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Recap / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 02 E 14 Whispers

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"O'Brien, personal log. Stardate 47581.2. I've gotta try to set the record straight about the last 52 hours. I don't know who's gonna hear this. I don't even know if I'll be alive by the time this log is recovered. I figure they'll be coming after me."
—Miles O'Brien

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ds9_whispers_106.jpg
Aren't you happy to see your husband, Keiko?
O'Brien, minus his com-badge, is piloting a runabout to the Parada system alone. Opening a personal log, he begins to recount the events of the last 52 hours, including how he got here and why he's convinced someone is out to get him.

It began when he returns from the Parada system. In preparation for a peace conference about DS9, he underwent basic training for the security measures aboard the station. When he wakes up in his quarters, things are off. Molly refuses to touch him, and Keiko seems nervous. It's also 5:30 AM. With the excuse of several essays to read, Keiko hurries off to daycare with Molly.

Shrugging off the oddness, he heads in for duty only to find an Ensign named DeCurtis repairing a system O'Brien was waiting to fix until Odo returned to the station. DeCurtis informs him that he was given direct orders from Sisko to do this. Fairly annoyed at being overstepped like this, O'Brien heads off to speak with Sisko, only to see Sisko and Keiko having a suspicious conversation outside the school.

Back in the present, O'Brien is 53 minutes from the Parada system when sensors detect the Mekong in pursuit. They can't catch him at warp, so he continues his log on the events of the past few days.

Arriving at Ops, the crew is acting suspicious as well. Sisko and Bashir are oddly forceful about him reporting in for a standard physical. In Sisko's ready room, he quizzes O'Brien on any information he has about the Paradas. All O'Brien can come up with is that they emit a foul smell when they're upset.

While being assigned to fix three pylons that have oddly broken down, O'Brien asks what Sisko was talking to Keiko about outside the school. Sisko assures him that he was simply discussing Jake's slipping grades. Reporting for his physical, O'Brien is rather peeved that it's taking an exceedingly long time and makes the leap that everyone is acting weird and the overly long physical is because he's dying. Rather than respond, Bashir quickly gives him a clean bill of health and lets him leave.

Heading back to work, he runs into Jake, who asks if O'Brien can help him with an upcoming science project. This little interaction turns odd when O'Brien mentions Jake's slipping grades, only for Jake to say his grades are just fine. That means Sisko lied.

It just keeps getting weirder for him. Ensign DeCurtis opens a door he insists only Kira had access codes to. Jake suddenly falls ill and not being able to come over for help with his project. Keiko cooks his favorite meal and yet continues acting oddly distant.

Late that night, O'Brien pores over every conceivable scan he think of, from unknown chemical agents to telepathic activity. Coming to a dead end there, he goes through the station logs and runs across a suddenly restricted file that requires level 1 clearance. Even though he has the clearance, his security code is rejected.

After fiddling with the system to get into the logs, he's shocked to find his personal logs have been broken into. Odo returns shortly after this, and O'Brien reports this weird activity to him. Odo is on his side, advising him to not act suspicious while he investigates things.

When he meets Odo again in his office, however, even he's acting weird now. And to compound things, Sisko and Kira advance on him with weapons drawn. Drawing a hidden flashbang from his sleeve, O'Brien scurries through the vents and transports himself off the station.

O'Brien contacts Admiral Rollman, but she orders him to give up and return to DS9. With even the highest ranks of Starfleet apparently corrupted, O'Brien can do nothing but seeks answers on Parada II.

Beaming down to the planet, O'Brien finds Sisko and Kira already waiting for him with two Paradas. As O'Brien orders them to drops their weapons, one of the Paradas claims a nearby door holds all the answers to this weirdness. As he prepares to open it, the other fires on O'Brien, fatally wounding him.

Behind the door is Bashir... and O'Brien. The real O'Brien. The protagonist of the episode was a replicant designed to assassinate someone at the peace conference. But he was designed too well. The copy believed he was the real O'Brien and continued with O'Brien's normal life while awaiting activation. Dying on the cavern floor, the replicant reaches for O'Brien and asks one thing: "Keiko... tell her I love..."


"Whispers" provides examples of:

  • Bluff the Imposter: Bashir asks the replicant O'Brien several questions under the guise of a routine physical, including one about O'Brien's parents. The replicant, however, snaps that Bashir knows full well that O'Brien's mother passed away two years ago.
  • Butt-Monkey: Even replicants of O'Brien are destined to suffer.
  • Call-Back: When visiting Quarks, he recalls the canceled racquetball match from "Rivals".
  • Copied the Morals, Too: The replicant O'Brien is too good a copy to fulfill his intended purpose as an assassin because he has all of the original O'Brien's personality. He actually spends most of his time on DS9 trying to investigate why things seem off in the hopes of protecting the station.
  • "Die Hard" on an X: Die Hard on Deep Space Nine for the replicant O'Brien.
  • Downer Ending: The O'Brien we've been following dies, even though by all appearances he was just like the real O'Brien.
  • Foreshadowing: When O'Brien is checking station logs, there's an entry by Sisko mentioning Cardassian movements along the border, and complaints from Federation colonies in the Demilitarized Zone. This is actually the franchise's first mention of the DMZ, which will go on to have major long-term ramifications for the Trek universe.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The O'Brien replicant was designed a tad too perfect.
  • How We Got Here: The episode opens with the replicant O'Brien fleeing the station, convinced that something's wrong with the rest of the crew. Everything leading up to that point is told by flashback as the replicant records a personal log.
  • Irony: The episode's premise is built on this, combined with a Cruel Twist Ending: O'Brien suspects the rest of the DS9 crew has been replaced or subverted by an unknown alien force ala Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only to find out that he's the one who was replaced.
  • La RĂ©sistance: The Paradan rebels, who O'Brien thinks are the bad guys, are actually the ones who rescued the real O'Brien and tipped off the crew of DS9 about the replicant.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Downplayed. Jake and Quark are the only people to treat the replicant normally, as they are not Starfleet officers and have no reason to know that anything is wrong. Near the end of the episode, Jake is looped in to help search for the replicant.
  • Manchurian Agent: The replicant's role was to assassinate someone at the Paradan peace conference, though we are never told who.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Replicant O'Brien orders "coffee, Jamaican blend, double-strong, double sweet" several times.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: O'Brien becomes suspicious because Keiko is unusually cold and antsy around him: not communicating with him, not reciprocating his physical affection, and acting jumpy and uneasy around him.
  • Plummet Perspective: When the replicant O'Brien drops his phaser down one of the Jeffries tubes.
  • Red Herring:
    • Quark quotes one of the Rules of Acquisition but doesn't quite remember which one it is (he thinks it's "one of the high numbers"), even though in earlier episodes he's always remembered the exact number. This seems to support replicant O'Brien's suspicion that the people aboard Deep Space 9 have somehow been changed or replaced, but in the end, it turns out to be a complete coincidence.
    • The shift in Odo's behavior (from supporting the replicant O'Brien to falling in with the rest of the senior staff) also seems to support something being wrong. But Odo had been off-station when Sisko learned O'Brien had been replaced, and once he came back Sisko likely explained what was really going on.
  • Rewatch Bonus: Watching the episode knowing The Reveal properly contextualizes the behaviors of the other characters — Keiko is initially dodgy around "O'Brien" and gets herself and Molly away from him as quick as she can, but after a talk with Sisko, she acts normal around him but is still on edge. The crew is probably not fully aware of what "O'Brien" is capable of and how he might react if confronted, and they're not even sure if he's a replicant or not, so they don't take direct action against him and keep him occupied with other tasks while keeping him out of the loop about conference security. When they do take action, they try to take him alive, likely to interrogate him and find out what his mission was.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: A Paradan rebel shoots the replicant right before The Reveal, eventually killing him.
  • Shout-Out: The term "replicant" was lifted from Blade Runner.
  • Silent Running Mode: The replicant O'Brien does this with his runabout in the Parada system.
    "Shut down all engines, all main power systems. Maintain silent running status."
  • Surprise Party: Replicant O'Brien briefly wonders if everybody's odd behavior is just a prelude to one of these, which wouldn't make sense as his birthday's not for another few months.
  • Tampering with Food and Drink: When Keiko makes him a special dinner, but refuses to eat any of it herself, O'Brien begins to wonder if she put something in it.
  • That's What I Would Do: O'Brien speculating on why his replicant did what he did.
    "If it were me, I'd be trying to warn somebody there was something wrong at the station."
  • Tomato in the Mirror: The O'Brien replicant didn't realize he was a fake until the very end.
  • Wham Line: When O'Brien manages to get a Starfleet admiral on the comm to report the apparent "takeover" of Deep Space Nine:
    Admiral Rollman: Listen to me very carefully. Return to D.S. Nine immediately. Turn the ship around and go back. You will not be harmed.
  • Wham Shot: After "O'Brien" is shot by a rebel, a door opens...revealing another O'Brien on a biobed.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is a combination of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Imposter by Philip K. Dick.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Happens a few times to poor O'Brien, even before The Reveal of his true nature.
    • When Odo shows up on the station after a trip to Bajor, it seems like O'Brien finally has an ally that can help him figure out what's going on with the crew. But then the next time he talks to him, Odo is acting suspicious too, convincing O'Brien that "they" got to him.
    • While on the run from security, O'Brien bumps into Jake, and tries to warn him that something's wrong with his dad, only for Jake to report his location and encourage him to surrender.
    • O'Brien manages to escape the station in a runabout, and immediately calls up a nearby Starbase to warn them that Deep Space 9 has been compromised, only for the admiral to tell him to turn around and surrender, making him wonder if all of Starfleet has been affected.

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