Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Julian Bashir

For a character like Garak, the only limit to subtext was the number of intricately woven lies the galaxy would permit. As for Bashir, you could always read his emotions like a book — just not one of Shoggoth's Enigma Tales. When the would-be Cardassian tailor and the "thoughtful young man" first met in Past Prologue, the in-between-the-lines was written all over their faces, and then carefully placed on the Doctor's shoulders.

If we can read anything queer into Garak/Bashir at all, it's because the actors rather boldly chose to play it that way. When asked by Ira Steven Behr what Garak really thought of Bashir in What We Left Behind, Andrew Robinson gave the following reply:

At first, he [Garak] just wanted to have sex with him. That's absolutely clear. That's all he wanted from him. […] But then it really got complicated, especially when Garak's addiction and despair began to surface. He needed someone to share it with.

In an interview all the way back in 2000, Robinson revealed that he had "planned Garak not as homosexual or heterosexual but omnisexual". Much later, in 2022, he told The Shuttlepod Show that "they [the producers, we assume]" had "no idea" that's what he had had in mind, but that the moment hands were put on shoulders, Alexander Siddig "picked it [the subtext] right up".

In an interview for The Beat in April this year (2024), Siddig confirmed that he did, indeed, play Bashir's first meeting with Garak that way, stating,

I became visibly flustered. That was entirely my choice. It wasn't written in the script. So, I set off in that direction right from the get-go.

In the same interview, Siddig also noted that he tries to infuse a little "implied homosexuality" into most of his 'written as straight' characters, "probably because I'm not quite straight myself and that's probably perfect".