cosmictuesdays asked: Can today be the day you write that giant post about Julian's development and how he changed both based on the retcon and his time in the Dominion camp? Because I've thought a great deal about his time in the camp, and would love to hear what you have to say too.
Well since you asked so nicely. : )
So. There is a marked difference in Julian’s behavior before his time in the Dominion prison camp and after. Before, there’s a lightness to his character, even during dramatic episodes. He’s capable of seriousness when the situation calls for it, but he’s also quick to laugh. His smiles are broad and genuine, and he’s kind of a doof. I mean, y’all know what he’s like in the first four seasons (my autistic bean, etc.). It’s not like he’s had a super breezy life – hiding his enhancements definitely took a toll (I know they weren’t canon yet but shhh this is a combo watsonist/doyalist analysis so they’re in play), and he’s definitely Seen Some Shit – Nor the Battle to the Strong definitely, but also being kidnapped by Jem’Hadar in Hippocratic Oath, having to kill Mirror Odo in Crossover (and everything else he went through in that episode), etc. Like this kid has definitely been through his share of Traumatic Experiences, and yet through it all, he’s still basically the same Julian, awkward and silly and over-eager.
And then he’s kidnapped by the Dominion, held hostage, isolated, tortured, made to witness the brutal beating of his ally, probably made to witness countless other people being tortured and killed…. It’s some bad shit. It’s some really bad shit.
Julian comes away from that experience changed – his smiles are tighter and more hesitant, his jokes are more cynical, his expressions more guarded. More than anything he just looks tired, even in the baseball episode, which is arguably the lightest episode in season 7. (I don’t have the spoons to pull screencaps to prove it, so you’re gonna have to trust me.)
There are, in my opinion, two major reasons for this character development, one Watsonist (in-universe) and one Doyalist (extra-textual ie writing staff decisions). The former is Julian’s experiences in the Dominion camp, and the latter is the retcon, the decision to make Julian genetically enhanced.
For the former: like I said, it was some Bad Shit and Julian Bashir is not exactly the epitome of Good Mental Health anyway (being forced to live a lie so well you basically have to believe it or everything you love will be taken away from you is uh. not healthy.) War is hell, and unlike his colleagues, all of whom have experience with war in some manner or another, DS9 is Julian’s first introduction to it. He spent a total of five weeks in that camp, knowing any moment could be his last. And yeah, he’s faced death before, up close and personal, but nothing like this.
And then there’s the retcon. In-universe, a lot of Julian’s character development can be attributed to his experiences as a prisoner of war, but that isn’t at all what the writers were trying to do, or at least not entirely. Alexander Siddig has said that it felt to him that they were trying to make him a sort of Data 2.0, something he hated and sabotaged when he could (bless him tbh). The way he’s always spouting statistics is the most obvious thing that can be attributed solely to the retcon, since pre-Dr. Bashir I Presume, he wouldn’t have been able to run such complex calculations in his head (since they hadn’t thought of it yet).
It would be easy to say here’s the in-universe reason and here’s the extra-textual reason for thing thing and that’s that, but it’s actually a bit more complex than that. The retcon has an in-universe effect too, in addition to the writing staff writing Julian differently to make him more like Data.
The best scene, imo, for illustrating how the Watsonist and Doyalist reasons for Julian’s development combine is this short bit between Julian and Garak in A Time to Stand:
GARAK: Not really. Genetically engineered, indeed.
BASHIR: Excuse me?
GARAK: Well look at you. You act as if you haven’t a care in the world. It’s exactly that kind of smug, superior attitude that makes people like you so unpopular.
BASHIR: Are you trying to insult me?
GARAK: A thirty two point seven percent chance of survival. I call that insulting.
BASHIR: Don’t take it so personally, Garak. It’s strictly a matter of mathematics.
GARAK: No, it’s strictly a matter of our lives. You’re not genetically engineered. You’re a Vulcan.
BASHIR: If I’m a Vulcan, then how do you explain my boyish smile?
GARAK: Not so boyish anymore, Doctor.
Julian being able to run the numbers is obviously pure writing room retcon, but the fact that he has, that he tells Garak, that it’s “strictly a matter of mathematics”, well, that’s a little stickier. The war drags on and people are dying, lots of people, sometimes people Julian knew or cared about. His life is the hardest it’s ever been, bleak and getting bleaker, and Julian is tired.
Julian is probably always running numbers, probably has done for as long as he can remember. He does it so naturally and so often that it can’t be a new habit. And now that his secret is out, why bother to keep them to himself? The war and his various traumas have worn him down, hardened him and forced him into sharp points, and his enhanced brain keeps telling him things seem hopeless because they are – there’s a mathematical basis and everything.
Looking at the show from this dual lens, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges is a fascinating look at the man Julian has become, both because of his traumatic experiences and because of the writers. He’s angry at what Ross and Sloan have done, for the things they’ve forced him to do, but he isn’t surprised. Compare “How did they let things get so bad?” from the end of Things Past with his absolute certainty that Sloan isn’t dead and that Ross was in on the plot in Inter Arma. He’d like to hope that they are better men, but he knows what people like Sloan are capable of.
Garak spent four and a half seasons trying to make Julian a cynic, and the Dominion went and did it for him.
Garak spent four and a half seasons trying to make Julian a cynic, and the Dominion went and did it for him.
I like to think - and idk, but I get the feeling that the Trek lit at least supports me here - that for all Garak’s talk of making Julian a doubting cynic, he absolutely loved and admired those aspects of Julian, and he hated seeing Julian stripped of them. Teasing Julian over being the Eternal Optimist is fun. Seeing that Eternal Optimism frayed and beaten down and all but dead is another thing completely.
