Day 33: DS9, Whispers

Show: Star Trek; Deep Space Nine

Episode Particulars: S2EP14, “Whispers”

 Summary: We’re dropped into the episode in media res, with O’Brien dictating his personal log as he flies a runabout solo towards the Parada system. It seems that, earlier that week, he was in the system to get the security specs for peace talks that will be held on the station. When he returned to start implementing them, however, everyone started acting strangely around him. People are avoiding him or dodging his questions, and he concludes that something sinister is going on. Basically, the entire episode can be summed up as “The Paranoia Show With Miles O’Brien”. Which is fine if you like paranoia/conspiracy tropes, but if you’re here for the plot…

Standalone Thoughts: This is one of those episodes where there’s a big risk that the audience will get ahead of the story, and thus diminish their enjoyment of it. And that’s exactly what happened to me. The episode opens with O’Brien alone on a runabout, talking about a mysterious “they”, and all the indications are that he’s on the run. While there are a few different directions the episode can go from here, something—Meany’s acting, perhaps—pretty quickly hints that this is a “it’s all in someone’s head” plot. Once you come to that conclusion, all you can really do is sit back and wait for the big reveal. Is it a hallucination? A simulation? Was an outside force involved? The viewer can try to appreciate the smaller details, like the acting or the little hints of what’s actually going on, but because we suspect none of this is “real”, it’s hard to get invested. To the episode’s credit, I wasn’t expecting the reveal they gave us, but it just winds up raising a lot of questions that aren’t answered. Ultimately, the ending is more interesting than the rest of the episode, and I think we can all agree that’s generally not a good thing.

How it Relates to the Whole: While none of the contents of this episode really matter in the grand scheme of things, it does occur to me that it kind of parallels one of the more dramatic incidents in Season Five. Unfortunately, no one comments on it in-universe. I’ll get into more details when we hit the incident in question.

Other: *Even though O’Brien is getting more and more paranoid as the episode goes on, I don’t understand why he gets so suspicious when Keiko makes some of his favorite foods, even though she doesn’t like them herself. That just seems like something a couple would do on occasion; it’s all about compromise and give and take. Either I missed something (which is absolutely possible), or the episode’s implying things about Keiko that I don’t think it meant to.

*Today we learn that anybody can access station logs, which I found oddly jarring. It makes sense on the one hand—it’s kind of like an after-action report—but I’m so used to it being used as an exposition dump that I just think of it as a kind of personal monologue. The perils of established conventions, I guess.

*Quark mentions at one point that O’Brien and Bashir have a racquetball rematch coming up, as they never completed their first attempt. It’s a nice callback to “Rivals”, and even if I don’t think they ever do get that rematch, I appreciate good uses of continuity like this.

*The entire situation that leads to this conflict makes no sense, now that I think about it. The Paradans are a race from the Gamma Quadrant; we know this because O’Brien goes through the wormhole. They’ve been in a civil war for over a decade…and now they’re asking the Federation to help them negotiate a peace treaty? Why would they ask for help from a group they’ve (presumably) only just met, and that comes from the other side of the galaxy, no less? And how does the Prime Directive factor into this? Is it ok if someone asks for help in their internal affairs, or is the episode just choosing to ignore it? I know it’s not the thing we’re supposed to focus on, but I think they should have changed it to a species in the Alpha Quadrant to try to avoid some of these pitfalls.

Best Line/Exchange: Again, there was nothing particularly noteworthy here. The best I could come up with was this;

O’Brien: What I found in those hidden logs didn’t answer all of my questions, but they sure as hell confirmed what I’d been afraid of. They were analyzing and reanalyzing everything that I’d put into my report about Paradan security. They’d even broken into my personal logs to see what they could find in there. I hope they enjoyed reading the sexy letters to my wife.

Not only is the last line delivered with the right amount of dry sarcasm, it’s a sweet, humorous note in a mostly serious plot. And with an episode like this, that counts for a lot.