...Also contains a bit of "The Hidden" - But I also include, the greatest Sci Fi "Whodunit" of all - "Who Goes There" by John W Campbell, which is the basis of "The Thing from Another World" and "The Thing" Films from the 50's and the 80's.
Rao Vantika is an Alien obsessed with Death. Ty Kajada is an Alien Policewoman of the same Alien Species, obsessed with Vantika.. and also obsessed with bringing him to Justice.
But Vantika is a genius. He's used all manner of tricks to prolong his life, extending it to the maximum that his species will allow.
But the Prisoner transport he is being hauled in, somehow catches fire and he dies. End of Story? Not by a long-shot.
Lt. Primmin, the Federation Security Liaison assigned to DS9, is tasked with protecting the shipment of some stuff called "Deuridium" which has some kind of Life-Preserving properties - This stuff is a Planetary Shipment, being sent to the home planet of Ty Kajada and Rao Vantika. Well, for some reason, Vantika wants this stuff - And he'll do anything - Including rise from the Dead, to get it! Kajada is not convinced Vantika is dead, he's faked his death so many times before. And in fact, things start happening on the Station that point to him being alive... But How? The DS9 team figures it out - Too late. Vantika has taken possession of a member of the DS9 crew... but which one? This is the question asked here. Who is it, Who Done it? And the "Science" gimmick of this ep, is the premise, that a Human Mind is not using all of it's capacity at any given moment - So there is room enough in the Human Brain's Neural Pathways, to store more than one ENTIRE personality. Which is a startling answer to this conundrum. The question becomes "Who Goes There?" - Which is the main gimmick in the 1930's Sci Fi story of the same name by John W Campbell.
This Ep reflects some of the best golden age Sci Fi stories ever written: "Passengers" by Robert Silverberg - Beings that can take over any human body and use it as a plaything, leaving the host personality unable to do anything about it... Kind of like a reverse Dax, and the Hosts the passengers take have no say in the matter.
Then there is "A Plague of Pythons" by Fred Pohl - There is a small conclave of humans that can don a headset and take over any human body on Earth. That story does not bode well for the people who made the headsets- The hero of the story gets control of all the headsets and kills them all.
"The Puppet Masters" by Robert A Heinlein, which reflects an invasion of Slug-like creatures (Sound Familiar, Dax?) that can attach to any human brainstem and it creates a merged being, LIKE the Dax symbiote- But the "Slugs" are Malevolent.
There is even a reference to "The Hidden" - An 80's sci-fi flick starring Kyle MacLachlan and Mike Nouri where there is a race that can do the same thing: IE, take control of a host body for a short time, abuse it, get it killed, then move to another host.
There is a very large hint of these stories in this great DS9 Ep written by Hugo Award Winner Morgan Gendel of Next Gen Ep "The Inner Light" - And it took one of the regular DS9 Actors to pull it off. Can't say which one, as I put enough spoilers in my reviews... Let's just say the guy they put Vantika IN, was a newbie to US Television.
The way this ep moves is the epitome of creepy. We never find out who Vantika is traveling in until the last minutes of the episode, but when who it is, is finally revealed? It is a shock and a kick in the Arse.
Now it was said in another review that the actor who "Had Vantika In Him"- when he had to BE Vantika, that this actor was wooden. Wrong: I think they did a great job, putting on a personality that was different than the DS9 character they usually portray. So we have a very creepy story, and everything that happens is misdirection. There are quite a few Macguffins in this Episode, we are totally fooled until the very last reveal. This was a great Ep in the first season of DS9 which revealed the possibilities of where this show could ultimately go.
I am going to have to qualify my last paragraph again, just to make it totally clear: a number of people in these reviews have commented on Siddig Al Fadeel's voice, without mentioning that during most of those conversations, he was speaking as the "Kobliat" alien Rao Vantika- Who in fact uses that same kind of speech at the very beginning of this episode, right before he dies the "first" time! I think the strangeness of Vantika's speech, which only manifests itself when Bashir "is" acting as Vantika, is totally appropriate.
Does Bashir speak like this during the rest of the episode when he was acting as Bashir? NO. The only time Siddig speaks like this is when he is representing Vantika. Which makes these comments in the other reviews regarding Siddig's voice, highly offensive and inappropriate to me. It says less about Siddig's acting talent and more about those particular Reviewers' inability to follow the story.
We also have to remember Dr. Bashir's little "frontier medicine" speech to Kira, which included quite a lot of stuttering. And also when Bashir and Dax walk out of the airlock of the science ship when we first see them in "Emissary", he is also stuttering when he is trying to invite Dax to dinner. That was our introduction to this character, he is a great doctor but he is of course a geek, A geek who is obsessed with Dax. And so this episode, being closer to the beginning of the series rather than the end- when we discover things about Bashir which we did not know here- and that he was hiding from everybody- when it comes down to it, Bashir was a better actor than the entire cast of the show, he was pretending to be a timid geek for the first 6 1/2 seasons, but that is not at all who he really was, was it?
Rao Vantika is an Alien obsessed with Death. Ty Kajada is an Alien Policewoman of the same Alien Species, obsessed with Vantika.. and also obsessed with bringing him to Justice.
But Vantika is a genius. He's used all manner of tricks to prolong his life, extending it to the maximum that his species will allow.
But the Prisoner transport he is being hauled in, somehow catches fire and he dies. End of Story? Not by a long-shot.
Lt. Primmin, the Federation Security Liaison assigned to DS9, is tasked with protecting the shipment of some stuff called "Deuridium" which has some kind of Life-Preserving properties - This stuff is a Planetary Shipment, being sent to the home planet of Ty Kajada and Rao Vantika. Well, for some reason, Vantika wants this stuff - And he'll do anything - Including rise from the Dead, to get it! Kajada is not convinced Vantika is dead, he's faked his death so many times before. And in fact, things start happening on the Station that point to him being alive... But How? The DS9 team figures it out - Too late. Vantika has taken possession of a member of the DS9 crew... but which one? This is the question asked here. Who is it, Who Done it? And the "Science" gimmick of this ep, is the premise, that a Human Mind is not using all of it's capacity at any given moment - So there is room enough in the Human Brain's Neural Pathways, to store more than one ENTIRE personality. Which is a startling answer to this conundrum. The question becomes "Who Goes There?" - Which is the main gimmick in the 1930's Sci Fi story of the same name by John W Campbell.
This Ep reflects some of the best golden age Sci Fi stories ever written: "Passengers" by Robert Silverberg - Beings that can take over any human body and use it as a plaything, leaving the host personality unable to do anything about it... Kind of like a reverse Dax, and the Hosts the passengers take have no say in the matter.
Then there is "A Plague of Pythons" by Fred Pohl - There is a small conclave of humans that can don a headset and take over any human body on Earth. That story does not bode well for the people who made the headsets- The hero of the story gets control of all the headsets and kills them all.
"The Puppet Masters" by Robert A Heinlein, which reflects an invasion of Slug-like creatures (Sound Familiar, Dax?) that can attach to any human brainstem and it creates a merged being, LIKE the Dax symbiote- But the "Slugs" are Malevolent.
There is even a reference to "The Hidden" - An 80's sci-fi flick starring Kyle MacLachlan and Mike Nouri where there is a race that can do the same thing: IE, take control of a host body for a short time, abuse it, get it killed, then move to another host.
There is a very large hint of these stories in this great DS9 Ep written by Hugo Award Winner Morgan Gendel of Next Gen Ep "The Inner Light" - And it took one of the regular DS9 Actors to pull it off. Can't say which one, as I put enough spoilers in my reviews... Let's just say the guy they put Vantika IN, was a newbie to US Television.
The way this ep moves is the epitome of creepy. We never find out who Vantika is traveling in until the last minutes of the episode, but when who it is, is finally revealed? It is a shock and a kick in the Arse.
Now it was said in another review that the actor who "Had Vantika In Him"- when he had to BE Vantika, that this actor was wooden. Wrong: I think they did a great job, putting on a personality that was different than the DS9 character they usually portray. So we have a very creepy story, and everything that happens is misdirection. There are quite a few Macguffins in this Episode, we are totally fooled until the very last reveal. This was a great Ep in the first season of DS9 which revealed the possibilities of where this show could ultimately go.
I am going to have to qualify my last paragraph again, just to make it totally clear: a number of people in these reviews have commented on Siddig Al Fadeel's voice, without mentioning that during most of those conversations, he was speaking as the "Kobliat" alien Rao Vantika- Who in fact uses that same kind of speech at the very beginning of this episode, right before he dies the "first" time! I think the strangeness of Vantika's speech, which only manifests itself when Bashir "is" acting as Vantika, is totally appropriate.
Does Bashir speak like this during the rest of the episode when he was acting as Bashir? NO. The only time Siddig speaks like this is when he is representing Vantika. Which makes these comments in the other reviews regarding Siddig's voice, highly offensive and inappropriate to me. It says less about Siddig's acting talent and more about those particular Reviewers' inability to follow the story.
We also have to remember Dr. Bashir's little "frontier medicine" speech to Kira, which included quite a lot of stuttering. And also when Bashir and Dax walk out of the airlock of the science ship when we first see them in "Emissary", he is also stuttering when he is trying to invite Dax to dinner. That was our introduction to this character, he is a great doctor but he is of course a geek, A geek who is obsessed with Dax. And so this episode, being closer to the beginning of the series rather than the end- when we discover things about Bashir which we did not know here- and that he was hiding from everybody- when it comes down to it, Bashir was a better actor than the entire cast of the show, he was pretending to be a timid geek for the first 6 1/2 seasons, but that is not at all who he really was, was it?