Whispers

This episode of DS9 is told in flashback by Chief O'Brien as he is fleeing a posse from his fellow space station staffers. He narrates into the log of the runabout he is fleeing on how these events have come about.

Basically after he has come back from the planet Parada checking their security systems for a planned Federation sponsored peace conference, Colm Meaney is treated like a pariah by the staff and even his wife and daughter are acting strange toward him. He suspects some kind of plot to sabotage the conference.

I confess this one had me baffled. I reached a wrong conclusion here. The explanation for it all was both logical and simple. This episode belongs to Colm Meaney.

Season 2, Episode 14 of DS9 entitled "Whispers" may be a short, simplistic seeming episode from the outset, but it's actually perhaps one of the most profound up to this point as well.

This episode informs our personal, subjective importance in our own lives, the naivete of that importance, but no less the beauty and importance of the drive to survive and to perhaps reap some modicum of value from our short experience within the vastness of all things.

I've watched way too much TV in my time. So I knew with four minute left and no resolution, something dramatic was going to happen. I thought, "Here comes the 'To Be Continued' notice. Nope. It was something else that ended the episode. Our friend O'Brien is in a shuttle, being pursued by members of the Federation. He feels that some alien form had taken over the bodies of the people on the Space Station and he was on to them. This has good suspense and O'Brien's character is quite good. Nevertheless, the ending was too abrupt and a little short on veracity. Still, I guess with sci fi, anything goes. This is no exception.

An episode that kept me on the edge, with a feeling of something wrong. Just could not point a finger at it. The solution was weird but only logical. The suspence is strong in this one.

From the first (teaser) scene, we can see the warning sign: not enough story filling the scene. And then we have to wonder if there wasn't enough story to fill the episode, since O'Brien has to narrate it for us. Sure enough, there isn't. So why does everyone else rate this so high?

The premise is great, but the details don't hold up. Why does Keiko make his favorite food, but not eat any herself? Answer: to satisfy the story mechanics and no other reason. Why does O'Brien trust people and get disappointed, when he already suspects a conspiracy? Same answer. Why didn't they just thrown him in the brig until the situation was resolved? See previous answer. And then the denouement happens far too easily (a common problem in TNG-onward Trek) -- even without the final line about Keiko, which doesn't bear up to examination.

A much stronger episode would have started with the last-scene confrontation, then flashed back to the story's beginning. Keiko's behavior should have been something more subtle than straight-up acting suspicious. And Odo should not have been thrown under the plot-device bus.

Which is all too bad. O'Brien and Odo are two of our favorite characters on the show, and we are quite familiar with the Phil-Dickian storyline attempted here -- anyone who's seen Total Recall will see the similarities. But the denouement only tells us what happened, not why or how or with any sense of a larger picture. So the end result is a great portrayal of a mood and perspective which simply doesn't connect the dots to make sense. Looks great, and anyone who saw a few minutes out of the middle would definitely find themselves hooked. I just wish they'd finished the job right.