OK, so I ended last night with DS9 Episode 516, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", which was at once an attempt at a series crossover (hey, it's the bald doctor from Voyager! The Trek bald quota lives on!), and a character study on Dr. Julian Bashir, who had up till this point suffered from a great deal of underdevelopment and being very uninteresting. The setup is that Dr. Lewis Zimmerman is going to make a holographic doc based off of Jules' template, in case, say, your ship is stuck on the other side of the galaxy, you have to take the long way back, and you just cannot look at Robert Picardo's face for one more minute.
Ah, but the twist! Jules cautions the doctor to not talk to his parents, as his parents are not too close to him, and he considers it an intrusion, and... well, would you please not go anywhere near his parents already? So of course the very first thing Zimmerman does when he's out of Bashir's earshot is to make an arrangement to meet his parents. Because having a subject that is on edge and bristling with tension for his holographic template is exactly what is after. Yes, it becomes apparent very quickly that Zimmerman has no social skills to speak of. At all.
So here come Jules' parents, who are, appropriately middle eastern descended English people just like their kid. A notable thing about this meeting was the contrast between the accent of Dr. Bashir (an educated British Received Pronunciation accent) and his Dad (East End London Cockney). I guess this distinction was drawn to further illustrate the distinction between the level of culture and education between Julian and his father, but it was right about here that I had a great lightning bolt of revelation about how similar Bashir was to the characterization of Dr. Gaius Baltar in the recent BSG reboot. Exactly the same relationship between him and his father, including the change of the accent.
And it turns out the dirty little secret that Bashir has been hiding, which his witless parents unwittingly let go just like Bashir was afraid they'd do was that Bashir had been genetically altered in early life because he was something of a simple-minded child. This of course becomes a thing that Bashir is horrified to have become public knowledge because the Fed is concerned about a redux of that whole Khan thing. Yep, the Eugenics Wars of the 90's sure were a bitch. But in the end, all's well that ends well because Jules' dad decides to own up to it and take the rap. So he is sent to Space Jail in New Zeland for the exorbitant sentence of... two years.
I should point out that in the last three out of three episodes, someone has gotten thrown in jail, be it Federation Summer Camp Jail, or Jem'Hadar Fight Club Jail. Oh, and I DID joke about the Fed Jail being a summer camp where they took yoga and crochet classes... but as Papa Bashir is being hauled off at the end of this episode, he ANNOUNCES THAT HE IS GOING TO USE HIS TIME IN STIR TO WORK ON HIS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE DESIGNS!!!! Well, there you go. Say hi to Eddington for me! Maybe you'll be villa mates!
The big laugh of this one goes once again to Quark, while just being very "Quarkish" to Leeta. After Leeta insists that she can attract Rom, Quark's brother:
Quark: [about Rom] He needs a woman with a body and brains.
Leeta: I have brains.
Quark: Sure you do, honey. That's why I hired you. Now, eat up, and then take those brains back to the dabo wheel where the customers can get a good long look at them. (Pointing to her boobs with a fork)
I love this show.
No comments:
Post a Comment