[8.1/10] If “Our Man Bashir” had just been a Trekkie-style James Bond parody, it would have been enough. As with the episode featuring Dax’s past hosts inhabiting the bodies of her best friends, there’s something intrinsically fun about getting to see the whole cast act out of character. Putting them in such wild, colorful roles is the icing on the cake.
Don’t get me wrong, some of it is ridiculous. But then again, so is the source material. In truth, there’s elements of this that rub me the wrong way: the sexism, the objectification, the seduction-as-solution methods at play. Thankfully, there’s a few saving graces. For one, these are all, for better or worse, tropes pulled straight from the adventures of 007, so there’s the veneer of plausible deniability to write this off as the over-the-top parody it’s intended to be. For another, lord knows The Original Series and James T. Kirk in particular deployed plenty of these same tropes, so high-minded Star Trek’s clearly not above them. And most importantly, Garak is there to roll his eyes and sneer at the absurdity of these conceits of the genre, which helps give the writers a bit of cover as well, and the audience a bit of relief that someone is saying it.
To that end, the ridiculousness is a feature not a bug, and the fun of the persona-swaps are self-justifying. Kira as a femme fatale with a dodgy Eastern European accent is so far from her no-nonsense persona that it’s inherently amusing to watch her purr and coo. (And given the real life romance between Alexander Siddig and Nana Visitor, there’s some metahumor to their holosuite characters’ flirtation as well.) Watching Avery Books monologue and threaten like he’s Ernest Blofield is almost as much of a treat as seeing him turn into a truly creepy murderer in the Dax episode. Sultry scientist Jadzia, high class henchman Worf, and local goon O’Brien (whose character might be an homage to Brooks’ former role as Hawk?), don’t get as much to do, but are still entertaining outside of their usual personalities.
Along the way, “Our Man Bashir” delivers plenty of good Bond spoofs out the wazoo. The improvised weapon for the eye-patched bad guy. The comely allies and enemies. The globe-trotting adventure (even if it’s basically just four well-done sets). The tense but important card game. The villain trying to destroy the world and remake it in his own image. The suits. The weapons. The lasers. The bad guy monologues. Deep Space Nine does them all with panache long before Austin Powers took the stuffing out of the genre in a major way. And the only thing that makes it all better is getting to hear Garak’s running commentary on the quaint silliness of the whole thing from the perspective of a real spy sticking his nose into such holodeck buffoonery.
To the writers’ credit though, things are pretty exciting in the real world too. Like all “crazy holodeck malfunction” episodes, you kind of have to turn your brain off in order to grant the premise. And yet, “Our Man Bashir” includes arguably the most plausible explanation for how Sisko and company could end up trapped as holodeck characters you could have. The idea of transporter malfunction that requires their patterns to be stored somewhere on the station is a good start. And the notion of their minds taking up residence in DS9’s usual systems, while their physical forms are kept in the holodeck database since it’s used to doing that sort of thing has the whiff of plausibility and even cleverness, which is about all you can ask for from a setup like this.
More to the point, the episode maintains the stakes both inside and outside of the holosuite. In the real world, this is another among Rom’s growing triumphs. Him using his technical to knowhow to not only keep Quark’s entertainment boxes running on shoestrings and bubblegum, but also jury-rig the Defiant to interface with his janked up holosuite tinkering is a big win. With so much focus on the secret agent escapades in the main story, the subplot lets Rom, Odo, and even Eddigton shine with some creativity in how they bring our heroes back from their photonic waystation.
And yet, what really elevates this one isn’t the pastiche or the semi-plausible explanations for how the DS9 crew got stuck in the holodeck and how their comrades can get them out. It’s that writer Ronald D. Moore and company use the setup to explore something deeper about Bashir, Garak, and the relationship between the two of them.
Julian has been Garak’s babe in the woods thus far, an amusing but entertaining curiosity to the savvier Cardassian who helps this little stumbling baby deer through the world of espionage. So something about watching Julian playact his way through a four-color version of the kind of life Garak actually lived bothers him, even if he tries not to let on. Garak’s lines about “entering the wrong intelligence agency” when he sees Agent Bashir’s women and wealth is amusing, but on a deeper level, you can understand the former Obsidian Order operative’s distaste for turning his profession into a cheesy game, one played by the veritable naif who revels in the pageantry while ignoring the hardship and hard decision the real game requires.
Nonetheless, Julian proves himself possessing of more mettle than Garak might have thought. One of the clever things Moore and the writers’ room does here is add stakes to the silly adventure by introducing an “If you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world” conceit. Bashir can’t just blast his way through the bad guys, because if Sisko’s body perishes in the holodeck, the computer might lose it permanently. So when Garak urges Julian to defend himself in lethal terms, or be prepared to have to sacrifice one of his crewmates to save the rest, or himself, Dr. Bashir pushes back.
Until he doesn’t. Julian may not be willing to drop his own friends to save himself, even if their supervillain doppelgangers are coming after him. But he is willing to pull the trigger on Garak (as a warning or worse) to stop him from exiting the holosuite and potentially compromising the program. It’s a sign that for however much exaggerated flair Dr. Bashir might enjoy in this little fantasy world, when it comes to the real one, he’s ready, willing, and able to make the hard calls, even with his erstwhile compadre, to stand up for his values and his friends.
But he also shows that he understands Garak’s values too. The former spook’s speech to Julian serves as a deconstruction of the James Bond archetype. Becoming a successful spy in the real world (or at least, a different fictional world) isn’t about mere derring-do or courage. If anything, the opposite is true on Garak’s account. It’s about knowing when to quit, knowing when to accept collateral losses in the name of a greater goal or simple survival. It’s accepting when you’ve been beaten and slithering away to fight another day. Garak’s survived this long on the back of that principle, and while he’s chastened by Julian’s convictions, he’s still a walking tribute to the seedy underbelly underlying that naive exaggerations of the spy story genre.
It’s clever, then, when Julian mirrors Garak’s speech in his conversation with the big bad here. The monologue not only allows him to stall for time, but also provide a plausible explanation as to why a committed spy like him (in-universe of course) would give up and switch sides. There’s poetry in Dr. Bashir using Garak’s own words about needing to give up in the face of impossible odds to do just the opposite, while giving the patina of plausibility to his own ploy.
It works of course! I especially love the fact that “Our Man Bashir” does what a real James Bond film could never do -- let the villain succeed in their scheme of global domination. Dr. Bashir wins the day by breaking the rules of the genre, a clever solution as to how to vamp for long enough that Rom and company can extricate their friends’ bodies from the holodeck. Moore and company offer a creative solution to an unusual problem.
They didn’t have to though! That's what’s so impressive about this one. You could have had a simple holodeck malfunction romp, featuring everyone acting out of character in a heightened reality, and this one would still be a blast. Instead, Deep Space Nine goes a step further, with insights into character, a series of moral questions, and a story with real stakes despite the silliness at its core. It’s the perfect melding of Bond’s outsized adventures, with the commitment to delving one step deeper into everything that became the calling card of this seminal Star Trek series.
Sisko's over-acting is very bad in this episode. Borderline intolerable :)
Fairly entertaining episode which doesn't take itself too serious and yet is able to build Bashir's character.
That's the first full holo episode in DS9. In the Trek franchise, holo episodes often feel like cheating. Mere fillers with totally detached fantasy stories. Many holo episodes provided ample room for writers and actors to experiment though. Thus they were often great entertainment. Since this is DS9 it's not until mid fourth season that writers felt the need to resort to a holo episode. They had more than enough real world stories to tell. Aftee this episode, DS9 will tell holo stories on a regular basis. But don't be afraid. Most of these stories rank constantly among the best holo stories of the franchise. It's only a Paper Moon perhaps representing peak quality.
In a sense, this episode follows the usual holo playbook: actors can play different characters, the story is a a bit silly, it features well known fictional characters from world literature or real figures from world history, safety procedures fail and somehow the crew's fate depends on the events that play out at the holodeck (either because crew member can actually die there or Holo characters become sentient and go rogue). But while writers used all of these standard elements they created a unique and very fun holo episode that is maybe among the best holo episodes of the franchise. To start with, it's one of the few episodes, Bashir is credible and likeable and shows his talent for comedy. Easy right? Give him a different character to play and he manages just fine. Plus, I personally like Bond movies. I like the franchise's earlier silliness with its over the top psychopath villains who seek world domination and concoct the craziest plans (always involving lasers). Thus I always liked Austin powers. Thus I like this episode's parody approach. I don't mind how insane and cliche filled the plot really is. I accept this 'cause ultimately that's the fictional plot Bashir chose to experience and it's certainly on par with the craziness of an average Bond movie. In the end this whole story doesn't take itself too serious and neither should we.
There's also an awesome dynamic between Garak (who's always a joy to watch) representing the real spy and fake spy Bashir. Garak seems to be genuinely shocked how Bashir imagines spy work - he doesn't get that this is fiction. While Bashir balances fiction and actual danger with astonishing levity, Garak is concerned and recommends a less playful approach. They are a formidable duo. Kudos to Kira who is a convincing KGB agent and Sisko who is actually the paradigm of a mad villain. He convincingly exhibits the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. Well played. Dax is also a joy to to watch. Sadly she is basically same old Dax : a sexy nerd. Sporting glasses and a white smock, eventually letting her hair down (literally), this could very well be her starring in the opening scenes of a bad adult movie. If her character's stories don't discuss the peculiarities of her race, it's always (and often exclusively) her sexiness that has become an overused plot device. I don't think that does her justice. However, writer can always blame that part is mimicking Bond's misogynistic plots. They are not even wrong.
Back on the station, it's primarily Eddington and Rom who save the day. It's one of the few episodes in DS9 in which Eddington actually gained some depth - he's and will remain the least developed Star Fleet officer aboard. I still think Eddington should have more such episodes so that his betrayal later in the show becomes more shocking. How they handle his character is one of the few weaknesses of this show as far as character building is concerned. As far as Rom is featured: this episode is just another hint that he's a constantly underappreciated genius (who only lacks confidence). This part is also quite enjoyable. Although that's actually the part where lives are saved through incomprehensible techno magic (the usual sauce involving transporters and buffers) I'd consider this the B-part of the story. However, A- and B-plot are cleverly intertwined. In theory, the notion of buffering persons in memory banks that in turn mess with the holo deck procedures could be an interesting notion. ... perhaps if they added some witty philosophy to it. But how it's presented here is laughable. However, it ups the stakes for both the A- and B-plot which otherwise could have been a purely fictional adventure with limited implications in real life. But as I said: don't take the spy story nor the science behind the transporter accident too serious and you'll enjoy this episode very much. Or let me put this way: if you like the silliness of Voyager's Cpt. Proton, you'll enjoy this episode as much.
PS: "Mona Luvsitt, Anastasia Komananov, Honey Bare" - That's Mike Myers levels of trolling :-) Two years before Myer's masterpiece. I still wonder if he knew about this episode.
I love Star Trek, but how did these ppl ever achieve space exploration..how many times is the warp core about to breach? And they are always locked out of the saftey systems? Or the safety systems malfunction altogether? And for the Defiant to be a cutting edge warship, it too suffers from the same ailments ...along with getting blown to shit ever other episode!! lolol
I forgot why I was so weirded out when the Doc in "Strange New Worlds" said that buffers could save a persons pattern essentially infinitively.
It was the Plot of this Episode, which is entirely based around the Idea, that EXACTLY THAT is not possible as patterns degrade in the buffer if not used immediately (which leads to them being saved in Julians Program).
Review by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2017-10-20T20:25:12Z
What pure, joyous fun this is. A pitch perfect spoof of James Bond and spy shows which has its tongue firmly in its cheek. The details are all just so correct, from the bad guy leaving the heroes to die in a convoluted manner instead of just shooting them, to the full on sexist treatment of all females, to Dr. Bashir's initials just happening to be J.B. We also get the extra fun of having Garak, a "real" spy along for the ride to point out how ridiculous it all is. His line about working for the wrong intelligence agency is gold.
While this is a Bashir episode, the real stars of the show turns out to be Sisko and Kira in their alter egos. Avery Brooks absolutely nails it with a maniacal performance that is spot on for what was needed (I can never get tired of his, "HA!"). Meanwhile, Nana Visitor puts on the worst Russian accent in history and commits to it fully, making everything she says (intentionally) hilarious. The way she pulls the file dossiers out from the bed is fantastic.
Worf as a baccarat playing henchman is great, so I think that leaves O'Brien as the only character who's left underused (and, ironically, gets Colm Meaney to play the kind of role he's done in a lot of action movies).
The episode just sends up every trope of the genre expertly, and then completely turns things around for the finale in which the hero switches sides to join the bad guys.
Finding ways to make the holodeck malfunction at this point must have been a difficult task, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was sick of it, but this worked in every way. The writers were clearly having a ball with this one, and the names used are fantastic, 'Mona Luvsitt' being my favourite.