This episode was recorded on July 6, 2025.
We recap "Blaze of Glory" and discuss how Eddington was right and Sisko was wrong.
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Transcript
[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]
This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this star date, July 6th, 2025, we are discussing Blaze of Glory. In the last episode, Scott mentioned something about Cisco, and I said make note of that. So pay attention to that feeling about Cisco from the last episode as Scott
summarizes this episode.
Nog is eating squid, which is his favorite human food with Jake and Ben. And Ben, out of respect to Nog eating squid, makes some Ferengi worms, which Jake was liking until he found out what they were. And Jake is intimating that Nog's security gig sucks. And Nog tries to underplay it, but Ben insists, says, Cadet, explain.
So basically, the Klingons are not respecting Nog, and they're being mean to him, and Ben tells Nog to stand up to them and show some toughness. As he's doing that, Martok shows up, Nog's about to do what he's doing, and Ben says, not right now. Ben
is told that there is an encrypted video text sent by the Maquis, who are near the Cardassian border, and Ben thought that the Maquis were toast because they were fighting with the Cardassians, and he thought all of them were gone. And in the message, this woman basically says, there are some missiles, they're heading for Cardassia,
you got 13 days. Martok is having trouble finding them, but admits that the Klingons once gave the Maquis some cloak and tech, because there's a lot of fighting. Ben understands that if the Cardassians die at the hand of the Maquis, they're considered a terror cell. If the Dominion returns fire, we basically have mutually assured destruction.
Worf and Jadzia are trying to find the bombs in the Badlands. No dice. And they're having a lot of trouble cloaking. And Miles explains that the Defiant is just too ill. So in the Badlands space, the gas and stuff, you can't really cloak. And so Worf says they just really need some more intel.
And Ben shows up at a space prison where ex-commander of the Maquis Eddington, well, ex-commander of Starfleet and former leader of Maquis Eddington is in the jail. Eddington is figuring that Ben came to gloat. Ben shows Michael editing Eddington the video, and Michael says, it wasn't me.
The reason why I'm saying Michael and not Eddington for that one thing is because in the video, it is addressed to Michael. Ben warns that billions will die if this happens. Eddington says, why should he care? Because he had to listen as Cardassia killed all of his friends. Ben supposes that Eddington could have the codes to cancel.
And Eddington says, you know, they'd have to do some cool shit to find it. Ben says, if Eddington helps, he can get his freedom. But Eddington says, nah, I'm going to wait here and wait to be unalived by the Jem'Hadar. At the infirmary,
mourn hit cork with a barstool and went naked and like went berserker mode and then they victim blamed cork for saying he saw the soldiers were looking nervous and it made him nervous and said the war was going to happen and deep space nine would be
target number one and everyone would die and that gave mourn an anxiety attack and got naked and ran to a bajoran temple right Yeah, it's true. That's what happened. It did. It did. Jed Zia tells Kira to come talk to Ben on the radio. Ben says he's going to go to the Badlands.
He's going to stop the missiles because he did this, you know, really ethical thing of handcuffing Eddington and forcing him on the mission. Great guy. On the way, Eddington laments that the fake food of weird proteins and sacking like this philosopher, and he thinks that Ben's beef with the maquis is too personal, and Ben makes him eat,
and Eddington talks about that what they're having is number 103, chicken and rice. It's replicated protein molecules, and he has to eat with handcuffs. which is, you know, dignified. And Eddington talks about when Ben made Thanksgiving dinner and made from real food and turkeys and said it was delicious.
And he really got into it when the Maquis were making their own food. And he talks about the tomatoes and how they probably burned to the ground. And Ben says, everything will burn if you don't help them. And Eddington just points out that he's already dead.
And because of Ben hunting him and hunting the Maquis, Ben has blood on his hands. Eddington reminds him of his good friend from a previous episode. He turned out to be Maquis. They went to school with each other and he died in the war off screen. But Still sad. Ben and Eddington get into a fight about morality,
and Ben blames Eddington for their dead, and Eddington blames Ben for their dead, and they're both blaming each other for their dead, vice versa. Turtles all the way down. Eddington was doing so good with the Maquis, he had pushed the Cardassians to join the Dominion, which got the Maquis wiped, and
Ben basically blames that the Maquis pushed the Federation towards a war that could kill millions. And this kind of affects Eddington, and he just puts his back to Ben. On Deep Space Nine, the Klingons are fighting. Martok breaks up the fighting to tell them that they need to do the fighting better.
Nog tells Jake that he's going to wait for the Klingons to break some laws and then we'll arrest them. He tries to arrest them and he gets rocked. At the Badlands, Jem'Hadar are coming. Ben plays chicken with Eddington. Ben uncuffs Eddington and says, if Eddington wants to die so bad, do it.
And allows him to take the helm. Ben calls his bluff. Eddington knows the Badlands well, and Eddington actually doesn't want everyone to die. And Eddington helps, but he's like, once we're done, I'm going to kill you. And Ben's like, you can try. Eddington continues to bait and play with Ben and just keeps on talking about this
old Canadian coin. And as they're doing this thing in the Badlands, Eddington does a risky maneuver. Although it kills Simjem Adar, Ben gets a head wound and is just like, whatever, let's go to the missiles. On Deep Space Nine, Jake tells Nog that he needs to call and talk to him if he's bringing a girl over.
Nog shrugs it off. They were just talking. But Nog sees Martok chilling with his boys, the usual spot on the promenade. Nog kind of has a snapping moment, and Jake just sees Nog go over to the Klingon, tell him to move, or he'll arrest them for loitering.
Martok laughs at him, but appreciates his chutzpah and his moxie, and... Or thinks he's stupid. But Nog doesn't flinch, and that sort of makes Martok respect him and his nerve and tells his guys to move along. Meanwhile, Eddington lands the runabout near Athos IV, where they go through some tunnels, climb through some well, and boom,
there's some Jem'adar. Ben and Eddington come under fire. Ben says this is a bad plan and they're getting shot and they bicker at each other and Eddington saves Ben's life even though he has a moment where he feels like he can kill him and they put the bodies in the well.
But then as they're walking they find 20 dead Maquis and Eddington laments his dead friends and he's guilty and remorseful and Again, he thought that he was going to beat the Cardassians before Ben arrested him. Eddington feels that he failed them. Ben says that he may be guilty too and may have blood on his hands,
which I think I said earlier. And Eddington considers killing Ben on the spot, but decides to just continue with the plan. They get to another room. There's a bunch of Maquis. The woman who called Eddington is there. And it turns out that it's his wife, Rebecca. They got married not that long before Eddington got arrested.
And it turns out this was all game. There were no missiles. It was a ploy. They wanted Eddington to get to the McKee. And Ben punches Eddington. The McKee escape. Ben says... he would have brought more men if he knew there were going to be Jem Hadar. And the Jem weren't supposed to be here.
Like that Whitney Houston song. How did you get here? So then the Jem killed the minions and not the high-ranking McKee because they wanted to give them as a gift to the Dominion. And as the Jem Hadar are showing up, Eddington gets blasted. And... It's not looking good. And Eddington says, Ben, save the others.
I'm going to stay behind. I'm going to hold them off. And he's killed. Eddington is killed. But buys enough time to escape. And as he's getting shot at, he's singing songs. And he's being a silly guy until his death. But his last word is Rebecca. And as the runabout... goes through the badlands.
Rebecca sits, knowing that her husband is dead. Back on Ducase 9, Nog has found Kira's earring, and She's impressed, and it turns out that he might be good at his job. As they get on the elevator, Martog walks by him, nods at him, says, cadet. Nog says, general.
And Nog's feeling really good about himself as the elevator closed the doors. Meanwhile, Jadzia and Ben talk about Eddington. Ben realizes he wasn't a traitor. He was just loyal to what he believed in, right to the end. Jadzia asks if it's really the end of the Maquis, and Ben doesn't know.
It's kind of hard to dim the light of revolution. Maybe some God passed the dominion. Maybe they'll rise again. He talks about lost causes, and Jadzia says, you almost sound thoughtful, hopeful, and walks off. And then we're left to see Ben look in Out the window. Feeling feelings.
When this episode kept talking about people starting a possible war but taking it so lightly, it kept making me think about the U.S., its allies, especially Israel. And every U.S. administration, including this one, even though some people thought Trump is an isolationist, but he's not. The West really is willing to kill everyone, including itself,
just to keep doing whatever it wants. It's like a guy with a bomb attached to his chest. It's my way or we all blow up. The West is the ultimate T-word. But I digress. Let's go to the main character of the story, which is Eddington. Now that the Eddington story arc is over...
As far as I know, they didn't make me hate Eddington. I kept waiting for that, thinking that was going to happen. And I don't even know how he's even a baddie unless you're really not paying attention. He is the most loyal and morally consistent and clear character on DS9.
I thought it was going to be like, he's a baddie, but he has a point. But then now we're going to make you hate him. But no, they didn't do that at all. Instead, his worst offense was he was fighting for a so-called lost cause. And Cisco and Dax just kind of are amused by that,
which is exactly the type of political actors who would take war lightly, business as usual, despite what they said in this episode. And everything Eddington said about Cisco, as far as I'm concerned, was true. The Maquis colonists died because of Cisco's own personal revenge quest. No lie detected.
Ben also showed this episode, which was a topic in the last one about consent. Ben doesn't care about consent. He's going to do what he wants to get what he wants, which is also a pattern. In the last episode, he says, who are you to decide what happens to somebody's life? But Ben does that all the time.
And as far as lost cause, people in power will always say the underdog, the rebels are the lost cause. Liberals keep saying that about anything even a tad left of liberal centrists. It's a lost cause. So if you're against the underdog, the rebels, what does that make you? The empire. In Star Wars terms, you're the dark side.
Eddington was Luke Skywalker. Sisko was Darth Vader and Dax is like Palpatine or something, somebody watching all this. And then Eddington dies to save everyone else, including Sisko. In fact, he saved Sisko several times. Everything he did that was supposed to be bad was all an elaborate plan to save his
people and the people he cares about the most, his wife. Old fans really need to watch the whole Eddington story arc again because it is not how they remembered it at all. Just because they superficially placed him as the antagonist of the week doesn't mean he was. Maybe he was Cisco's antagonist, but he wasn't the baddie.
Look deeper. I think some of the writers were definitely rooting for Eddington. Even Cisco's best friend, Calvin Hudson, who died fighting as a Maquis, saw that Eddington was a good guy and was on the right side of history. But instead of Cisco thinking, oh,
someone I trust and think of as a moral person in Calvin Hudson thinks the Maquis are on the right side, so maybe I should think deeply about this. But instead, we get Cisco as Principal Skinner again. And it's like, no, it's the rebels who are wrong. He just follows the uniform like the past episode said.
Calvin was ultimately doing the right thing. Sisko, at least as far as this point in the series, is not about doing the right thing, but about doing what Starfleet says. Times he has broken off from Starfleet. I think Eddington was right in his analysis.
It wasn't necessarily about doing what's right, but serving his ego and saying he was right. Doing what's right or doing the thing that says I am right. They're different. This Cisco, as Eddington accurately pointed out, will break away from federation, but to say he is right rather than doing the right thing.
Otherwise, he just follows orders, even if it's the wrong thing. So there's a lot of room for growth here still with Cisco. And even having a character like Calvin Hudson, they portray him as this moral character. They put him in a spot where even Cisco signs off on his morality. And then Hudson signs off on the MIT.
So there was a lot of potential here. There still is a lot of potential here with the Maquis. I know other Trek series explore the Maquis more, but I feel like in some ways, DS9 really dropped the ball on the Maquis story. They should have had fewer Mirror Universe episodes,
maybe fewer time travel episodes and spent more time on the Maquis. Scott, what did you think about this episode? How important was it? How do you rate it?
I think it's important because you're I mean, it's important to the mythology because you're seeing Ben get grayer and grayer and revisiting Eddington in a way and showing him is like, kind of not a bad guy. Like, not really. And they didn't try to do the Killmonger thing where they just made him a little
evil enough where you were like, oh, he's just a jerk. He really just got sick of the game and wanted to help people and comes off self-righteous, but also a little righteous. So I give this episode a four, a mythological four. It's a good episode. Eddington, the actor that plays Eddington and Avery Brooks plays Ben,
they're doing Shakespeare at certain points. Which makes sense. Avery Brooks was a theater actor. And that's where he got his chops. So it's not all that surprising.
It did remind me of, if you want change, just vote for it, which people are still saying today.
Well, that's the thing. I have to tell you, there's all these enraged, if you're listening right now, the big beautiful bill just passed that is going to kill lots of people and it's already having effects and people that gloat about small country hospitals being closed and being like, well, the people in that country hospital voted for Trump,
so ha ha ha. No, I don't want anyone to die for not having access to healthcare. I want everyone, even people I dislike, to have healthcare because I do believe that it's a universal right and closing of small hospitals is really bad for people. And
What I'm seeing on the internet and sometimes hearing from friends and family is like progressives blaming leftists for this happening. Obfuscating that, oh, you know, it's your fault when it's not, you know, the establishment Democrats pushing the someone to run with very little time, not having a primary, not having a problem with what's happening internationally.
I even saw someone tweet, you know, that it's the leftist fault for letting one international issue get in their way for voting, which is gross. And, you know, I did vote for Kamala. I wasn't happy about it. But I live in Maryland, and there's a threat of Maryland becoming purple. And I had no idea.
I just had a feeling that the second version of this was going to be very different. And I didn't want to put at risk all of my homies that are more disenfranchised and more... likely to get screwed over so you know I think this is the sort of thing like yeah
there's a whole like vote blue no matter who sort of thing going on in Deep Space Nine in this episode and I there's a lot of parallels and I just want to say that I don't want anyone to not have access to healthcare and
You're barking up the wrong tree if you think it's leftists that are at fault for this happening and not the establishment Democrats that did nothing during the Biden administration and the Republicans who are doing a very good job at getting young, disenfranchised people interested in politics, even though it's a cult.
To me, I think it's a cult. The Democrats are good at setting speaking records without getting anything done.
However, I will say a little glimmer of light. I know you're probably trying to wrap this up, but in New York City, Zoran Mamdani has become a cause libre by being the Democratic candidate for mayor, beating Andrew Cuomo, who everyone thought was going to win, he had $18 million in super PAC money.
All these statisticians and pollsters, they all got it wrong.
Yeah. And they got it wrong because they just wanted to think that it wasn't going to happen. But this guy did such a good job. And he won the primary by a lot. And even though it's just one city, New York City is a microcosm of the world. So people are noticing. And if he wins the mayorship,
which I have a very strong feeling he will, that is going to give some oomph to give some hope. And is he like the perfect leftist? No one's the perfect leftist. But, you know, I think he's doing the best with the tools that he has and Whereas something like this did happen in Buffalo a few years ago,
where Democratic Socialists won the primary and the Democratic incumbent, or whatever that word is, went independent and got a lot of money and won the mayorship. However, New York City has a lot more eyes than Buffalo. And this is important to me.
A parallel I kept thinking about was the lost cause thing, right? To today, if we use the DS9 lens from this episode, it's kind of like they're trying to say, hey, we are here not because of us who've already been in charge, but because of all of you who've never been in charge,
you went for a lost cause instead of supporting us who already have all the power, right? That's their message is you went for a lost cause when you should have been supporting us even though you don't like what we're doing. And that parallels so well to this episode and the crux of this episode and the
divide between Sisko, Dax, and Eddington. And I feel like, why is Dax always there? And I think because Dax is actually old man, it's Curzon. So it's almost kind of saying like, you know, young people like Eddington, they go for lost causes, but we know, we know what it's really about, you know, kind of like...
really reactionary kind of thinking that people on the street level, younger people, poor people, disenfranchised people don't know what's up. Only people in ivory towers who already have power know what's up and what's best for everybody. So there's a lot of parallels, which really affects my read of this episode and really the whole Eddington story arc.
And I know you're feeling the same way. And yeah, there's a lot of kind of reanalyzing DS9. It's almost like it's a new show. So that's kind of fun. Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?
Dukat sucks.
Until then...