Star Trek (DS9): The Quickening

[ewmailing]

Ouch on the score. I sometimes get the sense that Chuck doesn’t like Bashir until he becomes genetically engineered. (I actually hated that, and even liked “Dr. Dork” because he was one of the first manifestations of a non-idealized, less than perfect Starfleet officer that suffered from the many flaws that Star Trek geeks like ourselves suffered from. While Miles O’Brien was the ‘every-man’ for most people, Bashir actually was the first stand-in for us geeks, both the positive and negative attributes. And an aside, I think that’s why pairing up O’Brien and Bashir as best friends worked so well.)

I actually liked this episode very much. Back then, I didn’t really care for the “baddie” buildup trope we’ve seen on so many other shows, from Babylon 5 to Stargate. So this episode was kind of a surprise to me on multiple fronts.

First, I loved how we see both the flaws and virtues in Bashir, from his insufferable arrogance to his unwavering devotion to medicine to help others in need. It had always been present in the series up to this point, but rarely in a focused crisis like this episode provides.

But second, the horrific design of the disease that the Dominion inflicted on these people, shifted the Dominion (in my eyes) from the stereotypical “baddie” with bigger and more guns we’ve seen in every other show/movie, to something that seemed new and distinctly terrifying. Instead of nuking them from orbit in one shot, building a disease that is designed to cripple a civilization slowly where it uproots the fabric of society and makes the population itself an active participant of their own destruction is truly horrific. This is true terror. Furthermore, a disease that is designed to mutate when exposed to EM to defeat study is probably the worse existential doomsday weapon that could be conceived to threaten the tech-centric Federation.


My biggest criticism of this episode is opportunities they missed. Originally when I first watched it, the scene where Bashir quit his post to live on the planet, and you see him beam down on to the planet and walk off with his medical crates in hand, I thought that the was the end of the episode. I thought that was an incredibly powerful ending.

For once, an episode’s problem was not solved at all by the end. A main character made a drastic decision which could have profound consequences for the show as a whole (a main character has potentially left or would at least require the station to recruit a new doctor causing a shake up with the rest of the cast).

I was hoping that in the following weeks/months, we would get little scenes embedded in subsequent DS9 episodes of Bashir’s progress (and failings) on the disease and woman he was trying to help (and potentially other people he meets). These scenes would be embedded, kind of like how the new Battlestar Galactic handled their whole Helo/Boomer subplot on Caprica). (And yes, I did actually think this way back when this episode first aired, well before BSG.)

I hoped these scenes would further Bashir’s character arc and growth, as well as slowly paint a picture of the Dominion from information that would not normally be easily gathered from typical military intel. And as Bashir's research progresses, I was hoping they could explore the technology of the disease to make it even more terrifying, and I hoped it would reveal something about the Dominion, asking the question why they would *really* engineer something as horrific like this when it has to be far more effective to annihilate them from orbit or poison the land if they wanted them to suffer longer. One thought is it could be connected to the biology of the Dominion itself. Another thought could be possibilities surrounding a biological warfare the Dominion waged or endured in their past. Or maybe it was research for something beneficial that had a devastating accident. There could also be interesting ethical issues that could be explored, not that I’m sure I trust the writing staff to handle these.




But then the commercial ended and I looked at my watch, and realized there was still another act to go on the episode.
Vaccine discovered. Bashir goes home. The end. (boo)

[Mickey_Rat15]

I suppose I'll bring up the other dog not barking in this episode: the Prime Directive. The Blight is a horrific and cruel biological weapon and it is good that Bashir tried to help, but once they find out that this was punishment for resisting the Dominion then trying to cure it is interefering with Dominion internal politics, right? At least by Picard's understanding of Prime Directive ethics in not interfering in wars and such.

The war is by all accounts over, so I don't see how this could be construed as interfering in a war.

As for interfering with Dominion internal politics, I suppose it depends on whether or not the planet was considered apart of Dominion territory and if the Teplan people were considered Dominion "subjects". If the Dominion just showed up, destroyed the planet, and left without making any real claim on the planet or its people, then this would easily be classified as a mission of mercy to a neutral party. Remember, Bashir and co. were answering a distress call, they were technically "invited".

This episode always does remind me of something I consider a missed opportunity to explore in DS9's later seasons - what was going on in the Gamma Quadrant during the Dominion War? Was it business as usual? Did the Dominion have the resources necessary to maintain complete, uncontested dominance over their home territory while waging a war against the Alpha Quadrant? Or were there cracks in the armor? Were there uprisings and rebellions while their iron grip started to loosen with forces and resources being diverted? Could they have been fighting some sort of war on multiple fronts?

I always had an idea for a TNG movie during the Dominion War where the Enterprise falls through an anomaly and winds up in Dominion territory in the Gamma Quadrant, but at almost the exact opposite side of the territory then where the Bajoran wormhole is. These planets are so far from the front of the Dominion War that they don't even know about it or anything about the politics of the Founders. All they know is that the their hated ruling force is starting to weaken and they see it as the perfect time to rise up and rebel. Picard has to decide whether or not to encourage or aid these people fight a war that they probably won't win simply because it would help the Federation out on the other side of the galaxy.

I believe at this point the Dominion has claimed everything on their side of the wormhole is their territory, and the Blight is considered an ongoing punishment by the Teplen. It is more just that the PD does not appear to be brought up as an issue, even if only as one to be dismissed. Which makes some sense from the writers if it was intended as an AIDS allegory as Chuck noted.

The Dominion must havw dedicated and lost a large part of their military to fight the war, but their production for Jem'hadar and shipyards are intact. The writer's reason for Section 31 infecting the Founders was as a way to tie up the war without having to write an Operation Olympic arc to conquer the Dominion Homeland.

Your movie idea sounds like a better and more appropriate story for the title "Star Trek: Insurrection" than what we got.

[AllanO]

I believe at this point the Dominion has claimed everything on their side of the wormhole is their territory, and the Blight is considered an ongoing punishment by the Teplen. It is more just that the PD does not appear to be brought up as an issue, even if only as one to be dismissed. Which makes some sense from the writers if it was intended as an AIDS allegory as Chuck noted.

Note the Federation can't just consider internal and external based on what some third party does or does not claim. Otherwise the Dominion could have just won the war by claiming all of the Alpha Quadrant as Dominion territory ("Well we were going to fight but I guess since you CLAIMED all the territory it is now an internal matter so no fighting").

Hard to say how they adjudicate between internal and external matters but there could be lots of reasons to dispute/ignore the Dominion claim over the Teplan from the mere physical fact that the Dominion forces/officials were not resident on the planet but had to warp in from an external system if they were actually going to interact with the people (remember what makes it okay to do first contact is a civilizations creation of warp drive) and so were physically external, to issues of when and if the federation ever admits territorial claims made via violent annexation, perhaps as long as there is one Terplan who disputes your claim they can not recognize the claim as that would equally be interference in an internal matter (a lot of the survivors look like they might dispute they are Dominion subjects).

A clear element in DS9 is that the Federation is clearly not recognizing the legitimacy of the Dominion's claim to the entire Gamma Quadrant, so this is pretty par for the course as far as I can tell.

[SFDebris]

To clarify: the scoring isn't measuring a nebulous quality of "good" so much as a ranking in how they compare to each other as far as their enjoyment goes. The idea of using "re-watch" as a criteria was more of a "well, if I was going to watch an episode of this, which would I be more likely to want to watch?" That's why it seemed the best way to score this was to consider that here. Also, it's important to remember that in such a system, some HAVE to be below 5 to balance out, and on DS9, there's simply not enough "not good" episodes to fill out that large of a list. If everything that was fine was listed at 5, the scale would eventually be meaningless, it would be "which 5's are more 5's than other 5's" after a while.

But thank you to everyone for having such a great discussion on this episode.

[CrypticMirror]

To clarify: the scoring isn't measuring a nebulous quality of "good" so much as a ranking in how they compare to each other as far as their enjoyment goes. The idea of using "re-watch" as a criteria was more of a "well, if I was going to watch an episode of this, which would I be more likely to want to watch?" That's why it seemed the best way to score this was to consider that here. Also, it's important to remember that in such a system, some HAVE to be below 5 to balance out, and on DS9, there's simply not enough "not good" episodes to fill out that large of a list. If everything that was fine was listed at 5, the scale would eventually be meaningless, it would be "which 5's are more 5's than other 5's" after a while.

But thank you to everyone for having such a great discussion on this episode.

DS9's problem, if it can be said to be a problem, is that -aside of a few such utter stinkers like Profit and Lace and the one with the Wadi aliens- that its baseline is mostly fine verging on decent. It's probably the best problem any show can have (if only Enterprise had that problem), but I guess it does make it tricky for reviewers like yourself Chuck who are scoring it in terms of better-to-worse than average. Below average for DS9 is often still pretty well put together television.

[Sir Will]

To clarify: the scoring isn't measuring a nebulous quality of "good" so much as a ranking in how they compare to each other as far as their enjoyment goes. The idea of using "re-watch" as a criteria was more of a "well, if I was going to watch an episode of this, which would I be more likely to want to watch?" That's why it seemed the best way to score this was to consider that here. Also, it's important to remember that in such a system, some HAVE to be below 5 to balance out, and on DS9, there's simply not enough "not good" episodes to fill out that large of a list. If everything that was fine was listed at 5, the scale would eventually be meaningless, it would be "which 5's are more 5's than other 5's" after a while.

But thank you to everyone for having such a great discussion on this episode.

DS9's problem, if it can be said to be a problem, is that -aside of a few such utter stinkers like Profit and Lace and the one with the Wadi aliens- that its baseline is mostly fine verging on decent. It's probably the best problem any show can have (if only Enterprise had that problem), but I guess it does make it tricky for reviewers like yourself Chuck who are scoring it in terms of better-to-worse than average. Below average for DS9 is often still pretty well put together television.

Pretty much, which is why he do often has to preface with 'relative to their series', since as he's noted before, a 6 on Voyager is something like a 4 on DS9 or something, generally speaking.

[CrypticMirror]

To clarify: the scoring isn't measuring a nebulous quality of "good" so much as a ranking in how they compare to each other as far as their enjoyment goes. The idea of using "re-watch" as a criteria was more of a "well, if I was going to watch an episode of this, which would I be more likely to want to watch?" That's why it seemed the best way to score this was to consider that here. Also, it's important to remember that in such a system, some HAVE to be below 5 to balance out, and on DS9, there's simply not enough "not good" episodes to fill out that large of a list. If everything that was fine was listed at 5, the scale would eventually be meaningless, it would be "which 5's are more 5's than other 5's" after a while.

But thank you to everyone for having such a great discussion on this episode.

DS9's problem, if it can be said to be a problem, is that -aside of a few such utter stinkers like Profit and Lace and the one with the Wadi aliens- that its baseline is mostly fine verging on decent. It's probably the best problem any show can have (if only Enterprise had that problem), but I guess it does make it tricky for reviewers like yourself Chuck who are scoring it in terms of better-to-worse than average. Below average for DS9 is often still pretty well put together television.

Pretty much, which is why he do often has to preface with 'relative to their series', since as he's noted before, a 6 on Voyager is something like a 4 on DS9 or something, generally speaking.

Yep. Average for DS9 is praise, average for Enterprise is deep shame.

[RobbyB1982]

Makes sense. When chuck started doing reviews DS9 was getting lots of 7 and 8 scores that he had to retroactively lower to fit the series as a whole, because he'd been comparing them to the entire franchise.

A 3 on DS9 is kind of equivilent to a 5 or 6 on one of the other shows.

[rickgriffin]

I was expecting a 4 myself

And I completely see where this review is coming from which is why it's a bit maddening--there needs to be SOMETHING to point to in this episode where you can say "this dragged" but I am starting to wonder if it's the lack of something in the episode.

Here's what I think was missing: If Bashir completely failed in his mission, it would feel like virtually nothing changed. Making the peoples' condition SO pitiful kinda undercuts the tension. It's hammered in quite quickly and relentlessly that all these people are going to die quite painfully. When he does fail, what happens? The guy we barely know suffers before dying quickly. Which they all kinda are. Sure he didn't get his (what is implied to be a relatively) nicer passage but that almost feels moot.

There's nothing really visceral about it when everything is at the same level of direness.

On top of that, if Bashir gave up . . . so what? Everything ends up being exactly the same as he found it. Bashir undertaking this task ends up carrying almost no additional risk, and even if by accident he makes the situation worse, the damage he did was very limited in scope; in fact, the only thing on the line is his own reputation with a bunch of people who'd never heard of him before and would probably forget about him soon after he left.

And I think this is mostly because having pity on a population is harder to dramatize than having pity on individuals. Sure, Bashir converses with individuals, but given his promise in the beginning he's under no delusion that he could actually save any one person in particular, so when he loses some people, even if he's devastated, that's still not a personal hurt. Because the problem keeps being framed as very general to the population, well frankly, in terms of damage TO that population, Bashir's failure is barely a blip on the radar.

So what if this wasn't about the population, but almost entirely about Bashir?

I think Bashir refraining from getting too personally involved and having reasonable expectations for himself, while good medical doctor practice, severely blunts the drama. If you consider from this perspective, there was SO MUCH MORE they could have done to put Bashir's ego on the line, which was maybe necessary given he's virtually carrying the episode by himself. But it almost kinda coddles him; his lowest point in the episode at best smacks of some poverty tourism.

If I were to punch up the script, here's what I would do: play up Bashir's bragging and ACTUALLY put his ego on the line. He SAYS that he doesn't expect miracles, but he does believe in his own abilities to the degree he expects to "have this thing knocked out in a week at most" and have everything he does completely back him up on this. He seems to be doing no wrong, peeling back the symptoms one by one and completely outdoing the hospice guy in every way--and if you want to keep the subversion, have it so the hospice guy, who is most skeptical at first, become Bashir's biggest believer.

So when everything goes to shit, kill off the hospice guy. He's suffering the illness same as everyone else. Make it clear early on he still has X number of years to live so he was still pretty far from death's door, and Bashir ended up rushing it. (It might get melodramatic, but have him curse Bashir on his deathbed, perhaps?)

Since the hospice guy was basically hosting Bashir, once his reputation is ruined and the guy's dead, now Bashir basically has nowhere to hang his hat. He's not just wandering around in a daze, he is on the run from people who feel completely betrayed by him, and he has to face his cock-up alone.

Cut to X weeks later, when Bashir is scheduled to be picked up. The team finds him in a cave (maybe with one or two patients who still believe in him) as he's trying to work out a cure by hand. The fact he's failed THIS BADLY at something has left him completely screwed up, and as he resists being taken back, he yells at Dax, "I was supposed to be their savior!" at which point it finally crosses his mind that this was, all along, about his ego. He ends up giving up and handing his research over to Starfleet Medical, and his notes are thorough and extensive enough they have a solution within two weeks.

THAT is the downer ending. The people get what they want--a cure--but Bashir didn't get what he wanted, and he has absolutely no idea what to think of himself anymore, that he let himself be driven to near-madness just so he didn't have to miss meeting his own expectations for himself.

The episode as it stands is competent enough as a drama, but unless you can wrap your head around "the good of these people, in general" as something to get invested in, it's not going to be nearly as strong as an episode would be if it focused on Bashir's ego, or the life/faith of a particular person, or what have you. It does a little of both, but not enough to really sharpen it like it needed.

[Durandal_1707]

^ I dunno, I feel like the whole "guy tries to be a messiah to the village, fails, and gets turned on by the natives" thing is really overdone at this point, and I found it kind of refreshing that the episode let the characters actually be somewhat sensible instead of making the story into the 3,729th retelling of Lord Jim.