In the next update for Star Trek Online – Victory is Life – everything revolves around Deep Space Nine. Dr. Bashir returns, voiced by the original actor Alexander Siddig. He loves MMOs, but has never touched Star Trek Online! Alexander Siddig shares this in an interview.
As usual for Star Trek Online, the developers spared no effort in engaging original actors from the series Deep Space Nine as voice actors for the new update Victory is Life. Among them is Alexander Siddig, who portrayed the young, idealistic station doctor Dr. Bashir in the series.
We managed to get Alexander Siddig for an interview, where we learned a few funny details from the series and got to know the lovable-nerdy side of the actor.
“I hope I look better than my action figure”
In the conversation, we first wanted to know what role the good Dr. Bashir would play in the new Star Trek Online chapter. Is he an important main character with his own storyline? Or is he just an NPC who gives out quests?
Unfortunately, Alexander couldn’t tell us anything about that, as he hadn’t seen or recorded his lines at the time of the interview. However, he was completely thrilled at the prospect of playing his old role again. After all, Dr. Bashir was his first major role back in 1993.
So Alexander is also curious about how he will look in the game. After all, the story of Star Trek Online takes place in the future from Deep Space Nine. “I hope I look better than my action figure,” he remarked jokingly.
Dr. Bashir is everywhere
Next, we wanted to know if Alexander Siddig has ever played Star Trek Online. After all, he could create himself as a character and meet his alter ego Dr. Bashir in the game. “The universe would implode,” he replied immediately. In fact, Siddig has never touched Star Trek Online.
Despite being a big fan of online role-playing games, having played almost everything: Ultima Online, Eve Online, Elite: Dangerous, Everquest, Destiny, The Division, ESO. But never Star Trek Online.
In all these games, he usually chose the following characteristics:
- He always played male humans
- He customized them in the character editor to be as small, thin old men as possible
- They are almost always healers – except in ESO, where he has a sneaky character alongside a small wrinkled Templar because he thought the Dark Brotherhood was so great
- Names are always an anagram of “Bashir.” In Eve Online, he is therefore named “Shriba.” Other characters have similar combinations of the letters from Bashir.
Therefore, he has not been able to bring himself to play Star Trek Online yet. After all, Bashir already exists, and he doesn’t want to play anything else. He remains “monogamous” to his role.
Nevertheless, he admitted that he is curious about the new episodes of Star Trek Online and might just take a look at the game.
Dr. Bashir as Master Spy?
As neither of them knew anything about Dr. Bashir’s role in the game, we posed a few interesting hypotheses. Alexander proposed three interesting concepts for the Doctor:
- Bashir could continue his career as a doctor and now be some sort of Professor, serving as a mentor for future Starfleet doctors.
- In the series, Dr. Bashir was increasingly confronted with dangerous situations and battles. So it could well be that he has moved up to the command level.
- The most exciting development – and the one Siddig and I would wish for – would be if Bashir had become some sort of spy. Some of the best episodes of Deep Space Nine revolved around how Bashir acted like a James Bond in the holodeck. And then there were his escapades with the double agent Garak.
Meeting Garak again would be particularly wonderful for Alexander Siddig, as he has always enjoyed the dialogues between the enigmatic spy and the idealistic-naive Dr. Bashir.
Preferred to play with the “cool people” from The Next Generation
Beside his escapades in MMOs, Alexander Siddig had a few interesting stories to tell from his time on the set of Deep Space Nine. The DS9 cast was very serious and professional. There was no joking around. In contrast, the people from the other Star Trek series “The Next Generation” were a wild bunch who always made jokes.
While The Next Generation was universally praised, Deep Space Nine was constantly at the center of controversy. The series didn’t fare as well because it was always set on the same station and didn’t explore the universe. Sometimes Siddig wished he could play with the “cool people” next door. Additionally, Bashir’s character was always a thorn in the side of the studio bosses at Paramount!
Back then, young men had to be perfect. The popular teen series “Beverly Hills, 90210” set the tone. Dr. Bashir was an attractive young man, but he was flawed, often putting his foot in his mouth, frequently vain, and often came across as arrogant.
Alexander Siddig was supposed to be the Commander
Alexander Siddig was chosen due to his good performance in the film “A Dangerous Man” and they first wanted to give him the role of Commander. However, he was deemed too young for that. He was thought to be older as he had worn a beard in “A Dangerous Man”.
Thus, Avery Brooks got the role of commander, and Alexander Siddig’s character was rewritten to be the station doctor. Originally, he was supposed to be a Spaniard named “Julian Amoros,” but was then changed to a character of North African descent named Bashir (Alexander Siddig is originally from Sudan).
As the role of his character was created spontaneously, the description of Dr. Bashir was extremely short. Therefore, Alexander Siddig was able to continuously develop the role and improvise a lot. “It was as improvised as it could be in a large TV production,” Alexander said about it.
Victory is Life for Star Trek Online will be released in June 2018 for PC and a bit later for consoles. Then we will finally find out what role Dr. Bashir plays.
