Michael Eddingtonnnnn....

[Photon]

I like the Eddington Arc but was he tried for treason? If he was and convicted I believe he should have been executed, perhaps the Feds had outlawed the death penalty, but a crime as serious as betrayal of the uniform should be met w/a more serious punishment than 20 to life.

BYW, what the crap happened to those holo-comms?

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Just watched For the Uniform? I love that episode. Wasn't it established in The Menagerie that the Federation only has the death penalty for one offence: travelling to Talos IV? Which made even less sense than having the death penalty for treason, but...

 

[Bones2]

Poor Eddington. All that pretty much killed the Sisko character for me, and he wasn't overly engaging or likeable to begin with.

 

[od0_ital]

...Wasn't it established in The Menagerie that the Federation only has the death penalty for one offence: travelling to Talos IV? Which made even less sense than having the death penalty for treason, but...

Yep, it was.

And, since the 24th century Federation was more evolved & understandin' a society, it doesn't make sense to have added the death penalty to other offenses.

 

[Admiral Shran]

About the holo-comms....

They were invented for the episode "For The Uniform." The showrunners didn't think all the conversations between Sisko and Eddington would work via the standard viewscreen communication we're all used to. They thought it would be dramatic death to just have two guys looking at each other's heads for the whole episode.

I think they hoped it would catch on and replace the viewscreens, but it never worked for various reasons (both dramatic and production-wise). After two episodes, the holo-comms were dropped in favor of returning to the viewscreens.

 

[nx1701g]

^ I also read somewhere that people found the Holocomms confusing and believed that Eddington had transported aboard the Defiant.

 

[Lt.Cmdr.LaForge]

The Eddington/sisko rivalry was really awesome imo. Eddington made a great antagonist. He died a heroic selfless death. Good story arc =]

 

[Admiral Shran]

I didn't find them confusing, but I think the showrunners clearly feared that they were. For their second, and last, appearance in "Doctor Bashir, I Presume," the admiral using one was lighted in a clear blue light. Probably done to make it "clear" that he actually wasn't there, but just his holoprojection.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I like the Eddington Arc but was he tried for treason?

Probably. More than most of the Maquis, his actions could have personally led to war with Cardassia. He deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. He got an 'easy' death.

Not only that, but in general he was a jackass and a narcissist.

 

[Hofner]

Actually, Eddington was sentenced to a fate worse than death: thousands of hours of therapy with a Federation counselor..

No wonder he was so happy to die in "Blaze Of Glory".

Robert

 

[Mysterion]

Eddington's speech where he compares the Federation to the Borg is one of the best pieces of writing in all of ST, IMO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRxPjJ8VlyE

 

[Admiral Shran]

Being sentenced to thousands of hours with a Federation counselor wouldn't be so bad, as long as her name wasn't Troi.

I don't know if he was tried for treason, but he clearly should have been. He used his position as a Starfleet officer to aid a terrorist group. Other Maquis, like Chakotay, resigned their commissions before joining the group. If Eddington had done the same, I would have liked the character much more.

 

[Timo]

I don't get this hate towards Eddington. He used disguise and pretense like Tuvok or Odo in order to win hopeless battles like Kira, often making fools of Starfleet like Kirk did. Sure, he was on the other side - the non-hero side and, perhaps more importantly, the losing side. But that never stopped the fans from cheering for villains like Khan or Harry Mudd or Lore. And in the end, he probably achieved more than any of those fellow evildoers, raising the Maquis movement to prominence and basically eliminating Starfleet or the Cardassians as a threat to it. The movement got what it wanted, that is, sovereign control of the colonies, until the Dominion came, saw and annihilated. What could be more to our liking than a successful villain?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

As for the Borg thing: I must have missed the part where the Federation forces members to join against their will, or destroys entire planets and spacefleets.

What could be more to our liking than a successful villain?

One that fails, as they deserve.

 

[ToddKent]

Eddington was blinded by his own arrogance. He whines about the Maquis being hunted and harassed by Starfleet but doesn't mention that they regularly stole Federation resources, attacked Federation citizens and broke Federation laws to conduct their war. Of course Starfleet was going to come after them.

He was a great villain though.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

I like Eddington a lot. Not to say he wasn't a dangerous extremist, but he was a great character. A foe worthy of Sisko.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

The Eddington arc was great. Especially For the Uniform, which is one of my all-time favorite episodes of DS9.

Eddington was a villain...but he was a sympathetic one in the sense that...well, you'd be mad too if you were arbitrarily kicked out of your homes and told to move somewhere else...quite possibly away from family, friends and farms/business that had taken years to establish.

What he did was wrong, of course...but while the means were a serious problem, the ends he was shooting for where really not all that unreasonable.

So it wasn't a black & white issue of right and wrong. It was in the gray zone.

 

[Photon]

So it wasn't a black & white issue of right and wrong. It was in the gray zone.

Which is another reason to love STS9

 

[trevanian]

I like the Eddington Arc but was he tried for treason?

Probably. More than most of the Maquis, his actions could have personally led to war with Cardassia. He deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. He got an 'easy' death.

Not only that, but in general he was a jackass and a narcissist.

Geez, is this the general 9er 'tude? Eddington and Garak are the only really terrific recurring characters i remember from anything in the 24th century, and Eddington is certainly the only one with a sense of personal ethics I could find wholly admirable, a helluva lot more than any of the trek regulars.

Maybe it is good I don't come into this forum too often. I'll just admire Ds9 from afar while ranking it just under TOS and miles ahead of all the rest of aired Trek.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I like the Eddington Arc but was he tried for treason?

Probably. More than most of the Maquis, his actions could have personally led to war with Cardassia. He deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. He got an 'easy' death.

Not only that, but in general he was a jackass and a narcissist.

Geez, is this the general 9er 'tude?

I dunno, but it's definitely *my* "tude". I never liked Eddington after he turned traitor. (And yes, that is exactly what he was.) He was not a "noble" Maquis, like Chakotay. Eddington was in it for Eddington, nothing more. He had these revolutionary fantasies and was just out for personal glory. It was all to feed his ego - which, let's face it, is a big part of most of this guerrilla revolutionary shit anyway.

To put it another way, Eddington was to the Maquis what Dukat was to Cardassia. In both cases, it was all about *him*.

So it wasn't a black & white issue of right and wrong. It was in the gray zone.

Which is another reason to love STS9

And another reason I didn't, because I don't believe in "gray zones".