SDS9 – S3E18: "Distant Voices" (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

Note to Listeners:

Southpaw: Deep Space Nine is back from hiatus!

This episode was recorded months before the Hollywood Writer's Strike, which began in May 2023. But in solidarity with the writers, we stopped releasing new episodes of Southpaw: Deep Space Nine. However, since the increased genocide of Palestinians, Hollywood has lost all of the goodwill it garnered during the strikes. Palestine has been a lens we used for Deep Space Nine since episode one of our watch-along series, but now that it's in everyone's consciousness, it's a great time to bring this series back from hiatus and record new episodes with Palestine in mind. Keep thinking and talking about Palestine.

Episode Description:

In this episode of Southpaw: Deep Space Nine, Sam and Scott delve into "Distant Voices," where a telepathic attack on Dr. Julian Bashir causes him to experience rapid aging as the station suffers a strange power failure and his crewmates begin acting strangely.

Find seasons 1 and 2 on the Southpaw podcast stream. Find the rest of season 3 on Patreon.

You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app

(Note: Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also other ways to watch DS9 that we're sure you internet space explorers can figure out. Otherwise, since Scott does such an excellent job with the play-by-play, you don't have to watch the episodes to enjoy our breakdowns.)

Transcript

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

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 3, where we analyze Deep Space Nine and Star Trek from a political and historical lens, episode by episode. I'm watching DS9 with fresh eyes, and Scott is our veteran Trek fan.  We are discussing Season 3 of DS9, Episode 18,  Distant Voices.  But I want to bring up  that at the time of this recording,  the WGA, Writers Guild of America, have gone on strike, and one of their main sticking points.

With the tech companies and studios is AI.  It's a topic we talk about a lot on this show. And now it's come home to roost in real life.  Amazon, Apple, Netflix are all studios now, and the other studios are all racing to be tech companies.  So it's kind of odd  talking about this because it's like DS9  storyline affecting us in real life, AI  replacing humans. 

Which also includes writers of the Star Trek franchises.  The writers don't want AI to write scripts and also they don't want writers to rewrite scripts by AI. The studios slash media companies slash tech companies are saying a hard no to that.  So now we already know what these companies want to do. We know what their intent is, which is that whether they were going to strike or not, they were going to try to replace them.

So then striking, they have nothing to lose.  So you can see how existential this is and how the studios are already ready to go all in on AI development.  So we're in a scary timeline right now, and this isn't just going to affect writers, this is going to be the precedent for AI and all workers. So everybody's.

Watching this, this is probably  the most interest people have had in a  writer strike, because I think most people don't care about Hollywood writers because they think of them as rich and bougie, but this time they do, because whether we want them to fight this fight or not, it's them fighting this fight.

Right now,  it's also cluing us in on how these big companies are looking to replace workers. IBM even said as much.  And in many other tech companies, it's been an open secret, replacing people with AI.  So because of this, in solidarity with writers,  Scott and I  are going to be taking a break from recording for a bit,  which for listeners won't mean much because by the time you hear this, the strike will be over.

We'll just stop releasing the episodes that are already in queue. So right now we're recording, but we're actually several episodes ahead.  But when you do listen to this,  it'll explain to you why there was a gap in the release of the episodes, but also a gap in the timeline between this episode and episode 19 through the looking glass, which we'll record after the strike is over, because I don't plan to really watch anything and I don't really mind because I have no problem boycotting all these Marvel preexisting IP  Multiverse time travel superhero. 

If they want me to do a permanent boycott and solidarity, I'm okay with that. If you don't want me to watch any of that stuff, I am okay with that.  Yeah. No, just to, just to piggyback, like, yeah, I mean, solidarity and you know, I feel like  it'll  continuing to record podcasts and content that people can listen to, it may take away from people pushing for the strike to end and we, these writers, they're, they're.

They're good people. What they're asking for is very reasonable. So it's, it's not hard for me to do this. If people that are not going to, people like Comrade Boots Riley is not going to push for his TV show that he's been working so hard on. If he can do it, we can do it. It's not hard. It's not hard.

That's all I'm saying.  It's really not that hard. It's not. And this will be a short episode on it anyway, because this episode sucked. And  so it's, it sucks that we're, that we're taking a break on, on like, uh,  just, um, adequate  beat.  Here we are. Here we are.  But even though these episodes are kind of clunkers, I appreciate that because they're clunkers.

Written by actual human beings, which is, which is why we don't skip clunkers, which is why we don't skip any episodes.  We don't skip, you know, if we ever get to a part where we're reviewing or  reviewing movies written by AI, we can skip those episodes. But as long as episodes involve human beings written by human beings, whether I like them or not,  we're going to give them that  integrity.

And dignity.  So yeah, this is a Bashir episode and is directed by Bashir Alexander Sadiq. What? Yep. I did not know that. Okay. Cause. The thing that impressed me the most about this episode was the acting. Well, you know,  I'm like 98 percent sure he directed this episode. And as I'm sure  many of, you know, him and Nana visitor, the doctor who played Kira were, were married for many years.

So Bashir and Garrick are having food. They have lunch often. They're friends, I guess.  Garrick wishes Bashir an early. Birthday, he gives him a gift. It's a hollow sweet Cardassian murder program, mystery program. Bashir doesn't really like Cardassian mysteries because  you sort of know who did it always, but it's just about how guilty you are. 

They just have a different sort of artistic style. Bashir is expecting a surprise party. He gets them every year.  He's turning 30 and he's having feelings about it. In Cardassia, aging is respected and a sign of power. And in a lot of cultures, aging is, is a beautiful thing, but  in certain sectors of earth and humanity, age is  akin to death and scary. 

Quark, Quark introduces Bashir to a friend named Altavar,  who's  looking for some medical gel, and Bashir won't sell it to him. It's like some sort of scheduled narcotic. He goes to the infirmary, he sees Al Tafar ransacking the place and blasts him with some weird energy and leaves with the gel.  Bashir comes to and no one, he comes to and the whole place that he's in just looks weird.

No one is hearing his computer engagements. Um, Bashir is just walking around the station and can't find anyone. He finally finds Quark, but Quark is afraid. He says, He is here and, and, and they throw something at him. And  Bashir finds Garak, who's also looking for Odo. The computer isn't working. Almost everything is dead or off and it's just weird. 

Bashir is hearing voices and his hair is slowly turning gray and he's slowly looking older.  The sheer and Garrick split up, which is always recommended in a scary situation like this. You should always split up with people. 

They're doing as they're trained, I guess. I guess. The voices get louder. Bashir gets greyer.  He finds Miles, Kira, Odo, Dax to hunt down Altivar that has caused this for some reason.  Everyone is arguing and being mean and weird. They, they feel like out of place versions of themselves.  The voices continue to get louder, but Bashir can't hear exactly what they're saying. 

You know, Bashir is looking for answers, but everyone is acting aggressive.  They try to hail other ships, but it isn't working. The voices are,  they realize that Bashir is in his own mind, he is in a coma,  and if he doesn't get out in three hours, he will die. The caricatures, the characters in Bashir are figments of  who he is and parts of him and when they fix something, it makes his body work again.

Miles fixed the columns and Bashir came here.  That's why they are acting weird, right? Because they're not them, they're figments.  The station is Bashir. No station, no Bashir.  The Bashir brain team, they meet in, they want to meet in ops. Um, Cisco is doing doctor stuff, and Cisco represents Bashir's professionalism.

However, Altavar is taking away all the pieces of Bashir.  Altavar says Bashir will watch him, will, will die slowly.  Bashir is getting older and older.  Altivar is trying to make Bashir second guess himself. Bashir and Miles meet and they go in circles. They get to Quarqs, and at Quark's they are betting on how Bashir is going to die.

And if he's going to die, Bashir bets on himself. But he can't find Ops, where he feels like he can fix himself.  Garak is trying to help Bashir get up so they can go to Ops, but when they get to Ops, it's a surprise birthday party that Bashir has every year, and Bashir finally realizes that Garak  makes no sense to him in his dream state.

And that he reveals he is Altavar and makes fun of Bashir for not being a tennis star that Bashir wanted to be at some point.  Or a medical star, you know, Bashir  purposefully didn't do great on his medical tests, so he wasn't ahead of his class.  And that,  that Bashir apparently has a purposeful, failed, he purposefully fails a little in life to not have pressure, which includes him and Dax.

Cause you know that Bashir that didn't go anywhere.  And Bashir  realized that he needs to go to medical and not ops because in Bashir's life,  his ops would be the infirmary and Bashir actually prefers his friendship with Dax and doesn't regret tennis. And that he enjoys the life that he has because it brought him to Deep Space Nine. 

And with that, he creates a quarantine field, destroying Altavar, and wakes up in the infirmary.  Altavar in real life is arrested, Garak and Bashir have dinner, and Garak is sort of impressed that he's the villain in Bashir's dream.  First off,  notice here how Bashir is glum about aging and says it's a part of human culture, which you brought up.

So this is an example of what Gramsci calls cultural hegemony. The West mistakes their culture for human nature. Which reflects itself in the writing of even sci fi  Scott. What did you think about this plot element, which was probably popular in the nineties. I don't see it as much today because youth culture is all over social media.

So you don't need the TV shows to talk about it as much.  Tell me what you thought about this capitalist obsession with you. I think, you know, being afraid of aging  is  a very  easy thing to do,  honestly.  My life got better when I turned 30, you know, and also in context, right? He's turning 30 in a world where humans are living to like 130.

I know  how, how are we supposed to feel for this guy?  We don't, I don't, I don't feel bad for this guy. This guy is, he is handsome. He's successful. He's the, he's the youngest person to be nominated for a medical award. Like he, his life is awesome and it's only getting better. Now we know when he was nominated, he was in his twenties.

Right  now, aside from like Kendrick Lamar getting a Pulitzer prize, like very early in the career, that usually is fine. Yeah. But sure. You're fine. Don't worry about it, dude. You're doing all right. Exactly. Now with the dominion threat,  I noticed it's used as an in story bogeyman narrative to blame or excuse any action. 

Like in the previous episode, the Romulans were going to commit a war crime because Dominion, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, Dominion, Dominion, Dominion.  Going back to this episode, one of the first things Bashir thinks is this might be a Dominion attack  and narratives of stories that make sense. And it's more about what makes sense rather than evidence.

We talked about this last time about plausible deniability stories that make sense. It just has to be plausible  rather than having evidence.  And right now the U S is using China, like the dominion and even painting them like that. China, China, China,  literally can bring them up to blame or justify anything, or just bring them up and you can raise a bunch of money for your tech company.

You could get more money for any of the U S departments,  the founder of open AI, which is the parent company of chat GPT set in an interview. He knows the risks of AI that this could. Possibly destroy everything as we know it, but he did it  because China  total non sequitur.  It doesn't explain anything. 

Doesn't even make sense to me why he said that, but he did, but somehow that was a relevant answer to open AI, to him, to the interviewer and to readers.  Again, like the dominion, it's just a bogeyman. Once you bring it up. You don't need to explain anything because  the boogeyman is everything you fear. It is the answer to everything. 

So of course, writers understand narratives and narratives are also used politically, which parallels nicely with the specter of the dominion in the current episodes,  except in their quadrant,  the dominion has military bases on every planet and the real world. It's the U S who surrounds the whole fucking world with their bases.

Like, look it up. You could find maths  put together by independent researchers. And there's also academics in universities who try to track all of it. And it's around every fucking country. They could go to war with every country at once. If they want it to, they could fire missiles on every country at once if the U S wanted to. 

So if you want to draw your own actual parallels to the dominion. To the country that actually has dominion. It's not China.  It's also interesting to watch a boogeyman be used to divide and conquer, which also plays out in real life. And in this episode, even in Bashir's mind,  the bogeyman is a useful weapon for empire. 

It's like parents who use scary monsters to control their children.  It's simplistic, but also effective for Western adults.  The war department uses it all the time because that's part of how their budget never goes down because they just keep fighting new bogeymen.  Scott, how do you like the use and long slow burn of the specter of the dominion, which is now being used as a political tool, but also fuel for paranoia?

We hear more about the dominion, even though we've met them, then we actually are dealing with them in the episodes. And does it for you conjure any parallels? Well, yeah, you you're creating the boogeyman because sometimes just this the the idea of the boogeyman the idea of it Is enough to  create fear  and also it's it's also That they're probably trying to save their budget for  bigger things that  You know, they can't, there can't just be a gazillion wars because that's hard to budget for special effects and things.

So kick the shit out of O'Brien for a while then. Yeah. So right now they're beating the shit out of Brian, seeing if the show is going to be renewed for another season before giving us more dominion. So right now it's easier to,  from a pragmatic standpoint, show  rat, like talk about it rather than showing it.

Right. And, but yeah, it just becomes a powerful.  Thing, you know, the, the, the unknown known  that is going to get you that, yeah, that's that's that just exists in people's minds more than they exist in reality, right? Sort of, sort of how,  like, as you said, most, most people in this country actually don't really know anything about the Chinese government.

Right?  And. They just, they hear the Chinese government and they think  TikTok and,  um, that you'll get arrested in China for Googling Winnie the Pooh. That is what,  that is what people think China is.  Not that it's a lot more complex and that,  that just being, just  having a  non unironic, just like China is bad  viewpoint just misses a lot of things. 

It's just, yeah, China bad, Russia bad, Korea, well, North Korea bad, whatever bad. Without digging deeper into it.  So,  but I don't really want to compare the dominion to, to other countries because  they're not, it's just, it's, everything is more complicated than that. Yes. Yes.  Scott, did this episode remind you of the last episode visionary?

Because  for this viewing, right, we watched them back to back and now we're talking about them back to back. We just separated, but.  For me, when I was like trying to remember and take some notes for our recording, I just couldn't tell when one episode ended and the other one began. They just seemed like just kind of the same episode, except they just replaced O'Brien with Bashir.

Yeah, it's just, these are, these are  episodes that I haven't watched since I was a kid. They, they're not very interesting to me  and  that just is what it is, man.  Fill in the blank episodes. They're fill in the blank episodes. I, I think I'm just,  I think I'm just frustrated. I'm frustrated with the world. And I'm frustrated with Hollywood.

And I'm frustrated with everything. This has been a bad week. I mean, to be honest, right? In this current timeline, a lot of bad shit happened this week. And it's just like,  America's still great, apparently, and still free, and not a fascist country. When  the things that just happened in one week here  would have  The West proclaiming a country would need to be. 

So I, you know, I'm just, I'm just kinda,  I love unpacking Star Trek with you and I love unpacking deep space nine,  but  I'm, I'm also  just, just frustrated with the world right now. Sam, you're also a person, right? Last time I checked  now,  sort of like the last episode, this episode had some creepy philosophical questions for no reason.

Like  for the characters in this episode, they realize they only exist in the mind of Bashir, but they're still afraid to die. They still want their own personal identity, their own autonomy,  which is an old philosophical concept of all of us only existing in the dream of a god. Or the updated version of that same idea.

We are all simulations. Or video game characters and somebody is playing this.  So why this is a philosophical thought is because for ages people have been terrified by the idea that they are just fictional characters and God is the playwright. This fear can drive a pursuit for meaning and for religion. 

And here we also find out Dr. Horny is not completely dead as in his mind.  There is still a dabo girl wearing a skin tight see through leotard singing to him happy birthday. Kind of like how Marilyn Monroe sang to JFK.  This scene also creeped me out.  Seemed kind of like fan service, which for people who don't know, it stings to titillate cishet straight male viewers. 

And also,  this is not new for DS9, and probably if we go back and watch even Star Trek Next Generation, it was probably there too, I don't know, but,  this type of fan service, this type of like, Like chauvinism,  misogyny, toxic masculinity. It's not  new in Star Trek in DS9, because I have a friend in real life, somebody who's older than me, who has written for Star Trek and knows some of the writers of the original DS9.

And I asked him about that fucked up thing about  Jake as a minor dating an adult dabble girl. And I asked him, what was the point of that? He said, Oh.  The point of that was back in the nineties, if you wanted to portray a young man, a teenager as being cool as the man, the typical trope was you had him dating an older woman.

So a boy dating a woman back then, that meant you were a stud. So that's why they did it.  And I was like, when I. Her, the actual reason is  it wasn't by accident. They didn't think better of it. They were trying to like develop character in a very gross way, which I hope  Hollywood writing, especially these type of popular inclusive shows have thought better of, but at that time they were still doing shit like this, which is just grooming and it's just fucked up.

And he was disgusted too. He's like, yeah, we would never do that now. But he's like, that's. Kind of how they did shit back then, which is why we need to change shit because for too long, fucked up shit was acceptable.  Now also similar to the last episode where you had Odo's unrequited feelings for Kira, here you have Bashir's feelings for Dax, which also made me confused the two episodes.

But more building, more slow burn, more foreshadowing, more very kind of low budget closed space. It's all about words and exposition more than having to spend a budget and do anything and it's all about  Acting, which in this episode, I did appreciate Bashir, the actor. It's good acting. Yeah, he showed his range. 

So I know you didn't like this episode overall. You said there's some stuff we need to know about Bashir. Was this episode important for knowing about him or not? No,  no.  So this is all just like the last episode or what if episode that doesn't matter.  Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?  Yes, I can.

And I'm annoyed that it's going to be a while before we do this episode.  We will take as long as it takes  because solidarity forever. Part of why I didn't enjoy these two episodes was because I realized this strike like just had started. And then it was like following my gut. I was like trying to understand why am I feeling this way?

Cause the thing about the WGA strike, because it is kind of mostly led by Biden bros and Biden stans, they haven't made any demands. They haven't made any demands to the public, what they want from us.  There's no cohesive message. Most of the time,  all the picket signs are individualized. It's like just jokes and tweets that they're putting up, right?

They're just trying to be funny. It's not the typical type of strikes that we're used to. So I didn't know what they wanted from me, but in watching it, I was like starting to feel gross, which is part of, I think why we both probably didn't enjoy the episodes that much and in reflecting and. Thinking about why do I feel this way?

I realized, oh, it's because I'm watching the shit while the strike just started. And so I'm like, okay, well, this should be the last of the episodes we do. And that's why I messaged you  about, we should stop after this. And you were like, of course. Right. So did you get that sense? Like at some point, like.

Man, watching this shit is kind of making me feel icky. Yeah, because also like, you know, I, I, I, I'm willing to go a little further and be like,  I'm going to not, I'm going to stream less. I'm going to do less, but at the same time, it's hard to,  it's complicated. Um,  It's hard. I don't know.  I'm listening to more podcasts.

I'm reading more comic books. I'm touching more grass. I'm talking to more people. So it's also kind of like a good, maybe a mental health break in some way. Right. It's like now I got to fill that time with something else.  Exactly.  So yes, next episode is  through the looking glass.  It's a mirror, it's a mirror universe episode,  another mirror of time travel, doppelgangers, mirror episodes.

And guess, and guess, guess who's like one of the main characters in that,  Miles.  God,  that's cool. We get to come back to this just right where we left off, just a random fill in the blank episodes. Yes.  All right. All right.  Until then, until then.