"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"
Hippocratic Oath (1995)

Director:

Rene Auberjonois

Writers:

Gene Roddenberry (creator: "Star Trek")
Rick Berman (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993)

Original Air Date:

16 October 1995 (Season 4, Episode 3)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

Bashir is asked to help a group of renegade Jem'Hadar break their addiction to ketracel white. Meanwhile Worf is dissatisfied with the way Odo runs security.

Plot Keywords:

Directed By Star | Crash Landing | Explosion | Engineer | Dart

Cast

Avery Brooks	...	Captain Sisko
Rene Auberjonois	...	Odo
Michael Dorn	...	Lt. Commander Worf
Terry Farrell	...	Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax
Cirroc Lofton	...	Jake Sisko (credit only)
Colm Meaney	...	Chief O'Brien
Armin Shimerman	...	Quark
Alexander Siddig	...	Doctor Bashir
Nana Visitor	...	Major Kira
Scott MacDonald	...	Goran'Agar
Stephen Davies	...	Arak'Taral
Jeremy Roberts	...	Meso'Clan (as Jerry Roberts)
Marshall R. Teague	...	Temo'Zuma (as Marshall Teague)
Roderick Garr	...	Shady Alien
Michael Bailous	...	Jem 'Hadar #1 (as Michael H. Bailous)

Quotes:

Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: Keiko only spends a few days at a time on the station. I'm the one living in those quarters, and if I want to set up a little workshop in the bedroom...
Dr. Julian Bashir: You set up a workshop in the bedroom?
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: Yeah. I don't use it when she's visiting.
Dr. Julian Bashir: No, of course not.
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: She says I'm trying to live like a bachelor again, that I'm expressing a subconscious desire to push her out of our quarters.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Now that *is* ridiculous.
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: That's what I said!
Dr. Julian Bashir: I mean, if anything, by spending your free time in the bedroom, a place you intimately associate with Keiko, you are actually expressing...a desire to be closer to her...during her absence. It's quite touching, really.
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: Exactly! Exactly! See, you understand. Why can't she see that? Why can't she be more like...
Dr. Julian Bashir: ...more like...?
[...]

The one where Bashir is conflicted between being a doctor and being a Starfleet officer...

'Hippocratic Oath'

Season four, episode four

I was about thirteen when I saw my first episode of DS9 and I'm rather ashamed to admit Bashir was my favourite character mainly because he was the only young reasonably attractive male in the cast. Thankfully, I quickly outgrew this shallow behaviour and, in turn, found Bashir's arrogant boyishness quite irritating in the first couple of seasons where he was portrayed to be much like a hyperactive puppy the others had to rein in. However, mid-way through the series, the character began to change, becoming far more interesting in his own right proving the DS9 scriptwriters had a talent for delivering character development. 'Hippocratic Oath' is a hallmark episode in the character's progress from moving away from being the fresh-faced kid of the main cast.

The episode sees Bashir and O'Brien crash-landing on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant where they are captured by a group of renegade Jem'Hadar who need a doctor to produce them more Ketracel White, the drug their bodies have been engineered to need for survive. But while O'Brien wants nothing more than to leave the Jem'Hadar to their inevitable painful deaths, Bashir feels that his duties as a doctor means he is obliged to help them.

This is a great episode in terms of character development and in excellent Star Trek storytelling where Starfleet officers are caught between doing what is right and their human impulses for revenge. It portrays the chalk-and-cheese friendship between the hardened, war veteran O'Brien, who is falling back into soldier mode as war between the Founders and Federation looks imminent, and the more idealistic, benevolent qualities that contribute to making Bashir a good doctor, who is torn between the Hippocratic Oath and the truth that the Jem'Hadar are a deadly race.