“The Passenger” is a middling episode at best and a clumsily awkward, and incredibly putrid mystery at worst. In truth, there’s very little to this episode beyond its surface-level narrative. And the narrative itself is barely worth acknowledging. This is, in fact, an episode which is immediately forgettable and downright embarrassing – for the series and the actor charged with carrying the episode through its “climactic” paces. Indeed, this is an example of the worst of Trek: technobabble nonsense encompassing a story without any purpose or direction.

This is the story of Vantika – an alien criminal mastermind who manages to escape from incarceration by way of his own death. It’s an obscure premise to begin with and the execution leaves a whole lot to be desired. Opening with Dr. Bashir’s very arrogant commentary on his own “gifts” as a physician, it’s not all that difficult to conclude that he will be the target of a most humiliating plot – his conscience will be co-opted by Vantika for the sole purpose of what amounts to little more than a heist.

Yeehaw.

These kinds of mystery-driven plots rely almost entirely on execution – particularly when there’s absolutely no commentary to be made by the story itself. In this case, the hollow mystery is very poorly executed, tipping its hand early and often. The voiceover is clearly male and, at a critical juncture, the “mysterious” culprit is quite visible as Bashir. Worse still, the entire conclusion of the episode comes by way of a lazy and ridiculous technobabble deus ex machina.

What little entertainment value there is to the episode comes from Odo. His verbal spars with Quark are, yet again, most enjoyable. And the conflict he has with Primmin, the Federation security officer charged with protecting “the goods” is well portrayed. Odo is indignant at Primmin’s encroachment onto his turf. And the subsequent scenes between Odo and Primmin and Odo and Sisko are worth watching. They don’t exactly provide any new revelations, but they successfully cash in on the established characterization of Odo.

“The Passenger” just isn’t worth the time to watch. The mystery is, at best, boring. The execution is terribly flawed – right down to Bashir’s bizarre voiceover effects. And the culmination of the story is so amateurish that one has to wonder how the whole concept even made it off the drawing board – let alone into a script. Judgment

Filed under: Deep Space Nine