okay just sobbed through that entire episode.
~DS9 SPOILER ALERT JUST IN CASE~ like i know this show is almost 20 years old now but i’ve known what was coming in this episode for MONTHS so don’t do that to yourself!
anyway. i still wasn’t sure how i was going to feel about the whole genetic enhancement plotline once they actually brought it up, because i knew that Siddig el Fadil didn’t approve of it, and i didn’t know any of the details. but, in my opinion, this revelation not only makes Julian a much more interesting character, but it makes all of his previous character development FINALLY MAKE SENSE. nothing about Julian felt cohesive before, and i’d always felt like the writers just weren’t really sure what to do with him, or even who he really was. he’s arrogant!/he’s a bit of a bumbling sweetheart! he’s obsessed with being perfect!/he’s afraid of being perfect!
i know that the writers almost certainly had no idea what they were doing with this plotline and thought it up a week before they wrote the script because they hadn’t given Siddig enough screentime lately or something - but they honestly could have fooled me into believing that they’d planned it all along. it makes so much sense given what we know about him, including how contradictory he is. sure, he’s a little arrogant - of course he is, he’s genetically designed to be better than most “normal” humans, and he knows it. and it’s the fact that he’s known all along that is the most heartbreaking, that the message he received as a child was: we don’t want you, not like this anyway, because you are not good enough. so they made him good enough, they made him almost perfect, but attaining that perfection is illegal and dubiously moral and must be kept secret, and so Julian never got to feel equal to other children, because he Wasn’t Good Enough, and then suddenly he was better. he doesn’t know how to feel about himself, whether or not to be proud of his own accomplishments (does he really deserve that award, that commendation, that published article? or is he just - as he calls himself to O'Brien - a “fraud?”) we know that he purposely missed a question on his final exam at Starfleet Medical - he’s terrified of his own potential, he’s terrified of what could happen if his parents’ secret was discovered, and he’s probably terrified that somewhere deep inside of him is a monster of Khan Noonien Singh caliber waiting to get out. and yet, perfection is what his parents wanted, what they designed him to be, what he believed they loved him for, as they could never love little struggling Jules, who was decidedly Not Good Enough to be loved.
Julian is, in many ways, still that little six-year-old boy, trying to please his parents, trying to live up to their expectations so that he will be finally be lovable. and he is also that frightened, angry fifteen-year-old, who finally understood what his parents had done to him, and what it meant, and how it embittered every accomplishment he’d ever made or would again. he resents what he is, but believes it is the only thing he has to offer. there’s much more to Julian Bashir than his genetic structure - “genetic recoding,” says O'Brien, “can’t give you ambition, or a personality, or compassion or any of the things that make a person truly human.” but i’m not sure Julian really believes that of himself, and that’s really, very sad.
