Blaze of Glory

DVD, DS9 S5 (Blaze of Glory)

With so much happening and so much still to happen, they made a wise decision to complete a storyline at this time in the series and season. This is the third act in the trilogy of Michael Eddington's betrayal (the third act in season terms, too, as he first appeared in Season 3, was in 4 and dies in 5, a nice middle series arc), concluding both his personal story and the greater issue of the Maquis, both handled in a dramatic, but satisfying way, that gives the character the bold ending he'd always looked for, if not the same for the organisation he led. The Maquis weren't well served on any of the three series' they appeared on, if you count those late Season 7 episodes of 'TNG' which laid the groundwork for the rebel group. On 'Voyager,' the series they were created for, they quickly faded into the background, only occasionally allowed out for a story when it was felt necessary. 'DS9' undoubtedly served the Maquis better, from its inception in Season 2 ('The Maquis'), the background threat of their terrorist activities running through the third, fourth and fifth seasons, adding to the paranoia level generated by the Dominion, the Klingons going crazy, and the political machinations around Cardassia. Compared to these big boys they were a minor spoke in the wheel, but they weren't forgotten, even if they remained small fry.

The Maquis became Eddington, the two story elements intertwined as one, once he shocked the characters and audience by turning against Starfleet. How long was he a member of the Maquis, and when did he become their main leader? Clearly, being a Lieutenant Commander when he came to the station with the Defiant at the beginning of Season 3, he must have been in Starfleet for a number of years, and the Maquis only formed during Season 2. Whether his sympathies with the Maquis came about during his tenure at DS9, or if that posting was something he'd volunteered for once becoming a sympathiser, is not possible to know, but I like to think that his longterm plan, right from the moment he stepped aboard the station, was to be the inside man for the Maquis. They never made it clear why he chose to work for this organisation, except that he believed in the cause to his death, but we never learn about his family or him having friends in the Maquis that influenced his decision. By all evidence it seems he just made a choice based on what he felt was right, and on that basis I think he'd have made an excellent Starfleet Captain, had this situation never occurred.

He had the leadership qualities, he was ambitious, and he was diligent in his duty. Looking back on this recent re-watch of the series, I'm surprised how few episodes he was actually in, and in how few of those he played a significant role. In 'For The Uniform' Dax and Sisko work out his psychology, the reasons he's motivated, and they realise that he has something of a hero complex - he wants to lead people in daring acts of courage and heroism for a righteous cause, and maybe that took over his being too much. He seemed much more level-headed and professional as a Starfleet officer, and once he's stripped his cover away, he becomes much more of a buccaneer. That is, until Sisko plays dirty and forces him to be true to his convictions and give himself up. But that wasn't the end we needed for the character, he deserved more, Kenneth Marshall deserved more, and so we got this third part of the story to round things off, to deal with the issues that remained unspoken between him and Sisko, the verbal sparring partners got their time to talk.

It's a different dynamic here than it ever was before. While undercover as a Starfleet officer, he and Sisko didn't always see eye to eye, mainly because Eddington was a stickler for the rules and regulations that govern Starfleet, whereas Sisko saw the need to bend or break them in the field. Then when Eddington broke away, Sisko took the betrayal hard and personally. That was cleared up by beating the man at his own game and finally capturing him as he'd vowed to do, so there isn't any anger or fuel of animosity left from Sisko's perspective, and Eddington never hated his commander, he just wanted another rational man to see things his way, to understand that what the Federation did to the Maquis was wrong. I don't think Sisko would wholeheartedly dispute that - bad things had happened in the Demilitarised Zone. The difference between them was that Sisko, this time, was all about keeping the rules, and Eddington wanted to break them, as being null and void from an organisation that had abandoned its people. The great tragedy is, that if only the Maquis had read the situation with Cardassia and the Dominion, they might have seen sense to seek some kind of protection from Starfleet because the treaty of the DMZ was under threat, since Cardassia was building itself up. But Starfleet was never going to sympathise with terrorists.

Eddington cries out that the Maquis were about to declare themselves as an independent state which would have put a new spin on their relations with their neighbours, but it was all pie in the sky, a dream for him and his followers, that they'd be able to go about their business as legitimate citizens of a new state, even if the Jem'Hadar hadn't ruthlessly hunted down the last of the Maquis and wiped them out. It's the first we've heard of it - Cardassia had issued a proclamation previously that all Klingons and Maquis in their space would be wiped out, and with the Dominion's muscle to back them up, they carried out their threat. The Maquis were swept away like nothing, a sad end to a valiant, if misguided people. I can never really decide whether the Maquis were right or wrong to fight authority. If they'd allowed the Federation to find them new worlds and built up their lives from scratch (as much a challenge to rise to as the fight against domination), they could have survived and reached that goal of independence. Maybe they could have one day built up to the level where they went back and reclaimed those worlds from the Cardassians again. There's always the thought that even if they had cooperated with the Federation, they might have been casualties in the coming Dominion War, but they would at least have had the protection of Starfleet and its allies instead of being the first step, the cleaning house period for the Dominion's attempt to take over the Alpha Quadrant.

Right or wrong, the Maquis were an interesting diversion and a different path to go down for Trek, and though they weren't used enough, and never really got beyond a minor annoyance to the area, and the cause of difficulties between the Federation and the Cardassians, I liked the added complexity they brought to the Trek universe. The way they were mercilessly cut down added to their qualities and made them tragic figures, embodied most strongly in Michael Eddington. I don't see him as their main leader, at first, he probably rose to prominence in Season 4 through carrying off such an audacious plan as stealing industrial Replicators and making Sisko his personal enemy. And as we hear, Cal Hudson, one of the most important leaders, and great friend and betrayer of Sisko, had died. This was the beginning of Sisko's personal feud with the Maquis, I believe, and the reason he took it so hard when Eddington proved traitor. But we mustn't forget Kasidy Yates' small part, another deeply personal attack for Sisko, all adding to the anger he felt towards the rebels. Even then, he wouldn't have wanted the Maquis to have been annihilated, just to be able to meet justice.

Once the genocide of the Maquis had begun, Eddington, although in prison, would have taken on even greater importance. In his own way, he was safer than any of them, tucked up in a Federation prison cell, where, as we know, and as he laments here, it's a constant round of psychological evaluation, counselling and rehabilitation (as seen with Deanna Troi and Tom Paris, to name but two examples from different sides of the equation). It's interesting to hear about attitudes to criminality from the 24th Century human's perspective, because we'd already been told that there's no crime on Earth, and humans tend not to be involved in shady business in this 'enlightened' future. But we also see that it's not the case, and while Eddington and his merry men aren't mass murderers, so that the threat to Quadrant security isn't marred by the fictional warheads heading for Cardassia, they certainly have turned their backs on the laws of their people in defence of what they consider a good and righteous cause. In 'TOS' we saw occasional examples of the deviants of society, and they generally turned out to be mad or damaged in some way, considered patients to be cured. Eddington could never fall into such a simplistic view, which is why 'DS9' is more real than most of the other series'.

Eddington had become the only strong leader left, once the remnants of the Maquis have fled to their secret base - I think they were denoted as being the last remaining leaders, which was why the Jem'Hadar had separated them and held them prisoner while killing everyone else on the base. Eddington plays a devious game, manipulating Sisko even now. You know what they say, 'once bitten, twice shy,' and 'fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me' - Sisko should have known better, but he was preoccupied with an imagined threat of a powder keg to war being exploded, to realise. His last episode shows Eddington in the best light, and at his best. He's got the same battering vocal attacks on the Federation, the same personality of a leader, and the strong convictions of his beliefs, but he's a captive. He plays Sisko like an instrument, just as Sisko, to a lesser extent, plays him: when the Jem'Hadar are on their tail in the Badlands, he gets a Raktajino and puts his feet up, waiting for Eddington to take the helm and get them to safety and the secret base. While we later find out that Eddington wanted to get to the base, his surprise at Sisko's actions in the face of extreme danger is genuine. The only other time in the whole episode that he wasn't playing a role was when he finds the Jem'Hadar got to the base already, and even more so when he's horrified to find his people have been slaughtered.

This moment is the most real we ever see of the man, when he's brought to reality with a bang, fervently wishing he'd been there to lead them, even though they probably would have died anyway. It's then that he lets out the major revelation that the Maquis had planned to become a state of their own, and felt they'd almost beaten Cardassia, its government in disarray, and it's then that he flashes his eyes angrily at Sisko, threatening to kill the man, just as he had in cold blood on the Runabout (Sisko surviving, just as he did the Jem'Hadar, Omet'iklan's, threat in 'To The Death'). I don't think he'd ever have done it. It's just a hunch, but he's too good a man in his own eyes - that's why he was willing to give himself up to prevent Sisko the 'madman' from ruining more Maquis planets in 'For The Uniform,' but we see his anguish in that sudden desire to get some revenge from the nearest source available. Even at that point he knows Rebecca and the others are depending on him, or he's hoping they're still alive, so he can rescue them, and he needs Sisko's help.

The underlying tension runs through the episode of whether he might take any advantage to do Sisko in. He certainly has his opportunities, such as when Sisko has to fiddle about in a Jeffries Tube with a delicate operation, while Eddington remains at the controls keeping the ship steady. When he does't hear from Sisko you can see he thinks he's dead, but he doesn't grin with pleasure or get excited, he begins to sit back as if pondering the implications. Until Sisko jerks him out of the chair with force! There's also the fight with the Jem'Hadar - Sisko's not in his bear-like, Hulk-out rage mode, so he doesn't do so well against the large opponent (even using the Kirk tactic of pipe beating!). He needs to get his blood pumping and the anger coursing through his veins to take on the Jem'Hadar (see 'The Search'!), but again, Eddington blows the Jem'Hadar away, not Sisko. The Captain stays remarkably calm throughout the episode, keeping a lid on his irritations, for the most part, even though Eddington tries to get under his skin, because he thinks the stakes are so incredibly high. Once he realises he's been manipulated again, that's when he boils over: never stand too close to Sisko, especially when he changes moods so suddenly, or you end up like Eddington, punched over a table! The same happened to Mirror Bashir, but that time Sisko was playing a role, and this time it's for real!

We find out more about Eddington than in any other episode: the main thing being that he'd only married a couple of weeks before Sisko captured him, that he's Canadian, or his ancestors were - I so expected the episode to end with Sisko holding the 'lucky looney' coin up to the light, having collected it from the Assay Office, but that would have been too cliched, I suppose, Sisko also already having his own personal symbol in the baseball, and they didn't like to do what was expected a lot of the time, so instead, Sisko just gazes out of the window. We also find that he and Sisko have more in common than we thought, when Eddington talks about how he enjoys growing real food. It could be a comment on the future of Trek in general, that they drink synthetic drinks, they eat synthetic foods, they take part in synthetic entertainment in the Holosuite… It would be, if we didn't know they also seek out new life and worlds, explore the galaxy and take part in very real adventures - they need the 'soft' essentials to stay healthy and as a counterpoint to the exciting lives they lead, plus they're so much more conscious about environmental issues and making sure everyone's fed, so why would they be against technology?

The Maquis aren't against technology either, but they still have these ideas of food only being real if it's grown, something Sisko tends to agree with, since he loves to be a chef, in this very episode making his son eat tube grub sauce - his Father would wholeheartedly agree with Eddington on the subject of food, not that he'd admit common traits with, or too, the man. Their respect for Cal is something else they share in common, we see how deeply the news of his death hits Sisko, another diversion to distract him from seeing through Eddington's ruse. It was so good to tidy up that loose end, although I would have liked the fate of Thomas Riker, Maquis member, and last seen heading for a Cardassian prison, to have been similarly sorted out. I see Eddington as being similar to Dukat, though a more noble man than the harsh Cardassian - if they'd grown up in the same race you could have said they were brothers. Both appear to have grand delusions in the way they see people and themselves, especially Sisko, and though I don't think Eddington ever thought of Sisko as his friend, he did want to gain his adversary's respect and understanding, I think. Dukat was far more deluded and egotistical, where Eddington was selfless and all about the cause.

Between both men and Sisko there's a bit of a macho thing going on, and both seek to meet him on a mental level as much as a physical one. Sisko gets fed up with all the talk and his presence is pushed to maximum confrontation, but it's only in front of others that Eddington cares to defend his pride, probably feeling that Sisko's stepped over a line and damaged his position as respected leader when he strikes him in front of the others, and no leader wants to seem weak with their followers watching. In the end, Eddington is shown not to be weak at all, but to be very strong, giving his life in defence of his wife and the remnants of his band. I'd forgotten how powerful his short death is, the way he shouts out orders to nobody in one last desperate gambit of deception to make the Jem'Hadar think they're dealing with a group of enemies instead of just a lone gunman. Eddington was a pirate, a cowboy, a daring leader, but most of all, he practiced what he preached and died for it, his last thought for his wife. There's no reason why Rebecca Sullivan should trust Sisko since he went out of his way to hunt down her husband and damage the Maquis' planets - she might think Sisko had killed Eddington himself, except that she knew her husband, and staying behind in a valiant rearguard action to secure the escape of his people, was exactly what he'd do.

I wonder what happened to those people - did Rebecca and the others go to prison? If they did, I'm sure it wasn't for long, as Kasidy was let out after only a few months, and leniency must have been shown to a beaten people. It could have made a good story for the remnant one day to return and try to take their worlds back, perhaps Rebecca was pregnant and her child could have led a revolution with the martyr spirit of its Father, years later? We can but dream. I also wonder if any of them knew Chakotay, B'Elanna, or the other Voyager Maquis members, and I like that Sisko wonders if there could still be some of them out there, like a direct pointer to 'Voyager.' The missiles made me think of an episode from that series: 'Dreadnought,' another Maquis plot. It also makes the situation of the Delta Quadrant ship more tragic since it holds the last of the organisation, though they wouldn't learn it for about a season. It makes their plight even more isolated that even what they fought for is no longer there for them to return to.

It was useful to have that coda at the end, where Dax and Ben talk about Eddington and the Maquis and try to make sense of it all, just as she was his confidant in 'For The Uniform' when they were trying to pin down the man. The 'old man' friendship they have, hadn't been forgotten through the series, and was always something for Sisko to rely on at his most difficult times. They talk about him and Eddington perhaps being more like each other than Sisko thought, something he couldn't have contemplated back when the man was his personal nemesis. Death can do that, smooth over the cracks of personality and see the good in people. Not only for Michael Eddington is this a sad time, but for Kenneth Marshall, an actor I'd place alongside some of the best names (Jeff Combs, Tony Todd, Marc Alaimo, etc), of Trek guest actors who should have been main cast members. He didn't come back as any other character, having made such an indelible mark in a non-prosthetic role, and actually hadn't been given as much to play with as we think - the antagonism with Odo never went far, (unlike the two appearances of George Primmin in Season 1!), very quickly settling into mutual respect for their attention to duty and diligent work ethic, because Eddington was so by the book. Marshall should have come back as an alien on 'Voyager' or 'Enterprise,' and even now he'd be on my list as a cast member for a potential spinoff, though he'd have to play the old man role these days.

In a fairly talky episode there's a lot to pick up on, whether that is all the new details we learn about the Maquis, such as their destruction, their preparation for independence, or that the Klingons had a brief alliance with them when they were fighting against the Cardassians (a revealing and justifiable way to set up the possibility of cloaked warheads on their way to attack Cardassia, just like real world events such as the search for WMDs or the threat of minor nations having nuclear strike capabilities), but as well as all the talk, there are observations to make as well: watch the way Eddington and Sisko plonk their trays of food onto the touch sensitive consoles of the, (yet again, unnamed) Runabout, for example. It doesn't activate the controls because they must be context-sensitive, just like modern touchpads, and probably touchscreen tablets, although I wouldn't know, as I don't own one! It's a simple extrapolation, but it makes sense for the technology, and shows they thought of such things.

I would question why they didn't vaporise the Jem'Hadar bodies at the base, instead of flinging them down a well, but it may be they wanted to conserve phaser power or not make more noise to alert others. The other thing with the Jem'Hadar is the way they use their camouflage shields this time. In all previous encounters I believe they were moving when they burst into visibility, but here they stand stock still, only revealed by Sisko's sweep of energy blasts. We've never been told what powers that cool ability, whether it's a natural (or engineered) skill, or technology in their uniforms. I thought it might have something to do with the ketracel white, otherwise they'd do it all the time if there was limitless power. It was also good to return once more to the area so much associated with the Maquis: the Badlands, looking better than ever in fiery orange and yellow colours, setting off those purple Jem'Hadar ships beautifully (and literally when they do the old trick of setting fire to vented  exhaust, something usually reserved for nebulas). I liked that they actually used the geography of the area, by swinging round one of those distinctive columns of fire to throw off pursuit. I don't remember ever seeing someone caught in a Jefferies Tube during an attack before, either, so Sisko being rolled around in such a tight, enclosed space was another spin on the old 'shaking for the camera' famous Trek move.

As for the B-story of Nog's bold decision to gain the respect of the Klingons on the station, it's a typically well done second leg to the story, and wonderfully, a rare Jake and Nog adventure, though Jake's there for moral support more than anything else. It's something that was set up in 'Soldiers of The Empire' so I'm glad they took it further. They also took it further in the episode, which could have ended when Nog's succeeded and Jake congratulates him, but they give us that extra boost of Martok actually acknowledging Nog as he steps off the Turbolift, as the icing on the cake! The Morn scene, on the other hand, has nothing to do with either storyline, except as an excuse to squeeze in the other regulars in what is a Captain-heavy episode. That Morn's panic-stricken, nude rampage happens offscreen, only enhances it in our imagination. Why was he naked, did he rip off his clothes in panic? Maybe it's a Lurian survival tactic they use when threatened, to move more quickly when not encumbered by those thick, bulky clothes. Or it could have been an act of supplication to the Prophets, since he did end up at the Bajoran Temple! We'll never know…

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