Star Trek: Deep Space's Nine's popular James Bond episode, "Our Man Bashir", was the shot in the arm that saved the character of Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig). The 10th episode of DS9 season 4, "Our Man Bashir" was smartly timed to release just a couple of weeks after Pierce Brosnan's first Bond movie, GoldenEye, released in November 1995. And, just as GoldenEye revitalized 007 for the 1990s, "Our Man Bashir", did the same for DS9's charming doctor after a shaky start where Bashir was nearly dropped from the series.
Dr. Bashir was one of the principal cast members of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but he was not a character fans initially took to heart. Fresh out of medical school, the young and brash doctor became DS9's Chief Medical Officer but the initial concept of the character didn't quite gel with Siddig El Fadil, as the actor was then known (he changed his name to Alexander Siddig before DS9 season 4). Bashir was intended to be a "hunky young doctor" because E.R. was a massively popular series on NBC at the time, and Bashir was meant to be DS9's answer to George Clooney. However, fans found the boyish and inexperienced Bashir more irritating than a heartthrob, and Julian's romantic storyline with Lieutenant Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) didn't catch fire as the writers hoped.
While it took Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a couple of seasons to find its creative footing, Bashir was nearly fired from the series early on. As Siddig said in the Star Trek oral history, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, "Bashir was very unpopular... this watered-down romantic hunk, which I was billed as, was very far from it." The actor also credits Star Trek's head honcho Rick Berman for fighting to keep Bashir on the show: "Rick Berman actually had to protect me because [Paramount] wanted to fire me after the first season. I just wasn't as popular as they wanted." However, by DS9 season 4, executive producer Ira Steven Behr was given full creative reign over the show and he turned Bashir's fortunes around with the brilliant James Bond-parody, "Our Man Bashir".
An ingenious bottle episode packed with cheeky 007 references and double-entendres, "Our Man Bashir" finds Julian trying to indulge his Holosuite fantasy of playing a gentleman spy in the 1960s when Garak (Andrew Robinson) joins him, much to his chagrin. A transporter accident aboard one of the runabouts then turned Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks), Dax, Major Kira (Nana Visitor), Worf (Michael Dorn), and Chief O'Brien (Colm Meaney) into characters in the "Julian Bashir, Secret Agent" program. Bashir and Garak had to defeat the game's Bond-like world domination plot without accidentally deleting their friends, thereby killing them.
But along with featuring Bashir's inimitable banter with Garak, "Our Man Bashir" instantly revitalized the Doctor into a more confident and debonair character. Bashir's fantasies of playing a suave secret agent bled into his role as DS9's top surgeon, and Julian emerged from the episode as a far better character in the eyes of Star Trek fans. As Siddig himself said in praise of Ira Steven Behr and "Our Man Bashir":
[DS9] clearly became Ira's show... Bashir grew up overnight with the James Bond show, "Our Man Bashir". That was the moment where it was like, "You've been complaining about this guy. Tomorrow, you won't." And they were absolutely right. They turned a lot of America's opinion of me on a dime just by delivering that show... And from that moment on, I was altogether more serious, more complex, and more attractive in an archetypical sense.
The improvements to Bashir didn't stop there. Along with highlighting his deep friendships with O'Brien and Garak, as DS9 progressed, fans learned the Doctor was actually genetically-engineered and far more intelligent and capable than he previously let on. This cleverly recontextualized his earlier portrayal as the Doctor "holding back" so that no one would expect he was an enhanced human. Bashir would later come to supervise other genetically-engineered misfits, become embroiled in Section 31, and, by the end of the series, Bashir survived the Dominion War and fell in love with Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer). Thanks to cosplaying as James Bond, Dr. Bashir became the character he was always meant to be and he is a prime example of how Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took bold chances to create some of the most complex and fascinating characters in all of Star Trek.