It's time for Star Trek to revisit the Cardassians, the xenophobic species at the heart of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's central conflict. Introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Wounded," the Cardassians were presented as a powerful adversary of the Federation, having engaged in an intense border war with Starfleet over several years. Not unlike the Romulans, TNG established the Cardassians as a paranoid, arrogant, highly secretive people.
The lore and society of the Cardassians would be developed exponentially on DS9. The titular space station was formerly known as Terok Nor, a Cardassian outpost in orbit of the planet Bajor, which the Cardassians had forcibly occupied for years. The Cardassians committed unspeakable atrocities against the Bajorans, a planet-wide trauma that would haunt the entire series. The Cardassians would align against the Federation in DS9's Dominion War, but they were eventually betrayed by their Dominion allies, and their home planet, Cardassia Prime, was decimated. The Cardassians were at a crucial turning point in their history at the end of DS9, and it's time to explore what happened next.
