DS9 Flashback: Doctor Bashir, I Presume

The Julian Bashir of season one of Deep Space Nine was an abrasive, off-putting character whose icky infatuation with Jadzia Dax has aged poorly in the subsequent 25+ years. But the writers did a slow and steady rehabilitation of his personality that over the years brought him more harmoniously into the mix of the series' interesting characters. And then, with "Doctor Bashir, I Presume," a massive revelation pushed Julian into entirely new and interesting places.

Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, creator of the Emergency Medical Hologram, is now looking to create a new version of his program intended for long term use -- and Julian Bashir is to be the template for its appearance and personality. He comes to Deep Space Nine for extensive interviews and research about Bashir... which puts the doctor in an awkward place, because he and his family are hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, Zimmerman's flirtation with Leeta brings her to a tough decision: should she stay on Deep Space Nine, hoping for a deeper relationship with Rom? Or should she leave with Zimmerman when his project is over, succumbing to his sweet flattery?

Freelance writer Jimmy Diggs had sold a few ideas to Star Trek: Voyager, and would sell a few more before that series concluded. But he also pitched this one idea to Deep Space Nine, a crossover about the creator of Voyager's holographic doctor building a version 2.0. Staff writer Ronald D. Moore was tasked with building out the story, and he felt sure that the inherently comedic premise needed a dramatic twist: Zimmerman should discover some dark secret in Bashir's past. But what?

A conversation with another staff writer, René Echevarria, zeroed in on the observation that genetic engineering was one of the few science fiction tropes largely missing in the Star Trek universe. Well, other than Khan, of course. But what if Khan, and the hinted-at backstory of the Eugenics Wars, was the reason there was no genetic engineering on Star Trek? And what if that was Bashir's secret, that he was genetically engineered?

This revelation initially didn't sit well at first with actor Alexander Siddig, for two reasons. One was the suddenness; as he put it, "I didn't know about it on Tuesday, and on Thursday the script arrived – we started shooting on Friday." This was an out of the blue character change he wished he could have known in advance, and it came right on the heels of him finding out that he'd secretly been a changeling for several episodes without knowing it.

Secondly, Siddig didn't like the episode's ending. It involved Bashir and O'Brien learning that Zimmerman had been deliberately adding bugs to the new "LMH" so that his preexisting EMH (which looked like him) would not be replaced. With this information, they'd blackmail Zimmerman to keep the secret of Bashir's genetic engineering, allowing everything to go back to normal. Siddig felt that this revelation about his character would permanently alter his conception of how to play him, yet this ending made it a secret only for Bashir, O'Brien, and the audience. How could this knowledge inform every acting choice he made, but in a way that never tipped the secret for other characters on the show? He pushed back at the writers, and in this rare instance, they agreed to rewrite the script at the last minute.

The resulting episode is better for the changes, with a great arc for both character and script. It starts off as comedy -- and a decent one at that, thanks in large part to guest star Robert Picardo as Zimmerman. He needles Bashir at every opportunity, being drawn to Leeta upon hearing she broke up with him, pursuing contact with Bashir's parents the moment it's clear that's a sore subject, and conducting a fun series of to-camera interviews with various characters on the show (including the ever-silent Morn). Along the way, there's a fun scene with two Picardos and two Siddigs, and plenty of friendly ribbing from O'Brien.

But the turn to the dramatic is even better. Bashir is nursing a big resentment for his father, who he sees as having given up on him as a child, the way he gives up on everything else in life. Both his parents infantilize him, calling him "Jules" when he's chosen to be known as "Julian." With the revelation of his secret, the drama grows stronger still. O'Brien stands by his friend, assuring him that nothing has changed in how he sees him, and that he will fight for Bashir to stay in Starfleet. His mother confesses after decades that she's always wondered if they were to blame for their son's deficiencies, telling him they did what they did out of love, not shame.

The idea that Julian Bashir is genetically engineered may not have been planned for, but it largely winds up making sense with what we've seen before this. His painful awkwardness in early seasons could have been a cover to hide his brilliance. His deliberate exam failure, costing him valedictorian at school, certainly fits. So does his parents' disapproval of his interest in a career as a tennis pro -- an apparent waste of his vast intellect. It all fortuitously lines up. And it sets the stage for interesting future episodes for the character.

Unfortunately, the B plot can't keep pace. Rom and Leeta as a couple is a cute idea, but the execution in this episode leaves much to be desired. Rom's tongue-tied demeanor is quite hammy (especially when you think to compare it to the more realistic awkwardness of Odo around Kira). Quark's constant negging of both Rom and Leeta (to a point where neither thinks they deserve happiness) may be accurate to that character, but it's tough to watch.

Zimmerman's flattery of Leeta seems pretty genuine... until he ultimately gets dumped and then promptly hits on literally the next woman to walk by. Worse by far: given what we know about the erogenous nature of Ferengi ears, seeing Rom stroke his (to act as an eavesdropping parabolic microphone, no less!) is pretty gross. But perhaps more socially regressive than any of that is this simple fact: if Leeta loves Rom, why can't she ask him out? She'd sooner move across the galaxy than do that?

Other observations:

• The salacious holosuite program "Vulcan Love Slave" gets a "Part 2: The Revenge."

• The holocommunicator appears for the last time on Deep Space Nine, an idea that came before its time.

• What perhaps doesn't fit about Julian's secret is that it had never been discovered before this. The galaxy is full of telepathic species, for example, and you'd think an encounter with one would expose the secret. But then, he did have an encounter with one, and it didn't. (Maybe he has such extreme mental discipline resulting from his modifications that he can hide parts of his thoughts even from a mental probe?)

• We get a fun sense of what criminal justice is like in a more utopian future. For breaking a rather serious law, Bashir's father gets two years, which Julian sees as "harsh."

• Bashir's father is played by working actor Brian George (famous for playing Babu Bhatt on Seinfeld). For his mother, the production said that at the time, they could not find a working actress of Arab descent. (I realize casting was less diverse in the 1990s, but at the very least, was Shohreh Aghdashloo not available?) They hired Fadwa El Guindi, a social anthropology professor at the University of Southern California, to play the role -- and she does well enough that it's not obvious she isn't a full-time actor.

While the Rom-Leeta story doesn't hold up so well today, the rest of this episode really does, as a moving look at the burden of hiding a secret from friends for years on end. Plus, it's a great springboard for all new kinds of stories for Julian Bashir. I give the episode a B+.