Lower Decks Just Made This Fan-Favorite Ship Canon

Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5, episode 9.

Summary

• “Fissure Quest” of Star Trek: Lower Decks features well-done fan service with alternate versions of beloved characters.
• Garashir, the popular ship between Garak and Bashir, became mainstream through fan-fiction.
• Star Trek: DS9
  writers wished they could include openly queer characters in the show, but Lower Decks finally made it happen.

The final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks has been a Star Trek fan’s dream. The episodes have explored popular tropes in new ways, examined fan-favorite alien cultures, and brought back some of the most beloved characters in the franchise. It’s truly fan service done right, and the most recent episode is no exception. In “Fissure Quest,” fans finally get something they’ve wanted since Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was still on the air.

The episode follows Captain William Boimler, Bradward Boimler’s transporter clone, and his crew as they try to track down the ship creating the quantum fissures that have caused so much mayhem this season. His crew happens to be made up of alternate versions of several fan-favorite characters: T’Pol, Curzon Dax, Elim Garak, Julian Bashir, and several copies of Harry Kim.

Though these alternate versions have a lot in common with their Prime Universe versions, there are some notable differences. Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker didn’t die and married T’Pol. Harry Kim finally got promoted (well, at least one of the alternate Kims did). Curzon Dax didn’t pass on his symbiont to Jadzia. And Elim Garak and Dr. Julian Bashir got married!

The Origin of the Garashir Ship

Fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have shipped Garak and Bashir since the very first season. The unlikely friendship between the Cardassian tailor/spy and the space station’s doctor that blossomed over regular lunch dates on the station’s promenade immediately drew the attention of queer Star Trek fans. They noticed the chemistry between the actors, and surmised that their characters were much more than friends. Fans who shipped the characters started writing fan-fiction about the characters and posting it online, and the ship grew in popularity.

Of course, Star Trek fanfiction was nothing new when DS9 premiered in 1993. In fact, the Star Trek fandom pretty much invented the modern concept of fanfic. Fans traded fics at conventions or sent them to each other in the mail, and a lot of them featured the original queer Star Trek ship: Captain Kirk and his First Officer, Spock, known as Spirk. The ship was so popular that Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator, actually took it upon himself to refute the existence of Spirk in his novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by having Kirk insist he was totally heterosexual.

Once fanfic went online, it became a central part of the Trek fandom. According to Vice, sites dedicated specifically to Star Trek fan-fiction popped up even before the definitive fan-fiction repository, Fanfiction.net, went online in 1998. Before the dedicated sites existed, fans passed fan-fiction around on online bulletin board systems, the predecessors to forums like Reddit, and via email.

So, Garashir, the official name of the Garak/Bashir ship, spread through fanfic sites. It became so popular, like Spirk, that it persisted until Tumblr launched in 2007. And once Tumblr users started posting about the ship, it became headcanon for Trekkies everywhere.

The Actors Were All in on Garashir

The lore of Garashir also spread at conventions, where fans asked the actors who portrayed them — Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson — whether they thought their characters were more than friends. Back when the show was actually on the air, the actors never outright said there was something romantic going on between Garak and Bashir, but they made a lot of jokes about it. Apparently, they made so many jokes about it that the producers told them to stop talking about Garashir at conventions, per a 1998 article in Metro.

However, once the show was off the air, Siddig and Robinson were much more open about their personal thoughts on Garashir. In interviews for The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, both actors said they were completely aware of the sexual tension between their characters, and they played it up as much as the producers would allow. Of Bashir, Siddig said:

“At the beginning, you’re not even sure of his sexuality. Then they throw the Cardassian Garak in the mix at a very early stage, and it’s not subtle. There’s a kind of quivering sexuality going on there.”

Robinson was just as clear about how he portrayed Garak’s feelings for Bashir.

“Bashir is really good-looking, so as a character choice I thought, ‘What the hell? Why not go for it?’ There is a close-up of Garak where it looks like he could eat him alive.”

Robinson addressed Garashir in the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind as well, stating that Garak definitely wanted an intimate relationship with Bashir.

Both actors have unashamedly embraced the fandom’s love of Garashir, and they frequently talk about how they think Garashir was a thing at some point, even if it never happened in canon. In fact, the duo actually performed a Garashir fan-fic together in 2020. At the time, fans thought it was the closest they’d ever get to actually seeing Garak and Bashir romantically involved.

Why Garashir Didn’t Happen Before ‘Lower Decks’

The obvious answer is, of course, that DS9 was on the air in the early 1990s, when gay characters were a rarity on television. When they did make an appearance, they were usually one-off characters or characters with small, recurring parts. According to the Paley Center for Media, there weren’t any queer lead characters until Ellen in 1997 and Will and Grace in 1998. The team behind Star Trek was willing to explore sexuality with episodes like Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “The Outcast” and “Rejoined.” However, they weren’t willing to challenge the social norms with a gay relationship between a lead character and a fan-favorite recurring character.

In the years since the show went off the air, several of the writers and showrunners behind DS9 have admitted they’re not proud of the fact that they never introduced a queer character. In the What We Left Behind documentary, Ira Steven Behr, the main showrunner for DS9, said he wished he had pushed harder to make Garak openly queer. In an interview with AfterElton in 2008, Ronald D. Moore said he felt “guilty” that he and the other writers “failed” at including queer characters in DS9. Though they haven’t said so outright, many people who worked on DS9 have implied that the producers repeatedly shot down pitches to have queer characters on the show.

Luckily, that isn’t an issue for Star Trek: Lower Decks. Because Star Trek: Discovery paved the way, introducing the first openly queer couple in the franchise in 2017, Lower Decks didn’t have to fight to make Garashir canon.

But technically, the Garashir fans have longed for still isn’t canon. The married Garak and Bashir featured in “Fissure Quest” are alternate versions of their Prime Universe selves, and Bashir is an Emergency Medical Hologram. But it’s still Garashir! In canon! And that’s way more than fans ever hoped to see.

Sources: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Motion Picture novel, Vice, Metro, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, What We Left Behind, Garashir fan-fic, Paley Center for Media, AfterElton