From: ph9991_manfr@rivers.acc.uwrf.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Tuesday Night Review - "Babel" !SPOILERS*!
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:54:21 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin - River Falls

Sorry to miss last week's DS9 offering but I had some other things to take 
care of (I didn't miss the show, but I didn't do a full review...)


Anyway,

And now, even less live, from Ellsworth and River Falls, Wisconsin, it's
the Tuesday Night Review!!!

SPOILERS! ahead for ST:DS9, "Babel"





Ahead be warned ye or hollow mutterings am goth nigh!
We exterminate windows serious!




First impression:  A lot of fun.  

Let's get to it, the details:

Story/Script:  Nearly perfect.  This episode juggled several plotlines and
character sub-plots quite handily whilst ensuring danger at every turn from
both the virus and later the ship's exploding danger.  
Not only this, but they had plenty of time for some very amusing "friendly
insults and jibes" especially between Quark and Odo, and Norm.  (My name
for Quark's regular customer who made him eat his own terrible food.)
For the first time, Odo's shapeshifting surprised me, and it looks like
Quark was surprised too.  :)
This disease took center stage, of course, and Wow!  An original disease!
No one mutating into an alien monster, no one displaying blotches all over
themselves, and the fever is the LAST thing to hit you.  The scrambled
lines made a very weird and interesting mix of the absurd with the dangerous,
and as each person came down with it, I got that "sinking" feeling I only
get when I actually believe they're in real trouble.  I caught myself saying
"Oh, shoot," when Kira came down with it.  
The ONLY bis of the story I didn't like were the scene of Dax and Kira
walking down the Promenade (clumsy), and a couple of the Captain's scenes
at first until the surprise of his dangerous method of departure was 
revealed.  Until then I thought he was irrelevant.  

Acting:  Impeccable and brilliant!  EVERYONE, absolutely EVERYONE delivered
every single scrambled line utterly convincingly to my utter amazement.  
(It probably wasn't actually difficult for them, since they probably 
consider their normal lines even less comprehensible than these:)  
Colm Meaney's opening scenes stand out in my mind as being much better than
he's had lately, but Rene Auberjonois, Armin Shimerman, and Nana Visitor
stole the show.  Kira's "you're infected too" and all the double-play
between Quark and Odo had me smiling all hour long.  

Direction: I can't pin my finger on it, but something Paul Lynch did to
the camerawork in this story made the disease seem all the more deadly.
Possibly what I "felt" was the slow pans of the sick as though the camera
were also getting too tired to move very quickly.  Acting coaching is
another function of a director often overlooked and I'm sure it had 
something to do with the impeccable performances from the cast.  It's so
rare these days to have a director who reads the script between the lines
exactly as intended and then make sure everyone in the cast understands as
well.  This was their best gel to date, and I'm certain Paul Lynch, veteran
of the pilot, had quite a lot to do with that.  

Incidental Music:  Why do I bother?  

Special FX: There really weren't any to speak of, but the make-up effects
people are definitely getting serious migraines on this show because they
don't seem to fail when they need to invent a new weird face.  The captain
of the perishable-goods ship (let's face it, he's a truck driver) was very
interesting-looking, and next week's lizard-man looks even better.  Can't
wait for that one.  

Overall score (scale of 1 to 10): 9.9

After a bit of a stumble last week (only a 9, if that's a stumble), things
are looking up again!  I'm going to have to recalibrate my scale soon
if it keeps up at this pace....
Not that I'd mind!

Steven.K.Manfred