Character Insight No. 245: Best of Elim Garak

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue the Best Of series for Deep Space Nine with a look at Elim Garak, a Cardassian tailor aboard the station who has one of the most interesting and mysterious back stories as an Obsidian Order agent, making this often recurring character worthy of a Best Of segment.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp245


Garak is most often seen interacting with Doctor Bashir, and this includes in one of his first notable episodes in Season 2's Cardassians. Garak proves some of his many skills from a former life in repairing a resettlement center's computers with tailor tools while investigating some work by Gul Dukat.

QUOTE (from Cardassians, S2):
Doctor Bashir: I continue to underestimate you, Garak.
Elim Garak: Oh, it's no more difficult than sewing on a button actually. Excuse me.
[He takes an electronic loupe out of his eye]
Doctor Bashir: You carry this everywhere with you, do you?
Elim Garak: A simple tailoring tool. You'd be surprised how often someone needs their pants let out.

We find out much more about Garak when a device implanted in his brain begins to malfunction and is slowly killing him, in the episode The Wire. Bashir saves his life, but not without a lot of interesting dialogue between these two once again.

QUOTE (from The Wire, S2):

Elim Garak: I do hope you appreciate the irony, Doctor. The whole purpose of the implant was to make me immune to pain.
Dr. Julian Bashir: What caused it to malfunction?
Elim Garak: It was never meant for continuous use.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Continuous use? What do you mean?
Elim Garak: Living on this station is torture for me, Doctor. The temperature is always too cold, the lights always too bright, every Bajoran on the station looks at me with loathing and contempt. So one day, I decided I couldn't live with it anymore. And I took the pain away.

There's no episode that holds a candle to In The Pale Moonlight for Garak, as far as character pieces go. Commander Sisko hits his darkest moment in the Dominion War as he employs the underhanded plots of Garak himself to plant evidence to force the Romulans into the war, to save the Alpha Quadrant.

QUOTE (from In The Pale Moonlight, S6):

Elim Garak: That's why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing? Well, it worked. And you'll get what you want: a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant. And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.

Elim Garak was played by Andrew Robinson, who currently serves as the director of fine arts acting program at the University of Southern California. Outside Star Trek, he is likely best known as the serial killer Scorpio in the classic film Dirty Harry.
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