Captain Sisko, during the Dominion War

deaftravis05 · November 2015

Sisko.

A ruthless commander who was willing to sell his soul to the Devil (aka Garak) to win at just about any cost.

Sisko...

the man who provoked the Dominion and eventually started the war, resulting in the deaths of untold millions, perhaps billions.

Sisko, the man who dared to punch who many view as a god.

Sisko, the man an entire race viewed as godly.

so why didn't the Dominion try to kill him? Clearly his death would had been a blow to the Federation as he was a warrior, one of the few capable warriors. He was a man who faced the Borg and survived. Faced Q and punched him out where all others just rolled their eyes and walked away. He walked into the heart of the Klingon military headquarters and faced down their crazy-eyed leader, Gorwon. He made a planet uninhabitable for his own species and threatened to carry out biogenetic attacks throughout an entire region to put an end to a threat. He fought dozens of klingons in hands to hand combat, escalated the war with the Klingons and deescalated after humiliating the Klingon Empire.

He was a soldier, a leader and the cause of headaches for the Federation Diplomatic Corps. He walked with gods and fought in the trenches. His death would had caused grief in the Federation, great sorrow among Bajorans and songs worthy of praise by the Empire. The Romulans respected him as a man who could do politics. It was the Dominion's greatest mistake not assassinating Sisko.

starswordc · November 2015

Out-of-universe? Plot armor.

In-universe, my best guess is the Dominion didn't want to turn him into a martyr. Take out that much of an effective leader with such a following, somebody will pick up where he left off. Maybe not as effectively, but there's no guarantee. I've said before, the Founders may be the titular leaders of the Dominion, but the Vorta are the day-to-day operators, the bureaucrats and generals who actually run the place, and they almost never do anything without having a practical reason for it.

starswordc · November 2015

Addendum b/c the mobile site is messed up: Also, Sisko may have a lot of symbolic importance, but he's still only one enemy commander among many. Just killing him wouldn't end the war.

deaftravis05 · November 2015

starswordc wrote: »

Addendum b/c the mobile site is messed up: Also, Sisko may have a lot of symbolic importance, but he's still only one enemy commander among many. Just killing him wouldn't end the war.

Oh no, it wouldn't but it'd be a blow to morale and the Founder leading the alpha forces understood that. That's why she let the survivors live to return to to the alliance to spread stories of doom and gloom.

gradii · November 2015

Easy. HE IS THE SISKO. and even the founders know you don't mess with The Sisko.

jonsills · November 2015

Remember also that the Founders, who give the Dominion direction, are aliens, with an alien point of view. In the Great Link, there's no such thing as a vital individual; they wanted Odo back because they saw him as a missing part of the whole, not because he was so very important in himself. It probably never occurred to them that assassinating a single figure could do so very much damage to their enemy. (Of course, after they allied with the Cardassians, it was probably suggested, but by then he was too hard to get to.)

mustrumridcully0 · November 2015

The Founder didn't seem all that big in assassinations overall, actually. Considering the capabilities they had, at least. It might be that it's the psychology of the Link that makes them consider individual lifes less important, but it could also be that Centuries of doing this stuff has shown them that individuals can be replaced, and it's more important to deal with the enemy overall structure. For example, causing the Federation to fall into disarray by faking massive Changling infiltration. It doesn't matter what Admiral will try to take matters into his own hands and call for martial law - it only matters that someone does it. Look at how they did it with Martok. They didn't send him to assassinate Gowron - a new leader would eventually emerge and lead the Klingon Empire. But destabilizing the quadrant and sending the Klingons to fight the Cardassians and stop the treaties with the Federation, now that's something.

But while Sisko was important in what we saw on TV, there is no guarantee that there couldn't have been someone else replacing him. He might have been part of the planning for the war, but maybe a Captain Shelby or Captain Unnamed Captain #3 would have done a similar job.

The Founders also didn't actually know most of the stuff you talked about.

Punching Q might certainly looks impressive to us, but would anyone know? And punching Q does actually not hurt Q or affect Q, other that it surprised him perhaps. But he's been surprised before. Or at least, he acted surprised. You never know with him. Anyway - would this be anything talked about and reach the Dominion?

The Soul-Selling stuff with Garak - only Garak and Sisko know about this. Certainly not the Dominion.

The deal with his fight against Eddington? No one in the Dominion would care what Sisko did there, and it was not that impressive.

Surviving the Borg? The entire Federation can say that from itself. And Sisko didn't survive because he was special, and he was just one of several survivors.

Sisko being worshiped as an emissary of the Bajoran gods - actually a dangerous thing to directly target him. First, it would anger the Bajorans. That might be irrelevant, since they are just a small species anyway. But they were also sitting atop the wormhole, and the gods they worship are the beings controlling the wormhole. Sisko's ability to convince the Wormhole aliens to get rid of the Dominion invasion fleet sounds like something that would convince the Dominion not to meddle with them unless they know exactly how to deal with them.
That said - the Dominion did consider destroying Bajor. They faked an incoming invasion fleet and were willing to sacrifice one of their own (Changling-Bashir) to trigger a nova in the Bajoran star, catching the joint fleets of Klingons and Federation in the process, while not needing to give up a single shot. But at that time, they didn't know that Sisko could convince the Prophets to take action on his behalf - and it might have caused them to reconsider. For the time being, the Wormhole aliens were passive and no threat. And the Wormhole itself the passage to the Alpha Quadrant.

Also, I believe the Dominion did not require particular provocation to start a war. It's an essential core concept of the Dominion that it exists to take control over solids so they can't threaten the Founders. The Wormhole just expedited things.

ryan218 · November 2015

Also, who says they didn't try? Remember, after 'Paradise Lost', most Federation ships and installations implemented security measures to detect Changelings (such as automated phaser sweeps, phaser sweep teams, blood screenings, etc.). It would have been very difficult for one of them to get close enough to Sisko to kill him without being killed themselves, and the Founders, judging from 'Defiant' seem to view one of their lives as far more precious than one of the Solids'. Furthermore, consider the effect on the morale of the Vorta and Jem'Hadar if one of their Gods were killed to murder a single human.

khan5000 · November 2015

Because it's Star Trek. Why aren't there Klingon or Romulan ships that can fire when cloaked? We know the tech problem was solved in the 23rd century

lilchibiclari · November 2015

They certainly have the tech for firing while cloaked. Perhaps it is due to treaties that they do not use it--same reason why the Federation refrained from building their own cloaks up through Nemesis.

deaftravis05 · November 2015

lilchibiclari wrote: »

They certainly have the tech for firing while cloaked. Perhaps it is due to treaties that they do not use it--same reason why the Federation refrained from building their own cloaks up through Nemesis.

that makes sense. The Federation has proven to be quite dangerous with science, and the Federation probably forced it to the table "So if you can fire while cloaked, we're going to build cloaking devices of our own. Want that?"

adamkafei · November 2015

To be fair, there isn't much advantage to firing while cloaked beyond the first couple of volleys as one can use your weaponsfire to work out your trajectory and return fire, it seems in all cases other than the Scimitar, cloaks used the ship's shield emitters hence a cloaked ship had no shields, a few direct photon hits and you're done. Obviously the Scimitar situation was inevitable but I do think it's cloaking shields were far too powerful for the first ship to deploy the technology.

khan5000 · November 2015

There's a great advantage to firing when cloaked. They can disable of destroy a ship before the ship knows they are there. The whole treaty thing makes little sense to me. What did the Federation gain that was so valuable that head give up trying to develop cloak technology?

ryan218 · November 2015

adamkafei wrote: »

To be fair, there isn't much advantage to firing while cloaked beyond the first couple of volleys as one can use your weaponsfire to work out your trajectory and return fire, it seems in all cases other than the Scimitar, cloaks used the ship's shield emitters hence a cloaked ship had no shields, a few direct photon hits and you're done. Obviously the Scimitar situation was inevitable but I do think it's cloaking shields were far too powerful for the first ship to deploy the technology.

I always assumed it was simply a case of the cloak needing too much power to tun both it and the shields (which explains the Scimitar as it certainly appears that ship had plenty of power). Also, there are numerous ways to detect even a cloaked ship, such as it's ion trail or plasma exhaust (ST:TUC). So, while firing while cloaked provides a certain advantage, you still have no real way of maintaining that advantage - no shields means the enemy can do more damage to you than you can to them. And it stands to reason that a cloak of this type requires more power than a regular cloak. Tactically, unless you can maintain shields and weapons while cloaked, it makes no sense to use a cloak that you can shoot through. And the Scimitar is massive; possibly in part to facilitate the power requirements of both the cloak and a shield large enough to cover the ship. Then you have standard cost v benefit - if you have a ship that big, it needs a lot of weapons to be worth the expense. More weapons means greater power consumption, meaning an even bigger ship. You couldn't do this to the rank-and-file ships of the line.

ryan218 · November 2015

khan5000 wrote: »

There's a great advantage to firing when cloaked. They can disable of destroy a ship before the ship knows they are there. The whole treaty thing makes little sense to me. What did the Federation gain that was so valuable that head give up trying to develop cloak technology?

My guess is the Federation felt threatened enough by the Romulans that 'no cloaks' was preferable to war.

Of course, we know the Federation did continue to develop cloaking technology (the Pegasus Project) as a black project within a certain section of Starfleet.

Anyway, this is getting off-topic. The OP asked about assassination attempts on Sisko (or lack thereof), not Federation cloaking technology.

adamkafei · November 2015

One of the big reasons for the treaty is that the Federation was in no position to fight the Romulans, they'd have been out numbered and out-teched, not to mention the cloaking question so really the Romulans lost out big on that treaty, now of course the Romulans find themselves in the position the Federation was when the treaty was signed, they also know the Federation is the only thing standing between them an a war with the Klingons, if that treaty breaks down the Romulans will face an existential threat on two sides.

khan5000 · November 2015

ryan218 wrote: »

khan5000 wrote: »

There's a great advantage to firing when cloaked. They can disable of destroy a ship before the ship knows they are there. The whole treaty thing makes little sense to me. What did the Federation gain that was so valuable that head give up trying to develop cloak technology?

My guess is the Federation felt threatened enough by the Romulans that 'no cloaks' was preferable to war.

Of course, we know the Federation did continue to develop cloaking technology (the Pegasus Project) as a black project within a certain section of Starfleet.

Anyway, this is getting off-topic. The OP asked about assassination attempts on Sisko (or lack thereof), not Federation cloaking technology.

I used that as an example that sometimes the stories don't make a lot of sense. Yes the Dominion should have made attempts to kill Sisko. If the Dominion was smart they could have taken out the Federation without so much as a fired shot. They could have infiltrated every level of star government...from the Feds to the KDF to the Roms and no one would have been the wiser

lazarus51166 · November 2015

the man who provoked the Dominion and eventually started the war

Which is incidental. War was coming one way or another, hence the continued weekly military convoys and Weyoun's reaction when they were stopped. Sisko's actions may have provoked a war but it only did so earlier than it otherwise would have happened, as well as giving them a chance to actually win. Otherwise the dominion would have peacefully built up an overwhelming force and attacked when it suited them

deaftravis05 · December 2015

1. The schimmy, I suspect used shields to act as a cloak, which would make it quite difficult to find them. However, to use the shields as a cloak in itself is a massive drain on power and would actually not be able to withstand much direct fire.

2. Indeed, the Federation knew the Dominion were challenging them. War was coming and they had to close the wormhole to have a chance. Sisko's moving early surprised them a bit.

adamkafei · December 2015

deaftravis05 wrote: »

1. The schimmy, I suspect used shields to act as a cloak, which would make it quite difficult to find them. However, to use the shields as a cloak in itself is a massive drain on power and would actually not be able to withstand much direct fire.

Which is exactly my point, for a ship that shouldn't be able to take a beating under cloak for logical reasons fought an entire battle against three ships that barely scratched it's shields. Anyway, I have nothing further on topic so I'll just leave it there.

antonine3258 · December 2015

Not much to add but agreement - the Dominion as a dominating military-oriented imperialistic culture seems to rely on crushing whole species as symbols rather than individuals. One is unimportant, generally, unless you're a founder. Also, Sisko's good, but until he shuts the wormhole down, he's not necessarily unique

starswordc · December 2015

@adamkafei : It was clearly stated when Scimitar first appeared that she had, quote, "primary and secondary shields". Most likely they were running with one set turned on and the other turned off. For Pete's sake, the thing was meant from its first appearance on screen to be a Starship Sue that would take a whole battle group to bring down; the power generation to keep your shields up while cloaked is just gravy.

badvaio · December 2015

Not even Chuck Norris would mess with Sisko

Captain Sisko, during the Dominion War

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