"I've Always Felt Like Garashir Was Kind of Canon" - Here's How That 'Deep Space Nine' Ship Came In for 'Lower Decks'

For some fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, their ship finally came in when "Fissure Quest," the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, paired up the characters of Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson) and Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig). Many fans (and both actors) have paired the characters up over the years, but Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan discussed how he finally made it canon (albeit with a Garak and Bashir from alternate universes) with Collider's Samantha Coley.

"Fissure Quest" largely follows a Starfleet ship crewed by alternate universe counterparts of previous Star Trek characters; it travels the multiverse, attempting to find the source of a series of mysterious dimensional rifts. Among them are a Bashir and Garak from different universes, who are married — and quarrel about which of their respective universes they'll live in when their mission is complete. McMahan told Collider he really didn't have to do much to make the pair canonical:

"Well, what's so funny to me is I've always felt like Garashir was kind of canon. I didn't do the heavy lifting on that, you know? To me, the surprise was getting to do it in a way that made sense with when the show takes place, and I really don't like to mess with what Ira [Steven Behr] did, you know what I mean? I'm very, very careful about what I do with other people's characters. I think for me, getting to do a multiversal story really helped be able to tell the story without having to add any asterisks to it."

McMahan also discussed how the characters differ from their "normal" counterparts; the normally flesh-and-blood Bashir is a hologram in "Fissure Quest," while tailor Garak joins him in the medical profession. He explained:

"I love the Doctor from Voyager, so making Bashir a hologram was a treat for me. And then saying, 'Yeah, Garak is one step away from being a surgeon, then a tailor.' It kind of involves sewing stuff, you know what I mean? Getting to have that added texture to it more than what anybody had ever seen in anything else that had been talked about with those characters, and then on top of that, getting them to have been in… It's not a new relationship for them, you’re coming into a relationship where they have a pattern. I wanted fans who love that dynamic to feel like they were getting a feeling of, 'We're coming in in the middle of it, and they're happy, and this is fun.'"

The Bashir hologram also references an episode of Deep Space Nine, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?", in which Lewis Zimmerman (Robert Picardo), the programmer of and template for Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram, attempts to design a new holographic doctor based on Bashir.

What Is "Garashir"?

Dr. Julian Bashir was a Starfleet doctor who was excited to take a frontier posting on the Deep Space Nine station. He was frequently presented as a ladies' man and bon vivant, but was also a brilliant doctor and surgeon; only later in the series' run was it revealed that he owed his brilliance to genetic alteration, a practise banned by the Federation. Elim Garak was initially introduced as a simple Cardassian tailor working in a shop on Deep Space Nine, but is eventually revealed to be much more; a cunning and frequently amoral covert operative of the Cardassian secret service, the Obsidian Order, who has been exiled from his homeworld. The two characters formed an unlikely friendship on the series, and many fans interpreted the pairing as a romantic one — which was given the portmanteau name "Garashir." Although Robinson interpreted Garak as gay, and played him as such, he was briefly given a female love interest in the form of Tora Ziyal, the half-Bajoran daughter of Cardassian arch-villain Gul Dukat.

Homosexuality was a taboo topic on Star Trek in the 1990s, despite the series' large gay fanbase and the wishes of the show's cast and crew. However, with the franchise's revival on Paramount+, the full spectrum of human (and sometimes alien) sexuality is explored, with a number of characters in same-sex relationships, including Discovery's Paul Stamets and Hugh Culber, Picard's Seven of Nine and Raffi Musiker, and Lower Decks' Beckett Mariner and Jennifer Sh'reyan.

All five seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks are now streaming on Paramount+. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, you can read our full interview with McMahan right now.

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