3x18 Distant Voices

[6.0/10] “Theater of the Mind” episodes are a blast. So why is this one so boring? The benefit of the form is two-fold. On the one hand, it allows you to dig deep into a character, really excavate the things that haunt them or move them. On the other, it allows you to cut loose a little bit in terms of the presentation. Moving things into a liminal space allows you to get more impressionsitic or outright weird than you can in a normal episode. Both tend to make these journeys through the mindscape standout episodes of any show. But “Distant Voices”’ trip through Dr. Bashir’s mind is surprisingly dull and drab.

Because it fails on both counts. An alien boogeyman puts Julian into a coma, and he finds himself forced to escape the perils and puzzles of his own mind. You could do so much with that idea! But when it comes to Julian’s psyche, we don’t learn a whole hell of a lot. He can be aggressive, skeptical, intelligent, confident, etc. None of that is particularly new information. Like so much in this episode, it feels so basic and unadventurous.

The closest thing to a character insight “Distant Voices” has is that Julian’s leery of getting older on his thirtieth birthday. The one semi-imaginative thing the episode does is have Dr. Bashir look visibly older in each new scene. The old age make-up isn’t massive improvement on the cheap effects in “The Deadly Years* from The Original Series or the bizarre prosthesis of “Unnatural Selection” from The Next Generation. Sometimes, Julian simply looks like Mr. Fantastic or a dude in an elaborate Halloween mask.

But Alexander Siddig gives it his all here. His performance is more committed than convincing, but I appreciate the big choices he makes to convey Julian’s aging physically and mentally, not just as a product of makeup and special effects. His voice, his movements, his posture, all convey the doctor’s age in an affected but palpable way. It’s a big challenge, and Siddig goes full bore with it. While the results aren’t perfect, he’s come a long way since his alien possession episode from the first season, and it’s nice to see the improvement.

The catch is that “Distant Voices” never really resolves that phobia. In a fairly ham-fisted episode, I assumed that of all the metaphorical figures in Dr. Bashir’s coma dream, Altovar, the Lethean menacing him, represented the looming specter of death. Given the setup in Julian’s initial conversation with Garak, I figured surviving the coma would hinge on Julian reconciling himself to his own mortality and the end of his youth, something I can relate to as someone who’s seen thirty come and go.

And yet, aside from one brief, closing mention that after this harrowing experience, Dr. Bashir finds himself cool with his age now, that's not where the episode goes. Instead, the alien aggressor taunts Julian about...not being able to take the pressure and so giving up on things? Apparently he gave up on tennis? And being first in his medical school class? And pursuing Jadzia?

Except oh wait! He didn’t really! Maybe? He sidesteps the taunts or at least professes acceptance of all those choices. That might be meaningful if we’d had the slightest hint that Dr. Bashir felt shaky or regretful about those things before now. It’s never really been a character trait he’s displayed. If anything, he seems too confident and even cocky sometimes. So as some means to reveal a deeper truth about Julian’s psyche, let alone provide him with an emotional breakthrough, this falls flat because there’s essentially no setup for it.

Moments where, say, Odo confesses his feelings to Kira (or so he thinks), or Quark acts in favor of friendship rather than profit, it has an impact because it shows them pushing past their usual hang-ups and personal stumbling blocks in the name of something bigger and more important. But Julian’s problems here have next to nothing to do with the traits or obstacles Julian has faced on-screen, so raising them and settling them in a single episode lands with minimal force.

Some of that might be more forgivable if the “Distant Voices” didn’t squander the opportunity to delve into the minds of one of its main characters. The fun and coolness of these episodes is doing something a little more avant garde and unexpected, since all bets are off in a mental realm. This episode, however, is surprisingly pedestrian considering the setting. Julian just wanders aimlessly around the station, with very little in the way of dream logic or singular choices in direction and cinematography to sell the uniqueness of his situation. If you didn’t know better, you’d mistake this for any other plot set on the station.

I understand that this was probably a bottle show to save money, and that making outre television on a weekly schedule isn’t easy. But in the past, Deep Space Nine hasn’t been afraid to make big choices in editing, filters, or other twists on the usual atmosphere to sell the sense of something off. Whether it’s communing with the prophets, having a vision, or being trapped in that dumb game, the show hasn’t flinched from getting out there with its visuals and tone before. So why does this coma fantasy feel so staid and vanilla?

Worse yet, the execution of such a high concept story is squarely unimaginative. Halfway through the runtime, Julian realizes the obvious -- that he’s trapped within his own mind and has to find a way out through this DS9-inspired rendition of it. But every representation in the dream is so facile and literal. The communications array is his ears! The “nerve center” is the sick bay where he works every day. Dr. Bashir even announces what the colleagues who populate his dream represent, as though this is Baby’s First Allegory. “Distant Voices” makes the infinite mysteries of the human mind somehow seem like the most mundane, oversimplified place to kill an hour or so imaginable.

This one isn’t all bad by any stretch. The concept alone does some of the heavy lifting despite the “mystery” being plain from the get-go. Siddig turns in one of his best performances with a challenging script. And the episode does wrestle with some meaty topics. But it wastes the potential of such a cerebral, outsized premise, and delivers a comparatively boring, safe tale of the mind that does little to distinguish itself from any other, run-of-the-mill outing for the series.