Maquis (Star Trek)

In the American Star Trek science fiction franchise, the Maquis /mɑːˈkiː/ are a 24th-century paramilitary organization/terrorist group (like the French Resistance, sometimes referred to as the Maquis, and the Spanish Maquis) first introduced in the 1994 episode "The Maquis" of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who subsequently also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.

The concept of the Maquis was intentionally introduced by the creators of Deep Space Nine so that it could play a plot device in the upcoming Voyager, which was scheduled to begin airing in 1995. As Jeri Taylor commented, "we knew that we wanted to include a renegade element in Voyager, and that the show would involve a ship housing both Starfleet people and those idealistic freedom fighters that the Federation felt were outlaws [e.g., the Maquis]." Therefore, the creators of Star Trek decided to create a backstory for the Maquis in several episodes of Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation, and they named them after the French guerrilla fighters of the Second World War. The recurring characters of Michael Eddington (played by Kenneth Marshall) in Deep Space Nine and Ro Laren (played by Michelle Forbes) in The Next Generation became members of the Maquis, and Voyager contained three regular Maquis characters: Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Seska (Martha Hackett), and B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), as well as Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), a regular character who had been captured and imprisoned for joining the Maquis.

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Wikipedia