Our Man Bashir

"Our Man Bashir" is the 82nd episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the tenth of the fourth season. It originally aired on November 27, 1995, in broadcast syndication. Directed by Winrich Kolbe, the story originated from a pitch by Assistant Script Coordinator Robert Gillan and was turned into a script by producer Ronald D. Moore. Both hairdressing in the episode and the score by Jay Chattaway were later nominated for Emmy Awards. The episode's plot involves the combination of two much-used Star Trek plot devices: a transporter accident and a holodeck malfunction.

Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures on Deep Space Nine, a space station located near a stable wormhole between the Alpha and Gamma quadrants of the Milky Way Galaxy. In this episode, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) plays a 1960s secret agent in a holosuite game, accompanied by his friend Garak (Andrew Robinson), who is himself a former spy. After a transporter accident, the physical likenesses of several crew members are temporarily stored as characters in the holosuite memory; Bashir and Garak must prevent any of them from dying in the game or else they will be lost to the real world.

The production team had deliberately avoided episodes centering on holodeck malfunctions as they felt they had been overused on Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, Gillan pitched the circumstances that caused the issue seen in the episode and Moore came up with the 1960s setting. Although the episode takes its title from Our Man Flint, a major inspiration for the story was the James Bond films. This obvious influence resulted in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer complaining to the studio, and later references to Bashir's holosuite game in the episode "A Simple Investigation" were toned down. "Our Man Bashir" received Nielsen ratings of 6.8 percent, and while the episode was mostly praised by reviewers, with particular attention paid to the performance of Avery Brooks, there was some criticism levelled at the depiction of women.