Star Trek: 10 Greatest Jeri Taylor Episodes
9. The Wounded
The Wounded, while not the first O'Brien story, was one of the most crucial episodes in crafting what he would become. Taylor took inspiration from Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, wherein a rogue officer continues to fight a war - after peace had been declared. Captain Maxwell is the Kurtz character, while both Picard and O'Brien serve as Marlowe.
The episode also introduces the Cardassians and, for Star Trek at least, the idea that soldiers who have been trained to fight and kill an enemy one day cannot simply sit and befriend them the next. This is a theme that would become an enormous plot arc on Deep Space Nine, not least in the return of the Cardassians, but in O'Brien himself.
Taylor also included the scene where Maxwell and O'Brien sing The Minstrel Boy, a song commemorating those killed in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This scene would become the crux of the episode, as well as a crucial character moment for O'Brien. The Minstrel Boy would return in What You Leave Behind's montage several years later.
The episode was a huge success, frequently appearing on TrekCulture lists as the best of its kind, and is a must-watch before starting Deep Space Nine.