Star Trek's First Gay Ship-Mates? The Star-Crossed Romance of Garak & Bashir

- Robinson 110% played Garak as being sexually interested in Bashir in his first appearance. And in the (non-canon but very very good) novel A Stitch in Time that Robinson himself authored, he establishes Garak as having had relationships with men and women.
  As the show developed the producers/writers/studio backed away from that idea (which, to be fair, I think is a spin that the actor himself put on the script, rather than being there on the page itself), hence giving Garak a girlfriend.
  Personally I never read into any of their scenes together that Bashir was interested in Garak as anything more than a friend, but if the show had been more progressive in that respect I suppose it might have evolved into an explicitly romantic relationship. Early 1990s vs early 2020s I suppose.
  DS9 was pretty progressive in that the idea of "being in the closet" wrt ones sexual orientation was never a consideration. In "Rejoined" for instance, nobody has an issue with Dax loving another woman - the taboo was about reassociation. And "Rules of Acquisition" people didn't judge Pel (who people thought was a man at the time) for falling in love with Quark - the taboo was about Ferengi females wearing clothes etc. (Not sure if that Matt Baume video mentions this - it's been a while since I saw it.)
  
  The Trill story line with Dax has it's own video but is mentioned in this one. It's fascinating to see the details of the rest of TV at the time. I steamed it after it aired
- I've always liked the pair of friends but this answers my question of why they were even a pair to begin with. Always thought it was weird Bashir just let this incredibly suspicious tailor hover around him. I chalked it up to the writers wanting to make an unlikely friendship situation.
  
  Have any of the show runners like Ira Stephen Behr or Ron Moore actually confirmed that or is it just Andrew Robinson's take on the scripts? I always got the impression that Garek was cracking onto Bashir until he started seeing Leeta and then he moved on.
- The powers that be didn't want it, so they played it low key
  
  Have any of the writers ever confirmed that? People are quick to jump on Rick Berman tlaboti anything they didn't like in 90s Trek, but outside of Robinson's take, I've never seen any indication that anyone on the show saw the characters this way.
- I think Garak was canonically pan/omni or at least the actor playing him played him that way.
  The video said that the queer coding went down as the seasons went on to downplay the flirting.
  
  He's a spy, even if he wasn't, he probably would have slept with anything if it was in furtherance of his goals.
- Did any of them ever state any preference explicitly? Until then it's a matter of interpretation. Bisexuality is a thing btw.
- I mean characters aren't heterosexual by default. Sexuality is a matter of interpretation when it comes to fictional characters, and it is definitely possible to interpret Garak as pan or bi.

I do remember reading that they did want to have those two characters being gay but the studio really pushed back on that. This is why it took so long for ST to have characters that are LGBT.
- Yeah. There are a lot of interviews of them saying they were both interested but was stymied by the system
- Can you cite the interview as I've never seen anything more than Robinson's head canon to suggest anyone on the production intended this. Not that I care about LGBT rep in Trek, I just don't like misinformation.
  
  The video has lots of clips and interviews. Its an interesting look at everything

Didn't Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson do a screen-read during quarantine of their respective characters as an old, married couple? Or was that something I just imagined? Obviously, not canon, but it's something that the fan base has certainly gotten behind!
- I've found the playlist -- it's called Alone Together. I've just started on the first episode and it's pretty cool. It's a fanfiction radio play!
- They did and it was glorious.
- There's a small clip from them doing it in the video. It's pretty glorious

Interesting background knowledge that they were supposed to be gay, puts a lot of things into new perspective.
That being said, I don’t really like the idea, I enjoyed them as these unlikely but good platonic friends. I don’t think adding a romantic aspect to them would have improved their characters. For example Garak has many traits that could be interpreted as stereotypically gay, especially within the time period the show was produced. Him being a flamboyant and well spoken heterosexual works better to subvert cliches. Come to think of it, Bashir also isn’t the manliest of men. Which i also find more interesting for a heterosexual character.

I’ve seen DS9 SO many times… I never picked up on that subtext in their first meetings. So obvious now and nice to see the actors got together to right some wrongs
Fuck Rick berman btw