Introducing a shape-shifter to the main cast of a Star Trek show meant that we had the chance to see him turn into all kinds of cool stuff. The limits of television storytelling, however, meant that certain restrictions had to be imposed on his powers. Odo must return to his gelatinous state every 15 hours to regenerate, or he risks falling apart. Also, judging from the unfinished shape of his face, he isn’t very good at imitating people (so, no Mystique-style infiltration missions for him).
Thus, despite his fluid body, Odo has the most rigid personality on DS9.
Dominant Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
Odo keeps to a predictable schedule—the shopkeepers on the Promenade can set their chronometers by his passing when he makes his rounds. He’s a reliable and trustworthy Security Chief, impartial in his judgments whether he’s serving the Cardassians or Starfleet, because he’s only interested in the real facts of the matter. Starfleet keeps him on after they take over Deep Space Nine, thanks to his familiarity with the station and its denizens.
Odo makes a skillful investigator, picking up on details in his environment that build a picture of the crime or suspects he’s studying. This makes it especially difficult for Quark to get any shenanigans past him. Even when Quark seems to have innocuous motives, Odo suspects him, because past experience has taught him that, “You’re always up to something.”
Odo prides himself on his knowledge of humanoid nature, and often uses the phrase, “It’s been my observation—“ when explaining something he’s learned about them.
Though he could take on any form he wishes, Odo settles on the appearance of a middle-aged, grumpy, humanoid man. When he’s briefly turned into a human, he still keeps such a stiff posture that he gives himself a pinched nerve. He somewhat resembles the scientist who studied and raised him, Dr. Mora, right down to the hairstyle. Even his name is a riff on the label he was given as an “Unknown Sample” (“Odo’ital”) in the lab. Other Changelings he meets chide him for sticking to this one form so consistently, conforming to the looks of average humanoids, but something about the man the crew calls “Constable” seems to express Odo’s essence.
Odo has an innate sense of order, of the way things ought to be, that never changes despite the many cultures and environments he lives in. His people tell him that this is part of being a Changeling, the desire to bring order and sanity to the chaotic existence of the solids (non-shapeshifters). When he gets his own quarters, Dax enjoys making him crazy by moving his furniture around, shifting it slightly out of place. Odo can tell when it’s off by even a centimeter.
When he’s temporarily stuck in human form as punishment, Odo keeps his smooth, somewhat unformed face, partly as a reminder by the Founders that he’s not great at the details of the humanoid form. However, he becomes fascinated by the bubbles in his drink, now that he actually ingests sustenance. He eventually gets his shape-shifting powers back, but Odo keeps his new quarters so he can practice shape-shifting—and his old bucket, which he used to “sleep” in before he got his own space, just for old times’ sake.
Odo doesn’t know where he comes from at first. His quest for his origins remains a driving force, a hardwired part of his genetic code, and he’s grieved to discover that his people are in fact the tyrannical Founders of the Dominion. He’s torn between returning to the Great Link from which he was born, and staying with his loyal friends on Deep Space Nine.
As gruff and surly as he acts, Odo just wants someplace to belong. His personal experiences with the crew of DS9 help prove to him that solids are not evil, nor in need of domination. When he finally returns to the Great Link, he brings this knowledge with him in an effort to enlighten his people.
Auxiliary Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
Odo lives to enforce law and order on the station. He has rules about not carrying weapons on the Promenade, not loitering, not sleeping, and a host of other things. He brooks no defiance of them. He especially loves calling Quark out for minor infractions of station regulations, just to make him miserable. He gets testy when Worf shows up and interferes with his methods, and has a list of security breaches on the Enterprise to rebut the Klingon’s accusations against the Constable’s abilities.
This side of Odo can go a bit fascist at times, like when he supports the declaration of martial law on Earth in the face of Changeling paranoia. When his job is called into question after Eddington’s defection, he complains that if he’d been given the broader authority he asked for, it never would have happened. He quietly believes that although things were grimmer under Cardassian occupation, at least they were safer. He illegally bugs Quark’s communications, and hints that he might do the same for others on the station as well.
Odo gets this drive from his people, the powerful Founders who run the Dominion empire in the Gamma Quadrant. The temptation to join the Great Link is not just that of returning home, but of joining a greater cause and power. He relates to their need to control the messy lives of solids, but ultimately he can’t go all the way with them in their desire to conquer the galaxy.
Tertiary Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
Odo holds to a rigid, personal sense of justice. He serves many masters over the years—Cardassians, Starfleet, the Dominion—but he follows his own code before theirs. He refuses to ever carry or fire a weapon in the course of his duties (being able to shape-shift his arm into a whip certainly helps). A major reason he’s kept on by both Cardassian and Starfleet authorities is his commitment to the truth no matter who he’s working for.
Odo’s not crazy about anyone seeing him revert to his gelatinous state for regeneration time, nor really of anyone seeing his personal feelings about anything. He’s chagrined at the informal, affectionate nickname of “Constable” by which the crew calls him. He’s especially uncomfortable with the deference and adoration lavished on him by Weyoun and the Jem’Hadar, who see him and the Founders as gods.
Odo harbors an intense disgust of Quark that somehow also carries deep regard, though he’d never say it aloud (Quark, being an Fe-dom, can see it simply through Odo’s body language).
I really hesitate to praise anything about the Odo/Kira romance, but it does relax Odo emotionally. He’s awkward and fumbling in expressing his feelings to her over the years. When it’s finally out in the open, he’s the most sincerely happy we ever see him. Sadly, his commitment to his people, and to helping them become a peaceful race, must win out over his relationship to Nerys, and he bids his lover goodbye in the end.
Inferior Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
Once Odo reconnects with his people, he has trouble learning how to shape-shift. Not that he’s never done it before, but it was mainly in the line of duty. Learning how to “be” different objects and lifeforms, to experience their essence, seems mysterious and untenable. He asks a lot of questions of the Founder to try to understand the nature of the Great Link, but her answers sound to him evasive and vague.
His fellow lost Changeling-child Laas gets Odo to expand his understanding of what a Changeling can be. He doesn’t have to be defined by the humanoid shape he walks around in most of the day, but Odo doesn’t have much practical use for changing forms multiple times in a day unless it serves his law-keeping purposes. He even derides the humanoid imagination in the episode where everyone’s fantasies are coming to life, which doesn’t surprise Quark at all.
Odo’s Intuition usually serves to make him suspicious and paranoid, which is useful for a security officer but detrimental to his mental well-being. On the less aggressive side, he also gets caught up in linking and shape-shifting with the Female Founder, losing track of time when he’s supposed to be helping Kira and her resistance. However, Odo twice becomes a parental figure to a member of the Dominion—once to a lost Jem’Hadar child and once to a sick little baby Changeling—and he wishes very much to raise them differently from the abusive experiences he suffered, or from the expectations of their kind.
Ultimately, Odo proves more flexible than the other Changelings in one key point—accepting non-shapeshifters and their differences as good rather than something to be feared.
It’s this tiny change in one shape-shifter that ends the war and saves the galaxy.
When typing the Vulcans of The Original Series, I observed that most of them are ISTJs. The orderliness, logic, and composure commonly associated with the type just suits them. Turns out our two favorite Klingons are also Si-doms, and Worf and Martok find ways to tear apart their types’ expectations with a fury.
Dominant Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
Martok has worked long and hard to get where he is. He comes from a lower-class, “commoner” background, and never forgets it. He was the first in his family to apply for officer training, but he was rejected thanks to a negative vote from the legendary Kor, who believed that those without noble blood should not be allowed in the ranks of officers. Martok holds this against Kor for the rest of his life, and refuses to speak to the man when he joins his crew for one last mission.
Martok had to work as a common day laborer due to his rejection, but he never gave up his original plan to become an officer. He served as an orderly on a Klingon warship and finally earned a field commission from his General when they fought invading Romulans. Sadly, Martok’s father had died by the time he accomplished this, and Martok carried that sore spot with him as well, nursing his grudge against Kor.
Over the years, Martok became an experienced and skilled strategist. He rose through the ranks and attained the position of right-hand man to the Chancellor himself, Gowron. He was briefly replaced by a Changeling, and spent at least a year in a Dominion internment camp.
During this imprisonment, Martok loses an eye in one of his daily sparring matches with the Jem’Hadar. He also loses his edge, and worries that he’ll never set foot on a Klingon ship again. Once he’s free, he feels that his captivity has dulled his senses.
It takes a while for Martok to get his footing and his old instincts back. He decides not to replace his missing eye, keeping the scar as a badge of honor, to remember what the Jem’Hadar did to him. He also keeps his fear—very un-Klingon of him—believing that due to his past experiences, only he truly understands and appreciates the danger that the Jem’Hadar represent.
He takes command of an old Bird-of-Prey called the Rotarran, whose crew is beat up and defeated, and can’t shake off his own malaise. He’s looping a bit, afraid of facing his fears by encountering the Jem’Hadar again. It takes a butt-kicking from Worf and a few successful battles under his belt for Martok to feel like his old warrior self again.
Even as Martok gains status in the Klingon Defense Force during the war, he keeps the Rotarran as his flagship based on the memorable victories he won with it and its crew.
At the end of the war, Worf deposes the reckless Gowron and installs Martok as the new Chancellor, based on his years of experience and service. Martok balks at taking the mantle, as he’s never forgotten the humble roots he came from. He’s a common Klingon warrior. To Worf, that makes him the perfect leader.
Auxiliary Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
When Martok first takes command of the Rotarran, he’s looping, and out of touch with his Te. He uses it ineffectively and bluntly, much like someone in an inferior Te-grip, demanding compliance with unclear orders, bullying and berating his crew, and threatening them with charges of treason if they question him. He’s deeply disappointed at the poor service record of the ship and crew, as they have grown incapable and defeated after months of losing battles.
Worf challenges Martok’s command competency, and the two of them duel on the bridge. Worf almost bests him, but he sees the fire return in Martok, and he lets him win. Now Martok feels like a commander again, and he pulls the crew together for a victorious fight.
Martok’s still a strict disciplinarian, though. He throws a subordinate off the upper level of the Promenade just to teach him a lesson, and almost gets locked up in the station’s brig for it. Worf argues to Odo and Sisko that the General is perfectly within keeping of Klingon disciplinary structures, and they let him off with a warning.
When Nog stands up to Martok and his unruly men, Martok marvels in the little Ferengi’s show of confidence, and gives him respect—and space—from thereon.
While still a traditional Klingon, Martok isn’t as caught up in the formality of ritual like the ISFJ Worf. They’re both Si-dom, but with different Extraverted Judging functions in the auxiliary position. Martok lets Worf go through the motions of the chants and songs as the Rotarran launches, but he really just wants to get on with the job.
Once Martok becomes the liaison between the Klingon forces and Starfleet on DS9, he finds to his dismay that his job involves a lot of paperwork. How’s that for a non-stereotypical ISTJ? Martok prefers direct action, not busywork behind a desk.
When they make it to Cardassia in the final push against the Dominion, Martok’s Starfleet and Romulan comrades stand dismayed at the destruction. Martok, however, wishes to celebrate the victory with bloodwine. This is satisfaction for a job well done.
Tertiary Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
Martok discovers a special bond with Worf during their imprisonment. It’s a moment Worf describes as tova’dok, a kind of spark of understanding between warriors. Martok coaches Worf to keep fighting during their imprisonment, and later appoints him his first officer on the Rotarran based on the trust they’ve built.
Eventually, Martok adopts Worf into his house, letting him take the name of Martok and regain his social standing in the Empire.
Martok has a fiery relationship with his wife Sirella, a majestic, formidable ESTJ. No one can quite understand how they work, not even Martok himself. He only knows that as tough a warrior as he tries to be, his honor leaves him lonely without someone to share his victories with.
Martok won’t let go of his grudge against Kor, and initially refuses to explain his emotional reaction to the Dahar Master’s presence on his ship. It is a matter of personal honor (whereas Worf, the Fe-user, is typically concerned with the honor that others will see). Even seeing Kor lose his honor as his mind deteriorates doesn’t satisfy him. After Kor goes out in a blaze of glory, Martok salutes his victory, but will not sing along with the other warriors in his honor.
Inferior Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
As a young warrior, Martok hoped for a better position in life than what he was born into, and fought to attain the rank of officer, which by all past tradition should have been out of his reach.
When he returns to command after his imprisonment, Martok has developed fearful and paranoid anxieties about the enemy he faces. Overcautious, he repeatedly orders the ship away from possible confrontation, citing various negative outcomes if they try to engage the Jem’Hadar. He grows pessimistic about the possibility of success, deciding without evidence that there can be no survivors on the ship they’ve come to find. He’s distrustful of his crew, and most of all himself.
To be a warrior again, he has to embrace the unknown possibilities of striking out into battle. Afterwards, he offers Worf a new beginning by becoming his brother.
When he’s being tended to by Doctor Bashir for battle training injuries, he gets fed up with Bashir’s worry. An inch or two this way or that, and Martok could have lost another eye or severed an artery. The old Klingon grumbles: “The human fascination with what might have been grows tiresome. The artery is not severed, and I am not dead.”
Martok is very much alive, despite everything, at the end of the saga. In fact, he’s wearing the robes of Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. It was not an outcome he expected, but it is a chance for the Empire to renew itself after generations of corruption.
ISTJ: Miles O’Brien, “Star Trek: TNG/Deep Space Nine”
ISTJ – the Inspector, the Trustee, the Steward
Chief O’Brien was dubbed DS9’s Everyman character, one the writers could throw into any manner of weird and wild adventure and see how he bore up. Since the ISTJ is the most abundant personality type in MBTI theory, the role makes a good fit. Whether facing temporal anomalies on TNG, or bumpy-headed aliens on DS9, the Chief brings a down-to-Earth perspective to a far-out place.
Dominant Function: (Si) Introverted Sensing, “The Study”
Chief Petty Officer Miles O’Brien has a long record of service with Starfleet. His early assignments directed the path of his later career, moving from tactical to engineering, and then specializing in transporter operations after he performed a nifty trick to beam his crew out of an emergency. While he’s humble about his own accomplishments, he’s proud to be part of the established institution of Starfleet. He also boasts of his Irish lineage, as it includes a king and a union leader.
O’Brien experienced a great deal of combat as a young enlisted man during the Cardassian Border Wars. In court, he’s counted as an expert witness based on the number of combat missions he’s run, and the recognition he’s received. As steady and useful as the Chief is in such situations, he doesn’t love his memories of being a soldier.
The war colored O’Brien’s view of Cardassians for the rest of his life. He frequently calls them “Cardies,” and he’s slow and stubborn to trust any of them he meets. Even the Cardassian war orphan who stays with the O’Briens only bonds with Miles after they realize they both dislike Cardassian food. The Chief witnessed the many atrocities the Cardassians committed, but he tells one Cardassian that what he truly hates is what he became because of them—a killer, even if it was in combat.
One good thing that came from his war experience—when his old captain goes rogue, O’Brien is able to talk him down partly by singing their old battle songs together.
O’Brien’s favorite place on the Enterprise is Transporter Room 3, where he serves most of his time. When the anxious Barclay starts freaking out about using the transporter, O’Brien is quick to recite the solid safety record of transporter technology. Later, he introduces Barclay to his pet spider, which he keeps in memory of the time he had to overcome his arachnophobia to crawl into a tunnel full of spiders and make repairs.
O’Brien gets the post on DS9 partly thanks to his previous experience with Cardassian technology during the war. He’s not thrilled with the state of things on the station, and frequently wishes he had access to reliable Federation technology, but he has the Si-dom’s persistence of sticking with the work until it’s done. Once he’s jerry-rigged everything to work properly, the station becomes the Chief’s domain, and only he really knows how to keep it functioning.
O’Brien’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, a traditional family man, and a working class engineer with no desire to move up into the ranks of officers. Thus, the many trials and tortures he suffers in his years on DS9 constantly test his resilience. He always manages to come out of them with his basic nature intact.
The exception is when he’s implanted with 20 years of prison memories that feel so real he has a hard time re-adapting to his old life. The environment may have been false, but the violent actions he took to survive feel, to Miles, authentic and damning. It takes the love and care of his wife Keiko and best friend Julian to keep him from killing himself, and to convince him he’s still the man he was before.
O’Brien gets back up and gets on with life, able to survive whatever the universe throws at him.
Auxiliary Function: (Te) Extraverted Thinking, “The Workshop”
The Chief is happiest when he has work to keep him busy, and the broken-down DS9 provides plenty. He has classic Starfleet engineer workaholic tendencies, and doesn’t know how to put down the technical manuals even when he’s on vacation with his wife. He’s straightforward and honest in his approach to his work—none of this fudging his estimates like a certain famous Miracle Worker. He can be a little by-the-book sometimes, as when he scolds Ensign Ro for dumping raw phaser power into a computer console to get it working in a crisis—a perfect clash of impetuous Ti-Se versus cautious Si-Te.
Still, the Chief never fails to get the job done in spite of all the difficulties he complains about.
O’Brien sports a certain dry sarcasm, born from his realist’s perspective, that rears up most often in contrast to his Extraverted Feeler friend Dr. Bashir. He gets especially testy with Julian when it’s revealed that the good doctor was genetically engineered, and thus had been letting him win at darts all these years. Miles wants to win legitimately, based on his ability, but that means making Julian stand a few feet farther back from the board.
Like many a high-spirited Te-user, Miles plays as hard as he works. Whether it’s darts or raquetball, he’s highly competitive, especially against Julian. In his free time, he hits the rapids on the holodeck, and repeatedly dislocates his shoulder doing so. It’s a very un-cautious, un-Si-dom thing to do, but he tells Julian he can’t stay away from the challenge.
O’Brien has little patience with more emotional approaches to life, which again makes him clash with Julian. When they’re stranded with a group of rogue Jem’Hadar, Bashir feels compelled to help them overcome their addiction to the chemical that keeps them enslaved. O’Brien doesn’t trust the Jem’Hadar—again, based on reliable past experience—and insists their focus should be on the more practical matter of escaping and leaving these guys behind to their fate.
On a later joint mission with the Jem’Hadar, O’Brien witnesses their pre-battle speech, about victory bringing life because they are dead until they win the fight.
The Chief gives the Starfleet people a pep talk of his own:
“My name is Miles Edward O’Brien. I am very much alive, and I intend to stay that way.”
Tertiary Function: (Fi) Introverted Feeling, “The Deep Well”
The Chief’s honestly not great in situations requiring emotional sensitivity. He’ll bitch and moan, and possibly explode, when too many things go wrong. He’s both brittle and stubborn with Cardassians, for whom he harbors deep resentment and prejudice. He constantly finds his patience tested by his begrudging friendship with Dr. Bashir, and he bickers with his wife Keiko so much it seems that’s all they ever do. He’s private and doesn’t like discussing his feelings—especially not to a ship’s counselor—until a talk with the ill-fated Captain Cusack inspires him to give a very serious, but very heart-felt speech to his friends at her eulogy.
For all the storms in their relationship, Miles and Keiko are probably a match because of their headstrong personalities. In separate episodes, they both show themselves willing to risk it all when the other is possessed by an alien entity (this happens often to Starfleet people), and O’Brien is at his most soft and tender when enjoying his family. When a telepathic mishap causes the DS9 crew to act out on their latent sexual attractions, Miles and Keiko wonder why nothing happened to them.
Miles says of their attraction to each other: “There’s nothing ‘latent’ about it.”
Interestingly, the Chief is the one to give Fe-user Worf advice on how to go easier on the engineering crew. Worf’s formality makes him rigid and stern, while O’Brien’s humility and practicality make him more suited to running a team of non-coms and technicians. Miles wants to be known as a good man, and he believes in the ideals of Starfleet even if he doesn’t stand up and preach them like his captains. This is why it hurts him so badly when he’s arrested and accused of terrorism by the Cardassians, or driven to suicide by his experiences in prison.
O’Brien achieves most of his emotional growth by gradually opening up to Bashir. The doctor’s incessant Fe-dom pestering makes them instant adversaries from the beginning, but after sharing many adventures together, they develop mutual respect. O’Brien eventually admits that, in some ways, he loves Julian as much as his wife, and enjoys their time together more.
(The Chief’s many outbursts and emotional misunderstandings with his loved ones, as well as his developing openness with Julian, often made me think that he was inferior-Fe. His strong Si and obvious lack of Ni kept me from typing him as an ISTP).
Inferior Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”
O’Brien’s an engineer, not a theorist. When asked hypothetical questions in court about the battle in question, he gets irritated. It didn’t happen that way, so what’s the point of speculating?
When he’s sent skipping back and forth through time by a temporal anomaly, he figures out the moment-by-moment actions he needs to take, but thinking too much about the paradoxes of his situation makes him complain, “I hate temporal mechanics.”
By his own admission, the Chief misses the forest for the trees when the creature possessing Keiko assigns him a list of seemingly random adjustments to make around the station. It takes the Ne-user Rom to realize what all the re-calibrations will result in.
However, Miles has an enthusiastic playful side, as proven by his many holosuite escapades with Julian. The boys go all out, dressing up in full costumes to recreate many a historic—and tragic—battle. They’re the ones who get everyone roped into Vic’s in the first place.
Miles is willing to change when necessary. Like another famous Star Trek ISTJ, he disappointed his father by joining Starfleet instead of taking the expected path. He talks himself into being more tolerant when he advocates to a Cardassian war-orphan’s father the value of an open mind. He takes the job on DS9 despite the disruption to his life, and applies his imagination to many an engineering problem. He eagerly leaves his time as a soldier in the past, and works to be, as one Vorta put it, “One of those famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators.”
ISTJ: Michael Eddington, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”
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.)
