Agent23
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Trek is incompetent at ground combat, and this has been seen so often as to turn it into a meme.
Versus Match Star Trek in Fallout
- Thread starter Zachowon
- Start date
A meme is not evidence.
So tell us what you found wrong with AR-558. Can you even name what was so bad about it? I mean, if it's so easy to prove, then this should be easy for you, right?
Agent23
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The whole episode...
One would have hoped with about an hour's worth of material then, you could explain why they did so poorly.
I guess one would be wrong.
You want to try again? Or should I just accept your concession now?
Well, since @Agent23 is being his usual self, let's address this "incompetence" that we see touted by people as if it's common sense. For those of you haven't seen the Siege of AR-558, the basic premise is that there's a company of Federation soldiers holding a Dominion communication hub. When Sisko and the Defiant bring them some supplies, they discover that the company is in bad shape; its two highest officers killed, down to a third of its strength, and suffering from battle fatigue from having been deployed to the rock for 5 months without reinforcements or being rotated out. When Dominion ships arrive, the Defiant needs to leave. When Sisko learns that a new detachment of Jem'Hadar soldiers has been beamed down, he decides to stay and aid the defenders.
The real thrust of "incompetence" comes in the final attack by the Jem'Hadar, who after tripping some explosives, rushed the Starfleet position, negating much of their numerical advantage before they're gunned down. To understand why and how this happened, we need to look at more than just this episode, because the context of this battle is affected by the events of previous episodes.
First, everyone is aware that the Dominion uses Ketracil White to keep the Jem'Hadar under control. They're addicted to it. The white also acts as a means of feeding the Jem'Hadar, who are stated not needing food or sleep so long as they have the white. Second, we all know that when the Dominion was suffering supply issues for its troops in the Alpha Quadrant. Weyoun makes mention of this concern when speaking to Dukat about the minefield blocking reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant.
A Time to Stand (S6E01)
Later in that same episode, Ross calls Sisko in for a dangerous mission:
Ross's plan is obviously one that goes for the throat. Without the Jem'Hadar, the Dominion War basically ends. It'll just be the Cardassians, a few hundred Vorta, and lots of heavy paperweights they call warships. The plan is ultimately successful:
The main facility is utterly destroyed, but due unforseen circumstances (getting caught), the Dominion ship they used was badly damaged. That leads into the next episode, Rocks and Shoals, where the ship crashes in a nebula and they're forced to survive. Unfortunately, a Dominion ship crashed before them. Garak and Nog, who are out on patrol, are ambushed by Jem'Hadar, who deshroud around them and takes them prisoner. Their Vorta leader however, is injured.
Rocks and Shoals (S6E02)
This then leads to the pictures of the episode that I posted in the thread, where the Jem'Hadar ambush Sisko at around 70-75 meters. The reason for the attack, despite Keevan's orders, was that one of the Jem'Hadar decided to engage:
Where the offending Jem'Hadar admits his disobedience. When ordered to shroud and return to camp, he explains that he is no longer able to shroud. This seems to be a condition that most of the Jem'Hadar are in.
This is explained to Keevan when he demands to know why his orders were disobeyed.
Regardless, Keevan has the Third make contact with Sisko and his men, offering to return Garak and Nog in return for medical treatment. However, after treating Keevan, the vorta reveals a few bits of information, his dilemma, and his plan:
He explains that without the white, the Jem'Hadar will become homicidal, killing everyone on the planet before finally turning on each other. He expects that Sisko's men can repair the broken comm system he and his men managed to salvage, as Keevan's own men are suffering from withdrawal and can't seem to repair it. That leads to the second set of pictures from my earlier post regarding this episode, where we see the Jem'Hadar gunned down. The Third (and probably the rest of his men) had realized that Keevan had betrayed them, but carried out their orders regardless. Even so, despite being at least 50-80 meters from Sisko and his men and going through withdrawal, one of the Jem'Hadar manages to kill some poor fucker named Gordon. Despite having cover. Probably luck, possibly not.
Anyway, now that we've established what happens to the main Dominion white storage facility AND what happens when the Jem'Hadar begin to suffer from withdrawal, the showrunners kept this victory in mind in a later episode called Behind the Lines, which was the 4th episode of Season 6:
Damar recommended that if more white could not be obtained, that they should poison the last batch of white to prevent the Jem'Hadar running amok. Kira and her "resistance cell" get the PADD he'd written his recommendation on to the Jem'Hadar, who get into a brawl with Damar over it.
The issue was also raised again in the 9th episode of the season, called Statistical Probabilities:
The Dominion and Starfleet had been peace negotiations. The Dominion had wanted a certain planet to fall within their border because it contained the right type of fungus for which they could produce the active ingredient for white on a massive scale. After Sisko learns that, he refuses to give Kabrel system to the Dominion. Peace negotiations break down after that.
Dominion activity would pick up again a few episodes later.
Why is this all important? Well, AR-558 takes place in Season 7, about a year later. We're given a rough idea of the strategic situation:
Starfleet has captured a large Dominion communications array in the sector. Their hope is that they'll be able to tap Dominion communications. According to Larkin, they're determined to get it back. They've been fighting off Jem'Hadar assaults for five months. We're not told if Larkin's company was the one to take the facility or if another company did and Larkin is the latest. We also don't know if that includes the engineers within the company in terms of numbers. Regardless, Sisko tells them that they're spread thin and probably can't rotate them out anytime soon.
Throughout the episode, we see that the soldiers at the facility are both physically and emotionally fatigued. When Sisko and his team arrived via transporter, one of the soldiers even took a shot at Sisko, thinking he was a Jem'Hadar:
The episode makes it clear that the soldiers are going through hell and are basically one shot away from having a nervous breakdown. Making the situation worse are the Houdinis that the Jem'Hadar left behind; mines that hide themselves in subspace and randomly go off when someone passes by:
In short, the soldiers have been there for 5 months, fighting repeated attacks by genetically engineered killing machines, and all the while they have to walk around knowing that at any moment, a Houdini might go off and kill them. It could be in your bed, on the toilet, eating, walking down a hallway, or just sitting down. That's a lot of stress for someone to take.
Not soon after, the Dominion arrives with reinforcements:
The Defiant has to leave orbit, but the Dominion manages to beam down more troops. Sisko decides to stay to help the soldiers on the surface defend the relay. Larkin points out the difficulty in knowing just how many troops have beamed down:
Soon after, the Jem'Hadar launch their first "attack". In reality, it's a bunch of holograms marching toward them. By gunning down the holograms, the soldiers have revealed their defensive positions. Later, Sisko sends Larkin with Nog and a few others to scout the enemy camp. They discover that the Jem'Hadar have "two columns", which as far as I can tell, doesn't really tell me much at all. However, this appears to be an overwhelming number and the soldiers are convinced that they can't possibly hold off that many troops. Going with the 3:1 rule (the number of troops you need to overcome a defensive position), my guess is that there would be at least 150 Jem'Hadar in those "two columns", unless someone else can point me to more accurate information. For 40ish soldiers who have been stuck on the front lines for 5 months, a full company of Jem'Hadar who are seemingly fresh to the fight cannot have been good news.
Sisko however, develops a plan to use the Houdinis (which Ezri and her engineering buddy have located and disarmed) against the Jem'Hadar.
Reese expects that the Houdinis should remove a third of their forces. That would pit 40+Sisko's people against about a hundred Jem'Hadar. After the explosions, we see the Jem'Hadar rush the Starfleet positions, which is where I expect most people get the "incompetence" part. We can see some of the action here:
Even with the Jem'Hadar making a bone-headed move of rushing the defenders, they still manage to nearly overwhelm the Federation soldiers, killing several of the guest stars for the episode. It should be noted that this scene is interesting in that we don't see nearly the numbers we should; there are at best a half dozen, maybe a dozen extras/guest stars there, plus Bashir, Ezri, and Sisko. So that still leaves about 30 troops unaccounted for. Now, it is possible that there were soldiers further down the ravine. That makes sense. After the explosion, the forward troops could have taken advantage of the fighting. Sisko would command from the rear and he and the few officers he had would act as the last line of defense.
It is possible that the rest of the troops were inside, but that doesn't make too much sense. The facility is the thing they're trying to defend and there was no indication that Sisko or anyone tried to fall back when they were being overrun. Or them calling for backup. It's clear that they're pretty much it. The only people we know of inside would be Quark and an injured Nog. We might account for a few engineers inside, but that's probably it. There is a problem with the forward deployment theory; Sisko doesn't mention them and nor does anyone else. At any point. We also don't hear any phaser fire or see any indication of it.
That leaves us with only one alternative; that the fight we see is more narrow in scope to the heroes fighting it and that there is probably 30 other guys around them also fighting off the charging Jem'Hadar advance. We've never really given a wideshot of the area, but we do see that there are plenty of rocks and it would be possible that there are multiple paths through the ravine that Sisko and his 40 soldiers had to defend.
In any case, this is where most people draw their "incompetence" argument. But let's look at it. First, we know that Starfleet is spread thin across the area. Sisko had brought fresh supplies, but we aren't told of what sort. They clearly didn't bring any personal forcefields or photon grenades, because they would have used them in both attacks. Yet they're forced to rely upon the Houdinis. The Dominion is also stretched thin and at this point in the war, they're on their back heel. They're actually losing. We also need to take into account not just the poor health and frayed nerves of the Federation troops, but the Jem'Hadar themselves.
The Jem'Hadar tactics that we see in AR-558 are abnormal. At no point did the Jem'Hadar shroud. Even if they were angered and confused by the bombs going off in the middle of their troops, it really doesn't make sense why such a highly disciplined group would suddenly lose control and charge into enemy fire. We saw that even Jem'Hadar who'd been withdrawing and were having trouble obeying orders due to a lack of white showed shame and regret for disobeying orders and eagerly charged into what they knew was a suicide mission planned by their treacherous Vorta leader.
However, further evidence might explain this. In a later episode, we're told about the So'na establishing a new Ketracel white facility. This would have been months after AR-558. Weyoun was insistent on protecting the facility.
Penumbra (S7E17)
Given that there is no evidence that the Dominion had been able to obtain a new supply of white between this episode and Statistical Probabilities, it's likely that the Dominion was starting to run short on its supply of white. Damar had recommended poisoning the white in early Season 6. That's over a year and a half. Yet, that doesn't entirely fit. If Damar was planning on poisoning the Jem'Hadar in early Season 6 after Sisko took out their main storage facility, it suggests that they were closer to a few months of running out, not that they had a year or two to secure new supplies. Especially as Dukat was fairly close to bringing down the minefield.
One thing we know from Rocks and Shoals is that the Vorta rationed his supply of white.
Now, Keevan is lying out of his ass. It's later revealed by his own admission, but you can see the face of just how fucked he knows he is if the Jem'Hadar realized they had two vials of white.
According to Keevan, if he had just two more vials, he would have sent the Jem'Hadar to kill Sisko and the others. He expected that to take 10 days, possibly more. He had a total of two vials of white in the container. He'd given the Jem'Hadar one, then probably their last fix when he sent them on their suicide mission. So we can expect that 3 vials spread among 10 Jem'Hadar would have lasted them 10 days and presumably have kept them from turning on him or each other.
EDIT
In other words, it's possible to stretch out the supply of white. That has consequences, however; the Jem'Hadar lose their ability to shroud, suffer from anxiety, and grow more prone to violence. Given the strategic situation, the proven facts of the war to that point, and the behavior of the Jem'Hadar in The Siege of AR-558, it's likely that the Jem'Hadar were suffering from white withdrawal. There was no attempt to shroud and after losing a third of their forces to mines, the Jem'Hadar had lost all discipline and charged their enemy.
It's certainly not the behavior of the otherwise highly disciplined Jem'Hadar.
The real thrust of "incompetence" comes in the final attack by the Jem'Hadar, who after tripping some explosives, rushed the Starfleet position, negating much of their numerical advantage before they're gunned down. To understand why and how this happened, we need to look at more than just this episode, because the context of this battle is affected by the events of previous episodes.
First, everyone is aware that the Dominion uses Ketracil White to keep the Jem'Hadar under control. They're addicted to it. The white also acts as a means of feeding the Jem'Hadar, who are stated not needing food or sleep so long as they have the white. Second, we all know that when the Dominion was suffering supply issues for its troops in the Alpha Quadrant. Weyoun makes mention of this concern when speaking to Dukat about the minefield blocking reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant.
A Time to Stand (S6E01)
Later in that same episode, Ross calls Sisko in for a dangerous mission:
Ross's plan is obviously one that goes for the throat. Without the Jem'Hadar, the Dominion War basically ends. It'll just be the Cardassians, a few hundred Vorta, and lots of heavy paperweights they call warships. The plan is ultimately successful:
The main facility is utterly destroyed, but due unforseen circumstances (getting caught), the Dominion ship they used was badly damaged. That leads into the next episode, Rocks and Shoals, where the ship crashes in a nebula and they're forced to survive. Unfortunately, a Dominion ship crashed before them. Garak and Nog, who are out on patrol, are ambushed by Jem'Hadar, who deshroud around them and takes them prisoner. Their Vorta leader however, is injured.
Rocks and Shoals (S6E02)
This then leads to the pictures of the episode that I posted in the thread, where the Jem'Hadar ambush Sisko at around 70-75 meters. The reason for the attack, despite Keevan's orders, was that one of the Jem'Hadar decided to engage:
Where the offending Jem'Hadar admits his disobedience. When ordered to shroud and return to camp, he explains that he is no longer able to shroud. This seems to be a condition that most of the Jem'Hadar are in.
This is explained to Keevan when he demands to know why his orders were disobeyed.
Regardless, Keevan has the Third make contact with Sisko and his men, offering to return Garak and Nog in return for medical treatment. However, after treating Keevan, the vorta reveals a few bits of information, his dilemma, and his plan:
He explains that without the white, the Jem'Hadar will become homicidal, killing everyone on the planet before finally turning on each other. He expects that Sisko's men can repair the broken comm system he and his men managed to salvage, as Keevan's own men are suffering from withdrawal and can't seem to repair it. That leads to the second set of pictures from my earlier post regarding this episode, where we see the Jem'Hadar gunned down. The Third (and probably the rest of his men) had realized that Keevan had betrayed them, but carried out their orders regardless. Even so, despite being at least 50-80 meters from Sisko and his men and going through withdrawal, one of the Jem'Hadar manages to kill some poor fucker named Gordon. Despite having cover. Probably luck, possibly not.
Anyway, now that we've established what happens to the main Dominion white storage facility AND what happens when the Jem'Hadar begin to suffer from withdrawal, the showrunners kept this victory in mind in a later episode called Behind the Lines, which was the 4th episode of Season 6:
Damar recommended that if more white could not be obtained, that they should poison the last batch of white to prevent the Jem'Hadar running amok. Kira and her "resistance cell" get the PADD he'd written his recommendation on to the Jem'Hadar, who get into a brawl with Damar over it.
The issue was also raised again in the 9th episode of the season, called Statistical Probabilities:
The Dominion and Starfleet had been peace negotiations. The Dominion had wanted a certain planet to fall within their border because it contained the right type of fungus for which they could produce the active ingredient for white on a massive scale. After Sisko learns that, he refuses to give Kabrel system to the Dominion. Peace negotiations break down after that.
Dominion activity would pick up again a few episodes later.
Why is this all important? Well, AR-558 takes place in Season 7, about a year later. We're given a rough idea of the strategic situation:
Starfleet has captured a large Dominion communications array in the sector. Their hope is that they'll be able to tap Dominion communications. According to Larkin, they're determined to get it back. They've been fighting off Jem'Hadar assaults for five months. We're not told if Larkin's company was the one to take the facility or if another company did and Larkin is the latest. We also don't know if that includes the engineers within the company in terms of numbers. Regardless, Sisko tells them that they're spread thin and probably can't rotate them out anytime soon.
Throughout the episode, we see that the soldiers at the facility are both physically and emotionally fatigued. When Sisko and his team arrived via transporter, one of the soldiers even took a shot at Sisko, thinking he was a Jem'Hadar:
The episode makes it clear that the soldiers are going through hell and are basically one shot away from having a nervous breakdown. Making the situation worse are the Houdinis that the Jem'Hadar left behind; mines that hide themselves in subspace and randomly go off when someone passes by:
In short, the soldiers have been there for 5 months, fighting repeated attacks by genetically engineered killing machines, and all the while they have to walk around knowing that at any moment, a Houdini might go off and kill them. It could be in your bed, on the toilet, eating, walking down a hallway, or just sitting down. That's a lot of stress for someone to take.
Not soon after, the Dominion arrives with reinforcements:
The Defiant has to leave orbit, but the Dominion manages to beam down more troops. Sisko decides to stay to help the soldiers on the surface defend the relay. Larkin points out the difficulty in knowing just how many troops have beamed down:
Soon after, the Jem'Hadar launch their first "attack". In reality, it's a bunch of holograms marching toward them. By gunning down the holograms, the soldiers have revealed their defensive positions. Later, Sisko sends Larkin with Nog and a few others to scout the enemy camp. They discover that the Jem'Hadar have "two columns", which as far as I can tell, doesn't really tell me much at all. However, this appears to be an overwhelming number and the soldiers are convinced that they can't possibly hold off that many troops. Going with the 3:1 rule (the number of troops you need to overcome a defensive position), my guess is that there would be at least 150 Jem'Hadar in those "two columns", unless someone else can point me to more accurate information. For 40ish soldiers who have been stuck on the front lines for 5 months, a full company of Jem'Hadar who are seemingly fresh to the fight cannot have been good news.
Sisko however, develops a plan to use the Houdinis (which Ezri and her engineering buddy have located and disarmed) against the Jem'Hadar.
Reese expects that the Houdinis should remove a third of their forces. That would pit 40+Sisko's people against about a hundred Jem'Hadar. After the explosions, we see the Jem'Hadar rush the Starfleet positions, which is where I expect most people get the "incompetence" part. We can see some of the action here:
Even with the Jem'Hadar making a bone-headed move of rushing the defenders, they still manage to nearly overwhelm the Federation soldiers, killing several of the guest stars for the episode. It should be noted that this scene is interesting in that we don't see nearly the numbers we should; there are at best a half dozen, maybe a dozen extras/guest stars there, plus Bashir, Ezri, and Sisko. So that still leaves about 30 troops unaccounted for. Now, it is possible that there were soldiers further down the ravine. That makes sense. After the explosion, the forward troops could have taken advantage of the fighting. Sisko would command from the rear and he and the few officers he had would act as the last line of defense.
It is possible that the rest of the troops were inside, but that doesn't make too much sense. The facility is the thing they're trying to defend and there was no indication that Sisko or anyone tried to fall back when they were being overrun. Or them calling for backup. It's clear that they're pretty much it. The only people we know of inside would be Quark and an injured Nog. We might account for a few engineers inside, but that's probably it. There is a problem with the forward deployment theory; Sisko doesn't mention them and nor does anyone else. At any point. We also don't hear any phaser fire or see any indication of it.
That leaves us with only one alternative; that the fight we see is more narrow in scope to the heroes fighting it and that there is probably 30 other guys around them also fighting off the charging Jem'Hadar advance. We've never really given a wideshot of the area, but we do see that there are plenty of rocks and it would be possible that there are multiple paths through the ravine that Sisko and his 40 soldiers had to defend.
In any case, this is where most people draw their "incompetence" argument. But let's look at it. First, we know that Starfleet is spread thin across the area. Sisko had brought fresh supplies, but we aren't told of what sort. They clearly didn't bring any personal forcefields or photon grenades, because they would have used them in both attacks. Yet they're forced to rely upon the Houdinis. The Dominion is also stretched thin and at this point in the war, they're on their back heel. They're actually losing. We also need to take into account not just the poor health and frayed nerves of the Federation troops, but the Jem'Hadar themselves.
The Jem'Hadar tactics that we see in AR-558 are abnormal. At no point did the Jem'Hadar shroud. Even if they were angered and confused by the bombs going off in the middle of their troops, it really doesn't make sense why such a highly disciplined group would suddenly lose control and charge into enemy fire. We saw that even Jem'Hadar who'd been withdrawing and were having trouble obeying orders due to a lack of white showed shame and regret for disobeying orders and eagerly charged into what they knew was a suicide mission planned by their treacherous Vorta leader.
However, further evidence might explain this. In a later episode, we're told about the So'na establishing a new Ketracel white facility. This would have been months after AR-558. Weyoun was insistent on protecting the facility.
Penumbra (S7E17)
Given that there is no evidence that the Dominion had been able to obtain a new supply of white between this episode and Statistical Probabilities, it's likely that the Dominion was starting to run short on its supply of white. Damar had recommended poisoning the white in early Season 6. That's over a year and a half. Yet, that doesn't entirely fit. If Damar was planning on poisoning the Jem'Hadar in early Season 6 after Sisko took out their main storage facility, it suggests that they were closer to a few months of running out, not that they had a year or two to secure new supplies. Especially as Dukat was fairly close to bringing down the minefield.
One thing we know from Rocks and Shoals is that the Vorta rationed his supply of white.
Now, Keevan is lying out of his ass. It's later revealed by his own admission, but you can see the face of just how fucked he knows he is if the Jem'Hadar realized they had two vials of white.
According to Keevan, if he had just two more vials, he would have sent the Jem'Hadar to kill Sisko and the others. He expected that to take 10 days, possibly more. He had a total of two vials of white in the container. He'd given the Jem'Hadar one, then probably their last fix when he sent them on their suicide mission. So we can expect that 3 vials spread among 10 Jem'Hadar would have lasted them 10 days and presumably have kept them from turning on him or each other.
EDIT
In other words, it's possible to stretch out the supply of white. That has consequences, however; the Jem'Hadar lose their ability to shroud, suffer from anxiety, and grow more prone to violence. Given the strategic situation, the proven facts of the war to that point, and the behavior of the Jem'Hadar in The Siege of AR-558, it's likely that the Jem'Hadar were suffering from white withdrawal. There was no attempt to shroud and after losing a third of their forces to mines, the Jem'Hadar had lost all discipline and charged their enemy.
It's certainly not the behavior of the otherwise highly disciplined Jem'Hadar.
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