page_title: Our Man Bashir
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Our Man Bashir / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexander Siddig at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.
context_page_description: "Our Man Bashir" is the 82nd episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the tenth of the fourth season. It originally aired on November 27, 1995, in broadcast syndication. Directed by Winrich Kolbe, the story originated from a pitch by Assistant Script Coordinator Robert Gillan and was turned into a script by producer Ronald D. Moore. Both hairdressing in the episode and the score by Jay Chattaway were later nominated for Emmy Awards. The show's plot involves the combination of a transporter and holodeck malfunction.
  Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures on Deep Space Nine, a space station located near a stable wormhole between the Alpha and Gamma quadrants of the Milky Way Galaxy. In this episode, Dr. Julian Bashir plays a 1960s secret agent alongside Garak in a holosuite. After a transporter accident, the patterns for several crew members are temporarily stored as characters in the holosuite memory; the duo must prevent any of them from dying in the game or else they will be lost to the real world.
context_section_description: Story editor René Echevarria was keen not to have a damaged holodeck story appear, as he felt it had been overdone in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was specified in the information sheet sent to freelance writers that Deep Space Nine was not accepting stories involving malfunctioning holodecks. Producer Ira Steven Behr explained that the show had been looking for a unique holodeck story that would be specifically for Deep Space Nine rather than Sherlock Holmes and Dixon Hill detective stories seen in The Next Generation. Whilst Bashir and O'Brien's adventures in the holosuites in the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Clontarf have been mentioned in episodes, they were simply too expensive to be shown on screen effectively. But Behr felt that the story for "Our Man Bashir" was within the budget of the show.
  The story was initially pitched to Echevarria by Robert Gillan, who was on the staff of Deep Space Nine as Assistant Script Coordinator. Echevarria was immediately convinced, and told Behr about the story who was equally as enthusiastic. In Gillan's original pitch, there wasn't a specific setting clearly set out, but Behr and Echevarria were sold on the idea that nothing went wrong with the holosuites — it was simply where the computer decided to store the information following a transporter accident. Producer Ronald D. Moore came up with the 1960s setting, as he felt it was appropriate since Garak was a spy for the Cardassian Obsidian Order. He wrote the teleplay, and based it on a variety of sources including James Bond, Our Man Flint, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild Wild West. He later explained that he "loved all of them as a kid. They had a certain panache. I loved writing that episode."
  Some of the elements were suggested by other staff members, with Robert Wolfe naming Colonel Anastasia Komananov and Behr changing Suzie Luvsitt to Mona Luvsitt. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was later not pleased with the James Bond-style approach, and when Bashir's spy program appeared in the later episode "A Simple Investigation", the references were more generic. Dennis Madalone managed to save some time during the production as one of the shots involved Bashir seeing Falcon approach him from behind by seeing his reflection in a bottle of champagne. After time was already scheduled to attempt the shot, Madalone explained to the director that he could take the filmed sequence and digitally manipulate it onto the bottle. Madalone was also responsible for firing a cork from a bottle at Colm Meaney's head from off screen to make it appear as if Bashir did it, and managed to do it on the first take.
  "Our Man Bashir" was the longest shoot of any single episode of Deep Space Nine, taking nine days to film instead of the normal seven. The episode required a great deal of stunt work and special equipment, such as stuntmen going through tempered glass instead of sugar glass because of the better glass breaking effect. There was a great deal of new sets used as well, which each took longer to set up camera and lighting for as the crew were not as familiar with them as the standing sets. The backdrop used for Mount Everest was rented, but the crew realised it lacked snow so they had to modify it and then return it to the original condition afterwards. The majority of the 1960s style technologies such as Dr. Noah's base, were all custom built in house and where parts moved they were generally manually operated off screen. Art director Herman Zimmerman said that "Everything that could be manually operated was, because the brain is still smarter than most computers and you can still do some things faster by hand."
caption: Julian Bashir, played by Alexander Siddig, was the central character in this episode.
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