“For the Cause”
Written by Mark Gehred-O’Connell and Ronald D. Moore
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 4, Episode 21
Production episode 40514-494
Original air date: May 6, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Yates wakes up in Sisko’s bed. Sisko tries to convince her to come back to bed, but she has a meeting with his engineer. After she leaves, he switches to her pillow because it smells like her. Yeah, they’re totally smitten.
Later, Eddington leads a classified briefing that includes Sisko, Kira, Worf, Dax, and Odo. Two weeks ago, the Cardassian’s civilian government requested industrial replicators from the Federation Council, and they’ve granted the request. However, this is being done in secret because the Maquis may try to seize the replicators—or at the very least stop the shipment. Since the Klingon invasion, the Maquis has had a pretty free rein over the Demilitarized Zone. The shipment will pass through DS9 in three days.
After the meeting breaks, Odo and Eddington stay behind with very bad news for Sisko—they suspect that Yates is a Maquis smuggler, though the evidence is circumstantial. Right now, they’re not making any accusations, they just have suspicions, and Odo wants to do surveillance on the Xhosa, but Sisko refuses unless there is solid evidence. However, he does allow as how reasons can be contrived to search vessels.
Bashir and Garak are watching Kira play springball. Also in the audience is Ziyal. Both Ziyal and Garak steal glances at each other, but Bashir cautions Garak to avoid her at all costs. She’s Dukat’s daughter, and Dukat hates him, plus Kira’s watching over her, and Garak really doesn’t want to tempt fate with her.
Yates comes over for dinner at the Sisko cabin. Jake is struggling with something in a story—he needs to know what an animal smells like—and that prompts Sisko to make a vague (and futile) attempt to query Yates about her flight plans on the Xhosa, but then he drops the subject when he realizes he’s being too unsubtle—and too suspicious.
Ziyal and Garak wind up alone on a turbolift. It’s awkward for a bit, but Garak nicely breaks the ice by asking if she’s going to hurt him. She’s amused by the notion, and they reassure each other that neither has anything to fear from the other.
An outbreak on Bajor has given Odo an excuse to conduct a six-hour health inspection of outgoing ships, including the Xhosa. However, the inspection will make her late to deliver something to the Tholians (so she says), and she’ll lose the consignment. She goes to Sisko, who lets her go on the theory that she’ll be standing over the inspectors anyhow, so they won’t be able to efficiently covertly search. Instead, he orders Worf to take the Defiant and follow Yates while cloaked (apparently Sisko isn’t even maintaining the pretense of only using the cloak in the Gamma Quadrant anymore), but only to observe and report to Sisko. They follow the Xhosa to the Badlands—a place Yates earlier insisted she tries to avoid—and find them beaming cargo to a Maquis raider.
Ziyal comes into Garak’s shop and invites him to a Cardassian sauna program on the holosuite that she got from Quark. Garak is the only other person who could handle the high temperatures. Garak accepts politely, but as soon as she leaves, he looks very apprehensive.
Sisko isn’t dealing with the report from the Badlands at all well, though at least Yates isn’t smuggling weapons—the cargo she beamed was about eighty percent organic, which means it’s likely food and/or medical supplies. He puts up a good front for Yates (and Jake), though he does agree to Odo and Eddington’s recommendation that they follow her on her next run and arrest everyone if she does make another transfer to a Maquis ship. Eddington, however, needs to stay behind to supervise the delivery of the replicators to Cardassia, as they’ll be coming through the station.
Kira goes to Garak’s shop and threatens him with serious bodily harm if he goes anywhere near Ziyal. However, the fact that Kira is threatening him makes Garak think that his fear that Ziyal will present Garak’s head on a platter to Dukat is unfounded. If that was Ziyal’s plan, Kira wouldn’t discourage him.
Not wanting to put anyone else in the position to give the order to fire on his girlfriend, Sisko agrees to take command of the Defiant. Before the Xhosa leaves, Sisko goes to the cargo bay to urge Yates to drop everything and go to Risa with him—not even packing a bag. But she can’t abandon her responsibilities, so she declines, reluctantly. Not nearly as reluctant as Sisko is when he takes the Defiant and follows the Xhosa to the Badlands to the same spot as last time. But the ship stays in a holding pattern, which doesn’t track. As Odo points out, terrorists don’t wait around—if you miss a rendezvous, you go home. Fed up with waiting, Sisko, Odo, and two security guards beam over.
Yates, realizing that she’s caught, gives everything up. She was told that the medical supplies she’s carrying are urgently needed. Her objections that she made too many runs recently fell on deaf ears. It’s obvious now that the object was to lure Sisko and the Defiant away from the station. Sisko realizes that the Maquis isn’t targeting the station, they’re targeting the Cardassia-bound replicators.
Eddington briefs his security people on how the replicators will be transferred, a method known only to him and the people in the wardroom, and no one else—not even Bajoran security. There’s also to be a full communications blackout for nine hours. After they leave, Kira enters and Eddington says he needs to take command of the station for the next few hours and then shoots her, locking the wardroom. Once the replicators are loaded on a Vulcan freighter, Eddington puts a junior-grade lieutenant in charge of the station, leaves his combadge behind, and enters the freighter.
By the time the Defiant returns, Eddington’s long gone, as are the replicators. Eddington contacts Sisko and tells him to leave the Maquis alone—their quarrel is with the Cardassians, not the Federation. Sisko promises to track Eddington down if it’s the last thing he does.
Garak joins Ziyal on the holosuite. Garak wants to know why she invited him, especially since both Dukat and Kira (two people who don’t agree on much) urged her not to trust Garak and to stay away from him, as he’d kill her without a second thought. Garak allows as how that’s actually true, but Ziyal just wants the company of a fellow Cardassian. She’s offering friendship with someone who can actually tell her stories of the home she’ll never be allowed to live in.
Odo insists that they’ll never see Yates or the Xhosa again, but Yates comes back to the station on her own (she left her crew behind on a Maquis base) to turn herself in. She did that because she loves Sisko and doesn’t want to lose their relationship, even if she does wind up in prison. Sisko has her arrested, and she says, “I’ll be back.”
Sisko’s reply: “I’ll be here.”
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko is forced into a nasty situation as he has to put his duty ahead of his girlfriend. As it is, Yates gets far more rope than she might otherwise because she’s dating the captain…
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira is appalled that the Cardassians are getting more industrial replicators than the Bajorans got, though Eddington points out that Bajor is one world, while the Klingons have devastated multiple Cardassian worlds. She also wins at springball, threatens Garak with bodily harm if she goes anywhere near Ziyal, and for the second time gets shot by a Starfleet officer who’s really working for the Maquis.
The slug in your belly: Dax tries to stay optimistic regarding Yates with the fact that she’s supplying humanitarian aid to the Maquis, but her later attempt to give Sisko a pep talk is slapped down.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf makes an absolute statement that terrorism isn’t honorable. O’Brien comments that he shouldn’t say that in front of Kira.
Preservation of matter and energy is for wimps: Odo defaults to draconian measures: surveilling the Xhosa, arresting Yates right away, wanting to leave deputies behind on the Xhosa when they leave the Badlands.
For Cardassia! Klingon devastation of Cardassian worlds is more brutal than was previously believed, which is why the Detapa Council is asking for industrial replicators.
Plain, simple: Garak reminds Quark at one point that he’s not being paranoid with regards to Ziyal. “Paranoid is what they call people who imagine threats against their life. I have threats against my life.”
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Yates and Sisko have moved on to the sleeping-together stage of their relationship. Meanwhile, Quark insists to Garak that Ziyal inviting him to the holosuite is a date, even though Garak protests.
What happens on the holosuite stays on the holosuite: Garak and Ziyal enjoy a Cardassian sauna on the holosuite, while Nog sends Jake a holosuite program that pits the 1961 Yankees against the 1978 Red Sox (Sisko insists that the Yankees will cream them, and he’s right).
Keep your ears open: “You know, in some ways you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it.”
Eddington’s Maquis manifesto.
Welcome aboard: Recurring actors Andrew J. Robinson, Penny Johnson, and Kenneth Marshall are all back as Garak, Yates, and Eddington. Tracy Middendorf takes over from Ciya Batten as Ziyal (when the character next appears in season five’s “In Purgatory’s Shadow,” she’ll be played by Melanie Smith, who will continue in the role thenceforth). Steven Vincent Leigh plays Reese and John Prosky plays Yates’s Bolian crewmember.
Trivial matters: Mark Gehred-O’Connell’s inspiration for the story was the reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, where most people were completely sure it was foreign terrorists, and were therefore gobsmacked when it turned out to be U.S. citizens who carried out that horrible tragedy.
The notion of Eddington defecting to the Maquis was first conceived when “The Adversary” was being produced, due in part to rumors that Eddington would prove to be a changeling. The producers were, at that point, determined to have Eddington not be a changeling, and instead he was a Maquis member.
Eddington’s story will continue in “For the Uniform” next season. Yates will return in “Rapture,” having served her prison sentence.
The Tholians’ obsessive punctuality mentioned by Yates was seen in their only appearance to date in “The Tholian Web.”
The 1961 Yankees were the “M&M boys” team, as that was the year that both Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were chasing Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record. Maris wound up breaking it by one; Mantle succumbed to injuries and so didn’t finish the season, coming up short of the record. The Yanks went on to win the World Series against the Reds. The 1978 Red Sox spent most of the season in first place, but that year’s Yankee team came back from 14.5 games out to tie the Sox, resulting in a one-game playoff that the Yanks won on Bucky Dent’s now-infamous home run. Apparently, the holosuite version of Sox couldn’t keep it that close against the M&M boys, as the holographic Yanks won 7-3.
Ziyal mentions that Garak had her grandfather tortured, which tracks with what Dukat mentioned regarding Garak and his father in “Civil Defense.”
This is our first time seeing anyone actually play springball, which seems to be a combination of handball and hockey…
Walk with the Prophets: “I do my job, Chief.” Once again, DS9 views the status quo as just one of those things they can set on fire any time they feel like it, and it’s magnificent. Two recurring characters turn out to have Maquis leanings, and it provides a real shot in the ass to everyone. There’s been so much changeling stuff that the Maquis plotline has fallen by the wayside, so it comes back here with a serious vengeance, nicely tying into the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, too.
Having Eddington be a bad guy is a great move on several levels. First of all, Eddington just isn’t that interesting—or at least he wasn’t until he contacted Sisko for his final screw-you. That magnificent speech he gives turns him from a bland security dude there mostly to occasionally fill in for Colm Meaney when he’s off making a film or to give Odo someone to talk to someone who promises to be a really good villain. (He’ll fulfill that promise in “For the Uniform” and “Blaze of Glory.”) He pushes all the right buttons with Sisko, with the knife-twisting Borg analogy as the perfect sign-off—not content with taking his girlfriend away (at least for a time), he also reminds Sisko of his dead wife.
That speech is a wonderfully twisted look at the Federation, and it’s the closest the Maquis ever get to being sympathetic. Not that they’re actually sympathetic, but at least you can sorta kinda see where they’re coming from in Eddington’s speech—they want to be on their own on the worlds they built.
I’m really disappointed that in the discussion amongst Worf, O’Brien, and Eddington about the Maquis (in which Eddington maintains his cover by saying he has no opinion about the Maquis one way or the other), nobody brings up the fact that the Maquis could’ve just moved. It’s a big galaxy, and yes, those worlds are their homes, but there are other homes out there. They were given a choice to stay in the Federation by going elsewhere, and they chose to leave the Federation by staying behind and becoming terrorists. The very first act the Maquis performed was the destruction of a Cardassian freighter, and that act alone meant that there was no way they could be “left alone,” as Eddington requests later. O’Brien says that they’re defending their homes, as if that justifies everything, and while the ceding of those worlds to Cardassia was ridiculous, staying behind and becoming terrorists was not the only option.
Anyhow, Yates’s culpability here is mitigated by the fact that she was providing medical supplies and food, which is the sort of thing Starfleet does, even for people they have a bigger animus against than the Maquis, so she comes across as someone doing the right thing, at least, but to do so, she has to lie to the man she loves.
And it’s lies that lie (sorry) at the heart of the episode. Yates has been lying to Sisko all along, though it’s as nothing compared to the lies Eddington has told. It’s especially impressive to see this truth come out, given that Sisko told Eddington in “The Die is Cast” that he trusted Eddington because he wore a Starfleet uniform.
Ultimately, this episode succeeds in making the Maquis a legitimate threat again by having them hit our lead character right where he lives. So much of this episode’s plot is dictated by the fact that the person they think is a Maquis smuggler is sleeping with the captain. And, of course, Sisko gives her an out at the very end with the Risa trip, one that you know Yates wants to take, and probably suspects why he’s giving it to her—but she thinks she’s taking important medical supplies, and that’s not a mission she can turn down. That compassion is part of why Sisko loves her and part of why she makes both a good smuggler for and patsy of the Maquis.
Mention also must be made of how magnificently delightful Avery Brooks and Penny Johnson are. The banter between them is beautifully scripted by Ronald D. Moore and acted superbly by Brooks and Johnson. Which, of course, serves to make the outcome all the more tragic.
Warp factor rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone that he has a bunch of stuff coming out in the next few months: his latest Star Trek book, The Klingon Art of War; two anthologies that have Cassie Zukav stories in them, Out of Tune (edited by Jonathan Maberry) and Bad-Ass Faeries: It’s Elemental (edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jeffrey Lyman, L. Jagi Lamplighter, and Lee C. Hillman); an essay for the book New Worlds, New Civilizations: Exploring Star Trek Comics; a short story in the superhero anthology With Great Power; and the “Merciless” adventure for the Firefly role-playing game Echoes of War. If you’re not following Keith on Facebook or Twitter or reading his blog, why the heck not??????
Does anyone know why the role of Ziyal was recast twice? I’ve heard that once Behr and Co. decided to make her a love interest for Garak that they felt Ciya Batten was too young for it to be credible. If that’s the case why was Middendorf replaced? Melanie Smith was my least favorite of the three actually. For that matter I never cared for the romance angle between the two of them anyway – it never seemed like they were sexual (especially since, IMO, Smith conveyed none of the sensuality that Middendorf does in her single outing). Wouldn’t a mentor/protege friendship be just as infuriating to Dukat?
If they were trying to make the Maquis a foil to make Sisko something less than the bright valourous captain Picard, umm they kind of failed. When he was like shooting missiles at Maquis colonies I then considered Sisko evil. I considered Janeway misguided and morally ambiguous when she just jumped on board with the Borg against Species 8472, but I never did consider her evil. Maybe I should have since she was part of designing and deploying a weapon of mass destruction (a genetic one at that).
I like this show, the actors do a better job than on Babylon 5 I think, you know, they chewed the scenery over there a lot, but I prefer Babylon 5 from a story perspective.
This Maquis thing, maybe they could have moved Keith, but umm…point me to more than one or two instances in human history when a people being displaced said, well, we can just move. I don’t think the Maquis probably considered themselves part of the Federation in name only before a treaty gave them to Cardassia.
I love this episode. Mostly for Eddington’s speech, which lays bare the worm that gnaws at the heart of the Federation. They just can’t grasp that anyone wouldn’t want to join their great galactic group hug. That the writers were able to view the Federation through this lens is what lifts DS9 above the cloying image that Roddenberry had imposed on TNG.
The one-two punch that Sisko suffers here is really devastating. And I’ve just realized for the first time that the Maquis’s sacrifice of Yates as a means of getting him off the station is probably the source of his extreme desire for revenge against Eddington. That always felt a little excessive to me before, but now I see a reason for it.
Unfortunately, so I’ve heard, the elimination of Cassidy Yates was the source of some friction between Avery Brooks and the producers. He had pushed hard for Sisko to stop being a grieving widower and start having a full life, because it was and still is, fairly unusual for a black male character to be in a loving, stable, and committed relationship on network television, especially in drama. Brooks wasn’t happy about Sisko losing that.
And yeah, the 61 Yankees would have creamed the 78 BoSox, especially if the designated hitter wasn’t allowed. They might have had some trouble with a team from the later 80s, when there had been a few innovations in pitching. Also, the Yanks best players were in their prime in 61, while some of the Sox players who had excellent careers were just getting started.
One thing I’d point out is that Eddington totally betrayed Yates, using her as an unknowing pawn in order to lure Sisko off the station. He obviously knew she was working with the Maquis due to his position, and turned her in to Starfleet knowing that Sisko would personally follow her and that she’d be arrested. (Not that he needed her to be arrested. If Sisko lets her go, then Eddington’s got evidence of corruption in Starfleet to use later.) Either way, Yates didn’t know that she was bait. That fact taints his attempts to portray the Maquis as noble victims.
This is moral relativity at its finest.
It’s easy to label the Maquis as terrorists, but still overlook the way the Cardassians always treated them as neighbors in the years prior. Worst neighbors ever.
Sadly, we only got a brief glimpse of this scenario on Journey’s End, where we could see the Cardassians would treat those Indians as badly as they’ve treated the Bajorans for 60 years.
He may be supporting some acts of terrorism, but I’m mostly on Eddington’s side on this one. After redefining the borders and leaving their own citizens to suffer under Cardassians (much like the Palestinians under Israeli rule), the Federation has no right to declare them criminals, let alone hunt them down.
And for what? Only to preserve diplomatic and economic relations with the Cardassians.
Eddington asked, and I ask as well: why would the Federation want the Cardassians to join their utopia, to the point of sending them replicators?
History would prove Eddington right, as the arrogant Cardassians ran right into the hands of the Dominion, forcing the entire quadrant into a full-blown war (and decimating the Maquis, in the process).
Superb episode. One of Ron Moore’s finest. And very well directed by James L Conway, who at this point was still DS9’s ace director (Allan Kroeker would replace him next season).
Castle should find a way to get Avery Brooks to guest spot as Mr. Captain Gates…
@3,
See, I have to disagree on Eddington’s speech. It’s utterly mornic as far as a motivation for either the Maquis or the Federation’s response to the Maquis. The Maquis didn’t leave the Federation because they didn’t want to be part of it any more. In fact, they didn’t really leave the Federation at all, the Federation quite literally left them. If the Federation re-negotiated the treaty with the Cardassians so that the Federation regained control of the disputed planets, I believe most Maquis would consider that a victory. The group has nothing to do with wanting to escape from Federation control.
It’s equally dumb to say that the Federation hates the Maquis because they “tried to leave paradise.” The Federation goes after the Maquis because they are preventing the Federation from having normal relations with the Cardassians and threatening to re-ignight the war that the treaty was supposed to stop. Eddington admits this, when right after promising to leave Sisko alone if they’re left alone in return, says that they’ll attack any further attempt to send humanitarian aid to the Cardassians. “We have no quarrel with you–provided you end all actions we disapprove of” is not exactly a declaration of peace.
No, the only use I see in Eddington’s little speech was to tell us about Eddington. The Maquis aren’t fighting because they feel trapped by the Federation–but I think Eddington is. I think Eddington wants to be a Kirk-like character, the hero who goes from planet to planet and bravely saves the day. He hasn’t found that and has grown discontent with the Federation. He’s looking for a cause–pretty much any cause–that will let him break free and be the hero he wants to be. Oh, and he’s a self-righteous hypocrite.
@5,
What “history” proved about the Maquis was that they pretty much all died when the Cardassians joined the Dominion, something that wouldn’t have happened if they’d moved back when the treaty was first signed. I’m not sure you can call that being proved “right”. And one more thing: would the Cardassians have been so eager to join the Dominion if the Maquis hadn’t continued to be a problem for them? If the new civilian government really had managed good relations with the Federation without ex-Starfleet terrorists attacking them at every turn? Hard to say, but it’s at least possible that Eddington and his ilk are what gave the Dominion its first foothold in the Alpha Quadrant.
Here’s the unfortunate thing: every time two nations draw a border, someone ends up on the wrong side of it. For an example, just check out the events of the past month in Eastern Europe. It really, really sucks to be one of those stuck on the wrong side (and that’s a serious understatement), but ultimately, you have to deal. You either adjust to the new government, or you move to the other side of the border. The Maquis had both those options, and instead chose to start their private war. I can sympathize, but ultimately they’re wrong to keep the war going and Sisko is right to try to stop them.
#7
Agreed. Eddington’s speech is well delivered, but it rings hollow to me. Where did he get this notion that the Federation wants the Cardassians to eventually join them? I don’t remember this ever being suggested. I always got the feeling the Feds were simply trying to get along with their neighbors without further bloodshed, just as they did with the Klingons and Romulans.
The Maquis are terrorists, and rather ignorant, stubborn ones at that.
Possibly no one brings up the Maquis moving because it was established in TNG “Journey’s End” that making them move was the unethical thing to do. The viewer is left a bit blind as to what happened between the colonists and the Cardassian government, so the Maquis seem to pop up out of the blue with little explanation for what motivated their decision. Part of the blame has to go to the Federation government for trying to stubbornly maintain a peace treaty which appears profoundly unjust and as a result is failing miserably to establish actual peace.
@1: I think I read that they kept recasting Ziyal in order to mess with the audience, basically. It may have been a joke, but one of the producers said he would’ve been happy to recast her every time she appeared, just for the hell of it.
I was never that heavily invested in the Maquis storyline, and Eddington was deluded to think he was the hero in this scenario, but Kenneth Marshall did do a really impressive job in these episodes. I like him as an actor and I wonder why he hasn’t done more. (He was even good as the lead in Krull way back when.)
My own interest in the Maquis arc was that is only true crossover between all 3 of the 24h Century -era shows.
The seeds were planted in late TNG, DS9 harvested them, and then VOY used said harvest as its kickoff.
Krad makes a good point about moving. There are better places to go. Risa for instance….
I loved this episode. The writing was excellent and it was one of Avery Brooks best moments in the show.
You know, in the real world if a government forces members of a different ethnicity to relocate, it’s considered a crime against humanity — “ethnic cleansing” to be exact — so I don’t think the Maquis are totally in the wrong here.
@12: The irony is that the Maquis/DMZ backstory was invented for Voyager, but then VGR hardly did anything with it because the show was set on the other end of the galaxy, so it ended up being more of a DS9 storyline.
Tell me about it. If VOY had had more scenes like Eddington’s “F*** You”, imagine the drama it could have attained.
Ah, well. Too late now.
Anyway, DS9 didn’t use them as much as they could have, in retrospect. Granted, part of it was due to VOY getting them.
Their biggest presence was during Season 2. From that point forward, they only had one episode a season (barring Season 5 and that cameo in “Heart of Stone”).
It’s kinda like how the Genni got phased out of Stargate Atlantis despite being a major recurring foil in Season 1.
To all those defending the Maquis: the first act they performed as the Maquis was to blow up a freighter full of innocent people and which didn’t actually have the cargo that was supposedly being used against them. So their first act was either retaliatory murder or, if they screwed up the timetable and meant to blow it up when it had the cargo, an utter failure of intelligence.
Either way? They commited multiple murders. These weren’t military, targets, this was a freighter. More to the point, they set off an explosive on a ship with a matter/antimatter drive at a space station with thousands of people on board. If something had gone wrong with the explosion, a lot more people could have died.
The Federation really can’t “leave alone” a group that did that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, the “why don’t they just move?” argument doesn’t, well, move me (har har). Even when you point out that as most of the colonists are human, and therefore can’t be said to be “originally” from the planets at issue, it doesn’t really cut it.
Imagine you’re an American citizen and the US government said to you that your home state or city was being given to, say, China. I think the “well, there are plenty of other cities/states to live in” argument wouldn’t quite hold, even though you almost certainly can’t be said to be “originally” from there. (If you can, if you’re a member of an indigenous population, a Native American/American Indian…well, now I’m really teaching Granny to suck eggs, aren’t I? The TNG episode “Journey’s End” set some of this up, remember…)
Separately, the Maquis strike me as having Rebel Without a Cause issues. Are they anti-Cardassian, or anti-Federation? Eddington’s speech is great as an indictment of the Federation, a la the Root Beer Conversation, until you remember that the Maquis (who were, after all, named for the French Resistance) are theoretically fighting the Cardassians.
At worst they can be angry at the Federation for helping the Cardassians, sure, and at best wanting the Federation to leave them alone (which, as KRAD points out, wouldn’t happen–they’re armed insurgents attacking everybody, the Federation can’t be hands-off)…but that doesn’t jive with Eddington’s “You’re assimilators” speech.
“What’re you rebelling against?”/”Whaddaya got?” indeed.
#19
Wouldn’t a better analogy be the real world handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China? Seems pretty close, though thankfully without the terrorism.
“…nobody brings up the fact that the Maquis could’ve just moved. It’s a big galaxy, and yes, those worlds are their homes, but there are other homes out there.”
You’re kidding, right? If you live in a place and it’s taken from you against your will, that’s OK and you should just go somewhere else? Uh, no.
That doesn’t justify turning to violence, but I can see why they got that way if all other options were denied to them.
It was wrong of the Federation to displace them and they shouldn’t have been surprised to meet resistance. Not all of the Federation is paradise, I guess. Not if they can just dispossess people of their homes for political reasons.
@20: That one strikes me as more complicated, in no small part because of the nature of the 99-year lease of the New Territories and the long-term nature of the planning (by 1985, more than ten years prior, both nations had established the plan and China had laid out how it would operate).
I’m not buying it. These people live in a universe of warp drive, ships with famlies, replicators, and despite what Carol Marcus said, a seemingly endless number of M-class planets to explore. For a supposed advanced age, the Maquis have a surprising lack of imagination and the ability to change with the times. So 20th century. Or rather so Klingon.
Makes me wonder if Gosheven from “The Ensigns of Command” later became a Maquis member. Idiots actively recruited.
Thenceforth, I say……Thenceforth!
So why don’t we argue that the Bajorians should have all moved? Or the Entire Cardassian people should have moved when the Klingons just attacked. Everyone live in the era of warp drives right!
The Maquis were planatery populations. I suspect the million marker at last for their entire population. Not quite a small scale relocation.
The Maquis were actively trolling for the Federation to get involved. They were unequivocally told in TNG move and keep being Fed citizens or stay and you’ll be considered Cardassian citizens when the border changes. Then in DS9 they are operating crossborder with Federation colonies to cause problems for both Federation and Cardassian authorities. They wanted the Federation involved, presumably because if all they did was rebel and strike at Cardassians then the Cardassians would wipe them out. Getting the Federation involved was their only hope for survival as a rebellion.
I still have no sympathy for murderous terrorists though, no matter how noble they say their cause was. It sucks where they lived was one of the areas partitioned and ceded, but history says that that happens. Hell, a large chunk of the south west United States really ought to be Mexico if we operate on the policy that partition and territory ceding aren’t legitimate parts of national policy.
#25
We don’t argue that because Bajor and Cardassia aren’t outlying colonies. They’re homeworlds.
Colonists move. It’s how they got there in the first place. They can move again, as seen in The Ensigns of Command. Because territorial maps get redrawn from time to time. It stinks, but it happens. Life isn’t fair, even in the 24th century.
@27: Americans are colonists too, but that wouldn’t make it effortless or desirable to evacuate New York City.
There’s no reason to expect every conflict to have a right side and a wrong side. Sometimes both sides are right, and sometimes both sides are wrong. Indeed, it’s pretty common for both sides to be wrong, because those who are wronged often commit wrongs in retribution. The issue with the DMZ colonists would’ve been resolved quite nicely if the Cardassian government had accepted them as its citizens and taken responsibility for their well-being and protection as it did for the rest of its citizens. That was their side of the bargain that Picard made in “Journey’s End.” But they didn’t live up to it; instead of protecting their new citizens, they persecuted them, and that’s why the Maquis arose in self-defense. But the Maquis went beyond self-defense and kept fighting for revenge even after Sisko discredited the Cardassian government and gave them an opportunity to push for a more favorable peace. So the ongoing Maquis conflict was the result of wrongs inflicted by both the Cardassians and the Maquis — of people on both sides acting in bad faith and consciously choosing violence over cooperation.
As far as the secession of the Maquis worlds being a “betrayal” or some such thing, keep in mind that the Federation agreed to this to end a prolonged war – O’Brien’s hatred for the “Cardies” doesn’t come from nowhere. The Maquis aren’t just fighting for their homes, they’re trying to restart that conflict – and they inexplicably seem to expect every fellow Federation citizen to be willing to lay down his life in the defense of their backwater.
Ok, looks like I’m gonna be the odd weird one out again, and say that I HATED Eddington being turned traitor. I guess I’m just weird, but I liked him as a security guard, he actually was a Starfleet security officer on DS9 that had a good head on his shoulders, could hold his own with Odo, while still showing Odo the respect he deserved, and I felt with a little time, he could have been a much better character and maybe an addition to the main roster.
Alas……..
At what stage does a colony become a “homeworld”, 3 generations? 10?
Is it only indigenas planets then? If it is, every human society not from East Africa (home of Homo Sapians) is by definition a “colonist” and can be relocated if necessary. We all live in the world of feet and cars right?
Mistakes were made on both sides of the DMZ conflict, but the Cardassians are now ostensibly under Civilian control and have just had their butts kicked by the Klingons. They are not actively attacking the Maquis. Given that the Maquis cannot conquer and hold the Cardassian Union, why take the industrial replicators? Spite?
@28 – We really don’t know what, if anything, the Cardassians did that motivated the Maquis actions. The problem is, from what we know of the Cardassian style of governence, which was authoritarian and fundamentally unjust, even being treated exactly like Cardassian citizens might have been intolerable for people used to Federation standards. Like expecting presumption of innocence before the law. The colonists may have been extremely naive when they agreed to those conditions.
At what stage does a colony become a “homeworld”, 3 generations? 10?
Is it only indigenas planets then? If it is, every human society not from East Africa (home of Homo Sapians) is by definition a “colonist” and can be relocated if necessary. We all live in the world of feet and cars right?
@31
Indeed.
In fact, we can easily call BS on the Federation’s policy regarding these colonists.
And no, Krad, the way I see it, it’s not that easy to simply move for some people.
As an example, people ought to remember what Kira and Sisko were ordered to do, back in Season 1’s Progress. Mullibok may have been stubborn, holding back a potential scientific breakthrough for Bajor, but who are we to tell an old man to abandon his home, the place he chose to live, even if he was possibly wrong?
It’s not easy for the Maquis. There are probably idealists who feel they can become Kirk-like heroes to these people. Idealists like Eddington, who probably let the ego and power get to their heads and push the terrorist cause further. But there are still normal people, trying to live their lives, who were being harassed by Cardassians.
At what point does a colonist become part of the land he chooses? Trees gain root once they’re planted. Who are we to simply rip them out whenever we face a problem?
To complement the previous comment, there’s difference between a colonist and a nomad.
It is perfectly simple, the Federation exercised the power of Eminent Domain over the area, as all governments are wont to do occasionally, for the purposes of ending a border dispute and very possibly admitting that they ought not to have colonized those planets to start with (colonists or tresspassing squatters?). A bunch of those squatters decided not to comply, and a deal was hammered out that they could stay but would have to be upright citizens of Cardassia if they did.
Now those squatters took the deal, then promptly welched on their part by engaging in armed insurrection and doing their best to draw in other powers in a wider conflict in order to try and shield themselves from the consequences of their own actions.
@35: “Now those squatters took the deal, then promptly welched on their part by engaging in armed insurrection and doing their best to draw in other powers in a wider conflict in order to try and shield themselves from the consequences of their own actions.”
As I already said, that’s not true. Cardassian Central Command “welched” first by harassing the colonists. From “The Maquis, Part One”:
So at first, the Maquis were defending the colonists against the attacks staged by Central Command. But in Part 2, Sisko and Dukat exposed what Central Command was doing, making them look bad and (as Quark conveyed to Sakonna) giving the colonists leverage they could use to put a stop to it. Yet Cal Hudson refused to pursue that peaceful solution and chose continued violence instead, and that was the point where the Maquis’s actions crossed the line from excusable self-defense to vindictive revenge and terrorism for its own sake. As I said, it’s simplistic to assume that every conflict has one side in the right and one side in the wrong. All too often, one wrong provokes another wrong, and neither side has the moral high ground.
@36: I actually Quark was being pretty naive there. (Much like with his later insistance that the Federation could make peace with the Dominion.) How did Sisko and Dukat’s discovery give the Maquis any true leverage to force a real peace? Central Command had already violated every other agreement it ever made with the Federation, so why would any new agreement it made prove any more enduring?
As such I think this is the episode where the Maquis truly cross over into terrorism for its own sake. I don’t blame them for not trusting Central Command, but at this point Central Command has been overthrown, so they are now waging war on a civilian government that probably would be willing to make a true, fair peace with them.
@37: Central Command didn’t exist in a vacuum. They would’ve been embarrassed publicly by the exposure of their participation in a criminal act, and that would’ve given other governments, not to mention the Detapa Council and the Obsidian Order, leverage that could be brought to bear on CC as diplomatic and political pressure to keep them in check. At the very least, it would’ve shown that their strategy of illegally arming colonists to harass the ex-Federation population hadn’t worked, and continuing in the same vein would’ve looked bad and further undermined their standing.
But once the Maquis chose to keep fighting instead of suing for peace, that just gave Central Command an excuse to keep attacking the colonists, on the grounds that they were acting to defend the Cardassian people. Violence just promotes more violence. The Maquis’s continued aggression made things worse for the colonists they claimed to be protecting.
@38: I think you are overestimating how much embarassment Central Command would feel over getting caught running arms to their colonists. They previously more or less got caught violating the armistice agreement in The Wounded, destroying a Federation colony in Ensign Ro, trying to conquer a Federation colony in Chain of Command, and trying to re-conquer Bajor in the Circle trilogy, and in none of those cases did getting caught dissuade Central Command from future acts of aggression. (Why would it when the Federation never imposed any sanction on them for those acts?) So what would be different this time?
All that I think would happen is the Central Command would offer up a Legate or two as sacrifical lambs, assure the Federation government that those were rogue officers who were acting without the permission of the Cardassian government, and then quietly start looking for a new way to smuggle weapons to their people in the DMZ.
@39: Even if that’s so, that doesn’t mean that continuing the violence was the right way to address that problem. There could’ve been other diplomatic or political options that were rendered unachievable because the Maquis chose to embrace vengeance over actual problem-solving.
@40 Yes, there might have been other options. Then again, there might not have been. Given the nature of the Cardassian regime, I doubt there were.
You are just assuming there were. We don’t know.
I’m not assuming anything. On the contrary, I’m saying it’s wrong to assume that force is the only way and using that assumption as an excuse to refuse to even look for alternatives. Defaulting on the side of violence is immoral, period. Force must be a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
I’m glad a few other people have brought up here how Eddington’s speech doesn’t really jive with how we saw the Maquis get their beginnings, because I thought something seemed a little off about it but wasn’t sure if my memory was wrong.
I definitely have some sympathy for the Maquis – ‘just moving’ is never a simple option and I can see how they suddenly feel abandoned by the Federation, especially given the Cardassian violence against their homes. But sympathy isn’t the same as approving of their actions.
Eddington’s speech stunned me at the time. I actually kissed the screen. Not because I entirely agreed with it, but because it was so fabulous to see a show’s premise critiqued from within.
I still think it’s one of the boldest scenes in television and also a great take-down of cultural imperialism.
Respectfully, I do not see how any of you are rationally defending the actions of the Maquis. Yes in the 21st century way of doing things being made to move would cause a bit more issues. Rationally as I see it this is due in large part to the following:
1. You cant really trust your government to be working in the best interests of everyone(or at least as many people as possible) in their decision making without it benefiting a money maker.
There are no such individuals(not really) making grand decisions like that in the Federation. The driving force behind this treaty was primarily to cease hostilities and prevent the death of thousands/millions/billions of people on both sides. The treaty also allows the Federation economy to shift back from war focus to communist expansion focus of making everyone in the Federations lives better which otherwise would have been tied up fighting the Cardassians needlessly. This means at best all those relief missions we hear about in TNG and DS9 might not have been possible. Also in the event of conquering Cardassia or Cardassia surrendering we have to deal with the type of fallout similar to what we see after the Klingons invade and thus even in victory more resources have to be dedicated AWAY from making Federation citizens lives better in the long term.
Oddly enough the Maquis complain about the frontier conditions of the planets they lived on and use it as an excuse to feal enmity towards Federation core worlders, but the Federation being at peace would have potentially allowed more resources to be allotted to making their lives better.
2.Cost involved in moving would have left some people holding a bag of rotton potatoes at the end of the day.
The Federation(Starfleet) would have helped ALL the settlers move and setup on another world(probably wherever world they choose) for FREE. In the age of replicators, prefabricated facilities, holodecks, microfusion reactors, and transporters the only real reason to not move in their situation is being hardheaded and selfish. No this is not a “crime against humanity” and in no way equivalent to an event that has occurred(to my knowledge) on Earth since they have only lived on these planets for a few decades maximum and even before they settled there they were warned this situation might occur.
3.The Federation gave them a choice to stay and if you stay and become a Cardassian citizen you are basically giving away your right to complain. I say this not because I believe anyone should be treated unjustly but because the reality of the matter is people probably knew exactly what type of government would now be presiding over them. I doubt Picard and other SF officers did not plainly lay it out to them the fact that the Cardassians have been terrible at holding up their end of any bargain made with the Federation.
So, what makes the Maquis the “bad guys” is the fact that regardless of the situation they always had an out to just move to another world in the Federation. Not choosing this path is basically choosing to entertain your own personal sentimentality to the detriment of millions if not billions of others in the Federation and beyond.
I wish the Maquis would have been better written to take advantage of the ability to me a morally ambiguous hero/villain metronome in the show, but as it stands they were acting like the spoiled children they claim the settled on the frontier worlds to get away from.
*morphs into a line of code and continues to rewatch other episodes of DS9(the best ST series thus far)*
P.S. Changelings are immensely OP but I love the idea anyway.
@46: The Federation is not “communist.” Communism, like capitalism, is an economic theory that applies in a scarcity-driven, labor-based economy, one where resources are finite and have to be acquired or created through human effort. A starfaring, replicator-based civilization like the Federation is basically a post-scarcity, post-labor economy, one where human toil is no longer required to achieve plenty and where material scarcity is an obsolete concept except for certain rare substances. Therefore its economic model would be something different from anything we’ve tried in the past, since the basic conditions are different.
Besides, we’ve seen abundant proof that capitalism is still practiced among Federation citizens; see independent businesspeople such as Harry Mudd, Cyrano Jones, Flint (a financier so wealthy he could buy his own planet), Carter Winston, Kasidy Yates, etc. and institutions such as the Bank of Bolias. A post-labor economy would probably provide universal basic income, ensuring that all its citizens had the necessities of life even in the absence of jobs; but that doesn’t preclude them from practicing capitalism as an optional activity divorced from basic subsistence. It would be very different from communism, because communism is emphatically labor-based, built on the ownership of the means of production by the people who do the work of production.
Not to mention, of course, that there’s no way in hell a show promoting a communist system would ever have been allowed on American television in the ’60s or the ’80s.
@47 True, its not technically “commuinism” just like all the forms of “communism” in practice today are not and have never been pure just communism(because of the failings of people in charge and the people who are in reality in control of their government). My point was that as far as what is as close to the Federations econimic structure as what is easily recognizable from what we know of how they do things is communism. A relatively pure application of the needs of the many philosophy with rescources being doled out as needed as possible to whomever needs them. The rest is taken care of by the replicator technology as easily convertable matter that can be used for replicators i.e. the dirt outside your house, is readily available.
It is a hybrid of capitalism and communism leaning way more towards communism thanks to replicators. So essentially TOS was in actuality a show promoting communist ideology(which got a bad name during that period and still has one). I do not see how its not communism considering there is supposedly no “money” in the federation so everything is basically barter and Federation owned and maintained(free) unless an external medium is used i.e. Latinum which the Ferengi(Banking Clan) use as does the rest of the major Alpha/Beta quadrant powers. Latinum or another medium would only really need to be used for things outside of what is required for you to live relatively comfortably. So as long as you dont want a new shuttlecraft you basically dont pay for(and I feel would have no right to “own”) non replicated lands or objects.
While there is no scarcity of most rescources space on a populated planets surface is still limited and thus there would have to be some sort of communist based system to decide who can take up land where(unless your family already owned that land prior to the formation of the UEF of UFP) or are on a planet with huge swaths of space for anyone to “claim” or register as their private domain.
I stand by the spirit of my previous assesment that the Federation is more or less communist in most cases.
I never thought Johnson and Brooks had much chemistry, and quite frankly her acting wasn’t up to par with Brooks. I do understand him wanting Sisko to “have a life,” but in my opinion there are better actresses and better characters.
@30. Completely agree. Whenever Eddington was on screen in DS9, even if he was just lurking in the background, I found myself wondering about his character. I thought he had a wonderfully ambiguous presence with his over-the-top dutiful attentiveness mixed with that aura of constant disapproval with how his superiors do their jobs. I wish he had morphed into a bigger role as a character .
Loved that moment at the beginning when Sisko exchanged his pillow with the one that had his woman’s scent. I do that… :)
I never trusted Eddington! Glad I’m actually right about my suspucions about a TV-Show character for once, lol.
A few minor thoughts (because I actually don’t have anything to add to the review):
– Those pillows look uncomfortable as hell. Triangles? Really?! And by the looks of it, it’s sloped towards the shoulders? Who thought that would be a good idea?
– Springball looks more like rugby squash to me
– Ziyal invites Garak into the sauna? I know americans are somewhat prude and keep a bathing suit on in the sauna. But the rest of the world usually goes into the saune in the nude… :O
– One thing I have to say about the review (and it has already been mentioned in the comments): No, the Maquis cannot “simply move”. That’s not how we humans work. Earth is huge, too. But do Palestinas and Israelis get along? Why doesn’t one of them simply move to a different place? I mean look at how laughably small the Gaza Strip is, and yet…
@51/waka: That analogy doesn’t really fit here, because the territory in question is both people’s ancestral homeland, which cannot be said of any alien planet where humans settle.
In fact, migration is very much how humans work. There’s a recent theory that it was our particular hominin subspecies’ unique drive to expand into new territories and environments we aren’t naturally adapted for, requiring us to innovate and adapt new survival methods, that enabled us to survive when environmental changes killed off other subspecies. So if this theory is right, it’s our need to explore and expand beyond our limits that made us human and enabled us to thrive — which is basically what Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek have been saying about human nature for half a century.
@52: But for many of the settlers it’s their homeland as well. Just imagine you are to settle somewhere else and make a new home. Then along comes some government and tells you to move elsewhere, would you? Somehow I doubt many would, no matter how many inhabital planets there are.
@53. Imagine you are a government, and you own a bunch of islands that you aren’t using for human habitation, and a bunch of people turn up from another government and settle on them and when you protest to their government to get them moved, they start shooting at you. That is pretty much the situation the Cardassians are in with the Maquis. I mean imagine if a bunch of North Koreans settled on some uninhabited US island and started saying it was claimed for NK and that they were going to live there no matter what, wouldn’t the US government want them moved on?
We don’t know for a fact the Cardassians are the ones in the wrong here in wanting the Maquis settlers gone, in fact that there was a treaty promising to give back those planets to them suggests that the Federation was the one in the wrong by allowing their citizens to settle there in the first place.
@53/waka: Yes, of course people can value a recently adopted homeland. I’m not saying they can’t. I’m just saying the Israelis and Palestinians are a poorly chosen analogy for that, because that’s not a recently adopted homeland. Something like the white settlers of the Americas or Australia would be a better analogy, although that’s complicated by the displacement of the indigenous peoples whose homeland it was first.
In all honesty both sides of the ‘Move on/Dig in’ argument make fair points, to the point where my only remark will be that it’s always easier to leave a rental than a home you built with your own two hands.
Lockdown Rewatch. This is a great Sisko episode, the Chemistry between Avery Brooks and Penny Johnson is rare in Trek and all their scenes together here are absolutely A + The Eddington story isn’t quite what it should have been for me and this mainly because of the way Eddington had been portrayed as a bit of a dick earlier in the series, I know they tried to pull that back a bit in Our Man Bashir but I have to say the very first time I saw this episode I guessed Eddington was going to be the traitor. However I agree his final speech is very good.
Not having seen this episode before but knowing future events in the series, I thought I knew how this episode was going to go. Sisko would investigate Kasidy, leading to a confrontation where everyone realizes Eddington is the traitor, and Kasidy gets mad at Sisko for doubting her. Imagine my surprise when it turns out she actually was smuggling supplies to the Maquis and ends up going to prison in the end. I wished this happened more often where knowing the outcome of later episodes led to incorrect assumptions of where a story was going.
I feel like every attempt to put the Maquis in the wrong basically fails due to the fact the Cardassian Union is based on the Nazis and the LESS evil influences for it are the British Empire at the height of its colonialism and Soviet Union. When faced against Space Nazis, it’s hard to state that the people fighting and blowing them up are in the wrong. But here’s the thing, even if you were to make that argument, it utterly falls apart and becomes LAUGHABLE on a show where the Bajoran resistance is given a free pass.
Because of course it should be. They’re fighting Space Nazis.
The thing is the Federation never cuts the colonists completely loose and treats them as Federation citizens, which they aren’t and don’t seem to consider themselves to be. Nechayez acts like they are, though. But the fact that they are fighting for their homes is an inconvenience for the Federation.
And let’s be honest, if you support the Federation in INSURRECTION it’s hard for you to support them going after the Maquis.
@59/CT Phipps: Just because your enemies are in the wrong doesn’t mean you can’t be equally in the wrong. It’s simplistic to think that every conflict has a good side and a bad side. On the contrary, it’s far too common for people who are victimized to become victimizers themselves, for victims of bigotry and persecution to practice bigotry and persecution against others, for revolutionaries who overthrow a tyrant to become just as tyrannical, or even worse. History is full of conflicts where both sides commit equal evils.
For that matter, it’s not uncommon in fiction either. Look at all the Batman villains who have sympathetic motives, who were driven mad or forced to extremes by the injustices inflicted upon them, but who are still villains because their methods are just as bad as the people they fight. What makes you a bad guy is what you do to others, not why you do it.
The difference between the Maquis and the Bajoran resistance is that the Maquis didn’t stop fighting when they had the option. In “The Maquis, Part II,” Sisko offered them a peaceful solution and they rejected it. That made them more like Ibudan in “Past Prologue” or the Circle terrorists in season 2 than like Kira or Shakaar. The difference is that they clung to terrorism an end in itself once it was no longer necessary as a means to an end. And in so doing, they probably made things worse in the long run by giving the Cardassians an excuse to go back to mistreating the colonists. There was plenty of wrong on both sides.
And no, the Cardassians are not based specifically on the Nazis. Yes, you can draw analogies between their death camps on Bajor and the Nazis’ death camps, but a lot of oppressive regimes have had death camps. Cardassia’s portrayal was based largely on Orwell’s 1984 and similar dystopian fiction, with resonances with the Stalinist USSR, North Korea, etc.
My only bone to pick with this excellent episode: WHERE THE HELL IS DAX?
After Sisko refuses her counsel in the ward room, we don’t see her for the rest of the the episode. She wasn’t on the Defiant when they went after the Xhosa, so the only way Eddington’s deception would’ve worked was if he knocked out Kira and Dax. She would be next in line to take command, not Reese.
I’ve never seen an explanation for this, nor have I seen anyone else point it out, so there’s a chance I’m being too nitpicky. What do you think?
It’s not this episode’s fault, but I’m genuinely surprised by how many fans take Eddington’s villain monologue at the end as if it’s a scathing and accurate critique of the Federation, rather than the motive rant of a terrorist with delusions of grandeur. I’m sorry, but if you think that a voluntary association of worlds built around shared ideals and values is somehow morally equivalent to forcibly injecting people with nanotechnology and deleting their individual personalities, I don’t even know how to begin explaining to you why you are wrong.