January 24th, 1993, "Babel"
Oh, this is gonna hurt...
Fiver by Derek
The Episode
JAHEEL: Mister O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: Captain Jaheel, those people have been stuck in that airlock for over an hour. Now if you can wait until we get that door opened, I'll be happy to listen to any problems you might have.
JAHEEL: But I've already been waiting two days for your people to readjust my ship's antimatter flow converter.
This seems like a situation where more staff needs to be brought in. The initial crew compliment was based on no wormhole, when Bajor was the backwater and would rarely get visitors. Now things have changed. Nobody should ever have to wait two days to get repairs.
Far too often the writers will come back to the "make O'Brien suffer" plot. I'm not a fan.
DAX [OC]: Dax to O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: O'Brien here.
DAX [OC]: Can you spare a minute, Chief? I have a little problem here at the lab.
O'BRIEN: On my way.
There's only one lab? And Dax of all people should know not to burden Miles unnecessarily.
(Sisko gets a drink from the replicators and it is awful)
SISKO: Chief, I thought you were going to fix the replicators.
This seems like a situation where either the replicator should shut itself down after sensing that it was making stuff that's not up to snuff OR O'Brien should've shut the thing off so nobody could use it until he could fix it.
But seriously, they should've ripped out the Cardassian replicator and put in a Starfleet one. An army walks on its stomach and all that.
O'BRIEN: Fix the replicators, Chief. My console's offline, Chief. I should've transferred to a cargo drone. No people, no complaints.
Or, y'know, stay on the Enterprise like Keiko wanted. Have I mentioned lately how much I HATE it when they imply that only the senior staff can do anything on their ship or station?
And for that matter, how much I HATE that Voyager is in better shape than DS9 despite an inadequate staff and limited resources?
ODO: Who knows, if things don't improve you may be forced to close down.
QUARK: You'd like that, wouldn't you?
ODO: Let's just say, without you around my job would be considerably easier.
Would it, though? Quark may be a criminal, but he's a criminal who actually follows a code, convoluted though it may be. Quark is predictable to say the least. Plus you can bribe or threaten him into helping out when required, I doubt you could say the same for an Orion Syndicate front or whatever.
QUARK: It's these replicators. If I don't get them fixed soon, they'll destroy my business.
ODO: Why not get O'Brien to fix them? He has the replicators on the command level working perfectly.
QUARK: I'm on his waiting list. He assures me he'll get to them as soon as he can.
Quark doesn't have his own engineer on staff? It stands to reason that this would be considered an essential for even a Ferengi business. Where is Rom, anyway?
O'BRIEN: That's nice to hear, sir. She's flower units about the lad herself.
Okay, let's talk about the aphasia virus. In the real world aphasia is being unable to remember specific words or communicate properly. It is NOT words being jumbled up in the mind as though the wires between words and their meanings are being scrambled up. Brains are only similar to computers in the vaguest sense.
Actually, it would've been interesting to see the EMH suffer from a computer virus that could actually create aphasia.
DAX: I forgot how different it was.
KIRA: How different what was?
DAX: Being female. I haven't been one for over eighty years. All this attention.
The last female host was Audrid, who died in 2284. 85 years, actually.
QUARK: Who says Bajorans don't have a sense of humour? Actually, we're celebrating the repair of the bar's replicator system. Perhaps I could interest you in a nice double whipped Idanian spice pudding.
This is the only mention of Idanian spice pudding in combination with Dax. In the future it turns out that the real fans were Jake and Bashir.
We won't meet an Idanian until "A Simple Investigation." (I'm not looking forward to that one, FYI).
(O'Brien grabs a PADD and starts tapping on it)
KIRA: What is that? What's he written?
(The PADD says 'Flame the dark true, salt way link, complete strike, limits victory, frosted wake, simple hesitation)
Sending words to the mouth and the hands would require different parts of the brain. It's unlikely that aphasia would hit both parts simultaneously.
BASHIR: He appears to be suffering from a form of aphasia. It's a perceptual dysfunction in which aural and visual stimuli are incorrectly processed by the brain. His actual thinking hasn't been affected, but he's incapable of expressing himself or understanding others.
What does being unable to hear or see correctly have to do with speaking?
DAX: Isn't aphasia typically associated with some kind of cranial trauma?
BASHIR: Yes. It can occur as a result of a stroke or blow to the head. But there's no evidence of that here.
The last time O'Brien's head was messed with was "Power Play" over a year ago. Not relevant, but interesting.
SISKO: Dax, you will temporarily assume Mister O'Brien's duties.
Why? O'Brien should have an assistant who's already handling things. Dax isn't qualified.
BASHIR: It imposes itself within the established synaptic pathways and then randomly reroutes them. For example, when I look at this, (holds up a tricorder) a process occurs in my brain which connects the stimulus to the word tricorder. This virus disrupts that process.
How? Even as a self-professed expert in creating BS Treknobabble explanations, this is ludicrous! This "process" is simple neural interaction, not something you could dampen without shutting down all conscious activity. If the brain was that scrambled all you'd be able to do is breathe and pump blood, the automatic functions. Coma city.
QUARK: Computer, let's start with one Ferengi starduster, please.
A Starduster sounds like a great name for a drink, I wonder why it wasn't used more often. Only one eBook if Memory Beta is to be believed.
ODO: Unauthorised access to crew quarters is a crime, Quark. You could have just asked to use the replicators.
QUARK: There's an old Ferengi saying. Never ask when you can take.
Of course the Rules of Acquisition don't exist yet. This isn't one of them. The closest I can find is 62: The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
ODO: You claimed Rom fixed your replicators.
QUARK: So?
ODO: Rom's an idiot. He couldn't fix a straw if it was bent.
Talk about Early Installment Weirdness (go TV Tropes!).
SISKO: You're saying it's in our food?
KIRA: That's not possible. All the food on the station is replicated, and all the replicators use biofilters. They automatically screen out contaminants including viruses.
Ugh, I hate it when they act like current tech is effective against all possible future scenarios. The biofilters can only filter out the stuff that's currently known to the people designing them.
SISKO: So what we have here is sabotage.
KIRA: Cardassian sabotage.
SISKO: How can you be sure?
KIRA: It has a diboridium core for a power source. That is Cardassian technology.
Only mention of diboridium.
QUARK: I'm merely here visiting my less fortunate customers to make sure they're not faking the illness to avoid paying their bills.
Well, that's a cynical outlook. Or maybe this is supposed to show us that Quark's heart of gold is REALLY deep inside him.
KIRA: The energy decay of this power core indicates that it dates back to the building of the station.
ODO: That's eighteen years ago. I suppose the Bajoran underground could have smuggled it aboard during construction.
DS9 was built sometime between 2346 and 2351, we don't know more than that. Eighteen years ago is 2351, which probably accounts for that latter date.
ODO: The truth is, I never learned the game.
QUARK: You mean, you've sat here for all these years and you don't even know how to gamble?
This seems odd to me. It stands to reason that Odo would want to learn the fundamentals of all games at Quarks so he has some idea of knowing when Quark is cheating.
QUARK: Relax. I served on a Ferengi freighter for eight years.
ODO: All right.
QUARK: I must have witnessed the procedure hundreds of times.
ODO: Witnessed? You mean to say you never handled the controls yourself?
Even the ship's cook should know the basics of how to work a transporter. Even the Ferengi would see the value in cross-training.