Transcription
Hello all, Rick here, looking into the various tales and origin stories of the Dominion in order to build a more comprehensive narrative around its formation.
So, the first thing that needs to be addressed is that the exact founding date of the Dominion has two references on screen, with the Dominion being referred to as both 2,000 years old and 10,000 years old. It's a discrepancy that is usually avoided when it comes to other materials outside of the shows, with sources basically settling more often on the 2000 figure. However, there might be a rationalization: that the Dominion in its current form, with Jem'Hadar, Vort, and the practices it undertakes, has only existed for around 2,000 years. While the notion of the founders' interstellar empire based on control existed as a concept for longer, this is the approach I will be taking for this video to attempt to rationalize conflicting canonical sources.
Ultimately, I don't think it changes much of the narrative, as the Changelings are biologically immortal anyway and do not age. Keep an eye on the corner for the beta sign too, as this will be displayed when I'm drawing from non-canonical sources.
The Changelings were originally a mono-form species, unable to shapeshift. But over time, perhaps through genetic modification, technology, or evolution, they gained the ability to exist as a liquid state and alter their molecular makeup on every level to become Changelings. This happened before they were warp capable. As by the time they were an interstellar power, they could already shapeshift.
Traveling throughout the galaxy, their initial goals had been as benign as many others: to explore, learn, and meet new cultures and develop their understanding of the galaxy. However, thanks to their abilities, they were all too frequently met with mistrust. The people they met were gripped with paranoia. Anything or everything could be a Changeling. They could be spies. How could you tell? What if your friends were replaced? Your leaders even? Too many cultures sought to ward off the Changelings, and many turned this defensive attitude into active hunting of them.
After generations of persecution, the Changelings' shared experiences soured their view of solid life forms. The mono-forms were paranoid, insecure, untrustworthy, and therefore inferior. Things were made worse when their home world was discovered and the founders' last refuge compromised. They fled their home world, traveling as parasites on an exodus away, but always hunted. Inhabited worlds they discovered soon feared them, and would-be refugees soon fell apart as, inevitably, their pursuers discovered them again. This took millennia to pass, and over the eras they became ever more adept at their gifts, soon learning how to link themselves together to share existence, thought, and idea. The Great Link was formed in this time of Exodus.
For the shapeshifters, though, something had to change. They needed to protect themselves from the solids. But they were not monsters. No. No. It would not do to simply wage wars against them. After all, the Changelings were not a violent people, and the Solids were too numerous. So, instead, they'd need to simply dissuade them, or perhaps guide them, to control them.
While plans were put into motion, the hunting of the Changelings did not end, and the ideas of creating an organization around the Changelings spread among them. They would need certain things to remain safe: a new home, a species to act as intermediaries for their work so they could remain safe, technology, and the soldiers to guard them. This work began around 4,000 years ago.
Most of the founders' power structure came about thanks to their meddling in evolution and usurping the natural direction of other life forms, turning them into obedient servant species and even programming into them reverence and blind obedience as a genetic impulse. Considering the disdain they came to harbor for solid life forms, it's no wonder they saw them as little more than tools.
One of the first species the founders uplifted in such a way was the Vorta. This tale is recounted in the show with Weyoun explaining how the Vorta were a timid, marsupial, tree-dwelling species that fed on nuts and berries until one day a wounded shapeshifter stumbled into their rustic settlement. They sheltered the shapeshifter from its pursuers, and in return, the founder-to-be told them that they would return one day to repay the Vorta for their kindness by putting them at the head of a vast interstellar empire. This tells us that even at this early stage, the Changelings were already considering the idea of the Dominion and believed that they had found a sympathetic species in the Vorta to help manage their organization. Which in turn tells us that from the start, the founders wanted the Dominion to basically be a shell of control around them where they could operate in a very detached fashion through intermediaries. The goal of the Dominion was always to protect the founders from the start.
Following their persecution, their original home world had been discovered and was no longer safe for them. So, the Changelings retreated to the shrouded Omarion Nebula, finding a rogue planet there to establish their Great Link. Already practiced in genetics, the shapeshifters imparted an imperative to recognize and return to the Omarion Nebula into 100 newborn droplets of the Link and sent them outwards into the galaxy to act as explorers and informers, eventually returning to the Link to share their experiences. One of these, of course, would drift into the Bajoran wormhole and get caught in the gravity well of the Denorios belt of the Beor system, eventually learning sentience and becoming Odo.
It was around the beginning of the 4th century that the Changelings began to expand and manifest their dominion. Havas Koul was a planet of burrowing insectoid creatures called the Borrowers, so-called because at the aphelion of their planet's orbit, they retreated underground to hibernate until their planet returns to its habitable zone. Around 2,000 years ago, the Dominion discovered them, and the founders had one goal in mind: They were looking for a species they could mold into an army, but more than that, a species they could exert complete control over. You see, the planet was host to a unique fungal life form, an enzyme-rich growth which served as the Borrowers' primary food source. And during one hibernation, the Dominion stripped the planet of it in its entirety. Thinking to hold them hostage, the founders had not quite understood just how dependent the Borrowers were on this fungus, and without it they became rabid, turning aggressive very quickly and devouring all in their path. Beyond reason, the insects forced the Dominion to retreat as their own civilization fell to ruin.
Taking a second look at this fungus, the Dominion was able to distill the enzyme within it that prevented the degradation of the Borrowers' minds and termed it Ketracel. Putting a pin in that discovery, the Dominion decided that the only thing that these Borrowers might be useful for now is to guide them to other worlds as a sort of force of nature, letting them raze a planet to the ground and strip it of all its life in their feeding frenzy.
Around the 1300s, these aliens made their way across space to just past the Idran system and through the Bajoran wormhole. Fortunately, they passed Bejo Vai and continued on their course through the Alpha Quadrant until they came upon a craggy, violent world, Kronos. When they invaded, they bit off a little more than they could chew with the Klingons, who named them simply the Herk outsiders. When the Herk retreated into the Gamma Quadrant again, the founders discovered that they had brought with them Klingon captives, and the discovery of the wormhole enticed the Dominion to dispatch investigation teams to examine the new aliens beyond the breach. Although it's not exactly clear if the Dominion knew of the wormhole's existence prior to Sisko and Dax discovering it, if they did, they seem to have ignored it and maintained its secrecy from other species. However, with the Klingons, they believed they had discovered another potential warrior caste for their dominion.
Now, with the Ketracel White in hand, they began to create their own Klingon offshoots, dependent on the White to survive, with the goal of making their own army. This too failed, however, as these heavily modified Klingons, inspired by the Klingon mythology of the Felclar, proved to be too willful and broke their reliance on Ketracel, turning on the Dominion. Nowhere near as many as the Herk had been, the Fek'ihri were fought off once again and deemed a second failure.
After these failed attempts, it was with the Jem'Hadar that the founders found success. The Jem'Hadar is the species that was encountered from the Bajoran wormhole chasing the Tusk. A species who follows the Great Hunt as part of their lifestyle. In order to facilitate this, a certain class of Jem'Hadar were permitted to engage in hunting other life forms on extensive trips across space in ritualistic sport, ending with the kill of their prey. Over time, however, their barbaric reputation earned them no end of scorn from other civilizations. So, they created a workaround of sorts. Gifted geneticists, the Jem'Hadar engineered samples of their own genome and grew a new prey species exclusively for the hunt. This prey species, the Tusk, bears some involvement in the creation of the Dominion as we know them. Where have we seen a scaled species of hardy aliens that can shroud themselves with a biological ability before? The Tusk were created by the Jem'Hadar through genetic augmentation to be their ultimate sport. Tired of hunting other life forms and upsetting other cultures, the Jem'Hadar created their own subjects of blood sport and bred into them instincts that conditioned them to flee, bite, and live for the hunt in their own way.
Witnessing the control over this species that the Jem'Hadar had manufactured piqued the founders' interest. With a little modification, spiking the aggression and the addition of their newfound Ketracel White control method, the conditioning of a warrior species into reliable soldiers would be complete. The blueprints for the Tusk genome were studied in detail and altered. The Jem'Hadar working in tandem with the Dominion to form their new fighting force, the Jem'Hadar. Learning from their prior mistakes and the Jem'Hadar's adroit understanding of genetic manipulation, the Jem'Hadar would be instinctually loyal to the founders, revering them as gods. The Ketracel White dependency of the Herk was added to their genome to allow the Vorta control over them, too, and the true army of the Dominion was born.
Now with a vast array of manufacturable clone soldiers genetically bound to the founders' will and slaved to the Ketracel, the Dominion was able to begin to churn out ships at a faster rate, train legions of soldiers, and prepare to expand like never before. The Dominion as we know it had formed.
Initially, those species that had joined in their dominion were sharing in the delivered dream of prosperity offered by the Vorta ambassadors, and the dominion grew out of connecting many species. However, the following years saw the founders abandon the pretense of uniting under the common good. Although the Vorta ambassadors continued to maintain this in their stead, once they had their endless military, subjugation, bullying, and coercion throughout; rebutative displays were the new mandate of the Dominion. And soon they'd made themselves the economic and military powerhouse of the Gamma Quadrant. All the while, the founders were able to take a less obvious role and fade from the galactic spotlight even more, becoming near mythological in existence to those outside of the inner Dominion's workings. The Vorta, the public face, and the Jem'Hadar the fist. Extensive genetic weapons, overwhelming firepower, indentured researchers, and a horde of seized goods maintained the Dominion's edge for the next 2,000 years.
The exact size of the Dominion is contested, as the Dominion itself would claim everything a patrol ship passes through as under their banner. While many species who are not Dominion members tentatively maintain their freedom simply by the fact that the Dominion has not bothered with them yet, the Dominion's guiding principle became that everything had its place. Every species, every individual had their place in the hierarchy of the Dominion as ordained by the founders. Some species, like the KMA, joined willingly, avoiding bloodshed and conquest, and served as a rewarded species of the Dominion, allowed to trade and establish tithes so long as they paid their dues in both tithes and respect to the Dominion. Most, however, were not so lucky.
The Dominion's core belief is still founded on that fear from the founders: the idea that what you can control cannot harm you. So, it's best to control everything and make for a safe and secure galaxy.
I'm planning on doing a follow-up video explaining the structure of the Dominion as we see it in DS9. Again, drawn from multiple sources. So, if you'd like to see that, stay tuned. But this covers the evolution and emergence of the Gamma Quadrant's largest superpower and one that even exceeds the Federation in scale.
Thanks for watching this long look. Until the next video, I've been Rick. Thanks again and goodbye. [Music] [Music]