"...it's an old Maquis trick..."

[Lazarus]

Is it just me or have you ever wondered how "old" these tricks can actually be?

The Maquis were formed in 2370 when the Demilitarised Zone was created, but as soon as 2371 when Voyager is still in it's first season Chakotay and the rest of his former crew are referring to various "old Maquis tricks" - how old can a Maquis trick actually be at this point? A year at most!?

They talk about these "old tricks" like they've been fighting the Cardassians as Maquis for decades! By the time they're performing them in the Delta Quadrant these tricks are probably six months old!

 

[backstept]

maybe they didn't mean old as in length of time, but old as in familiar or frequently-used-at-one-time-but-not-recently

 

[Lazarus]

maybe they didn't mean old as in length of time, but old as in familiar or frequently-used-at-one-time-but-not-recently

I don't know, I think that's stretching. Seems pretty clear what they mean by it if I'm honest.

 

[Pavonis]

The Maquis may have emerged as an organized terrorist/freedom fighter group in 2370, but recall that Chakotay claims to have resigned his commission as early as March 2368. Though not stated outright, it's implied that Chakotay resigned to defend his home planet from Cardassians. So around 2367-2368 we have the beginnings of resistance to Cardassian intrusions into the disputed colonies. By 2371, then, the Maquis could easily have refined techniques that reliably worked against Cardassian forces, thus referring to them as "old tricks".

Now that I think about it, fighting with the Cardassians had been ongoing since the 2350s, when Picard, commanding Stargazer, ended up fleeing from a Cardassian warship. So even up to two decades back, there may have been individual Federation colonists fighting individual Cardassian colonists in the disputed region that became the Demilitarized Zone. Some of those colonists may have ended up joining or even leading the Maquis, so there's plenty of time for tricks to be developed, and to rightfully call them old.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Kim as editor of the "newspaper" Starfleet Academy produced (why do I now get the impression that he was blogger with delusions of grandure? I wonder if he lied like that a lot?) covered the rise of the Maquis in his freshman year at the academy. It's a four year course right?

 

[David cgc]

Memory Alpha says it was he was a senior when he wrote that article on the formation of the Maquis. So, yeah, they'd been around for about a year by the time Voyager got lost.

 

[Guy Gardener]

KIM: When I was in school, I was editor of the Academy newspaper for a year. I monitored subspace transmissions I got reports on some of the first activity by the Maquis against the Cardassians. I wrote an editorial about it, and the students became polarized on the issue. They debated the pros and cons and gained an insight into the entire history of the political rebellion. Now, that's the power of journalism.
NEELIX: What did your professors say when you told them you were going to publish the editorial?
KIM: I didn't tell them. It's the job of a journalist to be independent.

He makes the(? Maybe it's another Academy?) Academy sound like Middle School.

Retroactively Maxwell's attacks on the Cardassians in 2367 could have been qualified as the first movements of the Maquis, even though its his insight which generated the treaty the Maquis opposed, but remember the Cardassians were attacking "federation" Colonists, it was these attacks which Maxwell was trying to route, so how many people would have had to have died before these civilians got organized into a militia? 2? maybe 3? Whatever they called themselves at that point, that collection of frontiersmen and women would evolve into the Marquis.

Seriously, Kim is talking like he was a child when these things happened, and that he was brave despite al the "adults" telling him that he was boisterous, but now he too is an old man that can look on these issues with balance.

Kim in his 50s would still be a child.

 

[I am not Spock]

I think there could have been colonists fighting the Cardies as far back as the 2350s as well. Even after the treaty in 2367, there were growing Federation/Cardassian tensions, like the Maxwell incident. The Maquis could have had their origins as far back as these times. Captain Maxwell could well have defected to the Maquis, for all we know.

 

[Guy Gardener]

His character showed up in those Hidden Frontier the Next Generation fanfilms last month, Still a Starship Captain, Maxwell made a big deal about how he had to follow insane orders from the top because he had run out of cowboy chances to muck up and he had to play everything by the book or it was the end of him.

An interesting take.