Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved,
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.

Synopsis: "Babel"

Episode Number: 405
Air Date: 1/23/93

	The episode opens with O'Brien working overtime trying to
fix all the broken systems on DS9, especially the food 
replicators. While fixing a food replicator in the 
station's command center, he causes a flare of light and a 
sputter of electrical discharge, but the replicator works 
fine after this display and O'Brien seems satisfied. As he 
leaves, he fails to notice that there is a device attached 
to the inside of the replicator which fairly clearly does 
not belong there.
	Later, in Ops, O'Brien begins to complain of being hot, and
shortly thereafter begins to speak incoherently. Kira 
notices and drags him off to the infirmary. Bashir 
diagnoses O'Brien's problem as aphasia but is unable to 
find the cause. There is a staff meeting in Ops where the 
senior staff discuss O'Brien's problem and its possible 
sources, but fail to really get anywhere. In the middle of 
the meeting, Dax also goes incoherent.
	In the infirmary, Bashir tells Sisko that he's traced the
problem to a virus that interferes with synaptic 
transmission, causing the victim to be unable to 
communicate. Two more victims of the virus are brought in, 
and Sisko orders the station quarantined.
	After more analysis, Bashir reports that he thinks the
virus is being ingested, and that he analyzed the 
station's food and found the virus in all of the 
command-center replicators. He is also getting patients in 
from non-command parts of the station, however. Odo reports 
that this is Quark's fault, for using the command 
replicators to produce food for his restaurant since the 
restaurant's replicators were broken. At this point Bashir 
becomes worried and runs a check on the station's air 
supply and finds out that the virus has become airborne, 
and everyone on the station is infected.
	Kira examines the command center replicators and locates
the mysterious device. She identifies it as being of 
Cardassian make due to its power supply. However, Bashir's 
research indicates that the virus isn't Cardassian at all, 
it's a Bajoran biological weapon. The officers conclude 
that the device was probably planted by the Bajoran 
underground at the time of the station's building, intended 
for use against the Cardassians, but for some reason never 
triggered. Sisko assigns Kira the job of tracking down the 
Bajoran scientist who created the virus in order to obtain 
the antidote from him.
	Meanwhile, sixty percent of the station's personnel have
been affected, including Sisko's son, Jake. And some of 
the first patients have taken a turn for the worse, 
including O'Brien. Bashir states that O'Brien and the other 
serious patients have around twelve hours to live.
	Kira has had little luck tracking down her Bajoran
scientist; all reports indicate he has been dead for 
years. However, she has obtained a lead on an associate of 
the scientist's whom she hopes might know something. She 
contacts the man but he is not interested in conversation. 
She tells Sisko she wants to go and meet with the man in 
person; he doesn't want her to break quarantine, but Odo 
urges Sisko to let her go -- "She's all you've got."
	The station has turned into a ghost town; nearly all the
personnel have the virus by now, including Dr. Bashir.
	Up in Ops, a serious situation develops with only Sisko and
Odo there to man the boards. A panicky ship captain tries 
to forcibly undock his ship from the station. After failing 
to convince the captain to stay, Sisko decides to release 
his ship from the docking clamps and grab him with a 
tractor beam after he's clear of the station. However, the 
captain's attempts to free his ship have disabled the 
clamps, which fail to release. The damage to the ship is 
severe and it is in danger of exploding and taking a good 
chunk of the station with it. As Sisko and Odo decide to 
try releasing the clamps manually, Sisko begins to speak 
incoherently and collapses. Odo calls for help from anyone, 
and gets Quark, who transports Odo over to the damaged ship 
(after playing with Odo's mind a bit.)
	Down on Bajor, Kira locks onto the coordinates of the 
associate and beams him aboard. She demands that he give 
her the antidote. He informs her that first of all, he 
didn't make the virus, and second, that as far as he knows 
the man who did make it didn't bother to make a 
counteragent. Kira then informs the man that he'd better be 
willing to try to make one, because she has exposed him to 
the virus by beaming him aboard the runabout.
	Back on DS9, Odo just barely manages to release the damaged
ship in time; it explodes a short distance from the 
station, shaking DS9 but not damaging it.
	Kira gets the associate to the infirmary, where he sets to
work on the antidote as Kira too falls victim to the virus 
and begins babbling.
	However, the associate, picking up where Bashir left off,
manages to create the counteragent in time, and everyone 
on the station is saved.

Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved,
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.


First Impressions Reviews: "Babel"

One-line opinion summary: This wasn't terrible, but it
wasn't great, and it *could* have been.

Rating: 6 out of 10, same as "A Man Alone".

Many spoilers below, and no ^L on this terminal, so it will
have to be blank lines.

	Synopsis: The episode opens with O'Brien working overtime
trying to fix all the broken systems on DS9, especially 
the food replicators. While fixing a food replicator in the 
station's command center, he causes a flare of light and a 
sputter of electrical discharge, but the replicator works 
fine after this display and O'Brien seems satisfied. As he 
leaves, we see a shot of the replicator from inside; there 
is a device attached to it which fairly clearly does not 
belong there.
	Later, in Ops, O'Brien begins to complain of being hot, and
shortly thereafter begins to speak incoherently. Kira 
notices and drags him off to the infirmary. Bashir 
diagnoses O'Brien's problem as aphasia but is unable to 
find the cause. There is a staff meeting in Ops where the 
senior staff discuss O'Brien's problem and its possible 
sources, but fail to really get anywhere. In the middle of 
the meeting, Dax also goes incoherent.
	In the infirmary, Bashir tells Sisko that he's traced the
problem to a virus that interferes with synaptic 
transmission, causing the victim to be unable to 
communicate. Two more victims of the virus are brought in, 
and Sisko orders the station quarantined.
	After more analysis, Bashir reports that he thinks the
virus is being ingested, and that he analyzed the 
station's food and found the virus in all of the 
command-center replicators. But he is also getting patients 
in from non-command parts of the station. Odo reports that 
this is Quark's fault, for using the command replicators to 
produce food for his restaurant since the restaurant's 
replicators were broken. At this point Bashir becomes 
worried and runs a check on the station's air supply and 
finds out that the virus has become airborne, and everyone 
on the station is infected.
	Kira examines the command center replicators and locates
the mysterious device. She identifies it as being of 
Cardassian make due to its power supply. However, Bashir's 
research indicates that the virus isn't Cardassian at all, 
it's a Bajoran biological weapon. The officers conclude 
that the device was probably planted by the Bajoran 
underground at the time of the station's building, intended 
for use against the Cardassians, but for some reason never 
triggered. Sisko assigns Kira the job of tracking down the 
Bajoran scientist who created the virus in order to obtain 
the antidote from him.
	Meanwhile, 60% of the station's personnel have been
affected, including Sisko's son, Jake. And some of the 
first patients have taken a turn for the worse, including 
O'Brien. Bashir states that O'Brien and the other serious 
patients have around twelve hours to live.
	Kira has had little luck tracking down her Bajoran
scientist; all reports indicate he has been dead for 
years. However, she has obtained a lead on an associate of 
the scientist's whom she hopes might know something. She 
contacts the man but he is not interested in conversation. 
She tells Sisko she wants to go and meet with the man in 
person; he doesn't want her to break quarantine, but Odo 
urges Sisko to let her go -- "She's all you've got."
	The station has turned into a ghost town; nearly all the
personnel have the virus by now, including Dr. Bashir.
	Up in Ops, a serious situation develops with only Sisko and
Odo there to man the boards. A panicky ship captain tries 
to forcibly undock his ship from the station. After failing 
to convince the captain to stay, Sisko decides to release 
his ship from the docking clamps and grab him with a 
tractor beam after he's clear of the station. However, the 
captain's attempts to free his ship have damages the 
clamps, which fail to release. The damage to the ship is 
severe and it is in danger of exploding and taking a good 
chunk of the station with it. As Sisko and Odo decide to 
try releasing the clamps manually, Sisko begins to speak 
incoherently and collapses. Odo calls for help from anyone, 
and gets Quark, who transports Odo over to the damaged ship 
(after playing with Odo's mind a bit.)
	Down on Bajor, Kira locks onto the coordinates of the
associate and beams him aboard. She demands that he give 
her the antidote. He informs her that first of all, he 
didn't make the virus, and second, that as far as he knows 
the man who did make it didn't bother to make a 
counteragent. Kira then informs the man that he'd better be 
willing to try to make one, because she has exposed him to 
the virus by beaming him aboard the runabout.
	Back on DS9, Odo just barely manages to release the damaged
ship in time; it explodes a short distance from the 
station, shaking DS9 but not damaging it.
	Kira gets the associate to the infirmary, where he sets to
work on the antidote as Kira too falls victim to the virus 
and begins babbling.
	However, the associate, picking up where Bashir left off,
manages to create the counteragent in time, and everyone 
on the station is saved.


Review

I had a seriously mixed reaction to this episode. On the 
one hand the plotline was basically good and intelligently 
handled, and there was some character development I really 
enjoyed. On the other hand, I came away feeling unsatisfied 
(at least partially because of the abrupt ending) and 
wondering exactly what story they were trying to tell here. 
Perhaps it's the direction at fault; as I'm not completely 
versed on who is responsible for what portion of a 
television show (beyond the obvious) I have a little 
trouble assigning blame to any one quarter.

The story I was hoping they'd tell (and which I did see a
little of, to be fair) was the one centering around two 
points: first, how much we depend on our ability to 
communicate with others, and how terrifying it is to lose 
that ability, and second, what it's like to be stuck in the 
middle of a plague. They keep saying DS9 is going to be 
grim and gritty, and I can see how they're trying, but they 
had an opportunity here to get truly grim, and they backed 
off. I would guess they don't trust their viewers to like 
Star Trek that is genuinely grim, which is a shame. Being 
trapped in a plague is an absolutely terrifying situation 
to be in, and that never came across. They paid lip service 
to it with the panicky ship captain, but then turned it 
into an excuse to have a last minute violent threat to the 
station. Like the virus wasn't enough of a threat? More 
like it simply wasn't nearly as visually interesting a 
threat -- "Scenes of people lying around being sick are 
boring; let's throw in an explosion."

None of the staff seemed worried enough about the situation
to me. What I would have liked to see was a lot of tightly 
controlled surfaces with terror coiled underneath, and 
maybe the occasional intimate shot of the mask of control 
cracking and letting the fear come through to let us know 
that these people *are* scared, but are fighting their fear 
to keep from being incapacitated by it. I was particularly 
disappointed in the way the young doctor was shown dealing 
with the situation, though I don't know if it's the actor's 
fault or the writers' (some of both, maybe.) If he's fresh 
out of the Academy, this is probably the first plague 
situation he's been in, and he's (apparently) the only 
doctor on the station. Let's see the strain! The only time 
he ever looked anything other than perfectly groomed and 
together was as he as coming down with the virus himself, 
where he did in fact look almost as exhausted as I would 
expect a doctor vastly outnumbered by his patients to look 
in such a circumstance. They've been portraying the doctor 
as cocky, still sure he can do almost anything medical; 
this would have been a perfect opportunity to see some 
development and growth on the character's part. People he's 
responsible for are getting sick all around him; he's found 
the cause but he can't find a cure, and it's only a matter 
of time before he gets it himself and becomes completely 
incapacitated. And then his patients start dying, in large 
numbers, with more likely to follow. Welcome to fallibility 
-- the real world can be a very nasty place, and this is no 
Academy simulation.

But no, we were shown none of that. There were times when I
saw faint hints of what I wanted to see in the actor's 
performance, times when he said "I don't know" and sounded 
frightened by this fact, but not nearly often enough. This 
really got driven home for me in the scene between Sisko 
and Bashir as O'Brien lies on the table in the infirmary, 
extremely ill. Bashir makes a comment about how the virus 
is a work of genius. What the heck kind of a comment is 
that to make, especially in the presence of a man who son 
is ill with that same virus? A damn callous one, IMHO. And 
Bashir really didn't seem all that concerned about 
O'Brien's condition either. If this is supposed to be part 
of the character, I'm going to stop liking him very 
quickly. Coming off as sounding callous because one says 
the wrong thing at the wrong time I can accept (I've done 
it myself), as when Bashir made his comments about 
"frontier medicine" to Kira in the premier, but true callousness 
is another thing entirely, and that's what this came across 
as. His attitude toward his research on the virus came 
across more as "Gee, something new to play with, a 
challenging puzzle" rather than "I had better find a way to 
nail this thing before it starts killing people". I 
wouldn't mind the former being present as long as it was 
tempered by at least some of the latter, but, again, I 
didn't see it. I was cheering Sisko on when he cut off 
Bashir quite sharply when Bashir started going on about how 
he'd figured out whose creation the virus was.

In fact, the only thing the doctor seemed to be good for in
this episode was for a lot of technobabble-loaded plot 
exposition. I was not impressed.

The only one who got anything across to me of the terror of
the situation was Avery Brooks, and then only in spots. A 
few of the scenes with Jake were very well done, as when he 
first finds out the boy is sick and he takes his son's face 
in his hands and pulls him close; but the later one about 
"I'm not going to lose you" fell flat. Suggesting to a sick 
kid that he might even *possibly* be lost is a very bad 
move; kids are highly suggestible.

This is my major gripe with the episode; that they failed
to deal with the specter of plague in any real depth. Take 
a look at the terror that the thought of AIDS engenders in 
people today -- and AIDS is extremely difficult to 
contract. They could, and should, have done much more with 
this. Throw out the exploding ship plot; keep in the 
panicky captain, but simply have his ship blow up quickly 
without endangering the station, to show that panic leads 
to even quicker destruction. Replace it with some high 
potency scenes of what the virus and the fear of it are 
doing to the people on the station.

And NOT A SINGLE PERSON DIED IN THIS EPISODE. Even the
panicky ship's captain was pulled out of harm's way by 
Odo. No one died of the virus. Not a single person.

"Grim and Gritty"??? Not by half.

There were other things that bothered me about the episode,
such as: Gee, Odo can practically run Ops by himself, 
can't he? Where'd he learn that? And the ending was 
unbelievably abrupt: no, there's no antidote, and I'm not 
the person who invented it, not even a real geneticist, but 
we'll just pick up Bashir's notes and poof, a counteragent 
exists and everyone is cured! Yeah, right.

All of that having been said, was there anything I liked
about the episode?

Well, yes. One thing I like very, very much was all the
wonderful (and wonderfully delivered) repartee between 
Quark and Odo. I can't say enough good things about the 
scenes the two of them had together, all the way through. 
Both characters went up a couple of notches in my 
estimation (as Bashir dropped by about the same.) The 
transporter bit at the end was lovely, as was "Rom's an 
idiot. He couldn't fix a straw if it was bent."

The scenes of overworked O'Brien in the opening were well
done, too, as was his no-so-good-natured grumbling; I 
really felt sympathetic for the character, and we got to 
see that the station really is not working properly -- not 
in any major way, but in the very true-to-life sort of 
annoyances that equipment breakdowns cause to the people 
who depend on them. Like the people trapped in the airlock; 
no major danger to the station, no real danger to the 
people in the airlock, just the simple frustration akin to 
being stuck in an elevator. I could stand to see little 
fifteen-second scenes like this become a running gag for 
the series.

We got to play "Where's Odo?" again, and again I completely
failed to guess where he was. I'm going to have to start 
being very suspicious of all the inanimate furniture in any 
scene without Rene Auberjonois in it if I'm going to up my 
batting average on this score.

The scene with Kira and the scientist's associate toward
the end was very good; for just a brief moment I really 
felt the horror that Kira would have been feeling in that 
situation, when she realizes the man can't simply pull the 
antidote out of his pocket and give it to her -- "I went 
through all of this, and there's no antidote? And he 
doesn't think he can make one?" -- but it was all ruined 
with the arrival of the associate on the station and the 
quickie fix. If this scene had come five minutes earlier, 
and they had had to do something more to get the antidote 
(and we could have seen them feverishly working at it) I 
would have been much happier with the ending. Come on, 
guys, let's see some DESPERATION!

And the plot was well constructed; no gaping holes that I
could see, and no conspicuous smaller ones, either. The 
explanation for why the device was there, what it was 
doing, and why it went off *now* instead of earlier all 
held together nicely. The fact that it was an old piece of 
sabotage led to a nice plausible complication -- the people 
who would know what to do about it are dead or difficult to 
locate. (Unfortunately as I've said ad nauseum, they didn't 
play up the desperation that should have engendered as much 
as they should have.) The pseudo-biology of the virus even 
held together pretty well. I have some more details to add 
about the show's biological pseudoscience, but to spare the 
people who couldn't care less, I've put it all in a special 
paragraph down below where it can be easily skipped. My one 
real quibble with the plot structure was the way they threw 
in those two deadlines right at the end: twelve hours 
before O'Brien dies, and fifteen minutes before the ship 
explodes. Why do we need this to make the ending come off? 
Why not a much more reasonable sort of deadline to generate 
the required tension? For example, make it a race to get 
the scientist back to the station before Kira collapses; 
that makes much more sense. [Forget the exploding spaceship 
entirely.] If Kira fails to return, everyone in the station 
will just slowly die, a much more horrific thought (to me 
at least) than the twelve hour limit (the thought of a 
station full of sick people, completely isolated, the 
medical staff also down with it, slowly dying over a period 
of days, is a great deal more horrible than the twelve hour 
deadline.) Have Kira start to show symptoms of the virus, 
but have her succumb more slowly, due to her genetics or 
just her sheer stubbornness, and show her fighting to keep 
from being overwhelmed by the virus before she gets the 
scientist back to the station, then collapsing just after 
getting him there.

Trek Biotech commentary: (Note: I'm a molecular geneticist
by trade, so I can't resist commenting on all of this 
scifi biology.) Much to my surprise, this is actually 
pretty good. Not perfect, naturally, but I don't expect 
that. There were none of the glaring "protein breaking down 
into DNA" errors like in "A Man Alone." Someone has been 
coaching both El Fadil and the guest scientist on their 
pronunciation of technologese; they got a number of 
jawbreakers out perfectly. And if anyone has access to the 
show's production people, I'd love to know where they're 
getting their biological computer graphix; they're nice 
quality. Obviously real biological graphics programs, not 
fakes.

I was a bit ambivalent about the virus itself and the way
it was portrayed. I can accept without a problem that it 
hits different people at different rates and with different 
severity; that's a real life phenomenon largely based on 
genetics and the person's physical condition. I can buy 
that it hits a large variety of humanoid races in a similar 
fashion, especially since it *didn't* hit Odo and Quark 
(they didn't show if it hit the other Ferengi.) They were a 
trifle inconsistent with what exactly the virus' effects on 
the victim were, though -- for example, when O'Brien typed 
the gibberish into the padd, he didn't seem to realize it 
was gibberish, but when Bashir saw the computer spitting 
back his gibberish at him, he caught on. And I was never 
clear on whether or not the victim could understand what 
was being said to him; for example, when O'Brien first 
started babbling, could he understand what Kira was saying 
to him, or did he hear her babbling just as she heard him 
babbling? If he heard her clearly, then he should have been 
able to figure out that he was speaking gibberish, even if 
it sounded okay to him. If he didn't hear her clearly, why 
wasn't he trying to drag *her* to the infirmary?

The idea of the virus messing up synaptic transmission is
basically sound, but why was it specific to the language 
centers? If it messed up synaptic transmission, one would 
think it would interfere with other functions like walking, 
talking and breathing. But I can forgive this as the virus 
was really just a plot device, and a multitude of sins can 
be covered under the aegis of the virus having been 
designed, not evolved -- "It was built that way." This is 
also the only good explanation for why the virus 
conveniently mutated to an airborne form -- it was built to 
do so. It wouldn't be capable of doing so naturally in so 
short a period of time, if it were capable of doing so at 
all. (We haven't seen any airborne varieties of AIDS or 
polio, after all, have we? Thank God!!) I could also pick 
minor nits with the scriptwriters word choice in a couple 
of places -- for example I don't think they'd really refer 
to the virus counteragent as an "antidote" -- that 
generally is used for poison counteragents. They'd be more 
likely to call it a "cure" or, as I did, a counteragent. 
But that's getting really nitpicky, and I'm sure they used 
that word so that the general audience would get the idea.

Next week: The iguana man from "The Last Starfighter" comes
to DS9 :-)

Jennifer Hawthorne

Copyright 1993, Jennifer A. Hawthorne. All rights reserved,
but I'm not stuffy about it as long as you don't go overboard.
