#michael eddington
ISTJ – the Inspector, the Steward, the Trustee
Eddington undergoes a major character switch when he becomes a villain. After a couple of years serving quietly in the background, he jumps ship (or station, as it were), and goes rogue. He’s more aggressive and dramatic as a crusading Maquis than he was as a law-abiding Starfleet officer, leading me to believe he’s operating out of his lower functions when he makes the change. Eddington sees himself as the hero of his own story, but to Starfleet and Sisko, he’s a terrorist.
Dominant Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
At first, Eddington seems like a good old-fashioned, reliable Starfleet officer. He joined with the ambition of being a captain, like everyone else, but ended up in security. That department doesn’t typically lead to command, but he still stuck to his job and did it well. Sisko asks him why he doesn’t just transfer over to the command division, but Eddington doesn’t seem interested in a big change at this point.
Of course, that could just be because he has other things brewing.
Eddington eventually reveals himself as a leader in the Maquis, a terrorist group dedicated to protecting Federation colonists left behind in Cardassian territory after new borders are drawn. The Maquis, and Eddington, don’t believe they should have to leave their homes for any reason. Though they’re offered many alternatives, they hold their ground and refuse to leave no matter how poor their living conditions grow.
Eddington appreciates the real, hand-grown, fresh food he raises and eats as a Maquis. He doesn’t like the taste of replicated food, and recognizes the exact menu selection he’s given as a prisoner. His whole existence as a Maquis feels more natural to him than his outward presentation as a Starfleet officer.
On the run from Sisko, Eddington relates their entire cat-and-mouse game to his favorite book, Les Miserables. He’s the persecuted Valjean, and Sisko’s the obsessive Javert. He makes Sisko read the book to understand his perspective—and Sisko plays along, doing all the villainous things Eddington expects of him until Eddington surrenders.
Once the Maquis are wiped out by the Dominion, Eddington feels he has nothing left to lose. He grows nihilistic and cynical and sits around waiting to die. Sisko tests his death-wish, and Eddington comes around long enough to help him out on one last mission.
He keeps a family heirloom, a two-hundred-year-old “Lucky Loonie” coin from Canada, as a good luck token, though he seems to have left it behind when he defected.
His last word when he goes out in a blaze of glory is the name of his wife.
Auxiliary Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
Eddington is originally assigned to DS9 to provide greater Starfleet control and influence over security operations. This means getting in Odo’s way a lot, although he means no hard feelings about it—it’s just his job. He has the same attitude when he sabotages the Defiant under orders from a Starfleet admiral. He’s just doing his duty, stopping the Defiant from carrying out a mission they were ordered not to do, and he’s very careful not to cripple the ship entirely. Once O’Brien fixes the sabotage, Eddington actually continues serving on the bridge, dutifully fulfilling his function.
Eddington self-sacrificially performs his service as an officer, which probably leads to his discontent over the years. He promises to Sisko that he’s willing to escort a high-ranking ambassador off the bridge against his will if his duty calls for it. He stays behind in the Defiant’s Engineering to help Jadzia prevent a warp core breach even though he’s badly burned—in fact he’s the last officer to leave the scene after the problem is fixed.
Despite his apparent low-key nature, Eddington admits upon Sisko’s promotion that he is a man obsessed with rank and title. When he defects, he in effect gets his own promotion, going from humble security officer to a sort of general in the Maquis, a man respected and followed by many. He feels personally responsible for not being there to lead his people when they’re attacked by the Dominion.
Eddington engineers a masterful heist when he defects, making off with a shipment of industrial replicators for the Maquis, while diverting suspicion, and the crew, to Kasidy Yates.
Tertiary Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
Even Sisko admits once he’s gone, that although Eddington was a traitor to Starfleet, he was loyal to what he believed in. Eddington sees the Maquis’ cause as noble and pure, and anyone who opposes it as on the wrong side of the fight. He feels no guilt for the civilian ships or populations they destroy, as he has a very similar stance to Kira’s “all Cardassians (or Starfleet officers) are guilty” speech.
In his Starfleet life, Eddington pretends to have no strong conviction about the Maquis. Just before he springs his trap, he still claims to be solely devoted to his Starfleet duty, only chasing down Maquis because that’s his assignment. Everyone believes him because that’s just the kind of guy he is.
Strangely, Eddington introduces himself when he first arrives on the station as “here to make friends.” Not a typical Fi-user statement, but he really does seem to be a simple, friendly person who wants to do right by his job—and that means being friends with his co-workers. After he defects, he accuses Sisko of being driven by ego, but it’s hard to deny that Eddington seems to have gotten a little worn out with playing nice and normal all the time.
Extraverted Intuition: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
Eddington’s clever and wily, and anticipates every contingency for his heist, planning an escape route and leaving bugs in the computers. He pretends to have no desire to leave prison to help Sisko, waiting until he’s dragged out of jail to go on the mission, just so Sisko won’t suspect that he actually wants to go so he can see his wife again. And he’s plenty creative in his old job too, like when he problem-solves in the moment by beaming the crew into holosuite characters after a transporter accident.
Eddington explains that he was once loyal to the uniform like Sisko, but he began questioning everything he believed after seeing the Federation’s treatment of the Maquis. He dramatically compares the Federation to the Borg, who assimilate others and expect everyone to play along. He aggrandizes his crusade, playing up his own mythos and tragedy, and Sisko calls out his ambitious desire to lead soldiers in glorious, doomed battle.
Eddington gets what he wanted in the end, dying in a flurry of enemy weapons fire while defending his people, fulfilling his fantasy of martyrdom.
(My main theory for Eddington is that he lived dutifully out of the top of his functional stack for most of his life, before the stress of seeing his home abandoned and abused forced him into his lower functions as a response. You could read him just the opposite, I suppose, as a meek Perceiver who was just waiting for the right cause to be a crusader. His Fi seems more strident to me, though, in a way that I’ve seen in other ISTJs who hit upon a sudden moral realization about something late in life.)
