SDS9 – S4E24: "The Quickening" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on September 12, 2024.

Sam and Scott recap "The Quickening" and discuss disease and germ warfare as Western colonial tools and the US soldier mentality to cancer treatment.

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Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 4. If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaw's completionist DS9 watch-along show where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. Today, we are discussing the quickening. Scott, can you recap this episode?

All Quark everywhere. Kira and Miles are hanging out. Quark and Odo enter. And Kira shows there's an ad for Quarks on the screen. It's showing up in the Replimat. It's showing up all over. It's got a jingle. It's got a song. Quark's like, what's the problem? And Odo is like, it's a Class 3 offense.

And then we see Worf coming through. He's very angry with a Quark mug. And Kira warns Quark, you better fix the replicators when she comes back from the Gamma Quad or it's going to be bad. And Quark is like, all right, I'll deal with it. I'll deal with it.

Meanwhile, Jadzia, Bashir, and Kira get a distress signal during a biosurvey on a nearby planet. They discover a city in ruin. The people have blue welts and disfiguration on their face. This person, Norva, collapses, begging for some help. As Bashir tries to help, this character warns that she's suffering from the Blight and urges them to leave.

Bashir tells Jadzia that the painkiller that she gave to Norva is not helping, it's not effective, probably because of the physiology of the planet, but believes that they are safe from this infection. They get to a hospital, and people are sitting around, and we're hearing a term called quickened. There's these very sick patients that are calmly eating.

Someone notes that Norva is quickened and needs to see Trevian. Trevian arrives, thanks Norva. this person and this guy basically enjoys his last meal and thanks trevian and trevian informs bashir and the team that norva is that and that the blight is 100 fatal and bashir is confused because trevian said that he could have helped so he's

he's a little curious Bashir and Jadzia are like, we have advanced medical technology. And Trevian's like, you don't understand. We had this really state-of-the-art world. The Dominion came. Everyone was infected with the Blight. When the blue lesions turn red, that's when people quicken, and then they die shortly afterwards. We see a man fall.

Bashir tries to help him, and Trevian administers herbs, and Bashir realizes that Trevian is aiding in their death. And Bashir is angry, and Trevian tells him to leave. Later, Jadzia and Bashir find a 200-year-old distress beacon, helpless because he wants to save people and he can't save people.

They meet a Coria who's pregnant and she worries that she's going to quicken before her baby is born and wants to give her baby a chance. And Kira says, warns of incoming Jem'Hadar ships. On the runabout, we realize that the Jem'Hadar are on a patrol route and will soon enter the system.

So Kira is like, let's go back to the Alpha. We'll organize the Starfleet to come back. This will take weeks. Bashir believes that he needs to deal with this now, talks about how a plague was solved very quickly, and convinces Kirik to leave them and hide the runabout, and they will just return in a week.

Akoria decides to allow Bashir and Jazia to stay with them. They set up a makeshift operation. Akoria is talking about this art by her late husband, who also created murals and other art to get people to feel hope. Akoria wants to feel hope, even though it's very hard.

Bashir shows Okoria a picture of her baby, and she is moved by it. We see Bashir making a little bit of progress. He thinks that he's mapping it, thinks that he's created an antigen. He believes that he's isolated the virus. And Akoria is starting to feel hopeful and starts sharing some food that she had

saved up because she no longer is worried that she's going to lose it. But now Bashir needs a quickened volunteer. And he finds Eprin, who he met earlier, and he's quickened though. And Eprin, his attention is piqued at the offer from Bashir, but he's skeptical because he wonders what Bashir is going to want.

But Bashir doesn't want anything he wants. fixes a boy's fracture. Trevian arrives and he warns that promises like this have been made in the past and that nothing good can come of anything. And Bashir assures that he can help while offering no real guarantee. At the lab, Bashir is discouraged that there aren't a lot of volunteers,

but Akoria shares that she once hoped to Quicken and go see Trevian, but her outlook has changed. And now that she's pregnant, she wants to live for her son. And then we find out that Eprin has volunteered. So we do like a little montage. Bashir is treating several people, various stages, making some progress,

and then he teaches Ikoria how to hypospray, so she administers herself and others and is unaware that it carries the antigen. Eprin, however, is no longer responding to the painkillers, and the inhibitor device on his forehead is... maybe not doing its thing. And Bashir is doing the thing where he hasn't slept for days.

And Ikoria tells Bashir that Eprin's white blood cell count has increased. It's a positive sign. And Bashir's really impressed by Ikoria's bedside manner. And Bashir reflects on sickness and illness. makes people think about their own mortality, and that even he thinks about death. And Okoria is like, well, everybody does.

And Bashir talks about Kukulaka, his childhood teddy bear that he stitched up, and he still has Kukulaka. And Their conversation ends because Jadzia rushes in. Something is wrong. Eprin has new lesions and is in a lot of pain and disquiet, and he develops more lesions and worsens. The virus mutates, and he's in terrible pain. So Bashir,

using a scanner, realizes that the electromagnetic mathematical science field from the instruments are triggering violent mutations. So the math is not mathing. and lesions are spreading rapidly, and other patients are screaming in agony. So Bashir shuts everything down. Unfortunately, though, Eprin has died.

Bashir is desperate to revive him and is doing that thing in movies where he's like, no, no, no, one more compression, one more push. Jadzia has to literally take him off. Trevian arrives, and the minister is poisoned to a bunch of people, begging for relief. And we see a devastated Bashir, unable to do anything.

And the next day, Bashir sees all these bodies and starts basically... feeling guilt, feeling that he's caused undue suffering and that he should have been smarter, he should have been more brilliant, and he should have found the viral mutation sooner. And Jadzia is like, you couldn't have known. You did your best.

And Bashir admits that he had hoped to make a cure. He believes there is no cure. And Jadzia is like, you arrogant, arrogant, arrogant guy. Just because you can't find a cure doesn't mean other people can't find a cure. which causes Bashir to be on his sad boy reflection time, walking through the world, ignored,

just doing his sad boy thing. And then finally sees the mural by Ikoria's husband that shows the city in better times. Ikoria approaches and reveals that she's quickening and still appreciates everything that Bashir has done for her. and appreciates having hope, but she's sad that she won't see her child born, because she's going to go see Trevian.

But Bashir, having a little bit of a change, stops her. But when the runabout returns, Bashir tells Kira and Jadzia he can't leave yet. He's going to stay behind. He has to try. And Akoria's Bashir's the only patient, and he looks at her with the basic equipment, and then he finds no antigen in her.

And he just makes an assumption that Akoria's rejected it. Her immune system was like, nope. And when she starts feeling pain from the blight, Bashir advises against more medicine because it could affect the baby, and she accepts. And as he prepares some things and he looks at the baby's health,

he realizes that Ikoria will not survive until term. So they decide to induce labor in two weeks. And Trevian visits, offers Ikoria a peaceful way out, but she refuses because she believes that her child has a chance to live and deserves a chance. Then we see Bashir and Trevian talk to people that provide healing in different ways.

And Bashir believes that Trevian is focused on death. And Trevian explains that he's not. He's just seen so much suffering and sees that he offers a very real solution to the pain without death. the tools necessary to fix the blight. But he wishes Bashir well, wishes Ikoria well, and Bashir starts to actually understand why this would happen.

And then a couple weeks go by. Ikoria gives birth. It is a healthy baby boy. And the effort basically takes her life. Ikoria dies content because Bashir realizes that the baby has no lesions. The antigen did not help Ikoria, but it passed through the placenta and basically created a vaccine.

And Bashir doesn't know whether to feel joy or sorrow. It's a melancholy. And when Bashir shares the advancement with Trevian, he is like, give this to all pregnant women. The adults can't be saved, but the children can. And Trevian's showing that he's not just... trying to kill people,

is he promises to distribute the vaccine and holds the baby and feels hopeful for the first time in a while. On Deep Space Nine, Ben praises Bashir, reads his report, and Bashir appreciates it all, but is troubled by the idea that people could continue to suffer.

And Ben reminds him that future generations will not have to suffer the way they did. But Bashir is like, okay, but I'm still going to try to find a cure.

The opening of the show really nailed a lot wrong with commercialization, advertising, branding, marketing, capitalism in a very funny way. And how the crew reacts to Quark bringing back advertising and branding is was hilarious. It was light, which contrasts with the rest of this episode, which was an interesting choice. Even me talking about it now,

it sounds like I'm describing a different episode, even though Scott explained it just a little while ago. So what was the rest of the episode like? It was another heavy episode. This one dealing more directly with moral philosophy and and is again using Bashir as a doctor, as the central character in a moral tale. However,

because of the history of this character, Bashir's morals are often confusing, and Bashir himself was confused about what's right or wrong in this episode, which actually worked well. This episode, like the last one, was about different forms of control, and this one was about using disease, as a form of control.

There's also a colonial and imperial history of this, the use of disease as control, a tactic of warfare, and as a warning. Even to this day, remnants of that, a mistrust of the health system lingers because of the past crimes of the US and the West.

And so this use of medicine and disease as a colonial tool doesn't end with settlers in the Americas intentionally spreading disease. You can look at the history of, again, MKUltra, which we discussed before, and of chemical weapons, including disease, and the use of disease by the U.S. in the war in Korea and

You could also look up Puerto Rico and anemia and cancer research and Cornelius Rhodes. This episode could also be an allegory for cancer. And going back to Puerto Rico, look up how Puerto Ricans were murdered for cancer research. Or how many people, especially indigenous people, got cancer because of U.S. nuclear research.

This episode started with some problematic hand-wringing about deaths with dignity and hospice, or even people who decide to stop treatment. Three people in my immediate family have died of cancer and I've had my own scares and have to go in semi-frequently for screenings. There's a whole ethics and care movement that's opposed to viewing treatment of a

disease as war and that you're supposed to be, once again, a soldier fighting to your last breath. quality of life be damned. And I've talked about this a lot, this soldier mentality that infiltrates every part of US culture, which is really just part of white supremacy culture. But going back to the hard decisions,

sometimes you might even live longer without treatment because treatment can have their own costs, especially if it's very unlikely to save you or cure you. Insisting upon it will often result in a shorter life and worse quality of life.

Yes. So fun fact, or at least interesting fact, is that people with terminal illnesses that choose to go with hospice as opposed to aggressively trying to treat their care, yes, often live longer, fuller lives because they're not spending so much time hurting their body with treatment and instead are allowing their body to rest,

are allowing them quality time. Whether people have the luxury of doing hospice at home or doing hospice at an inpatient center or a nursing home, you're able to be with your family and be given medicine that exists just to comfort you and is often stuff that they might not give you otherwise because it

could slow your heart rate. It could allow the process to happen. And it is a very beautiful, important thing. And I really appreciated that Trevian showed the importance of of that choice and how it is not even close to inconsistent with the Hippocratic oath to offer hospice. That's essentially what he's offering.

I mean, you could also argue that he's offering an assisted way out. I think that's a simplistic view of what's happening here. But hospice is a beautiful thing. Palliative care is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, the West is so full of hubris often that they look at the last part of the natural progression of our lives.

as this bad thing, which it can be, right? Like when young people pass away, when people have horrific deaths, when there are accidents, those are terrible. But when someone's lived a beautiful life and they are choosing to pass on surrounded by their loved ones, that is a success. And there needn't be so much fear about it,

especially certain doctors like Bashir who think of hospice as a failure, not as just a progression. If it was a failure, there wouldn't be whole entire fields of study and medicine purely focused on palliative care.

And I want to touch upon something that you mentioned earlier about quality time, not just as far as quality of life, but also with your family, because often that aggressive treatment, if it works, great. That's the point. But even when it works during that time, you're getting that aggressive treatment. You often don't.

have the ability to spend quality time with your family. You're basically incapacitated in the hopes of surviving. But if not, it's a gamble where then you might not survive and you didn't get that time with your family. So for people who know their terminal and decide, okay, I don't want treatment. It's not about them choosing no treatment.

It's about them choosing quality time with their family and to be with them as much as they can to maximize that time before they're gone. And for their family to also have as much time as they can before this person is gone.

So going back to what I was saying about being a soldier, look, if you want to be a soldier, you do you. I'm not saying people shouldn't do that. And the whole movement that opposes this type of warfare mentality rhetoric is not prescribing that approach to everybody that you shouldn't do treatment or anything like that.

But it's saying that when you view everyone and this process through that framework, you often also judge people as quitters or as weak and you also become prescriptive. You tell people to do this. So from this framework, if somebody passes, which is the natural thing that was happening, people will say they lost their battle with cancer,

which is what? It's saying they're a loser, right? They lost. So many people apologize when they're fucking dying because they think they let people down because they didn't win. And I say this because I spent a lot of time in cancer wards and hospice. I spent years.

So I'm not talking about just my family in that time, spending so much time in those spaces. I met a lot of people, got close with a lot of people there because I was there every day and saw people pass and you see that guilt. They feel guilty. So we also have to think about consent.

And that's something that's come up a lot in DS9 because in a sci-fi show, there's all sorts of thought experiments. And so this is about people consenting, people getting to choose their own approaches. And so I would say with this one thing, I feel like this has shifted since the 90s, how people view end-of-life care.

Not everyone, probably not even the mainstream, but still a significant shift. Maybe if I'm in a similar situation, maybe I'll approach it as a soldier. But if I don't, shut the fuck up. Yeah. In the previous episode, we talked about the U.S.

mentality of thinking of yourself as a soldier, and this even goes to how we view our health. You're always supposed to be a good soldier. Just suck it up. Fight the good fight. Not just talking about health, but us as workers or as people,

we're always supposed to just shut up and suck it up and fight the good fight and just do our job and not complain about the U.S. or not complain about our bosses or not complain about capitalism and work ourselves to death. I like that this episode didn't end neat because despite Bashir's moralizing,

he realized his arrogance because it's not that people didn't want a cure. The cure is damn hard. And the quest for the cure was doing more harm than good. And Trevian ultimately is shown to be a compassionate person. He felt like an allegory for a folk doctor or a traditional medicine doctor just working within their material conditions.

who is judged by a Western lens, something you were just talking about, right? Yeah. Judged by the outsiders. So you're not judging them within their own context. You're judging them from your context. And they don't have your technology. They don't have your resources. And even when you do, you couldn't cure it anyway. Yeah.

You came up with something that is going to cure future generations, but that's not even what Bashir ultimately wanted and was unsatisfied with it.

Right. And penicillin, is barely 200 years old, right? So are you saying that medicine didn't exist up until 200 years ago? Absolutely not. Traditional Eastern medicine has existed for a very long time. Folk medicine has existed since time. Even the idea of having peppermint tea if your stomach hurt, that is a form of healing.

There has been healing way before there were doctors. It's just that there has been a beautiful advancement in modern medicine, but it is foolish to think that there isn't beautiful healing to be learned from paleo uh medicine or is like i i read somewhere paleo science i also appreciated

that this episode had criticisms of the whole cottage industry of scams and bullshit that target and profit off of desperate people who are dying and also their families And that was also something Bashir wasn't sensitive to, right? That people like him show up and try to really take advantage of these people.

That cure isn't always a good thing. So this episode started one way, It ended another way. People grew. We learned more. This episode had its own lessons about standpoints and whose standpoint are we using. And we started the episode with one standpoint and we ended with another standpoint.

Who you thought was good wasn't all that good and who you thought was bad wasn't all that bad. It also asks, what would you do when there's no good options? going back to soldier mentality, a soldier is not supposed to recognize that there's no good options because a soldier always has to find the objective for victory.

But life's not like that. DS9 is really messing me up with... For the cause, to the death, and now the quickening, some very heavy episodes. For real. So Scott, tell me your thoughts of this episode and the journey we just had with these last three episodes.

So we are really cooking up. And I consider this episode largely a non-mythology episode because while the blight is caused by the Dominion, this doesn't really have far-reaching things in it. The standalone? It's kind of standalone. I would call it standalone. If there are some implications later on, I can't remember. So I'm giving this a standalone 4.5.

This is an episode that I never would have rewatched if I wasn't doing this. And I think it is a very smart, thoughtful episode. I would gather that one of the writers of this episode had a loved one that was in hospice. because it's hard to describe and understand hospice if you aren't connected to it.

And I thought this episode had a very smart outlook on these sort of things, especially for the 90s.

Because we are watching every episode, you do find these hidden gems that aren't mythology, that aren't really important to understand the overall storyline or storytelling. But then when you only watch those episodes, you do also end up missing little ones, special ones like this one. But also, yeah, the last three has been quite good and has been...

Really changing the tone of the show for me. Yeah. Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

A nice little quark episode for a treat.

Okay, good. I needed that break. All right.

Until then...