Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 2x14 — Whispers

Aired 1994-02-06

SpaceOpera.com rating:4

Average reader rating:7.13

Synopsis

O'Brien returns from a security mission to notice that the entire crew has seemingly turned against him.

Filler rating: good filler

There's no essential plot or exposition in this episode that renders it unskippable, but it's a decent episode, even though it could have been better.

Remarkable scenes

O'Brien and Bashir during the medical exam.
O'Brien: "I haven't had a physical take this long since I was born!"
Jake accidentally inferring that O'Brien is "really, really old."
O'Brien: "They even broke into my personal logs to see what they could find there. I hope they enjoyed the sexy letters I sent to my wife."
O'Brien freaking out at Quark.
O'Brien fleeing the station and stealing a runabout.
The revelation that there are two O'Briens!
Rules of Acquisition; 194 (maybe, Quark's not sure): It's always good business to know about new customers before they walk in your door.

Review

A decent premise is slightly ruined, drowning under the weight of another conspiracy plot. The ending redeems most of the annoying aspects of the story, but I wish the plot twist was revealed a little sooner than the last two minutes of the episode. Though it is sometimes fun to watch O'Brien freak out at everybody and everything, it also gets old fast. A decent ride though.

10 reader comments

This episode has one of the most intriguing "hook" beginnings of all of star trek. I thought the whole episode was just stupendously done, and the director(s) achieved a truly spooky feel throughout it. I was a little disappointed at the quick, cheap ending. When I looked down and saw that there was only 10 minutes left, I could feel the cheap ending coming on.
I think the episode would have been REALLY cool if they had made it into a two-parter and really explored the situation with the rebels and such.
-1 for the cheap ending, but all in all one of my favorite ds9 episodes. The Obrien concentration was fun.
by Pete Miller | 06/08/2006 at 2:56 am

A perfect 10 all the way! You get to watch O'Brien slowly lose everyone he cares about drift away in deception. Every time he finds someone to confide in, they turn against him. First it is Jake, then it is Odo, then a Starfleet commmander. All trust becomes diminished. I would not want this to happen to me.
What is great is that if you are watching the episode for the first time, you will not be able to figure out the mystery, no matter how smart you are. Nor, do you notice that the clone O'Brien is constantly drinking a kind of coffee that the real O'Brien never dirnks. Fantastic!
by Orion Pimpdaddy | 09/30/2006 at 3:41 am

I liked the buildup in this episode. At first, the way people are acting towards the fake O'Brien is subtle, yet noticeable, and it eventually becomes more and more strange and overt.
I also loved the acting; yet another great performance from Rosalind Chao (and others). I especially liked the scene where they're eating, with the closeups on their faces. He knows she's up to something, but won't tell. She knows he's not really her husband. The tension is terrific.
I definitely didn't guess what was going to happen, but I did get an inkling when he was told to go back by the starfleet admiral. I began to think that there was something wrong with him rather than the others, given that if there seems to be something wrong with everyone but you, chances are you're the problem!
A very decent episode, worth watching twice.
by DJB | 01/28/2009 at 8:11 am

Bashir totally misjudges what has happened when, at the end, he says, "I think he was trying to be a hero." Honestly, O'brien just wanted to survive. Heroic just doesn't seem to apply here.
by Orion Pimpdaddy | 03/16/2010 at 1:03 pm

I feel that a lot of Star Trek is inspired by the writings of Isaac Asimov. This episode also I think was inspired by the short story "Let's get together" by the writer.
Well, not the entire episode, just the ending stroke me as being very similar.
by Popescu | 08/10/2010 at 2:18 am

This should have been a two-parter. This episode was so gripping that it kept my attention right up until the very end. If they'd have done a "to be continued" when he arrived on the planet and then further explored the Paradas rebel plot a bit more in part two, this would have been fantastic. Instead, as with several DS9 episodes, they try to rush the ending after giving us a truly intriguing storyline. I share the webmaster's below average rating for that reason alone.
by MJ | 02/04/2011 at 6:15 pm

Whenever the webmaster has given a rating that is near enough 4 points below the mean then that points toward the true score of the episode being somewhere in between. I think that is true here.
We have a good episode that is one of those oddities that you can get equal fascination from both first and second viewings, first from O'Briens point of view and then when rewatched from the other characters point of view.
Overall a quality outing.
by Bernard | 03/08/2011 at 4:05 pm

Great episode, one of the best DS9 episodes this far. 4 points is ridiculous, as is giving no good explanation for such a low rating. It's not just another conspiracy episode, for Christ's sake! None of the conspiracy episodes in other series of the franchise was even close to be this original and well written. Waiting to the very end to solve the mystery was a very clever move too as it saves the suspense until the end. And it's no "cheap ending", quite the opposite. TNG "Conspiracy" had a cheap ending, this one here is amazing and makes you watch the episode a second time just to see it from the other's point of view.
by Zaphod | 04/20/2011 at 9:36 am

This is actually one of my favorite eps of DS9. I understand a lot of viewers don't like "dream" episodes, "tricked into thinking the holosuite is real" or episodes where things are conveniently reversed due to time manipulation.
I get why some people don't really enjoy those type of episodes but I'm the opposite. I really enjoy the twists they exhibit and this episode is a perfect example.
On my first watch, I was completely fixated and didn't see that twist coming at all.
I'd give it a ten and a must watch.
JTQ
by James T Quark | 08/16/2015 at 1:14 am

I did not enjoy watching this episode. It sets up an intriguing mystery at the beginning, but you quickly get the idea that “something weird is going on” and after that, the mystery doesn’t develop, it just sits there until the end, when it is suddenly resolved so quickly that I only have a vague idea what happened. I felt like the middle half of the episode was just padding and the episode needed more story to add more context to what was going on.
by Christopher Alexander | 07/18/2020 at 2:01 am