[TNG] Season 4, Episode 12: The Wounded
Rating: 3
One of Star Trek’s favorite things in the whole wide world is to do a story where a former captain of one of our main characters turns against the Federation (We just saw it in DS9’s Homefront/Paradise Lost episodes, combined with their other favorite thing – a Federation admiral as villain.) I get why it’s a concept frequently revisited, there’s a lot of drama and complex emotions inherent in the situation. This episode handles that aspect of the story well, as well as effectively establishing the Cardassians as an interesting villain. O’Brien’s hatred of the Cardassians is portrayed in an uneven way, but overall it adds a nice wrinkle to the show.
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Notes:
Cardassians! Marc Alaimo! Dorky face-guard things! And just DISGUSTING facial hair.
The federation and cardassians recently signed a peace treaty, but a Starfleet captain is acting on his own and attacking cardassians. Enterprise has to stop him!
Some cardassians tag along. O’Brien served under the captian they’re searching for, Captain Maxwell. O’Brien thinks Maxwell has to have a good reason to do what he’s doing.
O’Brien isn’t too friendly with the Cardassians.
Keiko and O’Brien just got married, but apparently have never eaten together. During their time dating, I guess O’Brien never made Irish food for her, and she never made Japanese food? Also, the two fly all over the galaxy but haven’t ever tried food from another place on Earth.
They see from long range sensors that Maxwell is going after another ship. Picard struggles about whether or not to give sensative info to the Cardassians so that they might stop him, but Maxwell destroys them anyway.
Enterprise finally catches up with Maxwell. He seems like a nice guy. Let’s trust him!
He says the Cardassians are up to something. Those cargo ships aren’t so innocent.
Enterprise tries to escort him back to a starbase but he goes after another cardassian ship. He challenges Picard to board the ship and see what they have.
So O’brien beams over and sings to him. This scene flirts with being terribly awkward, but I think it veers safely into being a pretty effective moment.
Maxwell surrenders himself and the cardassians thank Picard. Picard says he did what he had to do to maintain the peace, but he knows the Cardassians were up to something so they better watch themselves!
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