There was a novel where The Enterprise was sent to stop a group of Vorta scientists who were trying to create an artificial wormhole in the badlands.         And something (I forget from where) about how the enterprise was doping some slightly shady stuff, arming neutral planets they agreed not to mess with as part of…

I do love how SPOILERS  DS9 manages to make fun of Insurrection subtly.   So yeah, remember how we pissed off the Sona?  Well, they allied with the Dominion and it turns out they have the right plant to make Ketracel White.

Agree with the point generally, but I think there was a cease-fire in place at this point.

But didn't First Contact take place much earlier?  Sisko makes a reference to "the recent Borg attack" prior to the outbreak of the Dominion war.

Or making weird contacts, and doing spy stuff, since he must still do quite a bit of this, and this would be the time to be doing it, with the Dominion cease-fire and presumably a realignment of politics and strategy, preparing for a longer war with more limited resources.

I could buy the Dominion war lasting longer then SPOILERS sort of   two years.  It seems like an awful lot happens.

It's probably like getting the best Pitchfork review.  Or being "featured" on aol, which for some reason still exists in the 24th century.

Janeway/Seven?   In that really unsettling way?

That one always had that creepy undertone though with the whole Jack Crusher thing…  it kind of makes sense that both characters would say this can never, ever happen.

I thought Worf/troi kind of worked, and SPOILERS  (You should use them too)  Odo/Kira worked toward the end.

Presumably they did some conquest between now and TOS. They were a fading power in "The undiscovered Country" and they seem to be right up there now with the Romulans and Cardassians, just behind the Federation.  If you like, there was a whole plotline to the old Star trek computer game which basically explained the…

Picard is in the most utopian situation.  The federation is an established power, there's no dominion threat, and they're not years away from home.

I guess the shields must absorb energy and redistribute it.  In order for the shields to work, there has to be an enormous power surge to absorb the blast, and too many circuit breakers would cause the shields to fail.

I figured it was a "war" more in the sense of ongoing border clashes.  The main part of the war most likely ended with the Federation occupation of Soukara.  Like,  The Cardassians keep harrassing planets on the border, the federation finally takes it seriously and invades cardassian space, occupies a planet, there's…

But they do care about Bajor.  And they are only omnipotent in the wormhole.  The wormhole has always been the center of the series, including both the Dominion and prophet plotlines.

I also found it interesting that Dukat recognized Sisko's plan whereas Weyoun didn't.  This may be SPOILERS  a subtle nod to the fact that Dukat could hold hiw own with the Dominion, whereas Damar clearly couldn't.

Ziyal was always moreso a "part" of dukat then her own character, i.e., the only half-decent part of him.

I strongly disagree.  I think it begins the point at which the Prohphets stories (except for the one where sisko finds valhalla or whatever) start to have depth.

SPOILERS  And her very last minute redemption.  Although if she had been chosen as the antichrist, things might have gone different.

I disagree.  I am a fan of the increasingly unhinged Dukat.