10 Times Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Went Woke
8. Robin Hood: Prince Of Holographic Communicators
Though The Maquis deals directly with that group of freedom fighters, For The Uniform takes a different route. Here, Michael Eddington casts himself as Jean Val Jean (a name that Star Trek: Voyager would borrow for Chakotay's Maquis Raider), while casting Captain Sisko as Inspector Javert.
The stage musical of Lés Miserables debuted in the 80s', bringing Victor Hugo's 1862 novel to greater public awareness. In that story, Val Jean is sentenced to a life of labour for stealing a loaf of bread. In this episode, Eddington sees himself as the persecuted Val Jean.
This episode compelled the audience to view Sisko in a new light. He infamously bombs the atmosphere of Solosos III, rendering it uninhabitable for fifty years, to Eddington's horror. On the one hand, one could argue that Eddington, and by extension the Maquis, forced Sisko into taking direct action against them.
However, the episode opens with a scene borrowed from 1938's The Adventure's Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The scene in question depicted Robin taking Maid Marion to see the starving people in the kingdom, exactly as Eddington does to Sisko in the DMZ.
The episode serves as another example of Deep Space Nine's attempts to blur the lines between right and wrong, and pushes the audience to investigate Starfleet's role in the proceedings. Ronald D. Moore felt that Sisko was evening the playing field between Starfleet and the Maquis, though he concedes that Sisko acts in a way that Picard wouldn't have. Does this then make Sisko a villain, as Eddington claims him to be?
This conflict: Need versus Right - in Deep Space Nine, the needle shifts away from what is easy. Though not as overt as his actions in In The Pale Moonlight, Sisko displays a Machiavellian method, and Eddington is captured.