Alexander Siddig, Andrew Robinson reprise their roles DS9’s 30th anniversary

Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson give Deep Space Nine fans a treat.

Alexander Siddig, who played Dr. Julian Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Andrew Robinson, who played Elim Garak, recently teamed up to create what Siddig’s official fan site called, on its Facebook page, “a very special treat” to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary.

The two actors performed, via videoconference, an excerpt from Robinson’s extremely popular Deep Space Nine novel, A Stitch in Time (Pocket Books, 2000). They read in character as Garak and Bashir from Part 2, Chapter 19.

The passage Robinson and Siddig read is a conversation between Garak and Bashir that is accessible even to Deep Space Nine fans who haven’t read A Stitch in Time (including, I must confess, yours truly). In it, Garak seeks Dr. Bashir’s counsel about a disturbing nightmare he has had before making one final trip to Cardassia.

Like many conversations the characters shared during their lunches at Quark’s, it contains humor, historical references, social commentary, and metaphysical speculation. It even, in the finest Star Trek tradition, includes a William Shakespeare quotation!

Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson have maintained their relationship

Both Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson deliver delightful performances. They’re not in costume or makeup, but they slip into their characters’ voices and demeanors seemingly effortlessly.

Siddig charmingly portrays Bashir’s discomfort when Garak tells him the doctor was in the dream, for instance. And Robinson clearly hasn’t lost touch with Garak’s unique outlook on philosophical matters, as we hear when he delivers the tailor-spy’s line, “If we lose our fear of death, we lose an important ally.”

This video isn’t the first remote filming project Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson have worked on together. During the height of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020, they created and released a four-episode Deep Space Nine play, Alone Together. It not only starred Siddig as Bashir and Robinson as Garak, but also featured appearances from their Deep Space Nine co-stars Cirroc Lofton, Nana Visitor, and Armin Shimerman.

The passage Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson perform focuses on the importance, as Garak says, of “relationships and how they set the course of our lives.” It’s wonderful to see these two talented actors have maintained a relationship with each other, and with the Star Trek series that brought them together.