5x16 Doctor Bashir, I Presume?

[8.6/10] Dr. Bashir was once my least favorite character on Deep Space Nine. His personality could effectively be summed up as “egotistical horndog.” There was a patronizing element to his desire to do “frontier medicine”. And, not for nothing, Alexander Siddig wasn’t very good in the role. Even aside from his struggles as the everyday character, remember his awful turn as a possessed villain in season 1’s “The Passenger”? Nothing about the guy worked for me.

And yet, somewhere along the way, everything got better. The writers found the friendship between Julian and Miles, which helped humanize and soften both of them. It gave him the partnership with Garak, which helped blunt the edges of Bashir’s “babe in the woods” routine. They moved on from his pursuit of Jadzia, which always bordered on uncomfortable, and let him grow into a more mature member of the senior staff. Every show needs some time to figure its characters out (hello Parks and Recreation* fans!), and DS9 made the most of it with Dr. Bashir.

But it also has to be said that Siddig found his voice in the role. “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” asks a lot of him. He has to play opposite Julian’s parents, with whom the good doctor has a strained relationship. He has to convey the idea of someone with a dangerous secret he’s deathly afraid of getting out. And he also has to convey the sense of someone still wounded by his past, but who reaches peace with it. None of that is easy. I don’t know if the Dr. Bashir of season 1 would be up to it, either in terms of writing or performance. But Siddig pulls it off brilliantly, a sign of how far he’s helped advance the character since the series began.

Which is important because, in many ways, “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” is a referendum on the character. In some ways, it’s literal. Julian is being considered for a new “Long-term Medical Hologram” program, and its architect needs to gather information about him. So it’s fun to see the talking dead interviews with his friends and colleagues on the station, in some ways acknowledging the rocky place where he started but also how far he’s come. Th chance to dive into what makes Julian tick, necessary to build a hologram with a bedside manner, gives the audience the chance to reflect on Dr. Bashir in the same way.

The holographic examination is half the fun though! Because who should be doing the research and investigation but Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the creator of and model for Voyager’s EMH! That’s right, we’re getting a rare crossover between Voyager and Deep Space Nine! (Between this and the EMH rubbing elbows with Dr. Crusher in First Contact, Robert Picardo gets around!)

To that end, I’d say that “Dr. Bashir, I Presume” is one of the few, maybe only, episode of DS9 that’s essential viewing for Voyager fans. (The only other contenders are the Maquis-focused episodes.) We get our first chance to meet the real Dr. Zimmerman, and I love the ways in which he’s subtly different from The Doctor on VOY.

He’s a little gruffer, a little more curt, a little more plainly egotistical. There’s touches of where The Doctor began on Voyager before his time with that crew and willingness to grow sanded down his edges a bit. Seeing the man who created the EMH helps give us insights into, well, why The Doctor is the way he is. And not for nothing, we see that, in contrast to Voyager’s Doc, it turns out that Dr. Zimmerman is kind of a horndog himself.

That becomes relevant when he starts courting none other than Leeta, who is mooning after Rom, but ready to move on when it seems like he doesn’t care enough to make his move. I like the fact that Zimmerna is relevant in both major storylines here, serving as the instigator of Dr. Bashir’s problems in the A-plot, and the fly in Leta and Rom’s ointment in the B-story.

In truth, I wasn't as crazy about the B-plot at first.. There’s something well-observed about the way that Rom and Leeta clearly like one another, but Rom being a retiring nerd type means he can’t quite muster the courage to ask her out. The depiction of it, though, becomes rather broad and sitcom-y, with Rom reaching cartoonish extremes before he can speak his mind. And Zimmerman nearly whisking Leeta away to Jupiter Station felt too fast and like an obvious fake out.

(Though I’ll say, there’s a weird sort of synchronicity to Zimmerman going to great lengths to get a pixie-haired young woman to leave her home with him on Deep Space Nine, while a version of The Doctor went to great lengths to get a pixie-haired young woman to remain at her home with him on Voyager’s “Darkling” in the same week.)

But I do appreciate the deeper explanation the episode gives for Rom’s nervousness. He’s not just a shy nerd; he’s someone who’s been burned hard after he caught feelings for Nog’s mother and was abandoned for someone wealthier. Candidly, I’d never really thought too much about Nog’s mother or her absence. I’d sort of assumed she’d unfortunately perished long ago. The reveal that she and Nog were in an arranged marriage, one that was the product of an arm’s length business transaction, only for Rom to get his heartbroken when he loved her but his love was unrequited, both deepens Rom as a character, and provides a more convincing reason for his reluctance to move things forward with Leeta.

That explanation also makes it that much more triumphant when Rom does makes his The Graduate play and finds the courage to tell Leeta not to go because he loves her. What can I say I’m rooting for those two crazy kids, and Dr. Zimmerman being surprisingly gracious (if still thirsty) about the whole thing speaks well of his character in a way not every action he takes here does.

In particular, he causes the biggest problem for Dr. Bashir. The last thing Julian wants is for his parents to be involved in this rundown of his life for the LMH program. But Zimmerman invites them to the station anyway, and kicks up a lot of bad blood and painful memories that Julian would just as well do without.

That said, the arrival and the very idea of Dr. Bashir’s parents gives Siddig some of the best notes he’s played today. The clear delicate discomfort with which he speaks about them to Zimmerman, his embarrassed awkwardness when introducing them to Captain Sisko, his gentle nudging of his father at the dinner table, his profound anger when things come to a head, and his lingering hurt from the choices they made about him, all show of Siddig’s range and show you the normally preternaturally confident doctor caught on his back foot by something with the power to shake him.

Writer Ronald D. Moore is one of the great Star Trek scribes, and he shows why here. The dynamic of the Bashir family feels so lived in and real. Julian’s father, Richard, is a fabulist who embarasses his son with tall tales and self-aggrandizement. Julian’s mother, Amsha, is a little softer, a little more down-to-earth. The push-and-pull between pride and some gentle cajoling from the elder Bashirs, and the reluctance and embarrassment of julian, calls to mind Worf’s interactions with his mom and dad in “Family”, one of The Next Generation’s very best episodes, and another one written by Moore. The discomfort and delicacy, the pointed prattle about his career choices, the simple fact of his parents calling him “Jules”, all create a lived-in dynamic between Julian and his mom and dad.

The convergence of lore, plot, and character in the conflict that follows is masterful. The lore is simple but startling. The beans Dr. Bashir is worried his parents will spill is that he was genetically augmented to be smarter, more adept, more able than how he was born. That blockbuster detail ties Julian’s wunderkind status to Khan and the augments, one of the most infamous villains in Star Trek history. Revealing this about Julian, and considering the ways in which it’s meant he’s been sandbagging in various ways up to this point, casts a new light on past choices and interactions.

(Even though the writers hadn't decided on this fact about him until now -- you’d think it’d at least come up in “Distant Voices” where DS9 explored his psyche and hang-ups otherwise.)

It ties into the plot in two ways. For one, the elder Bashirs only spill the beans because, unbeknownst to them, they’re talking to the LMH prototype, who they mistake for their son, passing the info along to O’Brien and Zimmerman. It’s a clever way to have the secret come out. The reveal also provides the stakes for the episode, because such genetic alteration is illegal in the Federation after the Eugenics Wars, and the truth coming out would mean Julian will be kicked out of Starfleet and lose his license to practice medicine.

Most of all, it comes through in character. Because Julian harbors serious ill-will for his mom and dad for doing this to him, no matter the life it gave him. He feels like he’s a science project to his father, someone meant to be improved as a legacy rather than accepted for what he was. His sense of hurt at the fact that his parents felt the need to fix him, that they didn’t love him as he was, and he was forced to become someone else against his will because he couldn’t be who they wanted him to be on his own is poignant and pathos-ridden. What a horrible way to feel, not just about your parents’ view of you, but about yourself.

What I appreciate in response is that the episode vindicates that view from Dr. Bashir, but doesn’t turn his parents into villains. Instead, his mother gives voice to the urge of all good parents -- to give their child the best life possible, and the explanation that their choice came from a place of love, not disappointment. The way Amsha speaks of her own insecurities, about whether she’d done something wrong,about whether his childhood struggles came from something he’d inherited from her, is just as heartbreaking, and makes you understand why they did what they did, despite the risks.

But it also comes through in notions of personal responsibility. Julian’s biggest frustration with his dad is the sense that he’s always looking for dodges, shortcuts, ways to avoid having to face the music. Part of why Julian wants to turn himself in and resign is to do the opposite, prove he’s not like his dad. That’s why it’s powerful when Richard himself does the same thing before his son has a chance to. Mr. Bashir serving a prison sentence to spare his son is a wonderful way to dramatize the idea that Amsha was giving voice to, that the Bashirs do love their son, and that Richard sees the error of his ways and doesn’t want Julian to have to suffer for his mistakes.

That’s a breakthrough. It spares Julain the worst possible consequences (and the approach accords nicely with a similar exploration on Strange New Worlds). More importantly it shows that both Julian and his father have the capacity to change, and serves as an affirmation of the way that Dr. Bashir is now, as valid and worthy of getting to continue his life as anyone.

I love that Chief O’Brien is another conduit for that. The way Miles speaks candidly to Dr. Zimmerman about what a wonderful person Julian is, with the caveat that he ensure his words not get back to Bashir, is unassumingly sweet and hilarious. Beyond that, he too accepts Julian, albeit with a different difficulty required for darts, helping reassure his friend, in his own way, that what matters about him -- his compassion, his care, his decency -- are the things that the geneticists didn’t touch.

When Dr. Bashir’s parents depart back for Earth, his dad calls him “Julian”, not “Jules”, a sign of recognition for who his son had become, and that taking precedence over who he used to be. With “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” viewers can do the same for Julian as a character.

The man who reckons with his complicated past, aims to face the consequences of who he is rather than evade them to prove himself different than his father, and who has forged caring friends aboard the station is not the same one chased after Dax and seemed too haughty for these rough and tumble climes. After five seasons worth of growth and development, Dr. Bashir is a new man, worthy of being a favorite, not an albatross. And the fans, and Deep Space Nine, are better off for his presence.