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Space Station Deep Space Nine - formerly known as Terok Nor. Who knows what the Cardassians are like now! But, roughly 800 years is a pretty long time. With that in mind, it seems unlikely that the Federation would have forgotten about the Cardassian government's actions all that quickly. The series made this pretty clear as an analogy about Germans who resisted Nazi Germany from within. In several pivotal episodes of DS9 (notably "Duet") we were introduced to the notion that the occupation of Bajor was not something a huge portion of the Cardassian people supported.
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Because it's Lower Decks, this detail is mostly played for laughs, because we're later told the "Cardassians are freaking everyone out." But, it's still canon and does demonstrate something Deep Space Nine did over and over again – point out that huge aspects of Cardassian culture were not cool with the fascist regime that defined much of Cardassian history as we know it. In " Temporal Edict," the USS Cerritos is on-route to Cardassia Prime to broker a peace treaty between different alien races. CBSĪlthough Lower Decks takes place just five years after the Dominion War, in 2380, there are already signs that the Cardassian Union is on decent terms with the Federation. The politics of Lower Decks might give a clue to the 32nd Century Cardassians. It seems that about 814 years after the end of the Dominion War in 2375, the Cardassian Union had come far enough that they were actually a part of the Federation. During the Dominion War, the Cardassians were aligned with the Dominion for the vast majority of the war, though they did turn and help the Federation in the final episodes of DS9. In fact, in broader Trek canon tells us that in the 2340s and the 2350s, the Federation and the Cardassian Union were engaged in outright war. In the 2370s of the 24th Century, during the timeframe of Deep Space Nine, the Cardassians were very much an enemy of the Federation.
Which, as he says in the video, was "a Federation member ship at that point." What Moreria points out, is that one of the black boxes, from the starship Gav'Nor, was in fact, a Cardassian ship.
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In her effort to discover the cause of the Burn, Burnham was determined to get the info from various Federation ships before their warp cores mysteriously exploded. The Easter egg everyone missed - In an official behind-the-scenes video for Discovery Season 3, prop master Mario Moreria specifically revealed all three of the starship "black boxes," recovered by Michael Burnham throughout the season. Mario Moreria, the prop master for Star Trek: Discovery, shows-off the Cardassian "black box." CBS
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