"Oh! I see."
Odo response to virus sufferer
Whoever says we never do culture on this blog!
Synopsis.
A mysterious virus on DS9 causes those afflicted to start spouting incoherent gibberish that makes people think they are insane, and then they die. a bit like watching too much Fox News then. (apart from the dying bit of course.)
Review.
Babel starts off with an extremely flustered and overworked O'Brien trying to fix the many, many things that keep breaking down on DS9. He is interrupted by Captain Jaheel, some alien dude who has a cargo ship and makeup that isn't really going to win any design awards for Paramount. Jaheel bitches about how he can't be delayed anymore as his cargo will start rotting. Jaheel is one of those whiny customers, anyone in the service trade hates having to deal with and on a bad day; would love to punch them in the smug face. You know - one of those who has to give their bitching; passive aggressive tuppenceworth about how crap you are at your job, like they'd do any fricking better BTW, under bad circumstances!! (Not that I'm projecting ill will to this guy because I've ever had bad experiences in a customer service based job you understand!! (-;) The chief eventually finds time for a cuppa at the replicator terminal he is fixing, which has a hidden device attached to it which must be evil because they play that "sinister" incidental music just before the opening credits roll.
"Don't laugh at my makeup asshole! The Ugnaughts off Empire Strikes Back think I'm their God!"
O'Brien suddenly starts spouting meaningless gibberish (and I ain't talking about
technobabble), and cannot even write coherently either.
Bashir diagnoses that the chief is suffering from aphasia, where the brain can't process words properly. But he can't detect brain damage or cranial trauma.
Meaney conveys the mixture of fear and frustration that an aphasia sufferer must go through at being struck down by such a surreal and frightening condition - really well in those infirmary scenes. It gets worse.
Jadzia gets struck down with it.
Bashir discovers it is a synaptic virus that screws about with the brain, hence why they are spouting gibberish (
and hence where the title of the episode comes from).
As more people are struck down with apahasia, the station erects a quarantine. Quark; who due to the almost stationwide replicator failure - couldn't trade, has found some way to circumvent this and allow his bar to stay open. Odo doesn't believe his cover story that Rom fixed the bars replicator, as Rom couldn't fix a bent straw*. Jaheel proves himself to be a bit of a pussy, and asks Sisko to break the quarantine for him, as he doesn't want to get sick. Sisko refuses, and then learns Jake has been struck down too.
Quark has managed to bypass the replicator problem by breaking into affected crewmembers quarters, and using the only working replicators on the station to stock his bar (must bring in long waiting delays.). This is a bit of a bummer as Bashir discovers the virus is foodbourne. Quark has unwittingly spread the virus far and wide. If this wasn't bad enough it has mutated to an airbourne virus as well! The virus is man made, but not a Cardassian one, but planted by the resistance when the station was built 18 years ago. Oh and there is the minor thing that those who are afflicted die after about 12 hours of contracting it. There is quite a nice scene in the infirmary when Bashir says that although the virus is so destructive and will likely kill them all, he would like to shake the hand of the man who designed something so clever. It reminds me of a line in the novelisation of "A New Hope", when one of the rebel pilots in a moment of grim irony, despite knowing how deadly the Death star was, and the evil it represented - couldn't help but be blown over by how fricking awesomely clever the whole contraption was. Bashir's comments are realistic. It may be badass, but it's badass with style.
It's more bad news as Kira discovers that the geneticist / resistance fighter who designed it (and hopefully the antidote) is no longer alive. But she discovers his assistant Surmak Ren, who cuts the call off when she mentions the virus. Bashir contracts the virus without discovering a cure himself. Jaheel meanwhile attempts to break the quarantine, but only manages to wreck a docking clamp and sever the fuel lines on his ship in the attempt, which means the ship will explode in a manner of minutes (according to the physical principles of when the script tells it to.). Kira manages to beam Ren up (so she doesn't break quarantine) in a runabout telling him he has to find a cure, as she is infected, and thus he is now too. Sisko contracts the virus leaving only Odo and Quark (at a fee) to set the ship free before it blows the station as well. Of course they manage it (we get some poor model work fx as well, which don't stand up well with the Babylon 5 CGI that would come a year or two later.), and of course Ren comes up with a cure, and everyone is saved (God he must have been a very observant and diligent assistant when the virus was tailor made!). And we get an obligatory "who'd be me" end scene where Sisko awkwardly bollocks O'Brien for his dodgy tea from a faulty replicator, as we have to end on a light note ho ho!
Mistakes and Questions.
*Odo says Rom is to thick to mend a bent straw. Which contradicts the aptitude Rom would show in fixing stuff later on down the line. I suppose this isn't really a mistake as it is only Odo'd opinion. And sometimes appearances can be deceiving.
O'Brien mouths off about being put upon in ops, after Sisko asks him to fix a replicator. Hang on! I know he's having a bad day, but this is his CO he is talking to. Perhaps Sisko took pity on him.
Quark is seen pestering patients he thinks are faking the virus to get out of paying their bar bills, in the makeshift ward. He's making a lot of noise, and harassing ill people. Shouldn't someone like Sisko or Bashir ask him to leave?
Who was guarding the docking bays so no-one attempts to breach the quarantine? Jaheel seems to have boarded his ship without anyone stopping him, and no-one is down there except for Odo at the end. Was there no security well enough to enforce the quarantine. And how could they have even enforced it anyway, if there are no security men free?
Isn't it a bit strange that this virus affects Bajorans (as well as humans and other species) as well as the Cardassians it was intended for? I mean if this virus is as clever as they make out, why not bioengineer it for Cardassians only? What would have happened if it had been passed on to Bajor itself?
Betty's Thought for the Day
The episode is named after the Babel parable in the Bible, and it does have some interesting parallels with the episode itself. If you don't know the story I'll sum it up. The people of Babel were the first survivors of the Noah flood, and had built quite a nice little society for themselves, and it was the first instance of humanity being totally unified in culture and language. They started to build a tower partly designed as a beacon of their new society should things go tits up, and partly out of hubris. To build a tower to reach the heavens themselves. God wasn't to happy about mankind getting ideas above its station and he smashed it up and scattered the human race all over the earth, and the unity of language and culture was severed forever. The interesting thing for me is that story can have two different meanings (or better still, morals of the story) depending on your world view. I think it is fair to say the conservative commentator Peter Hitchens summed it up nicely as those who see man as inherently sinful, and that these Utopian grand schemes, where mankind presumes to know better than the higher authority, always end badly. Thus God was intervening to put mankind in its rightful place. The other school see man as essentially good and even capable of being perfected somewhat. That this was a spiteful act by a jealous god determined to stunt his ambitious children, and to bring mankind down and divided, and easier to rule over. The story and the symbolism about it was the basis of the backstory to Babylon 5 (the station is a future version of the tower, and the Shadows try to do what God does in this story.) However this story is sort of a loose inverted version of the Babel myth. On here the "superior beings" built their tower (Terok Nor) to stake claim over the "lesser beings", and to reach down to the land (it was a mining station). And it is the vengeful "lesser beings" who try to tear down the tower, and "confound the language" of the "superior beings." Intentional, or am I just reading too much into it. I just though it was an interesting take.
Summary.
Babel may be the virus of the week story, and hardly original, but for a story of this nature it was a pretty good one. For an early episode it is an unusual example of an ensemble piece, with all the regulars getting something to do. It is well paced, with Quarks B plot tying into the main plot, and the level of danger increases incrementally throughout so the sense of threat feels present and a genuine race against time. The only downsides are the poor "ship blows up" scene and how quickly everything has to be resolved, and how easily the virus is cured at the end. But that is a symptom of how much they put into your average DS9 episode. All in all a well established and entertaining episode with some good scenes and sense of pace (until the end). A nice standalone well worth watching if you have 45 minutes to kill.
Rating 7 / 10
Next Time
O'Brien befriends an alien from the Gamma Quadrant who appears to be on the run. And the Prime Directive is invoked, which is a handy get out of jail card for dealing with awkward moral issues.
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