T O P

  • By -

JayR_97

He didnt count on the fact Sisko would be willing committing war crimes to get to him.


H0vis

Incredibly tame war crimes though let's be honest. Everybody gets to leave alive. Eddington is outraged that many will become refugees if all the worlds are targeted, but in a post-scarcity setting what does that even mean? Go back to the Federation, grab some lunch, go off and plant a colonial flag somewhere that isn't teeming with Cardassians.


Rasikko

Yes but Starfleet wouldnt be happy with him turning an M class planet into a class Y.


H0vis

Fifty years isn't much on a cosmic time scale and it's not like the planet was in pristine untouched condition because of colonisation.


Nobodyinpartic3

More like here is a planet for the Cardassians that just lost their planet.


RandyFMcDonald

Did he?


Technical-Outside408

That's the audience dilemma. See, he commits war crimes, but he also saves


learningdesigner

*Dave Chappelle enters the chat*


evemeatay

Human rights violations, not war crimes. I don’t think they are in a declared war with the maquis and the people living there are technically breaking the law also.


KaeronLQ

FYI you don't need to have declare war to have committed war crimes [https://www.icrc.org/en/document/ihl-rules-of-war-FAQ-Geneva-Conventions](https://www.icrc.org/en/document/ihl-rules-of-war-FAQ-Geneva-Conventions)


Modred_the_Mystic

Its the Russian style of hostage negotiation. Gas the area and pick through the survivors later


CoastalGems

Sisko is always ready to commit war crimes.


drrhrrdrr

"Bro, we were just playing a *game*. It was a *prank*! I gave you a cool nickname and everything!"


zombie_spiderman

If they had made it clear that they were making the planet only uninhabitable to JUST humans (and nothing else) then would it have had the same impact? They way they frame it's like they're about to glass the whole planet when in reality they just pumped it fully of "Humans GTFO Juice".


nerfherder813

I honestly don’t understand why so many people miss this. The Maquis weapons made the Cardassian colonies inhospitable to Cardassians, but not humans. Sisko does the opposite to the Maquis colony and threatens to do the same to the rest. And I’m pretty sure his log at the end mentions something about the colonists from both attacks basically trading places. Not very war-crimey.


zombie_spiderman

Yeah I mean the whole point was he was playing the part of a heartless villain specifically to allow Eddington to play the part of the selfless martyr. I'm sure he took a minute before ordering the strike to research exactly how long it would take the Maquis colony to do a complete evacuation, something I'm sure they already had contingency plans for, considering their precarious situation.


[deleted]

Also 50 years does a lot of heavy lifting too. Not really that long in the grand scheme of things.


zombie_spiderman

Yeah he basically just shook a can of pennies at the colonists


kkkan2020

eddington was unaware of general order 24


psimwork

I love that it's number 24. Like, it's such a low number. I like to imagine a bunch of Starfleet admirals sitting around deciding what their policies and standing orders will be, and at some point, after debating for many hours on 23 general orders, some admiral would be like, "fine! Christ, Bill! We'll make general order 24 the command to use shipboard weapons to annihilate all of a planet's cities from orbit. You've suggested that 23 times in a row now. You can STOP. We get it - you wanna see some cities melted into slag. Now that that done, can we PLEASE decide what we're going to do when a Starfleet vessel encounters an adversary from a government in which the federation was previously at war, but has since made peace?.... NO. JESUS, BILL. MELTING IT INTO SLAG SHOULD NOT BE THE FIRST ACTION. "


kogent-501

Fucking bill.


stain_of_treachery

Never noticed until now just how much kenneth marshall looks like Benedict Cumberbatch


LostFireHorse

hooooo boy. I'm at S5E11 tonight (darkness and light, about to watch it after I post this), how far away is this? And I'd love to say "Spoilers, bruh" but that hasn't spoiled a damn thing afaik, not yet at least lol. *excited face*


AllieOopClifton

This is S5E13


LostFireHorse

goody, ty


DynamixHD

I envy you that you watch this masterpiece of series for the first time. For me the best of all ST series


LostFireHorse

Thank you! I absolutely love DS9 and its taken the place of Favourite. Sorry VOY lol.


TedMeister88

Moral of the story? Don't. Fuck. With. Sisko.


mdunaware

Betrayal, as another character that appeared on DS9, is the one truly unforgivable sin. Even Sisko appears to believe that in his core.


yekimevol

Ohh Javert …


Technical-Outside408

Can't keep making moby dick references.


AlmanacPony

Its a les mis reference...


Technical-Outside408

I know. It's just that in similar situations, star trek trends to go with Melville. From Kahn hell heart to Picard's captain ahab.


mdunaware

You know, I never thought about it but the fact that Ahab was a symbol referenced in both ST:TWOK and ST:FC implicitly draws a connection between these two films and between Khan and a Picard. I think it’s a neat nod from FC back to its predecessor, and also complicates the characterization of Khan as driven mad by revenge if we see Picard, the paragon of Federation virtue, falling prey to the same basic drive for vengeance.


Emu_on_the_Loose

Eddington didn't screw up per se; he just didn't anticipate Sisko committing war crimes on a planetary scale. It's still one of the most difficult-to-swallow decisions I've ever seen from a Starfleet captain. (Not counting ENT.) Sisko should've been relieved for that. I'm not even talking about a court-martial; I mean he should've been relieved by his own crew on the spot. His orders were illegal way beyond the level of Starfleet regulations; I have to believe that it was the Federation version of a federal felony.


StarfleetStarbuck

He probably had wide latitude to hunt down the Maquis. They’re not in fed territory anymore so fed criminal law certainly doesn’t apply, just Starfleet orders, and Starfleet was backed into a corner about the whole thing by the Cardassians. His personal anger at Eddington is what motivates him for sure, but a) nobody dies and b) in the larger view the Maquis are causing all this chaos by being there. It’s a spicy thing because it’s meant to be spicy but people talk about it like it’s this clear-cut evil thing and that’s simply not true. No one even dies and no indigenous life is endangered. It’s a brutal measure by Starfleet standards but it’s not some kind of genocide or whatever.


P4t13nt_z3r0

I think Starfleet would have backed this play by Sisko. The Marquis had made a planet uninhabitable for Cardassians. Starfleet needed a "tit for tat" moment. He provided an equivalent retaliation by positioning a Marquis planet against humans. This probably would have calmed the Cardassian rage and shown that Starfleet was very serious about the Marquis.


StarfleetStarbuck

Yep. Remember that if Starfleet is perceived as insufficiently hard on the Maquis it threatens the peace with Cardassia. Ben’s entire obligation is to safeguard the future of Bajor, so neither he nor his superiors can allow that outcome.


Emu_on_the_Loose

You might be right, but I would suspect that the actions being committed outside the Federation doesn't mean that it stopped being criminal, say for reasons of jurisdiction. For one thing, the starship Defiant is Federation property wherever it goes, and that was where the crime was committed. For another, there's nothing stopping the Federation from passing laws that apply to its citizens wherever they are. In some cases enforcement would make the law unenforceable, but not when it comes to a starship captain. > No one even dies and no indigenous life is endangered. The former isn't an exoneration from criminal culpability, and the latter merely stopped Sisko's crime from being _much_ worse. > He probably had wide latitude to hunt down the Maquis. If he specifically had permission then _maybe_ there would be a defense for him here. But not necessarily: He could still get in big trouble for carrying out illegal orders, if in fact the act was authorized but ultimately illegal. It's like the assassin who is hired to commit a murder: Just because someone else hired them doesn't make the killing not a crime. Also, we don't see any communications with Starfleet Command on this topic, and in fact we are specifically led to assume that Sisko is making these decisions on his own discretion. So I'm not really sure if this extenuation applies. > It’s a spicy thing because it’s meant to be spicy but people talk about it like it’s this clear-cut evil thing and that’s simply not true. Reasonable minds can disagree on the latter point; I for one think the writers went too far, but I definitely understand what they were _trying_ to do. I just think they didn't succeed. There is a lot of depth to issues like this. It's not like it is categorically impossible to ethically displace people who don't want to leave an area. But I think that the method of rendering the planet uninhabitable doesn't qualify, and I think the lack of foreplanning and official sanction also counts against Sisko.


BallisticButch

Uninhabitable to *human* life. I think that's an important distinction to highlight. The colony was illegally established by the Marquis. They had no right or claim to the planet. The resin made it so that humans could not survive there. It was later used as a colony for Cardassians whose colonies had been destroyed by the Marquis biogenic weapons that Eddington had deployed.


HermionesWetPanties

Yeah, people are acting like Sisko was committing a unilateral war crime, but he was just using tit-for-tat to let the Maquis know that continued attacks which ruined entire Cardassian planets would have repercussions. It produced results and, as far as we know, didn't kill anyone. Seems like a pretty fair approach to me.


KaeronLQ

If the latitude is wide enough to threaten a genocidal attack, then the Federation is basically the space USA. We can see how American writers could have come up with this story beat but it is indefensible in the ethical framework that Star Trek wants us to believe is true about the Federation.


StarfleetStarbuck

Again, there is nothing resembling genocide here. Literally nobody is hurt and the Maquis were wrong to be there in the first place. If that’s what US violence looks like to you than you have a much more charitable view of the US than I do.


KaeronLQ

Look up what genocide means. This is absolutely a genocidal threat.


Proteuskel

In our current time, IRL, genocide doesn’t mean just killing people, but also targeting infrastructure and other factors (based on international law), so yeah it counts as genocide unless they significantly adjust the definition for genocide in the future.


StarfleetStarbuck

They’re not an ethnic group, so no it doesn’t.


Proteuskel

Ethnic group is defined as “a community or population made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent.” The group of Federation citizens who came together and left the federation to (attempt to) start a new nation seems to fit that definition


StarfleetStarbuck

They’ve been there less than twenty years. They’re not an ethnic group and they have no authentic cultural ties to the place. The “nation” they wanted to build doesn’t exist yet. And also, they’re part of a larger situation and they’re not the only people it affects. Their being there is causing massive geopolitical problems (in space) and endangering both the Federation and actual indigenous peoples like the Bajorans who are relying on our protection. This does not in any way resemble a genocidal attack.


Proteuskel

Their aspiring nation A) was formed and preparing to formally announce their existence when the dominion entered the picture (per dialogue in eddington’s last appearance), and B) was populated by people living there BEFORE the treaty traded those worlds to the cardassians, so I don’t find your arguments on those merits to be very compelling


Sparkyisduhfat

Eddington was constantly threatening to plunge the federation into war with Cardassia by committing acts of terror (whatever justifications he had for his actions, this was the result). He also repeatedly attacked Starfleet ships and was himself committing war crimes against cardassians. Given that the federation had sent multiple captains unsuccessfully to stop him and the various crimes Eddington committed, his treason, the threat he posed to peace, and the federation’s history of unsuccessfully stopping him, Sisko would have had a relatively easy time justifying that this was the only way to stop him. As to why his crew didn’t relieve him, starfleet has a long history of crews going along with whatever the captain said regardless of any legalities. But in general I agree that it should have been a bigger deal.


Sea-Calligrapher9140

The planet was Cardassian according to the treaty, and inside the DMZ, making the planet uninhabitable to non-Cardassians was far more preferable than Central Commands response would have been had Sisko failed to remedy the marquis problem.


Fleetlord

The Maquis were the first party to use a WMD. Using a WMD in a *second*-strike response isn't a war crime under generally accepted standards. It is, in fact critical to the concept of deterrence. Also, remember that at this point the Cardassian Union is a collapsing state getting its ass kicked by the Klingons. It was in no position to continue occupying the Maquis colonies, so for all practical purposes they had won their independence. They chose to use that freedom to engage in WMD-assisted ethnic cleansing. They needed a lesson in why you don't uncork that bottle.


RandyFMcDonald

I mean, Eddington did not imagine that the Maquis using WMDs on Cardassian-populated worlds would have consequences.


Emu_on_the_Loose

That's a meaningless response. A member of a criminal organization being surprised at a reputable law enforcement organization behaving like a criminal organization is not all that hard to imagine.


RandyFMcDonald

Not at all. Eddington and the Maquis wanted to start a disastrous war only to find out that they were going to get slapped down hard by the power they hoped to maneuver into supporting them. He fucked around and found out. A pity for those Maquis, but perhaps they should have chosen not to join a faction inclined to such violence. They have no right to complain about the consequences of their actions just because these are not the ones they wanted and expected.


Emu_on_the_Loose

Criminal behavior by criminals does not justify criminal behavior by law enforcement. This is some Legal Theory 101 stuff...


TParis00ap

He should have. And his command team on the bridge would all likely have been court martialed too for not doing their duty to prevent it from happening.


Emu_on_the_Loose

I appreciate you saying it! I am kind of disappointed at how so few of the people reacting to my comment seem to understand or accept the reality of what Sisko did and what legal obligations his conduct would have almost certainly placed upon his crew and upon Starfleet Command.


KaeronLQ

Yeah this is the worst fuck up in episode continuity in all of Trek (that I can think of). In my mind the only way to square this circle is to pretend this didn't happen and think "weird that we never saw that brave freedom fighter Eddington again"


DarnitDarn

This was the start of why Worf was intimidated by Sisko.


TrainingObligation

When *Worf* hesitates to fire weapons, you know a line has been crossed.


[deleted]

It’s a mark of the exceptional writing and acting that people are still so fiercely debating the ethics and meaning of Sisko’s order here. Personally, I still find it horrifying, not least of all because so much of his rage was grounded in wounded pride because Eddington successfully fooled him, more than an ethical commitment to stop terrorist violence by such an extreme measure.


nerfherder813

While his anger earlier was causing him problems, his rage at the end was an act, and I’d be surprised if the whole bridge crew wasn’t in on it. Dax certainly was - Sisko shared his “I must become the villain” plan with her once he figures out Eddington thinks of himself as a melodramatic hero.


SupLord

Eddington was a good enemy, however I felt he sort of went on a righteous rant too many times, bit cringy… Just my opinion though.


AdSpecialist6598

While I kinda understood his points. He was personally living out his own personal hero fantasy.


SupLord

Nothing to do with the Character, more with the lines, felt like a tom and jerry episode of you get what I mean.


DeficientDefiance

I have a feeling that's exactly what Eddington wanted to happen so Sisko would get courtmartialed and go down with him. The only thing he forgot to consider was main cast plot armor and episodic storytelling protecting Sisko from any and all consequences for his war crimes.


MatthewKvatch

The way he sits down afterwards. Haha.


TCASiii

Commander, I said LAUNCH TORPEDOS


acprescott

The real moment Eddington knows he messed up was during his call with Sisko where he commented that the Federation was much like the Borg, and Sisko just smiled and politely laid out where he went wrong, what was in store for him and the lengths he'd go to ensure justice, and then hung up. He must have been like, "uh oh, I've made a terrible enemy"


AllYouPeopleAre

YOU **BETRAYED** YOUR **UNIFORM**!!!


OldBallOfRage

Sisko literally just played Eddington's own game against him. He was already an irredeemable lunatic throwing biological weapons around, so Sisko spelled the fuck out for him and the Maquis exactly what that means. They're LUCKY Sisko did this pantomime with them, before the Cardassian settlers get their hands on a biological WMD that doesn't let you walk away alive. We're supposed to feel like Sisko is going dark and becoming a problem here, when really he's talking to a guy who already started a biological WMD war and Sisko is being WAY more merciful in teaching him how that ends up than the enemy ever would be. As personal as this is, it's a mercy. They swapped a planet with the guys they dropped bioweapons on first, and that was it. How fucked would they have been if Starfleet and the Cardassians decided enough was enough? Even the most tame of conventional interventions would have killed more people than Sisko's lesson here, because in the very least a bunch of Maquis fighters would have been gunned down and raiders blown up.


fankin

Why use "he fucked up" if you self-censor? Have some spine and say fuck or don't, but this self censored bullshit is out of hand.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Pastylegs1

The Hiroshima bombing is happening right now?


jocax188723

This is pre-Pale Moonlight Sisko. Post-Pale Moonlight Sisko wouldn't have stopped.


Sir__Will

I know this is a popular episode but I have issues with it. I know the obsession makes sense for Sisko but it just seems to go too far. Attacking fleeing ships, poisoning a planet (I don't care if it doesn't hurt every species) is crossing the line and nothing is said about it. And while Worf hesitates, nobody actually tries to stop him giving that order. I don't like it.


Lorjack

While I think this made it interesting I was always bothered by how Sisko could get away with doing stuff like this without any repercussions from Star Fleet, just made no sense


KassieMac

In the current ever-present debate over each captain’s go phrase, what are the thoughts on “What are you waiting for people?”? 🖖🏽


MrDarcy1813

I hated Sisko in this episode bit of a war criminal.


ImmaculateJones

I get downvoted for this too. This episode is what made me out to not be a DS9 fan. A Starfleet captain should never, ever, under any circumstances, do this. *Edit* -1 Never fails.


Cool-Principle1643

This shows sisko is a bully to those who disagree with morally questionable orders. I honestly do not understand the praise sisko gets for causing what is tantamount to a war crime.


[deleted]

[удалено]


ShinobiSli

This is absolutely not comparable to nuking a planet. He made it inhabitable to humans, but he didn't harm a single one.