5-23. Blaze of Glory.

Sisko and Eddington: Keep your friends close...

THE PLOT

Gen. Martok informs Sisko that he has intercepted a Maquis message, clearly directed to captured Maquis leader Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall), stating that a missile launch is imminent. Martok reveals that the Klingons provided the Maquis with cloaking technology during the conflict with Cardassia. If the missiles are cloaked, they will be impossible to detect; and if they strike Cardassia, then it will be the start of the very war that they have all been trying so hard to avoid.

There is one hope. If they can locate the launch site, then someone who knows the abort codes will be able to deactivate the missiles remotely. Sisko offers Eddington a full pardon for his cooperation. The Maquis leader is bitter about the destruction of his people by the Dominion. He blames Starfleet in general, and Sisko in particular, for allowing it to happen. He does eventually agree to help - but he warns that once this mission is over, he intends to kill Sisko!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: He may be willing to deal with Eddington, but it's clear that he has not forgiven the man his betrayal. Though Sisko talks about how Eddington broke his oath to Starfleet, and how Cal Hudson did so before him, Eddington is right when he says that isn't the captain's real problem. Hudson was a personal friend, Eddington a trusted officer. In Sisko's mind, both men did something worse than betray Starfleet - They betrayed him. Sisko sums it up himself, when he realizes exactly what this entire mission has really been about. "I don't like being lied to!" he snarls, punctuating the statement with a punch.

Eddington: When Sisko says that the Maquis should have been pushing for a negotiated peace with the Cardassians, rather than continuing to wage war, Eddington snaps back: "The Maquis won its greatest victories under my leadership... We had the Cardassians on the run!" As Sisko observes, the Cardassians ran to the Dominion, with predictable results for the Maquis. Those words appear to finally resonate when Eddington stands in the midst of corpses of Maquis who were massacred by the Jem'Hadar. Eddington spends the first part of the episode pretending to have a death wish, a ruse Sisko sees through immediately. After he sees the end result of his private war, what had been an act becomes a reality. Kenneth Marshall's performance here is easily his best of the series, and the many sharp exchanges between Eddington and Sisko form this episode's very strong center.

Nog: Gets the episode's "B" plot. His rotation as cadet now having put him with Security, Nog is finding difficulty dealing with Martok and his Klingons. He complains that they don't even acknowledge his presence, just looking over his head when he tries to talk to them about violations of station regulations. After Sisko tells him to stand up to them, to earn their respect by refusing to be intimidated, Nog spends most of the rest of his subplot spoiling for a fight - though when his chance finally comes, his voice quavers with fear even as he forces the confrontation.


THOUGHTS

Blaze of Glory brings the Eddington arc to a close, and to all appearances closes out the DS9 Maquis arc as well. Following up on Gul Dukat's vow to cleanse Cardassian space of the Maquis, this episode reveals that the Jem'Hadar have destroyed them. Which makes sense: The Jem'Hadar were established in their very first appearance as ruthless.  There's no reason they would have wasted any time in removing an enemy from space settled by treaty as Cardassian space... which is now Dominion space.

For Eddington, this means that the cause he fought for, and the people for whom he sacrificed his freedom, have been all but eradicated. And it happened while he was in prison, helpless to do anything except hear about it through news reports. Again, it makes perfect sense that this has engendered massive resentment against Sisko, who made his capture into a personal crusade. Had Sisko simply left him alone, he would have been able to at least try to save his people from the Jem'Hadar, even if all that would have resulted in was him dying alongside them.

Both men have valid points, but both exaggerate their claims. The Maquis may have become more aggressive under Eddington, but the real damage to Cardassia was wrought by the Dominion's eradication of the Obsidian Order and by the Klingon conflict. Sisko, in turn, did make his pursuit of Eddington personal - but Eddington was launching biogenic attacks against entire planets, clearly raising the stakes past what Starfleet was willing to accept. Our knowledge of the backstory lets us see that neither man is entirely wrong, but neither is entirely right.

The plot ticks along at a swift pace, buoyed by some of the most beautiful effects the series has yet offered in the Badlands scenes. The sequence in which Eddington and Sisko desperately evade two Jem'Hadar warships is particularly well-done, outstanding effects edited tautly with the live action to create a truly nail-biting moment. The planet-bound action of the last third is also effective, the stock Trek set given atmosphere by the dim lighting, by the smoke hanging in the air, and by the Maquis corpses that surround both men even as they battle through Jem'Hadar to reach their goal.

All of this makes Blaze of Glory a good episode, but there is a slightly mechanical quality to it that keeps me from rating it as a great one. Part of this is that the Maquis strand, while far better-handled by DS9 than by Voyager, never felt completely a part of the series. Once or twice a season, DS9 would remember the Maquis were there and do an episode involving them. Folding Eddington into the arc upped the stakes a bit (and did something interesting with a previously bland character)... but in the full season that separated Eddington's betrayal from this resolution, there was only one other Maquis episode and a handful of isolated mentions.

All of which leaves the sense that this episode was mainly designed to cut out an inconvenient thread so that it wouldn't distract from the building Dominion conflict. Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe are among the show's best writers, and they do a fine job of making the Maquis resolution fit with what's come before. But with only scattered build-up of that arc prior to this point, the ending just doesn't have the power that it should have had.

It's still good, though, and significant within the fabric of the series. It's just a pity that the Maquis were never truly exploited to their full potential.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Children of Time
Next Episode: Empok Nor

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5-13. For the Uniform.

Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall),
leader of the Maquis.

THE PLOT

A Maquis informant gives Sisko a long-awaited lead in his pursuit of Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall), the once-trusted security officer who betrayed Sisko eight months earlier. Eddington is now a leader in the Maquis, and he has been waiting for the inevitable rendezvous with his old captain. He activates a virus he had planted deep within the Defiant's systems, allowing him to escape after warning Sisko that it is time for him to "walk away."

Starfleet apparently believes so, as well. Captain Sanders (Eric Pierpoint) tells Sisko that Eddington's pursuit has been taken away from Sisko and assigned to him. Starfleet apparently has lost confidence in Sisko's ability to get the job done, believing that his personal feelings are clouding his judgment. When evidence surfaces of a Maquis attack located too far away from Sanders' position, however, Sisko disregards orders, taking the still-damaged Defiant out to track down the Maquis leader once and for all!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: Took Eddington's betrayal as a personal failure. Not only did he fail to notice anything was off about his officer, he actually recommended him for a promotion. Though we haven't seen him pursuing Eddington (whom I don't believe has even been mentioned since For the Cause), he has apparently been trying to track him down for eight months without success. Once he finally does have the scent, he pursues his quarry relentlessly. To defeat Eddington at the end, he orders a particularly ruthless action - an order that gives Worf and Kira a moment's pause before they follow it.

Dax: Though she supports Sisko's actions, she also tells him to remember his insistence on pursuing Eddington without authorization the next time he wants to lecture her about hot-headedness. She continues to act as a friend, listening as Sisko vents. She also picks up on the key point about Eddington's love of Les Miserables,allowing Sisko to fold that into his own tactics.

Odo: Only has a small role in this episode, but he does get a couple good moments. His best bit comes early on. He asks Sisko if he had ever reminded Starfleet that they assigned Eddington because they didn't trust him. When Sisko replies that he hasn't brought that up, Odo says: "Please do." Good to see that the constable has neither forgotten that snub nor forgiven it.

Eddington: During his time on Deep Space 9, he prepared for being a fugitive by planting viruses in the systems of both the Defiant and the station. Though he is definitely a criminal, he sees himself as the hero of the story. He compares Sisko's pursuit of him to Inspector Javert's pursuit of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. This tic, complete with his actually calling Sisko "Javert" in later conversations, ultimately makes Sisko realize that Eddington's view of himself as the "romantic hero" is a weakness he can exploit.

THOUGHTS

DS9 picks up the Maquis thread for the first time this season, in a direct sequel to last year's For the Cause. The episode not only marks the return of Eddington and the Maquis storyline, it features one more welcome return as well: writer Peter Allen Fields. Fields wrote some of the best episodes of Seasons One and Two. Duet, The Circle, Necessary Evil, and Blood Oath were all his. He also collaborated on Dax (one of the best early episodes) and Crossover.

While this script isn't up to most of the level of most of those shows, it is still a good, tight thriller. It does a good job of ratcheting up the stakes for Sisko by showing how much Eddington's betrayal was a personal insult to him."He played me... And what is my excuse? Is he a Changeling? No. Is he a being with seven lifetimes of experience? No. Is he a wormhole alien? No. He's just a man, like me - And he beat me!"

Judging the episode only as itself, with no broader context, Sisko's turmoil is a great strength. It makes the chase very personal, and adds a needed emotional level to the proceedings. In the greater context of the series, though, his rage doesn't fully convince. It's been eight months... and in all that time, Sisko hasn't mentioned Eddington nor has he seemed particularly on-edge. We're apparently meant to believe he has been following up leads to find Eddington offscreen. But with that pursuit getting not so much as a throwaway line until now, I can't quite buy into it.

None of which stops this from being good entertainment. The story is swiftly-paced, and does a fine job of making Eddington into a formidable opponent. We see him outmaneuver Sisko twice in the first twenty minutes, then see him trick both Sisko and Capt. Sanders around the midpoint of the episode. His tactics are well-played and believable. Also, since each of these encounters sees Eddington fooling Sisko yet again, it effectively builds Sisko's anger at being fooled by a man he had once trusted.

The ending is effective in wrapping up the plot of the episode without tying off the Maquis strand. As Sisko says, his actions in this episode maintain the balance of power in the disputed region without actually stabilizing the larger situation. The show clearly plans to revisit this thread. I just hope it won't take another eight months for it to do so.

Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: The Begotten
Next Episode: In Purgatory's Shadow


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4-22. For the Cause.

Sisko suspects Kasidy of being a Maquis agent.

THE PLOT

With the Cardassians focused on rebuilding after the Klingon assault, the Maquis influence has been allowed to grow. With Starfleet rendering aid to Cardassia by sending a shipment of replicators to them, Commander Eddington (Kenneth Marshall) briefs Sisko on concerns that the Maquis will attempt to intercept the shipment. Sisko orders steps taken to secure the station while the replicators stop at Deep Space 9, but Eddington and Odo have one further worry. The possibility of a Maquis smuggler on Deep Space 9.

Their suspect is Sisko's lover, Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson). While all the evidence is circumstantial, it is significant - particularly when Kasidy denies familiarity with star systems Sisko knows she has visited. As the coincidences grow, so do Sisko's suspicions. Meanwhile, Garak begins showing an interest in Ziyal (Tracy Middendorf), Gul Dukat's half-Bajoran daughter... and being Garak, it seems likely that this interest has some ulterior motive.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Sisko: His first impulse is to deny Odo and Eddington any additional investigation of Kasidy. His sense of duty is too strong, however, and he gives them discretion to inspect her ship and to follow her in the cloaked Defiant. At every turn, he provides Kasidy with opportunities to escape. When she prepares to leave for a rendezvous that will almost certainly end in her arrest, Sisko meets her on the docking ring and begs her to just drop everything and run away with him to Risa. Brooks' performance has gone from strength to strength this season, and he is once again excellent here.

Eddington: As the man in charge of Starfleet-related security on the station, this episode allows him to emerge from the background. A notable scene occurs when he is accompanying the Defiant, following Kasidy as she makes her rendezvous. O'Brien and Worf argue their views of the Maquis: O'Brien sympathizes with their defense of their homes, while Worf views them as dishonorable for betraying their Starfleet oaths and turning to terrorism. Eddington refuses to give his opinion, stating that his place is just to follow orders: "I do my job... Starfleet says to find the Maquis, I'll find the Maquis. They tell me to help them, I'll help them. My opinion is irrelevant." In a more unguarded conversation with Sisko, he reveals some issues with Starfleet's refusal to simply allow the Maquis to leave the Federation, comparing the way the Federation expands to enfold new worlds to the assimilation of races by the Borg.

Garak: When Ziyal approaches him in his shop, he reacts with suspicion, worrying that the daughter of his sworn enemy may plan to kill him. Quark has some fun at his expense, a few well-placed observations leading Garak to second- and even third-guess his own instincts. Finally, he just directly confronts her about her motives... all the while concealing a weapon in case she turns out to be something other than just a lonely and innocent girl.

Kasidy Yates: After being prominently mentioned in The Muse, it's hardly a surprise that Kasidy is strongly featured in the very next episode. The character is a delight, as always. Penny Johnson is a strong actress who plays well opposite Avery Brooks. The strength of both actress and character keeps her from ever getting overwhelmed by Brooks or Sisko. In an episode in which these two strong-willed people, each of whom cares deeply about the other but also about their commitments, their scenes cannot help but resonate with emotion and tension.


THOUGHTS

I've commented before about how the emergence of The Dominion and the Klingon/Cardassian conflict has marginalized the development of Bajor. The Maquis strand, which was established in late Season Two, has also been pushed very much to the side by these other conflicts. I don't think the Maquis has been the central focus of an episode since Season Three's Defiant, and they've been only barely mentioned in Season Four.

For the Cause brings the Maquis back into focus, and does so in a way that's very personal for our regulars, Sisko in particular. By creating a situation in which Sisko suspects Kasidy, we once again see the Maquis strand putting Sisko at odds with someone he cares about: Cal Hudson in The Maquis, Kasidy here. That personal focus is even more effective here, because Kasidy is a character we already have come to know and because Penny Johnson's performance far outstrips Bernie Casey's wooden, "collect-the-paycheck" work of the earlier two-parter.

There are many good elements here. I appreciated Sisko's desperation to allow Kasidy an out. Even at the end, when he is finally convinced that she must be guilty, he gives her a chance to escape. "Kasidy Yates is my responsibility," he tells Odo, in a tone that brooks no argument. I was also glad to see the episode remember that the situation with the Maquis is a complex one. They are responding to injustices against them by the Cardassians, ones which Starfleet willfully ignored to preserve a treaty the other side was violating. These are not cardboard villains; the argument between O'Brien and Worf, and the later conversation between Sisko and Eddington, reminds the viewer just how messy the Maquis situation is.

With an ending that demands follow-up, it seems a safe bet that there will be more made of the Maquis strand in Season Five. Personally, I look forward to seeing the fallout.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: The Muse
Next Episode: To the Death


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3-09. Defiant.

Commander William Riker (Jonathan
Frakes) - or so it appears...

THE PLOT

The station gets an unexpected visitor: Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Forced by Dr. Crusher to take some long-overdue vacation time, Riker has stopped by Deep Space 9 on his way to Risa. He quickly bonds with Kira, who responds well to his warmth and confidence. Kira gives him a tour of the station and of its new starship, the Defiant.

...Which is when everything suddenly turns upside-down. Riker turns his phaser on Kira, stunning her. He creates a fake warp core breach so that Sisko will let him get clear of the station, then takes the ship into warp. It isn't long before Sisko discovers that his visitor wasn't Will Riker at all. It was Thomas Riker, Will's clone from a transporter accident. Now a member of the Maquis, Tom is taking the cloaked and heavily-armed Defiant direct into Cardassian space - leaving Sisko no choice but to partner with Starfleet's one-time enemies to stop him!


CHARACTERS

Commander Sisko: The relationship between Sisko and Dukat is an increasingly fascinating one. They are not friends, and with the backstory of this series they never could be. But in many ways, they are reflections of each other. Both fathers, who share a moment in this episode discussing the challenges of balancing military careers with raising young children. Both frequently at odds with their own governments, Sisko frustrated at Starfleet's inaction regarding Cardassia's treaty breaches, Dukat frustrated at the secretiveness of the Obsidian Order. Sisko has a moral center that Dukat lacks... but I think it's a very small and thin shade of gray that separates them. As in The Maquis, you can see Sisko recognizing a lot of himself in his Cardassian counterpart, and not necessarily finding comfort in that.

Major Kira: Draws a distinction between her own background fighting the Cardassians and what Thomas is doing now. She fought the Cardassians because they invaded her home, while she sees no similar justification for Tom. "You don't live in the demilitarized zone," she spits at him, adding that his actions will lead to more deaths than if he had simply done nothing. She criticizes his tactics, recognizing them not as those of a terrorist but rather those of a Starfleet officer. For all of that, she sympathizes with his intentions, closing the episode with a promise to get him out of the Cardassian labor camp... though as I don't believe that Frakes guest starred again, I'm guessing that promise goes unrealized.

Thomas Riker: Seems driven by a couple of forces. As Kira recognizes, he is determined to distinguish himself from Will Riker. At one point, he dismisses a prudent course of action, stating that while it may be "what Will Riker would do," it's not what he's going to do. There is genuine moral outrage also at work, however. He is clearly appalled that Federation citizens are dying and that Starfleet is doing nothing to stop it. His theft of the Defiant has a clear goal, and the ending seems to prove him right. Jonathan Frakes is very good playing the angry, slightly embittered Thomas - quite a contrast with the off-putting stiffness of his early scenes in this episode (probably intentional, to show Thomas' discomfort passing himself off as Will).

Gul Dukat: This episode sees him once again put at odds with forces within his own government. We've already had indications that he isn't fully trusted by Cardassia. Now we see him making enemies out of the Obsidian Order as a whole. At the same time, Dukat has to be building up some resentment from the repeated shows of disrespect. Here, we see the Obsidian Order representative praising Sisko's strategic sense - in such a way as to make it clear that her real goal is to put Dukat in his place. I have the feeling that all these insults are things a man like Dukat will not forget, and certainly will not forgive.


THOUGHTS

It's been a fair while since The Maquis introduced the guerrilla conflict against the Cardassians. That strand was quickly sidelined with the introduction of the Dominion, and it is only now that it finally gets followed up (probably at least in part to refresh that strand for the debut of Voyager). As with The Maquis, the script prominently pairs Sisko and Gul Dukat. Add in that it's a script by Ronald D. Moore, and it's little surprise that the resulting episode is a good one.

It's a tight, fast-paced piece. Moore reveals Tom Riker and has him steal the Defiant by the end of the first Act, leaving the bulk of the show for the chase. Of course, there's no budget for a true action piece. Instead, we get a strong character piece that doubles as an effective strategic thriller. The structure of the episode cuts between two pairs of characters: Sisko and Dukat, Tom Riker and Kira. We see them reasoning against each other, and it's made clear that both character sets are formidable. Nobody among our four leads does anything glaringly stupid. Tom loses because the odds against him are such that he can't possibly win - and even there, Sisko's compromise with Dukat means that his act probably wasn't in vain.

It's a well-directed episode, with plenty of atmosphere gained from tight compositions and smart lighting choices. Deep Space 9 is the darkest Star Trek show, in lighting terms as well as tone. Floodlit sets are a rarity. Instead, this series plays with shadows and tinted lights. Characters converse in tight frames, usually with one character in the background of the other so that you see both faces during urgent conversations. Even in a large set, there is claustrophobia in those tight frames, and with reason - Sisko and Dukat are effectively conspiring out of earshot of Obsidian Order forces in the same room as them, while Kira is pushing Tom to look at his own demons and motives. The production choices and script feed each other, making for a polished and effective end product.


Overall Rating: 8/10

Previous Episode: Meridian

Next Episode: Fascination

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