“The problem I find with a lot of writers, including myself, is that once you get involved with a character you start to get to know him and you humanise him,” Behr told Star Trek The Magazine, 2002.
“Michael Piller did the rewrite of ‘Defiant’ where he had Dukat talk about his children; My reaction was, ‘Uh oh, we’ve crossed the line.’ I realised that he was going to lose all credibility as a villain; we were going to shower him with our usual writerish empathy. [...] I really responded against that. Here was the guy who had been in charge of Bajor, and right away we were looking for excuses for him.”
Behr himself had little sympathy for the character. “I had certainly done my bit in making Dukat a kind of swashbuckling villain, but I always thought the Cardassians were horrific; I think anyone who doesn’t is obviously confused. They did a horrible thing, and I have little sympathy for that,” he said.
He was also pleased with the way DS9 resolved the character. “I think he got what he deserved, let me put it like that,” Behr explained. “I can’t say I feel sorry for him, I really don’t. He and Wynn were two characters I just could not sympathise with. Though we tried in all fairness to give them their points of view and give them their attitudes, they were very deluded, and they did horrible things.”
