Recap / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 05 E 13 For The Uniform

Eddington being a smug bastard.

Sisko is snooping around a Maquis colony looking for an informant on his mission to bring the former Commander Eddington to justice, but Eddington himself surprises Sisko and tells him that the informant has already been marooned on a distant planet. The Maquis traitor tries to talk Sisko out of his mission to capture him, appealing to his sympathy for the plight of Maquis refugees, but Sisko will not be moved.

Sisko beams back to the Defiant and, along with Captain Sanders on the USS Malinche, gives chase to Eddington's ship. When the Defiant prepares to attack, the ship's systems shut down due to a computer worm placed by Eddington while he was on the station. Although he has the ship at his mercy, Eddington holds off destroying it and warns Sisko again to abandon his pursuit.

After getting towed back to the station, Sisko learns that he's been taken off the mission due to his lack of success. Fuming, Sisko works out his frustrations on a punching bag while Dax tries to convince him not to take it so personally. But then Sisko learns that Eddington has attacked a Cardassian colony with biogenetic weapons, making it inhospitable to Cardassians. He rounds up the crew into the half-functional Defiant to rejoin the chase. Nog is recruited to deliver messages between Ops and Engineering in lieu of communications. They track Eddington into some plasma fields but discover that it was just a decoy. Eddington again tells Sisko to give up his vendetta, likening him to Inspector Javert in Les Misérables. Before Sisko can rejoin the Malinche, it gets disabled by Eddington's ships, leaving the Defiant as the only recourse to bring him to justice.

The crew put the pieces together to figure out where Eddington will next strike: Quatal Five. They arrive just after the attack, with Eddington's raiders racing away while transport ships evacuate Cardassian colonists off the poisoned world. The Defiant destroys one Maquis ship, but the other one, with Eddington aboard, cripples the transport ship, forcing Sisko to rescue it and let Eddington get away yet again.

Contemplating his latest failure, Sisko turns to Les Miserables and reasons that, if he is Javert in Eddington's mind, than Eddington must see himself as Valjean, an innocent man who is moved to a heroic self sacrifice. Sisko decides to "play the villain" in Eddington's fantasy. He orders the crew to fire torpedoes laced with Trilithium resin at a Maquis colony, making it uninhabitable to humans. He then threatens to target all remaining Maquis colonies in the DMZ. Eddington offers to give himself up if Sisko will stay his hand, and Sisko agrees.

Eddington is hauled onto the station under guard, looking vaguely pleased with himself. Meanwhile, the colonists on each of the poisoned colonies will swap to the other one, where they won't be affected by the toxins that drove out the previous occupants. Sisko admits to Dax that he didn't have Starfleet authorization for his actions, but any good villain knows how to gamble. Dax admits that she sometimes like it when The Bad Guy Wins.

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Tropes

• Armor-Piercing Question:
  Eddington: Tell me, Captain, what is it that bothers you more: the fact that I left Starfleet to fight for a higher cause or the fact that it happened on your watch?
• The Bad Guy Wins: Discussed in the end by Sisko and Dax, as he opted to play the role of villain to Eddington's hero.
  Dax: Sometimes I like it when the bad guy wins.
• Batman Gambit: Realizing that Eddington is a romantic and sees himself as Jean Valjean in a real-life melodrama, Sisko decides to play to that. He engineers a melodramatic 'climax' wherein the 'hero' must sacrifice himself for the cause and the greater good: Launching WMDs against a Maquis colony and threatening to do it to the entire DMZ unless Eddington surrenders. It works.
• Big "SHUT UP!": "MAJOR, SHUT THAT THING OFF!"
• Break the Haughty: Eddington spends the entire episode smugly ahead of Sisko at every step, cruelly mocking his failed attempts to stop his efforts. At least until Sisko takes the kid gloves off and starts effectively nuking Maquis planets, rendering them uninhabitable to humans for 50 years, and unless Eddington surrenders, he'll do the same to every planet the Maquis call home. By that point, Eddington is scared shitless that Sisko would even cross that line, and would be willing to cross it further just to bring him in, leading to him surrendering to get Sisko to stop.
• Bullying a Dragon: Eddington was the Station's Chief of Starfleet Security for the better part of 2 years and he saw Sisko's temper in action more than once. You'd think he'd know better than to continually piss off the man who designed the Defiant, or to at least tone it down. And like a dragon, it finally scorches him in the ass when Sisko decides to drop chemical weapons into the atmosphere of every Maquis colony in the DMZ unless Eddington surrenders.
• Continuity Nod: Odo asks Sisko to remind Starfleet that Eddington was brought to the station because they didn't fully trust Odo to handle the station's security. They must have learned their lesson already, since Eddington was never replaced.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: Seeing as this episode is a sequel to the one in which Eddington outs himself and defects to the Maquis, it's quite fitting that the two titles, "For the Cause" and "For the Uniform", map to each other.
• Cruel Mercy: In The Teaser, Eddington prevents Sisko's meeting with an informer. Eddington balks at the suggestion he killed him. He says the informer shuttle's engines were sabotaged and that he was left marooned on a planet in the Badlands. Sisko notes that all Eddington did was ensure him a slow death.
• Death Glare: Sisko gives one to Captain Sanders when he mentions how Eddington "fooled" him. Sanders tries to backspace this as a poor choice of words, but Sisko admits that it's appropriate.
• Disproportionate Retribution: This is how Eddington sees Starfleet going after him—he who joined a noble cause like Valjean being hunted like a mad dog by a Javert—in the same way that Valjean was jailed for so long for stealing a peace of bread. Conveniently ignoring the fact he compromised Starfleet by feeding their top-sensitive information to a terrorist cell, he still thinks Sisko dropping chemical weapons into the atmosphere of Maquis colony planets is too far an act just to stop him.
• Dramatic Irony: Eddington and the Maquis release a chemical weapon into a planet's atmosphere that is harmless to humans, but toxic to Cardassians, forcing the Cardassians to abandon the planet and allowing the Maquis to take it. At the end of the episode Sisko does the reverse on a Maquis planet, deploying a chemical weapon lethal to humans but harmless to Cardassians. The result is that the two colonies basically just swap planets.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Sisko and Jadzia discussing Eddington's love of Les Miserables and how he sees Sisko as Javert. Jadzia mentions how she doesn't care for the melodrama of Victor Hugo's work, making Sisko realize that Eddington is essentially living out a personal melodramatic hero fantasy. This gives Sisko the insight he needs: To defeat Eddington, Sisko has to truly become the 'villain'.
• Everyone Has Standards: Although Eddington is an unapologetic terrorist who would happily let Cardassian innocents die if it meant letting Sisko finish him off, he's against killing and passes up numerous opportunities to kill Sisko.
• Explosive Instrumentation: The chief figures on this happening (in fact, it already has earlier in the episode) and chooses Nog as the makeshift com system because he'll be able to hear Sisko's orders over the explosions.
• Fantastic Racism: Eddington escapes from Sisko by firing at a Cardassian ship escaping the planet he just bombed. When asking if Sisko will save the ships, he states its inhabitants are "only Cardassians."
• Foreshadowing: There's a really subtle bit of foreshadowing with Eddington's love for Les Miserables. While Eddington sees himself as a romantic hero fighting the noble fight against an evil empire, he's forgetting a key part of the book's plot: The revolution fails. This subtly foreshadows not just Eddington's fate by the end of this episode, but the ultimate fate of the Maquis after his surrender and once Cardassia joins the Dominion in the next two episodes.
• Good News, Bad News: O'Brien rattles off a Long List of system failures and malfunctions before mentioning that the new holo-com is still working perfectly.
• He Who Fights Monsters: During the climax:
  Eddington: Can't you see what's happening to you? You're going against everything you claim to believe in. And for what? To satisfy a personal vendetta?
  Sisko: YOU BETRAYED YOUR UNIFORM!
  Eddington: And you're betraying yours right now! The sad part is that you don't even realize it. I feel sorry for you, Captain. This obsession with me, look what it's cost you!
• Heroic Sacrifice: This trait of heroes gets Invoked by Sisko to make Eddington surrender.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Odo realizes this trope is in play when Eddington uses a Breen nursery rhyme as a Maquis signal. The lyrics are irrelevant—what matters is that it's Breen, and therefore a signal to rendezvous at a Breen colony.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Eddington wants to make Cardassian colonies unlivable for them? Then Sisko is going to do the same to every Maquis colony he can find.
  • In a sense, by constantly referencing Les Miserables when mocking Sisko, Eddington gives him an important clue as to his worldview, which allows Sisko to turn the tables on him.
• I Shall Taunt You: Eddington keeps trying to convince Sisko to give up on the chase, but he can't help gloating a little each time, which only exacerbates Sisko's ire.
• Inspector Javert: A comparison brought up numerous times during the episode, due to Sisko's almost obsessive hunt for Eddington. Eddington even starts calling Sisko Javert, once again cherry-picking his perception of events to ignore the fact that he's done far more to wrong Sisko than Valjean ever did to Javert.
• Irony: Starfleet Security assigned Eddington because they didn't trust Odo. After reporting that he found more of Eddington's backdoor viruses in the station computer, Odo makes it a point to Sisko to remind Starfleet Security about it.
• It's All About Me: Eddington may accuse Sisko of making it personal, but he's also incapable of comprehending anything that contradicts his perceived role as a hero, just ignoring Sisko's observations that trying to fight for the lost colonies is preventing the human refugees moving on and finding their own homes and offering no real protest to Sisko's points that the treaty with Cardassia was more complex than Eddington lets himself acknowledge.
• It's Personal: Everyone knows Sisko is out for revenge against Eddington. Dax and even Eddington himself confront him on it.
• Karma Houdini: Despite violating orders from Starfleet Command and deploying a chemical WMD against a Maquis planet, Sisko faces no repercussions on-screen. May be mitigated by the fact he finally brought Eddington in and kneecapped the Maquis leadership, and Sisko was sure to use a chemical weapon that's only harmful to humans, not Cardassians, allowing the planet to be resettled with the refugees the Maquis had just displaced.
• Large Ham: Sisko goes to town against Eddington, probably as a form of Obfuscating Insanity.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Invoked. Sisko threatens to unleash a biogenic weapon on a Maquis colony planet (rendering it uninhabitable for 50 years) and will continue to do so until Eddington surrenders. Eddington doesn't believe "the pride of Starfleet" would do it, but Sisko does. The rest of the crew is similarly surprised.
  Eddington: You're bluffing.
  Sisko: Am I? (to Worf) Commander, launch torpedoes.
  Worf: (Stunned Silence)
  Sisko: Commander, launch torpedoes!
  Worf: (Beat) Aye, sir. (launches torpedoes)
• Mandatory Line: Averted with Bashir, who doesn't appear in this episode. In the teleplay, Bashir does appear in a scene set while the Defiant was back at Deep Space Nine, but it was either not shot or cut from the final episode.
• Moral Myopia: The Maquis dropping chemical weapons into the atmosphere of Cardassian colonies and forcing them to evacuate, thereby destroying their lives? Perfectly fine as far as Eddington is concerned. Sisko doing the same to ''Maquis' colonies? How dare he!
• My God, You Are Serious!: When Sisko gives the order to launch the biogenic weapon on a Maquis colony world, all members of the bridge staff are initially shocked into silence. It takes Sisko repeating his orders emphatically for everyone to realize that yes, he wants the biogenic weapons launched, and he wants them launched now.
• Never My Fault: Eddington holds himself as the hero of the story—the Valjean to Sisko's Javert—and that he's fighting a noble cause against the Cardassian oppressors in the Demilitarized Zone. What he's refusing to accept is that he still betrayed Starfleet, sabotaged their systems, attacked two of their vessels under the pretense that Sisko forced him towards this action, turned two Cardassian colonies into death zones to the people living on them, and was willing to send an entire Cardassian transport ship to its doom unless Sisko stopped pursuing him, which he justifies as inconsequential by the fact they're Cardassians.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: As noted under Eureka! Moment and Hoist By His Own Petard, Eddington's constant quoting of Les Miserables eventually gives Sisko the insight he needs to understand Eddington's psychology and figure out how to finally beat him.
• Not So Stoic: Worf is actually stunned that Sisko is willing to poison an entire planet's atmosphere, forcing Sisko to remind him to carry out his orders.
• Oh, Crap!: Eddington's reaction when he realizes Sisko wasn't bluffing about attacking Solosos III.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You know an order is hard to swallow when Worf actually has to ask for confirmation before carrying it out. He apparently thought Sisko was bluffing.
• The Only One: After being told that the Malinche is the only ship in the sector, but too far away to assist in the area where Eddington is operating, Sisko reminds his staff that there is another ship in the sector, and it's at docking bay three.
• Outside-Context Problem: This is part of the reason the Eddington assignment's initially reassigned to Sanders. Starfleet Command feels that as Eddington's former commanding officer, Sisko's vulnerable. Eddington simply knows the Captain and his strengths and weaknesses all too well and it's largely why he's managed to evade Sisko's manhunt for 8 months. Command's hope is that Sanders, someone Eddington doesn't know and has no experience with, will neutralize that advantage. It doesn't work, but points for trying.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The only way Sisko can defeat Eddington is to play himself up as the villain Eddington cast him as in his mind and use the same tactics as the Maquis on Cardassian colony worlds; bombarding Maquis colony worlds with biogenic weapons and force them into becoming refugees until Eddington surrenders.
• Percussive Therapy: Sisko indulges in this with a punching bag while unloading his frustrations to Dax.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Eddington is the villain, so you expect him to do bad things. Sisko's use of the same tactics is treated gravely at first, but by the end, Sisko and Dax are both lightly trading quips about their "villainous" tactics. It helps that the evacuated colonists simply swap worlds (since the poison to one species was harmless to the other in both cases), so no new refugees were created by his actions.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Captain Sanders, the commander of the U.S.S. Malinche, is shown to be a consummate professional and a Nice Guy. When Starfleet orders him to take over the hunt for Eddington from Sisko, he tries to break the news as gently and respectfully as possible. And when his ship is disabled chasing Eddington, just like the Defiant was, he doesn't hesitate to turn over an important piece of intel so Sisko can carry on the pursuit while admitting his own failure to get the job done.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sisko and Eddington trade these throughout the episode.
• Repeat to Confirm: Necessary as many of Defiant's systems are hosed by Eddington's virus, including internal coms. As a result, Sisko has Nog relay orders from the Bridge to Engineering, as well as any responses/warnings.
• Sadistic Choice: Eddington leaves Sisko with a tough choice: rescue the ship carrying Cardassian refugees that he disabled and is about to fall into the planet's atmosphere, but let Eddington escape; or pursue Eddington, but leave innocent Cardassians to die. Sisko chooses to save the Cardassians.
• Sequel Episode: To "For the Cause", making this also the second installment of the Eddington Trilogy.
• Shout-Out:
  • There is a ship named after La Malinche.
  • Les Misérables is discussed and becomes plot relevant.
  • Dax dumps on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, calling it overly melodramatic, with two-dimensional female characters.
  • Dax muses on "the secret life of Michael Eddington."
• Stunned Silence: The bridge crew's reaction when Sisko announces he's going to poison a Maquis colony world.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • While Odo and his technicians remove the Cascade Viruses Eddington left in the Station's mainframe, Odo grimly and realistically also admits that he can't guarantee they've found all of them. Eddington was the Station's Chief of Starfleet Security for nearly two years and thus had the means and time to sabotage more systems with similar 'surprises'. The only way to be sure is to literally go through every single system on the Station, not matter how minor or inconsequential.
  • The damage to the Defiant from Eddington's Cascade Virus. With the entire main computer wiped, every single piece of Starfleet software is going to have be reloaded and re-programmed from scratch. And since the Station isn't a spacedock with a full repair crew, O'Brien and his team can only go so fast with the repairs and re-programming. He estimates two weeks before the Defiant is back to full operation, and during the hunt for Eddington numerous systems are still off-line and the ones that are working aren't at maximum efficiency.
• Taken Off the Case: Starfleet Command orders Sanders to take over the pursuit of Eddington from Sisko, feeling that Sisko is too personally invested in bringing Eddington to justice. However, Eddington proves too crafty even for Starfleet, forcing Sisko to finish the job his way.
• Theme Naming: The Malinche continues the tradition of Excelsior-class ships named after Native Americans, in this case La Malinche was Hernán Cortés' interpreter, adviser and mother of one of his sons.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Eddington has a whole Valjean/Javert complex going on with him and Sisko. Sisko eventually realizes that to win, he must stop thinking he's the hero like Javert did.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Maquis creates warheads that would poison the atmosphere of any Cardassian-inhabited worlds, ensuring they can't be inhabitable for the next 50 years. Sisko then decides to do the same to their worlds, and takes one out before threatening to do it to all of them, forcing Eddington to surrender.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Sisko already had a personal vendetta against Eddington specifically, but he believes the Maquis truly crossed the line by attacking the Malinche.
• Worf Had the Flu: The Defiant Had A Computer Virus. During the first battle with the Maquis, Eddington triggers a cascade virus he'd left inside the system, wiping the computer's memory banks and leaving it defenseless; his one Raider is able to give it a pounding before leaving, just to make a point. They're still not up to full performance by the time they set off after him; course corrections have to be made manually and the main comms are down, so Nog has to relay messages to and from Engineering via a personal communicator.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Eddington uses a fake distress call from a Cardassian freighter to lure in and disable the U.S.S. Malinche.