YOU SAID IT. YOU CAN’T UNSAY IT. let’s talk about julian + scripting
it is my fervent belief that the reason julian likes holosuite adventures so much is because they’re scripted. each program that julian plays has a specific set of rules, conventions, styles, speech patterns, etc that he steps into. “a lot of kick for a 45 dom” is one snappy line, but in no universe would I ever believe julian thought of it himself. he is like. the polar opposite of smooth. when julian isn’t playing a role with specific behavioral rules (spy, wwii pilot, doctor) or when things go abruptly differently than expected, he has two settings: overexcited puppy or awkward bean.
look at the beginning of past prologue: when garak approaches him unexpectedly, he can barely get a sentence out, and afterwards he goes running into ops in full puppy mode, too excited to bother with scripts and blathering at high speed. (there are lots and lots of examples of this, especially pre-retcon/prison camp.)
so: our man bashir. julian’s in his element, throwing out witty rejoinders and locking lips with a hot babe and generally pretending to be the suave guy he absolutely is not the rest of the time when garak shows up and promptly shoots the whole thing to hell.
now obviously a large part of what appeals to julian about garak is that garak keeps him on his toes. garak has never followed a script in his life and in fact delights in saying unexpected things to get a reaction. most of the time that thrills julian cause that genetically enhanced brain of his craves a challenge and boy howdy is elim garak a challenge, but this is not most of the time. the spy program has a script and garak is not part of the script.
and that carries over through the whole episode – whenever julian is following the program, he’s fine, but whenever it needs to be altered to account for garak’s presence – when he introduces himself, “ana” and garak to “duchamps”, when garak is complaining about the inaccuracies in espionage techniques, etc – julian either gets irritated or it takes him a second to get back on track. and yes, garak is kind of being a pill but garak is kind of always a pill and julian’s irritation is usually a lot more fond.
two examples to illustrate what I mean in this episode: 1. “kiss the girl, get the key” and 2. “there is no reasonable course of action but to quit.”
for the first: julian’s ridiculous lines to “honey” are absolutely part of the program script and 100% what he’s supposed to do to escape the laser. when garak interrupts and julian snaps at him, I don’t think it’s because he’s embarrassed (because he hasn’t been at all thus far, even about smooching not!kira) or because they might die – garak’s just going off-script. and if he doesn’t do the thing he’s supposed to do, then they’ll have to think of some other way out and they already have one in the script.
and for the second: obviously they have to go off-book at the end so they don’t all die. which is. a problem. so how does julian cope with this? why yes, with another script. he uses garak’s exact words basically. like he could have conveyed the general gist in a way that was more fitting for his character, but uh, they might die so script it is.
elodieunderglass
