jtem asked:

At the risk of offending, Garat was the best character on DS9 (if I have a son I'll be tempted to name him "Elim" but Dukat could have been shot in the first season and it would have been a better show. I'm not saying that he was played badly -- the problem is the character and not the actor. You can argue that they couldn't kill him as he was the equal opposite of the emissary and was thus fated, but they could have changed the scripts!

Hmm. I think I’m gonna have to disagree with you there—I’m not at all offended, don’t worry, but I do disagree.

I think Dukat was absolutely hypnotic as a villain. I contrast him with, like, Cullah and Seska on Voyager (sorry, Voyager fans!)—I found them both incredibly dull to watch, even though their machinations were just as complicated as Dukat’s. Hell, they were probably both a lot smarter than Dukat ever was. And yet… dull, dull, dull.

Ditto Michael Eddington, who pitted factions against each other and got under Sisko’s skin in a way Dukat could only dream of. I mean, God, the dude was Canadian ffs, I should have loved him, and yet aaaargh dull razor blade every second he was on screen. (As a baddie.)

But Dukat, oh, Skrain Dukat… He’s a snake. He’s slime. He’s incredibly self-confident even at his lowest ebb, and when he’s riding high he’s one hundred percent convinced that the universe is simply delivering what he’s owed. He doesn’t worry about what’s best for Cardassia the way Garak does, because he is completely incapable of envisioning that Cardassia could ever do better than his good government. He sincerely believes that he is the best thing that ever happened to the Bajorans, and he just doesn’t get why they are so ungrateful about it. And he slithers across the screen, oh, he’s sinuous and lithe and I could just watch him read the phone book, like, thank you Marc Alaimo because Dukat.

(Did that make any sense? I don’t know. Tell me what you don’t like about him!)

just rrrrgh that guy he is maddening~~