Star Trek DS9 Episode Honors Classic Trek Movie Moment
Unlike Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine didn’t have very many references to The Original Series or its feature films. However, one throwaway line of dialogue helped confirm that Dr. Bashir was very familiar with Dr. McCoy’s previous experiences. In the episode “The Passenger,” Dr. Bashir mentions how “synaptic pattern displacement” has “never been done by a non-Vulcan,” which was an intentional homage to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Monster Of The Week
How did this homage come about, exactly? In this Deep Space Nine episode, Bashir and Dax must deal with a unique foe who can put its consciousness into different bodies. This foe is potentially very deadly because it can impersonate important personnel (including Bashir) and abuse the access such body-hopping provides.
Scientific Reasoning Behind Body Swapping
Where does the Star Trek III connection come in? While body-swapping is a common storytelling technique in supernatural, fantasy, and even superhero genres, Trek has always prided itself on being a more grounded (at least, in science) franchise. That means the first thing they tried to do was prove their body-swapping hypothesis by questioning whether this would even be scientifically possible.
These two Deep Space Nine characters discussed how realistic their hypothesis was by bouncing ideas off each other. It was Dax who first threw out the wild idea that the villain’s consciousness was hopping into different bodies, and she asked Bashir whether this was medically possible. To this question, the young doctor responds, “The closest thing I’ve encountered is synaptic pattern displacement,” and quickly clarifies, “But that’s never been done by a non-Vulcan.”
Call Back To The Original Series Crew
Staff writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe helped work on this script, and he later revealed that Bashir’s very specific line was meant to be an homage to Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. That movie’s entire plot built off the brief moment in The Wrath of Khan where Spock touched the unconscious McCoy’s head and spoke the word “remember.”
The next film revealed that he had inserted his mind (or “katra”) into the doctor, and after retrieving the resurrected Spock’s body from the Genesis planet, Kirk and crew traveled to Vulcan where Spock’s body and mind were once again reunited.
Different Circumstances
As far as Deep Space Nine Easter eggs go, this one is fairly subtle…it’s easy to repeatedly watch “The Passenger” without realizing that Bashir is referencing what Spock did to McCoy. However, the exact scenario in the episode is different from Star Trek III because of how the person hosting the other consciousness acts.
In the episode, victims like Bashir are completely overtaken by the new personality; in The Search for Spock, McCoy mostly acted like himself, though he took on some of Spock’s more memorable mannerisms.
Deep Space Nine Had More Overt References Later
We’re big fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine around here, so we were excited to see the show quietly reference Star Trek III. This isn’t as explosive as the show revealing that Kirk ruined the entire Mirror Universe or when everyone had to time-travel into the “Trouble With Tribbles” episode. But this quiet moment confirms that Bashir is a bit like most of the audience: a huge fan of Spock and McCoy.
