THE WOUNDED Did anyone else feel that O'Brien's rant in the turbolift to the Cardassians' invitation to join them in Ten Forward could have come out of Shylock's mouth in Act I, Scene iii of Shakespeare's _The_Merchant_Of_Venice_? (For that matter, Maxwell could be a reasonable, though far from exact, analogue to Brutus in _Julius_Caesar_.) This was an episode which had a lot of good ideas in it - like much of the fourth season of TNG. However, it unfortunately decided to hit us over the head with the, which made the whole thing seem very corny. The one aspect of the show which I *don't* think was a good idea was showing O'Brien and Keiko's married life. This was all very tedious. Though the second dinner scene did serve to set up some events later in the story, I think it could have bene handled much more delicately than having O'Brien first rant at the Cardassians in the turbolift and then deny that he has problems with them to Keiko. I also though that Colm Meany's acting job as O'Brien was exceedingly poor, but that may have been because the script was melodrama at its worst. Other than that, here are some of the basic ideas I felt were solid: The feelings that people have toward a people they've fought a war with; A Federation captain going renegade; Two races that generally mistrust each other having to work together to stop the renegade; The examination of the personal feelings of the two races' commanders in the context of their different professional agendas (certainly the Cardassians were more interested in destroying the Phoenix than in simply stopping it). The first issue, that of the feelings O'Brien and Maxwell had toward the Cardassians, was handled with about as much subtlety as a throwing a grenade at us. The whole thing was reduced to absurdity when O'Brien delivered the incredibly cliche line "I don't hate you, Cardassian. I hate what *I* became because of you." That's the sort of line that makes me want to throw my arms up in disgust. I can get that sort of stuff out of most comic books or network adventure programming. I can get the "old war stories" stuff from the same place. And they weren't any more complex or interesting here than there. Watching Picard and the Enterprise crew work with the Cardassians was fairly interesting. I liked the sequence where they were arguing about the prefix code, which nicely showed that each "side" had its own agenda, and its own view of What Should Be Done. Adding to that effect was the excellent handling of the computer graphics used to represent the tactical positions of the units. The graphics themselves were superb. My only reservation was the ease with which the Phoenix defeated the Cardassian warship. If they're THAT eays to handle, why the heck is the Federation worried about the Cardassians? I also liked seeing the Cardassian leader sending his subordinate to his room, as it were. Seeing someone with a clear leadershp ability besides Picard is a nice change of pace. The leader actually had a fair amount of depth to him, which I enjoyed (though I didn't care for his playing coy at the end; more cliche). However, I felt the Picard/Cardassian interplay broke down when they talked in the Ready Room. Everything was nicely spelled out for us in an exchange that was ultimately unsatisfying, to me anyway. And then we have Captain Maxwell. This was the real sadness of the episode. First of all, the actor playing Maxwell was utterly unable to convince me of his feelings, conviction, or much of anything else, really. I also kept wondering why his crew went along with him. One would think that their careers would be over as well, as accomplices and all. Did anyone else think Maxwell sounded like he had a Texas twang in his voice when he first appeared? The last exchange between O'Brien and Maxwell was pretty darned boring. I simply couldn't attach any emotional significance to the song, because it hadn't been built up enough as an important characteristic of the episode. And Maxwell's decision to back down seemed too sudden, too pat. There were numerous little touches I liked and disliked. The main thing I liked was the final twist, which reminded me of Picard's orders to preserve the peace no matter what - even if Maxwell was right, it turns out. On the minus side, I didn't like the design of the Phoenix (I'd rather have seen a truly new design, rather than a Reliant-redux). I don't like the idea of introducing ANOTHER race the Federation has problems with, especially since they probably won't appear again (like the Telarians). They were a pretty bland race, too. I found the delay between Maxwell powering up his weapons and O'Brien transporting over seemed contrived - it was too long. This could have been handled with a throwaway question and answer: O'Brien: "Why didn't you fire?" Maxwell: It would have interested me more than the song bit. I also found the idea of a ship whose shields go down for 1/50 of a second every so often to be pretty stupid. There were some good bits in this episode, especially the points where tension was high (and the fact that they didn't have Maxwell attack the Enterprise when he pulled away, but instead led them to the supply ship), but the execution was deeply flawed, producing an episode which I think was of average quality at best. Actually, I think I'd have to rate it a little below, considering the bad acting and all. It's certainly not something I'm eagerly waiting to see again. Grade: C- SEASON FOUR TO DATE: The Best Of Both Worlds Part Two: C- Family: A- Brothers: B Suddenly Human: C Remember Me: A+ Legacy: D+ Reunion: A- Future Imperfect: D- Final Mission: B The Loss: D- Data's Day: B- The Wounded: C- --- Total: 28.333 Average: 2.361 = C+ (Fall of 0.063 from previous episode) Reality check: Yeah, I'd say that this, "Suddenly Human", and "BOBW" 2 are all in the same boat, with "SH" being the best. "Brothers" and "Data's Day", while neither being a stupendous episode, benefitted from being more entertaining thanks to the Data bits. "Final Mission" was only really dragged down because of the garbage scow sequence. Actually, the fourth season is getting pretty boring, I think. We haven't had a really great episode since "Remember Me" (though I'm waiting to see "Reunion" again to see how it stands up; I missed it last week).