In the twenty-fourth episode of the fourth season of\u00c2\u00a0Deep Space Nine<\/i>, Jadzia and Julian clash over whether or not to help a doomed society. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of genocide, chronic illness, assisted suicide\/euthanasia.\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Well, damn, the Jem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hadar are so awful. Coming off the last episode, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to want them to get their comeuppance, despite that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To the Death\u00e2\u20ac\u009d complicated them a bit more. But holy shit, what they did to the people on this planet is horrendous. It really is an act of genocide, since their sole goal is to doom this society to a fatal, non-curable disease that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s passed on to anyone who dares procreate. I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been surprised to learn that this society lost a significant number of their population over the last 200 years either, even though that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really stated outright.<\/p>\n
So why do anything? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the central question in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Quickening,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great chance to explore Dr. Bashir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dedication to medicine, even when it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t result in a positive resolution. The writers create a foil in Trevean, the only thing that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s close enough to a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in this place, and he never even bothers to heal anyone or even make an attempt to find one. Instead, he treats the Quickening \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the moment when the lesions on these people turn red and death soon follows \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as a chance to give these people a quick death. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the only dignity that he can offer them.<\/p>\n
But this story doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really focus on that. I thought it was going to be an episode about assisted suicide, but it ends up following Julian Bashir and how the man deals with futility. His medical expertise might be well-suited for the task, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t prepare a person for repeated failures. Julian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s resilient, of course, but what if that resilience doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually solve anything? What if the people he wants to treat have no desire to\u00c2\u00a0be<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0treated? For what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth, the script does a fine job of showing us\u00c2\u00a0why<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0these people are so reluctant to trust anyone who promises to help them. Over the last couple centuries, plenty of people have tried to exploit their suffering. Trevean names a few of those examples, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame anyone for thinking that Julian and Jadzia are just here to make money or gain something from trying to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153help.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Yet even when Julian overcomes this obstacle, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hit with a tragic complication: the very equipment he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s using to cure these people is killing them. And what do you do\u00c2\u00a0then<\/i>? How can you keep trying to help people if the tools you normally trust aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t working anymore? I enjoyed the idea of this conflict, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Quickening\u00e2\u20ac\u009d felt like it fizzled out by the end. These are big questions for the show to ask, but the end result is shockingly bleak, despite that Julian discovers a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vaccine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the Quickening. The current generation of people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including the children who are currently living \u00e2\u20ac\u201c will all die, but any people inoculated with Julian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vaccine can have children who will not carry the virus. Yes, I suppose that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hopeful, but Ekoria\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death makes the whole thing bittersweet and cruel. Her child will grow up without parents. And how many other children will have a similar upbringing?<\/p>\n
I suppose the whole purpose of this episode is to leave things in an unsatisfying place. Julian never finds a cure, despite working on it when he returns to \u00c2\u00a0DS9<\/i>, and his only consolation comes from the idea that there might be a generation who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll survive the Quickening. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no mention of the Jem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hadar returning and discovering that there are now children without the disease, nor is there any true closure. I feel weird asking for it because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a major reason why I love\u00c2\u00a0Deep Space Nine<\/i>. This show is constantly willing to twist my expectations and to tell the best story possible, even if it leaves me hanging. But \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Quickening\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an uneven narrative because of the way the tension lurches forward, settles down, and then fades away, even in terms of the character study of Julian. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a terrible episode by any means, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thankful to get another piece of the Jem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hadar\/Dominion puzzle.<\/p>\n
The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Quickening\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded\u00c2\u00a0here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards.<\/b> In the twenty-fourth episode of the fourth season of\u00c2\u00a0Deep Space Nine, Jadzia and Julian clash over whether or not to help a doomed society. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640,614],"tags":[615],"class_list":["post-5746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-space-nine","category-star-trek","tag-mark-watches-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"