2x20 The Maquis (1)

[8.1/10] Middlemarch by George Eliot is full of insightful passages, but one of my favorites comes when a member of what we’d now consider the middle class tries to talk down a cadre of angry locals who are mad about a train set to run through their community. “Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they knew through a hard process of feeling and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel.”

There’s some condescension there, but also a truth about when high-minded decisions from far away centers of power fall on the heads of folks long removed from them. Without knowing the specifics, the Federation-Cardassian treaty first described in “Journey’s End” from The Next Generation sounds like a good and noble thing. Compromises are made between peoples who don’t always see eye-to-eye in the name of brokering a stable peace. There are costs to any such agreements, but the hope is that they’ll be far outweighed by the benefits.

But what does that mean to the people who have to pay those costs? The colonists who have lived in what is now the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone have built their lives in these places. Their options are to abandon their homes and start over or live under increasingly contentious Cardassian rule. If comments from Admiral Nechayev on TNG are any indication, they knew these lands were disputed when they settled. Still, it’s expected, maybe even understandable, that those left behind by this treaty would view it as a farce and an offense, and let that club fall on the Federation’s grand ideals which have nevertheless disrupted their quiet lives.

If you can’t tell, I like “The Maquis” and the concepts the episode has in tow. In a way, they represent the first real chink in the Federation’s morally superior armor. Sure, we’ve had plenty of rogue admirals and questionable orders from Starfleet Command before. But this is something different. It’s a broader idea about deals between governments having winners and losers, and those who receive the short end of the stick on both sides taking matters into their own hands.

The notion of Starfleet officers and Federation citizens disagreeing with Command and official stances isn’t startling. The notion of them resorting to terrorist attacks and being ready to fight a war their government’s trying to avoid, one they feel is inevitable and justified anyway, certainly is.

What makes it particularly interesting is the presence of two figures. The first is Commander Hudson, Starfleet’s liaison to the colonies in the demilitarized zone, whose membership in The Maquis provides the cliffhanger at the center of this duology. The choice to include a man like him is an important one, because it makes it impossible to just write off this group despite their tactics.

He’s introduced as Sisko’s longtime friend. Their wives spent time together. They came up in the service together. Hudson’s not a madman or a dastard. He brings up legitimate points about the bind the treaty puts the colonists in and voices the sense that Federation leadership is blind to the realities and asymmetries of life for those people in the shadow of the Cardassian rule. When he pops up on the Maquis stronghold in “the badlands” of that area of space, his presence is a sign that these are not mustache-twirling villains or folks who’ve lost their minds; they’re people our heroes know and trust, who can’t be written off as easily as all that.

The second is Gul Dukat. In a way, this is his coming out party. We’ve had meaningful glimpses of him in the past, from his involvement with the issue of Cardassian war orphans to his flashback deputizing of Odo. But watching him sit side-by-side with Commander SIsko takes things to a different level entirely.

Like Commander Hudson, he is a reasonable antagonist and countervailing force, someone not reduced to pure evil or straight villainy. He’s not a good man, and isn’t one to be trusted, but he too makes valid points about the Federation’s superiority complex despite foibles of their own. He has a family. He seems to legitimately call off his countrymen in pursuit of Federation vessels. He tells truths Sisko doesn’t want to hear about who’s responsible for the deaths of seventy-eight of his people in an explosion triggered at Deep Space Nine.

In short, he’s bad, but he’s not entirely wrong either. Instead of a flat baddie, he plays like someone on the other side of an international dispute would: holding different values, believing he’s the patriot and good guy, and questioning the hypocrisy and “fair play” of his counterpart, even one he seems to genuinely like. Dukat’s a complicated figure, and his efforts to show Sisko that the Federation isn’t so pure or blameless in all of this are uncomfortable but compelling.

The only blemish here is the B-story, involving Quark trying to romance Sakonna, a Vulcan who wants to business with him and is intrigued by his “cultural idiosyncrasies.” It’s not so bad; it just feels a little awkward to have such a goofy subplot in an otherwise more serious episode. There’s a solid punchline, with Sakonna asking Quark for weapons to contribute to the Maquis, but most of this is Quark’s romance routine. There’s some laughs to be had there. Armin Shimmerman remains a pro at adding endearing touches to an unctuous character. But it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the episode.

Most of the first part of “The Maquis” is focused on a simple question -- whether Sisko can figure out who blew up the Cardassian vessel. What’s interesting is that the audience knows the answer to the essential internal mystery. The cold open shows us a man in Starfleet uniform messing with a control panel on the Cardassian ship moments before it blows up. There’s wiggle room for a twist, but we essentially already know that someone from the side of the traditional good guys is the perpetrator here.

Normally, that’s a weakness for an episode of Star Trek, but it succeeds here because what’s important isn’t whodunnit; it’s Sisko accepting that it was someone from his side. He’s not wrong to suspect malfeasance on the part of the Cardassian when it comes to skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone. Sisko correctly calls back to the Cardassians arming Bajoran hardliners through a third party to destabilize a burgeoning peace, and despite a confession from the perpetrator, we know from TNG’s “Chain of Command” what Cardassian torture methods can elicit.

But the truth is that the former Federation colonists, who now find themselves under the auspices of the Cardassians, aren’t happy. They don’t feel seen or understood. And just as the Federation government is willing to sacrifice their land in the name of a broader peace, The Maquis are willing to sacrifice that peace and use tactics our heroes would never even consider in the name of what they feel is self-defense. There’s a complexity, a moral grayness to that conflict, the sort interwoven social and political knot Deep Space Nine would eventually become famous for.

It would also become famous for testing the limits of Gene Rodenberry’s vaunted vision. The Great Bird of the Galaxy envisioned a future for humanity beyond creed or cruelty or anything but our greatest ideals. In episodes like “The Maquis”, DS9 had the chutzpah to ask how those ideals and academic principles might seem to the people whose more hardscrabble lives don’t let them feel the benefits of such a pollyanna view. And Star Trek is so much the better for it.