Day 39: DS9, The Maquis (Part 1)

Show: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine

Episode Particulars: S2EP20, “The Maquis, Part 1”

 Summary: A Cardassian freighter, the Bok’Nor, blows up just after pulling out of DS9’s dock. As the crew tries to investigate, Commander Calvin Hudson (Bernie Casey), an old friend of Sisko’s, shows up to tell Sisko that thanks to this incident, the lives of the Federation colonists in the demilitarized zone may be at risk. Shortly after that, Sisko gets a visit from Gul Dukat, who suspects the risk goes both ways, and the two of them witnessing Cardassian ships getting attacked by small Federation vessels only confirms that. As tensions mount on all sides, Quark gets paid a visit by the Vulcan Sakonna (Bertila Damas), who wants to use his connections to acquire guns. It’s all adding up to something big…but certain members of the audience have no clue where any of the numbers even came from.

Standalone Thoughts: I had to dig into both Wikipedia and Memory Alpha for this one, just to confirm what I suspected; unlike most episodes of the show, this one ties directly into some of the stuff that was happening over on The Next Generation. The problem is, if you aren’t familiar with what was going on in TNG, you’re going to be very confused.

While the show has been very clear about the conflict between Cardassia and Bajor, conflict between Cardassia and the Federation hasn’t really come up on DS9. Even O’Brien’s occasional comments about Cardassia haven’t really been put into context if you’ve just been watching DS9 by itself. So when the episode suddenly starts talking about treaties with the Federation, colonies, a demilitarized zone, and the like, you’re left floundering and wondering where all this came from. It’s probably a decent example of cross-show continuity if you’ve been keeping up with TNG at the same time (and at the time, TNG aired the day after DS9 did, so it was probably relatively easy to keep track), but on its own, you spend more time trying to wrap your head around things than you do concentrating on the material in the episode itself.

Even with all that, though, there’s some good to be found. I haven’t talked about Avery Brooks’ performance as I have the other actors, because while he’s been decent, he doesn’t do much to really make him stand out (aside from his parental interactions with Jake). But put Sisko in a crisis situation, especially when lives are at stake or there’s a moral dilemma, and he steps up his game. Brooks is at his best, I think, when Sisko is either angry or determined to follow his chosen course of action despite the arguments of others. And as the episode goes on, we see a lot of that on display, making me appreciate him a little more. There’s also a nice continuity nod to the events from the beginning of the season, and some Federation-Bajoran conflict as the situation escalates, thus creating both internal and external conflict. If we had just had a little more setup for this in DS9 itself, I’d probably be enjoying this a lot more. Instead, I’m baffled and looking forward to finishing this two-parter so DS9 can go back to doing its own, already established thing.

How it Relates to the Whole: We’ll have to see how this all plays out, so I don’t know what effect it will have on this show, though I seem to recall the Maquis making the occasional appearance here and there. In the wider scheme of things, however, the Maquis will pop in the second-to-last episode of TNG, and will, at least initially, provide some material for the upcoming Voyager. While I don’t particularly like this episode’s execution, I have to at least give the show some props for influencing the rest of its siblings in a small way.

Other: *The exchange between Dax and Kira in the teaser is one of the more cringeworthy moments I’ve seen in this show so far. Both of them are being catty to each other about their dating habits, and while I think the intent was to show playful teasing between friends, it doesn’t really come off that way. And the worst part is, it doesn’t seem to have any relevance to what’s happening in the show, so it’s completely unnecessary.

*Casey’s delivery of what I suspect was supposed to be an impassioned speech midway through the episode is awkward and stilted, which is weird because he was generally doing a fine job up to that point. I don’t know what was going on there, but I do know it’s very jarring.

*While I’m absolutely not complaining that Sisko asked Bashir to come along on the away mission at the end of the episode, I’m not entirely sure why. I guess he figured Bashir would be necessary, but since we’re not given a spoken reason, it’s a bit baffling. We’ll have to see what role Bashir plays in tomorrow’s episode.

Best Line/Exchange: I know I should probably choose a moment between Sisko and Dukat, or Sisko showing his command style, but the part that jumped out at me most was this;

(Sakonna is attempting to do business with Quark, while Quark is attempting to flirt with her by offering some rare Vulcan alcohol.)

Sakonna: I’m not thirsty, thus I see no reason to have a drink.

Quark: Well, it’ll be right here should you develop a thirst. Now, you mentioned a business proposition…

Sakonna: It is a private matter; I would rather not discuss it here.

Quark: Then we can discuss it over dinner. That is, we can plan the business meeting to coincide with when you think you might get hungry.

Sakonna: That would be acceptable.

Quark: That would be wonderful. How does Eight sound to your tummy?
Sakonna: I will return then. (Walks off)

Quark’s hardly what you would call subtle, but you have to give him credit for figuring out his audience and adjusting his sales pitch accordingly. He does something similar in later scenes, and I have to admire his persistence. Not that I’d enjoy finding myself on the receiving end of it, of course, but it’s fun to watch from a distance.

After the Fact Update: The situation is even more complicated than I thought; the DS9 Companion reveals that the entire setup for the Maquis, starting in TNG and continuing here, was done solely in preparation for Voyager. Allow me to quote extensively here;

“We knew that we wanted to include a renegade element in Voyager, and that the show would involve a ship housing both Starfleet people and these idealistic freedom fighters that the Federation felt were outlaws,” explains Writer Jeri Taylor. “So in order to avoid having some burdensome backstory and exposition in Voyager’s pilot, we decided we would plant the idea of the Maquis in the shows that were already on the air.”

I approve of this, on one level, because it’s a clever way of handling the situation. On another level, however, you run into the problem I talked about in the main review, which is that not everyone is going to have seen all the related episodes, so they might wind up confused anyway. Plus, as I mentioned in “Emissary”, Voyager wound up opening with an exposition dump anyway, so while it’s good to have established backstory, it does lead to the impression that they didn’t quite succeed at their goal. And to top it all off, the Maquis/Federation conflict in Voyager all but disappeared by Season Two, which ultimately made all this pointless. Ah well, at least DS9 managed to play reasonably well with the hand it was dealt, as far as I can recall.