DS9 - The Wire

[TGLS]

I don't care what the intended journey was or wasn't. He was too 'green' in the beginning. He wasn't just green, he was a creep! He was too annoying.

Yeah. You know what I think to myself? If all of his actions originally were an act to hide his superhuman abilities, did he consciously try to be a creep towards women?

His constant pursuit of Jadzia after she had clearly said no makes him a right dick if that was deliberate.

Well, given that genetically engineered supermen are assholes in Trek, it's plausible that this could be the other way around, and he was unconsciously acting like a dick because of his superhuman abilities.

[Yukaphile]

I mean, maybe he evolved on that front too? Just because you're a supergenius does not you can automatically be respectful towards women. When I was younger, I had my own flaws that were similar, which in some ways, I am overcompensating for these days.

[Admiral X]

If he was particularly bookish, he might not have been properly socialized and didn't realize he was coming across as creepy. A lot of young guys don't. Well, even some older ones don't. Wouldn't be surprised if the relationships he actually did manage to get into helped him out there (seems to me he was with another Bajoran woman before hooking up with Leeta). That and maybe the writers finally realized he was coming across as creepy and made some adjustments.

[Yukaphile]

I was quite bookish as a young male, and I can attest to that. Didn't hit the level of "Bashir creep," however, but I was still that kind of socially awkward person, and still am.

[Deledrius]

His constant pursuit of Jadzia after she had clearly said no makes him a right dick if that was deliberate.

And yet... (I don't want to defend his creeping, but as part of the retcon...) could it be that he deliberately chose someone with enough life experience and self-actualization to defend against his performance of too-eager creeper? If there was anyone on DS9 who could say "No" to him and back it up, it was Jadzia.

Not that she should have had to, or that this was even still a "good guy" thing to do, but if we're talking about whether elements of his early character traits were part of the charade or not, I could see this being an explanation that would have seemed reasonable in a late-90s episode of Trek.

[Darth Wedgius]

Dax kept telling him no, but did she ever tell him to stop?

[CrypticMirror]

Dax kept telling him no, but did she ever tell him to stop?

Those are the same thing. Even if they weren't, after the first two or three times being told no a functional adult ought to be able to work it out. In his intro in Emissary, Bashir has apparently been hounding Jadzia all the way from Earth during their journey on the USS Plot Device, and getting solid no all the way. Setting aside the genetics retcon, the guy might be a green officer but he'd been through med school and officer school, so he ought to have been able to pick up on that. The 90s might have been a bit of a different time in regards to how women were portrayed on tv, and heaven knows that even today it can still be hazardous to your health -literally, not figuratively- to tell a guy no, stop, or go away directly for fear of his reaction to his hurt ego; but even for the 1990s this was straight out of the 1970s. I think they must have been working off early Alan Alda MASH dialogue there, it is so creepy even for the time.

TL;DR. If you hit on a woman, and she says no; it means stop.

[Admiral X]

And yet, as Ezri stated later on, if Worf hadn't come along, it would have been Bashir that she married.

[sayla0079]

And yet, as Ezri stated later on, if Worf hadn't come along, it would have been Bashir that she married.

In fairness though when she said that Ezri's brain was scrambled so she might have been remembering wrong.

[clearspira]

And yet, as Ezri stated later on, if Worf hadn't come along, it would have been Bashir that she married.

In fairness though when she said that Ezri's brain was scrambled so she might have been remembering wrong.

I find this very plausible. Its a plot point that Ezri was not one of the super-trained savant Trills who were prepared for years for the blending; she was just some woman who had to make a life or death choice as to whether the Dax symbiont died or not (the fact that this was even considered is a bit of a plot hole as it is meant to be a secret that essentially any Trill can be blended but there you go). Three instances of confusion come to my mind: standing on her head because one of her previous hosts was a gymnast, cringing at drinking a Raktagino because she confused Jadzia's tastebuds with her own, and injuring herself in the baseball game as she confused the capabilities of her body for someone else's.

Clearly on something as powerful as love we simply cannot trust her feelings. And as many have pointed out, that makes her relationship with Bashir, particularly how fast it seemed to come about, greatly suspect.

I would also argue that this is why the rule ''do not fraternise with the partner of a previous host'' as we saw in the pseudo-lesbian episode exists: it is to prevent people like Ezri making potentially dangerous mistakes.