Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Cardassians
1. They Were The Architects Of Their Own Demise
The fact is, the Cardassians brought it upon themselves.
Was J.G. Hertzler being a little harsh in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine Companion, or was he right on the money?
By the time Deep Space Nine was coming to a close, the writers had made their Cardassian viewpoint characters so rich and complicated that none were truly evil anymore - though Dukat came fairly close. Damar, and Garak, were both far deeper than any one trait, so how would the near-total destruction of Cardassia Prime look to the audience?
On the streets of the Capital, Sisko, Admiral Ross, and Martok stand with a bottle of bloodwine. For the Klingon, it's simple - the Cardassians had brutalised the quadrant, and Bajor in particular, so the sight of so many slain soldiers was 'poetic justice.'
Sisko and Ross, representing the human viewpoint, reject the notion of drinking a toast to their bodies, finding the whole thing to be bad taste. None of this was accidental. The writers believed that having a species so developed, so demonised, and so deadly almost utterly destroyed merited comment.
Whatever side of the argument one comes down on, it's fair to say that the Cardassians, reptilian duplicitous fiends that they may have been, are nowhere near the one-dimensional villains of their first appearances. Thanks to a couple of cameos in Star Trek: Discovery, we know that they continue to survive in the 32nd Century - might we now expect some Cardy Cadets in Starfleet Academy?