"There's Nothing Wrong With a Good Delusion" (DS9 1-9 "The Passenger")

February 21, 1993

Dammit, I'm just here to help!

(Synopsis on Memory Alpha)

This should have been the Bashir episode.  Indeed, he has more to do in this episode than he had in any episode since he got to hang out with Garak back in "Past Prologue" or failed to cure the disease in "Babel".  Certainly this is Siddig El Fadil's episode to win or lose.

So let's start with him.  Properly, the actor who plays Julian Bashir is named Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi.  For the first few seasons of Deep Space Nine he was credited as Siddig El Fadil.  By the start of the fourth season he'd grown tired of people mispronouncing even that shortened version and switched his credit to Alexander Siddig.  His friends call him Sid.  We'll go with Siddig.  Siddig's from the Sudan but grew up in London.  During the show he'll fall for Nana Visitor and when we get the odd plotline of Kira carrying Miles and Keiko's baby at the end of the fourth and through the fifth season, it would be because of Visitor's pregnancy with Siddig's son Django.

So far Siddig's been playing Bashir as an arrogant prat.  He's simultaneously totally full of himself and blindingly naive.  He was unpopular to begin with and, after the first season, there were network executives who wanted him gone from the show, much as Dr. Crusher was removed from The Next Generation, and the way Dr. Kyle would leave Babylon 5 after the pilot.  In all three cases, the result was different.  For Kyle the pilot was the end of the road.  For Crusher, the executives would repent after they found her replacement, Dr. Pulaski, even more objectionable.  Here on Deep Space Nine, the showrunners had both a plan and the will to hold on to Bashir.  They stood their ground, and Bashir stayed.

The plan that saved the good doctor was, as it happened, the same thing that almost got him booted from the series.  Bashir was designed to be unlikable and arrogant.  The plan would be to show him grow as a person, learn humility, and become a shining example of a Starfleet officer by the end of the series after having been through the crucible.  In the end the plan more or less succeeded, but it had a rough start here.  Siddig plays Bashir as so oblivious and arrogant that he can be hard to watch.  In addition, the way he's been portrayed as an inveterate womanizer, while in the tradition of Kirk and Riker, adds an unpleasant aspect to the character as he overplays his hand and shoots way past charming into creepy.  That doesn't come into play much in "The Passenger", mind you, but was pretty distinctive in both "Q-Less" and "Dax:".

You can transport memories now?  Really?

The funny thing about "The Passenger" is the way the mystery wraps up.  Once you've heard that evil scientist Vantika can pass his memory and personality by touch, it's not hard to remember that he choked Bashir in the teaser.  For that matter, if you pay close attention, it's clearly Siddig's voice whispering the threats when Vantika confronts Quark.  So it really wasn't as much of a surprise as it ought to have been when they make the big reveal of a possessed Bashir as the villain.  Alas, the solution to the crisis is more technobabble.  Modulate the tractor beam here, use the transporter to beam out the bad memories there.  It's all quite unsatisfying.

Future showrunner Ira Steven Behr wasn't a fan of "The Passenger", saying:

""The Passenger" was a show at the time I felt could have just as easily been about Geordi. There's nothing wrong with the episode; I just don't have much of a feeling for it. It could have just as easily taken place on the Enterprise"

                                                           -Ira Steven Behr, Captains' Logs Supplemental

So if the plot of the episode fails to impress, what about the performances?  Siddig's reading of possessed Bashir was too stiff for my taste, though the fact that we only get the one line from the original Vantika before his death makes it hard to compare.  Still, there are just too many odd pauses that makes the line readings seem forced and unnatural to me.

The Law and a Criminal meet in a bar...

More successful, however, is the banter between Odo and Quark.  It's funny and the chemistry between René Auberjonois and Armin Shimmerman is perfect.  It's rare to find that kind of excellent teamwork between actors, especially only a few episodes into the series, and the people behind Deep Space Nine were quick to realize the potential there.  Eventually we'd get an episode of the show that was nothing but Odo and Quark, season five's "The Ascent".

Speaking of security, we're introduced to a new recurring character who only barely recurs, Lieutenant Primmin.  Primmin is thrown in as a Starfleet security representative.  His main role is to act as a red herring for this mystery and to annoy Odo by stepping on his turf.  The drama in that aborted B-plot is neutered right off the bat, though, as Sisko back Odo unequivocally, which means there's no conflict since Sisko forces Primmin to accept Odo's authority.  By the end of the episode the two learn to work together somewhat, but it means little because Primmin's next appearance in the next episode "Move Along Home" would be his last.  When DS9 would add another Starfleet security officer at the start of the third season they would do a better job.

Always with the prosthetics.  Well, at least it's not the Narn get up!

A character who performs better in this episode is someone else who's changed her crediting the way Siddig did.  At the time of this episode, and later when she appears on Babylon 5, the actress who plays space cop Kajada was going by Caitlin Brown.  Nowadays she's Julie Caitlin Brown, and more of an agent than an actress, though she still got minor roles as recently as 2010.

Brown would go on to play a character on The Next Generation later in 1993, then switch over to a recurring role on Babylon 5.  There she played G'kar's firebrand assistant, Na'toth.  It was a great shame when Brown decided not to continue in the role beyond the first season, and, like Saavik's switch to Robin Curtis after Kirstie Alley, Brown's replacement as Na'toth, Mark Kay Adams, just wasn't the same.

That brings us to the Babylon 5 moment of the analysis.  The crossover actor.  There is, of course, a finite pool of character actors to draw on in Hollywood at any given time.  When two shows are running simultaneously, it is pretty much inevitable that some actors and actresses would appear on both shows.  The most egregious of them was Robert Foxworth who played a general on Babylon 5 but was unavailable to return to the role for an important episode because he was off playing an admiral on Deep Space Nine.  There were, of course, others.  Andreas Katsulas would take some time off from B5 to appear as Romulan Commander Tomalak in The Next Generation's finale, "All Good Things," and, as mentioned previously, Walter Koenig would have a major recurring villain role on Babylon 5.  Even the voice of the computer, among other Trek roles, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, would get a guest role on B5.  In short, we should remember that neither show was being made in a vacuum, and that there's a lot going back and forth between them, including members of the cast.

Next up, we'll have a look at where we've been for DS9 then get into B5's pilot, "The Gathering".