garak: you could never be Mother. you could never be that cuntress. your contour is messy and you’re still wearing the terok boots from 10 seasons ago

gul dukat, veins on his forehead bulging and on the verge of tears: i slay! i slay!

While I'm working on a new oil painting it's time to post some old sketches. And since winter holidays are coming... So introducing Dukat enjoying traditional Earth winter stuff.

god imagine being damar and your boss whose daughter you murdered comes back to your homeworld after having been declared clinically insane and missing for months and he has an alien artifact with him that’s he’s convinced will give him the power to interfere with the gods of that alien race and it actually works and he gets possessed by a demonic being in your place of employment and your shitty little coworker is watching all this unfold and his only response is to be like ugh some of us actually believe in real gods 🙄🙄🙄 like yeah maybe id be in shambles too

Part of what makes Dukat such a compelling character is his core belief in his own superiority and that he is the main character of the universe. This is accomplished through writing but also because Marc Alaimo really, really believed in Dukat as a character. He never plays him with a hint of self doubt. If he experiences opposition to this self image Alaimo plays him as deeply embarrassed, angry or even mentally compromised - all signs of someone who's self hinges completely on this image of himself he has constructed. To the point that any real opposition, like the realisation the universe doesn't revolve around you, crushes him if he can't reconstruct it to fit his own narrative.

Alaimo wanted redemption for Dukat and a romance with Kira. I'm very glad that didn't happen. But the fact that Alaimo never accepted Dukat as fundamentally bad is part of why Dukat works. Dukat can't be redeemed. Not because he doesn't have the opportunity. But because he is fueled by greed and lust for power and that's always behind the choices he makes.

So he needs to be played without self doubt. Without a trace of any remorse. Another actor might have been tempted to play Dukat with cracks in the armor of his bravado where he shows remorse or realisation. Because we want to believe villains have complex feelings about their behavior, right? That deep inside, they doubt? But Dukat always carries this unfaltering belief in himself. He doesn't feel sorry. He doesn't regret anything. In fact, he revels in his crime. In his oppression of the Bajoran people.

It really is interesting how Alaimo having a different view of the character is such a big part of what makes him a good villain.

OP I looove what you're saying about narratives and roles here, because I think another very compelling character arc to view through this lens is that of Dukat's main foil: Benjamin Sisko! (I can already feel a giant essay forming so I'm just gonna warn for that and then put it under a cut lol)

dukats stupid ahhhh thing compilation plus his silly little friends

Ahhh majahh kirahh

Real Things They Let Dukat Do:

- call Kira up in the middle of the night to tell her he banged her mom 

- start an abstinence cult

- turn the abstinence cult into a suicide cult when it wasn’t working out

- get possessed by evil ghosts on purpose

- start having hallucinations of people he knows telling him to kill, kill, kill

- get plastic surgery to bang the pope

- go blind reading a book too hard

- get thrown out of his girlfriend’s house for going blind

- get resurrected by evil ghosts who reverse his plastic surgery and give him red eyes and telekinetic powers

- set his girlfriend on fire

Star Trek DS9: The Way of the Warrior