Ron Moore's Voyager

[exodus]

What's the point of creating a faction that's opposed to Starfleet if they're never actually in conflict with Starfleet?

What annoys me most is the fact that the Maquis were created on TNG and DS9 so that they could be used on Voyager as a conflicting cast, so the writing staff on two other tv shows were forced to take the time to create this new entity that the Voyager writing staff would hardly ever use. Luckily DS9 managed to get a few good stories out of them to make the whole concept worthwhile, but the Voyager writers should be ashamed of themselves for dropping the ball the way they did.

Maybe but in the same token, being lost and alone on the otherside of the galaxy, what did the conflict at home matter now?

I think the point was, outside of any governments laws and manipulations, mankind would get along regardless of what a persons political affilations might or used to be. Laws are what made the Maquis & Federation enemies, not the people themselves.

 

[TheGodBen]

^ Then they shouldn't have bothered to create the Maquis in the first place. If they wanted to use them for conflict then use them, if they wanted a safe crew then why do all the work?

Hmmmm......I don't want to question your statement but I find it hard to believe that they created the Maquis only because they planned to use them on Voyager. Didn't the Maquis show up in TNG long before Voyager was planned?

It came from Ron Moore in an interview he gave back when he was still working on DS9. Here's the quote.

The Maquis were definitely created for Voyager. When I was working on "Journey's End", Michael [Piller] told me quite explicitly about their plans for the role of the Maquis on Voyager and that he wanted "Journey" to show the roots of the Maquis even though they would later be named on DS9.

 

[exodus]

^ Then they shouldn't have bothered to create the Maquis in the first place. If they wanted to use them for conflict then use them, if they wanted a safe crew then why do all the work?

Because things change the more pens hit paper. Besides, if we've learned anything from Trek is, all enemies become allies after a while.

Klingons
Romulans
Cardassians
Hirogen
etc.

It's always been the Trek way. The Maquis weren't going to be our enemies forever.

 

[Sci]

^ Then they shouldn't have bothered to create the Maquis in the first place. If they wanted to use them for conflict then use them, if they wanted a safe crew then why do all the work?

Because things change the more pens hit paper. Besides, if we've learned anything from Trek is, all enemies become allies after a while.

Klingons
Romulans
Cardassians
Hirogen
etc.

It's always been the Trek way. The Maquis weren't going to be our enemies forever.

And it's fine if they had made that an arc -- a story in its own right. How they go from not trusting each other to learning to compromise with one-another to work together as allies and friends.

But they didn't. By the end of the first episode, the Maquis were wearing Starfleet uniforms, and by the time the first season ended, they were all good little Starfleet officers. That's not a story about enemies becoming allies and working out their differences in peaceful compromise -- that's one enemy surrendering to another.

 

[exodus]

^ Then they shouldn't have bothered to create the Maquis in the first place. If they wanted to use them for conflict then use them, if they wanted a safe crew then why do all the work?

Because things change the more pens hit paper. Besides, if we've learned anything from Trek is, all enemies become allies after a while.

Klingons
Romulans
Cardassians
Hirogen
etc.

It's always been the Trek way. The Maquis weren't going to be our enemies forever.

And it's fine if they had made that an arc -- a story in its own right. How they go from not trusting each other to learning to compromise with one-another to work together as allies and friends.

But they didn't. By the end of the first episode, the Maquis were wearing Starfleet uniforms, and by the time the first season ended, they were all good little Starfleet officers. That's not a story about enemies becoming allies and working out their differences in peaceful compromise -- that's one enemy surrendering to another.

Survival.

The Maquis were out manned & out gunned by Voyager and her crew. So in the end if they fought they still would end up with the same choices, join or die. If they pooled their efforts, the greater chances of their survival. A rag tap group such as the Maquis that needs to steal food & supplies to suvive all ready understands this point. If they didn't, the chance of the Maquis crew surviving on their own was slim to impossable.

I can only assume the writers didn't feel the need for an arc because I assumed they thought we could figure it out for ourselves after watching other Trek shows previous. Just the same way they didn't think it was needed to explain repeatedly how a ship that lands makes repairs without a starbase.

 

[Lynx]

^ Then they shouldn't have bothered to create the Maquis in the first place. If they wanted to use them for conflict then use them, if they wanted a safe crew then why do all the work?

Hmmmm......I don't want to question your statement but I find it hard to believe that they created the Maquis only because they planned to use them on Voyager. Didn't the Maquis show up in TNG long before Voyager was planned?

It came from Ron Moore in an interview he gave back when he was still working on DS9. Here's the quote.

The Maquis were definitely created for Voyager. When I was working on "Journey's End", Michael [Piller] told me quite explicitly about their plans for the role of the Maquis on Voyager and that he wanted "Journey" to show the roots of the Maquis even though they would later be named on DS9.

Thanks for info. I always thought that the Maquis were created for DS9 and the Voyager connection came at a later stage.

Anyway, I still don't see the point in a total conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crew because of things I've mentioned earlier. The Maquis were about 30 people who didn't have the skill to take over and use a ship of Voyager's capacity while the Starfleet crew were about 150 people who did have that knowledge. Since Chakotay and his people, at least most of them, were smart guys, they probably realized that they had to play along with Starfleet rules in order to get home, otherwise they might get stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

OK, there were some details who could have been done better. B'Elanna Torres became tame a little too quick, but on the other hand, there was over a month between the events in "Caretaker" and the events in "Parallax" according to the Stardates and thst should have been visible in the episode "Parallax" (I refuse to believe that it would take over a month to decide who would be Chief Engineeer and did they take a vacation on Ocampa for some weeks before taking off into space).

The events which lead up to "Learning Curve" plus the behavior of Jonas and Suder should also have been explained more carefully in episodes before the actual events.

In the Voyager book "Incident At Arbuk", there was a somewhat slimy ex-Maquis character named Paul Fairman who tried to start a black market on board the ship. I would have liked to see that character in the series.

Besides that, I would have liked to see some Starfleet guy flip out. Why should only the Maquis people be the villains? I mean, the situation with being stuck 70 000 light years from home should have affected some Starfleet people as well. Kim did seem to have difficulties to cope with the situation from time to time and in the book "Cybersong" there was a female Starfleet officer named Daphne Mandel who obviously had some own problems as well.

I would also like to point out that the Federation and Starfleet weren't the main enemy for the Maquis. The Cardassians were.

 

[Sci]

Because things change the more pens hit paper. Besides, if we've learned anything from Trek is, all enemies become allies after a while.

Klingons
Romulans
Cardassians
Hirogen
etc.

It's always been the Trek way. The Maquis weren't going to be our enemies forever.

And it's fine if they had made that an arc -- a story in its own right. How they go from not trusting each other to learning to compromise with one-another to work together as allies and friends.

But they didn't. By the end of the first episode, the Maquis were wearing Starfleet uniforms, and by the time the first season ended, they were all good little Starfleet officers. That's not a story about enemies becoming allies and working out their differences in peaceful compromise -- that's one enemy surrendering to another.

Survival.

The Maquis were out manned & out gunned by Voyager and her crew. So in the end if they fought they still would end up with the same choices, join or die.

Not exactly. The Maquis made up about one-third of Voyager's crew throughout the series. "Caretaker" made it very clear that Janeway and the Starfleet crew needed the Maquis to run the ship -- just as the Maquis needed the ship to get home.

This should have been an alliance of equals rather than a story of subordination. That it was essentially a story about the Maquis giving up their identities and replacing it with Starfleet's makes the story imperialistic, not a story about peaceful resolution of conflicts and mutual compromise.

I can only assume the writers didn't feel the need for an arc because I assumed they thought we could figure it out for ourselves after watching other Trek shows previous.

Then, once again, what the hell was even the point of creating Maquis characters in the first place? It breaks Chekhov's rule: It's like putting a gun onstage in Act I and making a big deal about how there's a gun, and then setting it down and never using it.

Just the same way they didn't think it was needed to explain repeatedly how a ship that lands makes repairs without a starbase.

Which is yet another flaw in VOY. Part of the point of stranding the ship in the Delta Quadrant was to get them away from the Federation infrastructure that makes life easy -- so why not depict the difficulties that would naturally come with that?

No one's saying that the Voyager crew should have been desperate all the time or at each other's throats all the time. But what was the point of telling a story about people trying to get home if they never seemed to be suffering? What's the point of putting the ship in the Delta Quadrant if you don't write the show any differently than you did TNG?

ETA:

Anyway, I still don't see the point in a total conflict between the Starfleet and Maquis crew because of things I've mentioned earlier. The Maquis were about 30 people who didn't have the skill to take over and use a ship of Voyager's capacity while the Starfleet crew were about 150 people who did have that knowledge.

No, Voyager's total crew compliment throughout throughout the series was always slightly less than 150, about a third of which were Maquis. That means that the Maquis probably numbered around 50 to the 100 or so Starfleeters.

Since Chakotay and his people, at least most of them, were smart guys, they probably realized that they had to play along with Starfleet rules in order to get home, otherwise they might get stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

As I've noted before, the Starfleet crew needed the Maquis to run the ship. There's no reason that this couldn't have been an alliance of equals rather than a state of subordination.

Besides that, I would have liked to see some Starfleet guy flip out. Why should only the Maquis people be the villains?

Who's saying that the Maquis are villains if there's conflict between them and the Starfleet crew? Maybe neither side is right or wrong, just different. Hell, one could argue that Janeway was morally wrong by impressing civilians into Starfleet rather than treating them as equal partners of the journey home -- that she had no right to force them to join Starfleet or to run the ship as a Starfleet vessel, since she needed the Maquis as much as they needed her. How is this not conscription?

Of course, that's just one way of looking at it. That's my point -- realistically, there would have been some conflict, and neither side would necessarily be wrong. That would have made for a much richer story, especially if they had really done a story about how former enemies learn to put their differences aside and cooperate as equals.

 

[JustKate]

I love Voyager, but I have to agree that creating the Maquis and then not using them as Maquis was a wasted opportunity. They didn't have to mutiny and there didn't have to be fights every episode, but why create them and then NOT show the struggles that everyone - Starfleet and Maquis - would have to go through to take two very disparate groups and incorporate them into one crew? I would have wanted it to end well in Trek's usual way, but I would have found the process fascinating to watch.

So it really does tick me off that the writers or studio didn't let me see it. It's maybe even a bit of an insult to the audience.

 

[Anwar]

Michael Piller actually did say in an interview that they were ordered to drop the Maquis thing by UPN before Caretaker was even finished, and he didn't like it. So it was less a creative decision and more executive meddling they couldn't escap no matter how hard they tried.

That Piller's Co-Producer, Jeri Taylor, agreed with UPN didn't help matters.

 

[Sci]

Michael Piller actually did say in an interview that they were ordered to drop the Maquis thing by UPN before Caretaker was even finished, and he didn't like it. So it was less a creative decision and more executive meddling they couldn't escap no matter how hard they tried.

Fair enough, we can blame UPN instead of the writers -- but it still hurts the quality of the show.

 

[JustKate]

[sarcasm] Huh. A studio underestimating the audience and dumbing stuff down for us. How rare![/sarcasm]

 

[kimc]

Bottom line: The Maquis felt betrayed by the Federation, and they would never have agreed to wear Starfleet uniforms or abide by Starfleet regulations, even if they needed the ship to get home.

Yes, the Maquis felt betrayed by the Federation but they were also very loyal to Chakotay. He sacrificed their ship because he believed it was the morally correct thing to do. He would not have tried to take Janeway's ship unless she gave him a good reason. After all, as a former Starfleet office he knew the rules she was working under.

And I'm not saying they would have tried to take the ship. I'm just saying that the way the show portrayed their relationship -- the Maquis always making concessions to the Starfleeters, the Starfleeters never making concessions to the Maquis -- was unrealistic.

Just what concessions were you expecting them to make? Either they were going to run as a Starfleet vessel or they weren't. When you're on the run and far from home is hardly the time to invent a new system on the fly.

No, it wasn't. That's the point of the Maquis. The Federation was no longer their home. They had all rejected the Federation. They were separatists. The Federation was no more still their home than Britain was still the Minutemen's country.

I don't think comaring the Maquis to the Minutemen is a good analogy. The Minutemen for the most part were born in America and had never lived in England. they were defending their homes from what had become a foreign governmnet that was using them as a cash cow.

The Maquis on the other hand were for the most part born in Federation territory. They may had been betrayed by their government but it was THEIR government - not a foreign entity (at least until the Cardassians came). The Federation gave them up - they didn't make the choice to leave. They were fighting what they considered to be a forgien government but as Chakotay once said they weren't going after Federation targets.

 

[exodus]

And it's fine if they had made that an arc -- a story in its own right. How they go from not trusting each other to learning to compromise with one-another to work together as allies and friends.

But they didn't. By the end of the first episode, the Maquis were wearing Starfleet uniforms, and by the time the first season ended, they were all good little Starfleet officers. That's not a story about enemies becoming allies and working out their differences in peaceful compromise -- that's one enemy surrendering to another.

Survival.

The Maquis were out manned & out gunned by Voyager and her crew. So in the end if they fought they still would end up with the same choices, join or die.

Not exactly. The Maquis made up about one-third of Voyager's crew throughout the series. "Caretaker" made it very clear that Janeway and the Starfleet crew needed the Maquis to run the ship -- just as the Maquis needed the ship to get home.

This should have been an alliance of equals rather than a story of subordination. That it was essentially a story about the Maquis giving up their identities and replacing it with Starfleet's makes the story imperialistic, not a story about peaceful resolution of conflicts and mutual compromise.



Then, once again, what the hell was even the point of creating Maquis characters in the first place? It breaks Chekhov's rule: It's like putting a gun onstage in Act I and making a big deal about how there's a gun, and then setting it down and never using it.



Which is yet another flaw in VOY. Part of the point of stranding the ship in the Delta Quadrant was to get them away from the Federation infrastructure that makes life easy -- so why not depict the difficulties that would naturally come with that?

No one's saying that the Voyager crew should have been desperate all the time or at each other's throats all the time. But what was the point of telling a story about people trying to get home if they never seemed to be suffering? What's the point of putting the ship in the Delta Quadrant if you don't write the show any differently than you did TNG?

The premise of the show was for them to be lost, it doesn't mean they'd be suffering. If they wanted them to suffer, they wouldn't repeated mention how advanced Voyager was over all other ships, even over other Starfleet ones. I think the point was to show what space is like outside Federation controlled territory.

The Maquis were created for Voyager, however in many cases of pen on paper ideas vs. ones actually execued. It was clear from the time they created the Maquis to the time Voyager actuaklly aired, opinion about how they wanted them portrade changed. The same could be said for DS9. There was supposed to be endless conflict between the Starfleet & Bajorian crew. By "Hands of the Prophets" all were getting along, not to mention how the Maquis conflict ended quickly on that show too.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Maquis already had a system. Nothing had to be invented.

 

[Praetor]

I've just discovered this thread today, so I have a lot of replying to do.

I think that Ron Moore's VGR (ignoring the realism of network demands) would have been more realistic in terms of character development and relationships, had a greater sense of inter-episode and overall continuity, and generally had been a better show. I do not believe - as some have suggested - that Ron Moore would have sought to have the show have a completely dark/nihilistic view as many say that BSG does. VGR was a spinoff, whereas BSG was a full reimagining.

For me, most of the problems with VGR were not in the setup, but in the execution. Everything that should have been needed for good drama and a therefore good show was there in that original premise - 'high concept' stuff as Braga used to put it. You had a crew made up of two groups as different as they could possibly be yet still forced to share the same goal, a small ship with limited supplies yet technologically-advanced enough that they both had a good shot of getting home and also were a prime target for any primitive brutes with a lot of muscle to throw around, and a 'new' region of space that could be populated with as many interesting baddies and allies as the writers deemed fit, and which we also knew to be home of the Ultimate Big Bad - the Borg.

Yet, most of the 'developments' that were expected and anticipated in the premise were either underdeveloped and cast aside (see supply shortages and crew conflict resolutions), left off-screen for us to infer (see shipwide repairs and refuelings, and shuttle and torpedo reconstructions), or altogether ignored or mishandled (see the Kazon and the Borg.)

The key to good drama is the idea that everything should up to a climax, and that it is the resolution of the climax that provides the interest for the viewer. This is true both for a single episode, and for a total series. When VGR began, the show was IMO more or less a lock for seven full seasons, which provided the opportunity to plan an overall arc for the series that truly fulfilled the series's premise. What we actually had in the case of VGR was a show that side-stepped fulfilling the groundwork laid in the premise.

Now the supply issues, battle damage, etc should have been very important from episode to episode. That was a missed opportunity. If we saw Voyager sustain a hull breach there needed to be repercussions in the next episode. Whether it be a line of dialogue mentioning the repair, or if we saw some patches on Voyager's outer hull. You just can't white wash all of the stuff that happens from week to week given Voyager's situation. BSG was great at this aspect. Galactica had visible damage from the 1st episode all the way to the end. If the damage was not critical to the operation of the ship it went unfixed. Voyager should have been a battle weary ship by the time it got home after all the stuff it went through. It should have been a battle scarred warrior, not the pristine princess, we got at the end. With Galactica I cringed every time she took a hard hit, because I knew she was not getting repaired anytime soon. Any number of things could go wrong at any time. With Voyager it was almost a given that in the next episode we knew she would be brand new again.

I agree with everything Akiraprise says above. But for me it's not really the visible damaged I missed on the Voyager. It just always felt like they never really were in danger and had to sacrifice anything. Yeah, there was talk about replicator rationing and limiting one's access to the allegedly energy-consuming holodeck, but it was just that: Talk.

Battlestar Galactica on the other hand did whole episodes about them trying to find water and dealing with the problems of declining food and medicine supplies. On Galactica everything had consequences. On Voyager you knew that by the end of the episode the status quo had to be retained.

For me, that was one of the quintessential faults of Voyager – although I like many single episodes of it.

Totally agreed here. The lack of any consequence to any actions (as manifested in a lack of damage to the ship, shortage in supplies, etc.) contributed overall to a lack of a feeling of peril for the crew. We, as viewers, are relatively certain that the ship will survive to next week for the show to go on. The trick on the part of the writers and producers is to make us feel as if it might not in order to create a sense of peril and therefore capture our interest in the drama of what is going on.

Isn't Roddenberry's vision that Humans can be better, "evolved", individuals if they chose to be so? And not without some pain? At least that's why got from TOS and even TNG, instead of "we're simply evolved and are perfect now!".

For example Kirk feels the urge to kill the Gorn, but choses not to. Instead of simply having no urge at all...

Brilliantly put, Praetorian. The idea that 24th century humans are 'perfect' by default is crap, IMO. The whole point is about showing we 'backwards' 20th and 21st century humans what we should be working towards - not that one day we'll magically be perfect.

It's not an exaggeration at all to say that they would no more get along with Starfleet officers aboard Voyager than Minutemen would get along with Redcoats.
{snip}
Think about it. The Maquis made up one-third of Voyager's crew. The Starfleeters needed the Maquis to operate the ship, just like the Maquis needed the ship to get home. So, yeah, they both had to cooperate -- but they both also would have demanded concessions from the other. The way the show did it, the Maquis only ever gave concessions to the Starfleet crew, and the Starfleet crew never gave any concessions to them.

At the very least, realistically, they would have demanded that Chakotay be given veto power over Janeway's major decisions. And that's assuming that they wouldn't demand that she share command with Chaoktay, forcing a sort of pseudo-democracy upon the ship.

Very well said, Sci. I agree.

It seems to me that the whole purpose of creating this group of dissenters was so they could dissent aboard Voyager. Analyzing their in-universe motives and the validity of their claims is rather pointless when you consider that the goal behind them was to create conflict. Trying to reinterpret them as being in the wrong to start with precisely defies the reason they were created.

(This all from one who's only seen the BSG mini and a handfull of episodes because I've found it depressing. I'll probably watch it eventually.)

 

[Navaros]

not to mention how the Maquis conflict ended quickly on that show too.

Not nearly so quickly as it ended on Voyager, which was after the very first episode. DS9 devoted at least 4 episodes to the Maquis off the top of my head. Besides, the Maquis weren't a main element of the DS9 show like they were with Voyager.

The series premise for Voyager called for the Maquis conflict to be a factor throughout the whole series.

Pulled to the far side of the Galaxy, where the Federation is 75 years away at maximum warp speed, a Starfleet ship must cooperate with Maquis rebels to find a way home.

Certainly wasn't any of that in Voyager beyond Caretaker.

It's a fair point that Kira was just a rubberstamper of anything Sisko did after Season 1 of DS9, but that's forgivable because they replaced that conflict with something even better. Louise Fletcher took over the Bajoran vs. Federation opposition, and she won a frickin' Oscar because she is the master of that kind of thing. It wouldn't have been possible to find anyone better to perform that function - she's the jackpot. On the other hand, when Voyager abandoned the Maquis rebel conflict, they replaced it with absolutely nothing; which is not good.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Gods bless that evil nun.

You all did do the leg work and see that Ronny came on board in season 6? he produced Equinox 2 and Survival instinct and then ran.

Survival Instinct was a rancid distilling cold sore.

No wonder he ran.

But the mechanisms that personified the show were well in place and cemented by that point... There would have been nothing really that Ron could have done that would have seemed insane or forced... Like how the villains metamorphosed in the final season of earth Final Conflict.

 

[Anwar]

Survival.

The Maquis were out manned & out gunned by Voyager and her crew. So in the end if they fought they still would end up with the same choices, join or die.

Not exactly. The Maquis made up about one-third of Voyager's crew throughout the series. "Caretaker" made it very clear that Janeway and the Starfleet crew needed the Maquis to run the ship -- just as the Maquis needed the ship to get home.

This should have been an alliance of equals rather than a story of subordination. That it was essentially a story about the Maquis giving up their identities and replacing it with Starfleet's makes the story imperialistic, not a story about peaceful resolution of conflicts and mutual compromise.



Then, once again, what the hell was even the point of creating Maquis characters in the first place? It breaks Chekhov's rule: It's like putting a gun onstage in Act I and making a big deal about how there's a gun, and then setting it down and never using it.



Which is yet another flaw in VOY. Part of the point of stranding the ship in the Delta Quadrant was to get them away from the Federation infrastructure that makes life easy -- so why not depict the difficulties that would naturally come with that?

No one's saying that the Voyager crew should have been desperate all the time or at each other's throats all the time. But what was the point of telling a story about people trying to get home if they never seemed to be suffering? What's the point of putting the ship in the Delta Quadrant if you don't write the show any differently than you did TNG?

The premise of the show was for them to be lost, it doesn't mean they'd be suffering. If they wanted them to suffer, they wouldn't repeated mention how advanced Voyager was over all other ships, even over other Starfleet ones. I think the point was to show what space is like outside Federation controlled territory.

The Maquis were created for Voyager, however in many cases of pen on paper ideas vs. ones actually execued. It was clear from the time they created the Maquis to the time Voyager actuaklly aired, opinion about how they wanted them portrade changed. The same could be said for DS9. There was supposed to be endless conflict between the Starfleet & Bajorian crew. By "Hands of the Prophets" all were getting along, not to mention how the Maquis conflict ended quickly on that show too.

I agree 100% Exodus, for all this talk of "conflict" and "tension" they really are just looking for an excuse for the cast to all just be snarky with each other whether it helped the plot or not. I'm starting to think they just are upset that they didn't all fall to pieces at the first sign of danger.

As for DS9, all they did was replace the internal conflict with an external one (the Dominion). Winn didn't really play a big role in the plot until the near end of the series when Dukat became obsessed with the Pagh Wraiths. With VOY they did the same thing except the fan reaction to the external threats was always negative. I mean seriously all DS9 did was maintain their external threat that the fans basically had the choice of not liking them and acting like a spoiled kid, or just accepting the Dominion and coming to like the Dominion conflict. With VOY they just folded too fast to negative fan reactions. If they had maintained the Vidiians or Krenim for longer than they did, the fans would have had a similar "okay I'll just accept that these are the bad guys" and VOY would've had their antagonist race to form an external conflict with.

 

[Delta1]

Just what concessions were you expecting them to make? Either they were going to run as a Starfleet vessel or they weren't. When you're on the run and far from home is hardly the time to invent a new system on the fly.

I'm a bit late, but this is exactly the time to invent a new system on the fly. The system wasn't designed to cope with a stranded ship depending on a hostile force to provide 1/3 of the crew. And to some extent, they did invent a new system. The normal Starfleet system does not pick up roving junk traders and make them fake ambassadors, or appoint/impress wanted criminals into the ship's company..

The fact that the system was malleable meant everyone should have been trying to change it, not just the captain. Real people try to change organizations, formally or informally, in ways that benefit them or that they perceive to be altruistic. The fact that Voyager's crew didn't just reflects how poorly they were characterized.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I have to assume most of you are American, I'm sorry if that is an insult, because mostly it is, you dirty bloody foreigners know what I'm takling about, but wasn't America (the ethos underpinning most Yankee TV.) founded on the simplest of principles "No taxation without representation"?

Are the Maquis represented equally or are they a cowlike slaveforce?