The Passenger

Ty Kajada is transporting a criminal, Rao Vantika, who sets a fire on her ship as an escape attempt. Kira and Bashir hear the SOS and come to her rescue. Back on DS9, Kajada seems exceedingly paranoid that the obviously dead Vantika might somehow be secretly alive, and when sabotage begins to occur, they humor her belief as they attempt to catch the saboteur and protect an incoming shipment of deuridium.

It turns out that the dying Vantika imprinted his neural patterns onto Bashir (in his copious free space–most species use only a small percentage of their brains, don't you know) and has been directing his actions. They use the transporter to remove the offending cells, and Bashir is back to his old self. Hooray.

The story is okayish, but Siddig's performance as Vantika is abysmal. He apparently wasn't given any time to prepare for the part, and found his own performance lacking.

Gendel originally had it that Vantika possesses Kajaka, rather than Bashir (Gross & Altman, 1996, p. 47), which sounds more interesting to me. Ira Steven Behr criticizes the episode for not really using the characters–it could as easily have been an episode of TNG (Gross & Altman, 1996, p. 48). I agree.

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