Star Trek DS9 - Season 2 - Episode 21
Star Trek DS9 - 2x21 - The Maquis, Part II
Originally Aired: 1994-5-1
Synopsis:
Sisko and Gul Dukat join forces in an effort to avert a war between the Cardassians and a group of Federation colonists led by Sisko's old friend. [DVD]
Filler Quotient:
0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- Numerous major long term plot threads are serviced here.
Problems
- The admiral says the rebels are still Federation citizens, but not all of them are because lots of them gave up their citizenship when they decided to stay on the Cardassian side of the border.
Factoids
- Properly trained Cardassians can resist Vulcan mind melds.
Remarkable Scenes
- Sisko's speech to Kira.
- Sisko and Odo leaving Quark in jail.
- Legate Parn regarding Gul Dukat being held by the Maquis pending execution: "What difference does it make whether we do it or they do it?"
- Dukat ridiculing his interrogators.
- Odo using his shape shifting abilities in battle.
- Dukat describing the Cardassian legal system. Entertainment, not justice.
- Kira: "With that kind of firepower, the Bajorans could have lost a full scale assault on Cardassia!" Dukat: "And lost."
- Dukat scaring the wits out of the contraband freighter.
- Sakonna: "I am a Vulcan. My emotional state is irrelevent." Quark: "Well I'm a Ferengi and my emotional state is very relevant."
- Sakonna to Quark: "Do you propose to lecture me on logic?"
- Quark's lecture about buying peace at a bargain price to Sakonna.
- The space battle. Nice!
- Rules of Acquisition; 3. Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
My Review
Nothing unexpected here. One notable detail is how Sisko saves Dukat's life. Must have been difficult for Sisko muster up the will to do that. Sisko working with Dukat was definitely surreal. Sisko's resolve remains strong, he is more willing to defend the Cardassians, the treaty, and the peace; turning on former Federation members, even his former friends, to accomplish this. I liked the way he balanced his loyalties and duties in this episode so perfectly. His actions were the perfect model for a Starfleet officer, in my opinion. Everything from his chats with Cal to his handling of Dukat was great. The climax was a lot of fun to watch, the space battle of unexpectedly high quality. I liked this second part better than the first part.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
This two-parter is perhaps the best DS9 offering to this point. Good stuff.
There is a problem here: the Zeppelite ship canrun at warp 9,8.
I love Sisko's speech: "The Problem is Earth..." I love what he says, and I love the way he makes Kira shut up. Kira needs to shut up more often in my opinion.
Here we see the emergence of Sisko as a total badass -- fantastic.
Solid episode that finishes off the set up from the first part nicely. Unfortunately it doesn't do much more than that.
I too enjoy Sisko's 'the problem with Earth' speech, I also enjoy Dukat who has been a joy throughout both parts.
"What's that phrase? 'Shoot to kill'?"
The Maquis, are an excellent addition to the Star Trek universe and stories will make very good use of them over the next few seasons.
Not too fond of Avery Brooks' acting in this two-parter, and he is totally outplayed by Dukat. Sisko just comes out as a whiny, grumpy tight-ass.
I also like that Dukat comes out as not only a villain, and it nuances the image of the Cardassians. On the space battle - it was ok, but felt a bit like a computer game at times...
Did anyone catch Hudson's Shatner-esque delivery of the heading towards the end of the episode?
This was an excellent two part episode and represents the very best of DS9-there's a very complicated issue here and you can sympathize with all sides, even with what Dukat is trying to accomplish. But the Maquis storyline always bugged me because if you're setting up something complicated, it deserves a good resolution.
Obviously you can't resolve the Maquis storyline here because it's still setting up Voyager. But it fails to reach a real resolution at any point. After taking direct action here to stop the Maquis, blowing up some of their ships, Sisko and the DS9 crew are largely going to ignore the Maquis for the next few years, save for a couple of episodes per season. They're more concerned with the Dominion. In the end the Maquis is going to be gobsmacked completely off screen by the Dominion. It's this loose thread that's dangling for a long time that never was completely pulled into place, so it got lopped off when they ran out of stories to do with it.
I feel that Federation leadership takes a bit of unjust blame here. There's degrees to which I can understand them being out of touch, but they're dealt a rough hand. First they finally managed to sign the peace treaty with the Cardassians and setting up a DMZ. This was apparently a fair enough deal with both sides having to concede colonies. They tried to relocate their citizens, but those people refused to move and said they're rather live under Cardassian rule than give up their land. So they leave them...and then they blame the Federation when the Cardassians treat them like crap in attempt to make them give up their lands. Then the Federation is stuck in a position where they either have to go to war, or attempt to police their citizens who start their own shooting war. The Federation breaking a peace treaty with the Cardassians would open a whole new can of worms for them because of their treaties with the Romulans and whatever tenuous agreements they had with the Tholians.
What I wanted to come out of this, at some point, was Starfleet policy to retain some clarity. Either they would go to war to protect their citizens, or they would disavow responsibility for them completely and tell the Cardassians to use their own discretion in dealing with the Maquis. We never got a real resolution to the Maquis situation on Voyager either, since the fact that there were Maquis crew members there mattered for maybe 4 episodes.
@John
I thought Kira's speech to Sisko was way more brave, to school her superior officer about Cardassians like that.
Siskos speech to her was most cowardly, he should have said that to the admiral not someone who agrees anyway.