Julian Bashir

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Character
Name: Julian Bashir
Occupation: Starfleet Doctor
Title/Rank: lieutenant
Location: Deep Space 9
Status: alive
Relationships: romantic relationship with Ezri Dax; friends with Jadzia Dax, Miles O'Brien and Elim Garak.
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Other: Memory Alpha entry.
Julian on cover of Salutatorian 1, by Stephani D. Etmanski
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Doctor Julian Bashir is one of the main characters in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, played by Alexander Siddig. He is Deep Space Nine's Chief Medical Officer.

In Canon

Bashir starts out as a TNG-like character: young, brilliant, oversexed & over-enthusiastic, far more naive and idealistic than most of the rest of DS9's staff. He even has a teddy bear, called Kukalaka. Later, he is revealed to have been genetically engineered as a child. Many fans assume this means that his naivete in earlier outings was just a facade, but this assumption is not required by the retcon.

Aside from Kukalaka, his closest associates on the station are the polar opposites, Miles O'Brien & Elim Garak -- the one "plain and simple", the other (despite his protestations) anything but. Julian has a classic buddies relationship with the married Miles, featuring beer, darts and frequent trips down the holosuites to refight the Battle of the Alamo. On the other hand, you don't need slash goggles to see that Garak flirts with him constantly. He also has an enduring friendship with Jadzia Dax, which features unrequited love or lust on his side. In the final season he gets to hook up with Ezri Dax, in a move which left many fans going ewww.

Fan Perspectives

Blossom Morphine writes: The writers created him to be an imperfect character, someone who would grow throughout his time on the station instead of starting out being the perfect officer. Bashir was brilliant, beautiful, kind, and wanted adventure. He fancied himself someone capable of handling any situation, and was very talented in many areas, both physically and mentally, but socially inept. He was by no means a pure character, but he was still rather naive, especially for being part of a military organization, not to mention a little arrogant.[1]

Butterfly writes: Julian Bashir seems simple in the beginning, too -- he's the brash young doctor with too many brains and not enough sense. But as the years pass, his bravado is shown to be true bravery, and his arrogance to be as much façade as truth. He chose to be a doctor, chose to make saving lives his life's work. He chose to work not in the heart of the Federation, but on what he thought would be on the outskirts, what he assumed would be an unimportant space station.[2]

The revelation of Bashir's genetic enhancements had a mixed reception among fans. Some felt betrayed by the change, while others welcomed the complexity it brought to the character or felt it explained earlier contradictions in his character. Regann writes: [T]he genetic enhancement arc, though handled clumsily, was the saving grace for the Bashir character, who had been written so unevenly and sporadically throughout the five seasons before it, a complicated mess of contradicting traits that didn't add up. But then they did, because we knew that there was two Bashirs -- the public persona he created and the Julian inside, dealing with the deception his life was built on. There may even be three Bashirs, if we count the un-enhanced "Jules" in our tally.[3]

In Fandom

Bashir is one of the most popular characters on the series. In a 1995 poll including all Trek characters, he was the highest ranked DS9 character and one of only three DS9 characters to reach the top ten, coming in at number seven.[4] He's also very popular with fanwriters; nostalgia writes that he's easily ... the most-written character by far.[5] According to her, he's also commonly held to be Trek's only bisexual character,[5] and he certainly lives up to that reputation in fanfiction. Given Bashir's mixed-race heritage,[6] his popularity perhaps runs counter to the perceived fannish bias against non-Caucasian characters.

In slash, he's most frequently paired with Garak; Garak/Bashir is by far the most common slash pairing in the DS9 fandom and is still being written. There's also a large following for the buddies coupling of Bashir/O'Brien (aka BOBslash), which also includes threesomes and love triangles featuring Miles' wife, Keiko and/or Garak. BOBslash generally tends to lie on the vignette end of the spectrum, while G/B inspires anything from drabbles to novels. Bashir also gets slashed with characters from other Trek series, especially Tom Paris.

In the fandom's heyday, there was also an almost equally prominent strand of het which pairs him with Jadzia (usually referred to as Julian/Jadzia to distinguish it from the pairing with Ezri Dax). Bashir/Ezri did not find favour among fanwriters, and tends to appear only to be repudiated in favour of the author's favourite brand of slash. Ezri gets to die heroically a fair bit as well.

Gen fiction about the character is also very common, and is often angsty. Nostalgia lists awful epic Bashir Torture in which the good doctor is beaten raped by wolves as one of the main DS9 cliches.[5] Other topics include his genetically engineered status and his interactions with Section 31.

Fanon & Tropes

  • Autistic Julian: Very common fanon in the newer wave of DS9 fans. Fans point to his social awkwardness and the genetic enhancement plotline.
  • Foot Fetish: Due to a throwaway canon line about his previous girlfriend, Palis Delon, having the most remarkable feet, some fans headcanon Bashir as having a foot fetish.
  • Trans Julian: Although still a minority, there is a not insignificant amount of transfic of Bashir. Some fans cite a line in canon that implies he could carry Keiko O'Brien's baby.

Example Fanworks

Fanfiction

Slash

Het

  • A Dead End, by dilly -- Julian/Ezri short that dissects the relationship
  • Intifada, by nostalgia -- dark vignette; Julian/Ezri
  • examples of Julian/Jadzia required

Gen

Fanzines

Bashir-focused anthology zines include:

Garak/Bashir

Nonfiction

Newsletters focusing on Alexander Siddig, the actor who portrayed Bashir:

Additional Art Gallery

Meta/Further Reading

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Archives

Author Sites

Fanclubs

References

  1. ^ Ship Manifesto: Especially the Lies: Garak/Bashir (accessed 7 October 2011)
  2. ^ Ship Manifesto: Julian Bashir/Miles O'Brien (accessed 7 October 2011)
  3. ^ Liars Make the Best Lovers (Garak/Bashir, DS9) (accessed 7 October 2011)
  4. ^ Brenda S. Antrim 'Netchatter', in Multi-Species Medicine #18
  5. ^ a b c Crack Van Overview: DS9 - TrekCrack for Grown Ups (accessed 7 October 2011)
  6. ^ His mother, Amsha Bashir, was played by Fadwa El Guindi, who is Egyptian by birth[1], his father, Richard Bashir, by Brian George, who has part Indian heritage[2], and Siddig himself is half Sudanese[3]
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