Now that was an episode! Probably the best episode so far this season Whispers is a story about justified paranoia for one of my favorite characters, Miles O'Brien. The idea of replacing someone with a replicant that things they are the original person isn't totally new, but the way this episode is executed is just fantastic. Telling the story from the perspective of the replicant who thinks everyone else has been replaced was just incredible. It also made me wish I knew what had happened with the real O'Brien during this time, but I guess he was busy being liberated by the rebels.
The episode opens with O'Brien in a runabout setting course at maximum warp for the Parada system. He is clearly upset by the events that led him to leave the station and starts a personal log discussing what happened. The episode then cuts to his return to the station. The first problems happen when he wakes up and notices Keiko isn't there. It seems she has gotten up before him as has Molly which is not normal behavior. Keiko leaves soon after and takes Molly with her which again isn't their normal routine. When O'Brien arrives at work he finds an ensign has already started work on the project he was supposed to be working on, getting security ready for a Paradan peace conference. When he gets to ops Julian insists on giving him a physical and when he protests Sisko insists. Miles asks to talk to Sisko who does his best to calm him down but it clearly isn't working. He also learns he has been taken off the job of working on security and put instead on repairing the docking pylons.
Miles goes in for his physical and despite things seeming to take longer than usual everything comes back normal. But everything else is still odd. Jake stops to ask him for help on a project but when the time comes Keiko tells Miles that Jake got sick. The ensign working on security claims to not be able to open a security seal on the Paradan quarters but when Miles leaves he opens it right up. When Odo arrives back on the station Miles talks to him before anyone else and tells him something is wrong on the station. Odo agrees to look into it and Miles returns to his quarters and rigs up some sort of small device.
Odo calls Miles to his office but when he arrives it becomes obvious Odo isn't quite right either but when he turns to leave Miles is confronted by Sisko and Kira. He sets off the small device and makes a get away. He has to reprogram the forcefields on the station to get out but eventually makes his way to a runabout and gets away from the station and back to where the episode opened. He is being pursued by another runabout but manages to lose them in a moons magnetic field. He follows to other runabout to a planet where the crew beamed down and he follows them. He confronts Sisko and Kira talking to two rebels and gets them to disarm before being shot fatally. Before he dies a door opens and the real Miles comes out. It seems the Miles we have been following was a copy programmed to somehow kill the rebel delegation at the peace conference. The replicant tells the real Miles to tell Keiko he loves her before dying.
Review: A tense episode with an actually effective twist ending. I know I saw this when it first aired, but I didn't remember what was actually going on which made this one a lot of fun. A bit of a TNG style episode, but a good one either way.
8 out of 10
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