Just a question about the episode "The Wounded"

[Jimmy Gape]

I enjoyed this episode. Just watched it for probably the 3rd time or so today... but there is something that just bothered me.

How does the Phoenix destroy the Cardassian warship so easily? Data is announcing the battle while the leaders on both sides watch on the bridge.

The Phoenix fires photon torpedoes and destroys the warship one one volley of torpedoes.

Based off of everything we have seen and know about star trek, this is either very very wrong or somehow Maxwell was able to penetrate their shields, which is unlikely because there is no mention of such thing.

Am I just being nitpicky here?

Other than this I thought it was a good episode. Oh yes and one other thing. It seems very hard to believe the Cardassians are just gonna ask Obrien to come party with them when they are in the turbolift. Obviously just a character development scene to expose Obriens hatred for the Cardassians.

Just a couple things that were extremely unrealistic and poorly written imo.

 

[at Quark's]

Dramatic necessity?

I think it had to be shown the Phoenix was dangerous out there, in the brief time alotted for this scene. If I recall correctly the plot also required for them to be so distant they couldn't arrive in time to interfere (so any visuals beyond those schematic radar images were unlikely) . A prolonged battle with only these would have been tedious to watch for us (imagine Data reporting for 5 minutes on that ...).

Sure, that's not an in-universe answer, if you want one of those (which I suspect you want) I'd have to assume Maxwell obtained some secret access codes or so himself during his illicit campaign to use every now and then when the situation called for it. In this case, the script states the Phoenix stayed outside the range of the Cardassian warship, but apparently not out of its own photo torpedo range because it hit the Cardassian with that. Perhaps the Cardassian ship sent the prefix code at the wrong moment, Maxwell noted he was defenseless against that but could still stay (or maneuver) out of range, and decided to use his own code because this was an emergency.

Or any other assumptions that are required to make for this to work ...

 

[JesterFace]

In the beginning of the episode Enterprise takes out the Cardassian ship with one phaser shot. Cardassian weapon and defensive capabilities aren't that great apparently.

That raises a question, Federation has been in a war with Cardassians for years. But why? Looks like Federation could just do what they want, Cardassian couldn't defend themselves. That war hasn't even been mentioned earlier in TNG. Then in the beginning Picard says, "yeah, we're at war with them". Not a much of a fight apparently. More like disputes over borders or something.

 

[Jimmy Gape]

In later years of TNG and also DS9 the Cardassian warships are displayed to be every bit as powerful as the other Alpha Quadrant Superpowers finest war vessels. Since this is the first episode to display Cardassians it appears as if they created them as weak and then later down the road they altered their defensive capablities.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

My assumption is that the warships from the older "type-1" Galors -- sometimes referred to as "destroyers" -- whereas the wartime Galors used outside of major fleet actions are the newer type-3 "cruisers".

 

[The Wormhole]

That raises a question, Federation has been in a war with Cardassians for years. But why? Looks like Federation could just do what they want, Cardassian couldn't defend themselves.

Realistically, the only way that's possible is if Starfleet didn't take the war with the Cardassians seriously and only sent Excelsiors and Mirandas into the fight. Had they sent any Galaxy or Nebula class ships into combat against the Cardassians, there's no way there would be war by any real definition of the word.

 

[Dale Sams]

Realistically, the only way that's possible is if Starfleet didn't take the war with the Cardassians seriously and only sent Excelsiors and Mirandas into the fight. Had they sent and Galaxy or Nebula class ships into combat against the Cardassians, there's no way there would be war by any real definition of the word.

Exactly. Head-canon states the Cardassian-Fed 'war' was just border skirmishes.

 

[JesterFace]

Realistically, the only way that's possible is if Starfleet didn't take the war with the Cardassians seriously and only sent Excelsiors and Mirandas into the fight. Had they sent any Galaxy or Nebula class ships into combat against the Cardassians, there's no way there would be war by any real definition of the word.

Exactly. Head-canon states the Cardassian-Fed 'war' was just border skirmishes.

Maybe Picard called it a war if the Cardassians had made an official declaration of war.
Or, like mentioned above, the ship Enterprise encountered was some old and useless piece of crap that could be shot into pieces with one torpedo.
Then again, if the Cardassian had warships to really have a war with the Federation, why was it never mentioned earlier, one might think that the flagship would be in the frontlines or the captain would mention the war at some point.
Or, there was a "war" just because this episode needed one to make the plot work.

I'll go with the border skirmish theory on this one.
Cardassians called it a war just to make it appear they took it seriously.

 

[Timo]

The anti-ship capabilities of Viet Cong forces were close to nil. DIdn't stop them from dominating the battlefields with infantry weaponry that was quite on par with its US counterparts.

Cardassian space victories are never really referred to. Bloody ground fighting is. Sure, it also seems O'Brien single-handedly drove off regimentfuls of Cardassians ("Empok Nor"), but we never see wimpy Cardassian ground forces. In contrast, we do see wimpy Cardassian ships, all the way through TNG. First, single ones are made of cardboard in "The Wounded"; then, the greatest claim to military prowess by a pair is the ability to blow up an uncrewed, warp-incapable freighter in "Ensign Ro"; and then an entire fleet is defeated by a single shuttlecraft in "Chain of Command".

Parallel timelines notwithstanding, the Cardassians only present a threat of any sort to our heroes in early DS9 (this being chiefly due to the heroes lacking a starship of their own), and only start to threaten or defeat Starfleet or Klingon starships after getting upgraded by the Dominion and firing those bright yellow beams in place of the amber or initial pink ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Realistically, the only way that's possible is if Starfleet didn't take the war with the Cardassians seriously and only sent Excelsiors and Mirandas into the fight. Had they sent any Galaxy or Nebula class ships into combat against the Cardassians, there's no way there would be war by any real definition of the word.

Perhaps the Cardassians were unwilling to limit their engagements to top-of-the-line ships and instead considered any and all targets fair game. In addition, perhaps the Federation obeyed rules of war that the Cardassians did not, such as refusing to engage planetary targets with appreciable numbers of civilians, which limited Federation offensive capabilities.

 

[Timo]

FWIW, the Galor class ship really is the perfect design for Cardassia.

1) The main gun is below the bow, usually seen firing downwards: these folks love to bombard planets!
2) The ship has a bulging belly, with large rolling doors to both sides: these folks love to launch waves of invasion shuttles on planets!
3) The tail looks very much like the main gun of a Klingon ship (by designer intent, by his backstage admission): these folks are prepared to run if the enemy shows up, and put major resources into covering their tails for the purpose!

I could see Cardassians not giving their ships much in the way of antiship weaponry. Their own death rays, emanating from those tiny pyramids dotting the ship and also forming a line of three in the middle of the bow, might be optimized for ground bombardment (comparable to short-barrel, low-velocity tank guns, common on infantry support tanks of yore), and only the tail stinger would be a reverse-engineered Klingon antiship weapon (comparable to a long-barrel, high-velocity tank gun, found only on dedicated tank-killer tanks of yore). We do hear of past conflict between the Union and the Klingon Empire; presumably that's where the Klingon-shaped bits on the Cardassian ships (plus entire Cardassian transports, looking like repainted Klingon ones!) come from.

Timo Saloniemi