Star Trek: The Wire

Episode: "The Wire"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 2, Episode 22

Original Air Date: May 8, 1994

via Memory Alpha

Garack episode!

Our favorite maybe/probably spy is having brutal headaches and displaying dramatic mood swings.  His buddy Doctor Bashir is eager to help.  Turns out, Garak has an implant in his brain, first given to him when he was a member of the Obsidian Order, Cardassia's intelligence agency.  It releases endorphins to help an agent survive torture.  But the device is not meant for continuous use.  Garak has grown dependent and the implant has run out of juice.

"The Wire" is an addiction story at its heart.  It also provides the deepest development yet for Garak.  As he battles the withdrawal symptoms, he tells Bashir several differing, even contradictory tales of how he came to be exiled.  Desperate, the doctor travels to Cardassia Prime in order to question Enabran Tain, the former leader of the Order who initially gave Garak the implant.  Tain gives yet another perspective on Garak's history, though much like Garak, doesn't provide much in the way of clarity in answering Bashir's questions.

What do we learn about Garak through it all?  He was definitely a spy and a talented one, at that, with what was once a bright future.  Something went wrong.  We can't be sure what because once he gets through the worst of the withdrawal, he tells Bashir that all of the stories he told were true, "especially the lies."  But he did something.  Tain clearly hates him, affirming that Garak deserves his exile and whatever anguish it brings him, either physical or psychological.  

No conclusive details.  Answers only invite more questions.  And that, my friends, is why the Garak story is awesome.  And watching actor Andy Robinson work his magic is always worth the price of admission.

Acting Notes

via Criminal Minds Wiki

Paul Dooley (Enabran Tain) was born Paul Dooley Brown in Parkersburg, West Virginia, February 22, 1928.  Growing up, he wrote a comic strip for the local newspaper.  He joined the Navy at 18, served two years, then came back to attend West Virginia University, graduating in 1952.  

When Dooley went to New York to pursue a showbiz career, he got his start as a clown at children's birthday parties.  Fortunately for all of us, he soon made some important connections with powerful people.  Mike Nichols discovered Dooley and cast him in his Broadway smash, The Odd Couple, first in a supporting role.  Dooley eventually took over as Felix when Art Carney moved on.  Playing opposite Walter Matthau was fortuitous as well.  Matthau helped him get signed by the William Morris Agency.

Dooley is a man of many talents.  Stand-up comedy got him on The Tonight Show and into Second City, the Harvard of comedy troupes, where he worked with Alan Arkin and Alan Alda.  He is a writer, too, which led to co-creating the The Electric Company, a work of children's television genius produced for public television in the 1970s.  Much more recently, he published a memoir: Movie Dad: Finding Myself and My Family, On Screen and Off.

Indeed, on screen Dooley is best known as a movie dad, most memorably in Breaking Away and Sixteen Candles.  Pixar fans would recognize his voice as that of Sarge in the Cars movies.  He's had a long career in television, too, including guest appearances on Bewitched, The Golden Girls and Desperate Housewives.