This fairly dull and routine-feeling offering confronts us with the unwelcome reality that, thus far, each episode of the new series has been worse than the previous one. “Babel” isn’t terrible, or anything, but “the station is crippled by a wacky sci-fi viral epidemic” is a pretty uninspired plot for the show to be falling back on, especially this early in its run—and it can’t be said that the episode does anything particularly clever or meaningful with the idea, either.
To its credit, the episode does at least tie its plot to the show’s overarching narrative by way of having the virus be something that’s “left over” from occupation days, and that was originally intended for use as a weapon against the Cardassians by the Bajoran underground. Were it not for this, what we would be looking at here would be a completely generic Trek story that could just as easily have been done on TNG as DS9 (indeed, one is somewhat tempted to compare it to TNG’s “The Naked Now” from season one, though needless to say, it’s not remotely on that level of general god-awfulness). Still, while it’s technically something, the connection to the Bajoran resistance isn’t much. Kira tracking down a doctor who was involved in the virus’s creation and getting him to figure out an antidote is interesting in theory, but (for instance) no questions are really raised along the way about the rightness or wrongness, or the wisdom/folly, of creating and using a biological weapon of this sort. Kira seems to have nothing but contempt for the Bajoran doctor, signaling that she presumably disapproves of it, even as a means of fighting the Cardassians. But she doesn’t say so explicitly, nor does anyone challenge her to consider whether or not she would always have felt that way, or to define where the line between acceptable and unacceptable means ought to be drawn, or anything like that. In fact, by exposing the doctor to the virus as a tactic to motivate him to figure out a cure, she actually proves that there are circumstances in which she is willing to employ such a weapon herself…but the episode doesn’t make anything of that, either. Instead, the Bajoran origin of the virus is pretty much just used as a way for our people to track down someone who can provide a solution for them. Boring.
Not only is entirely too much of the hour taken up by the utterly predictable progression of one character after another falling prey to the virus (a kind of thing that we’ve seen numerous times before, in any number of different TNG episodes), but there isn’t even very much in the way of worthwhile character moments along the way (especially compared to the previous episode). I mean, okay, the motif of an overworked O’Brien being beset by a never-ending stream of malfunctioning systems on this broken-down hulk of a space station is good for a laugh, and sure, there’s some modestly good Odo/Quark stuff, especially during the part where they’re almost the only two unaffected people left, and Odo is trying to hold things together, and Quark shows up to “help.” However, we also have, in this episode, the first example of something that I have already declared my intention to be on the lookout for as I progress through the show: times when Quark does something illegal, that has serious ramifications for the station, but faces no consequences for it. His unauthorized use of a replicator that he has no business using is responsible for spreading what otherwise would have been a narrowly contained epidemic to the entire population of the station, which could easily have resulted in hundreds of deaths. Yes, the episode conveniently has him “redeem” himself somewhat by helping Odo to prevent a ship from exploding and killing a bunch of people (all while joking (?) about expecting to be paid for his efforts), but still—no one even brings up the idea of Quark facing any consequences for his actions? Really? Also, for an episode that’s entitled “Babel,” and is about a virus that makes everyone babble nonsensically, rendering communication impossible…there isn’t even any attempt to make metaphorical meaning out of this, or to have the episode be about communication (or lack thereof) on a thematic level, or anything like that. I mean, are some of the bits where virus-affected characters spew word salad at least moderately amusing? Sure…but not nearly enough so to carry (or justify) the episode, you know?
We hear an awful lot about “quarantine procedures,” but what we actually see is characters co-mingling thoughtlessly, not even wearing any kind of protective gear (masks?), and still repeatedly acting shocked and dismayed each time another one of them starts showing aphasia symptoms. Huh? Apart from the fact of Kira abducting a doctor who was tangentially related to the virus’s creation, there’s no story to the discovery of the antidote (which magically cures everyone, offscreen); the Bajoran doctor just putters around at a computer console for a few minutes, and boom, deadly problem solved. And while the additional crisis that arises with the ship that tries to depart and then has to be released before it explodes gives Odo and Quark a problem to solve together, there’s something very weird about the way that it plays out simultaneously with Kira returning to the station with the Bajoran doctor and getting him to find a cure, without these two story threads interacting much at all. All in all, then, this is just not a particularly competently executed episode.
This episode errs slightly on the side of dull. It’s clearly the worst DS9 episode to date, and it doesn’t show us much about the characters or add up to all that much thematically. However, I do like a few things.
Leaving Odo and Quark to work together at the end works for me. There are some good moments, though it was still underdeveloped. For starters, Quark really is a very poor capitalist if he thinks it’s a good idea to wait until after the tension has dissipated to negotiate for his price [you read him as joking; maybe that’s what it was], and if you were going to develop the Odo/Quark relationship here, why wouldn’t you start with that? Quark makes a pitch for something that he expects Odo to give him later, they banter back and forth while Odo is yelling at him about how they don’t have time and people are going to die, and Quark has to decide whether to take that risk for his own profit or back down. You’ve told us something about Quark that way. Alternatively, you could show what Odo is willing to compromise to save the station and do his duty, or at least how much he’s willing to lie to Quark to get what he wants from him.
Kira’s strategy for getting an antidote is kinda cool; it’s definitely half-cocked, but since she and the rest of the people on DS9 would have died if she hadn’t resorted to this extreme, it seems justifiable story-wise, and it is consistent with her character. It does seem like maybe there would have been legal ways to do this, but the episode could have done a better job of making it clear that they didn’t have time for that. And it’s pretty annoying that there don’t seem to be any consequences for her behavior, since it is surely extremely illegal on Bajor for a Major to abduct someone using a military vehicle (he says as federal agents are abducting people in real time without accountability in his own city). So while the incentive that she supplies Surmak with seems like it would be an effective one, he would certainly have become her enemy after that, and probably there would have been legal proceedings (possibly with enough drama to justify a better episode than this one). It is also a bit convenient that he was able to solve the issue so easily, and in the end, it seems as though he was apparently totally fine with letting everyone on the station die merely because he couldn’t be assed to spend an afternoon figuring out a cure… which, in real life, would require the coordination of an entire community and a lot of time. (For that matter, why wasn’t Bashir coordinating with not just his own medical staff, but also the Bajoran medical community? In TNG, they are usually out on their own; on DS9, they’re right next to a planetary civilization.) They probably at least should have had Surmak picking up where Bashir left off as far as coordinating with the Bajoran medical system and sweating his ass off thinking he’s probably going to die himself. To make it more plausible, they should probably also have had him find a previously-developed cure, not searching for a new one. If it were that easy to find a cure, the Cardassians would have done it had the virus affected them.
I usually enjoy “put upon O’Brien,” and his “anything else I can do for you?” quip when the lights go out at the beginning was pretty cute.
[Adding later: I did accidentally notice your rating before I finished the episode (though I didn’t read your review yet), but I was previously inclined to give this a low three. I mean, this is better than anything in the first season TNG, isn’t it? Like I said, it errs on the side of dull, but it’s still moderately entertaining and isn’t a total slog. I guess it’s pretty subjective. You’re certainly right that this could raise a lot of interesting ethical questions about the ethics of terrorism that the episode sidesteps. And also a great point that if you were going to do something like an aphasia virus, it should probably be in the service of exploring the nature of communication between people, in the way that Buffy’s “Hush” was about how people finally *start* communicating when they lose the ability to speak.]
Other points:
I think they forgot about the transporters for a lot of this story. People stuck in an airlock can’t just beam out? And why not beam Jaheel off his ship, then and beam yourself into it to shut down his controls? Surely he can’t have the shields up when he’s docked.
The reveal of the danger object that started off the whole situation was kind of anomalous. Why didn’t they have someone finding it later in order to demonstrate it instead of leaking the answer to the audience ahead of time? That diffuses any tension the episode might be generating.
Why didn’t the crew realize it might not only be O’Brien right away? They were awfully slow to start thinking that he might not be the only one affected.
Where’s Keiko while her husband is getting sick? Off serving with Sir Not Appearing In This Film?
[Good point, too, about Quark not being held responsible for his behavior.]
I think what really kills this one for me is that it’s like 90% “uninspired random weird sci-fi epidemic,” and (at best) 10% “connected to DS9’s premise/themes”–and in the end, the episode hardly seems interested in any of the potential inherent in that 10% (as we both discussed).
I don’t feel like it’s at all clear to what extent Quark is or isn’t joking about expecting to be paid (hence my parenthetical question mark). Maybe we read it as–he certainly WANTS to be paid, and for sure, the capitalist in him sees an opportunity and knows how to exploit it, but the reality is that he’s not cold-blooded enough to actually insist on cash in hand (or even a commitment to be paid later) before helping to prevent a bunch of innocent people from dying, especially if he wants to continue living and doing business in this community. Which is fine, but as you said, it would be nice if the episode would lean a bit harder into this as an actual character arc for him, instead of just sort of lightly flirting with the idea of him demanding to be paid, but not taking the idea very seriously.