Siddig Based Bashir On Previous Trek Doctors

Alexander Siddig has happy memories of his years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine after being a fan of the original series and The Next Generation for many years before his casting.

Speaking to Star Trek Magazine (via Sci Fi Pulse), Siddig stated that he was a fan of the previous Trek series and said that when he was cast on Deep Space Nine, he based much of his interpretation of Bashir "on what I saw McCoy and Crusher doing on those shows."

Because he was the youngest doctor yet seen on Star Trek, Siddig felt that his character was "very progressive", but felt that as a result he made some very big mistakes, "like the episode where he nearly killed a whole population of people. But it also meant that he was looking 'outside the envelope', trying to find solutions that were out of the box."

Siddig enjoyed the character's unorthodox thinking and his difficulty handling crises in the field, despite his being an acknowledged genius.

He also thought the storyline about the JemHadar dependency on Ketracel-White was "science fiction at its best" as an allegory about drug abuse.

Though he has had to struggle with typecasting as a result of having been on Star Trek, Siddig is currently filming Kingdom of Heaven, a new film by Gladiator director Ridley Scott, though he was sworn to secrecy about the details.

More excerpts from the Siddig interview are here at Sci Fi Pulse. The full article is in Star Trek Magazine #115.

Sid City also has a transcript.

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