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Julian Bashir

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Character
Name: Julian Bashir
Occupation: Starfleet Doctor
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.
TACS (1996)
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Dr. Julian Bashir is one of the main characters in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. is Deep Space Nine's Chief Medical Officer.

Rick Buickel, from Doctor Julian Subatoi Bashir, This is Your Life Too, reprinted in 2001 in Bashir... Julian Bashir (1996)

Bashir was portrayed by Alexander Siddig.

He's very popular with fanwriters; nostalgia wrote that he's "easily ... the most-written character by far."[1]

Some fans believe that Bashir is bisexual. [1]. And others believe he is trans. [2]

Given Bashir's mixed-race heritage,[3] his popularity perhaps runs counter to the perceived fannish bias against non-Caucasian characters.

From a fan in 2003:

Genetically enhanced chief medical officer, and commonly held to be Trek's only bisexual character. Worked with the 'Jack Pack', a group of genetically enhanced misfits he was supposed to make normal. Failed at that. Quite badly. Also got roped in to Section 31, the Federation's shadowy CIA-type espionage organisation. Likes playing spy and gets self-righteous when he has to actually be one. Pined after Jadzia for six years and shagged Ezri in the final episode. But his big relationships were the flirty one with Garak and the bizarre are they/aren't they "friendship" with Miles. Sleeps with a teddy-bear called Kukalaka. (No, really.) [4]

Short Canon Description

Bashir starts out as 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.

Fandom

Pairings and Relationships

Aside from Kukalaka, his teddy bear, his closest associates on the station are the polar opposites, Miles O'Brien & Elim Garak.

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.

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. There's 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.

He also has an enduring friendship with Jadzia Dax, which features unrequited love or lust on his side. 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.

Fan Perspectives

2000

Gabrielle Lawson wrote:

I write about Julian Bashir. He intrigued me right from the start, even when I had to cover my eyes because he was being such a dork in the beginning. I saw his potential. And I think they, the PTB, were fairly successful in having him explore that potential. He grew out of being a dork and became a very popular and fairly well developed character. Fairly well? you ask. Well, yeah. I may be biased, but I think they could have done more.

[snipped]

Julian Bashir's history was slowly unfolded after 7 years of DS9, so my picture of him evolved as we learned more. This is where I ended up. Julian Bashir is a caring person, an idealist, someone who could never be "turned to the dark side of the force." He's a Good Guy, without question. He lives and breathes medicine. He is a doctor. That is his identity, not just his profession.

He had a hard childhood, first with his intellectual inabilities then with peer problems after he was enhanced. It's not easy being the smartest kid in class. It often leaves you lonely, outside the circle. Makes you a little awkward in social settings. Then at 15, which is hard enough, he learns he's a monster. Yes, a monster, because Julian Bashir learned about Khan in school, just like everyone else. He thought the same things everyone else did about genetically enhanced people. So he found out he was one. That's got to mess a person up. He thinks he's less-than-human, a freak, and a fraud. But he goes to med. school anyway. Love of medicine too great for the law? That's my guess. He goes anyway. And maybe he pays penance by screwing up the preganglionic thing and not being valedictorian. He beats himself up for his mistakes, not because he's arrogant, but because he believes he "shouldn't" make those mistakes. Someone designed him to be smarter. He doesn't have the excuse of saying he's just human.

He is forgiving as well, for the most part. He doesn't press charges on people when he could (O'Brien in "Hippocratic Oath" and Worf in "Afterimage"). He hides his truest feelings from others, not showing his hurt when he's hurt or his anger. He very rarely really gets angry (not out of righteous indignation). The only time we really saw him angry was when his parents showed up. And family can do that to anyone.

[snipped]

...let's move on to the successes in the show. Season 1, there were few. But they were there. Even in the first episode. One thing I loved about Bashir right from the beginning was "The Voice". He could make anyone obey him. Odo in the premier, an invading Klingon in "Invasive Procedures", a soldier pointing a gun to his (Bashir's chest) in "Battle Lines". Nothing stood between this man and his patients. That stood out and it didn't let go through seven years. This man is a DOCTOR. But he was also naive and arrogant. Or maybe not..... Years later we learn his secret, the genetic enhancement, and looking back, it explains so much of his behavior. He hid his real superiority behind arrogance, when he really had a very low self-image.

Bashir grew from the first season on, lost some of his annoyingness and became very likable. Jadzia said once, "You're a dear man, Julian Bashir." She was right. They, the PTB, made him that way and did a good job of it. But they also made him strong. He could carry a weapon as well as a medical kit. They made him funny, without always making fun of him. They made him smart in other other areas, engineering for example. He fixed a broken computer in "Battle Lines". He was a good athlete as well, captain of his racquetball team in med school. And he was surprisingly wise at times, like in "The House of Quark" when he gives O'Brien marriage advice.

They did a lot of bad things to him, but never broke him. He changed, grew darker, but never dark. Julian Bashir was still the Good Guy (with the exception of the much debated Extreme Measures -- which I say, he intended to not be a Good Guy but was actually preempted from DOING anything bad by Sloan's suicide).

Two of the best things they did to explore Julian Bashir were 1) making him genetically enhanced and 2) Section 31 (Sloan was the perfect "anti-Bashir"). [5]

2010

Blossom Morphine wrote:

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. [6]

Butterfly wrote:

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. [7]

2011

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 wrote:

[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. [8]

2012

More on Bashir's genetic enhancements:

i still wasn’t sure how i was going to feel about the whole genetic enhancement plotline once they actually brought it up, because i knew that Siddig el Fadil didn’t approve of it, and i didn’t know any of the details. but, in my opinion, this revelation not only makes Julian a much more interesting character, but it makes all of his previous character development FINALLY MAKE SENSE. nothing about Julian felt cohesive before, and i’d always felt like the writers just weren’t really sure what to do with him, or even who he really was. he’s arrogant!/he’s a bit of a bumbling sweetheart! he’s obsessed with being perfect!/he’s afraid of being perfect! [9]

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. [10]
  • Bashir and his teddy bear, Kukalaka
  • 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: Some fans cite a line in canon that implies he could carry Keiko O'Brien's baby.[11] [12]
  • hurt/comfort and angst
  • Bashir's genetically engineered status and his interactions with Section 31

Fanfiction

Fanzines: Bashir-focused

Vids

Sample Art

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

2001

Fanclubs

Archives

Meta/Further Reading

Canon Resources

References

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Crack Van Overview: DS9 - TrekCrack for Grown Ups (accessed 7 October 2011)
  2. ^ "I recognized my experiences and anxieties as a transmasculine person in how Bashir navigated his genetic enhancement. The specific language and stigmas surrounding Augments in Star Trek’s society were so familiar that once I began connecting the dots, I couldn’t easily see Bashir as anything other than a transgender man." -- Julian Bashir Helped Me Make Trek My Own, Archived version by Haden Cross on startrek.com. (June 24, 2020)
  3. ^ 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]
  4. ^ from teh nos' (nostalgia_lj) wrote in crack_van, DS9 - TrekCrack for Grown Ups ; archive link (2003-12-24)
  5. ^ from Writers and Writing (2000)
  6. ^ Ship Manifesto: Especially the Lies: Garak/Bashir (accessed 7 October 2011)
  7. ^ Ship Manifesto: Julian Bashir/Miles O'Brien (accessed 7 October 2011)
  8. ^ Liars Make the Best Lovers (Garak/Bashir, DS9) (accessed 7 October 2011)
  9. ^ Untitled Meta, Archived version by metatheatre, posted to tumblr (2012)
  10. ^ from Julian Bashir and his possible autism ; archive link (2021)
  11. ^ For example: JULIAN BASHIR in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is TRANS! ♡, Gifset. March 3, 2021. kiranxrys. Archived from the original on April 30, 2023.
  12. ^ Some fiction in which Bashir is trans is here.
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