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Character Spotlight: Julian Bashir

By Ames

We’re practicing some real frontier medicine this week on A Star to Steer Her By as we shine our spotlight on Dr. Julian Bashir. He starts off the show as kind of a wide-eyed tactless prig – but he’s cute, so we can forgive him a little – and grows into a sort of tempered, moralistic prig you can’t help but want to play games on the holodeck with. When he’s not creeping on women, anyway, which he does. A lot.

So grab your racquetball racquet, work on your best totally-not-really-Bond voice, and get ready to walk the thin line between medical ethics and medical malpractice with us! Scroll on below for our best and worst moments from our dear doctor, listen to our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:00:03), and learn the difference between a preganglionic fiber for a postganglionic nerve.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

I’m not going to let you die Having the symbiont removed is fatal to a Trill host, but Julian keeps Jadzia alive after Verad steals the Dax symbiont in “Invasive Procedures.” It’s a good moment for the good doctor, especially considering he mostly creeped on Jadzia up to this point, to see him stand up to a Klingon in order to care for her and to work with Quark on a scheme to get the symbiont back!

My best friend, Elim What this constantly humping puppy really needed early in the show was someone to temper his boundless enthusiasm, and that person was the enigmatic and utterly captivating Garak. So when Garak is in danger of dying due to his brain implant in “The Wire,” Bashir is the loyal friend who goes so far as to track down Enabran Tain to find a way to save his book club buddy.

He may look like Bareil, he may even talk like Bareil, but he won’t be Bareil The most important character trait of Dr. Bashir – and any Starfleet doctor, for that matter – is his unwavering moralistic attitude. We get a good taste of this in “Life Support” when he refuses to turn Bareil into a Frankenstein’s monster no matter how much Kira wanted him to. Bashir attests that there would be no more humanity (Bajoranity?) left and he stands by that.

First, do no harm… More of those morals are on display in “Hippocratic Oath” when First Goran’Agar asks Bashir to help cure the Jem’Hadar of their addiction to ketracel white. Julian sees not only how it could benefit the Federation to separate the Jem’Hadar from the Dominion, but also how it could benefit this whole race of real people who are suffering, and that is commendable.

And it would be less awkward if you had a chaperone Of course, Julian is more than just a genius doctor. He’s also part of a well-oiled team, and his relationships are at the core of any character. In “Rejoined,” Julian agrees without question to chaperone Jadzia and Lenara’s date because both Trills are afraid of the feelings that might come out if left alone together, and Julian is happy to act as wingman for his friend.

A year ago, I would’ve thought you were just trying to be a hero Starting Bashir off as such a naive, self-absorbed character gave him room to develop and it’s quite amazing to watch how his character grows over the seasons. By the time we get to season 7’s “Starship Down,” he’s able to reflect on how far he’s come when his first impulse is to keeping Jadzia warm when they’re stuck in a closet and not to feel her up instead.

A Blight-free baby It’s clear just how much Julian has matured as a character in “The Quickening.” Not only does he work tirelessly to try to cure the Teplan of the Blight and succeed in at least creating a vaccine to protect the next generation, but we see him facing failure for the first time (that he’d admit) when he can’t save Ekoria, something we don’t see a lot from TV characters of this era.

Surgery Under Fire Here’s an episode which starts with Bashir being his boastful, blathering self, then shifts abruptly to throwing him into the high-stress role of combat medic, all while Jake Sisko reports on the subject. The strength of “...Nor the Battle to the Strong” is portraying the different sides of Bashir, and the one that tries his hardest to protect Jake during a siege shines through the shelling.

What was one is now two While this episode is one of our least favorites – especially for Worf and Jadzia! – Julian actually comes across as progressive and supportive in “Let He Who Is Without Sin.” He and Leeta are vacationing on Risa, ostensibly to participate in the Rite of Separation, which looks to be a very adult, empathetic, and consensual way to break up with no bad feelings. My, how he’s grown!

It’s either a self-sealing stem bolt or a reverse ratcheting router, I’m just not sure We always love it when the doctors on this show put their foot down and prove what a badass they are. McCoy did it with Khan. Crusher did it with worm-neck Quinn. Pulaski did it every day of her BAMF life. And Julian gets to do it when he stands up to the Jem’Hadar who’ve imprisoned him in “By Inferno's Light.” Because Starfleet CMOs are tough as nails, baby!

Playing spies and being spies are very different things Like the mirror universe, the concept of Section 31 was great once and then got twisted and overused until we were rather sick of it. But when it was introduced in “Inquisition,” Section 31 was the bomb! And Julian was all the more brilliant for figuring out Luther Sloan’s layers of ruse. Even though being a spy should be a dream come true, he somehow resists the urge to join up.

It’s just that I like you a bit more. See? There, I’ve admitted it. No Bashir list would be complete without his adorable friendship with Miles O’Brien, encapsulated in all its glory in their bromance scenes in “Extreme Measures.” When Julian admits to Miles how much he loves him when they think they’re on the brink of dying, it’s just the sweetest thing. But then they go do something stupid, which you’ll see shortly…

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Worst moments

Plug that thing into your own warp core If you hadn’t seen any of Deep Space Nine before Bashir’s guest appearance on TNG in the episode “Birthright,” he’d seem like kind of a nut. This weirdo comes on board the Enterprise with some mystery tech that he promptly starts hooking up to the ship, pointing at everyone’s favorite android, and causing general chaos. Who is this dingbat and what is he doing on my show?

His clone gained consciousness and began a new life DS9’s characters seem more like the “let’s see what happens” types than those on other shows, and Bashir is just as culpable as anyone else (except maybe Sisko, who’s always a wild card). In “A Man Alone” he finds some goo lying around and decides (without asking anyone) to grow it into a fully sapient clone with absolutely no repercussions. This never comes up again. Julian is basically Dr. Frankenstein.

Not necessary, but not forbidden either It is uncomfortable how much Julian follows Jadzia around like a pervert, constantly making little comments (“I can think of better ways of keeping you up,” he says, like a creep) even though she’s expressed she has no interest in him. And even though it allows him to witness her kidnapping in “Dax,” I find it reprehensible for him to stalk her on her way home after she told him not to.

DS9 is not ADA-compliant The first time Bashir initiates a squicky relationship with a patient is in “Melora,” and it won’t be the last. Melora Pazlar is a fiercely independent Enaran, whose physiology is better suited to low-gravity worlds, and Julian tries to “fix” her to be more suitable to Earth gravity. But even grosser, he starts dating his patient, which would get his license taken away in today’s practices.

It’s a five-thousand-year-old battle warm-up For the first couple of seasons, Bashir is so insufferable that all the other characters complain whenever they are forced to spend time with him. And one of his most annoying displays of self aggrandizement comes in “Rivals.” Watching him showing off his exercises before destroying O’Brien in racquetball is just obnoxious as hell. It is hard to like this guy when he’s like that.

Life begins at thirty Clearly turning thirty makes you over the hill, even though in this advanced future, people are living in their hundreds. This is mostly a running gag on the podcast, but it is born out of Julian’s actual feelings in “Distant Voices” and he is such a little twerp about turning thirty that he comes off as even more obnoxious than he did when wrecking O’Brien in racquetball!

He’ll know he’s a Klingon You know how we gave Julian credit for seeing the line where to stop messing with Bareil’s brain in “Life Support”? Well he takes a dump on that line in “Sons of Mogh.” We gave Worf his share of the blame for eschewing familial responsibility for his brother, and Jadzia for coming up with the nonconsensual plan to wipe Kurn’s memory, and now we have to blame Bashir for carrying it out despite the poor ethics involved.

The no-win scenario Based on the projections of the mutants (sorry: augmented people) in “Statistical Probabilities,” Bashir straight up recommends to Starfleet that they surrender in the Dominion War to end the casualties. Come on, man! Don’t you know that “nobody can guarantee what’s going to happen tomorrow, not even an admiral from the future”? And who in their right mind would listen to Jack?

Turn that no into a yes Vic Fontaine is an incredibly polarizing character, but in “His Way,” he is problematic as hell. He psychically reads people’s circumstances, he interrupts people at work, he lies to both Kira and Odo, he won’t stop singing. And we have Julian to thank for forcing his character down our throats in this deeply uncomfortable episode that fails at being romantic and comes across as simply toxic. Hey, just like Bashir sometimes!

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti NO If Julian’s relationship with Melora made us uncomfortable because of the inherent power dynamic, get ready to be downright disgusted by what he does to Serena Douglass in “Chrysalis.” The augmented girl also becomes his conquest, both as a woman he can “fix” and as one he can woo. Her ability to consent in either case is questionable at best and utterly illegal at most.

Adding brain insult to brain injury All the close male friendship scenes in the world couldn’t negate the upsetting character assassination in “Extreme Measures.” How Bashir is capable of inflicting the kind of suffering he does on Sloan negates pretty much any accolades we gave him earlier for his sense of morals. This is simply despicable behavior that Bashir should never have even considered.

Ezri, why are you avoiding me? After we gave Ezri shit for falling for Julian last week, I went and reacquainted myself with all their scenes together in season 7, and Julian is SO gross to Ezri. He starts hitting on her in “Afterimage” when she is clearly suffering from trauma and she flatly turns him down. And then the final couple episodes of the series each have a cringey crush scene until they finally hook up in “The Dogs of War” and it just feels lazy! Bashir is rewarded for years of creeping and finally gets a girl. Not the girl, because she is NOT Jadzia. Just a girl. Vomit.

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Put it back in your pants, Julian, we’re done with this spotlight. This is what you get with such well-rounded characters like DS9 creates: people who have lots of strengths and flaws, and we’ll have even more to discuss in the coming weeks. But first, we’ve got to wrap our coverage of season 2 of Enterprise on SoundCloud, so keep your eyes here for our thoughts on that, keep paging us over on Facebook and Twitter, and tally up those racquetball points!

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