Customer Reviews

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 9: The Passenger [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was an Okay episode, We meet the new Federation Security officer who clashes with Constable Odo, This episode had a sneaking feeling to it. It had a great Plot to it. I would give this episode an 3 and 1/2

Bashir and Kira are on the Rio Grande and respond to a distress call. A Kobliad ship is losing life support and the ship's occupants are in danger. Instead of beaming the passengers to the Rio Grande, these two idiots beam themselves (leaving the Rio Grande unmanned) over to a smoke-filled ship without breathing gear. They find the pilot dead, a security officer injured and her prisoner near death. Despite her pleas to let the prisoner die, trapped in his cell, Julian rushes to the rescue, knowing nothing about the species or their capabilities. Dr. Bashir has to be one of the stupidest "geniuses" in Star Trek lore. All Star Trek doctors have a flair for the dramatic - jumping through fire to save a single-cell creature if need-be, but we continue to put up with them because only a Starfleet doctor can discover a never-before-seen virus and develop a cure for it before the end of the episode.

Bashir sees the prisoner, Rao Vantika, is dying quickly - life signs are fading. As he scans him, the prisoner puts a death-vice grip on Bashir's neck for several seconds before he gives his death rattle.

Ty Kajada, the Kobliad security officer, has spent her entire adult life persuing Rao Vantika - more than just a murderer - a sick fiend who has committed countless crimes on their world - a scientist that kidnapped innocents and used prisoners in experiments to extend his own life. Kajada is convinced that Vanntika is still alive and the crew just rolls their eyes. This is not the first time (nor the last - we see this same re-hashed story on Voyager, too) this same theme of "he's dead, Jim" turns out to be wrong. This story has been re-hashed into several episodes over the years and you just have to roll your eyes and cross your fingers that you will somehow be mildly entertained.

When things start going wrong on the station, Kajada tells Sisko, "I told you so" over and over until they finally pull their collective heads out of their butts and listen to her. Dax investigates as she is always the backup when Julian is out of pocket - and he appears to be missing. She discovers that among Vantika's belongings, he had maps of the humanoid brain and what portions of another's brain it would be safe to "hide." He clearly planned on transferring his consciousness to another person - but how? As a prisoner, he would have been scanned for any devices and Dax knows he would have had to penetrate the skin of whoever he was going to "infect" with his consciousness. She searches under his fingernails and finds a microscopic "nano" generator that contained glial cells of his consciousness. I honestly don't know how the actors keep a straight face with these kinds of stories.

Even though Vantika's body is clearly and most certainly long dead, his consciousness is somewhere in DS9 - but where? In whom? Quark is dealing with dark figures in his bar, in an attempt to steal a valuable Deuridium shipment, which were the last known plans of Vantika.

To even the casual viewer, it is abundantly obvious from the first few minutes of the show that Julian is the one carrying Vantika around in his head, but the crew must run around like ants trying to pick up the bread crumbs. Bashir's pompous character was one of the most annoying of any Trek series, in my opinion - and the most expendable. Siddig El Fadil's wooden acting is rarely believable unless he's laughing in the bar or throwing a tantrum - as a villain, he is about as believable as my dog.

Dax figures out a genius way to excise the bad mojo out of Julian and wrap up everything in a little bow before the last commercial. The story is so predictable from beginning to end and there are so many idiotic holes to make the story even plausible - I wonder if there was a writer's strike that week, or what. Definitely one of the episodes that could be flushed without any damage to Trek lore whatsoever.

This is a great episode that moves the spotlight away from Sisko to Bashir and Odo who take the ball and run with it. You see, someone has an evil criminal in their mind, controlling them, manipulating them and the station, with Bashir, Odo and Kira acting strangely... where is HE?

Kira and an arrogant Dr. Bashir are in a runabout when they receive a distress call from a Kobliad ship. When they arrive, the ship is in flames, the pilot is dead and only a Kobliad security officer (Ty Kajada) and a prisoner are alive. Bashir is able to enter the brig, only to find the prisoner (Vantika) injured and near death. In a last gasp, he grabs Bashir and says, "Don't let me die!" and then proceeds to die.
When they get back to DS9, Kajada expresses extreme skepticism that Vantika is actually dead and insists on a complete autopsy. It turns out that Vantika is a master criminal and mass murderer and has evaded capture several times by faking his death. Kajada insists that all measures be taken to conclude that Vantika is truly dead.
A shipment of the very rare and valuable substance deuridium, that prolongs the life of Kobliad people, is due to arrive at DS9. A Star Fleet security officer is assigned to oversee the shipment and he quickly runs afoul of Odo. In a fit of unprofessional emotion, Odo takes Commander Sisco aside and demands that he be put in charge. When problems such as a computer purge arise, Commander Sisco and the remaining command crew believe that Vantika is still alive and his consciousness is residing in another. Rather than considering Kajada, Kira and Bashir to all be suspects, they concentrate only on Kajada. Of course, Vantika's consciousness is in Bashir, a fact that the viewer easily concluded long before.
In a climactic scene, the evil Bashir and his mercenary crew, with the aid of Quark, capture a ship and try to escape with the deuridium. At the last second, Dax is able to beam signals over to the ship that break Vantika's hold on Bashir and the crisis is over.
This is a bad episode; it would certainly have turned me off of the series if it had been one of the first episodes that I saw. The command crew act very foolishly in believing that Vantika is capable of transferring his consciousness into anyone, yet never consider Bashir or Kira, two of the three people who came into contact with Vantika when he was alive. Star Fleet command personnel are supposed to be the cream of humanity, yet in this case, the command crew appears to be very ignorant. Furthermore, Odo's emotional outburst was completely uncalled for and Cisco should have reprimanded him for his unprofessional conduct.

Oh dear. Two less-than-stellar episodes in a row here. THE PASSENGER suffers for a single reason, and that is that its central premise is buried so deep inside technobabble that I simply couldn't make myself care about it.

The storyline revolves around a ship containing a prisoner and a captor. The prisoner has apparently died, while the captor insists that he is alive, based on the fact that he has managed to fake his own death many times before. This leads to an extended "he's alive", "no, he's dead", "no he's dead" argument, where nothing terribly interesting happens.

The only way for me to describe this episode is "silly". The plot is silly. The technobabble is silly. And during the story's climax, even the acting is quite silly (though to be fair to the performer(s), there isn't much to work with here). This isn't an episode that you laugh with; it's one you laugh at.

Get episode 10 and skip this one