Duty, Friendship, and Lies in The Wire (DS9 2x22)
The Wire is one of my favorite episodes of DS9, and honestly one of my favorite episodes of anything. I see something new in it every time I watch it, and it always impacts me emotionally. So, I want to talk about it. This is going to be a very, very long post.
The episode is book-ended (no pun intended) with Garak sharing a piece of Cardassian literature with Bashir. In the opening scene, the argument between them about the Neverending Sacrifice serves to set a few thematic elements. Most apparent is a tension about Cardassian culture vs. Federation(/Human) culture, which Garak snaps at Bashir about more than once.


