Matthew's Star Trek Page

Alexander Siddig- Dr. Bashir

Played By: Alexander Siddig
Rank: Lieutenant
Current assignment: Chief Medical Officer, Deep Space Nine
Full Name: Julian Subatoi Bashir
Year of birth: 2341
Education: Starfleet Academy and Medical School, 2359-2369
Marital status: Single
Office: Infirmary, DS9 Promenade

Starfleet Career Summary

2369 -- With brevet rank of lieutenant junior grade, assigned as CMO to Deep Space Nine under Cmdr. Benjamin Sisko

2372 -- Promoted to lieutenant

Psychological Profile: Report of Starfleet Counselor Telnorri, Bajoran Sector

Although medically brilliant, Bashir has come a long way in his personal development and maturity since arriving among the first Starfleet contingent at Deep Space Nine, his first post-Academy assignment, at age 27 on SD 46390.1.

Bashir first recalls wanting to be a doctor at age 5, when he sewed up his teddy bear Kukulaka as his first "patient." Five years later, while living on Invernia II where his father, a Federation diplomat, was stationed, a massive ionic storm caused the needless death of a same-aged native girl; it was an incident which he credited as his first real push to study medicine - though not before overcoming a childhood fear of doctors. Their seeming power over life and death led him to break the mystery by becoming one, when he realized he just wanted to help people. Even so, he seriously considered a career in tennis before realizing he was no pro. He was a star athlete in the sister sport of racquetball, though, and later played on the Academy team. Both Bashir's parents were still alive in 2370.

Bashir chose a medical career with Starfleet over his one true love in life to date, the ballerina Palis Delon, and the chance to be a chief of surgery in Paris within five years at the medical complex her father headed. He still sometimes regrets it, but he's not spoken to her since he left Earth. One of his forebears, a great-grandmother Whatley, was in Starfleet.

At Starfleet Academy, where the required reading helped him recognize the so-called mirror universe instantly, one friend was an Andorian, Erib. He also studied meditation with Isam Helewa.

In medical school, Bashir kept diaries revealing his fear of failure, his drive to graduate at the top and to have a career in Starfleet. He had designed a candy bar in med school whose nutritional value was even higher than that of Starfleet combat rations; interestingly, he was first in his class in pediatric medicine. With natural energy and stockiness, Bashir was a star player in racquetball, serving as captain of the Starfleet Medical School team when it won the sector championship his last year there in 2368-69; in the finals he defeated a Vulcan.

A trick question during orals at Starfleet Medical about ganglia dropped him to class salutatorian - but it was good enough to net him his prized DS9 assignment: heading for the "frontier" where heroes are made. The slip-up allowed Elizabeth Lense to finish first, later confiding she envied his long-term post. She had always confused him with an Andorian when mis-introduced.

Among the DS9 personalities, Bashir was immediately drawn to the Cardassian clothier Garak, hitting it off immediately with the former spy and his air of mystery. In ongoing debates at their weekly Replimat lunches, he discusses comparative literature, drama, philosophy and politics. A year Bashir saved his life, confirming his former spy career in ending Garak's toxic build-up caused by the shock of breaking dependence on the pleasure endorphins released by an altered pain-immunizing cranial implant. He braved meeting former Obsidian Order chief Enabran Tain to get the Cardassian medical data needed to synthesize new leukocytes in time.

His green cockiness and casualness at times has especially annoyed the less patient veterans like Kira and O'Brien. Under the effects of Lwaxana's Zanthi Fever he developed a crush on Kira - perhaps due to a latent attraction. He and O'Brien did gradually form a bond, helped along by his saving O'Brien's life; the chief even calls him Julian as he'd once requested. They played 70 games of racquetball in the first two months Molly and Keiko left for the Bajor survey in 2371; after 106 games their sport of choice becomes the simpler setup of darts. Still, he's a poor lunch debate substitute for Garak. When he feels his old Starfleet Medical rival Elizabeth Lense has snubbed him, he got drunk with O'Brien and sang "Jerusalem." In 2372 he wrote a holo-program for he and O'Brien, role-playing RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain during Earth's World War II.

Bashir's earnestness was not mistaken with Dax, for whom he developed a crush en route to DS9. He ignored her aloofness and even patient amusement and for a while misjudges Sisko, feeling him a fellow suitor. Though that crush lingered for some time - he loaned her the diaries he kept in medical school so she might understand him better - he eventually developed a strong fond friendship for her. The hardest act he's faced was cutting Jadzia's link to Dax at gunpoint and forwarding the symbiont to Verad, its hijacker, while frantically keeping Jadzia alive afterward against all odds - including a dressing-down of his Klingon guard. He later saved her again, taking the risk with Sisko to uncover the Joran Belar scandal at the Symbiosis Commission on Trill.

Echoing other single career officers, he feels marriage only leaves behind a family destined unfairly to worry about him on duty. Significant romantic encounters, aside from his "true love" of the ballerina Palis Delon, included a brief but warm affair with the Elaysian Ens. Melora Pazlar in 2365 and an ongoing current relationship with Leeta, a Bajoran Dabo girl at Quark's.

His was the body kidnapped by dying Kobliad criminal Vantika to house his consciousness, and after a usually fatal telepathic assault from a Lethean, he fought through a resulting coma back to consciousness with an hallucination peopled with his friends to represent personality aspects. He's watching his weight at the time of Dax's zhian'tara in late 2370.

He considers himself a history buff but is not big on 21st-century Earth, calling it too depressing. Though an aficionado of food such as Klingon racht, even alive, and Vulcan plomeek soup; he doesn't like beets. He once saw a "memorable" exhibit of Seyetik's huge murals on Ligobis X and has learned about Bajoran music since arriving on DS9. Urged on by Garak, he has tried Cardassian literature but finds it boringly predictable - including Cardassian enigma tales, as opposed to Terran mysteries. He also likes live theatre, but feels human plays of the last century are in decline. Tennis is his favorite sport, even though he played racquetball in college, and still does with O'Brien, as well as darts. He also loves puzzles.

Professional Assessment: Report of Starfleet Medical:

Bashir's accomplishments as a young doctor, much less Starfleet officer, are summed up by his Carrington Award nomination in 2371 - the youngest in its history - for his "audacious and groundbreaking" bio-molecular replication work. Bashir reportedly tried valiantly not to expect to win despite the best well-wishes, feeling himself far too young to win a career-recognition award. Despite that, he had worked on an acceptance speech.

He is cool in a medical crisis and will firmly take charge; he keeps a medical kit by his bed and won a commendation for his rescue of three ambassadors touring the wormhole area during a fire. He was close to discovering his own cure for the aphasia virus before succumbing, forensically discovered the secret of Ibudan's cloning, and wasn't fooled by a death-faking parasitic infection. Sometimes, though, his medical skills may go to his head. Other medical accomplishments include opening the hospital of Bajor's first but short-lived Gamma Quadrant colony and bringing to life the once-discredited theory of neuromuscular adaptation. His paper on immuno-therapy applied to a case study of T-cell anomalies on Bajor was also impressive.

Bashir reported that his medical conscience was wrung out over medical miracles, experimental drugs and the ethics of prolonging life when he brought the critically injured Bareil literally back from the dead long enough to finish the Bajor-Cardassia peace talks. The doctor wisely drew the line at a full, radical positronic brain implant.

Personal Commendations: Report by Capt. Benjamin Sisko, DS9/U.S.S. Defiant

Apart from his medical routine, Bashir trains to be a well-rounded officer, having taken engineering extension courses at Starfleet medical and worked to improve his tactical skills, phaser marksmanship and even melee ability. He can handle standard Runabout scanners, long-range sensors and the shield controls sight unseen on the Federation freighter Norkova, and even repaired the computer power system on the downed Yangtzee Kiang; he also eventually learned enough to discover the original size of deleted files, and can write holo-programs.

During his second year at the station he could pilot a Runabout alone, even in combat, and assumed the Defiant's sensors at Tactical in O'Brien's absence and took over the sluggish helm to implement evasive patterns. He was wounded by energy-weapons fire while rescuing the beaten Kira from The Circle, then led a successful guerrilla band into capturing the first six "POWs" of the would-be Bajoran coup on DS9. He learned surveillance techniques from Garak and once tried them out on Quark while Odo's away. During the initial Dominion invasion scare, he lead a drill team sweeping the Promenade and saved Odo with a well-hit phaser to his attacker during the Klingon boarding attempt.

Professional Assessment UPDATE: Report of Starfleet Medical, SD 50500:

Dr. Bashir continues to rack up an impressive record in medicine, both in the research lab and in the field. We are incredibly impressed with his action to single-handedly cure the plague on Boranis III in just three days, and cite him for the assistance offered at Ajilon Prime early in 2373 during the Archanis Sector skirmishes with the Klingons. His improvisation to save the life of the O'Brien baby with a fetal transporter transplant in to the Bajoran major was also well done and should be a standard for study in years to come in the field of both transporter applications and cross-species reproduction.

However, we reserve judgment on his controversial paper proposing that prion replenishment could be inhibited by quantum resonance effects, and leave it to further study to shed more if any light on the subject.

Even so, Dr. Bashir continues to prove himself an all-around model of the Starfleet physician, and should be considered for future upgrades to the EMH development program at Jupiter Station.

Personal note: Capt. B. Sisko SD 50415

Though it did not win him any accolades, Dr. Bashir's victory late last year in controlling the Quickening plague for a planet's next generation after Dominion bio-tampering was an emotional milestone. I cannot gauge the effect of this long sobering struggle, but this CO can tell it took a toll. Julian has been a changed man since then, and while we have always appreciated his camaraderie and talents I feel we all have been the better for it.

Meanwhile, it seems I owe my life at least two times over during the past year to our good doctor: once just for the sport of his "secret agent" holo-program. And from his subsequent confidences it seems I don't owe Mr. Garak anything for the help.

As for the second incident, I cannot fault him for preserving my neural system over the promise of the "visions" I was receiving a few weeks ago regarding Bajor's future, much less my son Jake for authorizing it. I would likely have done the same thing for my father, had I been in Jake's shoes. Still, the passion I felt, the universe I sensed, has been taken from me, and I feel myself taking it out not on Jake but on the doctor -- a action I know in my head is wholly without cause or merit. Still, it is there, and I will have to deal with it. In no way is it my intent to allow that event to affect our future dealings, or his opportunities here on the station or in Starfleet. I would be happy to share his Tarkalean tea anytime.