Are the Maquis doing the right thing?
Thanks for the lively discussion all! My take is that the sci fi elements mean you can’t cut and paste their experiences onto our morality exactly, but it makes the feeling of conflict relatable, at least emotionally.


I think the main goal of the Maquis was not to evoke sympathy for them, but to put the main characters in interesting moral/ethical quandaries. Both TNG and DS9 did “forced relocation” episodes where the narrative focus was on the fact that there were no “right” answers, only “less wrong” ones.
In that sense, it’s like the Kobayashi Maru: the main characters are presented with a no-win scenario and the purpose of the episode is that watching how they deal with that tells us more about who these characters are and what they stand for. Kira’s episode certainly helped define her character, especially when Sisko summed it up for her: she was used to fighting for the underdog, but she was on the other side now.