4.12 The Wounded

Rating: 2.5

While the Enterprise embarks on a mapping survey near the Cardassian border, the new and fragile truce between the Federation and Cardassia is tested when a renegade StarFleet captain takes matters into his own hands.

Comments

This well-written episode, penned by Jeri Taylor, explores how war affects people. This episode feel very much like a DS9 episode.

Marc Alaimo plays Gul Macet here. Later, on DS9, he played Gul Ducat (virtually the same character).

The Cardassian are all gold and brown. Their uniforms are brownish gold, their ships are bronze, and they themselves are decidedly sepia. And there’s another difference in how they would eventually look on DS9 and VOY – while on their ship, they wear a thin facial mask.

Nits

It’s certainly dramatic to have Worf burst onto the bridge and present his Cardassian spy suspect to Picard and Macet, but is it good security procedure to allow a suspect access to the bridge? Wouldn’t it be better to bring him directly to the brig and lock him up, then ask Picard and Macet to question him there?

I am always amazed by Picard’s restraint in using the engines. Here, he is given a direct order to stop a renegade captain from starting a war. Yet after locating the ship he only pursues at Warp 4! Finally, after Maxwell kills even more people, he goes to Warp 9. Why not use Warp 9 right from the start?

Early on, the Enterprise locates Maxwell’s ship, the Phoenix, and pursues (as mentioned, slowly). Yet when they get closer, Data reports that they have ‘located’ the ship. This seems to infer that they did not know its location earlier.

Picard and Maxwell meet and Maxwell makes no secret that he hates the Cardassians. Maxwell even tries to get Picard to disobey direct orders and attack the Cardassians. Yet Picard allows Maxwell to return to his vessel and captain it back to a Starbase. Maxwell has already killed 700 Cardassians, none of whom were attacking him. Should Maxwell still be trusted to follow Picard back to the Starbase? Of course, Maxwell promptly changes course and pursues another Cardassian ship.

Instead of attacking outposts without provocation, why didn’t Maxwell do earlier what he asks Picard to do at the end – board a supposed research supply ship and get proof that the Cardassians were using the ships to transport weapons?

Memorable Moments

•    O’Brien and Maxwell singing a duet

Quotable Quotes

"The phaser was set to maximum. The man just incinerated there before my eyes. I’d never killed anything before."
- O’Brien, on taking out a Cardassian terrorist