Star Trek The Next Conversation - a comedy Star Trek podcast currently about TV's Deep Space Nine DS9 (or TNG) · Matt Mira and Andrew Secunda

DS9 s4e10 "Our Man Bashir"

·2 hr 18 min·5 clips

Matt and Andrew open on Bashir as a James Bond lead, and the conversation quickly latches onto how ridiculous the setup is. The premise gives them an easy target, but they keep returning to the absurdity without losing sight of why it works. The pattern-transfer and body-swap logic gets treated like classic Star Trek nonsense, funny precisely because it goes so far over the top. Matt sounds sick, which gives the exchange a looser, more off-the-cuff feel. The hosts trade corrections, interruptions, and half-finished thoughts in their usual way, and that looseness becomes part of the joke. They keep coming back to the spy framing and the episode’s full-on genre parody, while still treating it like something worth taking seriously as television. Garak keeps pulling the discussion back to the sharpest material. The Bashir-Garak relationship gets the most attention, and that dynamic is what makes the silliness stick. They also land on the episode in a very podcast-native way, with the rating talk becoming part of the bit instead of a clean verdict. A listener voicemail from Zachariah in Ottawa sends the show into a familiar loop of jokes, context, and audience back-and-forth. The conversation around that message stretches into relationship humor and the sense that the listeners are part of the running gag machine. The hosts then wander into Star Trek Lego talk, including a four-hundred-dollar set, which becomes a punchline, a fantasy, and a financial reality check all at once. They riff on the crew lineup, preorder pressure, and the kind of expensive merchandise only the truly committed can joke about rationalizing. Still, the episode keeps snapping back to the main event: a Star Trek hour that is stupid on purpose and better than it should be. By the finish, the whole thing lands as affectionate, messy, and very in character for the show.

As heard by us

A goofy Bond-holodeck episode, carried by Matt and Andrew's banter and the Garak-Bashir dynamic.

Star Trek The Next Conversation spends time with DS9's "Our Man Bashir" and does not try to sand down its Bond spoof awkwardness. Matt and Andrew lean into the pattern-transfer nonsense, the holodeck setup, and the Garak-Bashir dynamic, which gives the hour more bite than the…

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Why you'd press play

Play this if you want a Matt-and-Andy Trek conversation about a James Bond-tinged Julian Bashir episode, with Garak/Bashir relationship talk and a lot of joking around.

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