The Delta Flyers - Our Man Bashir

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

The Delta Flyers is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell & Armin Shimerman. In each podcast release, they will recap and discuss an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.This week’s episode, Our Man Bashir, is hosted by Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill, Terry Farrell, and special guest Alexander SiddigOur Man Bashir: Crew members barely escape a runabout explosion that ruins the transporter and traps their patterns in Bashir's secret agent holosuite fantasy.We would like to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible, starting with our Production Managers, Megan Elise and Rebecca McNeill.Additionally, we could not make this podcast available without our Executive Producers:Stephanie Baker, Jason M Okun, Luz R., Marie Burgoyne, Kris Hansen, Chris Knapp, Janet K Harlow, Rich Gross, Mary Jac Greer, Mike Gu, Tara Polen, Carrie Roberts, Sandra Stengel, AJC, Nicholaus Russell, Alex Mednis, Holly Schmitt, Roxane Ray, Tim Neumark, Ian Ramsey, Feroza Mehta, Jonathan Brooks, Matt Norris, Izzy Jaffer, Andrew Cano, Francesca Garibaldi, Thomas Irvin, Jonathan Capps, Chris Garis, Sean T, & Cindy WoodfordOur Co-Executive Producers:Liz Scott, Sab Ewell, Sarah A Gubbins, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Elaine Ferguson, Captain Jeremiah Brown, E & John, Deike Hoffmann, Anna Post, Shannyn Bourke, Lee Lisle, Sarah Thompson, Holly Smith, Amy Tudor, Mark G Hamilton, KMB, Dominic Burgess, Normandy Madden, Joseph Michael Kuhlman, Darryl Cheng, Elizabeth Stanton, Tim Beach, Victor Ling, Shambhavi Kadam, David Wei Liu, Donna Runyon, Nicholas Albano, Andrew Duncan, Randy Hawke, Rob Traverse, Penny Liu, Stephanie Lee, David Smith, Stacy Davis, Heath K., Ryan Mahieu, Kevin Harlow, Megan Doyle, Keir Newton, Mariette Karr, Jeff Allen, & Tamara EvansAnd our Producers:Philipp Havrilla, James Amey, Jake Barrett, Ann Harding, Samantha Weddle, Paul Johnston, Carole Patterson, Warren Stine, Carl Murphy, Jocelyn Pina, Chad Awkerman, AJ Provance, Maxine Soloway, Heidi McLellan, Brianna Kloss, Dat Cao, Stephen Riegner, Debra Defelice, Alexander Ray, Vikki Williams, Cindy Ring, Kelly Brown, Jason Wang, Gabriel Dominic Girgis, Shanyn Behn, Renee Wiley, Maria Rosell, Michael Bucklin, Lisa Klink, Dominique Weidle, Jesse Bailey, Mike Chow, Matt Edmonds, Miki T, Heather Selig, Rachel Shapiro, Stephanie Aves, Seth Carlson, Amy Rambacher, Jessica B, E.G. Galano, Annie Davey, Jeremy Gaskin, Charlie Faulkner, Estelle Keller, Eddie Dawson, Greg Kenzo Wickstrom, Lauren Rivers, Jennifer B, Dean Chew, Robert Allen Stiffler, PJ Pick, Preston M, Rebecca Leary, Karen Galleski, Jan Hanford, Katelynn Burmark, Timothy McMichens, Cassandra Girard, Robby Hill, Andrea Wilson, Slacktwaddle, Willow Whitcomb, Mo, Leslie Ford, Joshua Shields, Jim Poesl, Daniel Chu, Scott Bowling, Ed Jarot, James Vanhaerent, Nick Cook-West, Shawn Battershall, Natalie Swain, Brian Heckathorne, Mark Johnson, Nelson Silveira, Ming Xie, & Gordon WatsonThank you for your support!This Podcast is recorded under a SAG-AFTRA agreement.“Our creations are protected by copyright, trademark, and trade secret laws. Some examples of our creations are the text we use, artwork we create, audio, and video we produce and post. You may not use, reproduce, or distribute our creations unless we give you permission. If you have any questions, you can email us at [e-mail] Sponsors:* Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/TDFSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-delta-flyers/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Delta Flyers' Journey Through the Wormhole with Quark, Dax, and their good friends, Tom and Harry. Join us as we make our way through episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Your host for today are my fellow Trek actors, Terry Farrell, Robert Duncan McNeil, and myself, Garrett Wong, and very, very special guests. so pleased to have him, the one and only, Sidig El Fadol, or Alexander Siddig, or Sid, as we know him. Any of the above. I'll answer to any of the above. Even hey. Just say hey. I want to jump back to something we talked about before we started recording. Yeah. So what I want to ask you is,

you mentioned that you just watched this episode for the very first time. Yeah. How did that feel? like because i know terry's had that experience of watching episodes in this podcast for the first time and it's a very different emotional it was quite emotional i mean it when i first watched it because i kind of you know compartmentalized my my time on on star trek and it's like that's gone you know get used to your next life yeah and um things will never be the same uh you'll never ever have a nine to five job again like that. It's just really kind of relatively easy money, hard, hard job to get. But once you're in, the door, you know, it's, you know what you're doing for the next year,

which is such an unheard of privilege for an actor who, as you know, we just, we just have to just up and leave. And we can't tell, you know, can't promise even our kids that will be anywhere for anything important in case we're working somewhere else. Yeah. I always equated to being in the army, except obviously it's not as rigorous. Right. Or dangerous.

If you could get pedicures and manicures in the army. Yeah. Then acting's for you. But it was emotional. I mean, I watched that first few frames. And first seeing everybody's name. And obviously, Renee's like the second name up. And Renee's not with us anymore.

And that was really sad. and then, you know, seeing all the old faces that I sort of took for granted and what saw everything, you know, because when you're doing it, you know, I was in my 20s, Terry, you were in your 20s, and you take it all for granted. We were the youngest on the set.

Yeah. Well, other than the kids. Rather than Syrac. We were the youngest adults on there. Yeah, indeed. So for Robbie and for Terry and for Armin, when they started watching episodes of their respective show, they all had this newfound appreciation for the show,

a sense of pride for the show, a sense of accomplishment for the show that they didn't have before re-watching it. So I want to ask, did you also have that same feeling? I absolutely do. I mean, it's funny because, as you know, as every Star Trek fan knows, especially as Star Trek fans who are, you know,

in their teens or above in the 90s. So old Star Trek fans, no friends, guys. Of course, great to spray. you were not cool in the 90s watching this show you were incredibly uncool in fact cool in your own household you were cool to your family and friends but as a genre as a fan base

it's like Trekkies are kind of weird and that's now obviously flipped on its head because the whole world has flipped on its head and we can list them anyways it has and it's so a lot of it was kind of kind of burying it because you know maybe I'll never get another job if I shout about this too much

and a lot of Star Trek actors especially from that era I had trouble finding work right after Star Trek people were like no but thank you you're over exposed or whatever it was they said or we don't really want to associate

with ourselves with that franchise I remember losing jobs just as recently as like five six years ago because of that. And it's crazy because you weren't an alien. I mean, it wasn't like you had weird makeup. You were playing a doctor. It's really strange.

Yeah. But if I had weird makeup, I'd probably find it easier to segue because I was... Yeah, I think sometimes that makeup hit the actors. They were more anonymous and able to move on after that. It was just so touching to see everybody. And it was a... I just saw this one episode. and I was just really, really bowled over by it, really, really impressed,

really impressed with the production, actually, as much as anything, as much, the actors I know and they're fabulous, but the production is really good. I mean, the episode I saw, the Armand Bashir episode, which I now know is season four, episode 10, because I just bought a copy of it, is like a little mini-bon movie with the very similar. So the pastiche really works. The satire really works. And then on top of that, you've also got, you know, people on the station scrabbling around trying to resurrect these guys who misbeamed. So it was really touching, actually. It's also interesting how you brought up how 90s fans, fans of DS9 and Voyager, were unpopular in the general public or at school, you know,

those teenagers. They were kind of ridiculed for being Star Trek fans. And then we as actors from those 90s shows, like you said, after the ending of our shows, we're a bit ridiculed by the business in terms of, oh, no, we're, no, we can't use you. You were part of that franchise. So there's that sort of parallel that goes on that I just think is interesting. And Deep Space Nine and Voyager, actually, to a slightly lesser extent, was unpopular, even amongst the unpopular people. Yes.

Yes. Oh, my goodness. D&G being the prize cow, right? Everyone loved that. Well, the truth is, going to Becker, I can't complain about that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you went straight. Right.

But what I want to say is I would watch a series with you and Andy as the spy team. Oh, absolutely. There's two guys. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was great. We love that relationship. We love that relationship.

We love Bashir and Garrick. I did too. I treasure Andy's presence every day. But, you know, a little tidbit. I never told you, Terry. Ted Danson rang me before he cast you. I was really happy to say, you were great. Oh, thank you.

He did his due diligence. He called around it. Oh, my goodness. All right, birthdays, Robbie. Who do we have? Well, our first birthday is to Dominic Burgess, our lovely, longtime Patreon supporter. Dominic, happy birthday on July 29th.

Happy birthday, Dominic. Happy birthday, Dominic. Happy birthday, Dominic. Dom. Next up, we have Tim Newmark, who does not give us his exact birthday, but it's sometime in the end of July. So sometime during the end of July, happy birthday, Tim. Happy birthday, Tim. Happy birthday, Tim, whenever it is. Whenever it is. Maybe he doesn't know. Oh, Terry. That's another, yes. Thank you for bringing that up. That's a possibility. You're right. Well, have a great birthday, Tim. Have a great end of July birthday.

Time for our poetry synopsis, starting with Robbie McNeil, with his Limerick of Our Man Bershear. Yeah, so, Sid, we do a little creative arts here in our podcast. We do a little poetry synopsis to try to summarize the essence of this television show in the art form of a limerick. Oh, you're putting big word out there. That's a big word. I really, I don't follow the exact rules of a limerick, but it's in the limerick zone. So here we go. All right.

Julian's hollow time gets complicated when Garrick appears. The transporters are a mess. So Rom volunteers. Earth may end up a lava inferno. What we need is a hero. His name is Bashir. Julian Bashir. yeah beautiful beautiful that's really my synopsis yeah i love it good job all right here is my

haiku doc loves to play spy cisco does doctor no proud rom is magiver nice wow that's pretty good yeah i'm kind of surprised that's really really good yeah i'm kind of surprised That's really, really good. Yeah. We probably just reeled that off last night, like, in a couple of minutes. Yeah, how about this morning? Yeah. There you go.

Yeah, very good job, though. It's interesting, though, with the poems, as kitchy as it is and silly in some ways, it sort of forces you to sort of reevaluate what is the essence of this episode. Exactly. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. It is. This teleplay is by Ronald D. Moore, story by Bob Gillen, directed by Vinlish Colbert, Mr. Colby himself.

The Baron. The Baron to you DS-Niners, and we never called him. We just had Colby, so. Yeah. Did you call him? Did you call him? No. I didn't.

Oh. You didn't. Oh. It's Armin. No. Yeah, maybe Armin, but I'm, you know, I do what I'm told with directors, and I mess around with it. You don't get on their bad side. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very dangerous to give him nicknames. Yeah. All right, guest stars Max Gredenchik is Rom. Kenneth Marshall as Michael Eddington. Special guest star Andrew Robinson is Garrick. And, of course, we have two co-stars in this. Melissa Young as Caprice and Marcy Brickhouse as Mona loves it. Loves it.

Loves it's very funny. Oh, I love that. Yes. Ron did a great job. Yeah, both of those characters are in the holodeck, of course. A little bit of true. Trivia, the title of this episode plays homage to the 1966 Daniel Mann film, Our Man Flint, which itself is also a parody of James Bond.

The producers of DS9 were very wary of doing a holodeck malfunctioned story due to the fact that it had been done a number of times on the next generation, so they were wary of it. But writer Bob Gillen's unique pitch of using the transporter to store the past, of the crew in the Holodeck Matrix won the DS9 producers over. Most D-SPAS-9 episodes were shot in seven days with the occasional episode taking eight, similar to Voyager, but our man, Bashir, actually took nine. And according to, yeah, I know, Robbie, we never did a nine-day episode ever. It doesn't feel like it should have, I wonder, why here's why, here's why, Steve Oster, he said it had.

the longest production of any single episode. The main reasons for this were the elaborate stunts that took time to set up. Like the initial scene, the guy being thrown through the blank to last window, a lot of time to set up and reshoot after, you know, you have to do another take. That takes a lot of time. There was also a lot of complex sets, many of which presented their own limitations. Mount Everest. Yeah.

Mount that, yes, they came in one day. The mountains were not painted with snow. They had to take those down and repaint them. So a lot of overtime went into this for a set construction. Another little bit of trivia is that MGM, who owns the James Bond franchise, they were not happy about this episode when it aired and shot off a letter to production stating all of their complaints. How funny, because of James Bond, because they didn't want to make fun of it or have fun with it.

I mean, people just tuning and think, has James Bond changed? Is there a black of James Bond? Now, guys, I want to throw out when we watched Sort of Caylis and Steve Oster took that day out, see, they added the day. Could you imagine this episode without that extra day? Yeah. It wouldn't have been as good if they really needed it. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Just saying. I'm just saying. Let's just jump right into this episode. We start off with a man being thrown through a plate. last window. So this episode already starts off with the bang. Great stunt. We realize this

is in the Hall of Suite. Bashir is there. And I just love how he uses the champagne cork to knock the bad guy out. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that was totally improvised.

What? Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. You're a good actor. We believed you for a second. We did. We did. I paused. I thought you are so lucky because how often do we improvise?

Like, never. Never. Was that your experience on the show that you had to be word perfect? Like a lot, everyone we talked to and on Voyager was the same way. Yeah. You could not change a word. You didn't deviate. Yeah.

No, dead letter perfect, Lovy. It was frowned upon. Yeah. Well, our hard of reason. To be fair, part of the reason is that that, A lot of the stuff we were saying, especially Terry and myself, was just very technical. And they researched it, figured it out, and then we had to get it right. That's the nearest thing.

I mean, obviously, I think a bunch of scientists really like the show because the technical stuff is hypothetically made sense. Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, you two had the two hardest jobs in terms of dialogue because every Trek show, it's the science officer and the doctor that have the hardest Technobavile to get through. So you two were the ones. We were the ones. Sid, is it true?

Armand has told us that you and Colum were able to learn your lines in the morning. You would come in reading off of the sides or the pages. And by the time you were shooting, you would have it down. Armand would... Yeah, we'd learn them during rehearsal. Yeah.

Jeez. Wow. You were good. You know why? Because we were lazy. We were just lazy. And they're very smart men. We went out in the evenings. We had fun and then we went to work and then went, oh, got it in the lines. Did you go out with Column?

Did you and Column hang out? We used to go out. Yeah, we used to go to, there's a bar called the Formosa, which is an Irish bar. At the end of my street, actually, on Gardner Street. I don't know if it's still in Los Angeles. I went there with him too. And it's also where we could smoke inside because we were smokers.

Oh, yeah. And when they stop smoking, I remember going there with Column and him lighting, I'm like, we're going to get in trouble. He's like, don't worry about it. Do you want to hit? I'm like, yeah. But so we'd have a hit. And I'm like, where do I blow it? Yeah.

He made me go and buy the drinks. And I went up to the bar and I said, I'll have, you know, two pints of ale, please. And the barman said, we don't serve your kind here. What? Okay. You're kidding, right? column and I was like, dude, they don't, I don't, he set you up because you're English. Yes.

What? Wait, could I just rewind for sex? He was teasing you, though, right? He'd know, I don't know whether it was a setup. Oh, I would guess a column set you up. It has to be. He probably did. Totally.

The guy that flies backwards through the plate glass window, the heavy, the bad guy, he's the one with the patch that later O'Brien thinks that, yeah, he's. is Falcon, but it's obviously an actor playing Falcon because the holodeck hasn't been compromised yet. Right. Exactly. So this is the actual real character that we see. So, all right. Well, he kisses, Bashir kisses the girl, and then suddenly there is endless applause behind him, and he looks around, there's Garrick applauding. Literally endless. Andy just applauds and applauds and applauds. It doesn't stop. It's kind of like a joke that's funny, and then it's not, and then it's funny

again if you do it long enough? That's what it's like to me. It goes on and on. That is the moment I should have shot Garek. Yes. Save us all a whole heap of father.

Garrick is curious, you know, what he's doing and they go back and forth a bit, but Bashir agrees to let him stay if he just stays out of his way. Right. And while they're talking over there,

the girl walks out. Garik points out, oh, I think your date is leaving. Bishir goes to Chaser, and I love Garek's line at the end. Oh, this will be fun. What could possibly go wrong. What a great setup. And a point of order, I don't think it was stressed enough, and I did. Bashir stressed it, but not enough.

Just how out of line Garek was coming into my fantasy. You imagine having a fantasy and just turning around and go, Mother. Yeah, no, not cool, not cool. Yes, I can. What are you doing here? Yeah. I am getting right out of this bed.

Yeah, very inappropriate. You said it's illegal, guys. This isn't me. I fell in here by accident, but where are you doing here? But I didn't know that it's illegal. Your character says that. You said breaking into a Hall of Suite during someone's program is not only rude. It's illegal.

It's never been stated as that before, though, in Starved. I've never known. That makes sense, though, because you threaten to call Odo and have him arrested. Like, it is absolutely. It's rude. inappropriate and illegal yeah well we go into uh the still in the hollow program we're in bashear suite next it's this beautiful penthouse in so pretty cowloon yes just the second we're in the second scene and already there's a new set

yes so this is part of the nine-day problem that you guys had to you know just as a point of order we had a wonderful um design team on on deep space as did you on voyager and uh on The Next Generation as well. But Nathan Crowley, who was just in the art department at that time and Joe Hodges, they were both British, so they were friends. We hung out a bit. Nathan Crowley's gone on to win a bunch of Oscars for his designs of all the movies. He just won an Oscar last year for, I'm not sure what movie he designed,

but he works with the top directors in the world, and he's on his second Oscar. Wow. He's the biggest designer in the world, and he started in the art department on Star Trek. Right. For the whole of the run of Deep Space Nine, he was there. Wow. And before they had the computers to help them with all the digital enhancement, the way they do it now.

Oh, yeah. They had to all. I remember it's over 30 years ago. Yeah. We weren't calling each other with cell phones. Sid still had a beeper. I should look up what the movie was because that's actually more useful information. Nathan, who was the art director on Star Trek, went on.

as a production designer, as the boss, in 2002, he did Insomnia, then he did Batman Begins, then he, I'm just skipping through the Dark Night, John Carter, Dark Night Rises, Westworld, Dunkirk, the Greatest Showman, and he did Wicked just last year. So that's how he wanted to do Wicked. Wow. He did one guy. Wow.

So, and for the listeners out there, so if he was an art director on DS9, he was basically the number two. They were shared position number two, yeah. Yeah. So the production designer is the boss of that whole department. That's Herman, right? Was it Herman? Yeah.

That would be a big boss. Yeah. He was the big boss. And Joseph Hodges and Nathan Crowley were both the art directors underneath. I remember Joe. So they do all the negotiating and making and whips, snapping the whip at the construction crew and making sure everything's done to spec. Yes.

Because you have to actually have a kind of. architectural, some architecture to be art directors because of the fact that people actually walk and your sets are always practical. People have to use them. They can't collapse in the middle of a thing.

So there's a lot of art design, art directors have started their lives as architects. Wow. Well, that's amazing that he's gone on to such... He's gone on to be the biggest production designer in the world. That's incredible. Wow. Bravo.

Well, in this penhouse in Kowloon, we do also meet Mona Loves It. I love that name. What a name. It's a great name. Bashir's valet. She's a classic Bond girl. And Bashir tells us that she's programmed to have basically every talent possible. She's like a mathematician and speaks seven languages and makes clothes.

Flies jets and helicopters. Yeah. yeah and then there's things that he doesn't mention yeah they're all the above-the-line talents we yes exactly Mona loves it so it's going to be very sad later in our story when Mona bites the dust just keep uh-uh I know I'm getting ahead of myself you are Eric asked about the program Bashir fills him in we learn that we're in a cold war story and Bashir explains the British government pays for all that provides it all, which I love

Garrick's reaction to that. I think I joined the wrong intelligence service. And that's the other great thing about this episode. There's so many of these great one-liners, such as that. Earlier when you pop the cork, you said that the Dom, you know, 45 has such a kick or whatever. There's these tiny little bond phrases, bond-like phrases that just were lovely, absolutely.

So well done by the writers. Ron Moore did a great job. What do you have memories of Ron? You must have some thoughts about Ron. Romer? Yeah. Oh, he was really quiet, kept himself to himself. East as far as I was concerned.

He may have been in a laugh ride with everyone else. I think he was kind of blanking me. No, he was a lovely guy and very gentle, very thoughtful. Yes, very thoughtful. But, you know, we didn't have a lot of interaction with the writers except for the boss. So we'd obviously talk a lot with Ira. The writers would come to set occasionally, always usually come, for their show, they'd turn up,

but they'd hover and disappear. So they were not rock stars. They didn't want to be treated as rock stars. But they were rock stars because they came up with these astonishing ideas. I mean, this idea of keeping the entire neural network in a holosuite program is just a brilliant. idea yeah brilliant um so those those things are and they incredibly work incredibly hard to everything done um so but i i know he went on again to be one of one of the great showrunners of

the world yeah yeah it's just a great you know that the all of the star tracts are really just really great incubators for talent they always used to refer to it as a university for me because i didn't i wasn't i couldn't call myself an actor when i first started on Star Trek and nor did the critics by the way but then but after a little while I began to learn because it was a it was a you couldn't be fired easily and you so you got a chance to fail and young young people today just starting out really don't get that opportunity because network TV is very forgiving and that's gone yeah so nowadays you're in real trouble if you if you make mistakes which is a young person you're supposed to do so I would

I was, we were all really privileged to be a part of a team where, you know, the studio tried to fire me twice. What is it? Really? Berman said, no. And they were like, okay. Well, you mentioned the critics in the early on. We didn't, we haven't come across anything like that online. What critics?

What were they? I got my first review that someone showed me. They gave me a scrapbook of reviews. Not, not, not, I was hardly ever mentioned. But the one that I did notice that caught my eye was, oh, at the last. last line of the review was, oh, and Bashir throws like a girl. Oh, wow. Make up that what you will.

Oh, my God. I didn't think it was negative. I didn't think it was positive. I was like, no, it's, that sounds personal, actually. It's like, I hate Bacier. Oh, my gosh. I love. Actually, it's actually kind of an interesting story because it's one of the reasons why I

think that our man, Bashir got greenlit, because it got to revamp the character. of Bashir. She was supposed to fall in love with Dax. But clearly I wasn't cutting it in the producer's eyes. And, you know, because I just wasn't, you know, butch enough and, you know, like at that time, we were competing with shows like Melrose Place and 90210. And, Sid, are you talking about the first season? Yeah.

Because that was that, that's when I was told that they had, in the first year contract, you guys all remember this, you get hired for the pilot and they have a choice. They can let you go free and clear after that or between episode, after seven episodes, and then they can, again, at 13, so they can fire you after the pilot, after seven, after 13. And after 13, if they decide to use you, then they can't let you go without having to honor the entire contract. Right, right. Well, the studio tried twice to get rid of me And Rick just went, no, we have a plan for him

And it was a plan we kind of we kind of orchestrated It was that this guy was going to grow up on TV And that was the fun Wow A great arc, great story arc It really worked well Yeah But trying to fire you was based on just letters from fandom

No, the fan base were not impressed But they weren't particularly impressed with the whole show. So it was unsurprising that, you know, people really, people who really like the gung-honess of next generation and the kind of the really obvious archetypes of, you know, Jonathan Freaks, good-looking leading man and, you know, wise old captain and making sure the ship is steady and all of those sort of, you know. You said it well.

Archetypes is kind of perfect. I mean... These are the types. We didn't fit into that. We just messed it all up. And we didn't have a ship. But that's the premise of your show is... We had a commander.

Yeah, but the premise of your show is a bit of misfits on this space station. I love it. The premise is baked into these characters. They've got the perfect characters. Honestly, Sid, and these guys will back me up. When we first started watching DS9, Garrett and I have never seen this show. So this is our first time watching it. Yeah.

And I was on Team Bashir early on. I was hardcore Team Bashir. I loved your character. I love what you did with him. I thought you were the most, the funniest and the most charming. And I just, I loved your character, honestly. Thank you. I've since gone on to Team Quark.

I will be honest. I love Quark. Team Quark was, Team Quark was the first, was the most runaway, the most popular character on the show. Really? Oh. Yeah, because he was funny and he was, um, he was the one. everybody was like loved um and that oh i love him now i didn't get him in the beginning but i i've grown to love him in the farangies a lot yeah yeah yeah i do want to also comment about the way that you

put young actors having the opportunity to fail that broadcast network television gave young actors this opportunity i've never heard that stated so beautifully it's really a great and particularly on Star Trek, you talk about like they were going to maybe fire you, whatever. Star Trek takes time, like every series, whether it's Next Gen or your show or Voyager or Discovery these days. Star Trek just takes a little while to get everything right. And I'm so glad they kept your character. Thank you. Me too. Dax and all these characters. It allows the show to fail a little. Not on your shoulders, but on the Star Trek franchise. Absolutely.

And we can find our feet. And all the fans see different things. I mean, who would have known that, you know, Dax became, you know, an LGBTQ icon. Yes. Right. You know, these things we didn't know at the time. And that was just in her not being judgmental. Yeah.

And also the fact that you were actually both. sex is in one, which is something people love. Right. They really, you know, the trans community just are on, like, bowing down to that, to that character for doing that. I remember the time, though, that you weren't there for

the group photo and we were all asking where you were and I can't remember which production person, which producer was like, it doesn't matter. We're taking the picture now. But we were so freaked out that you weren't there. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I stayed out because I was

furious about the fact that we weren't getting paid for merchandising. Yeah. So I just walked out. And the sad thing was, they fired the marketer who didn't get me there. So because she didn't get me on that stage, they fired her. Oh, wow. That was a real lesson that my actions, however. Have consequences.

Yeah. For other people. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. We are now in a shuttle. We're in the runabout Orinoco, and Cisco and the senior staff are returning from a conference, like an off-world conference. And so they actually are just about to dock when all of a sudden all the systems start failing one after another. The warp core is about to basically explode, and it's time for them to eject the work core. but that doesn't even work because the ejection system is missing so they realized some type of sabotage has happened we later learned that is a small tiny fractured cardassian splinter group that did it but the problem is they're going to have to try to beam them aboard the station but during the beam out something happens they don't appear they just sort of appear it's a cloud of smoke that we see is when they appear it was almost like an old

of us. We're shimmering in. Start to shimmer in and then it just moved. Then we're gone. It was like a David Copperfield magic trick kind of a thing, smoke. It was kind of odd. That's the only thing I was like.

I was worried about the smoke because if you're beaming all these particles in and then reassembling them and then there's smoke. Yes. Which bit of boom is that smoke? There's particles and smoke. So when you get everyone back, someone's going to be missing an ear or a finger or something, yeah, and we blew it out of the window. Really smelly.

It's smelly, that hand. Okay. Very funny. And also, I found it interesting that Eddington is basically running the station because everybody had gone. So they brought in Eddington to be the boss. So he's running the place. Eddington's trying to figure out what happened. Odo arrives, tries to save their transporter patterns in the buffer.

They're really panicking. there's not enough computer memory to store all of their signatures. And so they're going to try and erase all this data from other parts of the computer, so they have enough room for the signature patterns, when suddenly there's a blackout and like a restart. It almost felt like the whole station is kind of like, boom. Generator power. Yes, yes.

Restarting. Yeah. And Eddington basically tells the computer to, you know, shut down any, erase anything that you have to to make room for these buffers. They have to do it really quick. Yeah, so the blackout, the restart of the computer or, you know, emergency systems. Eddington thinks they've saved every, all this, all the buffers, but he's not sure where it is.

So that's how we go out of the scene. I think we've got them. I just don't know where somewhere on the station. But didn't you kind of know? But we kind of. Yeah. I mean, if you watch enough Star Trek, where else are they going to go? Yeah.

Yeah, we've got James Bond on the holodeck. They're going to be in the holodeck. Unless we cut back to the holodeck and there's nothing in there. Oh, yeah, that's true. That would have been super bad. That would have been bad. But what do we do? Where do we go next?

To be sure's apartment, of course. What? Are you kidding me? We're back there. What? It's crazy. Garek's getting his outfit, his turtleneck, which I thought was very cute. Mona loves it

is helping him out because she can do everything she can sew clothes and and all the below the line she's a talented yes yeah you guys both look very handsome I'm happy that you changed

into something more comfortable and then we hear this noise Bashir turns he's ready for trouble and the wall turns around there's a bed it is Kira in a negligee or you know

satin gown on the bed and she has a Russian accent I love that she has a Russian accent took a weeks to put back yeah she's really really good at it yeah yeah what do you remember of that Russian like was that maybe we'll do it maybe we won't or what do you remember

no it was that was without unquestioned as soon as it came out everyone was like this is great that's exactly what we that's the right tone because it suits the episode so well. It's tongue in cheek, you know, it's, it's, she's not pretending to be Russian. She's pretending to be an actor who's pretending to be Russian. Yes, exactly. Yes.

She's really good at accents. Oh, my gosh. She's really good at this. Yeah. Here's a little bit, here's a little quote here from Nana. This is one of Nana's favorite D-Space 9 episodes and her quote, it was so much fun. That show was a joy to do. How many times, you know, is it a necessity to do a bad Russian accent?

I was in heaven. It was ideal for me. And to come out of a wall in a round bed, it just doesn't get better than that. I love that quote. True. And she looks spectacular on top of it all. I'm just now putting together the comment about the elaborate sets in the nine days. Part of the elaborate sets are these moving parts, which we don't normally do.

walls turning walls rising up and all of that kind of stuff yeah the wall with the guns on it yeah yeah yeah that's details yeah and i have a feeling and i may be wrong about the chronology and then i will will correct if if need be but i think we were together at that point nanar and i but no one knew it so it's kind of fun oh in the first season what year was it made what year was that one mate was that made is that four season 95 96 yeah we if it was the beginning of 95 if it was in 95 we were together and not everybody knew but it's possible that they did but there was a whole period of time that we were dating and obviously we didn't want anyone to know so we're doing all of this down on the down low you know wow everybody oh you kept it secret for a while then

for a while yeah because it's a work thing and Yeah, yeah. She, Nana, or Kira, is playing the role of Anastasia Komenonov? I think you can have to come on and off. Come on. Oh, come on and off. Yes, exactly. I got it.

I just got it. I just got it, too. Me too. Come on and off. You love it. You know, they're all subtle. And the way that Nana read the, I'm sure she did it. on purpose instead of saying colonel she goes colonel colonel like that again colonel loved it well

but sheer thinks that she that it's kira just playing a joke on him because garrick shown up so now maybe kira's there so he tries to shut off the holodeck won't shut down no he calls ops they explain that about this transporter accident and that they cannot shut off this holodeck program because it could kill everybody if they're if they're you know uh pattern buffers are stuck in the holodeck. So now the new rule, got to keep going, got to keep playing the game. He does say Cisco, Kira, Worf, Dax, and O'Brien all exist in the Hall of Suite database. And he signs off. And then back in the apartment, Kira explains this Russian mission, Kira, or come on and off, no, whatever it is, that one. It is come on and off. She does it so brilliantly. That one line when

She says, I wish, I wish I could relax you, but I am here on business and she reaches back behind her. Oh, that's so good. It pulls out the fold of her like that. Wait, there's more. That's more. There's more. There's more.

There's one more after that. Because it started so sexy and seductive. I wish I could hurt you, but I'm here on business. It was just like, oh, my God. It's so good. She does the file bit twice, which is brilliant. She explains about these artificial earthquakes. we learn about this scientist named Honey Bear,

which is Dax. Dax, Honey Bear. Dax as Honey Bear with the science glasses on. I love the look for Honey Bear. Honey Bear is kidnapped, we learn. And suddenly the door opens. There's Mona. What's her last name?

Mona loves it. Loves it. Mona loves it's there. But then she falls down on the ground with a knife in her back. that's part of the program though obviously i mean not no one else no one was weirdness going on no one was no real actors were hurt enough were harmed in the making of this harmed in the making of this holodeck um yeah she's got a knife in her back and then o'brien appears he's got a gun points the gun he's got the falcon patch on which i love yeah so maybe

she wasn't supposed to die maybe not i mean because right right It wasn't supposed to be O'Brien. I needed her talents. Yeah. She has a lot of talents. It would be a little too soon. Even in James Bond, they keep the women with the slave names until the end. You don't kill her like in the first 10 minutes.

Yeah, not in the beginning. He hadn't even had sex with her yet. Exactly. Not that we married to Bond to die early in one of the Bond fans. Yes, that's, yes. Yeah. Well, Miles is there as Falcon, the Falcon character with the eyepatch, just as about it is he's about to shoot Bashir. Kira says, no, wait.

That tells Falcon, just let me have one more kiss. And as he agrees, he steps away, they take, they have the kiss and she whispers earring. And he takes her earring. Very sexy kiss, by the way. Very sexy kiss. Yeah. Yes, that was method acting there. Because it was real kissing.

but just as he raises the gun Bashir tosses the earring it blows up into a puff of smoke to distract them and now the fight we're into a big fight classic Bond fighting I love the fight choreography and this was great I like the early moment when he says

let us have one kiss one last kiss and O'Brien answers why not I've always been a romantic at heart but to me he got a very funny line But he was saying that. So good. Well, they win. But Garrick's bleeding, which shows us that the safeties are off in this holiday now.

So in all these computer malfunctions, the safeties are off. And when Kira goes to shoot Falcon, Bashir stops. Or he goes, no, no, no. If you shoot Falcon, it would kill Miles. O'Brien, who is his pattern buffer is in the character. So we can't kill the bad guys here. Yeah. And this is where Garrick says, you know, in his wisdom of being a spy,

well, you're going to have to make some choices, Bashir. You know, you may have to let someone die. It's not a game anymore. And I love, I love Kira's like, who is Dax? She keeps repeating, she keeps repeating, who is Dex? It's very funny. Kira does say that Dr. Noah, who is in Paris, may be behind the honey bear kidnapping.

And so we're off to Paris. Off we go. Do we talk about the fact that if the character is killed, that the computer will erase their pattern? Do we talk about that already, too? Sort of, yeah. Yeah, that's insinuated. But yeah, that's definitely the case.

If one of these people even gets hurt, they might lose, we might lose them. Yes. And those stakes are the same for Bejir, too. Yes, yeah. You know, normally he plays this game, and if he gets killed or whatever, it's the end of that round.

Right. This is the end of the end of the round. Not today. No, safety's rough. yes new rules yep um we're out out back on the station in a corridor at this point and rom and eddington take off a panel i love that opening shot classic uh rick colby you know with a panel coming off and all that foreground he does such he's got such a good eye for for does yeah for directing he's really really good um but rham and quark are helping um edington he's

here and rom has rigged the holo computer with makeshift parts basically he mentions a spatula that he used which i thought was very funny by the by the way we are learning a lot about rome and how smart he is which yeah recent development because for three years he was not treated as oh he was just like yeah yeah yeah and this one takes it up you know a big a big jump yeah yeah in terms of his ability. He's a mechanical engineer. Yeah. Like a savant.

Yes. Especially using all these crazy parts to make it work. And it's not just a spatula. That's not the only kitchen utensil. If you look closely, there's also a strainer. Strainer is also used. It's so much Maguire here. I love it.

That's very funny. Eddington does find their physical patterns in the hollow computer. So their physical buffer is there. Right. But Quark mentions that, you know, their minds are so complex that they're being stored all over different parts of the computer system so it's not going to be as simple as just finding them in the hollow program they're scattered all over the computer systems all over the station yeah so they have to reintegrate the neural

energy which is all over the station with their physical patterns which is in the hollow holo matrix yes yep i do like that quark quark jumps in with some smartness here which doesn't often happened that he's got actual helpful contributions. Usually there's always an angle, but this was a little different quirk in this episode, which I liked. We go to a nightclub in Paris next, the joints jumping with go-go dancers in cages. Bashir, Kira and Garrick arrive at the club. They asked to see Dr. Noah.

And we see a shadow, their point of view, a shadow in the glass. I could tell that that was wharf from the shadow. I couldn't figure it out. I could see sort of it was a little. There was some stuff going. I'm like, that's got to be war. A little broad for anybody else. Yeah.

Now I'm playing the, all right, who's next? Who are we going to see? Who's Avery going to be? Who's Michael going to be? What characters are they going to play? It was a fun sort of play-along episode for the audience. Well, we find out that this is, it is Worf, but he is not Dr. Noah, as Bashir thinks he is.

He's Duchamp. Dushanp is sort of the associate of Dr. Noah. But, you know, Bashir is really intent on getting this meeting with Dr. Noah. So the only way that this is going to happen is if he can pay five million francs to Douchon. And so they start a game of Fakhara back and forth. And the funny part is in the very beginning when Dusham says, so where's your money? He pulls out one bill. And he's like, well, my mother.

Where's the rest of your money? He's like, in front of you, saying, I'm going to win all of your money. I'm going to win all your money. He's 10 francs. This is going to be a long game of Baccarat. Oh, my gosh. 14 days later. They're still playing.

You've got five o'clock shadow from not shaving everyone. By the way, 150 francs. 450 francs. By the way, Michael was smoking a cigar in the scene. Worf was smoking a cigar in the scene. Yes. And I couldn't remember, did Michael smoke cigars back then? Like, cigars were very trendy.

Something tells me he did. Yeah, they all did. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done it. But it was him and Franks and Lavar. LeVar. I remember LeVar was really into it. So was Bob Picardo on our show. He had a membership at that Havana Club,

and he was really into cigars. Bob was way into cigars, but he did not know how to blow smoke rings. Like, look, you notice that? He blew three smoke rings out at, in the very beginning. I was thinking, oh my gosh, Michael Dorn, good for you. That's hard to do. Professional cigar smoker. He's a professional cigar smoker, I feel. Yes. Well, we go back to ops. We learn about the Cardassian separatists here that they claim responsibility for this. Eddington in this scene says, you know, Quark was right. And I made a note, finally, some court respect. Finally.

No one ever says anything nice about quark. It's kind of like Nelix on our show. No one ever said anything nice about Nelik. They're going to try to use the defiant, though, to reintegrate all these patterns. That's their idea. So Rom says he'll have to reconfigure the hollow systems to work with Starfleet systems.

So that's going to take a little time. We go back to the Paris Night Club, back to the game of Baccarat. Bashir takes a card, and it's a four. So now his total of cards, equals nine, and nine is an automatic winner in the game of Baccarat. So he wins the five million francs. And he's ready to see Dr. Noah.

So Bashir says, when do we leave? War says right now and blows through his cigar, right? They showed that he was going into a cigar pack and one had a red band around it. He took that band off and then blew it. That's the one with the powder that renders them unconscious. That was my big contribution just now, was it. Yes, thank you. Nice detail.

Thank you. Thank you. This is a throw. This actually happened in a Bond movie, though, where one person, yes, it was a female agent that blew her cigarette into Bond's face, and he was unconscious. So, so almost in Bond films, yeah. Hey, Sid, do you play Baccarat? No.

No idea about the rules of Baccaro. I didn't either. I didn't know about the nine until you just said that. When they showed your cards, I was like, well, that doesn't look very good. Because I was thinking of 21 or poker. Yeah, I was thinking poker too. Yeah. It was very simply shot.

I don't know if you guys noticed, but it was just sort of this panning camera from Kira, down to the table, up to Michael. And he stayed in these tight shots that were just sort of panning and flowing. And again, I think, you know, it was very, simple but elegant coverage in this that's gonna set up and then you fell out of frame and the close-ups when you got the smoke in your face. It's very brave

actually because moving cameras is not big on the list of Star Trek things that they like. I mean not Deep Space Nine things. I can't speak for the other shows but because it's expensive and costly to set up you know you've got to lay down track and all the stuff

light the whole thing a whole thing has to be so when it's a one or like that someone flaps a line And it's like, oh, we've got to go back and start again. So, and Rick particularly didn't like, I mean, his golden rule was no one can ever cut on the move. It just hated anyone cutting on the move. So you had to bring the camera to a standstill and then cut. Yeah.

That fast MTV cutting on the moves stuff. Yeah. Did Rick, when you directed, did he go through all of those rules of his things like that? But he kind of let me know because what I did was, I was kind of a. of Pally with him anyway. And so he gave me quite unprecedented access. So I would sit with him as he was having his edit of each of the shows. Yeah. Oh. And he'd be, you know, talking into a microphone. So you're shadowing. Yeah. And so I would be on a couch with a big screen in front of us and he'd just go through. I want to clip 10, 10 frames off that, that take. I want this,

too much of this person. I don't like their teeth or something. But you know what I mean? He'll go through every minutiae. Just flick the show into shape. So I did mainly what I did. I didn't have to go and I didn't have to spend so much time shadowing. I just got to see that him just condense it, which was

like, that's the source. Yeah. You learned a lot from those sessions with him, I'm sure. Absolutely. I really enjoyed it. And I enjoyed generally, the shadowing in general, because I was a director before I was an actor and it was much more important to me

I was much more... I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. I don't think any of us knew that. Yeah. I went to an acting school because there was no such thing as a directing school in 1980,

whatever it was, 7. Never I went to school. But you could go to acting school if you could get in because it was really hard to get into acting school. So I got in and then just put all my energy into how does this going to work on. And then I did create a, we had a theater company afterwards. We did make it.

We made it work. But at one point, they found out that I was there to direct, and one of the teachers was furious. You just wasted a space. Someone who could have been an actor, could have been in this place. I think it worked. Well, I'm glad you continued doing it. Your acting career worked out.

And you sent a memo to that teacher saying, like, yeah, I think it worked out just fine for me as an actor. Yeah, he cornered me in the bar one day after school, because we were, you know, at 18 you can drink. So we were all in the pub. and he was like, you are the second worst actor in this school. And he went on and on and he was furious with me.

I don't know who the worst, I don't know who the worst or actor was. Wow, tough teacher. Tough teacher. Yeah, those ones hit home. Acting school can be one of the toughest places because... It can be. Yeah. It can be...

It was also beautiful to be around a bunch of people who all think the same way and who are very happy to talk about the kind of craziness of art, you know, about, like, you know, most people would say that's, that's, you're just being self-indulgent. You can't keep being in England, we call them, we're neurotic, yeah. And this, we could, we just talked art all day and the, the art of acting and the art of theater. And that was great fun. And we would, three years, day in, day out, with vacations, just, like a school course.

Wow. Well, the next scene we have here is in the Hall of Suites in a sitting room. We see there's a fire, there's a vase in the middle. We realize we're near some snow-capped mountains through the windows. Kira wakes up from being knocked out

in the previous scene. And she speaks Russian. She actually speaks a little bit of Russian at the top of the scene, which was great. I love that. Garrett comments on the decor. He takes a little shot at the decor.

He says, another decorator's nightmare, this era has a distinct lack of taste. So I love Garrick's aesthetic comments. He's always got like... An opinion. He really can be. He's such an asshole. He's the friend you have to, like, okay.

Is Garris? Yes. Oh, God. Is he going to offend everybody? He's going to have an opinion about everything. Everybody has a friend like that. You know, those... Yes. I don't know why.

We always have a friend that we don't like. Dude, and we all put up with that person over and over again. Well, Cisco finally arrives in his character, and we learned that his name is hip, Hippocrates Noah, which is what a wonderful name. Hippocrates Noah. I think Ira came up with that one. Yeah. Very good.

Yeah. And he was, his performance is tuned in. Oh, God. He's tuned in. He really was. Isn't he? Avery off the leash. He's off the hook.

He's doing like, huh. Yeah. Yeah, I think he loved playing this role. I think I felt like he had fun with this. He really did. Mm-hmm. Well, we go to a commercial break.

We come back. Sisko is first starts with a test for Bashir about the stones and the vase. He asks him, you know, kind of mentions this vase and bashir just goes off on the the rubies the tourmaline the sapphire the topaz um the chromian content of the rubies he knows where they're from how do you know quite interesting that and because i was thinking to myself when i read the script like huh i don't know this stuff how would i know this stuff it doesn't i'm not i'm not imbued with knowledge in my

holosuite program yeah i'm just you know i'm just dumb old bashear but it is a forerunner of of the fact that he is genetically enhanced. And that genetic, that enhancement is- We don't know this, yeah. Garrett and I don't know this. But it's a forerunner of it, because that kind of knowledge is the kind of thing he would have known

as an enhanced person. And I didn't know it either. But when I watched it this morning, I was like, oh, they gave me a clue. They gave me a clue, because I knew all this stuff, which is not my bailiwick, is not my expertise. But Sid. really well. You did, but, Sid, the way I figured it, the way I looked at it when I watched

this, I assumed that just as we all love our favorite books and we go back and read our favorite books, I thought this was maybe a favorite chapter of yours from this Hollisweet program that you had played it before and you had been in this scene before where you had to be knowledgeable about these jewels. That is even more rational. That's a much better explanation. I didn't realize that these characters existed in another form somehow. Yeah, you may have played this game before. That's how I assumed it too. That's well done. She said it's your program.

I like that. I like that. That's fine, Garrett. But I like SIDS because it's giving me a clue into something I didn't know about him. It was something It's what they did. We actually had a fight about it because once they enhanced the character

which was a surprise to me he suddenly was exponentially more knowledgeable and capable of, you know, mathematics that he hadn't been capable of before I had to really fight with the writers saying because he figured out while we were in the Defiant

and something was happened he knew how long a missile would take fired from point X to reach us given the velocity distance. Oh God. That's above normal Bashir's pay grade. Right. Yeah. But I understand what you're saying

then why weren't there more little tells all along the way. Yeah, I was I was kind of furious that they jumped it in my lap because I could have really prepped for that and also contribute it. Yeah. Well, yeah, and then it would make sense if that was like a unknown thing about your character. It should have been something that there were more little splashes of that. Yeah.

And every episode should have had something. Like Easter eggs. Yes, exactly. exactly so I when I saw that I thought that was an Easter egg but I obviously I think your rationale is much better okay but still Robbie and I are going to look forward to seeing superhuman computer this year yes I thought I thought because I was always I was always really nervous and conscious of the fact that I was one of the less popular characters so I always very cynically I always thought oh the show isn't doing well so they're going to

get someone in to do this and they're going to turn this character into that and then, and now, you know, data is such a popular character on the next generation, they're going to turn Bashir into a data so that people get their data fix from deep space. And I was really resisting that because it would open up a whole box of spectrum-related issues that just, we kind of needed a lot of care and attention if you were going to get involved in that seriously. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah.

Well, Bashir does recognize. that they're near the top of Mount Everest because of the geology of all this or the fact that he played the game before. Yeah, he played this game. Cisco calls it his island, though, and then he explains, and there's this cool

set change where the wall goes up. We see Dax and her scientists' outfit and her glasses working by this big Austin Powers map kind of vibe. He's a bravo to sec instruction. I'm sorry, that was awesome. Oh, so God. Good job. So good.

I applauded when it happened. I was like, so excited. We learned that he's shooting lasers. Cisco is going to shoot lasers into the Earth's crust. You know, his plan is to basically collapse the Earth's crust, let the oceans just wipe out humanity. And his island or his base on top of Everest will be an island at that point. He'll repopulate the planet, rebuild.

And he mentions he's got this great plan. and he also has the best security in the world. And he's invited all these amazing and tell all the greatest minds around the world. Yep. Yes, including Dax. Honey bear, honey bear. Honey bear, yeah. Honey bear.

Okay, so at the end of the scene, we also meet Falcon. Noah says he has the best security in the world, introduces his security. It is Falcon, who is now O'Brien. So, yep, that's, yes. It's O'Falcon. It's still O'Brien. But I don't think we've seen O'Brien in this role. Yes, we have.

We did. Remember the lady who got stabbed? The lady who comes again or whatever he means? Oh, that's right. That's right. Yes, her. Whatever her name is. Yeah, the lady who comes again, her.

Yes. I forgot her name. We saw him once. We saw him as Fulkin once. Mona loves it. Mona loves it. But now we know he's going to be on this island with Cisco too.

It's like now it's all, everybody's coming together. Right. We're back in the defiant transporter room and we see cables running all over the place. Comical. Comically. It's ridiculous.

It is ridiculous. Yeah. Rom has run cables from everywhere and he says he needs one more hour. And Eddington's responses, oh my God, O'Brien's going to kill me, which made me laugh. I thought it was weird. Yeah. Yeah, Rom's getting smarter.

smarter and smarter Yeah Back in the hollow suite We're in a cave now Garrick and Bashir Are tied up to the support beams of this laser machine Kira is not there though

She's been spared Sisko says That she's young and healthy And we'll need women like her To help propagate the second human race That's why she's not there And she's a spirited individual She is very spirited

He says once I turn this on I can't turn it off Nobody can turn it off You can't stop it so he flips the switch Populating the human race That at that pace is kind of glacial isn't it We've got Nana And maybe I mean we've got Come On and Off and maybe honey

Yeah How many we're at now We're four kids Yeah And maybe three go go dance Three go-go dancers, yeah. Really awesome bad guy bond line when Cisco says,

I'm sorry to stay cool, Mr. Bashir, when he leaves. The molten lava is about to appear. But this scene is important because it duplicates every single Bond film. Every single Bond film, the bad guy always leaves Bond in a situation where no one can see him die. So it's sort of like, well, and that he can escape.

So this is very similar to There's a Bond film where Bond is, he's basically tied up in the bottom of where the missile is going to launch. So the missile is going to basically fry him when it takes off. And here is going to molten lava, molten lava is going to be the deadly agent here. Again, very similar parallels to Bond movies. And there is a countdown clock in here in the scene, which we, at the end of the previous scene, it's at about five minutes. four minutes 59 seconds we come back after the commercial break and it's now three minutes 44 seconds so i love a countdown clock it always adds to high stakes anyway they're going to die and

they can't end the program or open the doors uh they you know they can't end the end the holodeck because it could kill the team you know all these pattern buffers that are stuck in the holodeck. So they're stuck. And that's when Dax enters. Bashir starts to flatter her, um, asked her to take her glasses off, let her bun down. Um, Terry, you did a very good job of being shy, the shy, smart girl. She did. I never went full bond girl. Never went full bond girl. I was still the, you did the, kind of a nerdy introverted kind of, yeah, a bond girl, which is not what you You did it so well. Yes.

So you had to do something different. Yes. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. You don't talk until this scene. Is this the first thing we see Honey Bear speak? Is that right?

No, I speak in, I'm speaking when I say, when we're back with Cisco in the very beginning when it's revealed the wall. It's revealed. I talk about our progress. Yes. A little bit there. It's like technical stuff. I would say this was, I probably had this memorized the first day I read it. I hardly have anything.

You don't have a lot of lines. I am not complaining. Yeah. Not by season for episode 10 would I complain about having a break? No. So happy to have a break. Okay. When you took off your glasses and you said like this, that line delivery was absolutely

delicious. I don't know what you infused into that, but it was definitely the nerdy bond girl. It was like, like, yeah. I don't know how I can't even. It was perfect. It was so good. Yes, it was so good. Well, she ends up starting to leave and then deciding she's going to go give him a kiss for, you know, he's about to die and he's been nice to her. So she runs back, gives him a kiss, and then leaves.

We realize that Bashir or our James Bond character has very cleverly pickpocketed the key from her. Oh, no, don't you think she did it? Oh, really? Yes, of course she did. She gave it to him. Oh, I thought he pit-pocketed it. You see my hand go in if you watch it again. And then my hand comes out of my pocket.

Yeah. I kissed him as a cover to give him the key. Although I'm sure she wanted to kiss him anyway. It wasn't clear, but it's true. That's exactly what happened. Oh, interesting. They're not exactly wrong, Robbie. She did pickpocket herself and give the key to him.

So there is a pickpocketing involved, but it wasn't him doing it. His hands were tied. He could not have done it. It's true. Oh, that's true. That's true. Yeah. So she, they did film her giving the key to me too.

But I think when they looked, I mean, in the wide like that. Yeah. But when they looked at it, it didn't look like she was giving a key to me. It looked a lot more suggestive and problematic. So. Oh, I see. They cut out that bit. So it's now kind of confusing.

I see. Oh, my gosh. Yes. It would be problematic. Last she was kissing me, her hand went down to my area and yes. You didn't know it was in front of him or behind. The wrong word. Right.

That's very funny. I love when Garrick says, kiss the girl, get the key. They never taught me that in the obsidian order. The wrong spy agency, yeah. They run out and then the laser goes off. They've been talking about these lasers, but to me it looked like jet propulsion. Jet engine. It didn't it?

I was like, that's not going to really go to the... That's not a laser. That's not a laser. Keep talking about lasers and it's propane or something. Fuel it, though, to get it shooting? I don't know. It just, I wish it looked more laser-like. Well, then we need to have more arguments about fire and space.

Yeah. Yes, yes, we do. It's already the most expected to go today. And I think they just went, you know what? That's it. The budget's done. You are not getting your post-production. We're going to use smoke cookies.

Yeah. So, Robbie, to you, the lasers look like a jet fighter engine shooting out. Yes, it looked like a rocket about to take off. All right. Which would not collapse the crust of the planet. It needed to be a little more dramatic for me. But anyway, we go back to the tunnels. There's rocks falling.

I love these moments in Star Trek in the caves when the rocks are falling and the camera's shaking. and you guys did a great job trying to escape. I love you making a spy gun from all these hidden parts in your shoe. Love that. Yes. Very James Bond. That's my favorite part of James Bond, right? Yes, the gadgets.

And Batman. Those two were they like, go, yes. And they explain them all. And it's so cool. You know, there's a funny thing that happened to me just now, which is not really related to the show, but you can cut it out if you want to. but it's I used to know

I had a dip before I got married I dated this lovely woman in England called Serena a documentary producer she was very brave and went all over the world and film stuff even though it was war zone and blah blah blah

wow and her best friend was called Blaze I was like that's such a cool name and we hung out with her quite a bit and we even went to her wedding she married this S-A-S man we weren't allowed to film the wedding it was all very secret and I knew Blaze worked for MI6

but I just didn't know how I just knew she was stationed in Beirut we didn't know anything about it and blow me down just three days ago I read in the newspaper she's just been made head of MI6 in English wow this person I went to

this is the only person in MI6 whose name you're allowed to the public are allowed to know is the head and he's called m it's called c c i think he's called c well it's got james bond does it they always call yes yeah yeah yeah letters yeah a letter yeah oh my god wow came head of the whole she bang and last time i saw her she was just getting married for this guy wow this scene in the tunnels though uh the sequence in the tunnels is critical for this episode in my mind It is the climactic moment and kind of pulls all the character relationships together. Because Garrick's making fun of the gun.

Garrick wants to cut the losses and end the program and save themselves. And Bashir will not risk killing his friends and the other members of the team. And Garrick even says, you know, if you're a real spy, you're a real secret agent, you'd know when to quit. You'd know when to cut your losses and give up. And then Bashir accuses him of being jealous or insulted because he's play acting at Garrick's spy life. So there's a lot of stuff coming out in this scene and in the middle of this action and the tunnels and everything. And Garrick says, you know what? You're not a hero.

You're not. And he starts to end the program. And that's when Bashir shoots the weapon. He does take a shot at Garrick and grazes his neck. And then he takes charge. you see it's a it's a turning point for me with this character and you did it beautifully thank you yeah i mean garrick even says were you trying to kill me or just graze me and and she's like i don't know you'll have to figure that out i'm not going to tell you great

well it's like even better though it's like when he says that because you say how do you know i wasn't trying to kill you and the way you deliver that line it was clear you know more than Garrett's giving you credit for but I love also that you know Garrett has limits on what your character can do in this hollow suite and you're like oh no

no no no yeah I've got a lot more I think the writers may have seen something in this because they went on to create the whole spy element with Sloan and everything like that which now became a spin-on off of its own. I don't know how good it is, but

that first bit was kind of very formative for a lot of, for a big plot line later. And then Bishelps, he did become a spy. How did, oh, wow, wow. How did it, how was it watching this scene, though? This scene to me, you know, kind of is the most important scene in the whole.

I think you're right. Yeah. I think it's the character, it's, it's the relationship is the most important part of it is the thing the do-or-die-conversation do I want to be more like you or more like me and Garrett gives his name

Garrett gives the game away because he's just ruthless and so it's a fascinating I don't know if I and would you sacrifice your humanity to get ahead professionally and that's a beautiful a beautiful scene

I mean, I remember at the time, kind of preoccupied with, it's very hard to do the thing that we all do in Star Trek. And no one really, it's famous. We call it the ship shake. Yes. We all have to do the book, all the work. So we're running through the tunnels and the frocks are falling. And we just throw ourselves against the wall.

And it looks like we lost our balance. But actually, yeah. Only mad people do that. Yeah. In the pilot of Voyager, they felt like we didn't do shakes very well. So they sent us a whole collection of DS9 ships. Yeah. Is that hilarious?

The trick is to go the same direction. Yeah, there's that. People just go, oh, wait a minute, I'm in the wrong direction. Wrong way. Yeah. Yeah. But that was a lot going on. There was a lot to unravel in that scene.

Absolutely. And because it was quite important. But it was actually relatively easy. because working with Garak is really, working with Andy is really straightforward. He's just camp enough to be believable as this Taylor Cardassian. It makes it, the alien in him comes to life.

And it's, it's just, it was just really good fun. And it really belied our actual real life relationship, which was very, very close. And he's such a warm human, you know, very not like Garang. Really terrific. I also love that, you know, Because you have a history, your characters have a history,

that he thinks he knows you so well and thinks he can kind of call you on things that it surprised him and us as an audience, you know, the heroism of Bashir in this scene. Well, I think also that, you know, there's a big fan splinter group, I would say big. There's a fan splinter group who do a lot of fan fiction, and there's a lot of stories based on the love affair

between Garrick and Bashir. And we are in our stride now. We are husband and husband. And we are absolutely talking like we're familiar like that. Yes. Yeah. And that was a really interesting corner that we turned, which the writers picked up on about some very early,

very first scene of the very first show that we were together in Repliment, where he hovered around me and he flustered me like I was a young ingenue. I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle myself. It just started a little flame, which ended up being a homoerotic, very important, homoerotic element to their relationship. Well, we had Andy, we had Andy on the podcast.

He talked about that very first episode and how little they told him about the character. And he said, as I read these scenes, I realized Garrick's in love with Bashir. I played it that way. He said, that was my choice. No one told me that, That's how I read it.

Yeah. That's what I got from it. So I leaned into that. Yeah. Well, he, when he saw you for the first time, he said, what a beautiful man. And that also was like kind of on seeing you struck by your beautiful face. It was only about three years. And your dough eyes.

I'm adding that from this. Yeah. Well, I empathize with lots of women who have that kind of attention. that almost predatory kind of attention in a not in a malicious way because about three years before that the one and only time I've ever been frankly propositioned by another guy

on a dance floor it actually flustered me completely I was so surprised and I was like I I I so I take that moment and bring it into the show and that was oh that's great So as much as of a couple that you two have become,

the writers also gave you another relationship. It's like you're married to two different people, O'Brien being the other person. He was the archetypal guy, and I was very different. Yeah, I was very lucky because I got... You were. My first was obviously Jadzia, and we did a big dance around that.

And it just went where it went organically. And then because I obviously couldn't, really seduce the girl, except in my own fantasy, which is what this shows about where I seduce everybody. Right. Not what happened in my, in my, my actual life as Julian Boucher, I couldn't, I couldn't get anybody interested in me at all. There was one character who I did, we did get together called Malora, but that's, I think,

a show coming, or maybe it's a show before, I don't know. We saw already had it. It was great. Yeah. And, but they could sort of paint you as a skirt chaser, a sister. A successful skirt chaser. Yeah, they did. A very unsuccessful skirt chaser.

Well, just with Dax, it didn't work. But that's okay. Not anyone else either, really. Really? Yeah, I just didn't. They didn't peg me for a regular guy who could seduce women at 100 paces. Oh, my goodness. They realized that I thought it was sort of written like there were, yeah, but they

weren't, they were like daubo girls and it wasn't like they were up to your speed. Yeah. Yeah. It was young silly. Yeah. It was silly. And it was, there was no real, he wasn't, he was very immature sexually. Let's put it that way. He really couldn't handle the heat of anything. Yeah. That's what you needed it. But it really worked. I think it really worked. I liked it. I liked that all of us had different energy. And I think that's what made him more interesting to watch.

I don't know many 18 year old boys who are very confident in that department. And a lot of late 20s either because it's. 20s are hard Right out of college Yeah Weren't you 27 I think you were 27 I was 28

And everybody else was married With kids Yeah Yeah Except for Armin and Kitty didn't have kids But everybody else Was married

Except for you and me Yeah So did you guys Hang out a lot Then off camera Yeah In the first season Yeah

We were good We were close Terry and I Yeah remember when I was The beard For that one There was a gal That wouldn't

Leave him alone He was like Would be my beard I was like, I can't wait. This is awesome. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. Oh, God. Okay. All right. So moving along, we're in a sitting room next. O'Brien's there. Kira's handcuffed. Cisco's,

admiring Dax's new look. And the doors fly open. And Garrick disarms Falcon immediately. And Bashir's got his gun made of parts. And it looks like they've captured them all. they've got the upper hand. Bashir goes to free Akira and she wants to kill them

but Bashir again says, no, we can't do that. He wants to protect their pattern buffers and things. And suddenly Warf appears in the doorway. Warf's got a gun and he's got it pointed at Garrick's head. Kudos to the prop master.

Almost every single gun was from the 60s except for the one that was used by Cisco. Cisco's was a later era gun. Oh, cool. Yeah. I mean, you know, when they get to that type of attention to detail, it's, it's impressive. It's like, oh, good job. You found a 60s era gun to match the 60s era.

That really is. We had several prop masters. I think Joe Longo was the main prop master. And then we had Bud and Pat. Okay. Bud and Pat. Yeah. Is Butter Pat around?

It doesn't matter her. Butter pat around. They were everything, everything, the two of them. So Cisco's about to shoot Bashir, and I love Avery's laugh, because Bashir, Bashir says, I'm no hero, you know, you don't have to shoot me. I know when to quit. And this is the moment where Avery goes, he he or something. He does one of those.

It was, it was, you mean when he says, the more I think about it, the more I realize that your way may be the only way when Bashir agrees. Yeah, but Bashir basically has the whole speech that, that Andy's character said to Bashir. And he says it to Cisco. And that was so freaking eye, goosebumps. It was like, yeah. And Garrett's feeling proud.

It was flawless. Sorry, got excited. It was a very modern environmental argument, even though it came out of the lips of the bad guy in the piece that they were doing such a bad job of looking after the planet. I'm getting rid of everybody and starting again. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And why would you fight for it? If it's going to be gone, why would you fight for it? That was just so, and when he said, nope,

every. Yeah. And then he went across with the heat, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, because Bashir's got a vamp here a little bit because he does hear, he hears from, from ops that they just need another four minutes or something,

I think. Two minutes. Two minutes. Yeah. He's going to say anything so he doesn't get to. shot because the safeties are off. If he gets shot, he's done. Yeah, he's just vamping there. He's quoting Garrick. He's, he's just trying to buy some time. He goes over. He's, he, he's about

to push the button. And Cisco says, or Dr. Noah, says he doesn't believe him. And Bashir has this argument, you know, I'm telling you the truth. It's the reason I'm alive. I know when to quit. All my spy friends are dead because they didn't know when to quit, but I know when I'm done. and he buys just enough time. We cut to the transporter room. Rom's ready. They begin the data transfer. Back in the sitting room,

Cisco says he's been wanting to kill Bashir for a long time and says, Bashir says, you may need me in your new world, you know? People like me that know all the rocks, know all the geology. He walks over by this console. Cisco thinks it's a trick. Bashir hits the button.

and Dax says you've destroyed the entire world. I say you've just activated the final laser sequence. Yes. Balsy move. Very balsy move. Yeah, imagine doing that and then getting in your ear. We need another 30 seconds. Oh, God.

Wait a minute. That would have been a funny pause. We just need a couple more seconds. Dr. Noah. Can I get your activation code? Yeah, let me get your code so I can actually start it again. Okay. I don't know.

Something. Is this bad anywhere? So back in ops, the power returns, the data transfer is complete. The lights come up. We go to the sitting room. We see the giant map and the land masses are shrinking, so the ocean's covering up all the land. And Cisco says he didn't expect to win. He's very shocked by this bold move, this unexpected.

move from Bashir. But he goes to raise the gun to shoot Bashir finally, and that's when the transporter beam happens. They disappear from the room. Cisco O'Brien, Warf-Daxe.

They're all beamed out. And we cut to the defiant transporter room, and they're beaming in there. I love that Miles looks around. It goes, what did you do

to my ship? Immediately. Yes, it's wires everywhere. It's funny. Eddington's very nervous. It's like, oh, it's going to take a little explaining. But Eddington lets Bashir know that he can leave, that they've got them.

And back in the Hall of Suite, Bashir tells Garrick that they didn't teach him that technique in the obsidian order. And as they walk out, Bashir says, it's not the last of Julian Bashir's secret agent, man. But it was. What a shame. I really liked it. I wanted to see more, more, more, more. This was their Captain Proton in a way, the same feeling that you had, right, for. Yeah, we had a holodeck on Voyager called Captain Proton that was very Flash Gordon.

So instead of James Bond, we had a whole black and it was all shot in Black and White. Black and white, sci-fi movie, B-movie. That was a lot of fun. And the fans loved it. And I'm sure the fans absolutely adored this episode, too, because it's so wonderful. Intertaining. Yeah, I think I've heard that people like this one. Oh, yeah.

It's Star Trek through and through, isn't it? You can just change it up. Yeah. You think you know what's going to happen. And nope, we do something else. It's like Q on the next generation who just came and just changed it. Yeah, you're right. Totally.

It does feel like a Q episode. It feels it's got the fun that the Q episodes have with all the mischief. The mischief. Yes, exactly. And it looked beautiful. You did a great, great job, especially that scene. Everybody did. Yeah.

You're seen with Garrick in the tunnel to me. It was great fun. It was iconic. Yeah, it was great that they had the depth of that scene, that sequence of him feeling challenged Garrett and trying to take control. And you were really in control. But it was great that there was that, that his ego was involved. People who follow the show, we really swap roles.

Because Garrett was the strong mat. I was the recessive, you know. The teacher-student roles got switched. They did. Mm-hmm. And that was the turning point for Bashir because then he just started to get stronger and stronger and they gave him much more meaty.

Well, you'll all find out as you watch the next episodes. I guess when you do get to a one that is Bashia-centric, he's much, much heavy weight, much more weight. not as light because in acting you you refer to status as light and dark in many ways Yes

and most a lot of people can play very dark or very light but you very rarely get to see them change their status in front of you which is kind of interesting So sit at you know Jean Roddenberry always for the original series

always had some sort of allegory, some type of lesson to learn from each Star Trek episode. So we also talk about our lesson at the end of our recap. So, Robbie, what is your theme or lesson moral for this episode? I wrote down, if you truly believe in yourself, you can be anything you want to be. Yeah. I think that's Bashir was able to kind of feel most himself, the part of himself that he didn't feel comfortable being in real life.

But in this Holodeck program, he was able to do that. And he showed Garrick who he truly was. And so, yeah, believe in yourself. Yeah. Terry? I had trust your true self. Oh, nice. Same lines.

Yeah, same thing. Lovely, though. Yeah. My lesson is, yeah, your lesson is more about Bashir. My lesson is a little bit off the A storyline. It's when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And that's in reference to Rom, not getting the parts that he needs. It's always having to scramble.

And we don't know that until this episode that he's pretty much a mechanical genius is what he is. But also, that's a great lesson from Bashir's story as well. He didn't have the game that he expected to play. No. It suddenly turned to real life and death. I can use it for that too. Yes.

Yes. And trusting your true self is not what everybody else thinks about you. Yeah. Or you think they think those limitations. right right it's important to have because it's changes with your life too the more you trust yourself the more capable you are of becoming who you really want to be in the world yeah yeah yeah did you want to add anything to that said in terms of well i think i mean if i was going to be really philosophical i would say you know don't shoot your friends i'm so glad you took it to a deeper level

Oh, thank God. We were so light. Shoot your friends. My lesson. My lesson is Mona Loves It can do anything. That's my. Mona loves it. Goodness.

Okay. Okay. Can I tell you what our Patreon poll winner for the theme moral of this episode is? Please do. Thank you. It's submitted by Alex Ray. And they say, real spies have to make hard choices. it's a quote by Garrick

It's a garret quote It's a garret quote That is true Oh my gosh Well we have reached that time Everybody we have come to the end of our recap And discussion of this absolutely very entertaining And wonderful episode

Our Man Bashir We want to thank Terry for being here And of course our wonderful guests Oh Sid thank you so much for joining us What a blast, what a pleasure Thank you so much. It was really, really good fun. It was fun for us, too.

And I love that you shared how meaningful it was to rewatch this after so many years. It was really cool. It was really cool. As I hadn't seen one of these shows for 35 years. I haven't laid eyes on those characters for a long time, and they're

old friends now. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's true. Wow. Yeah, I'm never surprised by the quality of acting by everybody, but it's just watching it and being relaxed and not having to learn the next show or be late for the next day or whatever. You're watching in a completely different headspace than when we were doing it. Yeah.

Yeah, because we were so sleep deprived, all of us. I also feel like... All of us. Yes. The distance from these, and Sid, you kind of talked about this a little when we first started talking. Having some distance of time and space and years, for me, allows me to see the truth of it better, the truth of our performances, the truth of what Star Trek was. Because at the time, I was so clouded with my ambition, my personal life, what I thought it should be.

You had three little kids. Didn't you have three little kids? Little kids, yeah. Oh, my gosh. But I don't, you know, the distance has given me clarity to look at. at myself and the stories and the show and and the value of it in a way that I maybe didn't appreciate back then so I couldn't agree more and I and how astonishingly lucky we were yeah we won the lottery you know that I did there's there are 10,000 people going for every one of those roles now at the planet got me from England they I didn't I wasn't in America they went

over there yeah wow did an audition and went brought me all the way over Well, thank goodness, they did. Thank goodness. Thank goodness for us. We were all lucky enough to land these plum rolls and have an opportunity to fail. Yes. Yes. So, Sid, we highly encourage you to watch more episodes of your show that you have not seen. And, Sid, you explained to us that you don't have Paramount Plus.

You had to pay 50 cents for this episode. So in totality, if you buy all of it, it'll be about 65. dollars for you for all 170 something odd episodes yes well we will invite you back when yes we will because you're lovely thank you Terry I'm shocked how lovely you are I had no idea how lovely you were so you know that what did you say I was too busy being silly what did you say I could easily sit in front of you look in your eyes and talk to you for ages it's something we've done Many times, I miss you so much. I want to ask the guy something, and that is, because what, and you must be asked this a lot, but if, if you, if someone only had 50 cents, what episode would you recommend they see a Voyager?

Oh my gosh. The 100th episode, timeless is what I would say, the 100th episode. I'm writing it down. I'm going to blow 50 cents on it. Yes, he's going to do it. Robbie, what episode would you recommend? I would recommend an embodies? Drive?

No, no, no. Okay, all right. I would recommend someone to watch over me, which is a Doctor Seven episode, mostly. That was directed by Rob. This is someone who knows nothing and who just wants to get to know you guys and get up to speed.

Yeah. What was it called, Robbie? Someone to watch over me. It was a Doctor Seven. I directed that episode, but I think it is. is one of my favorite episodes of our show. I will watch both of them. I'll spend a buck. I can spend a buck.

And what was the one you guys had me watch? Just get the pilot episode. Okay, yes. Oh, Threshold. Threshold. They had me watch one called Threshold, and they said it was the worst episode ever. I didn't say that.

Some people said that. And then we talked about it, the three of us. It was crazy. All right, well, we've come to the end of the episode. We want to say thank you to Terry and, of course, to our very, very special guest, Sid. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Join us, everyone, next time, and we will be recapping and discussing the episode Homefront with Armand.

That will be with Armand for all of the Patreon patrons that are listening right now. Please stay tuned for your bonus material for everyone else. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye, everybody. I don't know. I'm