The Wounded (⭑⭑⭑)

“The Wounded” is very much a borderline offering, right on the line between three and four stars for me. There is a lot to like about it, but there are also several things that bug me. In the “pro” column, this is the episode that introduced the Cardassians, who would emerge as a rich and fascinating addition to Trek’s expanding universe in the years to come (and who are already pretty compelling here in their debut appearance). The episode also earns some points for continuing to evolve Chief O’Brien into more of a main character. Interestingly, these are both ways in which “The Wounded” paved the way for TNG’s successor series, DS9. However, the episode (to me) suffers from an unsatisfying and inept emptiness in how O’Brien’s role in the main plot plays out, and is a decidedly mixed bag in terms of character development. I’ve gone with three stars, but I don’t feel fully satisfied with this decision. This is a stronger episode than most three-stars, but it’s not really good enough to sit alongside the show’s four-star episodes, either.

One issue that I need to address at the outset here is that, both within the reality of the show and in an external, narrative sense, the Cardassians seem to materialize sort of out of nowhere. I have always had misgivings about this episode casually retconning into existence a power with whom the Federation has supposedly fought a lengthy and bitter war that ended, per the captain’s opening log entry, less than a year ago (so, concurrently with the events of the show’s earlier seasons), without us ever having heard about it before now. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that the writers decided to introduce a new ongoing antagonistic power into the Trek universe with absolutely no foreshadowing or other fanfare. This episode simply opens with some expository dialog between the bridge officers that acts as though everybody already knows all about the Cardassians, and implicitly asks the audience to roll with it. Because I like the Cardassians, I’m generally inclined toward acquiescing in this, but I do find the retcon galling.

Putting that aside, I actually really like the Cardassian-focused side of this episode’s story, in which Picard cuts short an initial hostile encounter by assuring Gul Macet of the Federation’s commitment to peace and promising to investigate the incident that the gul is upset about, and the two then proceed to warily cooperate throughout the remainder of the story. In general, the Cardassians will occupy a unique niche in the power politics of the Trek universe—more relatable and accessible than the Romulans, ambiguous “frenemies” rather than implacable cold war rivals, yet also unlike the Klingons, who are more clearly allies and ultimately more trustworthy (and easier to read), but are also more culturally different. The Cardassians seem like the best foils for the Federation, with a culture that is steeped in militarism while allowing for many of its members to yearn for something better. To the extent that this all is effectively conveyed in this first episode to feature them (and I think that it is present to a degree), it’s hard to say how much is thanks to the writing versus how much is owed to Marc Alaimo, whose performance as Gul Macet prefigures most of what he will later do on DS9 to make Gul Dukat the magnifieant character that he will be. For sure, I love everything about the back and forth diplomatic dance between Macet and Picard in this episode; the former is posturing, definitely slick and never quite trustworthy, yet often seemingly sincere and never dismissable, either, and just generally comes across as an actual person. The Glinn who interacts with O’Brien has his own distinctive identity, too (so it’s not all Marc Alaimo), and exemplifies how Cardassians will often be developed as individuals with unique perspectives in a way that Romulans and Klingons rarely are; this Glinn, for instance, totally comes across as an engineer rather than a soldier, and just seems to want to connect across the cultural divide. This, obviously, is all very cool.

Unfortunately, some (though not all!) of what “The Wounded” tries to do with O’Brien—and almost all of what it tries to do with Captain Maxwell—works rather less well, in my view. I’m a fan of season four’s ongoing promotion of O’Brien to the status of a quasi-regular character, and “The Wounded” gives him his most prominent role yet. However, the story thread of Picard looking to O’Brien for insights regarding Captain Maxwell pretty much falls flat; O’Brien never gets around to offering any useful thoughts that actually lead anywhere, and the scene in which he ultimately manages to pull Maxwell back from the brink by singing with him feels, to me, like a cheap cop-out. Part of the problem is that Captain Maxwell just doesn’t really work as a character, so there was probably no compelling way for O’Brien to play the role in reining him in that the plot requires him to play. For all that O’Brien, and even Picard, express sympathy and admiration for Maxwell as a great man unfortunately gone astray, he comes across with little nuance, as every bit the half-cocked, self-important rogue captain consumed with bitterness and anger that Gul Macet pegs him for. This remains the case, in fact, even after it becomes clear that his distrust of the Cardassians is actually well founded. (However, Maxwell does at least have a nice moment when he first beams aboard the Enterprise and greets both Riker and O’Brien.) On the other hand, O’Brien’s interactions with the Cardassians, and the arc that he goes through as he wrestles with his own unacknowledged baggage toward them, is quite good. From his initial denial that he harbors any lingering resentment toward them, right up to his eventual monologue that ends with the “it’s not you I hate, Cardassian” bit, he comes across as a flawed but well-intentioned human being who is struggling (not entirely successfully) with difficult and complex feelings in a believable way.

Also, though, the breakfast scene early on between Miles and Keiko, while tangential to the rest of the episode, detracts from its stronger O’Brien bits by continuing to develop the newlyweds’ relationship in disappointing ways. For starters, the scene seemingly asks us to believe that the two of them have never, until now, meaningfully conversed about something as basic and mundane as their respective food preferences. Also, it shows them treating it as a given that Keiko, as the wife, is primarily in charge of preparing their shared meals, with the notion of Miles taking a turn at this task representing a novelty. The conversation about Miles’s memories of his mother’s cooking makes the same twentieth-century stereotypical gender role assumptions. And finally, the scene ends with Keiko implicitly dangling sex as a kind of gift that she will bestow upon her new husband if she is sufficiently impressed with his dinner, in a moment that is clearly supposed to be flirty and cute but that I find very off-putting. Argh.

On the positive side, there is a fair amount of good Picard material in the episode. I already commented on his interactions with Gul Macet, but thus far I’ve mostly emphasized the latter’s side of those interactions. Picard, on his side, is satisfyingly canny, yet also consistently and admirably diplomatic. There’s a particularly nice moment when he makes the momentous decision to give up the Phoenix‘s prefix code to the Cardassians. And then, too, the final scene between him and the gul has always been one of this episode’s most memorable bits, to me. Throughout the entire episode, our captain has played the part of the Federation’s representative whose job it is to preserve the peace and rein in the rogue Maxwell, and he’s comported himself admirably in this endeavor—but in the ending scene, he lets Gul Macet know that for all this, he is no chump. He perceives the duplicitousness that impelled Maxwell to ill-advised action perfectly well himself; the only difference is that he, unlike Maxwell, refuses to overstep his role, and acts in the interest of actually averting war rather than out of bitterness and vengeance. (The question of how much Macet knows about his own government’s shenanigans, and thus how sincere he may or may not be in his interactions with Picard, is an interesting one that I think the episode does well to leave ambiguous.) The stern, self-assured, no-nonsense look on Picard’s face when he puts the Cardassians on notice in the episode’s final moment has always stuck with me as very cool.

Assorted minor quibbles warrant brief mentions before I wrap this up: For one, Troi misstates the status of Federation-Cardassian relations in the opening scene when she describes the Cardassians as “our allies now”; they have a treaty and are no longer at war, but they’re certainly not allies! For another, the back story that O’Brien was at one time a tactical officer on another ship seems hard to reconcile with his history of very low-level postings, and current role as Transporter Chief, on the Enterprise. Also, the spewed-out-of-nowhere tech loophole via which he is able to beam onto the Phoenix feels awfully convenient. And finally, O’Brien’s story about his war experiences repeatedly makes reference to “women and children” in a way that does not seem remotely consistent with alleged 24th-century gender equality, and really rubs me the wrong way. (Reacting to a variety of tidbits relating to ethnicity, culture, and gender in this episode, my favorite commenter on another review site (user William B) remarks that the net effect is a sense that “before O’Brien got on board the Enterprise he served in a late 19th century Irish batallion.”)

Overall, then, “The Wounded” has some good ideas, one great guest character, some excellent character work for a couple of the established characters (alongside some awkward missteps with the O’Briens), and several very effective moments, yet it still can’t quite rise above the disappointing “rogue captain” story at its heart, or fully deliver on its effort to involve O’Brien in the main plot. It should have been a four-star episode, but I don’t think it quite is one.