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Julian Bashir, secret agent

Bashir as a James Bond-esque secret agent

Julian Bashir, Secret Agent was a series of holo-novels created by holoprogrammer Felix and starring Julian Bashir as the main character, a secret agent in service of Great Britain. It was set in 1964 during the Cold War on Earth and featured exotic locales such as Paris and Kowloon.

Stories[]

The plots were often elaborate and barely believable. Every plot involved two women, one of whom was meant to die with the other ending up in love with Bashir, although the choice depended on how the program played out. Elim Garak considered it a farcical version of real-life intelligence operations, but the crew of Deep Space 9 found it diverting.

One story involved an insane genius, Dr. Hippocrates Noah, who believed civilization had become so corrupt as to necessitate a change. Noah's plan was to flood the planet, save for his mansion in the Himalayas. This story of the program was running in 2372, when the computer stored the transporter patterns of Worf, Benjamin Sisko, Jadzia Dax, Miles O'Brien, and Kira Nerys in Quark's holosuites. Consequently, the images of the senior staff were imposed over several existing character appearances while their brain patterns were dispersed throughout the station's computers. With the holosuite safeties deactivated, Bashir was forced to resort to various elaborate measures to keep his holographically-recreated colleagues alive – despite such issues as the fact that all but one of them were the villains of the storyline – culminating in him carrying out Dr. Noah's plan in order to buy Odo, Rom, and Michael Eddington time to transfer their transporter patterns into the USS Defiant transporters. (DS9: "Our Man Bashir")

After this incident, the program became popular with the DS9 crew. Miles O'Brien sometimes stepped into the role of Falcon, this time willingly. By 2373, Felix had designed another program called Queen's Gambit in which Lady Wantsomore, "a beautiful socialite", would be brainwashed to assassinate the Queen of England. This time, Bashir had the help of Nigel Dunlap, an agent who came out of retirement to assist him in stopping the assassination. Falcon also made an appearance in this program. Jadzia Dax was to play Lady Wantsomore and Miles O'Brien was to be Falcon yet again, though O'Brien had become "tired of being the bad guy". Bashir had wanted Odo to play Dunlap, but the Changeling was not interested, despite the fact that he would have been able to "steal" Falcon's girlfriend. (DS9: "A Simple Investigation")

Another story took place in West Berlin, where three MI5 agents had been killed in a suspected Soviet plot, but with several American-intercepted messages routed through Istanbul to an island in the South Pacific suggesting otherwise. Bashir and O'Brien were supposed to play this program in 2374, but O'Brien convinced Bashir to play Tongo instead. (DS9: "Change of Heart")

The same year, Vic Fontaine used the character Anastasia Komananov, which still featured Kira's physical appearance from the 2372 incident, as a template to create Lola Chrystal. (DS9: "His Way")

In 2375, Leeta said she thought the program was "ridiculous". (DS9: "It's Only a Paper Moon")

Characters[]

Appendices[]

Background information[]

Shoe pen gun sketch

Sketch for the "Shoe-gun"

Prop master Joe Longo lists some props from this episode as some of his favorites from the series. He worked with art designer John Eaves to figure out how to make a hidden gun-gizmo "like Maxwell Smart's."

According to Ronald D. Moore, the holo-novel was an homage to James Bond, as well as other spy thrillers of the 1960s, such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Our Man Flint and the Matt Helm novel series. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (pp. 294-295))

The Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 295) further notes that, "Although Moore tried to avoid direct references to any of his childhood heroes, some names and turns of phrase skated a little close to the edge, and MGM/UA, the studio that produces the 007 films, reportedly did not find imitation to be the sincerest form of flattery. As a result a later episode that featured Bashir's spy holoprogram ("A Simple Investigation") was far more generic in its references."

The program is also featured at the beginning of the novel Hollow Men.

External link[]

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