Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Our Man Bashir

"Our Man Bashir" is the 82nd episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the tenth of the fourth season. It originally aired on November 27, 1995. in broadcast syndication. Directed by Winrich Kolbe, the story originated from a pitch by Assistant Script Coordinator Robert Gillan and was turned into a script by producer Ronald D. Moore. Both hairdressing in the episode and the score by Jay Chattaway were later nominated for Emmy Awards. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures on Deep Space Nine, a space station located near a stable wormhole between the Alpha and Gamma quadrants of the Milky Way Galaxy. In this episode, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) plays a 1960s secret agent alongside Garak (Andrew Robinson) in a holosuite. After a transporter accident makes several other crew members appear as characters in the program, the duo must prevent any of them from dying in the game or else they will be killed in real life. The production team deliberately avoided holodeck malfunction related episodes as they felt they had been overused on Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, Gillian pitched the circumstances that caused the issue seen in the episode and Moore came up with the 1960s setting. One of the influences for the episode was the James Bond films, which was also raised by several reviewers. This obvious influence resulted in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contacting the studio and the later references to it in the episode "A Simple Investigation" were toned down. "Our Man Bashir" received Nielsen ratings of 6.8 percent, and while the episode was mostly praised by reviewers with particular attention paid to the performance of Avery Brooks, there was some criticism levelled at the depiction of women.