I already reviewed the other expansions released between 2019 and 2023 (the Andorians, Vulcans, and Breen), but I wanted to save the Dominion for a separate post because the Dominion come with a whole host of additional features beyond just the new faction. Technically, the expansion is called "The Dominion War". In addition to adding the Dominion faction, this expansion adds rules for new Gamma Quadrant system discs, a wormhole system that connects the Gamma Quadrant to the rest of the map, and a team-based variant game mode with different setup and several new rules.

The Dominion faction can be played with or without the Gamma Quadrant rules in play. But for the most part, I'm going to assume that if you're playing with the Dominion, you're probably playing with the wormhole and Gamma Quadrant as well. Maybe that's a safe assumption; maybe it's not. It's how we've always played the Dominion.

The Dominion War expansion replaces the Bajor system disc that was included with the Cardassian expansion. The new Bajor is a larger piece that combines the Bajoran system, wormhole, and Idran system into a single cardboard "disc" which is placed at the center of the board during setup. This system is fixed and cannot move, and every player knows exactly where it is located. Further, Bajor is a level 3 wap-capable civilization with its own starbase, which makes Bajor very difficult to conquer or hegemonize until the late game.

The combined Bajor / wormhole / Idran system is always located in the center of the board.

Combining Bajor, the Wormhole, and Idran into a single system severely limits the possible configurations of the board when using the Gamma Quadrant. Thus, Bajor has to be at one edge of the Alpha/Beta quadrant portion of the galaxy. Bajor cannot be centralized (like say, being in between the Federation, Cardassian, and Ferengi territories).

I think I would have preferred if the Wormhole tokens were separate pieces that could be attached to any system similar to Starbases, or if they are special effects written on otherwise normal system discs, and that they simply treat the two systems as if they are adjacent. If I recall correctly, this is basically how the Borg Transwarp Conduits work. This would allow the Gamma Quadrant systems to be more of a separate play-space altogether, and the Alpha/Beta quadrant could still organically grow around wherever the wormhole happens to be. This not only more closely resembles the geography of the canon Star Trek galaxy, but it allows for a much wider variety of board configurations and greater replayability.

The Dominion coming through the wormhole

The Dominion is similar to the Vulcans and the Breen, in that all 3 feel kind of like they are simultaneously the hardest factions to play, and also the easiest. Much like with the Breen, the Dominion (if using the wormhole) has tremendous potential to be a turtle faction. The wormhole serves as a bottleneck, and it is very command-expensive to traverse that bottleneck. Ships and fleets must stop at Bajor or Idran, and then spend an additional command to cross from Bajor to Idran (or vice versa). Idran is also a level 5 hazard, which means any ships crossing the wormhole must also survive a die roll. This makes sneak attacks against the Dominion very difficult to pull off, since it may take an entire turn for a player to move fleets through the wormhole, only to not have enough commands left to actually attack any of the Dominion's holdings. Further, if any player takes control of Bajor, then that player serves as the gatekeeper to the Gamma Quadrant, and can potentially block other players from entering the wormhole to threaten the Dominion.

Crossing the wormhole can be very costly.

If the Dominion can build 3 or more culture nodes in the Gamma systems and fortify the exit of the wormhole, they can easily go into turtle mode and secure a relatively un-contested victory. And if the Alpha Quadrant powers fight amongst themselves over control of Bajor, with the Changeling Infiltrators interfering with everyone's movements and making their play less efficient, it's easy for the Dominion to sit back, cleanup whatever is left of the Alpha fleets, and coast to victory This might be why the Dominion does not have any abilities that grant opportunities for free culture (like every other faction has).

In the age of streaming and binge-watching here in the year 2023, long-form serialized television is now ubiquitous. Every network and streaming service has wanted its own blockbuster TV shows. Whether it's AMC's The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, HBO's Game of Thrones, Sci-Fi's Battlestar Galactica, Netflix's House of Cards and Stranger Things, History's Vikings, and so forth, it seems that every big new show outside of sit-coms has a heavily-serialized format. Procedural dramas are going the way of the dinosaur.

Serialized, long-form television may be commonplace now, but back in the 1990's, it was virtually unheard of outside of daytime soap operas (such as Dallas and Dynasty) and the occasional network mini-series. At least, this was the case in the United States. British television has a much longer track record of serialized story-telling. A big part of why serialized television was uncommon was that the producer(s) of network syndicacted shows didn't have as much control over when its affiliates decided to air the shows, or how heavily they would market and advertise it. Furthermore, the networks or affiliates could change the time slot of the show pretty much at a whim. Viewership, therefore, would be much more fickle and fractured. Audiences would pop in and drop out. Expecting the audience to have seen every previous episode in preparation for this week's episode was a dangerous and risky expectation for a production studio. It's easy to lose viewers if none of them know what's going on.

- Game Of Thrones, copyright HBO

- Vikings, copyright History Channel

Highly serialized, long-form drama are the norm for modern networks and subscription television services.

As I mentioned in the previous essay, this was the case with me. I was in elementary school and middle school during DS9's run, and I missed a lot of episodes in the first couple seasons, despite wanting to watch the show. Missing so many episodes meant that I had very little idea what was going on when I would watch, and so I mostly lost interest in the show. If my dad was watching it, and I was there, I'd watch it, but I wasn't planning my day around it.

Looking back now, that sort of serialized story-telling is now ubiquitous and expected, and so it's easier to recognize that Deep Space Nine was truly innovative and ahead of its time in this regard.

Long-form story-telling

Serialized story-telling wasn't alien to Star Trek. Deep Space Nine premiered in 1993, the same year as the sixth season of Next Generation. By this time, The Next Generation had several story threads that had recurred over the course of a season, or over multiple seasons -- as well as several attempted overarching plot threads that were dropped.

As early as the first season of Next Generation, Q had become a recurring antagonist, and his "judgement" over the human race was established as a recurring plot thread. Heck Q's judgement of humanity was originally depicted as the framing mechanism for the entire show! It was scaled back in the following seasons due to the general poor reception of the first season, and the fact that John de Lancie just works better in a more whimsical and comic role.

- TNG "Encounter At Farpoint", season 1, episode 1

- TNG "Redemption, Part I", season 4, episode 26

TNG had several recurring plot threads.

The final two episodes of Next Generation's first season, "Conspiracy" and "The Neutral Zone", seem to have been part of an abandoned attempt at more long-form story-telling. Both seem to be trying to establish some new threat to the Federation (and possibly a shared threat between the Federation and other rival powers such as the Romulans). I think the original idea was for this to become an overarching storyline for the entire series. But the thread from "Conspiracy" was completely dropped, and the destroyed colonies referenced in "The Neutral Zone" were re-written to be retroactive foreshadowing of the Borg's appearance in season 2.

I'll be honest. I almost didn't even bother to watch the third season of Star Trek: Picard. The first 2 seasons were so bad that the thought of watching another season almost made me physically ill. It was bad enough to have beloved characters like Picard, Seven of Nine, Hugh, and Q treated the way that they were, but now season 3 threatened to treat the entire cast of Next Generation with the same level of disrespect. It was not something that I wanted to willingly subject myself to.

Even after I saw some positive reactions to the first couple episodes, I still didn't bother watching. After all, the first episode or 2 of both of the previous seasons received generally positive reviews before nose-diving off the deep end into a pool of shit. But then the season reached the halfway mark, and I was still seeing almost entirely positive buzz surrounding it -- and not just from a few shill social media influencers, but from pretty much everybody. At that point, my partner started expressing interest in watching it, so I finally caved and started watching, with a bottle of Excedrin next to me, just in case.

I kept my guard up throughout the first few episode. I fully expected that it would start off relatively strong before inevitably tripping over its own 2 feet. But that kind of ... never really happens this time around. Yes, there is a big "mystery box" tease throughout the show that had the hallmarks of J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman plastered all over it, and that had me very worried for where things would end up. And yes, that mystery box does turn out to be an 11th-hour bait-and-switch.

© CBS, Paramount

The "Mystery Box" of Jack Crusher had Alex Kurtzman's fingerprints all over it.

But even though the bait-and-switch plot-twist ends up being about as silly as anything that was in the previous 2 seasons, this one actually kind of works. It's something that is actually quite clearly telegraphed throughout the entire show, starting from the opening scenes. But it also has some clever mis-direction and red-herrings to keep the twist from ever feeling truly certain. And instead of being something pulled out of the writers' asses (like robot tentacle-monsters from another dimension), this twist is something that is both firmly grounded in Star Trek history and lore, and which logically follows from previous series.

It's almost like the people who wrote this season of Picard actually, like, I don't know, watched some episodes of Star Trek before coming up with this plot.

It ends up making a world of difference. I'm still not "in love" with Star Trek: Picard season 3. I don't think it is particularly great "Star Trek". It still falls firmly into the category of "Dark Trek", and is still about vengeful bad guys with super-weapons. But it is at least competently-plotted and scripted this time around. It is tightly themed, is loaded with set-ups and pay-offs, and shows our characters growing an changing in ways that are consistent with their original characterizations. Season 3 of Picard is basically an extended Next Generation movie, and it's definitely better than Nemesis, and probably at least as good as any of the other Next Generation movies (keeping in mind that I'm not a big fan of First Contact).