Best I Ever Had! 

Data to tjwparso: I am curious. What is the significance of beans?

@@dboymax1 We have established communications with beans. Go ahead....

He said that there are those who crave war, who need it. Perhaps his aid intentionally got caught to provoke an incident.

Yes... Or maybe he was testing Picard to see if he would snap or if he would be chill? Of course, I haven't seen these episodes in so long. ​@@jerradwilson

He stood up, forced a long strained silent fart as he stepped forward, and once he realized what he had done, he called Picard away to a different room.

Look at the smirk Macet gives after Picard says he considers the matter closed. His aid was doing what Macet asked of him, and was supposed to get caught so that Macet could prod Picard and see how forgiving the Federation would be, how much they could push against the boundaries of the treaty and still get away with it.

he was probably ordered to, this was definitely a test, Cardassians have a history of coming at the Federation sideways

It's insane how much more swagger and intimidation he has at his disposal as Dukat... these early Cardassians uniforms are the fuckin' ugliest things I swear. Good god.

@docwhat8370 This is exactly why I like Gul Macet more than Gul Dukat in my opinion. I never really liked Gul Dukat....that guy was a complete and total JERK!!! BTW... here's my opinion and views on both Gul Macet and Gul Dukat: "While Gul Macet and Gul Dukat are actually twin cousins (due to them both having very similar faces)..... There are in fact many notable key differences between both Gul Macet and Gul Dukat that make them very different as separate individuals from one another.... such as their differing personalities for prime example. Gul Macet is a much more honorable, merciful, kind-hearted, helpful, war-weary, and much more sympathetic individual, who has more redeemable qualities.... unlike his much more violent and evil cousin Gul Dukat. As for Gul Dukat himself, he is a much more untrustworthy, less honorable, cruel, unsympathetic, irredeemable, and far more ruthless individual who came to embrace the corrupted Cardassian Union and the Dominion, as well as selling his soul to the Devil, plus he murdered Jadzia Dax. Gul Macet is very easily mistaken for his cousin, but he is nothing like Gul Dukat at all....... period!!!"

Well, when dukat wasn't craving that bajoran poontang anyway

​@@jamieolberding7731but that is why Gul Dukat is my favorite Star Trek character ever because I love his Cardassian looks & his selfish scandalous jerk head ways! To each their own I just felt I had to say lol!

​@hansolo631 Not a Historian but I believe they were modeled as cobras/lizards. I agree. Later costumes are much better!

I think there was a line of dialog on DS9 where Obrian said he said something to the effect of being proud to serve on the Enterprise he was board being the transporter chief.

O'Brien was praised by all that served with (or were served by) him in the DS9 arc. Basically, he is a warrior who prefers to build and fix things but if you are a threat you will go down hard. I think that is part of why he liked working on the station, always something that needed fixing or building.

One could make an argument that having the guy responsible for teleporting a team into a tactical situation should be able to make quick tactical decisions. But that would probably be more believable if Starfleet actually had something akin to a marine contingent in Canon (I know they do in the books and games, but those are non-canon as I understand it). It does seem a waste of his talents. But then, Starfleet, for all of its ideals, isn't very good in the tactical department. I mean, for fraks sake, I'm hardly a military engineer or veteran, but even I could make improvements with one simple thing. "Right. So, phasers and disruptors, they can knock people dead or make them vanish in some sort of whacky NDF chain reaction. Right? But these packing crates lying around everywhere... they're not bothered by those beams? And you use them for cover sometimes? Have umm... have you ever considered making them into... mobile cover? You know. Some body armor made out of the same material? Just... just gonna toss that idea out there..."

@@andrewgause6971 good point about Obrien. With regards to the crates providing cover for phaser and disruptor fire. That's a problem that Hollywood has had for years like car doors stopping bullets with the exception of putting the engine block between you and the shooter a car is a terrible choice for cover.

@@TheAtkey agreed. Agreed. Though in this case, I would argue it isn't Hollywood. In Siege if AR558, they actually use packing crates as part of a pre-planned peremiter defense. Sisko considered it a sound defensive line. Hilarity that for all his competency in naval combat, Sisko clearly doesn't understand infantry, this suggests that these are well known in-universe things. Which just makes the decision not to turn them into cheap, lightweight body armor all the more flabbergasting to me.

Well, he IS a Klingon

It's an intimidation tactic.

Yeah, I'm guessing by this episode that O'Brien had some serious PTSD and just decided for a while to get as far away from being involved with the bridge and command staff.

@@tboneforreal he was on the bridge though in at least the very first episode

@@jpalmer999 Yes he was and he was also in command red, but he wasn't there very long so I take that as that was just a position he probably had to take when he first transferred to the Enterprise.

@@tboneforreal Yeah that's what I was thinking.

Tactical officer who isn't commissioned?

In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine book Unity, Gul Macet is Dukats cousin who helped Legate Damar free Cardassia from the Dominion.

@@jeffnarrow3059 Good call, thanks for sharing!!

@@LGranthamsHeir You're welcome. I'm a big Star Trek fan, and I'm grateful that my dad ( may he rest in peace) got me into Star Trek when I was a kid.

It’s too bad they didn’t portray this character on DS9 as Dukat’s twin brother. Would’ve been cool to see.

@@Steno316 I'd like to see Kira meet Macet

Oof

I am so glad they improved the Cardassian uniform for DS9 because this one was just plain ugly.

They were toying with the idea of making the cardassians the series “big bad.” Especially since they had intended on the big bad being the ferengi and they flopped.

@@smf5576 I think the design was supposed to act as a contrast to the Starfleet uniforms in that it resembled armor and was very drab. It would probably look better if they had used a shade of gray or maybe black instead of a muddy brown.

@@sigmus1475 Yeah. A different color certainly would have helped.

Yeah it's too bad. But I guess fate would have Picard do other things, like travel back in time to defeat the Borg, or betray Starfleet in favor of the Ba'Ku, and hang out with the clone son he never knew he had.

@@ravensthatflywiththenightm7319 You ever stop to think that a good 90% of Star Trek feels like a fanfiction of itself? I feel it especially strongly in the time travel episodes.

@@stingerjohnny9951 Lately I've come to the realization Star Trek has a lot more fantasy and "fanficky" elements than Star Wars. I feel that especially strongly with, you guessed it, the time travel episodes in particular.

@@ravensthatflywiththenightm7319 The Force is honestly not a strange thing to wrap your head around if you are of a spiritual nature, while time travel is confusing bullshit no matter who you are. Therefore, I’d genuinely argue that Star Wars is more realistic than Star Trek. Also why did they never go back in time on a dead planet to an ancient civilization? That would have been cool and it would have brought up the ethics of warning these people as it could have unforseen consequences a la the Butterfly Effect. That would have been way cooler than going back to cosplay as cowboys in a replica ghost town. I’m here for sci-fi, not mediocre Historical Comedy.

@@stingerjohnny9951 Exactly! It's just borderline frustrating that the vast majority of Trekkies refuse to see the logic.

You could tell Riker thinks they were being too chummy with each other.

when riker is disturbed by something he can sell it in less than a second. so many of frakes’ most interesting character moments are these really quick, easy to miss glances.

Probably an agent of the Obsidian Order

@@tyranusfan Or maybe a simple tailor who has found himself a part of a misunderstanding.

They've kind of established in the books since that Gul Macet is an honorable Cardassian, totally different from his cousin Gul Dukat (which was also established there to explain them looking exactly the same, obviously because of the same actor) who while carrying out his orders, is firmly against the supplying of weapons in that area and antagonizing the Federation. So you could also make an argument that Macet is genuinely angry with him.

@@EnforcerX71 you could tell by his expression he was.

@@Jadefox32 Yeah, I like to think that the aide was indeed an agent of the Obsidian Order, placed there without Macet's knowledge to take advantage of the Federation's desire to make amends. I figure when the guy was caught Macet immediately put this together and the look he gave was like "Oh fer feck's sake, now I got Enabran Tain breathing down my kneck!"

Recipe for beans: Ingredients: Beans Instructions: Hot

Lots of beans!!

@The ill will they have a beans fixation for some reason, and it's become a running joke

Looked for "beans", typed in "Beams".

all he had to do was ask. I’m sure they would have happily given it over

Morgan Freeman is the being the Q see in their nightmares :D

🍷Lol, Morgan to Ricker - Did i ever tell you how long time ago I and Andy were cell mates, helping the boys get a pack of free beer on a hot summer day! Ricker - Andy? who..

I'd rather see it as Clancy Brown. "Between us and the Cardassians there will be no peace. There can be only one!"

Then things get really crazy when William Sadler shows up...

@@nivenfres ...doing martial arts moves in the nude in his quarters before (SPOILER ALERT) teaming up with John Amos to make Chief O'Brien crash an airliner at Dulles airport. TL;DR The "O'Brien must suffer" trope applies to other cinematic universes.

Or it was all a ruse to get Picard to think kindly of Gul Macet. A plan fiendish in its intricacies! ;-)

Isn't that like just about always the thing? Even if he was acting without orders getting caught is the issue not trying to gain intel.

Not a western episode, though he was an 18th century card player in the back of a bar. It was in Time's Arrow, when data gets sent back in time and meets Mark Twain.

I have nothing to say to you, O'Brien. You know why.

Or that the Enterprise is just that good of a ship. I Imagine the Rutlege was a much lesser vessel possible on the level of the Stargazor in relation to the Enterprise D or Maxwell's current ship the Nova Class Phoenix.

@@TheAtkey O'Brien has achieved unthinkable levels of PTSD. He probably just wanted to a nice, calm job where he could indulge in his love of working with technology without worry of being sent off to battle. After all, you pretty much always need somebody working the transporters.

Being Tactical Officer doesn't mean you have people working under you to command, you just fire the guns and scan for signs of enemy ships powering up weapons & shields. You don't have to hold a command position to perform that role. Chief Engineer Security Chief Chief Medical Officer Transporter Chief These are all head's of department who have people working under them - O'Brien holds more responsibility, command responsibility, in that role than just beaming people places. Responsibility he didn't have as Tactical Officer.

I’ve always assumed that as an NCO, transporter chief was a position with more responsibility than tactical officer. He would have been in charge of one of the major essential systems on the ship and would have had a large number of crew members under his command.

I mean the man married the dark entity known only as “Keiko” he needed all the peace and quiet he found her in his work life to survive such an ordeal. Hell I’m pretty sure he only has kids to have something to distract said “Keiko” so his limited sanity would have the briefest of respite between the universe declaring that “O’Brien MUST SUFFER!”.

Not disinterested, awkward. He smiles awkwardly because he knows Captain Maxwell is actually in a great deal of trouble and thus the friendly banter is out of place.

Gul Market

for the best Gul deals in your sector

For when you want cheap Bajoran comfort women?

Oh really? What season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians can we watch these interactions on? ;)

Leather skinned tyrants hellbent on galactic domination.

@@tboneforreal This is the crossover episode we all really wanted.

I was about to come comment this myself. Even accounting for the Enterprise being Starfleet's flagship - so maybe a higher standard is applied - it is clearly a demotion, as he'd be a whole different colour of uniform as a Tactical Officer. Indeed, how does that work exactly? And, also, seems wasteful, if he really was as good a Tactical Officer as Maxwell suggests, to then be wasting him on the transporters and that's all. And we can ask how he got his qualifications, as presumably a transporter chief is quite a technical job, requiring actual proper technical qualifications (I mean, it's not just technical, it's also implicitly dealing with life and death - so you don't just hand it over to, say, Riker, just because he feels like doing it and you'd surely require exams and qualifications to prove your competent enough not to, you know, transport Picard or a Starfleet Admiral inside solid rock. Basically, what I'm getting at is that it seems like a job requiring technical specialisation - spending your career devoted to the technology, to gradually earn your rank as a Transporter Chief - not just something you just feel like doing and can pick up over a rainy weekend from a few books, when you're bored).

Other way around. Tactical officer is an officer position. Nco transporter chief is enlisted.

I always got the impression that since star fleet is far more then just military as long you are qualified and it gets approved, you could move laterally or down as you pleased.

It's quite clear that his career path was retconned on more than one occasion.

It was during the war, maybe he got a temp promotion to that position if the officer was killed or injured.

They would have had to remove him even if they wanted a war. You can't have an officer willing to openly break their own peace treaties like that. It would be one thing if it were an urgent matter but this was over an arms buildup that would have taken months. He was just to much of a loose cannon to have around.

ITYM USS SHAWSHANK? A Rebellious captain indeed.

They are to the Mirandas what Galaxies are to the Constitutions. Had Star Trek II been a TNG film instead, the Reliant would have been a Nebula.

They are essentially the galaxy glass without the large engineering hull.

@@angryretailbanker5103 But galaxy class ships were superior to the nebulas, weren't they????? Whereas in the wrath of khan, the constitution class enterprise was outmatched by the miranda class reliant, and needed to lure it into the nebula, based on spock's theory that khan wouldn't be able to handle a three dimensional space battle very well, from what I remember!!!!! And in this episode, Maxwell seemed nervous about the prospect of the enterprise opening fire on his ship!!!!

@@STEJTHEGREATEST I was talking about design. But remember that in Star Trek II, the Enterprise was caught off guard. As Khan said, “We’re all just one big happy fleet.” The only reason the Enterprise survived that encounter was by using the override codes to lower the Reliant’s shields and get some good hits on them.

👏👏👏🤣🤣🤣

In Beta canon, they are cousins.

Or is it Cardassia's version of " witness protection " ?

@@MemoirsofaBasketcase Ah yes "cousins" . And they have beans in common!

Possibly. I definitely agree that the Federation dropped the ball with the DMZ and the treaty, but I'm not sure it was as much out of simple carelessness as it appears. Part of why DS9 was so good was that we got to see a lot more of how the episode of the week affected the wider galaxy. But that also reminds me that we almost never saw that on TNG. We know the war with Cardassia had been going on for over a decade because Picard was in it on the Stargazer and it ended a year before this episode. That means that negotiating the ceasefire likely took quite some time. Based on what we see in this episode it would seem the Federation would have had a huge advantage. The Cardassians took advantage of the Federation's peaceful nature and knew they had to be careful not to let it escalate beyond a border conflict because if it did the Federation would obliterate them. But at the same time the Federation also had a much larger area to protect than their border with Cardassia, we've heard of them getting into conflicts with the Talarians and the Tzenkethi in the same time period. But none of those powers could really pose an existential threat to the Federation. No power active in the quadrant was both hostile to the Federation and a match for Starfleet. And then a year before the conflict with Cardassia ended the Romulans ended their 50-year isolation with ships that stole the Galaxy-class's title of most powerful vessel in known space. They began constantly poking and prodding at the Federation looking for any sign of weakness, always threatening war. They were an actual threat, which meant that all of a sudden the Federation had to be A LOT more wary of a conflict that would pull ships away from the Romulan border. Either during or shortly before the peace talks the Cardassians jumped to being an existential threat without having to do anything. Then in the middle of the peace talks the Enterprise made first contact with the Borg, and suddenly a conflict with anyone else looked even more like a distraction they couldn't afford. Picard's log indicates the Cardassian war ended in TNG's third season, which is 2366. But the treaty that created the DMZ and all the issues there is labeled the treaty of 2367, the same year of this episode, which probably means an early cease fire followed by a full treaty. And while that treaty was being negotiated, we have Wolf 359, which leaves Starfleet weakened and not sure when the Borg would return. And it's against that backdrop that the terms with Cardassia are being negotiated. All of this to say that while yeah, the Federation dropped the ball big time, I think they also genuinely had a dangerous big picture they were trying to hold together as best they could.

This could have been post Setlik 3. With so many officers down he could have fit the position well and remained there for the tenure of the mission.

@@redemption2 it’s a reasonable explanation

Not technically correct. He's an NCO, or Non-Commissioned Officer. Basically an officer who was promoted to the position from the enlisted ranks.

@@asmcint Yep an NCO can be given a position normally given to a commissioned officer if the situation "warrants".

The design of the Cardassians wasn't nailed down yet, as evidenced by the fact that this is the only episode where they have facial hair or wear headgear. About the only things that stuck were the ships and the basics of the makeup (and even that was revised to be less pink and more grey).

Maybe Cardassian face cancer

I always took it that O'Brien took over the post ad-hoc perhaps because the tactical officer was killed. O'Brien distinguished himself in the role, Maxwell granted him acting field commission under the similar authority Picard that grants Wesley his acting rank and he did well insofar as the war lasted. And after the war O'Brien felt he was better off in engineering. Of course he looks very, very junior as the helmsman in TNG's 1st episode.

This entire clip was people trying to manipulate each other. Macet told Picard "I'm not bloodthirsty and neither are you" as a way of saying "It's you and me vs Maxwell, right?" and in the transporter room, Riker probably wants to arrest Maxwell on the spot, but Maxwell turns on the charm and ensures that the conversation is entirely friendly and even a little ass-kissy. Riker is probably thinking "this guy just killed nearly a thousand people and is way too happy to be here."

@@tbeller80 Thanks for the perspective. If that's the case, that look should be reserved for Maxwell himself. The fact that Riker directs the stink eye toward O'Brien may be more of a, "This is serious shit and NOT a chummy visit. Priorities!" at best. At worst, it's a case of misplaced hostility along the lines of " You've undermined the gravity of the situation (and me) by encouraging this insubordinate officer! " In any case, Riker's passive aggressive stares often leave me scratching my head as they seem misplaced.

@@TheIronFyst The stink-eye look at O'Brien might also be a case of, "You're being awfully chummy with this renegade captain who's trying to re-ignite a war by killing hundreds of our new 'allies'. Get your loyalties straight, Mister O'Brien."