Thursday, December 07, 2017

DS9 Flashback: The Passenger

Many Star Trek fans (including me) think that "The Inner Light" was the best episode of The Next Generation. So on paper, having the writer behind that story, Morgan Gendel, contribute an idea for Deep Space Nine seems very exciting. Unfortunately, that episode turned out to be "The Passenger."

Bashir and Kira come to the rescue of an alien ship in distress, but fail to save the life of a criminal on board, Rao Vantika. That's how they see it, at least. Vantika's escort/hunter/jailer, Ty Kajada, insists that Vantika has somehow faked his own death -- a notion that begins to look plausible when things start going wrong aboard Deep Space Nine. With some digging, Dax arrives at an explanation: Vantika may have found a way to transfer his consciousness into another living being, creating a Jekyll/Hyde duality in someone who doesn't even know it.

Gendel's original pitch for this episode was to tell the story of a cop who didn't know she was chasing herself -- Vantika's mind would be hiding in Kajada's body. Bashir would have become romantically involved with Kajada, and would then be forced to decide how much he could trust her in race against time to find a bomb planted on the station by Vantika. As a freelancer, Gendel admitted he was open to any feedback given so long as he sold his pitch; he recalls a bunch of back and forth meetings where the writing staff tweaked his story, waffled on whether they wanted a villain in the mold of Hannibal Lecter or not, and more.

It feels like the least interesting of all story options was the one chosen. Even if Gendel's initial pitch sounds too centered on the guest star, turning Bashir into a guest star by having him be Vantika's host doesn't seem like the best solution. No consideration is ever given to the idea that Kira -- who was also there trying to rescue Vantika at the beginning of the episode -- could also be his host. Instead, the closest the episode comes to being a true whodunit is in offering up previously unknown security officer Primmin as a red herring who might be in league with Vantika. (In actuality, his subplot was reportedly crafted to cover for the absence of O'Brien for a second straight episode, as Colm Meaney was off shooting a movie.)

The Primmin B-plot actually works better than the Vantika A-plot. It takes the series' inherent culture clash, Federation values vs. the "wild west" of a Bajoran station, and makes it an explicit conflict between Odo and Primmin. There are some great moments here, many using Sisko as the pivot between them. Sisko talks Odo out of a hot-headed decision to quit, and slaps down Primmin by reminding him the Federation are only invited guests here. ("If you want my opinion--" "Actually, I don't." Snap!)

But just about everything in the episode involving Bashir is bad. It starts right in the cold open, with him bragging more than ever before about his medical skills (which Kira takes in surprising stride, by her standards). And while Bashir goes on to be not nearly as pervy or egotistical as usual through the rest of the episode, the sad fact is that it might not be him in the rest of the episode. The episode lays out that the Vantika consciousness is dormant while Bashir is "awake," and vice versa, but there are some moments here and there where Bashir effectively blocks Ty Kajada and her investigation in such a way that you have to believe it's Vantika pretending to be Bashir. That means at this point in the life of the show, a horrifying killer is a more likeable Bashir than Bashir. Yikes.

And speaking of pretending, actor Alexander Siddig makes some unfortunate choices in his portrayal of the villainous Vantika. He plays really broad, and reportedly used a strange, "Bela Lugosi-like" voice on set, which was judged to be so distracting in post-production that they had him redub over all his lines. The result is a bizarre.... almost... Kirk-like... pattern... of... slow... speech that can't possibly be any less grating than what they replaced. (But it's not the worst acting in the final act. When Vantika and his goons board the alien ship, everybody there freezes and waits woodenly to get shot, each performing their cheap fall stunt in turn.)

The mystery doesn't even work. Besides having a lack of suspects for who Vantika could be, the episode's editing actually gives the game away. In the scene where a "mysterious whispering figure" accosts Quark, the voice totally just sounds like Bashir whispering. And when the figure throws Quark, the camera pans unfortunately and actually shows Bashir on screen, for enough frames that you don't even have to pause to recognize him! (This error was much to the disappointment of producer Michael Piller, though there was apparently no way to edit around it.)

Other observations:
  • Even Quark is portrayed to respect boundaries more than Bashir in this episode. Quark and Odo have an extended conversation about wanting something (ahem, Dax), but knowing you can't have it. Bashir hasn't learned the second part of that, as shown when he stalked Dax last episode.
  • Staff writer Ira Steven Behr spoke negatively of this episode in interviews. He felt this was another story that didn't distinguish itself from what could be done on The Next Generation, noting this could have easily been about Geordi. I find it interesting that his mind went from Bashir, the most romantically "problematic" DS9 character, to Geordi, who the writers saddled with similar romantic hangups.
  • While it makes perfect sense that you'd be able to lock the door of Odo's security office, I had a brief mental flash of the creepy stories about Matt Lauer in the moment where Odo had to push a button to let Ty Kajada out of his office.
  • I love that Sisko doesn't take chances and just stuns Bashir/Vantika at the end of the episode. It would have been even more potent if he hadn't waited for "Bashir" to claim "wait, it's me!"
  • There is some crazy technology on display here, even for Star Trek. First, we have the transporter being used as a miracle cure once again, somehow beaming Vantika's consciousness out of Bashir's brain. Then there's also the fact that since we know the Trek universe has cloning (from just a few episodes ago), that combined with this ability to transfer consciousness basically means they've invented immortality.
  • When Ty Kajada shoots the container holding Vantika's consciousness, it's a good thing she doesn't miss. She's got her weapon set to vaporize, and the container is just sitting there on a big computer console.
This episode rates around the bottom of the C- range for me, with the Odo subplot being the element that saves it from falling even lower. It's the weakest episode of Deep Space Nine yet. (Though a famously terrible one is just around the corner.)

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