Star Trek has quickly found itself at a bit of a crossroads. Star Trek: Picard came to an in early 2023 with its long-planned finale in Season 3. Star Trek: Discovery — which launched the Trek renaissance in 2017 — is slated to end its run with the upcoming fifth season, while Star Trek: Prodigy has been dropped with a potential second season left in limbo. That news comes even while other Star Trek projects — such as the long-awaited Section 31 movie starring Michelle Yeoh — move forward.
The franchise clearly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but a moment of transition has arrived. In the wake of the ongoing writers’ strike, it’s a good opportunity to assess, and with nostalgia playing well in the wake of Picard‘s triumphant curtain call, looking behind to look forward may prove beneficial. Doctor Bashir, the brilliant if somewhat naïve chief medical officer on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, makes an outstanding choice to return for one simple reason. He’s a terrific candidate for villainy, something his creators agree upon — as well as a singular twist on the franchise’s periodic nods to its past.
Doctor Bashir Has the Seeds of Darkness in Him
On the surface, Bashir seems like a benevolent young man (though perhaps in a bit over his head). Deep Space Nine presents him as eager to learn and fond of adventure, which gets him into trouble more than once. That includes an extended liaison with the station’s resident exiled spy Garak and a stint in a POW camp when he’s replaced by a Changeling shortly before the start of the Dominion War. His fondness for intrigue even comes out in one of his favorite holosuite programs, in which he portrays a tuxedo-dressed 007 type in the swinging ’60s.
Yet underneath it all, something sinister lurks. It starts with his ego, which matches his skills and which sometimes slides into excess self-regard. That takes on more chilling overtones in Season 5, Episode 16, “Doctor Bashir, I Presume,” when his parents reveal that they subjected him to genetic modification as a boy. Augments are strictly illegal in the Federation out of fear they will produce monomaniacal tyrants such as Khan Noonien-Singh. He remains at his post, but the revelation leaves a mark. So does his interaction with Garak, which becomes more intense and combative at times.
In the documentary What We Left Behind, the Deep Space Nine writing team reunites to speculate on what a possible eighth season of the show might look like. They rapidly sketch out the future of each primary character, and where they might be 20 years after the series concluded. That includes Doctor Bashir now a major mover and shaker in Section 31: possibly even in charge of it. They’re eager to show how at least one of their protagonists had fallen far from the light, and as they describe it, a fallen Bashir suddenly looks like the obvious choice.
Bashir Makes an Ideal Villain for a Future Star Trek Project
The timeline for Star Trek is always tricky, and involving Bashir in any project — whether as hero or villain — requires it to happen more or less around the same period as Picard. That said, Bashir certainly doesn’t need to stay limited to a Deep Space Nine-specific project, and should Section 31 re-appear as a potential baddie, putting him at the head of it makes for a narrative slam dunk. To top it all off, actor Alexander Siddig who plays Bashir is no stranger to Machiavellian puppetmasters, having played no less a figure than Ra’s al Ghul in the Gotham TV series.
The time for such a move depends on how Star Trek‘s new projects proceed, but if Yeoh’s movie becomes a hit, Section 31 could suddenly be very in-demand. Bashir is the perfect blend of old and new: a legacy character who still has a story to tell, one who could fit into a wide variety of plot lines. The fact that he can do so as a legitimate villain only makes the prospect more enticing.