Rhonda’s Take: Episode 4 “Babel”
The irony of the episode, “Babel,” is that for an episode about people getting a virus that makes them unable to verbalize coherent thoughts, it was an episode full of confusing technobabble. Honestly, all the playing with language in this episode wasn’t what made it interesting. Unlike the last two episodes, it wasn’t character development that made it interesting either. This was the first episode that was truly an ensemble showcase for its midsized cast of regulars and it allowed for some action. The elements about the virus had some odd resonance for our current pandemic beleaguered world. While the acting was often bland, particularly from the guest cast, the director continued the spirit of excellent filmography.
I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but I don’t remember a single episode of Next Generation that allowed Miles O’Brien to have a storyline. My husband remembers when he married Keiko, but even that was a B story. Here, and in the next episode “Captive Pursuit,” Colm Meaney gets to show his acting skill. As “Babel” opens we follow O’Brien around the ship as he attempts to repair numerous broken systems that won’t stop breaking. After being harried by everyone for O’Brien to fix their broken equipment, the scene culminates in Commander Sisko ordering coffee from the Ops replicator, clearly not being happy about it, and then shouting, “Chief, fix the replicator,” as if it wasn’t already on O’Brien’s “To Do” list!
There are two excellent camera motions in the following sequences. After O’Brien repairs one of the replicators, he happily walks away sipping a pleasing mug of coffee, and then the camera pans back and follows some tubing in the replicator to pause on a device with a beeping green light. We don’t know what has been triggered, but we know it can’t be good. After the credits, the director opens on a pan of Quark’s Bar, which yet again establishes this as an important, living heart of our station. While I am on the filmic notes: How many of you are counting Morn appearances? He has been in several scenes in each episode, but has yet to be named or even noted by our main characters. I’m really excited to see when he becomes, like Cheers’ Norm, a fixture at the bar. For those of you watching for the first time, he’s the alien who looks a bit like a potatohead (for Doctor Who fans, he’s an American version of a Sontaran!).
In fairly quick succession, we get cuts to our characters: Odo and Quark banter about who would be better off without the other at the beginning of the episode and Odo delivers a fatefully telling line later about Quark’s brother (“Rom’s an idiot!”); Sisko compliments Keiko about the school; then Dax and Kira walk across the promenade having a friendly conversation. Throughout the run of DS9 their friendship will show that women can be friends without being in competition, but this conversation is of particular interest from a feminist perspective. As the pair walk across the promenade, heads are turning and tongues are proverbially panting at them. Jadzia Dax, whose symbiote has been in both female and male bodies, most recently a man who died late in life, says, “I forgot what it’s like to have all this attention.” Moments later, Quark, in his flirtation, offers them one of the house specialities. Kira declines by saying she has work to do, but Jadzia smiles, clearly relishing that “all this attention” has its perks, and accepts the invitation. Please note that Jadzia knows that Quark desires her and that she has no intention of following through on a romantic entanglement with him.
Throughout the episode our characters lose their ability to communicate and descend into nonsensical babble. It’s Bashir’s job to suss out the cause, which leads to all the technobabble about the technology of the future that makes living on the space station possible as well as technobabble about how viruses are developed, contracted, mutated. It is determined to be a Bajoran trap for the Cardassians that has been activated 18 years after being set, which allows for further development of Kira’s competence as she hunts down the possible developer of the virus. She earns one of the best scenes in this episode when she gets literally in the face of the virologist who is trying to deny knowledge or ability to help. As she breathes the words nose-to-nose to him, “Now, you’re infected too,” we pump our fists in victory. Props to the director again for the awesome close-ups in this scene!
“Now, you’re infected too,”
~Kira Nerys
I have to assume that it was a fault in Paul Lynch’s directions to his actors in this episode because too many of them give lifeless performances for it to be a fault of the actors. In particular, Jack Kehler as Jaheel, the freighter captain who is angry and wants to leave the station does not feel angry, even though he delivers the lines. Matthew Faison as Surmak Ren, the virologist that Kira kidnaps, seems unperturbed despite saying he is. Our main cast are not as lifeless. There are several beautiful scenes between Ben and Jake Sisko that are well-acted by Avery Brooks and Cirroc Lofton. When Jake is afflicted by the aphasia virus, Ben repeatedly says that he “will not lose” Jake and we are reminded that the pair have lost their wife and mother not long before. Jake tries to answer his father, but, of course, can only string together unrelated words. However, Lofton imbues them with tender emotion to convey his character’s love for his father.
In many of our responses, the DS9 Team have referred to the reverberations of thematic elements that echo modern day events or attitudes. Watching this episode amidst the changing climate of COVID-19 pointed to the universal truths of people’s behavior: Quark’s Bar remains crowded, despite a quarantine order; the freighter captain keeps insisting that he be allowed to leave the station before he gets sick, even though he and his crew are likely to be (and as it turns out are) infected; he is so obsessed with saving himself that he nearly destroys the docking pylon, his ship, and the station. The fact that the virus, which is first contracted by eating food from the station’s replicators, mutates to an airborne transmission heightens the tension, and, once again, reminds us of our own fears about mutated strains of COVID-19.
Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek in general, get a bad rap for not being humorous and then a bad rap when there is humor injected. I loved the humor in this episode. Quark is always the comedy relief so he gets the other set of best scenes in this episode. Armin Shimerman really plays up Quark’s joy at getting to be the hero in Ops as everyone else has fallen to the virus and Odo’s strength is needed elsewhere on the ship. When everything is back to normal, including the replicators, Sisko orders his coffee again, but, of course, it’s still not to his liking. His “O’Brien!” is such a great callback to the opening scene.
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Ponderings from the Promenade: A Journey through Star Trek Deep Space Nine 
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