- Bashir tries to help a planet in the grips of a Dominion-engineered plague that guarantees a painful death.
- Bashir, Dax and Kira are on reconnaissance in the Gamma Quadrant when they receive a distress call from the Teplan system. The message says their world has been attacked. But, when Bashir and crew land, they find a world in a state similar to earth's dark ages, nor does it look like they'd been recently attacked. The people seem in a state of hopelessness, as Bashir finds out all the planet's inhabitants suffer from a disease called 'the blight.' Once, this world stood up to the Dominion, but as punishment they introduced the disease. All people have lesions, and when the disease runs its course ('quickened,' as they say) the infected die soon afterwards. The doctor's shocked to find the people turn to euthanasia when they have 'quickened'. A doctor, Trevean, provides a way out, and Bashir offers to help find a cure, but they're met only with skepticism. Only one pregnant woman, Ekoria, listens with interest.—Arnoud Tiele (imdb@tiele.nl)
- The Quickening begins with an amusing opener scene where Quark is being called to answer for a series of advertisements from his bar that included tampering with the station's com systems and replicators; a 'class-three' offense under Federation Law. Kira gives him a stern warning that if he doesn't undo the tamperings very quickly, he will answer to her.
Kira, Dax and Bashir are in a runabout on a mission to the Gamma Quadrant. They are doing a routine survey mission in the Gavara System. While on their way, Kira picks up a fragmented distress call from a planet; the call says that their planet has been devastated by an attack that has caused massive destruction and casualties. Dax pinpoints the location to a planet in the Teplan system. Since the system lies outside of Dominion space, Kira and Dax agree to investigate.
Dax and Bashir beam down to the planet's surface. Quickly they see just how severe the destruction to the world is; the city lies in utter ruin; its survivors eking out a bleak day to day, hand-to-mouth existence. People stare at them as they make their way down a dirt street. Suddenly a woman staggers up to them, pleading for them to take her to someone named Trevean. Her body is covered with horrible red welt lesions. Dax hurries off to find this Trevean while Bashir tries to administer a medicine to ease the woman's pain. Squatting down beside Bashir, a bald, cynical man named Epran (Dylan Haggerty) tells him that he sees Bashir is not from this world. He explains that "The blight has quickened" in the woman, and there's nothing Bashir can do. Epran's best advice for Bashir is to leave the planet and leave the people to their desperate existence, as there's nothing he can do for them.
Dax makes her way back to Bashir. The painkiller he administered to the stricken woman is having no effect, as her people's physiology is very different from Earth humans, even though the people closely resemble humans. Dax has traded her hair clip to someone in return for getting transportation to bring the woman to the hospital where the man named Trevean works.
At the hospital, two workers take the stricken woman and bring her to Trevean (Michael Sarrazin). Meeting Trevean for the first time, Bashir and Dax see an elderly man lift a cup in toast to Trevean and thank him for all Trevean has given him in this one day since he woke up and found he'd 'quickened.' Trevean explains to Bashir and Dax that a little over 200 years ago, his world was much like any federation world; they built vast cities and explored space. Then the Jem'Hadar found them and demanded their enslavement to the Founders. When the world refused, the Jem'Hadar destroyed their civilization, and then to make the planet and its people an example to all other worlds, they infected the survivors with a horrible biologically-engineered disease-- the Blight. The disease is absolutely fatal and incurable; most do not live to bear children of their own. They are all born with lesion markings. At some random point in their lives, the Blight 'quickens' and the lesions turn red with inflammation. At this point the person's remaining days before death are filled with pain and suffering. Despite this, Bashir and Dax are outraged to find the man who had toasted Trevean, suddenly begin death convulsions-- Trevean works as a suicide doctor, giving 'quickened' patients a fast-acting poison as a form of euthanasia. The 'patients' die peacefully, painlessly, surrounded by whatever family and friends are available to attend their assisted suicides. Having lived this way with no hope of a better life for 200 years has made the people of this world hardened and unsympathetic to Bashir's protests, and they tell him curtly that they want him to leave the hospital and then leave their planet.
Dax scrounges about the city ruins and finds that the distress beacon is located in an abandoned building; still running from its own power source. She has deduced that the message was first sent out shortly after the Jem'Hadar attack 200 years ago, running fully automated, and in the many years since then, the planet's people have forgotten all about it. Eking out their bleak existence with no hope has made them unwelcoming to strangers. Bashir decides that he cannot help these people, especially on account that they don't want his help; believing all his efforts will be fruitless. He tells Dax they should do as the people want, and leave the planet and continue on their way.
But at that moment, one person comes up to them in the hope that perhaps they can do something. The woman's name is Ekoria (Ellen Wheeler), and she is pregnant; due to deliver her baby in two months. She tells Bashir that unlike most of the people, she is willing to put a show of faith in any doctor who might want to try and help them, and she knows that there are some others, even if just a few, who would welcome him as well.
Just at that moment, Kira signals Dax to warn them that two Jem'Hadar ships are headed toward her runabout. Jem'Hadar weapons being devastating enough to the Federation's most advanced combat starships, their simple Federation runabout would be helpless.
Dax and Bashir beam up and Kira analyzes the flight path of the Jem'Hadar ships; they appear to be flying a standard patrol route which will brng them close enough to the planet to spot their runabout soon. She promises Bashir that when they get back to Starfleet, they can start putting together a relief effort. But Bashir reminds Kira that on another remote planet, he needed only one hour to identify a pathogen that was wiping out people by the thousands, and only three days to dose the water table to inoculate the entire population. Kira's plan for a relief effort would take weeks and allow untold deaths and suffering in the meantime, that Bashir might be able to prevent. Dax and Kira decide it's worth a try. Kira will beam Bashir and Dax back down to the planet and fly to a nebula that will shield the runabout from Jem'Hadar sensors. In a week she'll return, and hopefully Bashir will have a cure for the Blight by then.
Ekoria takes Bashir and Dax in, giving them a small space in her home. Bashir sets to work immediately, Ekoria herself being their first volunteer patient. From a tissue sample, Bashir needs little time positively isolating and identifying the virus that causes the Blight, meaning he can now begin work on developing an antigen to combat it. Ekoria smiles hopefully at the news. Hesitating briefly, she starts unpacking jarred and canned supplies, offering Bashir and Dax a meal. Dax realizes there's something Ekoria's not telling them, and finally she admits she'd been stockpiling the food for some time, saving it for her death when it was time for her to go to Trevean for her euthanasia. But she now has a sense of hope that she won't need to do that anymore.
Bashir and Dax go out in search of volunteers but find none. Epran happens to bump into Bashir and Ekoria, and mocks Bashir in front of a small crowd. Bashir finds a boy with one arm in a sling and demonstrates his medical prowess by healing the fractured bones quickly. He tells the crowd that he is making no promises to the people but he desperately wants to do whatever he can. Trevean arrives on the scene, sternly warning Bashir that many other people have come from other worlds, offering help, taking food and clothing in return for their various elixirs that did nothing but send the people who took them, straight to Trevean for release from their suffering. If Bashir DID make any promises that didn't pan out, Trevean's people have begun to deal with them with very harsh brutality.
Back at Ekoria's home, she tells Bashir that her people have developed into far more than having lost all sense of hope-- their living conditions and the suffering caused by the Blight have caused them to actually begin to worship death. From the moment they are old enough as children to understand the Blight and its effects, all of their bleak, desperate existences are centered around preparing for their assisted suicides at Trevean's hospital. Ekoria herself used to wake up each morning praying that she'd quickened, because her euthanasia would be the one day of her life that she would have true comfort, solace and happiness before she drank Trevean's poison. The day of a person's assisted suicide has become completely ritualized and made into a ceremony almost religious in scale and devotion.
What made Ekoria want to look forward to a future was when she became pregnant. Bashir's ultrasound scans have revealed that her baby will be a boy, and Ekoria's purpose in life is to be there for her baby son when he's born. Bashir's work on charting the Blight pathogen's life cycle has been difficult and slow due to lack of volunteers to give tissue samples, but he says to Ekoria that he still hasn't given up hope of being able to provide her the lifespan to see not only her son, but eventual grandchildren.
At that point, Dax arrives to announce that a small group of people have arrived to donate tissue samples and become patients of Bashir's. Among them is Epran. He's canceled his ritual euthanasia for Bashir's benefit, showing how much he was sacrificing.
Julian finally develops a test antigen and administers it to all the volunteers. He and Dax are quietly hopeful, but afraid to speak of their optimism to any of the patients until they are sure that some of them are responding to it. Sometime later, Ekoria tells Bashir that Dax said that Epran's white blood cell count is up 12%, which Bashir assures her is very good news. He amuses Ekoria with a story of how his re-patching up of a stuffed animal that was unraveling from age and use, was what made him devote his life to being a doctor and helping people.
But suddenly Dax comes rushing out to tell Bashir that something is wrong. Epran is going into painful convulsions; the Blight pathogen is mutating. Bashir scans him and realizes to his horror that the electromagnetic fields from his medical equipment and instruments is causing it. He urgently shouts for Dax to shut all the equipment down immediately, but it is too late. All of the patients except for Ekoria are experiencing the Blight mutation and wracking them with horrible agony. The mutation still does not slow. Epran suddenly collapses and dies from cardiac arrest. One woman rushes out of the home and returns with Trevean. All the stricken patients beg for him to euthanize them immediately, and he rushes to administer the euthanasia poison to them.
Early the next morning, Bashir is bitter. He realizes that the day before the debacle, he had run a scan on Epran and detected an anomaly in his Blight pathogen that Bashir now believes had been a warning of the virus mutation from his medical instruments' emissions. Dax cannot comfort him or convince him to stop blaming himself as much as the suffering people must surely now blame him. Compounding Julian's guilt is a realization that he was arrogant in thinking that he could best the Dominion's most advanced biological weapons, especially in the space of a single week.
Disillusioned, Bashir walks through the ruined city waiting for Kira to return and pick him and Dax up to continue on their mission and return home. He finds his way to a mural painted by Ekoria's late husband showing what he envisioned the world to have looked like before the Jem'Hadar attack. As he looks wistfully at it, Ekoria finds her way to him. Her blight has quickened; her lesions are now red and inflamed. Her death is imminent. But she's still grateful to Bashir for giving her a sense of hope she hadn't felt since before her husband died of the Blight. She kisses him goodbye and starts to walk away, but he suddenly calls out to her.
Dax and Bashir are back on the runabout with Kira. Bashir tells Kira that he wants to return to the planet and continue his work. Ekoria is the one person on the world who still believes in him and it has made him more driven than ever to work on curing the Blight, even if Ekoria is his only patient. They provide him with a long range communicator to contact the station when he's finished, and they'll send a runabout to pick him up.
Bashir works tirelessly, taking care of Ekoria as best he can. Frustrating him is the fact that the antigen he has been administering to her has simply dissipated; there's no trace of it in her bloodstream. He is unsure why, but guesses that her body's immune system has attacked and destroyed it. Ekoria is in pain, but she bravely endures it because Bashir is afraid that there is so much anti-pain medication in her system already, that any more could harm her baby.
Ekoria awakes one morning as Bashir is preparing a salve to smear on her skin. She is growing weaker by the day, and she knows she won't make it another six weeks, which is when Bashir says her baby is due. He tells her that within a minimum of two weeks, he can induce labor so her baby has a chance of being born safely.
One evening Trevean comes to Ekoria. Concerned that she was too weak to find her way to him, he's come offering to euthanize her, even though it means her baby would die. But even though the child would die from the Blight one day himself, Ekoria wants to see him have some kind of life. Bashir is puzzled at Trevean's obsession with death, as he is apparently the oldest living person on the planet right now. Trevean says simply that because of his age, he's seen more suffering than anyone.
The two weeks pass and Bashir has induced labor, helping Ekoria deliver her baby son. When the baby is out, she collapses back on her bed in exhaustion and pain. Bashir examines her baby and breaks out in incredulous delight. The antigen treatment he'd been administering to Ekoria hadn't been fought off by her immune system-- as a pregnant woman, her body routed it directly through her placenta and into her baby. Ekoria's baby son is completely Blight-free; his skin has no traces of any lesions. He will grow up completely healthy and never know the suffering of the terrible disease. He places the baby on Ekoria's breast. She smiles broadly at her baby son with elated happiness and then she quietly dies.
Bashir brings the baby to Trevean. He and all his assistants are amazed to see that even if Bashir hasn't found a cure for them, he has a vaccine to protect their children. The vaccine is easy for Trevean to make, and Bashir can provide him all the tools he needs to begin inoculating all pregnant women immediately. Seeing to all of them will be a huge task, but to Trevean, it is a privilege. Trevean steps outside his hospital and holds up the baby boy as a crowd gathers in astonished wonder.
Back on Deep Space Nine, Captain Sisko comes in to commend Bashir on his work. Bashir has continued trying to develop a cure for those who still have the Blight, without any success. Despite Sisko's gentle reminder that Bashir has saved the people's children, he still wishes he could have done more for those currently afflicted.
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