🚀 go-pugleaf

SPOILERS BELOW!!



In article <4o893r$g...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, tly...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:

<Full review deleted for bandwith conservation...>
> And, a wrap-up:
> 
> Writing:  Not always riveting, but scientific plausibility aside it hung 
>         together fairly well.
> Directing:  Flat in spots (though that may have been the actors); nice 
>         work with lighting ideas.
> Acting:  I'm not sure that Ellen Wheeler (Ekoria) really worked for 
>         me; the rest did, Alexander Siddig and Michael Sarrazin 
>         (Trevean) in particular.
> 
> OVERALL:  7.  Not stellar, but certainly not bad.

Hmmm... This is the first time (that I can remember) that I disagree in
some way with one of the always well written and well thought out reviews
of Mr. Lynch. I think this show is my favorite of this season, basically
because of Siddig's acting and the dialogue scenes (can you tell Wheeler's
performance did work for me?). Personally, I like shows based on character
interaction, and it was about time we had one, after all the cartoonish
action we've had this season (which is not necessarily bad... just that we
needed a break). It was also about time for any of the characters to
fail... nothing is more monotonous than seeing them succeed easily every
week. All in all, an excellent show... in my opinion, of course.

That matte painting with the sunrise coming up was pretty nice too... :-)

-- 
                       , 
|     Jose R. Perez    \Q    "Never tell me the odds!" - Han Solo      |
| Ga. Tech EE / GSU MBA |\ Why wait for Windows 2010? Get a Mac today! |
|\    jo...@gsu.edu     / \            I want to believe.              /|
========================================================================

On May 26, 1996 00:37:15 in article <[DS9] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "The
Quickening">, 'tly...@alumnae.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)' wrote:


>The blight itself seemed fine, but the "EM fields are causing
>the virus to mutate at a very fast rate" was just goofy (even if the
>current speculation that EM fields from power lines are dangerous is
>true, which I'm not certain I believe).

But remember, this wasn't a natural plague, it was inflicted by the
Dominion and the Jem Hadar.  The virus was probably GENETICALLY ENGINEERED
to do that, to compound the victims' misery by forcing them to turn off
whatever technology they had left after the attack and plunge them into a
primitive hell of an existence.

The actual mechanics of
>Bashir's "vaccine" also felt questionable to me -- given that the kids
>are born with the blight, they're presumably infected very quickly
>after conception, so giving this elixir to a seven-month-pregnant
>woman shouldn't do a thing to help prevent the kid's infection.

Actually, in humans the placenta acts as a filter to isolate the developing
fetus from the mother's infections (but obviously, this process has
limitations, or we wouldn't have babies born HIV positive).  Perhaps for
the people on this planet infection doesn't take place until very late in
pregnancy, or perhaps it actually happens at birth, when the amniotic fluid
drains and the baby comes into direct contact with lesions in the birth
canal?

Gene

In article <4o893r$g...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
Timothy W. Lynch <tly...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>WARNING:   Quick!  Turn away unless you want to fall victim to 
>spoilers for DS9's "The Quickening"!

>In brief:  Decent.  Not the most interesting plague story I've ever seen, 
>but decent -- and with a good ending.

Hmm.  Obviously this episode didn't grab you the way it did me.  (Consider
yourself lucky, maybe.  I found the episode to be thoroughly unnerving.)

>It's tough to write a plague story these days, I've got to say.  Virtually 
>every series where it would be possible to do one has done it at least 
>once (from all the Treks to "Babylon 5" to "ER", and I've no doubt 
>that "Friends" will do it eventually, leading every *other* show on 
>television to do it after that :-) ); that, along with all the real plagues 
>that have been hitting headlines over the last few years, means that it's 
>getting harder to do one that doesn't feel like a rehash.

Honestly, I can't remember Trek ever telling a better plague story than this
one.  As far as I can remember, most of Trek's medical problems have ended
up succombing to neat and tidy technobabble solutions.  "The Quickening"
avoided that formula, and in that sense it reminded me of the B5 episodes
"Believers" and "Confessions and Lamentations" (each of which took a standard
Trek medical crisis and proceded to toss the formula out the window).  Seemed
to me that "The Quickening" was neither as bold nor as bleak as the two B5
efforts, but it also wasn't as single-mindedly manipulative.  (For the
record, I consider both "Believers" and "Confessions and Lamentations" to
be among B5's ten worst episodes yet aired, despite good intentions.  I have
a feeling that fans of B5's plague episodes may have been less impressed by
DS9's effort than I was.)

>I'll admit to being quite worried about the show until midway through 
>act two, however.  In rapid succession, we had:  the token 
>Odo/Quark/Worf/O'Brien scene with Quark being punished for doing 
>something venal and stupid -- yay;

You honestly didn't laugh?  Personally, I appreciated that the episode started
on a lighter note like this, instead of forcing the audience to wade through
the bleaker stuff from the outset.

>Bashir acting totally giddy and 
>annoying -- joy;

Wait a second, this obnoxious, arrogant, giddy side has been part of Bashir's
character for a very long time.  Yes, he has matured a bit during the past
few seasons (especially in his dealings with O'Brien), but this immaturity is
still very much a part of him.  IMHO, this was a central thrust of the episode:
Bashir was faced here with a situation which took his arrogance and immaturity
and slammed it right back in his face.  Not a pleasant thing to watch,
admittedly, but it seemed honest enough.

>the initial scene with Trevean, which made me fear 
>that we were going to be in for *yet another* Trek episode dealing 
>with euthanasia and the right to die;

I was afraid that it would turn out that Trevean was hiding the cure for the
plague for his own personal benefits, and that Bashir would end up exposing
Trevean, saving the planet, and closing the day on an artificial happy note.

Fortunately, that didn't happen.

>and Bashir acting totally arrogant 
>as if he expects to solve a 200-year-old medical problem in a week.

See above.

>The blight itself seemed fine, but the "EM fields are causing 
>the virus to mutate at a very fast rate" was just goofy (even if the 
>current speculation that EM fields from power lines are dangerous is 
>true, which I'm not certain I believe).

My take on this scene was that the Dominion intentionally designed the virus
to react against EM fields, as a sort of survival mechanism for the virus --
and also to destabilize the victim society as fully as possible.  And there's
nothing new about the Dominion being capable of hocus-pocus pseudo-science
nonsense.  "Goofy" science is a way of life for Trek, and, as long as the
motivation behind it is as sound as it was here, I'm not going to complain.  
Which isn't to say that you can't complain if you want to.  ;-)

>The other problem I had with "The Quickening" was mostly that it felt 
>a bit flat.  The story felt generally solid, but lines like "It's more than 
>that -- we've come to worship death" rang out about as dully as a 
>laundry list.  I'm not sure whether that's the fault of the dialogue or of 
>the actress (in this case I'm inclined to blame the latter, as Ekoria 
>never quite grabbed me), but much of the show felt a little slow and 
>flat.

Hmm -- my reaction was very different.  There was a tremendous sense of
despair throughout the episode, even in the more hopeful moments, and somehow
this episode really grabbed me, and not in an altogether pleasant way.
The "we've come to worship death" line seemed to me to be the key to 
understanding what had happened to these people's culture.  They knew that they
were probably going to die young, likely before they had time to accomplish
much with their lives, and they knew that fighting the end would only lead to
enormous agony.  In designing this blight, the Dominion did more than destroy
a population -- they destroyed a presumably once advanced and enlightened
culture.  Even with Bashir's discovery at the end of the episode, it's clear
that these people have a long and difficult road of recovery ahead of them,
It would almost have been less cruel for the Dominion to have exterminated
the entire population at the outset, once and for all.

>(Things like Dax's "translating" for Bashir's medical jargon 
>didn't particularly help, as Bashir rarely seems that bad.)

Maybe, but I've often thought that most doctors could benefit from a translator
or two....

>That was outweighed, though, by much of what we *did* get from 
>"The Quickening".  In particular, the scene between Bashir and Dax 
>after Bashir's patients have died was absolute bliss.  What worked 
>best was that Bashir's "doctor as god" belief really *hadn't* changed:  
>as Dax pointed out, his change from "oh, I can cure this in a week" to 
>"I couldn't cure it in a week, thus there is no cure" isn't really a 
>humbling at all.  It was only after she pointed that out that Bashir 
>*really* realized where he'd been prideful, and that realization just 
>came off beautifully.  (His self-lashing "I was looking *forward* to 
>tomorrow" also came off well.)

Agreed completely.

>Bashir finding a "delayed cure" of sorts -- still feels like a little bit of a 
>stretch, but feels much better to me:  given the lack of regard for life 
>the Dominion seems to have, they may not have considered the 
>possibility of a cure such as this one, and Bashir *did* still get 
>emotionally hurt over this.  I think this ending is about the best one 
>that Naren Shankar could have been reasonably expected to use ... 
>and that certainly works for me.

Up until the ending, I had found "The Quickening" to be a very intense 
viewing experience...but I *was* still nervous that everything would be flushed
down the pipes by a cheap and cheesy ending.  Honestly, I couldn't see any
good way to resolve the episode -- which is to say that I didn't anticipate
the way in which it was resolved.  It was emotionally faithful to what had
happened before (no quick and tidy last minute solution to leave everybody
smiling -- in other words, no standard Trek finish), but it also ended the
story with a very real sense of hope which I think was very much needed and
very appropriate.

>And, a wrap-up:
>
>Writing:  Not always riveting, but scientific plausibility aside it hung 
>	together fairly well.
>Directing:  Flat in spots (though that may have been the actors); nice 
>	work with lighting ideas.
>Acting:  I'm not sure that Ellen Wheeler (Ekoria) really worked for 
>	me; the rest did, Alexander Siddig and Michael Sarrazin 
>	(Trevean) in particular.

All of the acting worked for me.  Even Terry Farrell's, for a change.

>OVERALL:  7.  Not stellar, but certainly not bad.

Definitely a 9 for me.


Ted

Timothy W. Lynch (tly...@alumnae.caltech.edu) wrote:
: WARNING:   Quick!  Turn away unless you want to fall victim to 
: spoilers for DS9's "The Quickening"!
: 
: In brief:  Decent.  Not the most interesting plague story I've ever seen, 
: but decent -- and with a good ending.
: 
: ======
: Written by:  Naren Shankar
: Directed by:  Rene Auberjonois
: 
: Brief summary:  Bashir and Dax answer a distress call only to find a 
: world ravaged by a Dominion-given "blight" -- one which Bashir 
: attempts to cure.
: ======
 
Excellent review, Tim (as usual).

: That was outweighed, though, by much of what we *did* get from 
: "The Quickening".  In particular, the scene between Bashir and Dax 
: after Bashir's patients have died was absolute bliss.  What worked 
: best was that Bashir's "doctor as god" belief really *hadn't* changed:  
: as Dax pointed out, his change from "oh, I can cure this in a week" to 
: "I couldn't cure it in a week, thus there is no cure" isn't really a 
: humbling at all.  It was only after she pointed that out that Bashir 
: *really* realized where he'd been prideful, and that realization just 
: came off beautifully.  (His self-lashing "I was looking *forward* to 
: tomorrow" also came off well.)

This was probably my favorite thing about the episode. In a small way,
it was prefectly in character for someone like Bashir. I a larger
way, I saw his attitude as a reflection of the Federation attitude
and of the Star Trek attitude ("We're the Federation, we can help you and 
make it all better, because we are good, smart, brilliant people....").

That Dax was the one to call him on it made a lot of sense considering
her age and experiance. 

: As for the ending ... well, I've already said that the biological aspects 
: of it were silly, but from an emotional standpoint it worked.  The two 
: obvious ways for the show to go were for Bashir to totally succeed, 
: or for Bashir to totally fail.  The former would have set off my "Trek 
: can do anything" alarms something fierce, and the latter didn't really 
: have any oomph to it, so I didn't expect it.  (Given the way the blight 
: operated, it wasn't killing off the entire race at once, so an ending 
: where everyone dies wasn't possible unless Bashir really screwed up 
: -- and I didn't really think that would happen.)  What was done -- 

I *was* wondering how it was going to be handled. Were the going to do
the typical Star Trek thing and save everyone? Or were they going to
do the Babylon 5 thing where they find the cure, but it's too late
and everyone (the entire species) dies? Like you, I thought of
only those two possibilities. I love being surprised. Good job, DS9!

: OVERALL:  7.  Not stellar, but certainly not bad.

I'd give it an 8, but you are right that the whole thing did seem a 
little flat, like everyone had a clamp on their emotions (which really
sort of makes sense considering the future of these people).

Sonja
--lans...@scf.nmsu.edu                 bam...@acca.nmsu.edu
"Independence limited, Freedom of choice
 Choice is made for you my friend, Freedom of speech
 Speech is words that they will bend, Freedom with their exception"
                                       -- "Eye of the Beholder", Metallica

Timothy W. Lynch (tly...@alumnae.caltech.edu) wrote:

> WARNING:   Quick!  Turn away unless you want to fall victim to 
> spoilers for DS9's "The Quickening"!

> In brief:  Decent.  Not the most interesting plague story I've ever seen, 
> but decent -- and with a good ending.

Try watching the episode not thinking of it as a `plague' episode, but
rather as a `pride and prejudice' episode.  Upon watching it the second
time, while making my archive copy, I found it was packed with lots of
little subtle references to the whole idea of not only Julian's personal
pride, but also his ingrained Federation/Starfleet prejudice.  The
plague was merely a means of providing the contrast between a people
who've been deprived of their technology and the Federation personnel
who've come to depend so much on technology that they think they're
better than others because of it.  And it worked on so many levels,
from the initial ``We have technology to help you''/``We used to be
a technological people too'' exchange, to the idea that Julian would
even need a `translator' because he was so personally caught up in
being a doctor rather than a healer.

> That's actually about it.  "The Quickening" generally worked, but it 
> was a simple enough story that there's not that much else to say about 
> it.

Sometimes, the simplest stories are the best.  I'd also say that The
Inner Light and The Visitor were pretty simple stories.

> -- I wasn't enchanted with the "token Quark" scene, but I did like the 
> "free refills" mug complete with jingle that Worf ended up with.  :-)

I too wasn't really sure what the whole point of this was.  Someone
else pointed it out as being a light touch to begin a heavy episode
on.  I suspect we're supposed to use it as an indication of just how
pervasive technology has become in the Federation, to use as a mirror
against which the rest of the episode can unfold.

> OVERALL:  7.  Not stellar, but certainly not bad.

I'd probably give it closer to a 9; not quite as good as The Visitor,
mostly because there was so much subtlety that many people no doubt
were lost by it.  But in some ways, the subtlety actually makes it a
better episode.

David B. Mears
Hewlett-Packard
Cupertino CA
me...@cup.hp.com

On 28 May 1996, David Mears wrote:

> Timothy W. Lynch (tly...@alumnae.caltech.edu) wrote:

> > WARNING:   Quick!  Turn away unless you want to fall victim to 
> > spoilers for DS9's "The Quickening"!



> > OVERALL:  7.  Not stellar, but certainly not bad.
> 
> I'd probably give it closer to a 9; 

Me too.  9 is about right.

> not quite as good as The Visitor,
> mostly because there was so much subtlety that many people no doubt
> were lost by it.  But in some ways, the subtlety actually makes it a
> better episode.

Yes.  When I watched this the first time it didn't really grab me, and I
thought it was "decent."  But when I sat down to record the thing,
suddenly I started noticing all the details and the subtleties that I had
missed the first time around.  The dead-on performance of the actress
playing Ekoria, frail yet strong...the look on her face when she's
deciding whether or not to share her "death" meal...the man that spits at
Julian while he's walking, after all his patients have died...the two
people who run away after Julian beams down at the end of the fourth
act...the "shaking" of Ekoria as she endures the pain for the sake of the
baby...the bittersweet irony of the first non-blight baby is born as
Ekoria dies...the shot of Trevian holding up the baby and then to a lone
Bashir...

It's an episode that improves each time you see it.

-
Jose Gonzalez

>    I don't know whether it had anything concrete or symbolic to link it with 
> the rest of the episode, but I found this short skit much easier to take 
> than the usual A-B story split.  Besides, any short skit which has Kira 
> taking Quark by the throat and saying "I will go to Quark's, and I *will* 
> have fun." is worth the 3 minutes it took to set up the scene.  :)
> 
>    I suspect the writers were just irritated by a local restaurant's refill 
> policy.  :)
> 

I loved that opening scene!  And I want one of those mugs!!

-- 
 ===============
|Gary M. Torborg| 
 ===============
gtor...@cmsc.polaristel.net
4250 2nd Street South
St Cloud  MN  56301