Watching DS9 again and the thing I forgot about Julian
- Thread starter stardream
- Start date
He didn't get the Crusher Memo: "No sex, please. We're Starfleet."
I agree. He ended up becoming one of my favourites and not just because of the O'Brien friendship. He developed really well as a character outside of that but it did help to endear him to me at first. I also thought Sid got better at acting as the show went on. He was awful in the first season but now I'd consider him a very talented actor based on the later DS9 seasons and other things he's been in since.
The whole point in Bashir to me was that evolution.
He is the young, plucky and naieve Starfleet doctor who is brilliant.
It's why his interactions with Garak are so fascinating and hilarious and why his friendship with O'Brien is so warm to watch. He doesn't have the life experience, the street-smarts, of those two. We get to see him grow and change from the boyish doctor to a man.
Ironically, Siddig's improving acting abilities almost...improve the evolution of the character itself.
He is the young, plucky and naieve Starfleet doctor who is brilliant.
It's why his interactions with Garak are so fascinating and hilarious and why his friendship with O'Brien is so warm to watch. He doesn't have the life experience, the street-smarts, of those two. We get to see him grow and change from the boyish doctor to a man.
Ironically, Siddig's improving acting abilities almost...improve the evolution of the character itself.
Bashir is a great character between about mid season 2 and the episode they made him genetically engineered. At the start he seemed like a puppy begging for attention. In those middle seasons, he had a balance of earned intelligence and emotional insecurity that made him a strong character.
I've heard Rick Berman say that when they were creating the character, the idea they had in mind was to go for an absolute polar opposite of Doctor McCoy. So, instead of this kind of older, wise-through-experience, cynical, seasoned doctor, Bashir was meant to be wet behind the ears and extremely naive and optimistic young surgeon who has loads of 'book learning' but next to no street smarts. Which is why he suffers so much from putting his foot in his mouth in the first couple of seasons! 
(Just look at his interactions with Kira in his very first scenes, where he manages time and again to say all the wrong things.)
What made this decision a real stroke of genuis was that it meant they could mature the character over time.
(Just look at his interactions with Kira in his very first scenes, where he manages time and again to say all the wrong things.)What made this decision a real stroke of genuis was that it meant they could mature the character over time.
Until they exploded their idea with the genetics crap.
I found Julian annoying in the first season. It's one thing to be young and maybe not seasoned, but in episodes where he's trying to flirt with Dax, or just talk incessantly to Miles, he was a hard character to like at first. With that being said, he might have also been the best developed character in the series, maybe minus the Genetically engineering part.
Yeah, I can't deny they definitely shot themselves in the foot with that.
Not that it was necessarily an invalid 'plot twist' in itself.... but it did harm Julian's character arc (IMHO) by making him seem retrospectively dishonest to everyone. It turned him from 'naive newcomer who everybody hates but eventually grows to love' into 'guy you can't totally trust anymore because he's been lying to you all along'. It's such a bizarre development that it feels like taking a car out onto the freeway and shifting straight from 1st to 5th gear by skipping over all 2nd to 4th. Or something.
The reveal of Bashir's status does cast some of his previous behavior in an interesting light. The insufferable excitable naivete of his early days could very well be interpreted as him overcompensating to not seem like he's a genetically enhanced whiz kid. Or him getting his one question wrong on his Starfleet Medical final as well as his decision not to go pro in tennis because those too could risk exposing his secret. Could also serve to explain why he was initially convinced there was no cure to be found in the Quickening because if a genetically engineered genius can't find one, what chance is there that it exists?
Even silly fluff like Our Man Bashir is something I watch now with the view of Julian getting to be his true self (note he's not playing someone else in his program) in the holodeck, with no holding back of his physical or mental capabilities, complete with a very precise gun shot that just happens to give Garak a flesh wound. Yes he suggests he might have been trying to kill him, but given Bashir's character, a bluff seems far more likely.
I guess for me the reveal of his genetic status didn't bother me too terribly, because I can find enough elements to that enrich previous episodes.
Even silly fluff like Our Man Bashir is something I watch now with the view of Julian getting to be his true self (note he's not playing someone else in his program) in the holodeck, with no holding back of his physical or mental capabilities, complete with a very precise gun shot that just happens to give Garak a flesh wound. Yes he suggests he might have been trying to kill him, but given Bashir's character, a bluff seems far more likely.
I guess for me the reveal of his genetic status didn't bother me too terribly, because I can find enough elements to that enrich previous episodes.
There are other life and death cases where Bashir could have benefitted from his genetic intelligence. Like in Armaggedon Game he should have deduced from their body language that they would try to kill him to wipe out knowledge of the Harvesters.
I think the only time they used that "Genetically Enhanced Augment" sub plot well was in Statistical Probabilities. That episode were they brought the crew of mentally messed up Augments to him to do war projections. That was an interesting avenue to explore. Just how dysfunctional those others were. Why were they so when Bashir was approaching Khan status? But they never pulled on that thread again. Which is a shame. If they had reused those characters and explored the subject a bit deeper it might have redeemed the whole otherwise idiotic Illegally Genetically Enhanced plot twist they dumped on Julian.
The reason I hate the Jack Pack episodes is just that, they never respected the implications of things they established. They could have done a cool story about an augment who left the Federation to get a Ferengi job for profit, and was being pursued by Romulans to build weapons, and really explored the morality and consequences of banning augments from skill professions.
Without that meaningful exploration of the theme it all comes off as a defense of authoritarianism. Like, the Jack Pack's treason attempt justifies treating them like children and by extension the Federation's authoritarian policies toward augments.
I never understood the banning genetic enhancements argument. I think its based on a 1960's public view of genetics. Considering the things science can do now to embryos without them being turned into future megalomaniacs. Would the audience of the 1960's consider test tube babies 'genetic enhanced' people? The canon in the Star Trek universe is humans can live to 140 years old but look about 90 years old (McCoy in TNG) then something must have happened in that universe for this to be the case.
