I guess.)

• That makes a surprising amount of sense.
  • And maybe his father's favored punishment of locking Garak in a closet was meant to be symbolic.
  • Wait, didn't he have a relationsship with Ziyal? Or are we assuming Cardassian Heteronormative Crusader types, and his bisexuality was the issue.
    • Actually, in canon, while Ziyal cared for him, Garak ever saw Ziyal as a daughter, and was even a little puzzled by her affection. However, in Andrew Robinson's character novel, Garak did feel attraction to both men and women and Word of God, from Robinson and writers, who saw him as being omnisexual.
    • Both Robinson and Alexander Siddig have said that they both played up the obvious Ho Yay between Garak and Bashir until their storyline started getting dropped when Bashir bonded with O'Brien.
• The problem with this is that Andrew Robinson decided to play Garak with homosexual subtext because he saw no reason that alien species like the Cardassians should follow human sexuality norms by default. On the other hand, that approach doesn't mesh well with the overall paternalistic portrayal of the Cardassians and the already mentioned emphasis on family and procreation.
  • Whatever Robinson's thinking, it's perfectly in character for Garak to be a non-conformist in many senses.
  • Cardassians do value the family very highly, as a microcosm of society and a bulwark of strength, but like the Romans and some other cultures with this attitude, they likely treat bisexuality and discreet adultery without children (for which same-sex relationships would be perfect) as normative or at least unimportant.
    • I am not sure that "adultery is unimportant" is true judging by Garak's reaction to Dukat hitting on Kira in the episode where they accidentally set off the station's old booby traps. "She has no interest in you! A married man!" (said with real venom). It may have just been that he hates Dukat or the indiscretion of it given it was right in front of everyone, but it was one of the few times Dukat ever looked genuinely abashed by someone slinging accusations at him - he certainly reacted more strongly to it than he does to most reminders of the terrible things that happened during the occupation. Could be Early-Installment Weirdness though.
    • If we do assume that discrete adultery is normative or unimportant though, this theory can still work with a little modification. Maybe Tain was fine with his son being gay or bi - but not with him publicly declaring his love for another boy. After all, he would still have wanted him to get married and give him lots of little Cardassian grandchildren, even if he was seeing other men on the side.

Garak "betrayed" Tain by confessing to someone that he is his son.

Although word never got out (the guy he confessed it to was probably killed right after) such a "blatant lie", as Tain undoubtedly would have called it, would be reason enough for a permanent exile from Cardassia.

The series does take place in Benny Russell's head.

Otherwise, why would Vic Fontaine exist? A 1950's lounge singer is out of place in a science fiction show except to appeal to Russell's imagined audience. To them, having Fontaine there is the equivalent of having modern rock stars interact with characters from the future.

• This would also explain why O'Brien and Bashir, an Irishman and a Briton, are obsessed with the Battle of Alamo, an ancient event in American history that few Europeans care about even today. Russell would have been imagining things from the point of view of a mid-20th century American, to whom Alamo was much closer both historically and culturally.
• Fontaine is from the 60's, not the 50's. That aside, Word of God has said there actually was an idea at one time to have a scene at the end of "What You Leave Behind" (the finale) showing Benny sitting in a director's chair in a studio holding a script marked "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."
  • The Fontaine program is officially set in 1962, but nothing in it is particularly 60s, all the elements used in it already existed in the 50s. Also, who's to say how many years Russell spends in imagining the various stories set on Deep Space Nine? Maybe by the time he gets to Fontaine it's the 1960s already?
  • Now that would have been... interesting.
• Perhaps 'Vic Fontaine' is actually a real, famous person from the 1950s or 1960s, and Benny is doing the equivalent of Quantum Leap writing in Marilyn Monroe or JFK.
• Or, once we've incorporated the TV show idea above, perhaps Vic Fontaine is a cameo by a 'real-life' (In Benny's universe) singer with the name of 'Nick Montane' or something like that, playing a thinly fictionalized version of himself on Benny's TV show.

Alternately, the whole Star Trek franchise is created by Benny Russell, who becomes the fictional equivalent to Gene Roddenberry.

After Russell gets out of the mental institution, he comes to the realization that the world isn't yet ready for a black space station commander, but one day it will be. So he creates a pitch for a TV series set in the same universe as Deep Space Nine, and names this series Star Trek. After a few years, he manages to sell this pitch, and Star Trek begins to air in 1966. Social attitudes have changed enough that Russell manages to include a black character, Uhura, in the series, though only as a minor officer. A couple of decades later he pitches another series, with more substantial roles for black characters. That series is a big success, and Russell is now confident the world is finally ready for Captain Sisko and for Deep Space Nine, which is indeed given the green light by the studio. The new series doesn't need any original scripts, because Russell already wrote all of them almost 40 years earlier.

Ezri's eldest brother is going through the process of becoming Joined.

At the end of Prodigal Daughter, after the younger brother was arrested, Ezri advised her older brother to "make a new life for yourself. A life of your own." She meant that he should get out from underneath their mother's wing and find out what he wants to do with his life. But since they were talking throughout that whole weekend about her having recently been Joined and the difference it made to her life, he thought she meant literally make a "new life" for himself, by becoming a Joined Trill. So he applies to be Joined and ends up being fast-tracked since his family have a history of being Joined and coping with it even without training, let alone after actually applying.

The modern day-to-day language spoken on Bajor is not Bajoran.

Rather, it is Cardassian. This can be chalked up to the Culture Police effect, most notably language suppression. It's the case with long-term occupiers throughout history, in such places as Ireland and Taiwan, and the switch-over takes a generation, or less sometimes. And the Cardassians have been there for two generations. If they started immediately, Kira's generation and the generation before might well have never learned Bajoran as a day-to-day spoken language, but relegated it to use just in religion and ritual. Of course, 50 years isn't long enough to completely wipe out a language, so modern Bajoran children will probably be learning Bajoran as their primary language, as a way to recover their culture. But, just like in Taiwan, these children will probably have a hard time communicating with their Cardassian-speaking grandparents.

How can we know if this is true or not? We can't. Everyone's using the universal translator!

• "Necessary Evil" seems to imply that Odo cannot read the Bajoran language (though curiously, Rom can), which might support this point: Odo would be trained only in the administrative language, Cardassian.
  • We do know that the Bajoran language is used in religious rituals, and Rom and Leeta had a Bajoran wedding. Rom could have learned to read Bajoran in preparation for the ceremony.
    • "Necessary Evil" was well before Leeta even appeared, but there are plenty of ways Rom might have picked up a bit of the language — all he does in the episode is identify names on the list, so all he'd have to know is the basic rules of pronunciation.
• We can know this is true because when the Bajorans pray we hear an alien language that we the audience, nor the characters in the show understand.

The Jem'Hadar were modified from a race with a Hive Caste System.

Specifically, they were modified from the Warrior caste and Ketracel White is based on an enzyme excreted by the Hive Queen caste (which has probably been exterminated). The Worker caste may still exist somewhere for slave labor.

Ziyal is Nerys's half-sister.

This is just a crazy thought, but it fits reasonably well. Basically, since Ziyal was born the same year that Meru died, my bet is that the death was in child birth or just happened, and that Dukat convinced the next woman he hooked up with, Tora Nepram, to be a surrogate mother for the child. Nepram never told Ziyal what the truth was, and Ziyal was given her name, so the deception was perfect. Dukat never told Kira because he was holding it in reserve to mess with her psychologically (just like how he held off with Meru), but died before he got the chance.

• Or, following that train of thought, more likely Ziyal died before Dukat got the chance, and since Ziyal's death lead to his Villainous Breakdown he just wasn't sane enough. Although, he was evidently sane enough to tell Kira he had been involved with Meru in the first place, so maybe he was still just waiting for the right moment.
• I've had this theory too. But in mine Kira's mother had to assume the name Tora Nepram for some reason, probably something to do with Dukat's enemies. Meru's death was faked in the records.

Damar is Ziyal's half-brother

Damar is Dukat's illegitimate son and both parties are aware of this. He was raised by another man who gave him his name but was resentful of his stepfather, possibly becuase his stepfather was also aware of his parentage and mistreated him or simply didn't live up to Damar's idea of what a Cardassian man should be. I am not sure of the intended relative ages of Dukat and Damar so that may sink this theory and I don't actually think it's likely, but on every viewing of the show, several things stand out.

• Damar's unfailing loyalty to Dukat is probably supposed to be an extension of his loyalty to the state, but it doesn't falter even when Dukat makes decisions that are objectively bad for Cardassia and has literally gone insane and he seems to take insults to Dukat very personally ("I'd like to toss that smug little Vorta out the nearest air lock.")
• Damar's loyalty was definitely returned by Dukat. Not only did he keep him with him, but he defended him several times to Weyoun, most notably after Damar ticks off Kira and Weyoun by saying he'll increase security on the promenade once the Bajorans return to the station. It stood out to me because Weyoun's tone is almost like telling someone to get their bratty kid under control.
• When Ziyal and Dukat squabble, Damar again takes it oddly personally. ("She doesn't appreciate what it means to be Cardassian, she doesn't appreciate what it means to be your daughter." (Emphasis mine.))
• When trying to persuade Ziyal to make up with her father, he uses inclusive pronouns. "We owe it to him to do all we can to help him stay strong." When this goes badly and he reports this to Dukat, Weyoun notably refers to this as a "family squabble," when he overhears it.
• Dukat is not the kind of character to let things slide, yet he not only fails to kill Damar on the spot after he murders his beloved daughter, but later seeks him out for help and explicitly tells him he's forgiven, and Damar is the only positive voice in his head in "Waltz." This could be because of Values Dissonance given what a negative view Cardassians take of treason, but does Dukat really seem like someone who'd let reason overcome his anger over Ziyal's death?

While this theory is ultimately unlikely, it would explain some seeming inconsistencies and deepen the tragedy of "Sacrifice of Angels." At the very least, their relationship can definitely read as father-son even if it's not literal.

Baseball symbolizes Good.

I mean, everything about baseball including the ball itself kept being treated symbolically, right?

Sisko has Bajoran ancestors

• Well, he obviously has Prophet ancestors (however that might work), so who can really say? Especially if you note the WMG way up there that suggests the Prophets were descended from the Bajorans in the first place.

The Prophets are more powerful than the Q.

Note that they perceive all of time, being nonlinear. Q, on the other hand, can't, seeing as how he's "tested" people without knowing how it would come out. He also hasn't demonstrated much ability to read minds, which the Prophets do. Q's a powerful Reality Warper, but the Prophets may be more so, but are restricted to the wormhole.

• Q is omnipotent but not omniscient. He can change form and hack reality to fit his whims. But the Prophets, while Energy Beings like Q, have a much more Starfish Alien-like psychology, being nearly unable to perceive space and time the way that humans and Bajorans do. It's not a matter of power, but rather a matter of Q being better able to readily understand humanoid life than the Prophets, who are on a different level of perception entirely.

Garak is a sociopath.

Something I've noticed about Garak when he's not in his "humble" mode. He's still polite and rather amicable. From what we've seen, whether it's torture or sharing lunch with Bashir, it's all the same to him. Not that he's entirely without morals, as we've seen him do things even without getting anything in return, but he also notably finds that behavior unnerving in himself.

• He pretty clearly displays empathy in The Die is Cast. Anyways, do we really want him to be a sociopath? He's a much more interesting character if he's a normal person with ambiguous morals who's capable of both good and evil.

Section 31 was right.

The purpose of Section 31 was to protect the Federation, whatever the means. To this end, they engineered a disease that would kill the Changelings, and infected the Great Link via Odo. This is supposed to be reprehensible, but consider that this action is what actually SAVED the Federation and stopped the Dominion. Consider that previously a group of genetically enhanced individuals had previously determined that there was no way for the Alliance to win a military victory, and that even the best case scenario, trillions of lives would be lost and the Federation and Klingons conquered. But, they were able to win because Odo offered a cure for the disease to the Founders, in exchange for ending the war. If Section 31 created the disease to wiped out the Founders, why create a cure for it? That could have been Section 31's plan all along? Infect the Changelings with a virus, bring them to the brink of death, and then offer them the cure in exchange for their unconditional surrender. Section 31, as distasteful as their tactics may have be, were ultimately responsible for saving the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion.

• It's Section 31's job to be right.
• If this is true, they could have ended the war much sooner. The Dominion ultimately exists to ensure the survival of the Founders, Section 31 offering them the deal earlier may have spared millions of lives (unless they wanted to get rid of Betazed for some reason).
• It's how long it took them to acquire the research by Dr. Wyatt Miller and the research by Dr.Mora enabling them to genetically engineer a version of the Tarellian Plague that would effect the Founders.

The Wormhole Aliens Sisko met in the the Pilot weren't the ones who opened up the wormhole

Their relationship is a lot like the Doctor and River Song. When Sisko met them in the pilot, they didn't know who he was or what linear time was. They didn't even seem to know about Bajor. After Sisko left, they sent the orbs to Bajor, ensures Sisko was born, and created the wormhole in the first place. Thus creating a Stable time loop.

The Blob was a deranged Changeling.

The blob was one of the hundred infant Changelings sent out to explore the Alpha Quadrant. When its vessel crashed on Earth, it was exposed to some substance in the air or soil that induced psychosis and an increase in mass (similar to Odo's experience with a psychotropic gas on L-S VI).

The Klingon restaurant took care of the Tribbles

Who else on the station would have a hatred of Tribbles and a need for fresh meat?

• I think I'd rather eat gagh.

The Cardassians are descendants of the Ancient Bajorans who came to Cardassia in the Lightships.

The Bajor was a very adverse environment to technological progress.

It is stated they have tens of thousands of years of recorded history, but what technology they have is either equal level or behind the Cardassians, who are not even at Federation tech level, what gives? Well, technological development is actually depends greatly on geography and local climate. On Earth, the reason the western world had a technological edge over the people they colonized was because they had many other people on a similar latitude that they could trade with (they had little in the way of water barriers or mountains from Spain all the way to at very least India. That meant there is a large amount of area that the same kinds of foods could be grown on. Technology followed these trade routes, allowing the Europeans to gain gunpowder from the Chinese, for example. Now, the reason why Africa and the Americas didn't have that great of tech growth was because either they had mountains, great water barriers, hostile wildlife, or other things that made trade between people very hard. That is why the Maya and Aztec had writing, but the Incas or the tribes of what would be the US didn't. Bajor continents may be set in such a way to utterly screw over any attempts to advance. Another problem is that their "gods" actually did exist and sometimes did directly interfere with Bajor, making it much easier to explain that "the Prophets did it" for any scientific questions, preventing new theories and developments from happening.

The Ferengi were once a matriarchy

Given the total debasement of Ferengi females (to the point that they not only are banned by law from wearing clothing but are also traditionally supposed to pre-chew the food for the males in the house), it seems that this is not a casual bias against females. This is a full-on hatred of them. If Ferengi females were once dominant in society, then the males would have been suppressed by them. After an uprising, the females were brought low and forced into humiliation in order to keep them from reorganizing and retaking Ferengi society. Over the generations, much of this became cultural and institutionalized, brought on by fear of females regaining the upper hand. As evidenced by Moogi, Pel, and even Prinadora, female Ferengi have been shown to have more skill in profit-making than their male counterparts even after centuries (or millennia) of subjugation, which is why the males have worked so hard to keep them down.

• On the other hand the males don't seem to actively hate their females, repressing them only because it's the law and how it's always been done. Nudity doesn't seem to humiliate any of them so it's possible the only reason the males wear it is because they go out in the rain while the females were supposed to stay at home. As for the pre-chewing, it sounds degrading to us but they're an alien culture, maybe that's just how Ferengi have always done things? Many female species partially digest their food when feeding their young, maybe Ferengi just never saw the point in stopping.
  • Incidents with Ferengi in Star Trek: The Next Generation indicate that female nudity does indicate inferior status, if not humiliation per se. Also, pre-chewing food is performed only by females for male relatives and partners of all ages. For instance, when Nog goes on a date, he considers it a compromise to refrain from asking his date not to chew his food for him. This suggests that pre-chewing is an act of subservience and not just a means of feeding offspring.

Jake has a secret drinking problem

Jake spends a lot of time in Quark's Bar, in fact, he even dated a dabo girl for a while (which raises a whole host of questions in itself).

In The Sound of Her Voice, Odo is hassling Quark over some minor code violations, and tells Quark that he must replace all of the barstools because they were supposedly unsafe. Quark is granted a reprieve in the form of Major Kira, who invites him to lunch. After he's gone, Jake comes from out of nowhere and tells Quark, "It's too bad about the barstools, I kinda liked them," and Quark shares his excitement that Odo is distracted. The whole scene suggests several things about Jake.

1. Jake is fond enough of Quark's barstools that he laments their loss.
2. Kira is taking Odo to lunch, so Jake is hanging out in a bar in the middle of the day.
3. The episode makes no effort to give Jake any real reason to be there—and Jake seems an odd character choice for the scene—leaving us to infer that he is probably a customer.
4. Jake is the son of DS9's commanding officer, yet Quark is comfortable enough to share with him his excitement that Odo is distracted, and that he intends to use this to his advantage (probably in criminal endeavors). Everything established about Quark's character suggests that under normal circumstances he would never share that with Federation citizens, especially humans; but he doesn't hesitate to tell Jake.

All of this points to a Jake having a drinking problem that Quark is helping Jake keep secret from his dad.

• All of that points to Jake being Nog's best friend and a good friend of the family. After so many years he doesn't need Nog present to be welcome at the bar and he's not part of Starfleet or security so he's got no responsibility to stop or report any of Quark's illegal activities, in fact Jake seems to be better at seeing opportunities for profit than Nog or Rom. As a reporter Jake likes things to be interesting and Quark's bar is where a lot of interesting things happen. Plus they serve more than just alcoholic beverages at the bar, you can get pretty much anything there if you can pay.
  • Does Quark really seem like the kind of person who would allow someone to loiter in his bar, even if that person is a close friend of his nephew? Jake is almost certainly at Quark's because he's a costumer, and that means probably there for one of four things: Booze, gambling, holosuite time, or food. If he's there to drink, he'll probably keep buying more the longer he stays. If he's there for the holosuite, why is he just kind of hanging around the bar area? If he's there to eat, why wouldn't he leave after he's finished—and wouldn't Quark shoo him away, he's just taking up space and wasting Quark's time? If Jake's there to gamble, would he really be interested in Quark and Odo's conversation? Quark should be encouraging him to get back to the tables or get out, otherwise Jake's just wasting Quark's time.^note  Rule of Acquisition Number 240: Time, like latinum, is a highly limited commodity. Even though Jake isn't a Starfleet officer, he is a human, and he's close to a number of Starfleet personnel, why would he take the chance of Jake slipping up and accidentally telling someone about Quark's plans?^note  Rule of Acquisition Number 46: Labor camps are full of people who trusted the wrong person. Jake is a reporter, which means it's his job to disseminate information, so Quark's taking a pretty big risk, even if he doesn't give Jake any details.^note  Rule of Acquisition Number 99: Trust is the biggest liability of them all.
    • You forget that this is a two-way street. If Quark is taking the risk that Jake will blab about his plans, he also gets the benefit of hearing anyone else's plans that Jake happens to blab. New security personnel being hired? Ship inbound with a rich cargo? Starfleet survey found a planet with rich latinum deposits? Quark is going to find out. Jake is the son of the station commander, and therefore likely to hear about everything that goes on around the station, and he's a civilian, meaning the only entity that can punish him for talking too much is his own father. The only safer source for Quark would be Nog, and Nog would be hearing all of this from Jake in the first place. Besides, Quark probably doesn't want to risk the station commander's ire by banning his son from the bar (not realizing that Ben would probably be grateful to him if he did!).

Joseph Sisko's Restaurant doesn't make any money.

The Restaurant is basically the equivalent of a modern webcomic, something he does because he enjoys it and likes sharing his creations with others, but which makes no money and isn't expected to. The food is all free as is the service, he counts his success in 'hits' (guests). He can afford to do this because humans don't really use or need money anymore, hence people who aren't in something like Starfleet tend to do things like grow vineyards or run restaurants purely for the love of the art.

• If Trek-Earth works anything like I think it does, all activity on Earth is something like this, although with real consequences—your priority for anything contested or otherwise scarce is determined by the popularity and reviewed quality of your work, weighted by provable knowledgeability and lack of likely bias.
• Depending upon how the food is made, it might be that it has to be merely cheap rather than free, in order to cover its own operating costs. If he insists on using organically-grown produce, it probably goes back to being a limited status resource, unless there are also a lot of artisan-farmers out there (could be I guess). This is building off an earlier WMG (not sure if I saw it here) that high-quality replicated goods aren't necessarily available to regular civilians due to licencing and/or energy constraints. Not needing money and not using money are very different things: the first is fine if you don't mind eating porridge and living in a state-provided pod, but...
• using an interpretation of how the 'credit' works in the Federation I see it going something like this: Each Federation Citizen is given X amount of credits which can be used to support specific industrial projects. Everyone gets the same amount of credits. Joseph Sisko used his credits to build his restaurant and put in self supporting agriculture, then he started serving food. You just walk up and as long as he has the food and resources to produce your order he gives you a plate, you don't have to pay for it. BUT if you really like it then you can allocate a credit or two to his project to help expand and support his restaurant. So the 'customers' aren't paying him for his services with money rather they are just putting their share of the resources into his plan. If someone at some point dislikes his restaurant for whatever reason then he would loose some of his resources being used for maintenance or expansion.
  • In that case he would probably prioritize 'reservations' based on how many resources a person put in. Which I think is a perfectly ethical 'utopian' tit-for-tat exchange.
  • Joseph Sisko himself probably has a bunch of his credits sunk into a nearby farm, with an old farmer family on it.
    • So by supporting Sisko's place with your credit, you know you would also be helping to support a local nearby farm.
    • Picard's brother refused to get a replicator himself, and Voyager was known to actually save energy growing food themselves. Agriculture probably developed along with else and operates at high efficiency, but is still considered more of an art than an industry. Also, Creole cooking is a well-loved part of human history, it's entirely possible the federation keeps places like Jakes open on an arts grant.

Sisko grew up on a capitalist commune

Tying into the above: just how can Sisko's family have owned a restaurant in a cashless society? Well, just as today we have small communities that practice social ownership, it seems reasonable to conclude that in a future cashless society, small communities will open up that are run along capitalist lines. Clearly the Sisko family grew up in one of these.

Mirror!Bashir is still an Augment...

But given the general crapsackness of the Mirrorverse, he's significantly more Khanlike than Prime!Bashir. He'd almost have to have been treated, if he was born with the same learning disabilities as Prime!Bashir. Mirror!Arik Soong was able to hide and keep the Augment technology around, though out of the hands of both the Empire and the Alliance.

• Alternately, the reason Mirror!Bashir was augmented was because he was a useless slave made useful by being augmented to fight in gladiator like entertainment.

Adigeon Prime, where Bashir was augmented

Is the trekverse version of Mesa. Only rather less evil and into taking over the galaxy. Like Mesa, the Adigeons rebel against the general No Transhumanism Allowed attitude of the galaxy at large.

Grand Negus Rom brought Baseball to Feranginar

Garak was exiled for being a political dissident

Garak initially had a promising career in the Obsidian Order thanks to his father Enabrin Tain. One of his assignments was to infiltrate Natima Lang's dissident group who sought to end martial law, the big brother police state, and the occupation of Bajor. Eventually, he privately came to side with their views, became a double agent, and covertly helped them, perhaps by helping them to escape from Cardassia when the heat was on or giving them sensitive information about the inner workings of the Obsidian Order. Garak managed to avoid execution thanks to the intervention of his powerful father but had to be punished by being sent to Terok Nor under the guise of being a tailor but also because the Obsidian Order wanted to mess with Gul Dukat's head by convincing him he was under investigation by the guy who had Gul Dukat's father executed.

Revolution took place long before the events of this show.

Of course, they had to get the power back on first, but when they did, they found uses for the nanomachines, like constructing space stations.

Quark was a spy for the Nagus

Why would the Cardassians let a Ferengi with little money and few connections set up a bar on a station in an occupied area? Why would the Bajorans let an alien who was buddy-buddy with the occupying force remain after said occupiers left? Why does the Nagus pay so many visits to the station? Why does the Nagus choose him to make official first contact between the Ferengi and the Dominion? Why is the Federation willing to trade an extremely valuable prisoner for a bartender's mother? It's because Quark is actually a member of whatever intelligence service the Ferengi have. Much like Garak, he is living on DS9 and keeping tabs on everything that goes on around him while maintaining his outward appearance as a "pillar of the community". His connections allowed him to remain in place aboard Terok Nor (later DS9) posing as a simple bartender while he is gathering information and latinum (he is still a Ferengi, after all). He accepts the loss of his business license after Brunt's machinations for two reasons: 1) it's not worth blowing his cover to protest to Zek about it, and 2) it helps to establish stronger connections with the crew, enabling him to further his mission by having them trust/pity him.

• Quark was a spy, all right- he just didn't know it. The Nagus greased a few Cardassian palms to get Quark onto the station, where Quark- who has no idea of his true role- has ingratiated himself with the station staff as part of expanding his business. All Quark knows is that every once in a while, his mother's new boyfriend drops by to harass him for information.

Why ensigns call O'Brien "Sir"

The Problem: Chuck noted in his review of "Whispers" that Star Trek's rank structure is so screwed up that an ensign is calling O'Brien, an NCO, "sir".

The Justifying Edit: In real militaries, an informal part of senior noncoms' jobs is mentoring new officers. Starfleet formalized this relationship to where the above ensign is literally O'Brien's inferior (and only O'Brien's; he doesn't call any of DS9's other noncoms "sir").

• Alternately, Starfleet could have a rule that a higher ranking person within a specific department is to be treated as a superior regardless of rank. O'Brien was chief of operations, and the ensign could have been part of his department.

How to reconcile the Ferengi warships of TNG: "The Battle" with the cowardly money-grubbers of Deep Space Nine

The Ferengi are like the Federation in that they are a peace-loving people surrounded by warlike neighbors (the Cardassians and the Breen, for starters), so they do, in fact, maintain a well-equipped military for self-defense. And like the Federation, they don't like to talk about themselves having a military.

• At least one piece of expanded universe material says that the Ferengi acted so differently in early TNG because they didn't understand the Federation, and thus acted extremely hostile towards them so that it would give them time to understand the Federation (a society that didn't use money, which they considered insanity) so that trade agreements could be reached later.
• Most of the Ferengi we see on DS9 are merchants. Those are the ones that are all about profit all the time. There are MUCH more military-oriented Ferengi out there that aren't nearly as concerned about "profit". The episode The Magnificent Ferengi gives us a SMALL look. They had technology roughly equivalent to the Federation. The non-merchants out there in ships are probably more like pirates (in fact, see the Ferengi pirates 2 centuries later on Enterprise). The Ferengi were in fact flanderized rather severely.

The real Sarah Sisko faked her own death

So here's the story as Joseph and Ben Sisko (now) know it: A prophet possessed Sarah, and made her marry Joseph and give birth to Ben. Then the prophet left her body. Sarah realized she was in a marriage she hadn't chosen, and left. Joseph tried to track her down. He found evidence of her living in Australia—along with news that she had been killed just a few months earlier, in a hovercraft accident. Kind of...suspicious, huh? Just when Joseph gets close to finding her, she's suddenly "dead." The real story is probably that Sarah knew her husband was searching for her, and created a false report of her death to get rid of him once and for all. This way, she could wash her hands of the family she never chose to have, and start over with her own life.

• Or, alternatively, Sarah did die, and there was fowl play involved, on the Prophets' part.
  • The hovercraft must've taken an engine hit from a precisely aimed heron.

Lwaxana Troi defeated the Dominion.

While the show played Lwaxana up as a comically annoying buffon she was one of the top ambassadors and political leaders in the Federation, because behind the scenes she was a total chess master bad ass. While we know Section 31 worked behind the scenes, SOMEBODY in the Federation had to be the ones giving them orders and assigning them missions. I speculate there was a cadre of Federation high ups who were the power behind Section 31. Notice that after the parasite invasion of Season 1 that got stopped by Picard and Riker she took a personal interest in Picard. Then when the Dominion threat was discovered, and it became known among Starfleet that the Dominion was run by Odo's people she took an interested in Odo. I submit that Lwaxana Troi was the one who infected Odo with the virus to destroy the Dominion. However her goal was never genocide, because she also made sure to manipulate events so that Dr.Bashir received the cure. Being an empath she knew Odo was in love with Kira, and knew what kind of man he was and figured that she could use him as a carrier for the disease, and then later give him the cure and use him not only as a carrier for the cure, but also a carrier for the power of love to make a kinder gentler Dominion and end the war. Perhaps the Dominion attack on Betazed was a personal attack by the Dominion...or even more likely, the fleet to defend Betazed was away from the planet when the Dominion struck, perhaps she sent them away and used Betazed as a piece in her chessmoves to draw the Dominion in and then close the trap on them. Also...why did Alexander out of the blue join the Klingon Defense Forces? Because he and Lwaxana became friends when he was a kid right? So she asked him to join the forces to act as her personal eyes and ears in the Klingon Empire. Lwaxana is much more bad ass and important to the Federation than we give her credit for, just as she wants it.

• She had already been interested in Odo before the Federation knew about the Dominion though.
• When she first met Odo she did become interested in him, she was really curious about what sex with a shapeshifter would be like and she liked his personality. Then Starfleet realized that the Dominion was controlled by the Founders. Deanna's arranged marriage fiancé had run off with the Tarellian plague ship, because of that Lwaxana had always kept an interest in how his attempts at curing the plague were going. In a burst of dark inspiration she put two and two together and conceived a plan...she contacted Agent Sloan and a plan was born.
• Alternatively, Lwaxana Troi saved Betazed by being so annoying to the Vorta they bugged out just to get her out of their hair.
• This puts much of her time on TNG in a new light. Ian Troi may have been an operative as well, or been killed by the Tal Shiar in an attempt to get to her. They also may have taken advantage of her grief over losing a daughter to recruit a well-connected Betazoid noble into their ranks - another reason much of her journal was deleted. The wolf seen in Dark Page might have been the result of Section 31 conditioning; that would explain why an animal from earth (possibly an image chosen by human scientists) was in her subconscious.

They made Far Beyond the Stars because Ciroc Lofton wasn't a strong enough actor when he grew up.

The Visitor was an attempt to frame the narrative of the story of DS9 as if it were a novel written by Jake Sisko. This would have made a very, very cool framing device for the story. Jake was supposed to ultimately be the view point character, like Ishmale from Moby Dick, left to tell the story. But unfortunately Cirroc Lofton did not grow into an actor with the kind of gravitas they were looking for to be able to pull this off. So they made Far Beyond the Stars to try and salvage this framing technique in some way, making Benny Russel the Ishmael...sort of.

All of Garak's stories in "The Wire" were true.

Well, not completely true, because it's Garak. But they are based on events from Garak's past- wholesale slaughter of Cardassian citizens, interrogating Bajoran war orphans, betraying close friends- no one can work for an organization like the Obsidian Order and keep their hands clean.

Why would Garak bring it up now? Because he's reached his breaking point, after years of living in exile. He might die soon, and Bashir, a Federation officer, is the only friend he has left. When Garak says "I need to know that somebody forgives me," it's the first utterly true statement he's said in years.

Worf goes down in history as the most legendary Klingon since Kahless. Martok also becomes famous, but not as famous as Worf. History paints Gowron as scandalous because of the last years of his rule.

Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Worf accomplishes many heroic and legendary feats. This wild guess is based only on what I remember from the shows, not any of the Expanded Universe:

• Worf was the first Klingon in Starfleet.
• Worf killed Duras, which was a key event in Gowron's ascent to the throne. Worf accomplished this even though he was suffering discommendation at the time, which history will see as Worf overcoming a huge personal obstacle.
• Worf was friends with the legendary Dahar Master Kor. Together, they recovered the Sword of Kahless (although at the end of that episode it is implied that they never told anyone of this adventure so history may not record this).
• Worf was personally approached by Kahless after he was "reincarnated". It was later Worf's decision that this new Kahless be made Emperor.
• Worf was an important member of the mission to expose the Changeling impostor who replaced Martok.
• Worf was captured by the Dominion, but in a legendary show of fighting spirit, he refused to be defeated in combat. This impressed Martok so much that Martok considered him a lifelong friend from that point onward, and Martok promised that Worf's feats in the prison camp would be remembered in song for all time.
• Worf recommended to Sisko to make Martok the Klingon liaison in Deep Space Nine, which was the most prominent front line station in the Dominion War. This was the start of Martok's rise to fame. Worf then participated in numerous missions as Martok's first officer, essentially serving as an officer for both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire at the same time.
• Worf killed Gowron in personal combat, and Worf himself became High Chancellor for about 60 seconds.
• Worf immediately gave the position of Chancellor to Martok. This is the second leader who was made High Chancellor as a result of Worf's actions.

Martok will also become famous to history as a great military leader during the Dominion War, and as the High Chancellor at the end of the war and the Klingon who led the invasion of Cardassia. Gowron will be remembered less favorably by history because of his scandals during the Dominion War (breaking peace with the Federation because he was fooled by the Changelings, trying to dishonor Martok by sending him on hopeless missions, placing political motivations above glory in battle).

• Worf becomes a sort of conspiracy theory figure of the star trek future. Sure reocrds Kempek then Gowron then Martok, and the era of the returned Emperor, even the Dominion War. But there are some nut jobs who call themselves the House of Mog, sort of the Lone Gunmen of the Klingon Empire. They put it all together, they realize all the dirty dealings and politics and fake emperor's and the also now that it was Worf who choose two leaders of the high council and basically installed the emperor on the throne...some even say he found the sword of kahless. But you walk around and start talking about Worf, well you might as well be wearing your tin foilhat as far as the status quo is concerned.

Bajorans are weakly psychic

Just something random that popped into my head when I was writing a fanfic. Bajoran clergy have this habit of reaching out to squeeze a person's ear in order to feel their soul (their "pagh" in Bajoran), and they seem to be able to actually get a sense of the person by doing it. Somehow this got connected in my mind with prothean and asari touch telepathy in Mass Effect.

The theory: Bajorans are tactile empaths, capable of getting a sense of a person's mental makeup by touching them.

• It's possible this was intentional. Star Trek tends to call it "telepathy" and those who have this ability are called "telepaths", not "psychics", but that's what you meant, right? Several species in the Star Trek franchise are capable of telepathy, and to various degrees of proficiency. For example, the Vulcans are stated to be capable of a mild telepathy, and indeed they touch someone if they want to access their psyche (although physical touch isn't always necessary, it appears that it helps greatly). So maybe the Bajorans also physically touch someone to get a mild form of telepathy, and maybe telepathy is something that has to be learned and practiced, which would explain why the clergy are the ones who do it. Even if the average Bajoran is capable of accessing someone's psyche by touching the ear, they might only get vague impressions of thoughts that need to be analyzed, and it's the clergy who has the knowledge and experience to interpret those thought impressions to analyze someone's pagh.

Senator Vreenak was in collusion with Garak

• Garak knows Vreenak's route, and knows how to get him onto the station. Vreenak motions for his bodyguards to leave the room before declaring that the data rod is fake, and in spite of saying that he would expose the deception to the entire alpha quadrant, he apparently said nothing about it, then dies in a shuttle explosion two days later. Two days which would have given him ample time to reveal the deception. And then there's Garak mentioning how the data rod miraculously survived the explosion. I think Vreenak knew the Dominion was bad news from Day 1, but being a Romulan he couldn't take the direct approach. He did what any good Romulan would do: Quietly pull the strings and manipulate events and people to get the desired outcome.

Post-TNG trill hosts are human, assimilated into Trill culture fairly recently.

I mean, look at it like this:The trill host we see in The Host was seemingly a lot more delicate than humans or Deep Space Nine trill hosts. Say the Federation opens trade with the Trill homeworld, they join the federation shortly thereafter, and then they all start dying or becoming unjoinable from what would be a minor disease for most species. A movement starts on a human colony to protect the legacy of trill culture, and more importantly, the symbiotes. Humans are already known to make temporary hosts. Say a little modification the the procedure Riker had, etc. The tattooed spots (Jadzia doesn't bat an eye when a 2020's human calls them a tattoo, so that's what I assume they are) are an ethno-cultural thing, and not all of the old Hosts have them. The only problem I see with this theory is Curzon. Perhaps he was a human who was accepted into Trill culture before Trill was even well known to the Federation. He could even have been the one who led the movement. At any rate, the Trill don't really want human help, but they realize it's an emergency, and their race is dying. And it's not widely publicized due to the fact that it was the Federation traders at fault.

• I assume that the Odan Trill with the rubber forehead and Trill with spots are two different ethnicities of Trill. The forehead Trills were the dominant ethnicity on Trill chosen by symbionts when it entered the Federation and they preferred a policy of secrecy about the symbionts because they assumed if the rest of the galaxy found out then aliens might start wanting symbionts. The spotted trills rose to prominence and preferred an open policy which thanks to some DEFT diplomacy, the revelation was just taken in stride.
• My theory is that Odan was also a temporary host, like Riker in that episode, and had to be chosen quickly to carry out the peace talks.

Ferengi history is not nearly as bloodless as they claim.

It stands to reason that all Ferengi schools are completely privatized and get no funding other than tuition. It is also likely that there are no government regulations on what they teach. This means they have an incentive to teach a curriculum that is popular regardless of accuracy. And what would be more popular, a curriculum that says Ferengi history is bloody and violent or a curriculum that says Ferengi culture is superior to all others?

• I'd go so far as to say that this a virtual certainty. It's been shown over and over again that Ferangi see absolutely no problem with piracy (TNG: ''Rascals, ENT: Acquisition), which along with slave trading and marauding are probably considered legitimate, even savvy, occupations. In fact, Ferengi's capitol ships are commonly known as "Marauders." In fact, Quark finds absolutely no contradiction in his condemnation of Humanity's history of slavery, and the treatment of Ferengi females, showing that they're a little blind to their own institutionalized brutality. Clearly, the Ferengi are willing, even happy, to subjugate non-Ferengi, which is hard to accomplish without shedding a little blood.
  • Heck, they even recognize "Eliminators" (hired assassins) in the present day as an apparently legitimate profession.
  • To combine this with a WMG above (that Ferengi were once matriarchal, and the current institutionalized repression started out as a kind of punishment), what if the bloody history they're hiding involves a protracted and horrific gender war?

In Hard Time, the jailers were waiting for O'Brien to kill his cellmate before releasing him

The point of the punishment was to rob O'Brien of his humanity. The moment that succeeded was when he killed his cellmate, who was part of the simulation and was created by the programmers for that reason. The eventual murder was planned as part of the punishment.

O'Brien says that he was released about a week after he killed his cellmate, which would only have been seconds in real time: they ended the simulation as soon as he did it. And the guard who releases him says that the punishment for espionage is "15 cycles" imprisonment and he's been in for 20 - so he actually held on to his humanity significantly longer than they expected. If he hadn't eventually broken, he might never have got out.

• At the very least, it's probably not a coincidence that the guards started feeding O'Brien again the day after he killed his cellmate. They were intentionally withholding food until he snapped from the lack of it, and then began feeding him again just to rub it in.

The majority of unjoined Trill are Stepford Snarkers

Living under a small elite of immortals gives you one hell of an inferiority complex. Being described as both "warm" and "arrogant" categorizes them as slight extroverts (compared to Humans an Bajorans at least) who hide their insecurities by trying to sound clever. This might explain Ezri's mother's feigned disinterest in her daughter's impromptu joining, and the fussy, passive-aggressive attitude of the unjoined attendent who took care of the symbiont breeding pools. Joined trill like Dax just affect the snarky attitude to fit in ("In case you haven't noticed Dax no one is laughing!!").

• However, when your life is automatically valued less than a parasite that screws with your personality by an organization that sees no harm in lying and letting people die for that lie, feelings of inferiority might be the least of your worries. Who knows how bad things might have been in just before they showed up in TNG?
• Not all Trill want to be joined, though (Ezri didn't); it's a huge responsibility, not to mention that having to partially give up one's own individual identity would be offputting to some. Ezri indicates that her mother is difficult, so her mother's attitude could just be her particular personality rather than reflective of the entire unjoined Trill population.

Vic Fontaine isn't a hologram

He's a down-on-his-luck singer who's hiding out in a holosuite for an easy life. He's hacked the suite to hide him from anyone using other programs, and to replicate real food for him. This explains why his Mirror Universe counterpart isn't a hologram either.

• Except we've seen Vic shut down and reactivate in the empty holosuite. Chances are, there is a "real" Vic who provided Felix with the physical template for the hologram (much like Dr. Zimmerman used himself as the template for the EMH Mark 1), and it's that person whose counterpart we see in the Mirror Universe.
  • He didn't shut it down; his hack activates a program that holographically projects an empty holosuite and masks him. That's why he was so quick to interrupt the other characters and give the "end program" command himself - which a hologram shouldn't be able to do (note that Voyager's Doctor always had to get someone else to deactivate him, at least at first.)

Benny Russell ended up in an asylum run by Nurse Ratched

• That would explain Kai Win's saccharine demeanor, need for control and need to discredit Sisko.

Ben Sisko is the descendant of John Stewart.

It would just explain so much...

Ben Sisko is the descendant of Hawk.

He also happens to look just like his ancestor.

If Damar had shot Jake rather than Ziyal, Ben would've become the evil one rather than Dukat

Theorize for a second that Damar, rather than blasting Ziyal as they were evacuating the station, decided instead to find and kill Jake as a form of revenge for the loss of the station. Instead of Dukat going completely insane, Sisko would've been the one to break down. Not only would he have a change of heart and suddenly sympathize with the Maquis, he'd go nuts and insist on wiping out the Cardassians. He'd embrace his role as the Emissary and start rallying Bajorans to his side. The Federation would likely deem him a criminal at that point but no doubt much of Bajor would side with him. While Dukat could have potential to be more heroic in this instance, it's likely that Ben would kill him quickly.

How Worf took a level in badass.

During TNG Worf regularly got his butt kicked by the villain of the week, to the point that it has become an internet meme. But by DS9 he is so tough that he can take down a whole squad of genetically engineered super-soldiers one-by-one until they just give up! How did he get so tough, especially now that he is approaching middle-aged (though it is possible that he is actually entering the Klingon prime.) The answer is in TNG: Ethics. After a failed spinal surgery an obscure Klingon secondary neural network kicks in. Since this system is an evolutionary adaptation for the survival of an injured individual, fight or flight would be a factor. Using this system is probably like a permanent adrenaline boost, allowing Worf to quickly relearn to walk (he was back on duty in the next episode.) This permanent supercharge boosted Worf's physical abilities as well. A few seasons later in TNG: Parallels he had already progressed from a skilled swordsman (somewhat better than Duras) to winning a prestigious, empire-wide, bat'leth tournament.

Everyone is dead and Terok-Nor is Purgatory.

Benjamin Sisko and Keiko are the only ones Above the Influence (or not influenced) in "Fascination"

We see a lot of characters (trying) to act upon their latent attractions towards other characters, the cause being Lwaxana's Zanthi fever and attraction to Odo. While a lot of characters are obvious, Miles is influenced by Lawxana's jealousy of Odo's attraction to Kira (and latent jealousy about Keiko's coworker) rather than attraction. Odo may be above the influence, or maybe he's just better at keeping his emotions (attraction to Kira) in check than anyone else. My belief is the latter. As for Ben Sisko and Keiko, there's neither latent attraction nor jealously to prey on, so they are unaffected.

• Keiko wasn't unaffected; she became attracted to Bareil. That leaves only Ben.

The Breen Homeworld has recently undergone some serious global warming.

Okay, so basically my theory comes from combining together a few different points mentioned in the show...

1. In "Return to Grace" Dukat mentioned a Cardassian Embassy on Breen.
2. No outsider had seen what a Breen looked like under their suit and lived.
3. In "The Changing Face of Evil" Weyoun said intelligence reports that Breen was a frozen wasteland were wrong and it was actually quite comfortable (implying he may have been there).

Taking point 2 with either of point 1 and 3 implies that the Breen must wear their suits at all times, including on their homeworld. If we assume that their homeworld has undergone global warming and that the suits are refrigeration suits, this would explain them doing so. In addition, if we're going to reconcile point 1 and 3 (that the Breen's homeworld was believed to be a frozen wasteland and yet the Cardassians had an embassy there and didn't bother to look at the weather) this would make more sense if we consider the possibility that the place may have been much colder several years earlier when the Cardassian embassy was there (during Return to Grace). By this time, it was already in the middle of global warming (hence why the Breen needed to wear the suits) and seemed warm to them, but was still a frozen wasteland by our standards. Now, it's gotten so much worse that it seems quite comfortable to the rest of the universe and hence the Breen need to wear refrigeration suits to survive.

Prime!O'Brien was Killed Off for Real in "Visionary" & was replaced by an Alternate!O'Brien.

When O'Brien uses delta radiation to travel into the future, he encounters his alternate who is unaffected by radiation. They both mention this inconsistency, but if they both are the same, then Prime!O'Brien dying of radiation should prevent the other O'Brien from living.

It's possible that Alt!O'Brien is experiencing the same events of this episode in own universe, but with some different choices made. Alt!O'Brien is somehow returned to the prime universe and is able to stay because an object of equal mass has replaced the missing Prime!O'Brien. Deep Space 9 is destroyed in the alternate universe, & Alt!O'Brien replaces the deceased Prime!O'Brien in the prime universe.

With the destruction of Deep Space 9 in the alternate universe, the Dominion War unfolded and finished very differently.

There is no Section 31.

Doctor Bashir likes playing super spy fantasies in the holo suites. Section 31 stories that do not involve him are due to him having shared his ideas with others, or more likely they are not original with him in the first place. Such a dark secret organization does not fit into Star Trek, but would be perfect for holo novels for certain tastes. He also may not be genetically engineered at all, as that also seems just the sort of thing to fit into a fantasy world. Ah! The hero is not just an ordinary doctor after all, but a genetic superman who is contacted by a super secret organization for a secret mission! Kind of juvenile, really, but who honestly doesn't have daydreams like that? This kind of fantasy may be more common among men than women from what I have read.

There is no Section 31.

But this WMG is the exact opposite of the previous. Section 31 is, after all, the location of the part of Starfleet's charter which 'allowed for extraordinary measures to be taken in times of extreme threat'. So when Starfleet Intelligence need to do some 'extraordinary measures' that they can maintain deniability about (Even within the Federation government), they just ascribe those actions to a non-existent organization of 'Section 31'. Of course, there are a bunch of low-level assets that think they work for Section 31, but in reality, all the Federation intelligence operations are controlled by Starfleet Intelligence, period, and they just call the stuff that is kept off the books 'Section 31'.

Sarina Douglass will eventually work with, and becomes friends with, Seven of Nine.

Really, they're so similar it's uncanny. Both had their lives royally screwed up by poor choices on their parents' parts, both were successfully re-socialized as adults, both women had the male doctors helping them fall in love with them when they weren't really interested, both are socially misfitted geniuses and both are beautiful singers. Sarina just has a softer and more feminine personality to Seven's sterner, blunter one. Both will end up Starfleet super-scientists working together, and they'll become best friends.

Jack is really The Cinema Snob.

Not only is the physical resemblance uncanny (they even DRESS exactly the same), but the personalities as well. Jack didn't go insane and get institutionalized due to being an augment, he cracked after being subjected to one too many Estus Pirkle movies.

Keiko was adopted.

Hence her mother being 100 years old. She adopted Keiko when she was in her sixties.

Research on Defiant was shut down just to get rid of Sisko.

Years of research results in a ship that almost destroys itself, but they don't just scale it down to something manageable? Given Sisko had yet to get over his wife's death, it's not hard to imagine that he kept demanding more power, even when it was impractical. Eventually, the sympathy ran out, and Utopia Planitia got the project shut down out of irritation-induced spite. Then, once Sisko was on his way to somewhere out of the way and their heads cooled slightly, they restarted the project and actually made a ship that worked. Sisko didn't mention this in Emissary because, at that point, he was too embarrassed by his behavior.

The Period Klingon Democracy mention in "You Are Cordially Invited" Really Was A "Dark Time"

It's mostly mention off-hand as a joke, because of course the Blood Knight Empire would consider democracy a dark period.

But, a democracy founded because the military assassinated the ruling monarch of the time? It could easily have been similar to the chaotic period following The French Revolution, which is still calledthe Reign of Terror by our historians. Now apply that situation to the aforementioned Blood Knight Klingons, and consider how much back-stabbing, political maneuvering, and general deciet that goes on in the modern Klingon High Council? Yeah, that would be a pretty Dark Time, even by Klingon standards.

The Klingon-Cardassian War was Gowron trying to be T’Kuvma and Martok was the “torchbearer.”

Realizing that the empire was fractured after the civil war Gowron sought unity against an external enemy. In addition the crest of the House of Martok looks like a stylized version of the broche Ash Tyler wore in the high council.

Joran Dax's Flanderization is a result of Jadiza and Ezri's interpretation of him becoming 'corrupted'

When Joran was the Dax host, he was just psychologically unstable with various personal issues, making him dangerous but not the Hannibal-Lecter-esque killer he was in his later appearances. However, after Jadzia learned about Joran's existence and what he had done, on some level she began to exaggerate the scale of his crimes to reinforce that the Symbiosis Commission had been 'right' to keep Joran locked up (particularly when she learned about his other two murders, considering that only one was known about initially), which led to the memory of Joran's personality in Dax becoming so twisted.

Keiko's mother's name begins with a K.

Because Miles has a father named Michael and a daughter named Molly. Their son is named Karioshi. If Keiko's mother's name began with a K, that'd make it three generations of M-names and three generations of K-names.

The Pah-Wraiths were manipulating Dukat for some time.

This would explain his sudden personality shift that led to Cardassia joining the Dominion under his negotiation. And while it's implied that Dukat is simply hallucinating in "Waltz" it's just as likely they are actively messing with him. Their goal is to set him up as someone who can free them and seal away the Prophets, everything else was simply a means to an end.

The Romulans arranged the events of In the Pale Moonlight.

Garak gives a convincing rationale for the Romulans accepting the recording after the ambassador's ship is destroyed. Even so, it still seems like barely enough evidence to commit them to a war on the side of their two greatest enemies, the Federation and Klingons. I suspect that the Romulans were fully aware that the contents of the recording were faked. They're not stupid. They were probably looking for an excuse to enter the war, but it's been long established that Romulans NEVER simply start a war. They ALWAYS plot and scheme and try to get the other side to do something rash, or treaty breaking, etc.

My theory is that the Romulans were the ultimate source of the plot. The whole thing was orchestrated with two goals. 1. Give them a REAL excuse to get into the war that wouldn't make them look weak and as though they were cooperating with the Federation. 2. Have the Federation think they SUCCEEDED in a Romulan style plot, to encourage a cultural shift in Federation policy towards one more similar to Romulan sensibilities. If they can get the Federation to act more like Romulans, that's a blow to their "moral high ground" diplomatic efforts.

Vic Fontaine exists as a non-hologram in the Mirror Universe because the holographic Vic Fontaine is based on a real person

Felix, who designed Julian's holoprograms, was a fan of the real Vic Fontaine (who is also likely some type of singer or entertainer) and the Vic holoprogram is basically his Self-Insert RPF.

Julian Bashir is autistic

It's never explicitly confirmed what he was diagnosed with before his parents had him enhanced. All that we know was that he was small and physically awkward for his age, and struggled with things that normal children could easily do at his age. But even in adulthood he seems to struggle with social skills and misses social cues constantly (especially in the earlier seasons) his later improvement on the social side can be explained by him manually/consciously learning to read his friends. And since he only had parts of him enhanced, not explicitly deleted, it makes sense that his autism didn't go away after the genetic engineering.

• This is a pretty popular fan theory — there's a well-stocked "Autistic Julian Bashir" tag on AO 3 — and I believe Alexander Siddig has commented favourably (or at least not adversely) on learning it was out there.

Julian's 'mutant' friends are socially inept for a reason

Julian was, for whatever reason, legitimately slow, or perceived as such compared to that era's increasingly common wunderkinds, and so, whatever his real lacks, these were made up for by his procedure and then some. However, the group he aids on two occasions was made up of children who were of perfectly average or even above average ability, and their parents wanted super-kids. Now, maybe their doctors being less skilled than Julian's didn't help, but what really made them outliers is that their base multiplier pushed their existing abilities far past what they could take in for things, people and events outside themselves. Whereas Julian was enhanced just enough to pick up on social context clues, theirs were forever at warp speed, a permanent state of TMI incoming.

The Ferengi have two separate and competing schools of financial philosophy.

The "Acquisitionists" adhere to the Rules of Acquisition, which emphasize quick profit and self-centered business practices that benefit the merchants and businessmen to the detriment of the customers. The "Rivermen", who follow the idea of the Great Material Continuum (described by Nog as "a mighty river flowing through the galaxy, from 'want' to 'have' and back"), prefer slow-burn financial deals that benefit both parties and while may not generate immediate rewards, will ultimately produce long-term profit and financial stability, as well as maintaining a greater sense of customer loyalty. The Acquisitionists have held a significant majority among the Ferengi for many years because their methods are easier and produce more immediate results. The Rivermen have started to gain more traction in recent years as it is becoming apparent that, while many individual Acquisitionists may be profiting in the short term, the economy of Ferenginar is in a shambles, with skyrocketing inflation, shoddy production and fraudulent business practices being the norm.

Quark and Brunt are hardline Acquisitionists, while Rom at one point became a Riverman. Rom was considered a failure among many other Ferengi, including his son Nog, until one day shortly before Nog left for Starfleet Academy, when Rom explained the tenets of the Rivermen, leading to Nog's conversion to their philosophy. Now that Rom has been appointed Zek's successor as the Grand Nagus, the Rivermen are in a position to rebuild Ferenginar, and many Acquisitionists are going to find themselves with the choice to either adapt or to lose everything. Ferengi politics following the Dominion War are going to be very interesting.

---