https://archive.org/details/characterinsightep347
Sarina Douglas was a human augment thanks to her parents putting her through an illegal genetic manipulation procedure called accelerated critical neural pathway formation when she was a child. This advanced her intelligence level to beyond genius, but her visual and auditory systems could not keep up with her enhanced cerebral cortex in her brain. As a result, she couldn't focus on the outside world and this made her appear to be a non-responsive mute.
Eventually Sarina ends up at a Federation special needs institute where her and several other augments receive treatment. She was primarily supervised and treated by Dr. Karen Loews over 15-plus years, and Loews eventually becomes Sarina's legal guardian as well.
We first meet Sarina when Dr. Loews brings her and the small group of augments the doctor manages to Deep Space 9 to be studied and perhaps helped by Dr. Bashir, a fellow genetically-enhanced augment. During this three weeks on board the station, Sarina helps the Federation efforts in the Dominion War by figuring out a way to negotiate with Weyoun to get the Dominion to cede more territory back to the Federation. However, this turns south when the augments calculate that the Federation will lose the war and lots of lives will be sacrificed in the losing effort.
The augments put a plan into motion to contact the Dominion and provide them with critical information on how to win the Alpha Quadrant with minimal loss of life. However, Bashir gets through to Sarina before the plan is implemented and the augments leave the station without further interference in the war.
A year later, Sarina is brought back to Deep Space 9 to undergo a new treatment he had developed to try and allow her brain to properly handle information from her senses. This treatment is successful and we get to watch Sarina re-learn how to speak and interact with her surroundings. Sarina also falls in love temporarily with Bashir, but as Bashir's romances often end up, it goes too quickly and she leaves, heading to an internship at a research center.
The augments put a plan into motion to contact the Dominion and provide them with critical information on how to win the Alpha Quadrant with minimal loss of life. However, Bashir gets through to Sarina before the plan is implemented and the augments leave the station without further interference in the war.
A year later, Sarina is brought back to Deep Space 9 to undergo a new treatment he had developed to try and allow her brain to properly handle information from her senses. This treatment is successful and we get to watch Sarina re-learn how to speak and interact with her surroundings. Sarina also falls in love temporarily with Bashir, but as Bashir's romances often end up, it goes too quickly and she leaves, heading to an internship at a research center.
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Sarina serves as another of many examples where genetic engineering goes wrong in the Trek universe, but her story has a happy ending while allowing Dr. Bashir to have some further important character development, including some further insight into his own augment history. Her return in the episode Chrysalis is one of the more positive one-off episodes in the middle of the mostly-dark Dominion War story arc.
Sarina was played by Faith Salie in both appearances, although after not having any dialogue in her first appearance, the show producers auditioned her before the second episode to make sure she would shine in a dialogue-heavy episode. Salie has not acted in about 15 years, but she has gone on to better fame in radio as a host and producer of the NPR show Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie.
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