I think Bashir's line to Worf & Garak is something along the lines of "I went to sleep in my quarters and woke up here." Did he sleep in his uniform? Maybe, or maybe he just had an old uniform in his dresser and whoever kidnapped him grabbed it so he wouldn't be naked.
When Changelings impersonate someone for a long period of time, it seems that they do as much as possible to continue the illusion - look at Changeling Martok, who was in the disguise for at least a year. It's not really all that unbelievable that Changeling Bashir would be trained as a doctor (which probably also suggests that the Dominion had been planning on kidnapping Bashir for quite some time).
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I don't think any special training would be necessary when you consider that the Founders already have a considerable amount of knowledge in humanoid genetics (as evidenced by the Jem'hadar and the Vorta), bio-chemistry (the white) and viral micro-biology (the blight.) From what little we understand about the great link we can conjecture that it is among other things a medium for exchanging thoughts, ideas and memories so any changeling wishing to pose as a doctor can get whatever information it needs from the link. I'm not saying that the Founders are omnipotent, but their collective knowledge must be considerable. The only tricky part in this deception is fooling those closest to Bashir that nothing is amiss. Especially Odo, he seams to have a 'sixth sense' with changeling infiltrators (sixth sense in inverted commas since we don't actually know how many senses a changeling has to begin with.) Fooling Garak would was also a commendable achievement, obviously this was a particularly talented infiltrator. I'd wager that he followed Bashir around for months getting his character down.
Martok's case was probably allot easier since he spent a great deal of time away from his Sirella and as a senior officer he probably didn't spend much time with Grex either. As a Klingon all he had to do was shout, head butt people, pretend to eat, drink and use the waste extractor and none of his men would be any the wiser.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"I'd wager that he followed Bashir around for months getting his character down."
Probably posed as his wallet, or something.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
...which is just another example of how badly written as a whole Trek races are.
Here's an idea: the changeling WAS Bashir's uniform! It stole his old uniform and impersonated his clothes until it was time to replace Bashir himself. Then Bashir was sent to the Dominion prison facility, uniform and all. Works as well as anything. Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Oh, my pet subject. I have thought a lot about this, no-one agrees with me, but here goes anyway. . . With the thread I posted at TNO about three and a half years ago!
quote:In 2373, Lieutenant Julian Subatoi Bashir, Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space Nine, was kidnapped by the Dominion (while away at a medical conference) and replaced by a Changeling. Dr. Bashir's subsequent appearance in a Dominion prison camp, wearing a style of uniform that had been replaced half a dozen episodes before, has left the exact date of his capture uncertain. However, more than a year later, when under interrogation by Section 31, it was revealed he had been held captive for 36 or 37 days (I forget which). This is significant because that figure is almost exactly one-tenth of a year, or 100 stardates. We still don't know how stardates are meant to work, but one thing is certain: there are 1000 of them in a year!
Naturally it's not as cut-and-dried as this; "By Inferno's Light," the episode where Bashir escapes, is the 15th episode of the season - yet only it and three other episodes prior to it have stardates mentioned in them.
Therefore we can assume Bashir was kidnapped on or about Stardate 50465, 100 prior to the given Stardate (in "BIL") of 50564.2.
Here's the Timeline:
"The Rapture:" DS9 crew appear wearing the new uniforms. While the changeover was not complete throughout Starfleet (an Admiral and his staff retain the TNG uniforms) Bashir is seen wearing the new style. He also performs delicate neurosurgery on Captain Sisko, and it is this that has always worried people - was it the Changeling? If so, why did he save Sisko? After all he could hardly have known Sisko woulkd recommend Bajor not join the Federation, something the Dominion would prefer not to happen!
"The Darkness and The Light:" Stardate 50416.2, which confirms that at this stage Bashir cannot have been replaced.
"The Begotten:" We're now into the realm of extreme uncertainty! Bashir delivers Keiko/Kira's baby, and also assists Odo and Dr. Mora Pel in treating an infant Changeling. . . yet as "The Die is Cast" the previous year shows, one Changeling would be willing to break his cover to save another - Bashir lets the baby Founder die, and also allows it to cure Odo the outcast.
"For the Uniform:" Stardate 50485.2; I can't remember how much, if at all, Bashir was in this episode. But the Stardate indicates it is set after he must have been replaced.
"In Purgatory's Shadow:" Here the real Bashir is seen in prison, and the Changeling begins overt action.
"By Inferno's Light:" Stardate 50564.2; Sometime around this stardate, Bashir escapes the prison camp, ending the 36-7 day period mentioned.
So was it Bashir or the Changeling in "The Begotten?" I'd say Bashir. I've tried to work the stardate out using the total gestation period of Keiko's baby - but it's impossible! Even assuming a normal 9-month pregnancy (ie 750 stardates) we don't know when the conception was, and if as some people remember O'Brien told Worf the news in "Accession" (the episode before "Rules of Engagement," Stardate 49665.3) then the baby might have been conceived on or around 49600, and born around 50450 - 850 stardates, giving a pregnancy with another half-trimester! Ouch. . .
It's not concrete, I admit that. We can say that with 26 episodes per season, and 52 weeks per year, one episode happens per fortnight, or about 35-40 stardates. The separation between "TDaTL" and "FtU" (70 stardates with one ep in between) above bear this out. This puts "The Begotten" as just before (about a week, anyway) Bashir left on his conference, and we know he wouldn't go anywhere so close before the birth.
***
So why the uniform? Simple. Bashir went to bed one night, and woke up in a prison camp. He was probably beamed straight out of bed. They'd been planning this for a while, and had even laid on clothes for him - not knowing that they would be out of date. They HAD to have planned this for a while, in order to have a Changeling prepared to function as a human doctor for however long it took.
Reviewing this, it struck me what a clever idea it was to have Siddig El-Fadil's character be taken. Why TPTB at Paramount chose him I don't know, but within the show it makes perfect sense. Why Bashir and not someone else?
Sisko: too important, impossible to replicate all his knowledge. Family member on the station.
Kira: pregnant when plan formulated.
Odo: Duh. . .
Worf: Likewise, a lot of knowledge. Quite possibly the most pissed-at-the-world person of all time, the rod up his ass has a rod up its ass. Relationship with other crew member. . .
Dax: Trying to imitate a symbiont and host with 7 lifetimes of experience? Tricky.
O'Brien: Years of hands-on experience in engineering impossible to pass on to Founder; family on board, plus Kira living with them then.
Jake: Why?
Quark: Nope.
No, Bashir is the obvious choice. Single (or no solid relationships) and rather aloof (no-ome knew why then) with a range of knowledge easy to duplicate given his tendency to write a paper or give a talk on anything new he discovered at the drop of a hat. And a Changeling had already impersonated him without anyone immediately noticing. As CMO he can go anywhere. . .
And why give him a STARFLEET uniform in any case? Easy - they knew his size!
I then did some more research. . .
quote:. . . and it seems that the choice of uniform for the real Bashir was meant to imply he had been replaced before "The Rapture." It was a spur of the moment idea, and they figured that nothing special had happened in the previous few episodes to contradict is. Echevarria (who wrote "The Begotten") expressed doubts about the way Bashir failed to help the baby changeling, but they just said that he was sticking to his cover no matter what.
And then they go and contradict it again later by giving a ridiculously short time of his imprisonment!
From TrekWeb: 'If Bashir was a changeling, then how did he manage to miss the detection of damage to the baby changeling? Did he really miss the damage? Or did he intentionally destroy the baby changeling? Producer Ronald D. Moore: "I don't think the Bashir-changeling missed the damage to the baby, and I don't think he intentionally harmed it. More likely is that the damage could not be repaired and he simply let events play themselves out."'
And:
'Writer Ronald D. Moore: "The revelation that Bashir had been a changeling for a few episodes was something that came up during the story break of "Purgatory's Shadow." We thought it would be a really cool surprise and a quick check of the preceeding episodes showed that it wouldn't damage anything in those shows (although Ren� [Echevarria] did have reservations about the Changeling-Bashir delivering Kira's baby [in The Begotten])."'
Someone needs to ask Echevarria, RDM, RHW or ISB about this. Was the time give in "Inquisition" (written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle) an attempt to correct the furore over the date of the abduction, I wonder. . .
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the idea that it was the Changeling who operated on Sisko. Why would he? It was far more in the interests of the Dominion to have him die, they didn't know that Loony Prophet Sisko was going to recommend Bajor not join the Federation. Of course, there's a flaw in that argument - would it really matter to the Founders whether Bajor was a UFP member or not? All their not being a member did for them was give them neutral status when Sisko abandoned DS9 to the Jem'Hadar. . .
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
OTOH, it would have been more advantageous for the Founders to keep their Cardassian puppet happy and content by letting him lay waste to Bajor than to strain relations with Dukat by signing that N-A pact.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
stardates don't go in order.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Good point. So, all in all Sisko's influence on Bajor maybe wasn't then a factor in his surviving or not. So why then would a Changeling operate (successfully, not letting him die) on him? Purely to maintain his cover? What then was his ultimate goal? I'm not sure how far in advance the collapse-the-wormhole plan, which the Changeling did blow his cover to sabotage, existed, so I can't believe he was there just for that!
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Mabye they intended to replace Sisko and needed him to (publically) survive. The chance to permanantly stabalize the Wormhole was just to good to pass up and the plan to replace sisko was abandoned in favor of that.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
If you recall the changeling's mission was to make the Bajoran sun supernova, taking with it a sizeable chunk of the Federation, Klingon and Romulan fleets (whither or not the Founders knew that the Romulans would turn up is neither here nor there) along with Bajor, DS9 and yes Sisko.
So as far as the changeling was concerned Sisko was as good as dead and Bajor would soon become irrelevant (not to mention non-existent). Killing Sisko on the operating table would not only be a pointless exercise but it might risk blowing his cover if foul play was detected.
quote: Probably posed as his wallet, or something.
Personally I suspect Kukalaka. Nobody ever suspects the cute little teddy bear!
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I've always wondered why the extremely high amounts of energy generated by Bajor-B'hava'el going supernova would not end up destroying the wormhole too! Wouldn't THAT cause a lot of problems for the Dominion?
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
We saw in Generations, Rapture, The Way of the Warrior, Homefront/Paradise Lost and Emissary - that Starfleet officers can and do change their uniforms at times of 'cross over'. Maybe for a certain period Officers can wear both - a la Generations.
So maybe Bashir reverted to his older uniform for his trip to the Medical conference?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Andrew -
The DS9-style duty uniform and the TNG-style duty uniform weren't a "crossover" -- both were apparently in use for several years concurrently. The DS9-style uniform seemed to be an alternate uniform, and the TNG-style tunic didn't go away until the First Contact style was introduced - even then, yes, some of the Admirals and their staff still wore the older uniform. I would hardly use the DS9-style and TNG-style as evidence of a "crossover" period between uniforms. I mean, how long does it take? You upload uniform patterns to every starbase and starship and order everyone to start wearing them the next shift.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Y'know, when I first saw this thread I thought it said "Blair as a Changling" and now that I think of it.... Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
Actually, wouldn't Odo be the perfect one to replace with a (loyal) Founder? It couldn't be detected...and he could be brought home and dealt with since he'd been "cured". He should have also had somewhat more useful access than the Doc one would think....
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I'd imagine the real Odo thought of that and set up lots of nasty suprises for a replacment via security protocalls and with the command crew's help.
Passwords, overrides, things he does to Kira behind closed doors...he'd be discovered. Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
And besides, wouldn't people be watching the local Changeling like a hawk anyway, not really totally trusting him? Compared to that, impersonating the slightly-weird station doctor probably made more sense.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
Lee, I never noticed that old post of yours. Maybe I can incorporate it (or part of it) into the article?
Maciej intentionally didn't incorporate estimations based on stardates, because they are not reliable (although it may work out with the 1000 units per year rule). Maybe watching "Inquisition" is a good idea, as more facts about the kidnapping may be revealed.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
It was at TNO, Bernd, easy to miss. 8)
I know that to say "36 days is one-tenth of a year, so it equals 100 stardates" is to assume a lot, but it's a good working hypothesis. I always remember some prat who tried to disagree with it by saying "well, Sloan must have been lying when he said Bashir was in captivity for 36 days." Why would he lie?! Bashir knows how long he spent as a prisoner!
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
that was one of those years where the stardates didnt go in order though..
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Explain.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
well, besides the 'stardates have never been a useful data point' explanation (since TOS and TNG stardates jumped all over the damn chart going in no particular order) but wasnt there some problem with the dating of First Contact versus the advent of the FC uniforms on DS9 that makes the stardates that year particularly unreliable?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Well, sure in the past stardates have been reliable, but in recent years in episodic Trek they've been able to manage to put progressing stardates to eps throughout a season.
So discounting all the stardates for a whole year just because a movie doesn't quite fit in with the dates established in that season of DS9 is daft. Especially since, as far as I can recall, the main problem with the stardate in ST:FC is that it doesn't leave enough time for the Defiant to have been repaired before "IPS/BIL," or that reference is made to the events of ST:FC in an ep that, by stardate, actually precedes it, or something.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
The whole stardate thing is a real pity, especially as it was originally one of the simplest elements of TOS (as planned). Stardates were supposed to just be the mission time of the ship, in months and days, and fractions thereof. E.g., "Where No Man..." was on stardate 1312 -- that made it thirteen months and twelve days into the Enterprise's five-year mission under Kirk.
For the most part TOS and TAS fit in that quite nicely. There are a half-dozen or so animated episodes with stardates waaay out there past the end of that timeframe, though. And many stardates over the course of TOS had "day" numbers higher than 31. So I don't pretend stardates as they made it to the screen have anything to do with months and days, but it is kind of fun to watch both series (overlapping) in stardate order.
--Jonah
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I thought that was just one possible theory, and one that a lot of the writers tended to ignore?
TOS stardates are a lot more chronological though if you put the airdates in production order.
And for 24th century Trek, they've pretty much been sequential since season 2 of TNG. Even then, the first season only mucked up on about 4 or so episodes.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Obsessive nerdiness! In airdate order: Encounter at Farpoint - 41153 The Naked Now - 41209 Code of Honor - 41235 The Last Outpost - 41386 Where No One Has Gone Before - 41263 Lonely Among us - 41249 Justice - 41255 The Battle - 41723 Hide and Q - 41590 Haven - 41294 The Big Goodbye - 41997 Datalore - 41242 Angel One - 41636 11001001 - 41365 Too Short a Season - 41309 When the Bough Breaks - 41509 Home Soil - 41463 Coming of Age - 41416 Heart of Glory - 41503 The Arsenal of Freedom - 41798 Symbiosis - no stardate Skin of Evil - 41601 We'll Always Have Paris - 41697 Conspiracy - 41775 The Neutral Zone - 41986
So the first season stardates are all messed up, and Yar's death means we can't rearrange the episodes to match their stardates. (Possibly Wesley's "promotion" does too, but I can't be bothered to remember when that happened.)
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: So I don't pretend stardates as they made it to the screen have anything to do with months and days, but it is kind of fun to watch both series (overlapping) in stardate order.
Of course, having them overlap makes no sense, since the ship was refitted with a second turbolift tube and a new engineering section prior to TAS, new shuttlecraft and equiptment such as the life-belts were put into use, and more importantly, Chekov was replaced by Arex and M'Ress joined the bridge crew. It's definitely post-TOS. (Immediately subsequent, by statements in TMP and VGR "Q2".)
Gene Roddenberry (not that I place infallible faith in a great deal of his statements, but nonetheless) says outright in sources as early as The Making of Star Trek that stardates are variable depending where you are in the galaxy and at what speed you're traveling and whatnot.
At least, that applies to TOS/TAS stardates. DS9 is a more-or-less fixed point in the galaxy, so its stardates naturally might not vary so much, and of course this ties in nicely with the fact that by the time that series came around the writers were paying more attention to the stardates. Perhaps this is a solution to discrepancies between First Contact and DS9 stardates? (The Enterprise-E in the Beta Quadrant and later Sector 001 might have been reading different stardates than DS9 was in the Bajor System.)
-MMoM Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
One alleged purpose of using stardates, though, is that they provide a universal timekeeping standard across the vast reaches of Federation space.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
If stardates aren't constant from place to place, they're useless.
"The distress call says they have three days to live, sir."
"When was it sent?"
"Stardate 12345.6, their time."
"How long ago was that?"
"Um... Hell if I know, sir."
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: One alleged purpose of using stardates, though, is that they provide a universal timekeeping standard across the vast reaches of Federation space.
That's what I'm saying though, is that this is a huge mistake. They don't. The sooner people accept that, the better. (Sorry to sound so overzealous, but I'm really getting tired of these deabates on stardate inconsistancies and people trying to make more of them than was ever intended by TPTB.)
quote:Originally posted by TSN: If stardates aren't constant from place to place, they're useless.
Precisely. Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Roddenberry's statement though was him merely coming up with a way of covering mistakes with stardates with tech talk. It's really, really apparent that stardates are suppossed to be chronological, that they are consistent across space, and that, since TNG started, 1000 = 1 year.
Even the messed up TNG season 1 stardates are in some sort of order. If you planted them on a graph, you'd get a roughly increasing line, not a random series of dots.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I think there are two seperate lines of argument here. One is that stardates are often not what they should be. The other is that, these mistakes aside, stardates are "really" universal and usable. These don't really seem to be in conflict.
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