Kent's Corner Issn. 2

11 February 1997

Kent's Corner-------------------------------Stardate 97021.1
            "Botched Political Statements in DS9"           
                                                            
A recent Deep Space Nine episode ("For The Uniform") dealt  
with both personal vendettas and with the ends justifying   
the means, and in the latter respect I think it was another 
disappointment for Star Trek watchers.                      
                                                            
In the episode, Mike Eddington (the former DS9 security     
officer who has defected to the Maquis) makes himself known 
as a general pain-in-the-@ss, as well as a tactical         
mastermind who leads the Maquis to several victories.  When 
the Defiant is disabled by Eddington (in a Maquis raider,   
using a virus he planted in the Defiant's computer),        
Eddington accuses Sisko of having let the war go            
"personal," and downloads a copy of Le Miserable to the     
Defiant as a way of making his point (I have never read/    
seen Le Miz, so I half-expected for him to d/l Moby  Dick   
-- but then, that's already been done in ST2, hasn't it?).  
At the end of the episode, in order to make Eddington       
sacrifice himself to help his people, Sisko arms a torpedo  
with environmentally not-friendly stuff and fires it into a 
Maquis colony.  Eddington surrenders to avert a similar     
fate in other nearby Maquis worlds and is arrested.  At     
this point in the program I sat there, staring at the       
screen, waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  I was waiting 
for Sisko to say that the colony hadn't really been dest-   
royed, but it was all a trick to fool Eddington.  No such   
statement was made, and Sisko even admits something like    
"Oops, I forgot to tell Starfleet about this plan -- didn't 
I?" as if he hadn't just destroyed the lives of thousands   
of people in his quest to make it easier to catch *one*     
traitor.  This, to me, is an unacceptable viewpoint for     
Star Trek to be pushing:  that the Ends justify the Means.  
"The Enterprise Incident" aside, this isn't what Star Trek  
is about.  Does this action -- basically, a declaration of  
official, firing war on not only the Maquis but all civil-  
ians living near the Maquis -- sound like normal Starfleet  
policy?  There are major problems with these actions.  They 
seem very un-Sisko-like and un-Starfleet-Officer-like.      
This is only the latest example of Paramount putting junk   
scripts on that only *look* like real examinations of       
ethical dilemmas.  Having Our Hero succumb to a vendetta    
and destroy innocents to get his quarry is the farthest     
thing from Roddenberry's views as I can think.  When did    
Kirk do this?  Picard?  In ST2, JTK was up against a        
maniacal revenge-driven "superman" but he, himself, was not 
overcome by the madness of his opponent.  Do YOU think that 
G.R. would be happy with "For The Uniform?"                 
                                                            
The other recent DS9 episode that comes to mind as bad      
policy is "The Basics" (or 'back to the basics,' something  
of that vein, DS9).  Up until the last few minutes they had 
what I was willing to call one of the best "There's a moral 
here that pertains to 20th-century politics" episodes yet.  
I was genuinely concerned as to how they would have Worf    
play this, and if they would have an unhappy ending where   
Worf takes the "traditional" or "conservative" (a.k.a. "un- 
popular in Hollywood") side.  They managed to evade any     
genuine creative thinking, however, by making the tradit-   
ionalist leader a power-hungry psychotic moron.  If they    
could have kept him a normal guy, with simply a few policy  
disagreements, it would have been a great episode.Or maybe  
this says something about the political leanings of the     
current leadership of the Star Trek franchise.  In any      
event, G.R. would not be proud, I think.                    
                                                            
                                                            
                                                            
                                                            
Kent's Corner-------------------------------Stardate 97021.1
ZMP Limited------Fleet Captain Adam Kent-----WTFF/CNN of STF