“The Quickening”
Written by Naren Shankar
Directed by Rene Auberjonois
Season 4, Episode 23
Production episode 40514-495
Original air date: May 20, 1996
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Sisko travels to the planet Zeist, and—
Whoops. Wrong The Quickening…
Kira, Dax, and Bashir are doing a bio-survey of a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. En route, they get a distress call from a planet just outside Dominion territory. Dax and Bashir beam down to find a settlement that looks badly wrecked. A woman suffering from an obvious illness collapses in front of them. While Dax tries to find out where the local hospital is, Bashir treats her, and another local tells them to go away now while they still have the chance.
Dax trades her hair clip for a ride to the “hospital”—in truth a near-empty structure that doesn’t seem to have any actual facilities. It turns out that Trevean, the head of the hospital, is in truth running a hospice—and he helps death along by providing a poison once the Blight has quickened. Once the quickening happens, the person is all but dead.
Trevean explains that the Teplans used to be a spacefaring society, but they came up against the Dominion two hundred years ago. They had the Jem’Hadar destroy their world, and then they infected everyone on the world with the Blight. They’re born with it—Trevean shows them an infant with blue lesions. When the lesions turn red, the Blight has quickened, and they die, painfully and slowly.
Bashir and Dax offer to help, but Trevean refuses. However, a woman named Ekoria is curious about Bashir, as she’s never met a doctor. She’s also pregnant, due in two months.
Their conversation is interrupted by Kira, who picks up the Jem’Hadar nearby. They’re on a routine patrol, but they’ll probably come by soon. Bashir and Dax ask to stay on the world, and Kira agrees, hiding the runabout in a nebula for a week. They beam down with a crapton of medical supplies. Ekoria lets them set up a clinic and lab in her home.
He starts scanning Ekoria’s blood, and eventually isolates the virus. To celebrate the breakthrough, Ekoria takes out the food she’d been saving for her death. She has a feeling she won’t need the feast.
Finding a volunteer who’s quickened is harder to do, as the Teplans have had people peddle miracle cures before. It never works. Even though Bashir isn’t asking for anything in return, even though he isn’t actually promising a cure, merely an attempt to find one, no one wants to aid him. Trevean in particular is dismissive of his efforts. Ekoria explains that after two centuries, the Teplans have lost all hope.
However, some are willing to dredge up hope: he gets a bunch of volunteers to give blood samples, enabling him to track the progress of the Blight. Bashir works tirelessly on treatments, though he hasn’t found a cure yet. Eventually, one of the patients crashes—the virus has mutated. Bashir realizes that the EM fields from their instruments causes the Blight to mutate. One patient dies, and another asks for Trevean, who arrives appalled at what Bashir has done. Everyone who volunteered dies.
Bashir castigates himself for being so arrogant as to think he could find a cure in a week. Dax points out that it’s even more arrogant to think that if he can’t cure it, nobody can.
Then the final twist of the knife: Ekoria has quickened. She refuses to let Bashir apologize. He gave her hope, which she hasn’t had in ages.
Kira returns with the runabout, but Bashir insists on staying behind to to treat Ekoria, which he continues to do for a week. Trevean comes to visit her, concerned that she’s too weak to come to him. But she insists on staying with Bashir.
After two more weeks, Bashir is able to induce labor. Her son is born, and he doesn’t have the Blight. Bashir realizes that the placenta absorbed all the antigens he gave her. Bashir can’t cure anyone who has the disease, but he can vaccinate the next generation. He brings the child to Trevean, who is overwhelmed. He begs Bashir for instructions on how to create the vaccine, which Bashir happily provides. All the pregnant Teplans must be given the vaccine, an undertaking Trevean doesn’t consider a task, but a privilege.
Bashir returns to the station—and continues to work on curing the Blight. Sisko commends him on a job well done.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The Dominion, clever bastards that they are, created a virus that mutates when exposed to EM fields. Any technological attempt to cure it will only make it worse.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: You gotta wonder what Kira—the least scientifically minded person, y’know, ever—did in a nebula for a week…
The slug in your belly: Dax gets to act as Bashir’s nurse for at least the first week of his stay on the Teplan world, and also gets to be his reality check. When she heads back to the station, she jokes that she’s not sure Bashir will manage without her to translate. She also trades her hairclip for a ride to Trevean’s, thus allowing her to wear her hair down for most of the episode (which actually looks rather good).
Rules of Acquisition: Quark uploads advertisements for his bar to the replicators on both the station and the Defiant, thus earning him the wrath of Kira, Odo, and Worf.
Victory is life: The Teplans resisted the Dominion. The Dominion’s response was to condemn them to a lifetime of suffering both by physically destroying their world’s entire physical structure and to stick them with an incurable disease.
Keep your ears open: “If all your little advertisements aren’t purged from our systems by the time I get back from the Gamma Quadrant, I will come to Quark’s, and believe me, I will have fun.”
Kira, making it clear what she thinks of Quark’s ads.
Welcome aboard: The late great Michael Sarrazin, best known for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, plays Trevean. Dylan Haggerty plays Epran and Ellen Wheeler plays Ekoria.
Trivial matters: Ira Steven Behr was inspired to produce this episode by the AIDS epidemic (an office assistant, Gregg Duffy Long, had recently succumbed to the disease) and by the movie Restoration; the film puts an inherently moral doctor in a situation he can’t control. Behr didn’t have time to write the script himself, so he assigned the notion to Naren Shankar. Rene Echevarria did an uncredited rewrite.
This is the first mention of Bashir’s teddy bear Kukalaka. The bear will actually make the occasional appearance throughout the show’s run, notably in “In the Cards.” (Echevarria came up with the name, thinking it was the name of his best friend’s invisible childhood friend, but it was, in fact, the name of said best friend’s ex-girlfrind’s cat.)
The Teplans were mentioned in the novel Rising Son by S.D. Perry, when the Even Odds, a Gamma Quadrant pirate ship, discovers art from the time before the Blight.
Quark tried to convince Sisko to let him run ads on the station in “The Jem’Hadar.” Apparently this time he decided to try to get forgiveness rather than permission, and wound up with neither.
Walk with the Prophets: “I cancelled my death for you.” I had absolutely no recollection of this episode, which is usually a bad sign. Upon finishing it, I realized that I had no recollection because I never watched the episode after the first time I saw it, and have no desire to ever watch it again.
This is not to say that the episode is bad. Exactly. We get a reminder of just how nasty-ass the Dominion can be, we get an episode in which our hero suffers setbacks and only manages to save the day partly, and…
Yeah, I got nothin’. This episode left me completely ungripped. It’s the same medical crisis story we’ve seen a thousand times before (a million if you watched House): doctor discovers disease, doctor offers to cure the disease, doctor has a breakthrough, doctor has a setback, doctor has a crisis of faith, doctor finds a cure. The story beats are as predictable as the phases of the moon, and the episode does absolutely nothing to enhance the experience. A hallmark of DS9 is that even the predictable, cliché plots are enhanced by good character work, but there’s none of that here. You could take this script and change not a single line of dialogue and it would work just as well as a TNG episode or an original series episode or a Stargate SG1 episode. (It only wouldn’t work as a Voyager episode because their doctor was a hologram.) Even the Kukalaka anecdote and the token resistance from Trevean are generic as hell. The latter does remarkably little to enhance the experience, as Michael Sarrazin pretty much sleepwalks through the part, and there’s no bite to his arguments with Bashir. It barely even registers as a conflict.
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido next Star Trek book is The Klingon Art of War, which will be released soon. The book will debut at TrekTrax Atlanta 2014 from 25-27 April (a con that also features Arlene “T’Pring” Martel, Jeremy “Valtane” Roberts, and Felix “Twiki” Silla, as well as several folks from fan films), and goes on sale formally on the 6th of March. You can order it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, or direct from the publisher. Keith will be doing signings in New York City (at least) during May to promote the book.
Nah, I don’t really think this would work as an SG-1 episode either (if you wanna do a SG-1 rewatch to argue this, I would happily accept that)…too bad about this episode and the ones that follow break the streak of all the excellent episodes that is Season 4 of this show…a 5 is way to generous for ths stinker.
And ARGH- why’d they have to call it the Quickening?! Now I’ll have Princes of the Universe stuck in my head all day!
I was not expecting such a lukewarm reaction to this one. I actually liked this episode quite a bit, and still do to this day.
Even if the plot is as rehashed as your average TNG episode, I thought it made good use of Bashir as a character by pounding down on his God complex, and the idea that he can solve any problem. It’s not often that Bashir fails in his duty, and to me, this was a pivotal point in proving he’s as falible as anyone else. And when he suffered over their deaths, I was right there feeling sorry for him.
It also made good use of the Bashir/Dax rapport for a while, before that character became a Worf appendage for good.
Screw the SG-1 re-watch…Highlander re-watch!
I agree with Eduardo here. It isn’t a generic story, because it’s one that’s tailor-made to make Bashir question his certainties, and it adds depth to him as a character because it shows that, even in those rare cases when a problem isn’t easy for him to solve, he’s still dedicated and caring enough to risk the blow to his ego by continuing to work on a possibly insoluble problem.
I’ve always found it interesting how the episode is structured, with the final act taking over three weeks with just Bashir on the planet. I wish the show hadn’t been so committed to giving all its credited leads (except Jake) at least a single token line in every episode, because it would’ve worked great to leave Bashir entirely out of an episode or two and have them take place during this one. Really, DS9 had so many episodes that focused on just one or two members of the ensemble that it would’ve been easy to overlap them that way, but the insistence on token appearances got in the way of that.
Unfortunately, it’s never made clear whether Bashir ever solved the problem of the Quickening. It’s mentioned in “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” that he’s been unable to find a cure up to that point. The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses by David Mack mentions him finding a treatment for the disease, but it’s unclear whether that’s referring to the vaccination he found here or a more complete cure he discovered later.
I had forgotten about this, too.
But, it does get me thinking – I remember being horrified by the Federation’s “destroy the Changlings” virus. Now, I’m a little less horrified since it was turnabout biowarfare (still horrified, just a little less so).
The only thing I remember about this episode is the Quark mug, which for whatever reason I thought was used in a different episode. I guess that says something about its story….
I’ve always found it interesting how the episode is structured, with the final act taking over three weeks with just Bashir on the planet.
And it’s not the first time Echevarria plays with the time structure, either. He did it before, back on TNG’s Transfigurations, where the episode’s story lasted a couple of months, or close to that.
@7:
Also, Echevarria’s Explorers unfolds over exactly three weeks. (From Dax announcing the Lexington’s arrival, to Bashir’s conversation the day after the Lexington arrived one day early.)
Seems he likes the number.
In principle, I like the idea of presenting Bashir with a problem that he not only can’t solve, but actually makes worse. Bursting that bubble of arrogance is an important step in his character arc. Alas, the execution falls far short of the concept. He’s given an out by finding a way to at least put an end to the disease for the next generation. He doesn’t really confront failure here, just incomplete success.
The technobabble front is also a bit problematic. A virus that mutates in the presence of an EM field? Like the planet’s magnetic field? Or sunlight? Even if you handwave that away, exposure to various EM fields from the remnants of Teplan technology or the technology of others who came to try helping should have caused so much mutation that a nonlethal strain developed.
@9: Not every planet has a magnetic field, although a planet without one might not be adequately shielded against stellar wind and cosmic radiation and could lose its atmosphere as a result (see: Mars). But maybe there’s a certain field intensity that has to be reached before the virus reacts, or maybe it has to react to a certain type of fluctuation.
Sensitivity to magnetism is known in a number of species, including some bacteria, so it’s not out of the question that a disease organism could be affected by strong EM fields.
I also liked this episode quite a lot! Gives Bashir some much needed fleshing out as a character and was quite messed up what the Dominion did to these people. It wasnt a total victory, everyone alive on that planet will die terribly, but the next generation will live. Quite something.
I liked this episode, and would put it in the top 10 DS9 episode list, but then I am a Bashir fan. This episode was probably *the* turning point for his character, and it succeeds or fails depending on just exactly how attached you are to Julian because it s his character study. I don’t think it would play out like this in SG1, (but I join the chorus of calling for a re-watch of that show to make sure) because -unless it was S1 SG1- they’d just call up the Asgard or Tok’ra and dump it on them in the end. In this, even though we don’t see it again, we always get the feel that this is Bashir’s albatross and he’s always wearing it from this point on.
As for feeling a bit like a generic medical mystery (like House), well most of the medical mystery shows broadcast after this episode was aired. We can’t blame the episode for feeling too similar to shows that hadn’t even aired yet.
Oh, and if we are doing an SG1 rewatch (which we should), there should also be a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 80s cartoon rewatch, just for funsies.
Quoth Duncan: “too bad about this episode and the ones that follow break the streak of all the excellent episodes that is Season 4 of this show”
Can’t agree in any way with what you say there. I think “Body Parts” and “Broken Link” are quite good, and the streak was broken long ago with “The Muse” and “Rules of Engagement.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I disagree that this would work as a generic SG-1 script, so I totally agree with the calls for an SG-1 rewatch, but I think there was a bit of a Stargate Atlantis subplot where they had Dr. Beckett keep working on some medical issue or another for a while. I do know that SG-1 had a few plots that involved bioweapons, but the villains either went all the way and killed (almost) everyone or were completely averted. Stargate villains are generally in the “if we aren’t going to torture you ourselves and/or enslave you, we want you to die quickly and get out of our way” camp, although the Aschen and their sterility plagues are the exception (and that’s only because they want planets for farm land or to colonize them after the original residents die off).
I usually put this episide on my “Dominion War” episode list but find it only tolerable. I like that Bashir gets an episode though.
B5 rewatch? Anyone? Anyone?
Even though it isn’t your fault, KRAD, I still have to say thanks a lot! Now I got that jingle of Quark’s stuck in my head. So much so, that I had to go find a clip online, make it audio so I could make a text tone for it so I can hopefully get it out of my head! lol!!
No mention of Dr. Kevorkian? He was all over the headlines at the time. Trevean (even their names are a little alike) would seem to be based on him, and Trek writers do love their “torn from today’s headlines” stories.
Count me among those who really like this one. It’s huge step up from the seemingly countless “the entire ship/station is inflicted with mysterious disease and the doctor races against the clock for a cure” episodes.
For once I agree with krad. This episode is just average and pretty generic. There’s nothing remarkably bad about it, but it’s not something I think about watching unless I already have the DVD in the player.
I’m with krad here. I’d totally forgotten this one (despite Dax wearing her hair down most of the episode). Now that I’ve been reminded of it, a 5 seems about right. Not so bad that I’d avoid watching it but not good enough to seek out.
At first I wondered why the Dominion would bother with such a virus as opposed to just wiping the Teplans out entirely, but upon reflection I think they were going for a fate worse than death here. They left the Teplans alive but so tortured as to destroy all their hope. That way they could point to the Teplans as an example of what happens to planets that oppose them.
This episode works perfectly fine in concept, but unfortunately in practice it’s one of those episodes that seems like it needs to resort to “montages of looking in microscopes” to fill out the run time, which is hardly the height of drama, if you ask me. I agree with the rating (though, as KRAD himself always says, that’s the least important part of the review) – it’s perfectly functional but forgettable.
-Andy
Agreed with most of the crowd: not a BAD episode … just kinda generic and not really gripping. I think it’s a more interesting character piece than KRAD’s description … but at the same time, I remember being easily distracted while I watched it, by almost anything. It was just missing a spark of livelihood somehow.
@5: Yeah, I was thinking about that as soon as I started reading this review. Do you think the writers were actually planning ahead to S7, and showed the Dominion’s atrocities in this episode partly so that they would deserve what was coming to them via Section 31?
@13: Agreed, Season 4 may be awesome overall, but it’s certainly still had a sprinkling of stinkers (worse than this one).
Also, good point about Kira in a nebula for a week. Maybe she had a LOT of duty rosters and other business-related reading to catch up on via PADD? Or was behind in her praying schedule?
@21: Err, the point of season 7 was that they didn’t deserve what Section 31 did to them, that nobody deserved to be exterminated as a race. That’s why the heroes of the show worked to save them rather than cheering on an act of genocide.
And the series has been giving us glimpses of the Dominion’s brutality toward worlds that defy it ever since season 2’s “Sanctuary” and “Shadowplay.” So it’s not like this was anything new.
@1, having Princes of the Universe stuck in one’s head is actually pretty good. It’s a cool tune. However, having the movie, Highlander 2: The Quickening stuck in one’s head is a terrible affliction, I don’t care if it is the Renegade Version.
@16, that Quark advertisement song and the look on Worf’s face when he turns the cup back is priceless, in my opinion. But yes, having that jingle rattle through my brain is going to be interesting for the rest of the day.
@23: I’ve never been a fan of the Highlander franchise — a story about people decapitating each other does not appeal to me — but I have seen Highlander 2 ages ago and I’m a little tempted to track down the Renegade Version just to see how different it is.
I was always a Highlander fan, not specifically because of the head-chopping, but I just liked the idea of people living throughout history and the story possibilities of going back and showing these people during certain eras of history. I don’t mind the sword play either. But there were some missed opportunities, mostly in the films, but also in the TV show. If anything should be rebooted, it’s Highlander, and leave The Birds alone.
While I agree that this wasn’t a great episode, I kind of liked it, and mostly for a reason that nobody else seems to have touched on yet, that being the idea that this race/society had adapted to the everyday reality of the disease to the extent that in just a few hundred years the “Death” had become very much a part of their cultural heritage, which seems very realistic and something I can imagine happening. When something is out of your control in this way, making it a cultural event and celebration would be a good coping mechanism.
I liked this one a lot too, but I’m kind of a sucker for babies, and had a little tear in my eye when the baby was born and that Ekoria was able to know she had given her child a chance at a better life.
Travean was kind of a mix between Mother Teresa and Dr. Kevorkian – I was wondering if they were going to go somewhere else with his character, but I’m glad in the end he really was pretty much what he claimed to be. As a rule, I am against euthanasia (and given that these patients were in the process of dying, I think the situation was a bit of a blurred line between assisted suicide and palliative care) but I kind of wanted to smack Bashir off his high horse when he was ranting at him towards the beginning of the episode.
I too was surprised by the lukewarm review of the episode. Count me with those who really enjoyed this one, not for the grim story but how its so raw and real. You really feel Bashir’s agony losing all those volunteer patients, and that agony is only partly mitigated when he finds the vaccine for the next generation of Teplans.
The true evil of the Dominion is on full gritty display here, and they remain scarier than the Borg.
@1 I would be down for an SG-1 rewatch with you guys and our excellent MC. Just have to finish my relatively late DS9 rewatch lol
@9 I agree. It would not be EM fields in general but ones put off by large concentrations of technlogy. Or the blight reacted to the change in its environments EM field(which would remain relatively the same) and not the presense of one. The latter however would mean they would be doomed if there was ever strong solar activity or a pole shift on their planet(maybe a pole shift would be slow enough to not cause it to mutate).
@22. No one deserves to be exterminated as a race in general. However this is mitigated by how my fellow changelings making decisions as a race(group consciousness) even if they do not agreee 100% of the time. Still the ones that stay are reaping the benefits of their peoples brutality and the ones who left(such as myself) have no “linked” contact with the founders and thus would not have been affected. Its wrong still but would you be willing to be the one to let trillions die(and let their planets be damaged or ruined for generations) because you want to save one already genocidal race? Its a command decisions and Section 31 made an understandable call. I like Odo and would have been saddened to see him die even if it meant the rest of the galaxy can live in relative peace.
@24 Then you are missing out sadly. The concept of the show was never “about” the decapitations but how these people are forced to live their lives and the kind of personalities develop from being immortal and plain different(similar to changelings). I will say that the show was never portrayed nearly as well as it could have been(acting could have been better, better budget, and more practice to clearly demonstrate the martial prowess of someone who has been training in martial arts for hundres of years making each serious immortal potential equivilent to or exeeding Batman comic representations). A CGI or animated Star trek would also be really cool or if they step up the quality on Star Trek online and have animated shorts for major events. I will state now I will definitely be in favor of another animated series(if the tone is more serious) or a cgi adaptation. The potential story for a reboot is immense spanning the breadth of human history.
@25 Exactly lol
I liked this episode as it fleshed out many aspects of how the dominion does business and gave the audience a bit more time to get to know Julian Bashir(in full doctor mode). Not riveting by any means but still was not an episode I would have been ok if it was cut from the continuity by space pirates at Paramount.
@28 They are in some ways scarier than the Borg as seen on screen. In the reality of canon though the Dominion is childs play in comparison to the ominious cloud that is the Borg Collective. The borg have all the power of the dominion(more) with no need for discussion, rest, conscience of any kind, or even fear of the destruction of its leadership or any individual structure at all besides the traswarp nexus’. If the borg were ever portrayed properly they would give you nightmares. Imagine the sentinals from X-Men DotFP but waaaaay worse who also add you to the fold after they defeat you.
I also would like to add I think it was a stroke of genius that the borgs symbol was a crazy Jean-Luc Locutus Hands claw. Perfectly represents their MO to reach out and touch all that exists to add it to the collective. We are one hand with one purpose and we want you…resistance is futile.
I’d say the thing that brings this episode down is the part of the episode that’s just a standard 90s Trekkian assisted suicide parable. Trevean pretty much only exists as a foil for Bashir, and as such, his character ends up coming off more like Doc Metcalf in Arachnophobia than a person who genuinely wants to help people deal with what’s, honestly, a pretty thoroughly hopeless situation.
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Supercilious jackwagon Bashir, convinced his augmented (we’d learn later) brain makes him the superior intellect and always tried to one up everyone he encountered. He failed, bitterly and got knocked down a peg. His OUR MAN BASHIR and Dominion captivity would finally make him a likable character that he still wasn’t during the QUICKENING.
Forgotten in all this is McCoy and the early TNG doc’s would have found the cure.
I only saw the ep once and have never forgotten it, so it surely must have impressed me.
In the script that was omitted from the episode, Trevean adopts Ekoria’s son as his own. The effects of the blight reminded me of Timicin’s appearance in Half a Life before they quickened. We already knew Terry Farrell looks good with her hair down in Our Man Bashir, except this time we don’t get the sexy saxophone solo. And we’re back on the subject of assisted suicide again after Sons of Mogh and VGR’s Death Wish.
An irony plot twist would have been if the lost distress beacon functioning for 200 years was the cause of the quickening (the EM output from it). But yes, I liked this episode but it was just an average. Bashir had good development, and I thought Ellen Wheeler/Ekoria really sold it, and I can see the relativity of the story to the AIDS epidemic (which terrified everyone when I was in college because they didn’t understand anything about it yet). But there was something missing between Trevean and Bashir. The base of the argument was good – someone who has given up hope so they develop a way to help those facing death to do it in a form of some dignity, less pain, and even celebration. If everyone could only go pain free surrounded by their loved ones and/or family. But there just wasn’t much of a confrontation. I’m not sure what the problem was – maybe a little more exposition about others trying to help them and taking advantage (the snake oil salesman they wanted to compare Bashir to). But Trevean, until the end, sort of came off as a straw man bad guy foil for Bashir and the argument between their points of view should have been much more profound and gripping than that.
There can be only one!
I just loved a good quickening, the lightning, the shattering windows…
I liked Bashir’s anecdote about his teddy bear. My teddy still lives to this day, and he too lost some limbs in his life. Now he’s retired and enjoys sitting on a shelf together with my wife’s teddy.
While watching the episode it got me thinking if Bashir didn’t violate the prime directive here. While the blight surely isn’t a natural cause, isn’t bringing technology that they don’t have on their planet and developing a vaccine a violation? But on the other hand, the prime directive didn’t play such a huge role in DS9 so far and I guess Bashir’s actions aren’t even violating it. I just thought about it for a while and figured it wouldn’t hurt to share the thoughts. ;)
Also it’s quite sad to see Keira having nothing to do again. I’d much rather see her outwitting a klingon Bird of Prey with a cardassian freight ship than being stuck in a runabout for one week, or having her run around in a dominatrix outfit in the MU.
@36/waka: As they said in the episode, the planet used to be starfaring centuries ago but regressed because of the Blight. So it’s not a Prime Directive situation.
I actually found myself very affected by this episode as I re-watched it. Ellen Wheeler’s performance was touching without being maudlin. I related to Bashir’s shame over how he’d been looking forward to casually boasting about finding a cure and thought this episode was an important one for him, especially compared to his portrayal at the start of the series. This was the posting he wanted and he got more from it than he ever expected.
I had mixed feelings about the ending. On one hand I was sitting here tearing up as Traveyan eagerly agreed to take responsibility for administering the vaccine and then presented the healthy baby to the crowd as Bashir stands off in the distance watching. On the other hand, I could see how it was another example of the “Federation Saves the Day” treatment we might have expected from TNG.
Still the scene where Bashir realizes the EM fields are hastening the disease and has to stand there while Traveyan rushes in as the angel of death was done in a particularly DS9 tone.
Wait? There was a Highlander/DS9 crossover episode?
It was an alright episode in my opinion (watching here way after the fact). The thing that struck me that hadn’t really been mentioned was the amount of exterior set shots. I don’t know exactly where they filmed this, but there was a lot of pictures of the ruined towers, shots of the streets, shot of Julian standing in a ruined doorway at the very end.
My other thought is this story is more interesting in the long term. So you have a solution that only affects babies, which is going to have some major societal implications creating a pair of in/out groups of blighted and pure inhabitants. Also… if the blight mutates again, the immunity may not carry over to the new version. So there’s that, but I guess it’s never really followed up on.
Lockdown rewatch. Watching this one in 2020 in the middle of the Covid pandemic is interesting and coincidentally I got to this episode in my rewatch where Bashir announces he has found a vaccine for the Blight on the day that the U.K. where I am announced it had approved the first vaccine for Covid 19. There are issues with this episode, not least because the Federation Doctor comes across as having a 24th century version of the “white saviour complex” ironical since Alexander Siddiq is of course of Middle Eastern decent. He gets taught a bit of humility but only at the expense of the lives of numerous natives, not a good look. On the plus points the performances by Alexander Siddiq and Ellen Wheeler are excellent
41: What you said about Bashir reminds me of Kira’s line from Return to Grace: “A lot of innocent people died for his education!”
Not a single person died of anything other than what they were going to die of anyway, for Bashir’s education. In fact if anything he bought a lot of people extra time, since they skipped out on the euthanasia to try out his treatments. So it is more that a lot of people got extra amounts of life for his education. Truly he is one of history’s greatest monsters.
I’m really surprised at the very low score here because I think of this as one of the best Star Trek episodes period. The simple fact that it challenges the idea the Federation is going to be able to fix anything, let alone in the span of a 45 minute episode. I also feel like Traveyan is a character that represents what DS9 did best and that was challenging Federation values.
I grew up in Appalachia and hospices are very common here. Julian acts like he’s a monster when he’s very much doing something necessary and selfless by his culture. He’s just (justifiably) skeptical of Julian’s messiah complex.
Yes, Julian makes a difference to this people but it nicely pops the balloon that its just easy to swoop in and fix complex problems.
@23,
…That Quark advertisement song and the look on Worf’s face when he turns the cup back is priceless, in my opinion. But yes, having that jingle rattle through my brain is going to be interesting for the rest of the day.
Not my joke, but there’s always the largely unknown second verse of that jingle:
“Flee from Worf! Worf ain’t fun! Flee right now! Don’t walk — run!!!”
My favorite part about the Mug might just be how it promises ‘Free Refills’…until you see the bottom of the cup and the fine print states “Limit One Per Customer”.
Heh, never change, Quark. Never change.
In this and previous episodes I’ve noticed several comments to the effect that DS9 criticized Federation values and assumptions more than TNG did. While I agree that this was a more prominent aspect of DS9, it’s not as though TNG was all kittens and roses. We had several memorable instances where the Federation, as the Federation, was portrayed in a negative light. Sure it was through side characters like Ensign Ro and the ubiquitous evil admiral, or other scenarios where Our Heroes had to grapple with a real-life conflict to their Federation values in thoughtful ways, rather than through the main characters themselves.
Besides, this particular episode seems less about Federation values as such and more about Bashir himself, breaking down his day dream of swooping in and saving the day, “frontier medicine” and all that.. Several comments have already cried BS on Eddington’s speechy-poo previously.
I also might have thought this episode would provoke as discussion about physician assisted sucide, abortion, or death in general. The premise of this episode is different than Half a Life in that these people are actually dying, but I resonate with Bashir’s revulsion when he discovers that the “hospital” is a sucide suite. Hospice and palliative care are very different than straight up killing people. I also can’t admire Trevean’s suggestion that Ekoria kill herself AND THE BABY. He thinks it’s ok to deprive that child of life simply because its life will end in the Blight and because the mother is in pain. That perspective reduces all the people’s lives to just their suffering and deaths. In the short time we see her, Ekoria clearly took joy in life, caring for people, her pregnancy, her husband and his art… Was that not “worth it” because she quickens and dies young? Is avoiding pain all that matters?
A very good character piece for Bashir; gets brought down a peg by his own arrogance and inadvertently making things worse. Even though the episode allows him a victory, it’s only a partial one which is actually a subversion of what you’d expect from a typical Trek episode. I also appreciate that they didn’t turn Trevean into some mustache-twirling villain, which they very easily could have done. Even if he’s at odds with Bashir, it’s due to pesimissim rather than some p***ing contest. He was simply trying to make the best of a bad situation.
I also like that shot of Bashir watching the inhabitants from a distance. In earlier seasons, Bashir may have been in the center of the crowd basking in the glory of his achievement. But here, Bashir is content to look on and quietly take pride in the fact that he helped give these people another chance.
On another note, this is the episode that convinced me that the Dominion were more evil than the Borg. While the Borg are brutally efficient, their lack of emotion makes their actions devoid of sadism, malice and cruelty. The Dominion demonstrated all 3 of these in their infecting of these people who had the gall to refuse their rulership. It was also motivated by revenge, another trait the Borg lack. Lastly, as horrifying as it sounds, the Borg are truly convinced they’re doing you a favor by assimilating you and stripping away your individuality. The Dominion knew very well they weren’t helping these aliens; they did this with the explicit intention of genocide and making them suffer greatly before their deaths.
I actually quite like this episode, and disagree that it could have been done on TOS or TNG. Not just because it serves to deflate Bashir’s ego somewhat, but also because it seems like a subversion of the typical Star Trek formula. How many episodes have there been where the Enterprise visits some planet and Geordi and Data manage to completely solve a civilization-ending crisis that has taxed their best minds within 45 minutes of B-plot? To me, the whole point of the episode is that Bashir doesn’t solve the problem; the best that he can do is offer a faint ray of hope for the future (and if anything, I think that the script overstates how hopeful the ending actually is; there are a few babies who are vaccinated against it, true, but the Quickening has an entire planetary population in which mutate and the babies might not be immune to all possible variants).
Plus, I really liked the Teplan civilization! Such misery and squallour existing amidst the ruins of a once-proud technological culture. Usually, I dislike when Star Trek doesn’t even bother with makeup for an alien species, but here, it serves a purpose. One gets the impression that the Teplans were once like the Federation, and that Earth could have become like their homeworld if they’d lost the Dominion War.
Just saw this one and came here to say: The visuals and music were pretty great.
It figures that the scriptwriter was not the story person – the day to day of the script is all rote, like someone completing their homework on time. But the story could have been good.
But the most notable thing I came to note was (and maybe it’s the CBD talking) I thought from the moment he beams BACK down and trudges through the crowd of disappointed people, it becomes quite good. Watching him using stone knives and bearskins to do medicine, and not rest until he gets somewhere, and seeing his tireless, humble, peaceful work ethic, it was all so tragically beautiful.
Of course she has to die when she dies, which is a bit of a cliche — but it would have been bizarre any differently. Maybe she could have hung around another minute or two, as the color drained from her and she grew shorter of breath. But in general the last few minutes, to me, were unpredictable and wonderfully performed. I’m also glad that there isn’t some weird romantic flirt subplot, though it did seem like they were drawn to each other, it didn’t get unprofessional as Julian sometimes got in the earliest episodes.
When he stood at a distance and let everyone else have the spotlight, this was a new Julian and it was a nice moment. I wish the rest of the script had been more twisty and clever.
And I really felt the visuals and music, the dusty world they created; it felt like money well spent.
“It figures that the scriptwriter was not the story person – the day to day of the script is all rote, like someone completing their homework on time. But the story could have been good.”
That doesn’t follow. Regardless of who’s credited for the original story idea, the entire writing staff participates in breaking (working out) the plot of every episode, revising and elaborating on the story outline as a group, and often transforming it radically from the original outline. One writer or team is then assigned to turn the detailed outline into a script. The entire staff offers revision notes, and the showrunner always writes the final draft to maintain consistency of style, character, and continuity.