Star Trek is lauded for an optimistic view of the future, and yet nearly every single incarnation of Trek has some horrible conflict in its immediate backstory. Even the ultra-cozy future of Star Trek: The Next Generation eventually revealed that prior to the 2360s, the Federation had been engaged in a brutal war with the Cardassians that lasted from the 2340s to the 2350s.
But here’s the thing: Like the Romulan War in the late 22nd century, the Federation’s struggle with the Cardassians exists almost entirely in our imaginations and hasn’t been depicted on screen at all. This makes the Cardassian War a super-rare dark spot in the Trek timeline, barely glimpsed until now. As reported by TrekMovie, a new IDW comic, Star Trek: Defiant #20, Miles O’Brien flashes back to a time on Setlik III, which was decidedly not anything like the rosy future of TNG. Mild spoilers ahead.
In the continuity of the Defiant comic book series, it’s the year 2378: three years after the ending of Deep Space Nine, and a year before Star Trek Nemesis. The series features various dream-team pairings of characters engaged in rowdier-than-usual off-the-books Starfleet missions. Like all Star Trek comics to date, Defiant isn’t strictly canon, though it’s not explicitly non-canon either. The 2370s events of the series, so far, haven’t contradicted anything in the ensuing canonical decades, which would include Lower Decks, Prodigy, or Picard. But, in this particular new issue, one event referenced is very much from pre-existing canon.
As Miles O’Brien talks with Julian Bashir, O’Brien admits to something that happened during the massacre on Setlik III, which occurred in 2347, well before the timeline of TNG and DS9. In the TNG episode “The Wounded,” we learned that O’Brien had murdered Cardassians as part of the defense of various civilians. But the details only ever were mentioned in dialogue, and never seen.
In the new comic flashback to Setlik III, O’Brien admits to another detail that had never been stated before. Turns out, that in cold blood, O’Brien took a phaser and shot one Cardassian through the head. In the present, O’Brien tells Bashir that this moment haunts him, saying, “He wouldn’t have survived his injuries. In the years since I’ve told myself I was showing him mercy... what do you think Julian? Am I a war criminal? Or just awful enough to join Section 31?”
The reference to Starfleet’s covert black ops organization, Section 31, is perfect for Deep Space Nine characters to be discussing. Lately, we think of Section 31 in relation to the modern Discovery era or the impending Michelle Yeoh-focused movie of the same name. But Section 31 originated with Deep Space Nine, and a time when the Trek franchise explored more of the morally grey areas of the Federation and Starfleet.
And yet, this specific incident comes from The Next Generation episode “The Wounded,” a moment where O’Brien recounted a different incident; a moment where he vaporized a Cardassian solider on accident. Interestingly, this new take doesn’t contradict that moment at all, but it does indicate that even back then, O’Brien was holding back everything that had transpired during that specific part of the war. This doesn’t mean O’Brien was lying before, nor does it suddenly turn one of the most pure and real Star Trek characters into a monster. But it does indicate that there are darker corners of the Star Trek timeline that we still don’t fully understand. The personal demons of Miles O’Brien were already a canonical fact, but our understanding of the murky time before the Enterprise-D glory years is still shrouded in mystery and tragedy.
