How I wish U. McCormack “Home Again” were the happy ending for Bashir's career...
I’ve been mourning his career since “Ceremony” like it was my own!! He came to DS9 as a Lt. junior grade and it took CENTURIES for him to get promoted to Commander (in the meantime Nog spent years on DS9, went to the Academy and he is suddenly Lt. Commander!!)
I know what Bashir did is considered treason and bla bla bla but c’mon!!! Starfleet cut Kirk a LOT of slack and EVERYBODY on “Peaceable” came out at the end squeaky clean in spite of what they did against their “Commander in Chief”…
After what Bashir did in Ceremony and assuming he and Sarina bring down S31, what else he has to do to be accepted back in Starfleet?!?! Give his left nut? Both of them? Thrown a liver into the deal maybe??
(Small aside: apparently
McCormack's new novel is in fact named The Missing.)
You know, I love Bashir. One of my favorite characters.
David Mack has done great stuff with him in the last few years.
But I gotta say: I was pissed off when he appeared in
The Poisoned Chalice and
Peaceable Kingdoms. In my opinion, it diluted the effect of
A Ceremony of Losses. Bashir committed treason of the highest order. Whether he was right or wrong to do so, he knew that he would almost certainly be locked up forever if he were caught. And the story ends with him in exactly that position– locked up, apparently forever.
And he should have stayed there. Full stop. He should have been as gone as he would be if he were dead. Deader than Duffy. He should have disappeared forever.
Because that's
exactly what would have happened. Chelsea Manning disappeared (possibility for parole in 8 years notwithstanding). Edward Snowden would probably disappear if he came back to the States. And, from an in-universe perspective, what Bashir did was more egregious.
He went up against the biggest power in the Quadrant, and he got caught. He didn't win, he lost. And he knew what the consequences would be. And that should've been that. The cost of saving the Andorians should've been Bashir's de facto existence, not just his career.
I dunno. Honestly, this "reset" bothers me much more than the events of
The Eternal Tide or
The Persistence of Memory, partly because it limits the allegorical meaning of the story.
Of course, this was, I think, the fundamental problem with
The Fall. They put the characters into a situation very similar to the real-world problems faced by Americans and Western Europeans today– being faced with corrupt, self-serving leaders, whose short-sighted policies are going to doom civilization, and who are so firmly ensconced in power that it's very difficult to conceive of a way to overcome them.
But instead of telling a difficult story in which our characters work through the challenges of these circumstances, in a way that would be at all believable from a real-world context, we got something that wasn't much better than a child's comic book superhero story. No engagement of the legitimate issues at hand. No acknowledgement of the stark, long-term real-world consequences of actions such as Bashir's and Dax's.
They set us up for the most currently relevant TrekLit stories ever– and they extricated themselves in some of the least realistic fashions imaginable.
That all said, I'm sure that
Disavowed will bring us a great story, continuing a fantastic arc for a great character. And within the specific context of Bashir's narrative,
The Fall works. But in the overall context of
The Fall, his story ends up being a major stumbling block.
For those waiting for the next David Mack's bestseller, I just found the blurb of SECTION 31 —
Disavowed on his website!! Check it out!!
http://www.infinitydog.com/book_disavowed.html
Does look like it'll be a great story. Also, that blurb isn't the only source of information on that page... but be forewarned of potentially major spoilers!
