For the Uniform, Sisko is a criminal and should be in prison, poisoning that colony was inexcusable.
Possibly...
But how else could Eddington be captured properly? He's already running around poisoning a lot more planets, endangering treaties, provoking wars, and simply had to be stopped before causing more carnage.
Like or dislike Sisko's action, it poses one of the biggest moral questions and dilemmas of time, regarding the needs of the many.
"For the Uniform" is not the best episode by any means, but it definitely is a poignant and arguably thought-provoking one - one that doesn't have scripting shying from an ending no better than any given episode of "The Brady Bunch".
Great incidental music as well.
Out of context (Eddington's antics that ultimately endangered billions), the clip provides a different perspective. But thankfully there's enough dialogue in the shown scene to provide
some context.
But the biggest questions remain:
- Did Eddington have a point in amongst trolling Starfleet for his own jollies?
- Would Sisko really go after all civilians, or was he saying that in last-ditch hopes that Eddington would see another perspective?
- With the advent of DS9, was the (already disproven) image of Starfleet being oh-so-noble finally disproven? Based on TOS (and TNG) already using the "evil admiral of the week" trope, I'd say DS9 shied away from the former series' own shyness and approached it head-on, with warp speed.
Episodes from TOS and TNG (prior to season 6, circa 1993, as DS9 started up by then) that already had admirals/other captains shown in a less-than-goodie light:
- The Omega Glory
- Turnabout Intruder (indirectly, also via anecdotal allegation than any concrete fact because the script didn't know what to do with its ideas.)
- A Taste of Armageddon (the dingdong ambassador and the demand the Federation intervenes)
- Spectre of the Gun (ordered by the Federation to go in, at all costs (what's that Prime Directive thingiebobboonie, again?)
- The Offspring (Data's "child" is to be taken, in a redux of the plot tropes used in...
- ...The Measure of a Man, where Starfleet has dictated without due process that Data is a toaster and of all the avenues the episode explored in depth, the episode forgets to do a good job at describing Starfleet's position - something even Riker could not do on his own, and Riker too brings up the convenient "off button" that pretty much says it all. No sentient being has such an easy-bake off button. However, a constructed device generally does.)
- Star Trek VI (as a major plot point, showing Federation and Klingon high command operatives as conniving villains)
- Dr Crusher, in violating cultural and PD rules flagrantly (like Picard doing the same for the aforementioned "Code of Honor")
- etc, etc
At least from recollection.
TNG, up to season 6, did a far better job at not using Starfleet/Federation folks as evil villain fodder. I'm not including examples or doorknobs (e.g.
Roscoe P Coltrane Logan who demands to take over the bridge for Geordi in "The Arsenal of Freedom", or the people behind snake oil peddler Kozinski (or Kozinski himself, for that matter...), or Picard for doing some of the bizarre things he did in season 1 (e.g. arbitrarily throwing a volley of photon torpedoes over a planet's horizon for the sole means of terrifying the Ligonians to return the abducted security chief Yar!!!) - forget Sisko, what Picard did is clearly not as complex an issue (stopping a mass mass murderer versus resolving a kidnapping of one person because everyone's hawt for Yar). By season 6 and 7, some DS9-style scripts were seeping into TNG, probably to blur the lines between both shows (while simultaneously showing time and time again how Sisko wasn't a clone of Picard... or Kirk, though of any captain, Kirk would be the closest... and even then...
IMHO, one could argue that DS9 is the spiritual if not real successor of TOS. TNG was a warm and fuzzy, yellow/orange aside. Even if it's been said that Gene wanted TOS to be de-canonized for a while (despite early TNG going to town in using TOS ship models as set props, etc!!)
But it's all the same franchise and a refreshingly complex one at that.
Taking out "BLAZE OF GLORY".
It was fine, just not as good as "FOR THE UNIFORM" in terms of the Sisko/Eddington conflict.
I'd nix that one for the half-baked and questionably-acted "replicator vs real food" scene alone. Showing differences between Eddington's side and Sisko's had so many more effective ways of doing so, than:
Of all the ingredients in food, the adjectives are the lamest and Eddington isn't selling that very well at all.
Of greater interest is how Sisko opts to ferry Eddington around, which took real guts for him to keep his personal shields up - noting Sisko's deserved hatred of Eddington for everything up to that point. At least the scene improves once they get done faffing about with the food, and continues to prove why Sisko is the most complex and compelling captain of the lot.
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