Eddington: Opinions?
- Thread starter Anduinel
- Start date
Not the entire Maquis, just his own cell.
Revolutionary groups like this, being anarchist by nature, are by definition disdainful of all authority. So Eddington could only have led the cadre which was personally loyal to him.
I'm guessing there were many Maquis cells, not all of which would have agreed with one another's goals and methods. Who knows, if a cell led by, for example, Chakotay, disagreed with what Eddington was doing, they might have willingly given up information on him, to preserve the movement in general.
this is a wild guess but.... you dont like Eddington?
Understatement of the century.
I found that whole spiel with him comparing himself to Jean Valjean and Sisko to Javert pretty clumsy and cringeworthy. almost as if Eddington was a Les Miserables fanboy and was going "Oh we are totally like my two favourite characters in this novel! Isn't it cool? Please tell me it's cool, Sisko! Don't you think I'm all badass and deep like Valjean?"
With the Marquis in general...the Peace Treaty between the Federation and the Cardassians that stranded colonies in each other's territory was ridiculous, yes and the Federation shouldn't have done that.
However the Marquis were also pretty dumb for staying where they were. Space is infinite and the Federation has no shortage of uninhabited, untouched, beautiful planets the colonists could settle on and start over. By not doing that they brought danger on themselves and their loved ones and so they don't really appear very sympathetic to me.
I know I know "connection to the land! My grandfather installed that water pump! We've always lived here!" but again, Space, infinite, it's likely that the Federation would have been able to accommodate each community of colonists with a suitable climate and environment to their liking on their new homeworlds.
With the Marquis in general...the Peace Treaty between the Federation and the Cardassians that stranded colonies in each other's territory was ridiculous, yes and the Federation shouldn't have done that.
However the Marquis were also pretty dumb for staying where they were. Space is infinite and the Federation has no shortage of uninhabited, untouched, beautiful planets the colonists could settle on and start over. By not doing that they brought danger on themselves and their loved ones and so they don't really appear very sympathetic to me.
I know I know "connection to the land! My grandfather installed that water pump! We've always lived here!" but again, Space, infinite, it's likely that the Federation would have been able to accommodate each community of colonists with a suitable climate and environment to their liking on their new homeworlds.
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The things we do for love. Saving her did end up getting him killed.
As I recall the original idea was to put somebody there that semi-threatened Odo's position and authority in a passive-aggressive, office politics kinda way. Assuming you liked Odo, you would low-key dislike Eddington.
Which I think was a cool idea, honestly, considering that the Starfleet people were typically portrayed as the "good guys." Now you're putting somebody in a Starfleet uniform that the viewer is put in a position to dislike, while liking somebody else that isn't. A neat little piece of subversive writing.
I liked him more after his character arc concluded, he become more of a real person with real motivations instead of just some snotty prick you vaguely dislike for reasons you can't quite put a finger on.
Which I think was a cool idea, honestly, considering that the Starfleet people were typically portrayed as the "good guys." Now you're putting somebody in a Starfleet uniform that the viewer is put in a position to dislike, while liking somebody else that isn't. A neat little piece of subversive writing.
I liked him more after his character arc concluded, he become more of a real person with real motivations instead of just some snotty prick you vaguely dislike for reasons you can't quite put a finger on.
I am watching DS9 for the first time and at first I liked Eddington's role as a counterpoint to Odo. I enjoyed that tension and drama between them. I loved Eddington's whole role in the replicator heist, but later on I thought how they wrote him got a little cringe-y and over-the-top. I am always rooting for the Maquis, but the whole Sisko versus Eddington thing towards the end I hated. I wanted neither of them to win because I thought they were both being so obnoxious.
I have to agree. There are times I really don't like Sisko as a Commander/Captain and I think that's a bold way to write a main character.
I have to agree. There are times I really don't like Sisko as a Commander/Captain and I think that's a bold way to write a main character.
Personally I wanted neither of them to win because I like them both!
As for Sisko, I did find him a bit boring in the first season, not as dynamic as Kirk, Janeway and sometimes Picard. But later on he became a tough badass!
Personally I wanted neither of them to win because I like them both!
As for Sisko, I did find him a bit boring in the first season, not as dynamic as Kirk, Janeway and sometimes Picard. But later on he became a tough badass!
I don't know why but it is never the Captains that I seem to enjoy the most. In TOS, it was Scotty and Spock, in TNG it was Data and Worf, in DS9 it is Nerys, Quark, and Julian, in VOY it is B'elanna, Tom, and the Doctor, and in ENT it was T'pol, Shran, and Trip.
With that said, I think Sisko is awesome as a Captain because he has a lot of gray areas and I like that in a Captain (not to say I didn't like my other more black/white Captains...Janeway is definitely my favorite!)
I'm still on season 6 but I wished they hadn't killed off the Maquis plot so soon (and that they wrote Eddington a little more like how they wrote him early on). I think I enjoyed that storyline more than the Dominion one so far.
I think both had a point to a certain extent.
Eddington is right in holding the Federation a mirror that its ways are not als self-evidently the best for any society as they themselves seem to believe. (Though him comparing them to the Borg but more insidiously, is taking the point too far). Sisko in reacting out of all proportion to Eddington, even so much so that Starfleet has to take him off the case, seems to underline this -- it's as if Sisko was personally insulted by this (though of course there was also a personal component to their conflict). Sisko himself would later in DS9 become more deeply morally compromised than he'd probably would have thought possible during the Eddington crisis.
Sisko, on the other hand, is right in pointing out that Eddington wants to be the hero of his own story a little too much, and isn't in there only for the "good cause" he confesses, but also for more selfish reasons.
Eddington is right in holding the Federation a mirror that its ways are not als self-evidently the best for any society as they themselves seem to believe. (Though him comparing them to the Borg but more insidiously, is taking the point too far). Sisko in reacting out of all proportion to Eddington, even so much so that Starfleet has to take him off the case, seems to underline this -- it's as if Sisko was personally insulted by this (though of course there was also a personal component to their conflict). Sisko himself would later in DS9 become more deeply morally compromised than he'd probably would have thought possible during the Eddington crisis.
Sisko, on the other hand, is right in pointing out that Eddington wants to be the hero of his own story a little too much, and isn't in there only for the "good cause" he confesses, but also for more selfish reasons.
Yeah I really didn't it like when Sisko in the various Marquis episodes saw them as some sort of personal insult against himself.
Also, the ending confused me. Did Sisko kill civilians?
Also, the ending confused me. Did Sisko kill civilians?
No. He gave them time to evacuate.
Yes, imo. However whether he did so or not is probably debatable.
In "For the Uniform", it was clear that Sisko deliberately attacked a Maquis inhabited planet with biogenic weapons, weapons that were designed to harm human life regardless of whether the human is a fighter or civilian. But the episode didn't really address, in a meaningful way, whether there were casualties as a result of Sisko's attack. So, I thought there was ambiguity.
I liked both Odo and Eddington. I enjoyed watching how Odo reacted to Eddington moving into his turf.
Odo is very stubborn. Odo's reaction seemed to be a mix of suspicion, indignity and insecurity. Didn't Odo suspect that Starfleet didn't fully trust him because he was a changeling? But Eddington came across as decent officer who was more than willing to accommodate Odo and compromise, which was why I found him likable.
Even after Eddington revealed that he was a Maquis I continued to find him to be a likable and sympathetic character. Granted, I was sympathetic to the cause of the Maquis. I couldn't help but side with Eddington in the Sisko vs. Eddington feud.
However, Eddington did seem to be a bit delusion when compared himself with Valjean. That part of Eddington I didn't find flattering. But then again, Sisko's obsession with getting even with Eddington was just as unsavory.
He initially gave them time and asked them to acknowledge that. When the colonists didn't respond or initiate said evacuation ( I'm pretty sure one of the bridge crew confirmed that there were no signs of an evacuation starting) he fired anyway, without giving them any more time
It pretty much had to be at that point in television history, in the 90s they would have never gotten away with showing the main character deliberately causing civilian causalities. That they didn't confirm afterwards that the colonists had left makes it imho likelier to me that the implication was that there were causalities.
Then again, we don't know how the poison works...maybe it was the kind of SciFi poison that would still grant the colonists a limited time to evacuate. Or it was detonated far enough from the colony itself so that it would give them a time window to escape.
At one point, Kira says "The Maquis are scrambling their transport ships. They're starting to evacuate."
And later, Sisko makes this log entry: "Resettlement efforts in the DMZ are underway. The Cardassian and Maquis colonists who were forced to abandon their homes will make new lives for themselves on the planets their counterparts evacuated. "
So it would seem that there were no casualties.
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I actually have to agree here. I rank the captains among the top characters but not as the top character.
TOS: Spock, Scotty and Kirk
TNG: Data, Riker, Picard
DS9: Quark, Garak, Kira, Sisko
VOY: Kes, Chakotay, Janeway
ENT: Trip, Porthos and maybe Phlox
That is a good point that you made, which reinforces my opinion that there were casualties.
What was shown (through the cgi) during the episode was that the biogenic weapons, once it impacted on the planet, it spread quickly across the planet.
And here a line spoken by Kira immediately after the biogenic torpedoes impacted on the planet.
KIRA: The trilithium resin is dissipating throughout the biosphere. The Maquis are scrambling their transport ships. They're starting to evacuate.
The biogenic material was already spreading rapidly across the planet. And then the Maquis are just starting to evacuate. And it could have been the well-connected Maquis or the Maquis fighters who had ready access to transport ships. Who knows?
I find it hard to believe that every single Maquis man, woman and child, who would be going about their daily business at the time, would be able to evacuate the planet before the biogenic material did its deadly job.
There were other Maquis settlements on other planets other than the one that Sisko attacked.
After launching the attack, Sisko threatened all the other Maquis colonies in the DMZ as well. The "resettlement efforts" could have referred to those other Maquis colonists on those other planets, and perhaps to those that managed to escape Sisko's attack. Those that perished, as a result of the attack, would obviously not have been able to resettle.
But Sisko did not, in fact, attack those planets.
He didn't have to. He made an example of the Maquis planet that he did attack.
I assume that the other Maquis colonists got the message and decided to resettle as a result. Sisko wasn't messing around. I assume that they weren't going to risk the wrath of the Sisko.
I assume that the other Maquis colonists got the message and decided to resettle as a result. Sisko wasn't messing around. I assume that they weren't going to risk the wrath of the Sisko.
I mean colonies in Star Trek are often limited to a relatively small, walled settlement and I assume that even as they were trying to call Sisko's bluff, the Marquis might have already alerted the whole colony to be ready to leave at short notice. Plus, they possibly have transporters.
I can't remember whether they explained the way the weapon worked,s o it could be one of those things in Star Trek that kills you after an X-amount of time of exposure (like that weird, timed radiation that was going to kill Crusher and Geordi after a certain amount of exposure in TNG "Disaster").
So it is possible, if wished to interpret it as a situation where there were no causalities.
But I agree that my gut feelings says that it's likely that there were causalities and I bet if that episode was made today we'd get a shot of a group of people not reaching the ships in time.
