Deep Space Nine's Three: Julian Bashir
"Basically, all of Bashir was manufactured, either by some scientists or by himself over the years."
-- actor Alexander Siddig on his character, Dr. Julian Bashir
In enneagram teaching, the "sin" of style Three is deceit. This can mean outright lying, but in more general terms, it means that the Three presents a façade that does not reflect his true self. Sometime in his life, the Three has assimilated the belief that to earn love, he must be successful -- or at least appear successful. The image is everything.
Threes are experts at molding themselves to meet others' expectations. A Three may crow about his accomplishments, but the inner, subconscious battle is a constant fear of being exposed as a failure and thus be unworthy of love. And because whatever praise and admiration he receives is a response to the image, it stays on the surface, unable to touch the insecure self inside. It certainly cannot shake his inner conviction that he has no intrinsic worth beyond what he achieves.
Dr. Julian Bashir's story is an apt dramatization of a Three living by the lesson he learned as a child: that his accomplishments are the most important thing about him.
In his early days on Deep Space Nine, Julian made sure those accomplishments were well known. "I had my choice of any job in the fleet," he tells Major Kira in the first episode. She's not particularly impressed, but when she makes a genuine compliment when he saves someone's life in The Passenger, he can't help but expand further on his abilities: "I impress myself actually. I can't imagine what other doctor would even consider examining the scapular nerve for parasitic infection. I seem to have a talent, I suppose, a vision that sees past the obvious, round the mundane, right to the target. Fate has granted me a gift, Major. A gift to be a healer."
The insecurity that lay behind the boasting was captured early on in the running joke about how Julian was salutatorian -- not valedictorian -- of his graduating class in medical school. We first hear of it when he's regaling a pretty girl with exciting tales of Star Fleet medical finals, but with the somewhat anti-climatic finish: "And that, I suppose, is the stuff salutatorians are made of." When she seems a little deflated, he hastens to add: "I mistook a pre-ganglionic fiber for a post-ganglionic nerve during the orals, or I would have been valedictorian. It was a trick question." A Three will try to reframe any perceived failure into at least a partial success -- or make it somehow, as Julian does here, not quite his fault.
The visit of the actual valedictorian serves as a comedic subplot in Explorers. Jadzia Dax, a bit gleeful at the chance to needle Julian, breaks the news to him. At first he pretends not to quite recall this Dr. Elizabeth Lenz, until Dax "reminds" him that Lenz was valedictorian.
Julian throws himself into studying the latest medical advances. "I don't want to be caught flat-footed by our intrepid Dr. Lenz," he tells Dax. "Of course, she's probably discovered the cure for aging by now."
"I take it the two of you are competitive," Dax says.
"We were neck and neck right up until the final exam. Then I blew it. That's how she wound up on the Lexington -- a post that virtually everyone in our graduating class was hoping for."
"Including you?"
"No, this is the assignment I wanted."
"Then what does it matter?" Dax asks.
"Don't you see?" Julian says. "She could have this post, she could have taken it from me. No matter what I accomplish while I'm here, somehow that will always make me feel second best."
It's the trap of Threes: You can never quite be successful enough. And other people's success diminishes your own.
When he finally meets Dr. Lenz, her reaction does nothing but feed his Three-ish compulsion. She tells him how he gave her a run for the money, how she envies and admires his work on Deep Space Nine, and leaves Julian preening.
He shared his medical school diaries with Dax, saying they contained his "innermost thoughts." But Dax's description indicates that those thoughts were entirely career-related, about "his struggle to graduate top of his class. His dream of having a career in Star Fleet. His constant fear of failure."
In The Quickening, Dax once again is Julian's sounding board for that fear of failure, but with more serious stakes. On a planet devastated by a plague, Julian tries to develop a cure. He is sure of success. But his efforts go catastrophically wrong, and Julian tells Dax he missed the warning signs because of his own overconfidence. He makes an uncharacteristic confession: "I'm going to tell you a little secret, Jadzia. I was looking forward to tomorrow, to seeing Kira again and casually asking, 'How was the nebula and oh, by the way, I cured that blight those people had.' "
Julian declares that there must be no cure. "And I was so arrogant, I thought I could find one in a week."
Dax takes him to task: "Maybe it was arrogant to think that. But it's even more arrogant to think there isn't a cure just because you couldn't find it."
Chastened, Julian goes back to work, and eventually discovers a vaccine -- but no cure. He sees it as still a failure, and is unable to accept Captain Sisko's praise. "People are still dying back there," Julian says.
"But their children won't," says Sisko.
"That's what I keep telling myself, sir." But it is not enough. The episode is a time of growth for Julian. In the course of his medical research, he grows to love and respect the people he treats. Yes, the inadequacy of a vaccine instead of a cure is reflective of a Three-ish need to win, but it also comes from genuine concern for the people suffering from the disease. (The people-oriented nature of Julian's work and his gregarious social nature show his 2-wing.)
As I said, as children Threes internalize the idea that to earn love, you must be successful. Thanks to science fiction, Julian learned that lesson in a much more literal way than most. In the episode Dr. Bashir, I Presume, we learn of Julian's biggest secret: the illegal genetic enhancement his parents had done on him when he was a child, transforming him from a failing slow learner to the "star pupil."
The secret comes out when Dr. Louis Zimmerman comes to DS9 to use Julian as a template for a Longterm Medical Hologram. Zimmerman invites Julian's parents to the station for interviews, against Julian's wishes. It becomes clear that Julian is estranged from them, and particularly at odds with his father.
Dr. Zimmerman and Miles O'Brien discover the secret of Julian's genetic enhancement, and when O'Brien privately asks him about it, Julian explains all.
"I was 6, small for my age, a bit awkward physically, not very bright. In the first grade when other children were learning to read and write and use the computer, I was still trying to tell a dog from a cat and a tree from a house. I didn't really understand what was happening. I knew that I wasn't doing as well as my classmates. ... All I knew is that I was a great disappointment to my parents."
Then his parents took him to another planet to undergo the illegal treatments: DNA recoding that accelerated his intellectual and physical capabilities, turning the mentally slow child into an exceptionally brilliant one. When the family returned to Earth, they moved to a different town and, using falsified records, enrolled him in a school where he excelled.
"And no one ever suspected?" O'Brien asks.
"There's no stigma attached to success, Chief," Julian answers.
A Three can never quite feel the praise because people are responding to his perfect image. For Julian, this is doubly true -- they are responding to the image, and to abilities that are not naturally his own. "The truth is," he says, "I'm a fraud."
O'Brien insists, "You're not a fraud. I don't care how many enhancements your parents had done. Genetic recoding can't give you ambition or a personality or compassion or any of the other things that make a person truly human."
Julian finally confronts his parents about the resentment he has harbored -- especially toward his father, who "decided I was a failure in the first grade," he says.
"You couldn't live with the shame of having a son who didn't measure up!" Julian tells his father.
His mother finally breaks into the argument. "We were never ashamed of you, never," she insists. She describes the worry and guilt she felt when she saw her son trying and still falling behind. "You can condemn us for what we did. You can say it's illegal or immoral or whatever you want to say. But you have to understand that we didn't do it because we were ashamed, but because you were our son and we loved you."
In fact, Julian may have been projecting his own Three-ish focus on success and failure onto to his parents' motives. His father, a clear unhealthy Seven who jumped from job to job, ever imagining a brighter future, was probably looking for a quick fix to a painful, constricting situation. And his mother, a placating Nine worried about her son, went along with it.
The "fraud" of the genetic enhancement blends with the deceptions of Three image-making. Alexander Siddig, commenting on his character, noted, "It's clear that Bashir had some choices to make in his life, and he took on a very high class accent that neither of his parents have. Basically, all of Bashir was manufactured, either by some scientists or by himself over the years. I quite like the notion that he's a completely assimilated person, not someone who's inherited any particular traits from his family."
"Completely assimilated," as Siddig puts it, could also be expressed as the Three's desire to become the paragon of whatever culture he finds himself in -- as Julian tries to live up to the ideal of a perfect Star Fleet officer and doctor.
Later, Julian met someone who embodied the dark side of his own Three style, where morals are subordinate to results: Luther Sloan of Section 31. Sloan drives it home to "Sisko" (in a holographic simulation with the real Julian present) how much Bashir has deceived him: "I understand you want to be loyal to a man who's served under you for so long. I understand you'd be inclined to take his word over that of an outsider. But step back for a moment and think about it. This man concealed the truth about his illegal genetic enhancement for over 30 years. He lied to get his medical license. He lied to get into Star Fleet. He lied to you when he came aboard this station and he's been lying to you ever since."
Sloan pushes Julian to admit that the only reason he told the truth was that he was found out -- and he doesn't know if he ever would have come forward otherwise.
Sloan tries to recruit Julian into Section 31, an organization that claims to protect the Federation using methods that contradict Federation ideals. Sloan says that he doubts Julian's patients cared about all of his lies. "If you knew how many lives [Section 31 has] saved, I think you'd agree that the ends do justify the means," Sloan says. "Now I'm not afraid of bending the rules every once in a while if the situation warrants it, and I don't think you are either."
"You've got the wrong man, Sloan," Julian says.
But Sloan answers with confidence: "I don't think so."
Perhaps Sloan could recognize the potential Machiavellianism in Julian. That Julian refused to join Section 31 reflects genuine ethical objections, but also that Julian's compulsion to be what is expected of a Star Fleet officer would not allow him to concede to Section 31's methods.
But it is also true that Julian is rather healthier than Sloan. (Aside from the "ends justify the means" ethic, when Sloan is on his deathbed in the episode Extreme Measures we see how a Three's obsessive workaholism wreaks emotional havoc on his personal life.)
Even if Julian, freed from the need for secrecy, uses his genetic enhancement as bragging rights, he still goes about his job with the honor, energy and dedication that marks the high side of Three. When they are healthy, Threes can let go of competition to motivate and help others to be their best. We see Julian do this in little ways with his co-workers; and more significantly with the mental patients who were the victims of genetic enhancement gone wrong.
--Teresa Malcolm