Gul Dukat - The best Trek Villian

[Eric R.]

Title says it all but why

Well, for most of DS9 we saw Dukat evolve from the standard cutt out bad guy to a redeemed roque/villian to complete evil. We first see him he is only the representation of his society and the ills it has undergone. We believe that he has been made into what he has become and that somewhere inside him is a good person wanting to do good, even if that is by his own cultures standards. THen mid way through DS9 we begin to beleieve he has started to change for the good and even when he reverts back to his "old self" we believe that he has only sought a way for the betterment of not only himself but thta of his people. Finally as he slips into madness we beleive that it is only because of the death of his daughter, a easily connected to emotion which we can understand. But it is not to the very end do we realize that we have not been dealing with a Cardassian simply turned into a bad person because of circumstance but we are dealing with pure evil. That he is evil, as Sisko is made out to be good if a bit tainted. In some ways Sisko becomes the archanagel that is able to cast the luther figure from the garden but yet is not complete good.

Just an opinion I wanted to share

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Totally. Dukat is one of the top villians ever, and definitely my fave Trek baddie. One of his best moments was when he and Sisko were marooned in a cave and Dukat was hallucinating other characters. That's the moment Sisko realizes Dukat is just completely gone. Great story, directing and acting in that ep.

On the flip side, I really like the symmetry of Damar's journey in the opposite direction.

[Owen E Oulton]

Never saw Dukat as redeemed - I never lost sight of what he did during the occupation, and the fact that he had never acknowledged nor repented of his crimes. It was interesting to see him as an unredeemed villain who has been "politically reformed" while all the time working on his own agenda.

It was interesting to read Marc Alaimo's and Ira Stephen Behr's views of the character in Star Trek, The Magazine - Alaimo's PoV being that he was just "terribly misunderstood," and Behr's being that the bad press Dukat received was entirely accurate.

And let's face it, Dukat's liaison with Wynn was just too creepy for words...

[Sho-sa Kurita]

And let's face it, Dukat's liaison with Wynn was just too creepy for words...

Yeah, let's not go there.

As for Alaimo's POV, approaching Dukat as truly misunderstood made him even better for the role. The only time I thought they really failed with Dukat was the whole 'cult of the pah wraiths' thing. Not that the idea was bad, I just thought the execution of the episode was lacking.

[JonA]

Originally posted by Sho-sa Kurita
Totally. Dukat is one of the top villians ever, and definitely my fave Trek baddie. One of his best moments was when he and Sisko were marooned in a cave and Dukat was hallucinating other characters. That's the moment Sisko realizes Dukat is just completely gone. Great story, directing and acting in that ep.

Ah that'll be Waltz. And it's one of my favourite DS9 episodes (therefore one of my fave ST episodes of all). I personally think it's up there with In the Pale Moonlight.

On the flip side, I really like the symmetry of Damar's journey in the opposite direction.

I know this is a thread about Dukat but I can't let this comment slide unless I say that Damar was my favourite character throughout the entire series of DS9.

[Eric R.]

In some ways Damar was what one would expect Dukat to have become over the course of the series someone who would come to terms with his past ills and seek redeemtion. Damar symbolized all those people who know what good is and are slowly destroyed by compromising with evil slowly centimeter by centimeter.

In addition and on the opposite side Kira followed a similar course to Damar, in relation to Sisko, travaling from the self relient, do anything it takes style gurillia leader to a person who begins to understand that there is in fact a clear clear line when the end do not justify the action taken.

BTW I don't mind if this thread turns into something which dissucssess the whole evil vs good nature of DS9 as examplified by its main characters.

[Joe Dizzy]

Originally posted by JonA
Ah that'll be Waltz. And it's one of my favourite STS9 episodes (therefore one of my fave ST episodes of all). I personally think it's up there with In the Pale Moonlight.

That was to me the episode where the once great character of Dukat began his descend into moustache-twirling, black-hat villain and became a caricature of the once quite fascinating Gul Dukat.

Dukat was probably the best, i.e. most interesting villain of the show, next to Garak.

[Tobian]

I think what made Dukat such a good vilan was because he wasn't just another cardboard cutout vilan who was 'evil'. The real world has no such definition, it's always a question of interpretation. What made him so good as a bad guy was the way he encapsulated that. he shifted and changed, you never really knew what was in his head, and never really understood his motivations. he manipulated a great deal, but alot of the time it was pure luck. Right up till the end you could never quite tell which way he would go.

Winn In my opinion was good for all the same reasons too! In many ways she was a far better vilain for the pure fact that while she was entirelly self centred, alot of her manipulation was about what she saw was 'good'. ad I agree her and Dukat was very sinister!

[C5]

DS9 was the series with the most interesting secondary characters - to the point that some of them underwent more changes and ended being more interesting than the regular cast (I'm mostly talking about Garak, Dukat, Damar and Winn here).

In the DS9 Companion, the writers say they always considered Dukat as evil, only this was not always obvious and sometimes he could even appear as redeemed. This is what made him a very interesting (and dangerous) villain. Sort of a mirror Garak, if you think about it - a deceiving, shifty character, whose side you knew in theory but never were exactly sure about.

[Erik Filean]

Oh, I agree completely. With Dukat, DS9's writers and Marc Alaimo succeeded in creating a thoroughly nuanced, three-dimensional villain. You could see the guy's devotion to his daughter without ever doubting that he was an unrepentant fascist thug. You could understand his motives and still find him utterly despicable. DS9 managed to do this with the Cardassians as a society, too, but Dukat wrapped all of the contradictions up in one package.

I have to say, though, that I would have liked to see the Dukat arc end with his failure and mental collapse when Starfleet retook DS9. The season 6 opening arc made Dukat into a tragically flawed character in a sort of Shakespearean mode, and I thought his later conversion into Chief Satanist of Bajor was too cardboard and a waste of the character after his fall from grace.

[Eric R.]

MYself I thought Dukt ending up as a poor blind homeless Bajoran forever caught in his false skin and forced to beg for his survival from the people he most detested would have been a very fine ending