tbh what the DS9 says about forgiveness and redemption between garak, damar, and dukat is totally incoherent
i am 100% behind dukat not getting redeemed because a three-for-three denies necessary contrast in the narrative, but whatever the fuck was being said there was said so poorly i just cannot distill the fucking takeaway we were expected to get from that
like even the scene where dukat (who is now being written as Full Satan Fire Ass) forgives damar for killing ziyal. like… okay… is the show implying that matters? to either dukat or damar? if it doesn’t matter to either then… ??
someone’s gonna be like “yes well dukat CHOSE not to be redeemed” but, there’s like a huge gulf between how bashir interacts with done-unforgiveable-deeds Garak and how sisko interacts with done-unforgiveable-deeds Dukat, and the show wants you to celebrate both of these things simultaneously?
it’s also weird that the show keeps justifying to itself that dukat doesn’t even get the chance to fail–he doesn’t deserve that and isn’t owed it–but then just, helps hide from the audience and/or minimize what garak has done. to like, retroactively imply it wasn’t as bad and that’s why unconditional redemption was o.k. Because it was secretly conditional as fuck and bashir just didn’t know he was on the right side of it (?????)
imho they should have had the same degree of opportunity and garak should have succeeded (and damar), and dukat -failed-. but instead it ends up feeling weirdly calvinist. and like, calvinism? in my star trek? nO THNAKS
This post has two good text replies on it, I intend to get to both but one at a time (especially my take on this one is a little more straightforward). This is the one from nerdfishgirl
Read her input and my response under the cut. With proper grammar, too:
I love it when @kaelio and @nerdfishgirl discuss these things because they cover all the bases and I don’t have to bother.
I think there’s a big tendency in fandom to “woobify” Garak and make allowances for his incredibly disturbing and often psychotic behavior and presumed past actions because he was a victim of abuse - which unnerves me for various reasons…
As for the writers of DS9 and their treatment of Garak vs Dukat in terms of redemption and change, I would argue that Garak really doesn’t change that much. Just look at the way he relishes shooting Rusot and his final scene with Julian where he mentions living in for revenge. Seems to me that he was just means to end for telling certain narratives.
*spoilers ahead for those who have not watched through S7 yet*
I do agree that Damar was not directly involved in the Occupation. I think the canon evidence for that is non-existent. That doesn’t mean I think he was a good person though either. I think its reasonable to think that as a high-ranking officer on a freighter, he helped transport Bajorans (and presumably other species as well) as slave labor in presumably awful conditions. Almost certainly, he aided in the war against the Federation.
But the other thing I wanted to expand on, was that I think that Damar
had the least distance to go of any the three leading Cardassians morally but the greatest distance to go in belief system.
By that I mean that both Dukat and Garak are far more willing to work with the Federation, and with other species in general, than Damar - who is probably the most xenophobic of the three. Dukat may want Kira (and all other Bajorans) to love him, but in so doing, he needs to be closely involved in Bajoran (and then Federation) affairs. He craves both their respect and love. Garak, by the nature of his job, has been far more exposed to non-Cardassian cultures, and shows willingness to investigate and engage with them (although while generally still proclaiming Cardassia’s superior, at least initially). Damar regards all of that as beneath him. He has (prior to his heel-face turn) no desire to associate with any aliens.
But at the same time, Damar is also the most honest, and probably the least selfish of any of the three of them. Dukat’s motivations are entirely centered around himself, at every point we see him. Garak’s motivations are much more complex - there is some selfishness (although mainly self-preservation) at work, but also a real desire to do the best for Cardassia as he sees it. But Garak loves Cardassia as an ideal, as a state, as a culture, but not necessarily as individual people. Which is very much fitting for a former agent of the Obsidian Order, whose job was to defend the state as an ideal against individual people.
Damar however, is motivated almost entirely by love for the Cardassian people. At first he even seems to rather naively assumes they will be able to free themselves, and continue under the same government after doing so. But after he makes the initial decision to turn to the Federation for help, and they send him Kira to help him, he begins to realize how much of his former belief system was wrong. And, importantly, he’s willing to admit it. For Damar, transformation occurs as a process of overcoming his own pride and his pride in his people to acknowledge they were wrong. But in Damar, these acknowledgements have the aid of Damar believing that there are clear right/wrong ways to go about life (unlike Garak), and an inability to lie to himself (unlike Dukat).
Also, I agree with @ladyvean that people make allowances for Garak because he was a victim of abuse. And to that I would say…there is zero evidence that Dukat and Damar were not also victims of such abuse (in fact in the case of Dukat, I think its highly likely). I think that it is deliberate on the part of the writers to introduce a childhood abuse plotline for Garak, and not for the other two Cardassians, in order to make it permissible for the Federation characters to give Garak as much latitude as they do, without any real changes in his behavior. This sort of writing is in fact, such a classic tactic that it’s talked about as an overused trope to give sympathy to characters without actually writing much about them as people, or allowing them to do terrible things while retaining audience sympathy (e.g. many stories Roald Dahl has written, Harry Potter, etc.).
I also agree with @kaelio that the narrative is forgiving to Garak because he’s a supplicant, and yeah…I’m not much of a fan of that either. I do think its disturbing, and I also don’t think its particularly great writing, particularly in terms in any sort of forgiveness arc, because again, its about playing on the sympathies of the audience without actually having the character change in ways that would increase audience sympathy. (Damar’s addiction arc, imo, is also a more subtle form of this, as is Dukat’s madness - and their paths toward redemption/damnation are, once more, determined by whether the seek/reject aid from the Federation - still kinda problematic imo).
ALL OF THIS.
