“Chrysalis”
Written by Rene Echevarria
Directed by Jonathan West
Season 7, Episode 5
Production episode 40510-555
Original air date: October 28, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Bashir is having a slow night of working on a virus while in bed, when Nog summons him to the infirmary to see Admiral Patrick. The “admiral” is, in fact, Patrick in disguise, along with Jack and Lauren—all three dressed as Starfleet officers—and Sarina. Bashir had been considering bringing Sarina to the station to try to treat her, and “the Jack Pack” decided not to wait and bring her to the station now, impersonating officers while doing so.
Bashir convinces Sisko to not have them arrested and Dr. Lowes has approved the surgery Bashir wishes to perform that would get Sarina out of her own head, as it were. Sisko also allows the other three to remain so that Sarina will have familiar faces around, but insists they no longer wear uniforms.
He takes her to the infirmary to run tests, and then asks O’Brien if he can modify a probe so that it can stimulate her synapses, putting her brain and her senses back in sync. But O’Brien says it can’t be done—however, Jack, Patrick, and Lauren have figured out a way to do it.
Using the modified probe, Bashir performs the surgery, but Sarina remains practically catatonic. Five days later, Bashir laments to Dax in Quark’s that he failed—only to see her wandering the Promenade and speaking. Sarina herself is surprised to see that she’s speaking—she’s used to thinking things but nobody hearing her. He runs a few tests and then brings her to the cargo bay. Jack is annoyed by her style of speech—she’s out of practice, and so sounds halting—and the four of them start singing variations on “Do Re Mi.” After a minute, Sarina sounds like she’s been singing her whole life.
Bashir is so caught up in Sarina’s recovery that he spaces on him and O’Brien getting together. When he does finally go to Quark’s, he babbles to O’Brien for half an hour about Sarina before O’Brien can get a word in reminding him that they were supposed to get together. (Why O’Brien didn’t just tap the combadge that’s right there on his chest to ask Bashir where he was is left unspoken.)
He returns to his quarters to find Sarina there. Bashir asked how she got in, and she says, “your access code only has six digits.” She’s afraid to fall asleep because she might wake up and be back the way she was. Bashir comforts her and she actually falls asleep on his shoulder. He eventually falls asleep on the couch also.
The next morning he wakes up on the couch to find that Sarina has solved a mutating virus problem that Bashir’s been working on for months. She also feeds him breakfast before he goes off to the infirmary for surgery. Sarina goes to the cargo bay, where Jack is panicking because the universe only has 60 or 70 trillion years left and they have to fix it!
When Bashir returns to the cargo bay, Sarina is sitting alone, seemingly unresponsive—but it turns out she’s just pretending to be catatonic so that Jack and the other two will stop bugging her. Bashir then invites Sarina to join him and O’Brien, Dax, Odo, and Kira at Quark’s. Lauren dresses her up, and they have a pleasant drink and chat together. She pretty much pegs all of them just from a little exposure.
Lowes wants Jack, Lauren, and Patrick to return to the institute, but Sarina no longer needs to be there. And then Sarina and Bashir kiss, which is about nineteen types of stupid and unethical (though he recuses himself as her doctor, putting her in Dr. Girani’s care). It doesn’t help matters when he tells the other three, who are furious (Jack), disgusted (Lauren), and sad (Patrick).
Bashir takes Sarina to Quark’s, where she cleans up at dabo, to Quark’s chagrin, but eventually gets overstimulated and has to leave. Bashir is utterly smitten with her, as she’s pretty much the woman he’s been waiting for all his life—someone who can actually keep up with him. O’Brien cautions him that it’s all happening a bit too fast, but Bashir replies that they’re genetically engineered—they do everything fast. (Wah-hey!)
When Sarina doesn’t show up for her and Bashir’s dinner date, he goes to her quarters to find that she’s once again catatonic. Girani can’t detect a cause, and so Bashir turns her over to the rest of the Jack Pack, who know her better than anyone. Unfortunately, there isn’t a physical cause—she’s retreated into herself because she’s frightened. She doesn’t know what love is, she doesn’t know how to respond to Bashir, but she desperately wants to please him because she’s so grateful.
Realizing how screwed up this relationship is, Bashir sends her off to an internship where she’ll live with a family and be able to acclimate, while the other three return to the institute.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? At one point O’Brien gets his Scotty on and tells Bashir that he can’t break the laws of physics with regard to the probe Bashir used in the surgery.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko lets go of the rather serious crime of impersonating an officer with unconvincing ease, especially since Sisko himself says that the “lovable scamps” defense didn’t really fly when they tried to give classified intel to the Dominion, so it really shouldn’t fly now. But Sisko lets it go because the script says he does…
The slug in your belly: Dax’s method of counseling Bashir is to help him in beating himself up, which actually works decently as a reverse-psychology ploy.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark offers free booze to Sarina just to get her to stop winning at dabo so much.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Lauren informs Bashir that it’s over between them, and that she has a new man in her life: Nog. It’s unclear as to whether or not Nog has been informed of this…
Meanwhile, Bashir totally falls for Sarina without thinking through the emotional consequences to her.
Keep your ears open: “That’s a stupid question!”
Patrick’s catch-all response, particularly when he’s disguised as an admiral, to keep people from questioning him. This works on several folks, including Nog and a security guard.
Welcome aboard: Back from “Statistical Probabilities” are Tim Ransom as Jack, Hilary Shepard Turner as Lauren, Michael Keenen as Patrick, and, most notably, Faith C. Salie as Sarina. Because she had dialogue this time ’round, Salie had to actually re-audition for the role of Sarina for this episode.
In addition, Aron Eisenberg shows up as Nog.
Trivial matters: This episode serves as a sequel to “Statistical Probabilities,” with the return of “the Jack Pack,” and that story is referenced more than once.
While this is the last time these characters are seen onscreen, Sarina will go on to be a recurring character in the tie-in fiction, appearing in several of the Typhon Pact novels, among others—most recently in David Mack’s Section 31 novel Disavowed.
Dr. Girani is mentioned and seen in the background. This is the first time that there has ever been a reference to another doctor serving on the station—even though a station as large of this would, by necessity, need to have at least three or four doctors on duty. Girani is only referenced in this episode, but she plays a good-sized role in several post-finale DS9 novels and also appears in the short story “The Devil You Know” by Heather Jarman in Prophecy and Change.
The singing scene was an odd experience for the actors, as Tim Ransom is completely tone-deaf and had to be dubbed (making Lauren’s comment that Jack was tone-deaf even funnier), while Faith C. Salie had no idea she could sing as well as she could. (For her part, Hilary Shepard Turner was the lead singer in a band and so was fine with it, and Michael Keenen enjoyed the experience as well.)
Walk with the Prophets: “So what’s a genetically enhanced girl supposed to do when she wakes up from a long sleep?” It took me a while to figure out why I didn’t like this one more than I should have. I mean, it’s generally a good, well-put-together episode. It’s actually fun to see the Jack Pack again, all four actors do superbly, especially Faith Salie, who had a much bigger role to play this time as Sarina. Salie is radiant and wonderful, and really sells Sarina’s transition.
There are certainly lots of small problems, bits of the story that strain credulity pretty much to the breaking point: Sisko letting the Jack Pack get away with what they did, Lowes blithely approving Bashir’s experimental surgery that includes equipment that hasn’t even been invented yet, O’Brien sitting and sulking and listening to Morn in Quark’s while waiting for Bashir without actually contacting him to ask where he is (and Bashir said he was in the infirmary for part of it, which is right across the corridor), and, for that matter, the Jack Pack actually being able to get from the institute to DS9 while disguised as Starfleet officers in the middle of a war that’s fueled by paranoia over the infiltration of shapeshifting aliens.
But ultimately my biggest problem is that this story is only about Bashir when it should also be about Sarina. Yes, Bashir is a main character, but he’s being a jackass. His behavior is horrendous, bordering on unethical—he stops being her doctor, at the very least—but Sarina imprinting on him is almost inevitable, and his response should’ve been to back off, not double down. (Gee, if only they had a counselor on the station to help him through that. Oh, wait!) Sarina’s struggle, outlined all-too-quickly when she unloads on Bashir in the cargo bay, should have been the heart of the episode.
At the very least, this story needed the balance between Bashir and Sarina that Rene Echevarria gave to his first script, TNG’s “The Offspring,” between Data and Lal. The stories have many of the same beats, but I like that Bashir’s procedure doesn’t fail or fall apart, but that Sarina still is in good shape and goes off to have a life at the end.
But I still wish we’d gotten more of her instead of just focusing on how awful Bashir’s life is without having someone who can keep up with him in his life. Yes, that’s very heady, and it’s a good journey for him to go on, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the poor woman who’s just been able to talk for the first time in her life. I get that she’s a guest star, but it feels so horribly unfair for this brilliant, fascinating woman to be reduced to Bashir’s trophy rather than be allowed to go on her own journey on camera.
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a whole bunch of stuff. He’s currently writing more stuff.
I love this episode because Bashir is such a creeper in it and is FINALLY CALLED OUT FOR BEING A TOTAL CREEPER.
Seriously, I spent the first part of this episode totally horrified at the way this relationship was progressing and the weird wish fulfillment (oh boy – a woman who is totally and utterly beholden to you and all naive and fresh and innocent and all that. Gee, what’s going to happen when everything ISN’T new to her anymore? Will she lose her luster?) and wondering if we were supposed to accept it at face value because Bashir is such a Nice Guy. I figured that the episode would end in a Flowers to Algernon way and her symptoms would revert.
I felt vindicated ;)
(Although I actually do feel really horrible for the rest of the pack).
PS – I think it would be oddly fitting for me to wish everybody here a happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception ;) (which was actually yesterday, but I forgot to mention it).
A few things I differ on. It didn’t seem out of character for Sisko to treat the officer impersonation as he did because what would be the consequence? They’d go to an institution. So why waste paper making it formal.
Also, I wouldn’t change the focus of the episode. It would seem out of place for Sarina to go and talk to others about her feelings or act them out with someone other than Bashir. We see the barriers she’s constructing around herself and they make perfect sense. I think less is more in this case.
And for there to be drama, Bashir has to be tempted by the ethical dilemna. Overall very good episode to me. Warp 8 out of 10.
I pretty much agree on this one — it would be better if Bashir hadn’t acted so unethically. As for the focus being too much on him, with Sarina being defined more in terms of how he felt about her than as a character in her own right, it occurs to me that it’s another example of how the show suffered from having an all-male writing staff. Of course, some male writers are good at writing from a female perspective — personally I prefer writing female characters myself — but this group didn’t seem to pull it off that well, and they could’ve used someone to give them some perspective.
But my absolute favorite part of the episode, and one of my favorite DS9 moments of all time, is the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence. It’s just beautiful, and is one of the musical high points of Jay Chattaway’s career as a Trek composer. It’s such a wonderful moment of joy and discovery.
@3: Changing the focus wouldn’t have to mean leaving Bashir out of those discussions — it would just mean writing the scenes from her perspective, having Bashir be there to support her arc, rather than having her be there to support Bashir’s arc.
Their, they’re–there is a difference, KRAD!
Pretty certain that should be him.
I have to ask – am I the only one who agrees with Jack that staving off either the eventual heat death of the universe or a “Big Crunch” really is something the human race should be working on?
— Michael A. Burstein
@6: In a universe inhabited by the Q, the Organians, and countless other nigh-godlike superraces, it seems likely to me that the problem is already being worked on in many quarters.
LOL – when the Jack Pack was going on about needing to change the cosmological constant, it actually reminded me of the scene in Deja Q where he instructs them to change the gravitational constant (or something like that) to deal with the issue of the collapsing moon.
Why does Sisko let them off? Well to quote Aubrey from the webcomic Something*Positive:
“The key is to commit crimes so confusing that police feel too stupid to even write a crime report about them.”
Can you imagine writing up a report explaining how a group of misfits with mental health issues successfuly broke out of an institution, conned their way onto a Starship, hijacked computer systems, impersonated an admiral successfully by just insulting people and…see I can’t even finish summarizing it. I can see how this one would be quietly buried. Sometimes you don’t want to know, and just want to call it done damage and move on.
As for the episode. Oh good, more comic releif at the expense of people who have developmental and mental disorders. That always says progresive future to me. /sarcasm.
@8: Note that Q’s suggestion was basically the exact same thing Chief O’Brien did in “Emissary” to lower DS9’s mass so the thrusters could propel it to the wormhole. For that matter, impulse drives work on much the same principle, reducing the ship’s inertial mass so that it can be accelerated quickly.
In the USA today, impersonating a military officer (as opposed to police) falls under free speech. Its only a crime if its used for fraud – in this case, the JackPac ‘stole’ a ride on Star Fleet transport, but since the Federation has no money and transportation is presumably a free public service, I don’t know if they could really be charged with theft. Whatever crime they committed here was very minor and I don’t see a problem with Sisko letting it go.
Aren’t the Jack Pack all institutionalized as mentally incompetent? Wouldn’t they have to be mentally competent to be charged with a crime?
It’s been ages since I’ve seen this one, so I can’t say for certain how I feel about Bashir and Sarina. Even if he didn’t get the doctor/patient problem, he should have grasped that Sarina was too naive and inexperienced. Even if this was the real deal and they were perfect and predestined and everything else, Sarina needed time to learn about the world and what she wanted from life before she could make that choice.
Regarding the focus being far too much on Bashir – this is one thing I think “Melora” did better. It’s an admittedly horrific episode overall, but at least much more of the focus was on Melora herself, and Bashir’s relationship with her was only part of the story.
As for the singing – goodness, I thought that went on too long. I’m glad someone liked it, but I wish it had been about two minutes shorter…
Hahahaha, I love that there’s a ‘Jack Pack’ tag on Tor.com :)
Thank you, Dr. Pedant Strikes, for pointing out those egregious errors. Those responsible have been flogged and the post has been edited.
mabfan: No, you’re not the only one, but I don’t think anyone else is on the problem with quite Jack’s urgency……
MeredithP: I’m with Christopher, I adored the singing. It was a truly joyous, wonderful moment that did a great deal to show how happy Sarina was to be able to express herself at last.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@9 – I can buy that – it happened to me. Long story short – I was nailed for speeding just outside of Hartford, CT in a county known for being strict. By rights, I was going fast enough (>2x speed limit) that I should have been hit with Reckless Driving, had my car impounded, kicked out of my specialty in the Navy, etc, etc.
However, due to a confluence of events I had a car with Florida license plates that was actually registered in Massachusetts, I was carrying a FL drivers license that had a TN address, and I was wearing my Navy dungarees but the big base in Groton/New London was at least a couple hours away.
The deputy that had pulled me over, looked at everything a couple of times, thought deeply and said “Son, I don’t have TIME to figure out the paperwork on this, just don’t let me catch you going that fast around here again…” :)
Now, concerning the episode, it was mostly “meh” for me – the Flowers for Algernon beats really took me out of the episode…but yes, Do-Re-Mi was the best part of this ep.
I totally agree that the singing is a lovely moment, I’m not a complete ass! I only meant I wish it was shorter.
@14, Lisamarie: Always check Keith’s tags. Some of my favorites are “Klingon kleavage,” “confused? don’t be!” and “Humperdinck Humperdinck Humperdinck!!!!!”
Meh. They could have skipped this ep.
Then again, I’m not a big Bashir fan nor a fan of the Jack Pack, so I’m probably biased.
Very much a “meh” from me as well. I found it the kind of episode ST had done several times before and I didn’t particularly like any of them either and this one didn’t add anything. And I found the singing kind of cringeworthy. Sorry.
Maybe 24-26 episodes in a season is too much. The new 10-16 episodes a season on cable really forces the writers to tighten things up…except in the case of the last season of True Blood where they can meander for a while about Bill’s “mal de vivre” and then shoehorn a soul-mate for Jason in the last couple of episodes…what the hell!?
I was happy to see the Jack Pack again, and loved the line “Your friend is right, you can’t break the laws of physics BUT YOU CAN BEND THEM!” I do think your assessment was right on, though.
I though the singing was just a fine length.
I have never noticed any of these tags before.
I remember when this episode first aired, how I cringed when I realized it was yet another “Pygmalion” episode (just how many of these have been done over the years in all the ST series?).
It was decent enough, but the thing is, I don’t think this should have been done during the final season. They should have done this sooner.
The problem, as Keith pointed out, this is a Bashir story. Sarina is treated as an object of study and affection, rather than being a protagonist. That’s an unavoidable issue when you develop a passive character. I’ll credit both Echevarria and the guest actors at least for making memorable scenes out of this mix.
Nevertheless, even though it’s a rather inconsequential episode, it was necessary to get this thread out of the way, so Bashir could fall for the new Dax without any obstacles.
To clarify, the issue with this being done in season 7 is that it takes up a spot out of 26 episodes. And there were too many important threads hanging as it is to devote a full 45 minutes to this particular story. This could have easily replaced last season’s Profit and Lace without grief.
Eduardo: I base this on no inside knowledge, but I suspect that they didn’t decide to do this episode until after “Statistical Probabilities” aired and they saw how viewers responded to the Jack Pack. They couldn’t have done it any sooner. And because this was the last season, it was their last chance to bring back interesting characters for a second shot. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I remember understanding why Julian would be so smitten with Sarina, she was such a delight. I was glad when she reappeared in the novelverse. Sarina is a charatcer that adds some nice texture.
Plus, WOW!
@6: Eh, no, I don’t think the heat death of the universe is worth working on, for a number of reasons. (Besides CLB’s answer that we can expect higher powers to take care of it, which is one of my reasons in real life, just as it’s CLB’s in the Trek-verse.)
First, is it even a tragedy if the universe ends after 70 trillion years? That’s 5000 times longer than it’s already lasted.
Second, there are SO many cosmological issues that are much more urgent. Our sun will “only” last another ~6 billion years. Stars in general will be gone long before heat death occurs. On the scale of trillions of years, it’s not too long before a gamma ray burst will probably destroy all life in our galaxy.
Third, even altering the cosmological constant would only delay heat death, not prevent it. To prevent it, you’d need to break the second law of thermodynamics — which, fundamentally, is derived directly from the laws of probability. Now, I suppose in Trek, even altering the laws of probability is feasible (citation: Season 2’s Rivals). But once you’re talking about breaking the 2nd Law somehow, there are SO many amazing developments and innovations that would be happening, which would totally steal the attention away from dealing with heat death.
@2 happy virgin of guadalupe day(Mexico) (so says my Big Bang Theory calendar)
Yes, today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe :D But the reason I always tend to remember that one is because December 9 is my birthday, and that’s actually the first day the visions started (and is celebrated as the Feast of St. Juan Diego).
Now, I have to ask, why is it on a Big Bang Theory calendar, lol :)
The inclusion of (Mexico) seems to indicate that they are listing it as a foreign holiday, rather than a Catholic Feast Day.
I loved the singing, just beautiful. To be surrounded by friends who are your family, and to finally come out of your shell, as it were, in a moment like Sarina’s was just a wonder to watch.
Normally I give Julian a pass with his methods of pursuing women, but this time he went too far too fast. I would rather have a montage (let’s be honest, we’ve only got 44 minutes) of Bashir showing Sarina the wonders of life, being able to appreciate them and to finally be able to express that appreciation, then Sarina and Julian become closer and Sarina develops an attraction to Bashir, then Bashir, though flattered and tempted, realizes Sarina still has a long way to go before she can really understand love, gently tells Sarina she still so much to see and do with her life, but he will always care for her. Then Sarina leaves, not overwhelmed and maybe creeped out, but with Bashir in her heart, the Jack Pack go their way, and life goes on.
Now that I’ve written all that, I think that’s how I’m gonna think of this episode in my mind, because its how it should have gone. Stupid all-male writing staff.
Did either episode even hint at a reason why Lauren is not suitable for the outside world? In both episodes she seems perfectly capbable and reasonable.
Wow. This episode upset me (almost) as much as Profit and Lace.
Let’s take a step back here….
Doctor fixes mentally ill (via bad gene therapy) woman who has been in a mostly comatose state for god knows how long and then- WAY-HEY! it’s Quagmire time!
I never realized until this rewatch how rapey Star Trek could be. The treatment of women as passive sexual objects to be claimed through “excessive desire” is sickening.
I’m kinda bummed because I really liked the Jack Pack and this just took away any fun I could have had with them.
One of the problems I think no one mentioned is that he’s not in love with her, he’s in love with the idea of her. He even tells Miles and Miles tries to talk him out of it (though I think he should have tried harder), which doesn’t work, and everything goes to hell. Of course, this is also classic “male writer”-syndrome, they portray the idea or image of women, not actual people. And yes, she was disturbingly passive, for understandable reasons but still. And I’m not sure it’s a good idea to separate her from the only family she knows so soon after a major life change as this definitely was. In short, this episode can take a hike!
This episode absolutely infuriated me. It started off quite promisingly, with Sarina’s delight in being able to interact with the world around her, especially as expressed through the singing. After that, things go sharply downhill and are so depressingly predictable. Of course we can’t have a nice, joyous episode focusing on Sarina realising the opportunities that are open to her and working out what to do with her life. Of course, even in the far future, it’s apparently nigh-impossible for a man and a woman to take the lead roles in an episode without a romantic angle being forced in. So of course that means we have to have yet another Trek “woman of the week” plot that we’ve seen plenty of times before. And of course, being just the woman of the week means some pretext will have to be arrived at to write Sarina out by the end of the episode.
I felt as if this was an insulting waste of my time. There’s very little of note here. Salie’s performance as Sarina is very good, but that’s pretty much the only redeeming feature.
Just rewatched this one, and did the usual poking around the Web about it.
Faith Salie points out that there’s a decent moral lesson here: Sarina is not obligated to reciprocate Bashir’s affections, nor does she owe him a relationship because he “fixed” her.
Yes, our good Doctor is behaving like a foolish, juvenile creep. But unlike most of the NiceGuy horror stories you hear, once he realizes what he’s doing, he’s the one to tell her she doesn’t owe him.
I think comment no. 37 nails it. Thank you Phil. Conveniently, Keith brushed over the fact that when Bashir spoke with O’Brien, he tells him that he’s had to hide who he is his whole life, but didn’t have to around Sarina (which is a key character moment for him).
Keith also brushes past the fact that Bashir was genuinely sorry. He really beat himself up about his actions. He realized he was pushing Sarina too hard and almost drove her back into herself.
I can understand that Bashir was moving too fast, we all can, because we’re outsiders looking in. But give the man some credit. When he realized what he had done, he did the right thing. Hell, even the actress mentions this, here’s the video: https://youtu.be/cXb6ztmE_CI.
Doing my first DS9 watch as a TNG fan. I’m really enjoying Keith’s recaps and I often scroll through the comments and discussions. I don’t usually feel the desire to comment, but this episode has made me angry.
There is something quite troubling about this episode in addition to the grossly inappropriate love story. I may have some details wrong as I really disliked the first episode with these characters so only watched it once (and not overly attentively,) but let me see if I understood what I just watched: a woman who has spent a lifetime in a catatonic state living in an institution gets some never-before done surgical procedure with an unproven machine (that looks like it’s been jury-rigged with straws and duct tape) and suddenly she can live a neuro-typical existence? She has solid social skills, comfortably flirts, and even snags herself a boyfriend within days? What????? And if this whole ridiculousness is actually possible, why again can nothing be done for the other three? They must continue to be institutionalized? That is super lame story-telling. And I can’t figure out if we’re supposed to believe that institutional life is enjoyed by the gang and that they embrace their uniquenesses, or are we supposed to believe they want to be “fixed” so they can be “normal?” There is some social commentary in here on mental illnesses and spectrum disorders, but it’s not done well at all.
And then, of course, there’s the creepy storyline where we have to watch while Bashir puts his hands on his patient while she is in a vulnerable state confessing that she’s afraid to fall asleep. Ugh! It’s just so disappointing! The Bashir character spent so much screen time in the earlier seasons partaking in sexual harassment, it took me until season 5 to begin to warm the character. And then they go and write stage directions for him, as the guy who very recently performed the miracle surgery on this woman, to take her by the shoulders and pull her in to create an inappropriately intimate moment. I cringed. Put this love story in a modern-day setting (or even in whatever year it was when this first aired) and there would be professional repercussions.
I had skipped Profit and Lace all together after reading the comments in the episodes leading up. I wish I had skipped this one too. Big thumbs down for DS9’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest-esque “kooky characters” return. I didn’t enjoy them the first time around and really did not need a second go. This goes straight in the bin with Meridian.
Lockdown rewatch.
I do not like this episode. Bashir is her doctor whatever he says and does about handing her case on, His behaviour is unethical, and that’s before we even consider the bare bones of the story which is a man hitting on a young woman within days of her life and health changing her entire world view. It’s a real pity as the performance from Faith Salie is very good. As Keith rightly points out in his main review this should have been her story, not about Bashirs love life. I like Bashir and his friendship with O’Brien is one of the heart and souls of the series, but it took me nearly half the rest of the season when watching this the first time around to get this episode out of my head. This brought back all those uncomfortable feelings from the time. A real misstep of an episode.
I can’t completely dislike any episode that elicits a “Wha-HEY” from krad.
Re: Impersonating a Starfleet officer
What are they going to do? Lock them up for the rest of their lives?
@39 She doesn’t seem to be totally catatonic as I understand it. In “Statistical Probabilities” she was actually the one to figure why the Dominion was willing to give up so much at the negotiating table for some seemingly unimportant system and made a diagram of a molecule that clued the rest of the group that plants found in that system could be processed into an ingredient for the White.
In this episode her problem is described as being somewhat mechanical, as if her sensory organs are running to slow for her superfast brain. And once this is corrected, she’s able to interact with the world. It mentioned at least a couple of times in the episode that she is progressing incredibly quickly because of the genetic enhancements made to her. Even so, she’s never really shown to be neurotypical at all. She’s scared and struggling at almost every point, other than for a few hours at Quark’s. So, no, I don’t buy that the portrayal of Sarina herself was particularly problematic.
But the episode does have problems. Sarina isn’t neurotypical and is liable to run into all sorts of problems and they just let her fly off into the galaxy somewhere. She may not need to be institutionalized as she was before, but she absolutely needs help adjusting to her life.
And of course Bashir is just totally gross. His behavior is absolutely unethical. Even if he isn’t her doctor anymore, he looms so large over her situation that for him to make sexual overtures to her in any way is simply exploitative. To the episode’s credit, it at least seems to be aware of this, having O’brien raise concerns and finally having Sarina say that she wants to make Bashir happy because she owes him so much, which wakes him up to how scummy he’s acting. He should have known better all along and he comes off as a total creep for much of the story.
#43 – “they just let her fly off into the galaxy somewhere. She may not need to be institutionalized as she was before, but she absolutely needs help adjusting to her life.”
This isn’t quite right. Bashir has secured some sort of quiet research job for her, and she will be living in the home of what sounds like an older couple. I’m going to assume that along with that, Bashir also arranged for a psychiatrist to oversee her adjustment to her new life.
I only ever knew Faith Salie from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, so I was delighted and impressed with her superb job in this difficult role.
I liked the Jack Pack more in this one, because they weren’t written as simply a collection of Hollywood Stereotypes of Mental Illness, and the episode wasn’t just a bad-faith argument about why designer genetic engineering is problematic (I think it IS problematic, but that doesn’t mean I found that episode in any way convincing), but the decision to make it a creepy love story about Bashir is bewildering, both because it’s the end of the show, not the beginning, and he should have grown up more than this, and because they’re about to shoehorn him together with Ezri, so what was the point?
Well, as a big Faith Salie fan, I am biased to enjoy this just to see her do such a great job at all the sides of this character. What a fun role!
Of course Julian is in the wrong, and I wish he had been different, but I do appreciate that this episode is basically setting him up as wrong so he could get a smackdown. It’s kind of Frozening – intentionally flipping the cliches and saying the thing.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough faith (ahem) in the episode to believe that it was going to bite Julian like it did. After Dax saying (twice!) that she liked him being a bit skeevy, it would have been consistent with Star Trek to turn this into a romance. But the point of the story was to say that’s a bad idea, and if I had believed that they were going to be that smart about it, I would have enjoyed the uncomfortable journey more.
Agree with some of the sentiment here: What the heck is so wrong with the Jack Pack (well, aside from Jack) that they can’t be free to just be messy people in the world? Lauren is basically chill AF at this point, with psycho crushes sure, but does that mean she can’t be a free citizen? Weird, weird, weird. I loved the scene where they are fussing over Lauren’s platform of lascivious reclination, because they’re family.
In my ideal version of this story, we would have seen the whole episode from Sarina’s perspective. Not looking out her eyes, I guess, but the Jack Pack sneaking in and Bashir being wonderful to her. i would like to have seen her and Bashir both having feelings but neither of them saying anything about it because it’s too weird to go for.
Could they have threaded that needle, where by the end you know they both love each other but they know they can’t be together right now? I suppose a conversation along those lines would have been okay. But to me, that kind of restrained desire would have been a beautiful bittersweet note as both of them are feeling so excited at her progress and recovery. A happy story with a tragic lining. Oh well.
Lovely interview about this ep:
https://www.startrek.com/news/faith-salie-shares-her-deep-space-nine-memories