Man, this episode pissed me off! So angry.
Kasidy, girl, whyyyyyy?!!!! And that Eddington! The smug, brainwashed, bald-headed, double crossing bastard!
Garak and Zeyal bonding was the only thing that took the edge off.
That was dramatic! And, as was so often the case with DS9, it's drama that has been earned. It's all about our characters, with the betrayals here feeling genuine.
The Maquis have been a significant issue for some time now, but up until this point there has been no personal connection for anybody, and that especially applies to us as an audience (Sisko's old Starfleet friend was somebody we didn't know, and Chakotay doesn't count because he has no personality to connect to). Now we see Kassidy is not at all who we thought she was all this time, and it works brilliantly. Avery Brooks gets to play through this wonderfully, and the relationship between him and Kassidy - and not to mention how it also involves Jake, because he's a part of this - allows for the narrative to unfold in a very engaging manner.
And then the episode blindsides you with what's REALLY going on. Eddington has been around since the very start of season 3, so it's a real shock that he turns out to also be a Maquis. Honestly, I think his appearances have been a bit too few and far between for this to have all the impact that it could have, but it's a great plot twist. Eddington has also been pretty bland and forgettable, but it looks like that was all an act as he rips into Federation values with gusto at the end. I've never really agreed with what the Maquis stand for, but now that the show finally delivers a passionate spokesperson it's much easier to see where they're coming from. And he's spot on correct about the Federation's fake veneer of all cultures getting along together in harmony.
One other thing I love about this episode is the relaxed nature we get to see at several points. From Bashir and Garak hanging out at a springball match to the casual family dining going on with the Sisko's, Deep Space Nine feels like a place full of friends.
Like that squash game. Like Garak and Ziyal. Like the sauna. Fascinating. It's about time to tell stories about the only two Cardassians aboard the station. Garak is a man full of surprises and so is his romantic life. You can't be sure what he's really up to and how he feels and how genuine all of this really is. I still think he's gay. I want him to be gay. But you can't be sure. It's also great how the Major became a protective godmother. I'd really love to learn more about how she takes care of Ziyal.
The Kasidy story is great. To start with: I really like her. I understand why Ben loves her and why he's troubled by the situation. Sadly, this story could have been prepared better by showing Ben's and Kasidy's relation more frequently. This way, you'd feel (even) more attached to her and you could imagine better how it must be to walk in Ben's shoes. But when she's taken away it's emotional anyway.
O'Brien and Work (and Eddington) discussing the Marquis is also great. Not that we didn't learn before that not everyone view them as shady terrorists. It's perhaps a missed opportunity to hear Eddington's real thoughts about the Marquis (also later in the Zoom call with Ben). But basically we already realized before that he's perhaps not loyal to the Federation and he will get ample opportunity to justify himself later. But what I said about Kasidy before is also true for Eddington. I still feel that he's underdeveloped and the betrayal could be so much more shocking and disturbing if we had bonded with him more before. But the little bits and pieces we gather about his motivation is great. His actions and the Marquis in general are great. DS9 is the only show that dares to extensively show that Starfleet and the Federation does have opponents from within with a very different philosophy. Frankly, I always felt uncomfortable that Federation is extremely militarized. In today's most advanced and most peaceful societies, the Armed Forces play a very limited role. In the Federation, Starfleet seems to have an uncomfortable amount of power and is tasked with all sorts of vital tasks ranging from logistics and policing to advising politicians, research and education.
How both stories with Kasidy and Eddington are intertwined and how the story culminates in that dust cloud is clever and exciting.
And since this is DS9 the episode's plot is embedded in wider geopolitics. You really sense how serious the situation had become: Cardassia and the Klingon's fight. The situation on Cardassia seems to be dire. The Marquis became obviously a major place in the sector. All of that is not really shown but people talk about this in briefings and private conversations and that's quite immersive.
All the elements for a great A-plot and a solid B-plot are here. However, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the balance of this episode is a bit off. Perhaps each plot should have had his own episode. Perhaps the A- and B-plot don't really work together 'cause they have nothing in common. I mean, they intertwine perfectly and they are perhaps both about betrayal. But the type of betrayal is very different. Plus, one story is about disappointments in love intertwined with politics in the sector while the Garak story is about starting a friendship (I guess?). I'm not sure that should be in one episode.
Eddington is quite the actor. Who had thought it, this tight laced, stuck up, straight as an arrow appearance was the act of the century.
To hide all this contempt for the Federation and the life he lead up until this point, requires more finesse than I would have credited him with
Eddington: "Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis?"
Me: "Why is the Maquis so obsessed with the Cardassians?" Even Bajoran people accept Cardassians just because of Federation oversight, yet still the Maquis are bothering about the almost dead Cardassians? Comparing Federation with the Borg is such a nice humor. I guess Eddington don't know much about history how countries merged to establish Starfleet. That's whole point of the Federation! Getting everything under it.
Not Kassidy! No...
I never liked Cassidy Yates.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-03-09T23:26:18Z
[8.0/10] Love and duty can tear you in opposite directions. Benjamin loves Kassidy. He basks in the scent on her pillow, entrusts her with his son, and exults in their time together. But Captain Sisko is wary of Captain Yates, as she tries to find ways out of inspections and faces suspicions of smuggling supplies to the Maquis in contravention of Federation law.
That is the heart of “For the Cause”. It took a lot for Benjamin to let someone into his life like this. Kassidy has been around for a long time now, becoming a presence on the show that changes the dynamic for Sisko in more ways than one. The episode thrives on the emotional turmoil of coming to care for someone so deeply over a long stretch, only to find that whatever personal feelings you may have, their choices may challenge you just as deeply in your role as a professional. The sense of betrayal, the wariness around someone you used to feel a profound trust and intimacy with, wouldn't have the same impact if Deep Space Nine had just introduced Kassidy in the same episode.
That said, you do have to set aside the fact that Sisko is strangely unprofessional here. You’d think that the first time Odo and Eddington told Sisko that they suspected Yates of malfeasance, he’d say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’m delegating this matter to Major Kira, since I clearly can't be objective in managing the investigation given my personal connection to Kassidy.” But if he did that, then there would be no episode, so I suppose the good material for Avery Brooks, and Captain Sisko, is worth a strange aberration in protocol.
Because it creates all sorts of tense decision points for Benjamin. Does he let Kassidy’s ship go without an inspection when she makes a personal appeal to him (something that also violates good practices), or does he make her submit to the look-see in the name of security? He lets her go, and decides to have her followed, but would he do the same if she weren’t his girlfriend? Would she get the same leeway or surveillance?
And what about at home? There he’s more distant, playing the part of the doting partner, but surreptitiously pumping her for information, subtly questioning where she’s been and what she’s been up to. If much of this episode centers on Sisko seemingly violating his objectivity as an officer because of his affections for Yates, much of it also centers on him violating the trust and intimacy of his personal relationship in the name of doing his job. The intersection of his personal feelings and his professional obligations is fraught territory, and there’s both narrative and emotional power in Benjamin trying to navigate the two.
In a strange way, the same applies to the B-story here, which sees an apparent courtship, or at least friendship, emerge between Garak and Dukat’s daughter, Ziyal. The tone is very different, but the concordance between them plays out in similar terms. The pair seem drawn to one another, but longstanding enmity between Garak and Dukat (did we know that Garak tortured Dukat’s father?), and a threat from Kira not to mess with Ziyal put even the normally unflappable Garak on edge. Should he act on this, or should he give into his justified paranoia that this could all be some kind of 4D chess to make an attempt on his life?
In a weird way, it’s the same business vs. personal conflict Sisko is going through. Should Garak let his personal feelings about Ziyal win out, or should he give into the more pragmatic concerns that have directed his life to date? On the one hand, I like where “For the Cause” lands. Garak needs to reassure himself about his paranoia, but Ziyal makes a good point. They’re both outcasts. They’re both all but forbidden from returning home. They have much in common, and can provide each other with some camaraderie and comfort as the only two Cardassians aboard. Resolving things on a note of connection is a canny choice in an episode otherwise full of the bittersweet.
On the other hand, this also feels like an effort to give Garak a case of the not-gays. I’m not qualified to wade into the complicated morass of queer-coding characters amid network standards and practices in the 1990s. But suffice it to say, I’ve always read Garak as being primarily attracted to Dr. Bashir, and my understanding is that Andrew Robinson played him that way. It’s unreasonable to expect television writers to follow your headcanon, but something feels off and out-of-step with prior portrayals about the romantic undertones to Garak’s budding connection with Ziyal, and it tempers an otherwise solid subplot in “For the Cause”.
The resolution of the main story is even better. The show has its cake and eats it too. Turns out, Captain Yates is conspiring with the Maquis behind Sisko’s back, but only to give them badly needed food and medical supplies, not weapons or anything harmful. Meanwhile, the real betrayer is Lt. Eddington, who used Kassidy as bait to get Sisko off the station and give him the wiggle room to take over the station and thwart a shipment of industrial replicators meant to fortify the Cardassians.
I love that choice. Eddington has been around even longer than Yates. He’s been a consistent presence, but also a fairly milquetoast one, blending into the background with his “I just do my job” approach, which makes him the perfect spy. He’s had a few suspicious moments (which is why many fans suspected he was a Changeling), but for the most part, he’s been the consummate, unremarkable professional. Making him the true bad guy, playing the part to perfection, while Kassidy has unclean hands but is more of a red herring for the true malfeasance, adds to the gut punch of Eddington getting the better of our heroes.
His monologue to Sisko after the fact doesn’t have much to do with the themes of the episode, but may nonetheless be one of the most powerful critiques of the Federation in a show not short on them. Call him on his crap or not, but the idea that the Maquis just want to be left alone, that their truest “crime” is rejecting paradise, that the Federation is no less insidious at assimilation than the Borg, are recriminations that ring with a certain amount of truth and sting. Frankly, it’s a perspective that deserves its own piece. But in brief, it’s a necessary tonic to the aspirational but sometimes myopic perspective that the Federation represents within Star Trek, and one that lands with extra force given the geopolitical landscape of the 1990s.
But the greater focus here is on the push-and-pull between Kassidy and Benjamin as lovers in private and as adversaries in public. Sisko and the Defiant catch Yates in the act, confirming Benjamin’s worst fears. There it is. He’s been blind. He’s been hoodwinked. The woman he thought he loved is a traitor.
Only, she isn’t exactly. She was following her duty, her principles, the same way he was. She comes back to face the music, not out of some abstract ideal, but because she cares about Benjamin enough to owe him an accounting. Despite it all, these two people love one another. The stellar performances bear that out. But they come with the bittersweet acknowledgement that however they may feel about one another behind closed doors, their crimes and obligations as captains take precedence, at least for the moment.
So Benjamin embraces Kassidy, and then calls in his security to take her to stand trial for her actions. And Kassidy embraces Benjamin, knowing that coming back to be honest with him is the only chance of salvaging the authentic love behind the necessary subterfuge.
That is a hard thing. To care about someone and be forced to let them go because it’s your job. To love someone but be forced to lie to them because it’s your duty. The conflict between who Benjamin and Kassidy want to be, and who they have to be, gives this one incredible force. I don’t think it’s any great spoiler to tell you that you’ll see Kassidy Yates again. But when you do, it comes with the more complicated relationship that emerges in the wake of she and Sisko’s personal lives crashing headlong into their professional lives, as they both try to stay afloat amid the wreckage that ensues.