At dinner with the Siskos, Cadet Nog reluctantly reveals that the B-plot will involve his difficulty getting respect from Klingons. Because this is TV, General Martok shows up at that very moment with this week’s plot-starter: an intercepted message for “Michael” about a terrorist missile launch which threatens to trigger a devastating war.
Sisko seeks the help of Michael Eddington, the former Federation security officer and self-styled resistance hero, who’s in a jail cell (a SPACE jail cell, mind you).
Eddington is too cool for school: “You like this, don’t you, Ben? You like deciding the fate of others. It makes you feel important.”
After a comic filler scene with Quark recounting the role he played in prompting Morn’s breakdown, we’re on a runabout, where Sisko and a shackled, uncooperative Eddington encounter plot contrivance particles that generate a “rivals with a shared goal” field. (No questions. Here, watch this space battle!)
When we last saw Eddington (s5e13 “For the Uniform“), the script worked hard to make us believe he was principled and empathetic, and that meant Sisko had to acknowledge and even embrace the Federation’s moral complicity; but now that this storyline features Sisko offering Eddington freedom in exchange for stopping the death of billions of innocents, Eddington’s refusal definitely gives off supervillain vibes. Their many scenes together are well written and well acted, but Eddington’s taunting rhetoric is less convincing making the whole tone seem… off. (More on that later.)
Back in the B Plot, Nog decides to confront the Klingons but falls over and the Klingons laugh at him. (Sad trombones!)
Later, Nog decides again to confront the Klingons, and this time they respect him. (Happy party horns! Are we done here… please?)
I was bracing for another visit to another dimly lit cave (again with the caves), but imagine my shock when instead we visit “a grim little fogbound piece of rock” with dimly lit flat surfaces and right angles, depicting a mind-blowingly science-fictiony location that’s ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from a dimly lit set that uses curved rock surfaces.
The expositional banter intensifies as the duo tries to enter the launch facility to deactivate the missiles.
Up until this point, I felt the script was awkwardly forcing Sisko and Eddington through the motions of an “antagonists earn mutual respect” trope that wasn’t quite working. I figured my write-up would probably emphasize how the tropes were so by-the-book that they earned a facepalm.
But in light of one particular revelation (no, it’s not Eddington’s “lucky loonie” monologue; you’ll know it when you see it), I have to give credit to the producers for running the risk of letting us think they were just doing a bad job with the “rivals find common ground” trope, when it appears instead the writers were building up to an even cheesier trope — and though it’s rushed, it justifies a lot of what I thought was “off,” and I have to admit, they committed to the bit.
If I’m going to accept a universe with warp drives and inertia dampers and universal translators, it’s not really too much more to ask me to believe this new detail about Eddington’s backstory.
This episode doesn’t rise to the level of s1e19 “Duet” or s4e5 “Indiscretion”, and I found the Voyager arc with Brad Dourif’s Souter more effective than the Eddington arc. In an age when TV shows had 25 or so episodes a season, this looks like a filler show; nevertheless, Nog’s plucky optimism showcases the Federation at its best, while the Maquis plotline raises postcolonial questions that anchoring it in the season arc, providing meaningful world-building.
