edosianorchids901:
lydia-gastrell:
distant-voices:
Being more coherent here. The fact that Julian had no idea what an anxiety attack is, is wild to me. ‘Nothing is wrong with Garak that I can tell.’ Is a panic attack not a brain function? We know Julian says he needs a counselor for problems in Garak’s head (what a way to put it lmao). But are you really telling me that Julian knows so little that he can’t even identify what happened? Doesn’t matter why exactly, that part isn’t his job. But surely he could identify what happened? Either I’m misunderstanding how anything about the human body works and Julian would have had no way of knowing it was related to the claustrophobia (even though he stated he knew that whatever happened was triggered by the claustrophobia), or the Federation has never heard of panic attacks.
Also the part where he called it a claustrophobic attack and then goes on to say he has no idea what happened- or is it the other way around? Anyways, contradictory. Julian, get your shit together.
Oh, I think the writers were just desperately trying to avoid a situation in which Julian and Garak might actually be shown having a close relationship again. No, no, lets have the 22 year old councelor in training suffering from joining trauma help Garak instead because homophobia… :/
Alternative, better-than-the-actual-show theory: Julian and Garak have been dating in secret the entire time and Julian is just bullshitting about “Yep, no idea what’s wrong with Garak” rather than publicly admit that he can’t really provide counseling because Garak is his partner.
Also I may need to consider writing some fix-it fanfic for that damn episode
That line has bothered me a lot The writers’ choice of words with “have his head examined” is terrible and feels very out of character to me. We have seen Bashir being very good with mental health issues before in Hard Time, and in that it seems like he’s able to do some talking therapy. Also, he prescribes O’Brien antidepressants in that. Furthermore, in A Stitch in Time, he starts Garak on antidepressants too (good! finally!) This is clearly just a clumsy set-up for Ezri and Garak interacting.
That being said, this is how I read this:
It’s not a case of Bashir not knowing Garak has had a panic attack. What he is looking for is a neurological reason for his panic attacks getting worse. This is not so odd, considering Garak has some nasty scarring from the wire, and that kind of trauma can make psychiatric conditions worse. When anything physical has been ruled out, you can go ahead with therapy etc. The reason why Bashir is not involved in Garak’s treatment (at least not the talking type) is that at this point in series seven, Bashir is not well mentally either. Of course there should be a counsellor on the station anyway, but this might be a reason why Sisko is so keen to get Ezri there (apart from that of course she should be there - she’s Dax!) Even if Bashir is still an excellent doctor, he is not in a position to deal with the mental health aspect, which considering there is a war on is going to be much worse for a lot of people.
Furthermore, even if Bashir were totally fine, it’d be a bad idea for him to counsel Garak, for obvious reasons. Getting therapy from your boyfriend is not a good idea.
