User Reviews

I won't recap the basic plot, as a couple of prior reviewers have already done so. What I will say is this is a good performance from Alexander Siddig, in Bashir gradually finding out over the series his strengths, but also his limits, as a physician and researcher. DS9 cast member Rene Auberjonois directs, and I think does a fine job in steering what could be a melodramatic or by the numbers episode into something with genuine emotional gravity. Ellen Wheeler also deserves considerable applause for her great guest star acting - she does much of the legwork in relating to the audience the depths and pains the Quickening disease holds for her people.

This episode however is most memorable for me overall for what it says indirectly about the Founders' prejudiced and sociopathic stance towards other races, at this point in the series. It's interesting to imagine Odo being in this episode, and what that would have been like, but then the subtlety would have been lost. How paranoid and fearful the Founders are, that they have lost track so completely of the suffering of others, being blindly and tragically obsessed about control and order over others. A lesson some people could do with thinking about today outside of the Star Trek Universe.

Stands up well on re-watch value, nearly 20 years after I first saw it.

While on a mission in the Gamma Quadrant Dr. Bashir, Dax and Kira receive a distress call from a planet just outside Dominion territory. When the doctor and Dax beam down to the surface they find what looks like a medieval civilisation in the grip of a plague. They learn that up until two hundred years before it was an advanced civilisation but all that changed when they defied the Dominion and the Jem'Hadar introduced a disease that effects everybody. When they will die is uncertain, some die as children others survive until adulthood but ultimately all are doomed to die in agony. When Bashir takes a woman to the hospital he is shocked to discover that instead of trying to treat the illness people are just offered a quick death. Determined to help he tries yo work on a cure with Dax and a pregnant local woman called Akoria. Things don't go well and most of his patients die screaming. Dax returns to DS9 with Kira but Dr. Bashir is determined to stay with Akoria, trying to keep her alive until her child is born; trying to find a cure all the time. When the child is born he happily announces to its mother that it doesn't have the illness, shortly after however she dies.

Even though there is little action in this episode I really enjoyed it. I was sure that bye the end we'd get a clichéd ending where the doctor would find the cure for all the sufferers. The fact that he found a vaccination which would stop babies being born with it meant that in the long term the society should recover but all the current sufferers were doomed just as they were before his arrival, this gave us a bitter-sweet conclusion. Alexander Siddig put in a fine performance as the doctor and guest star Ellen Wheeler was good as Akoria.

After embarrassing starfleet and doctors galaxy wide in 'Son's of Mogh', Julian Bashir gets redemption in this episode by encapsulating the principles and decency we place on the medical profession in a display of altruism for the victims of the plight.

Bashir takes the lead in the episode and demands that he provides aid and and comfort to the victims of the plight on this world. It's not even a topic of discussion whether or not he will help the society out and I appreciated that.

The subplot with Ekoria works extremely well at drawing out emotion. She's desperate to live long enough to have the baby and the actress has this innocence aura about here that really invests me in her welfare.

I also enjoyed the character (and performance) of Trevean ---- He's a man carrying a great weight and you can see he truly cares about his people but he has been broken by the plight to a point where optimism no longer exists within in and the only solution is to end life to prevent suffering. I was thinking over the ceremony that they have before life is ended and I find it to be completely righteous ---- When I am 150 years old and I am ready to die, I want to hang out with my friends and partake in what I love about life and just let go of live on my own terms.

Julian has created an immunization for an entire civilization and saved millions (?) from suffering and quite likely has saved the people from a future extinction due to low birth rate ----- Thus, all is forgiven for 'Son's of Mogh' and we can hug it out and move forward from here with no more mention of that.

Just now watched it, and I can say it will be worth it 20 years from now. I don't normally write reviews. Odo would not have been interesting in the episode because he has already rejected his peers, the founders. What is interesting is the human doctor, Bashir, having compassion for another species (although alarmingly humanoid, OK this IS Star Trek). This is a sad episode, a tearjerker, but worth watching to renew your faith in humanity to get the job done. Bashir risks life, remember the threat to kill him, to save the people he encountered. He delivers on his promise, but only to the surviving children. In my opinion, this was an excellent episode because it was not a complete solve, everything hunky dory. People died, but Doctors try, and I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a Doctor, damn it! (Bones was my favorite(for personality), but Bashir is good too). It would not mesh completely with Ayn Rand's Objectivity (Atlas Shrugged, or Fountainhead) or maybe it would. The good doctor's one track obsession with curing the people is his own objective. Each person to their own objective. Read Atlas Shrugged about a year ago, just finished Fountainhead. At least now you know what influenced my review. It's only a show, but it also might reflect how you regard life in general. I personally prefer to see life flourish in all its forms. I hope I would have the conviction and determination to STEADY ON as Bashir did.