[Nate the Great]

At intervals I try to make PNQ posts about how mishandled the Maquis were. I keep going off onto tangents (as I did today twice before I had to delete them), ranting about many different things. Let me try to keep things simple and relatively civil...

PNQ: Was the basic premise of the Maquis ever properly developed or even followed up on consistently?

In my opinion, no. Bulletpoints:
* Supposedly there were also Cardassian colonies left high and dry on the Federation side of the DMZ, but we never saw them (and for that matter, it was never stated whether or not the Federation became landlords to them). This would've provided for some interesting plots: Cardassian High Command asks how things are going and the colonies admit that the Federation has left them completely alone, not even trying to create their own colonies elsewhere on their planets. There couldn't have been one episode of DS9 based on this premise? It would've been useful leverage to make the Cardassians stop hassling the Federation colonists so much, right?
* Okay, the Cardassian colonies in the DMZ was mentioned, but only to tell us that the Cardassian military was secretly gave them weapons so they could hassle the Federation colonies. That sure seems like an act of war to me! Why not give this information to Starfleet and let them handle it?
* The Maquis kept demanding the rights and powers of a nation without ever actually owning the space that they claim. It seemed like every parsec was still "owned" by either the Federation or the Cardassian Empire, so the DMZ residents were either of no nation or of the nation of their landlords. All they could do was petition both sides to cede the territory to them.
* The Maquis kept complaining that Starfleet stop treating them like terrorists and refugees (even though they were). Eddington claimed that if left alone the Maquis would've focused all of their attention on the Cardassians. Yeah, that's a suicide mission, dude. He could never grasp the simple fact that his people could live "in paradise" had they just relocated to a Federation world in the first place.

You'll note that Voyager never really came up. It's well established how mishandled the Maquis were on that show. If the creators were so scared of the Starfleet officers looking like the bad guys the premise should've been not Starfleet and Maquis, but Starfleet and another group. A group that has their own morals and values that happen to be quite different from Starfleet, but still valid. Have the other ship be Vulcans with little experience with humans, or Ferengi, or Andorians, or Binars, or Klingons, or even another Delta Quadrant race that we've never seen before. Maybe tweak the Talaxian race to be a little less annoying. The possibilities are endless!