The Dumbest Thing Eddington Ever Did

[Artabax]

Cultural diversity in the Fed? Both Riker and Tuvok insist that Bajoran earrings must be verboten.

Maquis did NOT leave Fed, they were abandoned by Fed with a "Peace" treaty that defined Cardassi are entitled to murder Maquis, Maquis are verboten to fight back.

Sisko was already determined to be Javert, nothing Eddington could possibly say could make Sisko any tiny bit more Javert nor less Javert than he already was.

Sisko genocided many Maquis planets. He made Cardassi uncountably stronger. And as soon as Fed had genocided all the Maquis, Fed were no longer useful and open war resumed.

Sisko felt bad about killing one criminal and one Romulan Senator. He never felt guilty for genociding dozens of planets.

[Yukaphile]

There are two sides to every story. Sisko was right to think we should try to give the treaty a chance. He was right when he said all that Cal cared about was vengeance. They were offered resettlement. And they started out with a legitimate basis, until Eddington escalated the stakes.

Don't forget that Eddington did the same thing first, and that Sisko at least warned them. They just didn't take him seriously. And it was the damned Dominion who killed them. Not the Feds. The Feds were trying to maintain order. So were the Cardassians.

[Meushell]

Cultural diversity in the Fed? Both Riker and Tuvok insist that Bajoran earrings must be verboten.

Maquis did NOT leave Fed, they were abandoned by Fed with a "Peace" treaty that defined Cardassi are entitled to murder Maquis, Maquis are verboten to fight back.

Sisko was already determined to be Javert, nothing Eddington could possibly say could make Sisko any tiny bit more Javert nor less Javert than he already was.

Sisko genocided many Maquis planets. He made Cardassi uncountably stronger. And as soon as Fed had genocided all the Maquis, Fed were no longer useful and open war resumed.

Sisko felt bad about killing one criminal and one Romulan Senator. He never felt guilty for genociding dozens of planets.

When did he commit genocide on many planets? He made one planet uninhabitable, and those people went to a planet that Cardassians were forced off.

[Jonathan101]

Seeing this scene I'm reminded of Chuck's comment about how Eddington is the Joker to Sisko's Batman and how Dukat wasn't Sisko's nemesis like the show thought he was. Using the whole Ed to Joker comparison it is interesting to consider another point chuck brought up when he talked about The Joker as Batman's nemesis which is how, even though The Joker may not know about Batman's true backstory he LOVES to revisit it to hurt Batman as much as possible.

While Eddington may not be The Joker he does seem to have a similar fixation of Sisko has shown in For the Uniform and here in For the Cause. In the scene where Eddington is calling Sisko worse then the Borg it suggest, to me, that Eddington had already sort of "picked" Sisko as the Javert to his Valjean.

I think the reason Eddington did this Incredibly Stupid move was because he wanted a straw man to push over and seeing how often Sisko would disobey orders when it would help him but wouldn't do so for the helpless Maquis who were only trying to protect themselves clearly Sisko is a villain who only cares about himself. Which leads us to this scene this whole discussion is about which is the moment Eddington decided to make this as personal as possible for Sisko so he would hunt him down and help fuel the narrative he had made for himself.

Chuck was wrong.

Dukat has way more interactions and conflicts with Sisko than Eddington ever did (Eddington had two or three episodes, not counting the times he was just the security chief; Dukat had literally the entire show to interact with Sisko).

Dukat has an equivalent rank in the Cardassian Union; Eddington was Siskos' subordinate.

Dukat was Siskos' predecessor as commander of the station; Eddington had nothing to do with the station before coming on board.

Dukat wanted to be seen as the saviour of the Bajoran people, while Sisko actually was the saviour of the Bajoran people despite not wanting to be seen that way. Eddington is more like Dukat in that regard in that regard in fact, in that both want to be seen as saviours.

Dukat and Sisko bond over their shared commitment to family and yet that ends up serving as a further contrast between the two, as Sisko brought his son to DS9 to spend time with him after losing his mother, while Dukat left his family on Cardassia so he could bang Bajoran women. Eddington doesn't have any family so far as we know.

Won't bring up season 7 where Dukat becomes the Chosen One of the Pah Wraiths because that's pretty self-explanatory, but it happened because it did in fact make sense.

Eddington is not the Joker to Siskos' Batman; he's more like his Jason Todd or something, without the family drama, or even Anarchy. Sisko is everything Dukat likes to imagine himself to be, and that is the whole point; Eddington meanwhile is a foil in a different and much less developed way.

The Borg comparison was a bit insensitive, but I don't think he meant it in that way or remembered that Sisko lost his wife to the Borg; he also didn't mean they were LITERALLY worse than the Borg since he does say "in some ways"- he's not dumb enough to think that the Borg are somehow preferable. He was just trying to make a point about how the Federation might not be as noble or high-minded as they like to think, and the rest of the show proves that he is right as far as that goes.

I don't think either Eddington nor Sisko meant or took the Borg comment personally. Sisko hated Eddington because he betrayed him and betrayed the uniform he put so much stock in, and that was enough. Eddington was probably surprised that Sisko was so determined to capture him, although I do agree that he somewhat enjoyed having an arch-nemesis a bit as it played into his hero fantasy.

[Meushell]

The Borg comparison was a bit insensitive, but I don't think he meant it in that way or remembered that Sisko lost his wife to the Borg; he also didn't mean they were LITERALLY worse than the Borg since he does say "in some ways"- he's not dumb enough to think that the Borg are somehow preferable. He was just trying to make a point about how the Federation might not be as noble or high-minded as they like to think, and the rest of the show proves that he is right as far as that goes.

I don't think either Eddington nor Sisko meant or took the Borg comment personally. Sisko hated Eddington because he betrayed him and betrayed the uniform he put so much stock in, and that was enough. Eddington was probably surprised that Sisko was so determined to capture him, although I do agree that he somewhat enjoyed having an arch-nemesis a bit as it played into his hero fantasy.

I agree. I don’t think Sisko would have acted any differently without the Borg comparison.

The more I watch DS9, the more I agree with Eddington, though both characters are wrong in different ways. I believe Eddington did what he felt was right. Look at Our Man Bashir, how hard Eddington works to save the lives of Sisko and crew. I don’t think it was personal for Eddington until Sisko made it personal, and that probably hurt.

For Sisko, I think the betrayal was enough because Eddington was already on his second chance. “I make it a policy to trust people in that uniform. Don’t make me regret that policy.” (Paraphrasing, as I don’t remember the exact quote.)

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

If you ask me, it's the smartest thing he ever did.

[Deledrius]

The more I watch DS9, the more I agree with Eddington, though both characters are wrong in different ways. I believe Eddington did what he felt was right. Look at Our Man Bashir, how hard Eddington works to save the lives of Sisko and crew. I don’t think it was personal for Eddington until Sisko made it personal, and that probably hurt.

A recent rewatch of DS9 really highlighted for me the struggle the show had with the Maquis. They were right, but had to be antagonists to the "good guys" of DS9. Most of the Maquis plots had trouble working inside of that contradiction, even with DS9's willingness to say the good guys can sometimes be wrong.

[Actarus]

I don't believe Eddington's comparison changed anything for Sisko. Sisko was not there to negociate anything. He was ready to listen, he wanted to know why Eddington joined the Maquis, but the conclusion would have remained the same. What pissed Sisko is that for many months he had under his command a security officer that was a Maquis agent and he never suspected anything all this time. Eddington used DS9 to help the Maquis, which put the peace treay with Cardassians at risk. So you bet Sisko took this personal. He was already on the hunt for that sole reason. The Borg comparison may have ticked him, but the result would have remained the same: Eddington was to be arrested and court martialed.

[Actarus]

The more I watch DS9, the more I agree with Eddington, though both characters are wrong in different ways. I believe Eddington did what he felt was right. Look at Our Man Bashir, how hard Eddington works to save the lives of Sisko and crew. I don’t think it was personal for Eddington until Sisko made it personal, and that probably hurt.

A recent rewatch of DS9 really highlighted for me the struggle the show had with the Maquis. They were right, but had to be antagonists to the "good guys" of DS9. Most of the Maquis plots had trouble working inside of that contradiction, even with DS9's willingness to say the good guys can sometimes be wrong.

It was not a struggle. That was the point of this entire story ark. Antagonists do not have to be "bad guys". The Maquis was right to fight for their homes. However, the Federation was also right to enforce a treaty that ensured peace with one of the major powers of the quadrant. It's not always a question of "Good vs Evil", of "Right vs Wrong". In politics, it generaly isn't...

Take Les Misérables. In the D&D alignment chart, Jean Valjean is clearly Neutral Good. His main antagonist, Inspector Javert, is not evil. He's Lawful Neutral. But their conceptions of what is "right" clash.

[Jonathan101]

If you ask me, it's the smartest thing he ever did.

You either die a red shirt, or you live long enough to see yourself become a memorable Star Trek villain.