#marc alaimo
THE VILLAINS OF DS9: CASEY BIGGS, JEFFREY COMBS AND MARC ALAIMO
Scifiball
ENFJ – the Giver, the Mentor, the Believer
I’ve no idea if it says anything about the franchise that the biggest nemeses in two different Star Treks are ENFJs. Even TNG had Lore, the ENFJ cult leader. Seems like Star Trek may have a running theme about the dangers of following crazed, charismatic leaders with big but empty promises.
(P.S. I feel really gross using my cheesy terms like “Believer” and “The Garden Fountain” for someone like Dukat, but that’s the format.)
Dominant Function: (Fe) Extraverted Feeling, “The Garden Fountain”
Gul Dukat needs to be loved. We all do, of course. Dukat, however, lives and breathes off the adoration, honor, praise, and hero-worship of others—which he never gets.
Back when he was made Prefect of Bajor during the Occupation, Dukat believed a gentler approach was needed. He enacted policies to ease the burden on labor camp workers, but strangely, the Bajorans failed to show appreciation for his compassion. They seemed to dislike being occupied by an invading force no matter how nice he was about it. They continued to resist him, and Dukat felt compelled to strike back and punish their ingratitude.
This cycle describes much of Dukat’s life and career. He wants to lead, but when his subjects or fellow leaders don’t like him, he struggles. He either overcompensates and looks desperate, or lashes out and becomes the angry tyrant he claims not to be.
Dukat is ready to kill Ziyal, his secret half-Bajoran daughter with a Bajoran woman, to preserve his reputation in the Union. He makes a hard choice to keep her alive and accept the disgrace, and then spends the rest of her short life trying to make sure she knows him as a good man. She falls for it (largely, I believe, because she is an ENFJ as well, as least in her final incarnation), and when she’s killed, Dukat loses the last attachment he had to any kind of innocence.
Nevertheless, Dukat is a skilled orator who can see which way the political wind is blowing and talk his way into positions of influence and power. He works his way up from disgrace as the Prefect of Bajor, then again after the reveal of Ziyal, this time masterminding Cardassia’s alliance with the Dominion. He gives fantastically inspiring speeches to the Cardassian people, promising a return to greatness and a purifying of the Union from the presence of its enemies.
And when that role fails him, he appoints himself leader of a cult of gullible Bajorans in the ways of the Pah-wraiths. His final con finds him seducing the Kai herself into believing he’s a simple Bajoran farmer, leading her down his dark path with flattery and appeals to her ego. The two Fe-doms decide that Bajor is worthy of neither of them, and must be destroyed.
Dukat gets exactly nowhere trying to seduce the two Fi-dom leaders of DS9. He makes continued creepy advances on Kira, hoping to win her heart, but she resists (especially when he reveals that he had a relationship with her mother, which makes him more attracted to her and her more disgusted by him). He straight up kidnaps a wounded Captain Sisko and pretends to care for him on a deserted planet, hoping that Sisko will finally see how wonderful a person he is; but Sisko isn’t having it, ultimately deciding that there is nothing redeemable at all about the man.
Auxiliary Function: (Ni) Introverted Intuition, “The Labyrinth”
Dukat survives despite repeated failure thanks to his ability to see a way forward in any situation. No matter how far he falls, Dukat has a vision to climb back to power—crusading against rogue Klingons in order to avenge the honor of Cardassia, or allying the Union with the Dominion, which temporarily makes him the leader of one of the greatest powers in the Quadrant. He believes in the superiority of the Cardassian people, and their sovereign right to rule the galaxy, which justifies any decision he makes that causes harm or distress to inferior races like the Bajorans.
He’s completely deluded about his own importance, idealizing all his actions into a mythology of a great man unappreciated in his time. Any criticism that cuts at that vision makes him defensive and angry. While his foresight can sometimes make him a canny political strategist, his overconfidence can also blind him to his enemy’s moves—for instance, when he’s stranded on DS9 by a security program left there by his superiors, who distrusted his loyalty.
Dukat’s final ploy involves following the path of the Pah-wraiths, the devils of Bajoran religion, in an ultimate grab for cosmic power.
Tertiary Function: (Se) Extraverted Intuition, “The Kitchens”
Dukat’s Se sometimes leads to him running through aggressive loop behavior, enacting more extreme measures and harsh punishments to gain control of his image. He can make ruthless decisions in the moment, and fight his way out of a corner. Despite being a devoted husband and father, he enjoys the company of Bajoran comfort women, which leads to his affair with Kira’s mother and his illegitimate daughter. He’s wily and quick, and survives no less than five assassination attempts during his tenure as Prefect of Bajor.
Inferior Function: (Ti) Introverted Thinking, “The Laboratory”
Like all Cardassians, Dukat was raised with strict mental discipline, and can even resist the intrusion of a Vulcan mind meld. That said, he lacks the ability to examine his obsessions critically, and melts down rather quickly when robbed of his goals. After Ziyal is killed, he loses his mind and can no longer function as anything but a purely emotional, rage-driven creature.
His biggest personal breakthrough is to realize at last that the Bajoran people will never love him. He decides they are weak, inferior creatures who don’t deserve his love. It’s their fault—and Sisko’s, and Kira’s, and everyone else’s—for not understanding him.
Dukat enacts a plan to wipe out Bajor, eventually ending up defeated by Sisko and knocked into some sort of cosmic hellscape, where he no doubt spends eternity blaming everyone in the galaxy for his failures.
