YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S4E12 "The Wounded"

• Genius Bonus: The old war song O'Brien and Maxwell sing is an actual Irish Rebel Song about the Rebellion of 1798. The melancholy tune about a hopeless battle is somehow very appropriate to the situation.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Maxwell will probably be remembered differently by history given the Cardassians eventually become the front line troops of the Dominion in a second, much larger, war—after the Cardassians had already turned a lot of the Federation against them during the Maquis conflict.
  • The Maquis effectively managed what Maxwell failed to do, overturning the treaty and provoking a war between the Federation and the Cardassians. In just a few years, the Federation would experience the horror of what would have happened if Maxwell hadn't been stopped. (Indeed, if the Federation and the Cardassians had gone to war without Dominion involvement, then Starfleet would quite possibly have been in no shape to challenge the Dominion afterwards.)
  • Gul Macet claims to want the peace between the Federation and Cardassia to last, and reaches an understanding with Picard to preserve it. But anyone who's watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine knows that the impending arrival of the Dominion would not only end up shattering that peace, but bring them into the most devastating war in Alpha Quadrant history. (And the fact that one of the major players in that alliance is another Cardassian played by Marc Alaimo makes this darkly ironic.)
  • O'Brien's monologue about his service in the war, especially the line, "I don't hate you, Cardassian, I hate what you made me become." Much the same theme is explored much more darkly, decades later in real life but about 100 years earlier in the setting, with Dr. M'Benga and General Dak'Rah in "Under the Cloak of War".

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