Why the most important relationship in Star Trek is Garak and Bashir

“Star Trek” is full of strange friendships between the pair, starting with the short-tempered human Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the half-Vulcan Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Kirk and Spock were a great duo because of how well they balanced and learned from each other, showing the deep bonds that can develop between very different people. Even Spock is the one who helps Kirk Beginning to understand his racism against the Klingons In “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, it is shown that even after decades together, the two still have things to teach each other. Their friendship is a truly beautiful thing, but there is one notable factor: they are both in Starfleet and from Federation planets. They may be very different, but they are never hostile (unless something strange happens, Like that whole bon far thing).

Then there’s Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Elem Garak (Andrew Robinson) from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” It is unlikely that the two were friends aboard the space station Deep Space Nine. The station was formerly called Terok Nor and was run by Cardassians during their occupation of the nearby planet Bajor, which had just regained its independence. Garak is the only Cardassian left on the station: an outcast tailor and possibly spy. Bashir is the Federation’s golden boy: a (genetically enhanced) human doctor whose work is so impressive that he’s being used as a model for Starfleet’s new medical holograms. Garak and Bashir have a very deep and complex friendship, and because of the breadth of their differences, they have the most important and powerful relationship in all of Star Trek.

Gene Roddenberry’s vision for “Star Trek” was one of a utopian future, and the Federation was supposed to represent the best of humanity. In “Deep Space Nine,” long considered a strange and dark offshoot of the series, the aliens aboard Deep Space Nine represent the ugly truths of humanity. Not only that, but the aliens were often at odds: Although Roddenberry never wanted “Star Trek” to be about war, the show dealt with the harsh realities of conflict with the Dominion Wars, which forced… Captain Benjamin Sisko abandons Starfleet ethics In order to save millions and millions of lives.

Strange characters like Ferengi bartender Quark (Armin Shimerman), Garak and the mutant Odo (René Auberjonois) presented a very different take on Starfleet, with moral shades of gray that were outside the realm of other “Star Trek” shows. No one exemplified moral ambiguity quite like Garak, who had to be completely despicable in every way simply because of who he was: a member of the Obsidian Order, the Cardassian spy organization, something akin to Nazi space reptilians. He was never completely evil, however, and over the course of the series and his friendship with Bashir, he began to do things for seemingly selfless reasons, contradicting his nature.

In an interview with TrekMovie.comRobinson explained that he likened Garak’s exile in Deep Space Nine to that of a Nazi officer remaining in Jerusalem, asking himself “What is this man doing here where he is universally hated?” In order to connect to the character. As we begin to learn more about Garak and his past, he becomes less evil and more tragic, a perfect foil for the almost perfect Dr. Julian Bashir.

Dr. Bashir is young, optimistic, and a bit naive when we first meet him on “Deep Space Nine,” and he meets Jarak in the third episode. The two hit it off right away with a flirtatious, quarrelsome kind of friendship in which Bashir desperately tries to solve the mystery of Garak’s true identity and Garak tries to get into Bashir’s pants (more on that later). Bashir is a bit arrogant but this is understandable, as we later find out that he has been genetically enhanced and is smarter, stronger, faster and more resilient than most humans, although he has had to hide this fact because genetic modification is banned in Starfleet. He’s more of a human being than a human – a serious, loyal young man who loves a good mystery and has a Holocaust program where… He pretends to be a character who is basically James Bond. His best friend in the whole world is engineer Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney), the most important man in Starfleet history, and together the two represent the best that humans can offer the Federation.

Bashir and Jarak’s friendship begins out of curiosity on Bashir’s part, as he tries to learn as much as he can about the eternally mysterious Jarak. He is quite certain that Garak is actually a Cardassian spy, and often picks on Garak’s words to try to convince him to expand into the art of espionage. It was only after Garak nearly died from an addiction to a device in his brain that the Order had implanted to keep him calm during torture in the season 2 episode “The Wire” that the two truly became friends, and their relationship deepened.

In “The Wire”, some of Jarak’s walls begin to collapse slightly due to the withdrawal of chemicals produced by the device, and he says to Bashir, “My presence in this station is torture for me, doctor.” He reveals that he was sent to Terok Nor and left there because he showed mercy to Bajoran prisoners of war, mostly women and children, allowing them to be released. However, he still has to lie a little, and the head of the Obsidian Organization, Inbran Tain (Paul Dooley), explains to one of Bashir’s investigators that Garak has an incredible talent for obfuscation, and that most of his lies contain a seed of truth. .

Eventually we learn that Tain is Garak’s father (although he never admits it publicly because Garak was illegitimate), and he is as cruel as one might expect. In fact, Garak suffers from a severe case of claustrophobia which likely came from locking Tine in a closet for hours at a time when he was a child. However, it is clear that all he wanted was his father’s approval. Until then Garak has done some pretty terrible thingsHe was raised by one of the most terrible people in the galaxy and never really knew anything different until he was sent into exile and met Bashir and the other humans on Deep Space Nine.

Bashir helps Garak learn to be a better person, to some extent, with greater caring and compassion. He begins doing things to help others even at his own expense, such as helping Quark’s renegade Cardassian ex-girlfriend escape. By eating lunch together once a week for years, Cardassians and humans begin to rub shoulders with each other. In the third season episode “The Die is Cast”, Bashir tells Miles that Garak made him think of lunch as “a kind of arena for philosophical debate”. Many friends would never challenge each other the way Bashir and Garak do, but their differences push them to be fuller, more complex people.

So Bashir helps Garak become a better person and develop meaningful relationships, but what does the good doctor gain from that – besides the fun of trying to spot the cunning Cardassian? Well, besides brain training, Garak actually helps Bashir develop a bit of a survival instinct and hone his spying skills. In the episode “Our Man Bashir” in which the two characters are stuck in Bashir’s James Bond-esque holosuite without using safety protocols, Bashir prevents Garak from potentially killing the other crew members in order to survive by shooting Garak, grazing him. . For the first time, Bashir proves to be as dangerous as Garak, and this raises the spy’s appreciation for him. It’s kind of funny, but it also works out for Bashir in the end because he ends up dealing with him later Starfleet’s own version of Obsidian Order, Section 31The hard lessons Garak learns help him endure.

Bashir and Jarak’s understanding of the world is best demonstrated through their conversations about literature. Garak prefers Cardassian epics in which people live dedicated lives in service to the state, while Bashir appreciates mysteries and tragedies such as Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” However, Garak cannot understand this, because he deduced very early on that Brutus would betray Caesar. Bashir tries to explain that the tragedy lies in the fact that Caesar never imagined that his best friend would try to kill him, and Garak laughs, saying that it is a farce rather than a tragedy. In Garak’s world, those closest to you are more likely to stab you in the back. But he learns to trust Bashir, and vice versa, which is powerful.

Throughout “Deep Space Nine,” there’s a fair amount of flirtation between Garak and Bahir, but it’s never fully addressed because ’90s television wasn’t ready for hot, gay alien love. Robinson believes Garak is “sexually ambiguous” and believes his motive for getting to know Bashir was initially sexual, he said. TrekMovie.com:

“In that first scene when he met Dr. Bashir, it was clear as a bell — and this was my choice — that he was sexually attracted to this handsome young Starfleet doctor. And even though they didn’t explicitly pursue a gay character, that ambiguity around Garak remained, and it was appropriate.” When they wrote about his mystery: Is he a tailor, a spy, what is he?

While Robinson says he was never asked to tone it down, producer Rick Berman is known, too Preventing Garak from being overtly eccentric in the series. However, the following year, Friend and Robinson did just that Perform fanfiction together According to the SidCity YouTube channel, in the readings, Gurg and Bashir are romantically involved. (The two actors are good friends in real life.) In the fifth season of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” alternate universe versions of 3D Garak and Bahir marry each other, with the actors reprising their roles (in animated form). It was very satisfying for fans who always wanted to see them together as a romantic couple, but it didn’t make any assumptions or changes to the original “Deep Space Nine” timeline, making it a perfect way to say goodbye. Two very complex characters.

Even if you’re not a fan of “Garashir” (as the pairing is called), it’s impossible to deny the strength of their friendship. Garak was unlike any other Star Trek hero — a morally ambiguous alien with an allergy to honesty — but he and Starfleet’s most idealistic doctor somehow managed a bond as deep as any other in the series. Star Trek is about finding common ground and seeing ourselves in each other, and Jarak and Bashir are the strongest and best examples of that idea.