The Passenger (episode)

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An alien criminal, attempting to prolong his life, hides his consciousness inside the mind of a station crew member.

Summary

Teaser

Major Kira and Doctor Bashir are returning from a medical mission in the runabout USS Rio Grande. Kira was reluctantly impressed by Bashir's competence, after he found a vital clue in a woman whom she dismissed as deceased. Bashir appears to accept such praise as no more than his due, and Kira is about to tell him off for his arrogance, when they receive a distress call from the Reyab, a Kobliad transport ship. They beam aboard to find that the ship's systems have been disabled by a fire raging on board. Kira looks for fire safety gear, and Bashir goes to the nearest crewperson, a Kobliad female named Ty Kajada. He asks her if anyone else is on board, and she says the pilot is dead. But Bashir reads another life form behind a locked door, and Kajada warns for him not to open it, the man is a prisoner who started the fire in an attempt to escape. Over her protests, Bashir overrides the door lock and finds a dying Kobliad male, Rao Vantika. Kira comes back and extinguishes the fire, preparing all four of them for emergency transport back to the runabout. Before she can energize, Vantika seizes Bashir by the throat with an iron grip and growls, "make me live", before expiring.

Act One

Back on Deep Space 9, Bashir revives Kajada in the infirmary. When she awakes, her thoughts go immediately to her prisoner. Bashir says the man is dead, but Kajada insists on examining his body herself. Bashir, a little insulted, assures her that Vantika is quite dead. She retorts that Vantika has faked his death more times than she can count, and more than a few medical "experts" have been fooled. She has tracked Vantika for more than twenty years, as he has committed multiple murders and other horrific crimes on her world. After scanning Vantika's retinas to confirm that he is brain dead, Kajada shocks Bashir by coolly stabbing the corpse in the chest with a trocar. She asks Bashir to autopsy the body and confirm its identity with DNA records, and to scan her ship for anomalous life readings. Shaken, Bashir agrees.

In Quark's, the Ferengi delivers a drink with unctuous good wishes to Lt. Dax, while Odo scornfully asks what he thinks his chances are with a woman like her. Quark retorts that nothing ventured, nothing gained, and not everyone in the galaxy is comfortable being as lonely and miserable as Odo. Odo is then put out to receive a visitor, Starfleet Security officer Lieutenant Primmin, who says they have been assigned to work together.

In Ops, Bashir reports that every test he has run confirms that the dead Kobliad is Rao Vantika, and that he is indisputably dead. Kajada has warned that Vantika was on his way to Deep Space Nine when she captured him, and Sisko and Dax connects it with a shipment of deuridium ore scheduled to arrive at the station from the Gamma Quadrant. The Kobliads are a dying species, and need deuridium to stabilize their cell structures. Even with new deposits discovered in the Gamma Quadrant, the demand far outstrips the supply, so it makes sense that Vantika would want to steal a supply for himself. Bashir says Kajada still isn't convinced Vantika is dead, so Sisko agrees to her request to scan her ship. He is also concerned with unearthing any preparations or accomplices Vantika had on the station in preparation for the hijack.

In conference with Primmin, Sisko quickly disabuses him of his belief that the station's security needs an "overhaul" to conform with Starfleet Security regulations; Odo has his own way of doing things, and Sisko has found that way to be effective, and best suited to the unique situations aboard the station. Sisko encourages Primmin to be a little more flexible, as he could actually learn something from "The Constable."

With difficulty, Odo and Primmin begin working together, reviewing the security arrangements for the deuridium shipment. When Odo tries to access the computer, he is surprised to find that everything in the active memory banks has been accessed and then purged. He believes this is impossible, but Kajada appears in his office and says that Vantika has done the exact same thing before.

Act Two

Ty Kajada reveals that she's been chasing Rao for over 20 years, and it wouldn't be the first time he had faked his own death. With this information, security is stepped up, and scans of the ship are conducted. Jadzia Dax discovers that someone had recently tried to break into the cargo hold of Ty's ship. She also discovered that the criminal could have been looking for a memory stick holding information about the humanoid brain.

Act Three

In Ops, Sisko and his crew confer, with Kajada and Primmin present. Kajada tells them to check their systems for a subspace relay shunt, a sabotage device favored by Vantika in his past crimes. She also advises them that he usually plants it in a nonessential system, and to be careful when removing it, as it is undoubtedly equipped with a self-destruct. During these instructions, Kajada constantly speaks as though Vantika has done these things himself, but Sisko remains skeptical, and asks her why she cannot admit that it is more likely that Vantika's accomplice is the one still at large. Kajada delivers an impassioned brief of Vantika's criminal history: the man is obsessed with ensuring his own survival; he has prolonged his life in myriad ways, and he has often stolen cutting-edge research to do so. Kajada assures them all that Vantika had some kind of plan to survive the fire aboard her ship; she doesn't know what that plan was, but the sabotage aboard the station is enough to convince her that it succeeded. Impressed by her arguments, Sisko instructs the crew to assume for the time being that Vantika is alive, until Bashir receives DNA confirmation of the corpse's identity.

In Quark's, Quark is collecting up his "tips" (dropped money) from the floor, when he is attacked from behind by an unknown person. He tells Quark that he is here to receive the cargo ship's inventory. This person is known to Quark, and apparently Quark had already arranged a number of co-conspirators to help with the crime.

Act Four

After discovering that, just before Rao died, he could have transferred his consciousness to another person, Odo immediately suspects that Ty could be the new host. He locks her out of the investigation, much to her protest. Suspecting that Quark may be assisting Rao, Ty snoops around at Quark's on her own, but ends up falling from the third floor balcony, interrupting a meeting between Quark and some mercenaries. While Ty lies critically injured in the infirmary, Dax inspects Rao's body and discovers implants hidden under the fingernails that would have allowed him to transfer his consciousness to another person via physical contact.

Meanwhile, Odo meets with Kira's team and is surprised to find that Premmin is not working alongside them as agreed. When Odo finds Premmin, the lieutenant explains that by trying to think the way Rao would, he has found a sabotage device connected to the waste extraction facility that would be able to disable the station for about an hour. Odo commends Premmin's work to Sisko.

Act Five

As the cargo ship comes through the wormhole, a runabout leaves the station, unscheduled, to escort it to the station. In Ops, the crew discover that Doctor Bashir is missing, and that it was his access codes that enabled the launch of the runabout.

On the cargo ship, Rao (as Bashir), takes command, after having most of the original crew killed. Just as they're about to escape, they're caught in a tractor beam. Rao is frustrated, because he thought he'd knocked their power out for about an hour. He talks to Sisko, and demands that the tractor beam be released, otherwise he'd take the ship to warp, destroying the ship, and dumping deuridium across the entire sector.

Dax comes up with a way of sending an electromagnetic pulse along the tractor beam, where it will resonate off the shields and cause an energy field inside the ship that will disrupt Rao's hold over Bashir's consciousness. It is successful, for long enough for a very confused Julian to lower the ship's shields, and let him be beamed to Ops. As Rao tries to seize control of him again, Sisko stuns him with a phaser, and they take him to Dax's lab. With a specially programmed transporter, she removes Vantika's signature glial cells and transfers them to a small containment field. Scanning the unconscious Bashir, Dax pronounces him "clean," and revives him. Waking up with a groan, Bashir's first words are to complain of a splitting headache.

A short time later, Sisko, Bashir, Dax, and a recovered Kajada regard the containment field in Dax's lab. Kajada apologizes to Bashir for his ordeal, while Bashir feels that they all owe her an apology for not taking her warnings about Vantika more seriously. Bashir confesses that he doesn't remember any of what Vantika made him do, and fees humiliated for not being able to stop it. Sisko assures him that no one holds him responsible.

Kajada asks Sisko to formally return custody of "the prisoner" to her. As soon as he agrees, Kajada draws her phaser and disintegrates the container, wiping out the last traces of Vantika, then walks out without another word. Sisko's expression indicate he is a little unsettled by her cold-blooded "execution" of Vantika, and even more unsettled when Dax and Bashir show no reaction at all.

Memorable Quotes

"Ah, yes, well... tricorders, very accurate with living people, not so accurate with dead ones. We learned that in first year medical school."

- Julian Bashir

"Make... me... live!"

- Rao Vantika

"If you want my opinion..."
"Actually, I don't."

- George Primmin and Benjamin Sisko

"What kind of fool are you?!"
"My own special variety."

- Ty Kajada and Odo

"I'm sure almost everyone knows about the shipment by now. Odo was probably making sure that Quark knows we know he knows."

- Sisko

"I've been asking myself, why would anyone induct a bioelectric charge into a glial cell?"
"A question I have always wondered about."

- Dax and Sisko

"You're deluding yourself."
"There's nothing wrong with a good delusion, I sell them upstairs to dozens of people every day."

- Odo and Quark

"I'm watching you, Quark."
"And I'm watching you, Jadzia."

- Odo and Quark

Background Information

Julie Caitlin Brown later plays Vekor in the TNG two parter "Gambit, Part I" and "Gambit, Part II".
One of the Bajoran mercenaries who invaded the Norkova has a 23rd century type 2 phaser.
Odo's reaction to Lieutenant Primmin is almost identical to his reaction to Lieutenant Commander Eddington in the third season opener, "The Search, Part I" - on both occasions he tells Sisko that he will be handing in his resignation.
According to writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Bashir's reference to synaptic pattern displacement never being done by a non-Vulcan is a reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when Spock performs the procedure on Doctor McCoy. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
Colm Meaney (Chief O'Brien) and Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko) do not appear in this episode.

Video and DVD releases

UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 5, 4 October 1993.
As part of the DS9 Season 1 DVD collection.

Links and references

Starring

Avery Brooks as Commander Benjamin Sisko

Also Starring

Guest Stars

Previous episode:
"Dax"

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Season 1

Next episode:
"Move Along Home"

The Passenger (episode)

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