The Maquis, Part I (S20E20)
Airdate: 24 April1994
Written by: James Crocker Directed by: David Livingston
Running Time: 46 minutes
By the spring of 1994, The Next Generation was winding down and preparing to hand the mantle of Star Trek's flagship series to Deep Space Nine, its younger and deliberately different sibling. By that point, however, the fictional universe those series inhabited had become a very different place from the utopian, optimistic vision with which Gene Roddenberry had originally endowed it. Where the original series — and much of The Next Generation — had tended to present the United Federation of Planets as a near-perfect civilisation whose officers could be relied upon to do the right thing, Deep Space Nine offered something more complex, darker and altogether more morally ambiguous. It was a universe in which the line between hero and villain had become smudged, and in which viewers of the mid-1990s might have recognised troubling echoes of their own twentieth-century world. One of the clearest and most significant expressions of this new tendency is the two-part story arc that gives this episode its name: "The Maquis".
The instalment went before audiences roughly a month after the final-season TNG episode Journey's End, and it is that earlier story which supplies the actual background to the arc. There, viewers learned of the treaty between the Federation and the Cardassian Union that had brought their long border conflict to an end, redrawing the demarcation line between the two powers and leaving numerous Federation colonists stranded on what had now become the Cardassian side of the border. These colonists were presented with an unpalatable choice: abandon their homes, or live under Cardassian rule. The Maquis, Part I wastes little time in exploring the consequences of that decision.
The plot opens on Deep Space Nine, where a Cardassian freighter, the Bok'Nor, is about to depart. As the vessel prepares to leave, an individual wearing a Starfleet uniform is seen adjusting equipment in the ship's vicinity; moments after departure, the freighter explodes, killing everyone on board. It is a cold, efficient act of sabotage, and it immediately raises the question of whether the culprit was a renegade Starfleet officer, a Cardassian conspiracy, or something more complicated altogether. Sisko and his crew begin their investigation and receive assistance in the form of Lieutenant Commander Calvin Hudson (Bernie Casey). Hudson is a Federation officer in charge of the Demilitarised Zone along the Cardassian border, and, as an old friend of both Sisko and Dax, he is welcomed aboard the station. It soon becomes apparent, however, that his sympathies lie, at least in part, with the colonists; he is openly dissatisfied with a treaty that has abandoned them, and his unease quietly plants the first seed of doubt in the audience's mind.
Sisko receives a second, far less welcome offer of assistance when Gul Dukat, the wily former prefect of Bajor, secretly makes his way onto the station. Dukat claims to be acting entirely on his own initiative, without the knowledge of the Cardassian Central Command, and he is characteristically smooth in his assurances. Sisko, understandably reluctant, nonetheless allows him to accompany the investigation when they take a runabout into the Demilitarised Zone. There, the two men witness a battle between Federation and Cardassian vessels — ships that, though nominally civilian, are unmistakably armed — and, in a significant escalation, an unidentified Federation ship destroys the Cardassian craft.
Back on the station, a separate strand of the story develops. Sakonna (Bertila Damas), a Vulcan woman, has been assisting an unnamed saboteur, and she approaches Quark with a request to help smuggle weapons to the colonists. The negotiations are interrupted, however, when the saboteur is abducted by unknown assailants. Meanwhile, Sisko and Dukat arrive at a colony in the Demilitarised Zone and find Hudson and a group of Federation colonists locked in a heated argument with Gul Evek, Hudson's Cardassian counterpart. Evek produces what he claims is the confession of one William Patrick Samuels (Michael A. Krawic), a colonist, whom the Cardassians identify as the saboteur responsible for the destruction of the Bok'Nor. Samuels, conveniently, is said to have killed himself in his cell shortly after confessing. The confession and the suicide are both too neat to be entirely credible, but when Hudson speaks privately to Sisko he admits that Samuels may well have been the saboteur. For Hudson, however, that is almost beside the point: the colonists have been forced to defend themselves, and he regards their actions as justified. As the two men travel back to Deep Space Nine, Dukat denies the colonists' accusations that the Bok'Nor was secretly supplying weapons to Cardassians operating in the Demilitarised Zone — a denial that carries a distinctly hollow ring.
Once back on the station, O'Brien confirms what many have suspected: the device that destroyed the Bok'Nor was of Federation origin, a finding that implicates the colonists and their allies directly. Matters then escalate quickly. Sakonna and a group of colonists kidnap Dukat, and a previously unknown organisation calling itself "the Maquis" publicly claims responsibility for the escalating campaign of resistance. Sisko, Major Kira and Dr Bashir track the abductors to the Badlands, a treacherous region of space notorious for violent plasma eruptions, and beam down to what appears to be the Maquis stronghold. They are immediately surrounded by armed insurgents — and at the centre of the group stands Hudson, the identity of the Maquis' leader revealed at last.
In terms of the larger Star Trek mythology, the introduction of the Maquis represents the most drastic abandonment to date of Roddenberry's depiction of the Federation as a utopian society and an unquestionable force for good. Whether by design or by drift, the Federation of Deep Space Nine is far from that ideal. The treaty that ended the war with Cardassia is so disastrously conceived that those affected by it view it in much the same way that some Frenchmen regarded their government's decision to capitulate in 1940 — as nothing short of treason. The Federation, in the eyes of the colonists, has effectively become a collaborationist Vichy France, selling out its own people in the name of an expedient peace. The colonists' response is to launch a guerrilla campaign of their own — one that, seen from the other side, can readily be viewed as terrorism. The very name "Maquis", with its deliberate echo of the French Resistance, reinforces the parallel and invites the audience to consider how easily the roles of feeedom fighter and terrorist can blur.
Yet the episode is careful not to allow the audience to settle into comfortable sympathy for the insurgents. A key scene between Sisko and Kira underlines the moral complexity of the situation. Kira, herself a former freedom fighter, instinctively understands the Maquis and sympathises with them; Sisko's counter-argument is a pointed one. The Bajorans, he reminds her, had no choice — their world was occupied, and their resistance was a matter of survival. The colonists of the Demilitarised Zone, by contrast, had a choice: they could have left, or they could have accepted Cardassian rule and attempted to live under it. By choosing to stay and then to fight, they have crossed a line, and however understandable their grievances may be, the violence they employ is not necessarily justified. It is a quiet, thoughtful exchange, and it ensures that the episode's sympathies remain genuinely divided.
As a piece of television writing, the episode is notable for the way in which James Crocker's script frames this new development in the form of a crime mystery. The audience is kept perpetually at odds, never quite sure whether any given character — Hudson, with his ambiguous loyalties, or Dukat, with his unreadable motives — is being honest or pursuing an agenda of his own. The structure is a real strength, keeping the viewer engaged in the detective work even as the larger political themes gather weight. The instalment also works well as a bridge between the two series, tying Deep Space Nine back to The Next Generation: Richard Poe reappears as Gul Evek, the same Cardassian role he had essayed in TNG's Journey's End, lending a welcome sense of continuity across the wider franchise.
There is also a good deal of enjoyable texture in the episode's lighter moments. The uneasy "buddy cop" rapport that develops between Sisko and Dukat — two men who distrust each other profoundly yet find themselves obliged to work together — is a nice touch, and the script leavens the grim subject matter with small, human details. Chief among these is Quark's infatuation with Sakonna, the strikingly attractive but obviously uninterested Vulcan woman, who rebuffs his advances with a mixture of Vulcan logic and pure disdain. Such moments remind the audience that Deep Space Nine, for all its new darkness, had not lost its sense of humour.
If the episode has a weakness, it is its ending. The closing cliffhanger — the ambush in the Badlands and the revelation of Hudson as the Maquis leader — is undeniably effective, but it is also rather convenient and melodramatic, and, as is often the case with two-part episodes, it sets up expectations that its resolution may struggle to meet. There is a sense that the writers have saved their most dramatic revelation for the final moments almost by reflex, and the payoff, when it comes in Part II, does not entirely live up to the promise.
That reservation aside, The Maquis, Part I remains a very good episode, one that deserves to be appreciated not merely for its importance to the worldbuilding of Star Trek — which is considerable, with consequences that would ripple through the franchise for years — but also for the assured quality of its execution. David Livingston's direction keeps the various strands of the plot moving with clarity and tension, and the performances, particularly from Avery Brooks and Marc Alaimo, are uniformly strong. It is an episode that signals, with unusual confidence, the direction in which the franchise was heading: away from easy certainties, and towards a far more challenging moral landscape.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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