"Live, Jadzia Dax" (DS9 1-8 "Dax")

This isn't even about you.

February 14, 1993

(Synopsis at Memory Alpha)

"Dax" is a sucker's bet, because you go in thinking you're finally going to get to know Lt. Jadzia Dax of Starfleet, and instead you find out far more about the late Trill Ambassador Curzon Dax.  And yet it still qualifies as one of our character introduction episodes, because it introduces us to the complexity of being a Joined Trill.

Unfortunately, Terry Farrell doesn't play up that complexity very often on Deep Space Nine.  If it weren't for the spots and the way she sometimes seems unusually smug, you would rarely get the feeling that there's a three hundred year old symbiote living in a young woman's body.  She just doesn't know how to play an old person in a young person's body.  For a clinic on that technique done right, I refer you to Doctor Who, and in particular Matt Smith's performance as the Eleventh Doctor.

So we're not even going to try to stick to the source material, are we?

Most of the time, the only way you would guess that there's anything beyond 'science officer' going on with Dax is when they go out of their way to do a Trill episode, of which "Dax" is the first.  So let's talk Trill, shall we?  First of all we need to admit that beyond the name and basic premise, there isn't a lot left from the original Trill concept as seen in the fourth season The Next Generation episode "The Host."  In that episode, the Trill character doesn't have spots, he's got forehead ridges instead.  Fine, that's just a cosmetic thing.  Spotted Trills are from the north and ridged Trills the south or some such.  Besides, it was pointed out that Terry Farrell didn't look as hot with the ridges than she did the spots, and further, prosthetics cost more and take more time to apply than dotted makeup.  Just ask Michael Dorn.

Okay, maybe they had a point vis a vis spots vs. ridges.

But that wasn't all they changed.  In "The Host" it's made clear that whenever the symbiote enters a new body it totally takes over that body.  There was nothing left of Will Riker throughout the second half of "The Host."  Instead, the Odun symbiote was in total control of Riker's body while they were merged.  So much so that Odun kept up his romance of Dr. Crusher despite the fact that it had to be pretty awkward for her to be getting backrubs from what used to be a colleague and superior officer.  Indeed, the fact that Odun was perfectly willing to keep up the romance even when transferred to a female body speaks well for Odun's open-mindedness, even if it doesn't say much for Crusher's that she rejects the new her.  Babylon 5 would go rather farther in that regard, though the final revelations on that score would prove to be somewhat unsatisfying.

Oh, and in "The Host" it's made clear that Trill's can't use transporters, as that disrupts the link between the host and symbiote.  Needless to say that complication, as well as the symbiote dominance aspect of Trills, is jettisoned pretty damn quick.  All told, I can't even say that these were the wrong decisions.  What are fun complications when used on a guest star can be crippling liabilities for a main character, so changes in appearance and in the way Trills function were made and no explanation was given.  It was assumed that the fans would come up with some sort of in-universe explanation, and indeed one was found in the DS9 novel "Forged in Fire."  In short: it's all the Klingons fault.

So setting aside how Trills were introduced on TNG, let's see how they get used on DS9.  In "Dax" we get the question of whether crimes committed during one host's lifetime carry over to the next.  As the crimes Dax is accused of here carry the death penalty we have the added problem that, since Jadzia can no longer survive without the symbiote, to kill the Dax symbiote for the crimes of Curzon Dax would necessarily mean executing Jadzia for a crime that occurred before she was born.  Had they kept the 'symbiote-takes-all' angle from TNG this would have been less of an issue, but here in "Dax" they argue that each new joining is a true merger of separate entities.  That's what gives Sisko his case to try and halt Dax's extradition, and it makes for an interesting debate, and one that isn't actually settled by the episode before Odo shows up with a witness to get Dax off the hook.  

Of course since the episode  brings in a Trill expert from Trill itself, it's pretty odd that neither lawyer nor the arbitrator bothers to ask how they handle symbiote crime on Trill.  After all with your entire society built around the little worm guys, you'd think whether or not the current host is responsible for past crimes would be a pretty basic legal precedent to set, eh?

Though Dax sitting silently while on her way to the gallows is kind of frustrating, it's no more so for us the audience than it is for Sisko who's watching an old friend seem to be willing to walk off a cliff without being willing to explain herself.  This is a pretty good episode.  Sisko has some good scenes, and we see Odo in investigator mode for the first time, and it's well done.  Finally, some kudos.  I've pointed out in the past when we've run into guest actors who don't measure up, so it is just that I also mention particularly effective performances as well.  The late Anne Haney played her role as the annoyed and sarcastic Arbiter perfectly.  She doesn't have a ton of scenes, but the ones she's in, she steals.

That was "Dax."  We now know that she's willing to face execution to keep her word to an ex-lover, and that she has a lot of baggage from her past lives to work through.  It will turn out that much of that baggage will have to do with Klingons, but that comes later.

So let's have a look at Babylon 5's equivalent character, Commander Sinclair's old friend Delenn.  Here's what Straczynski had to say about the Minbar ambassador in one of his first posts about B5 back in late 2001:

"Shortly after Sinclair was named Commander, the Minbari assigned their first ambassador to the station.

His name is Delenn. And he stays very close to Commander Sinclair.

Some say he is keeping a close eye on Sinclair.

Some say he is Sinclair's friend. And some say there may well be something very lethal behind those unreadable Minbari eyes."

                                                                  -J. Michael Straczynski, GENIE 12/31/91    

You read that right.  He.  We'll talk more about the changes to Delenn in once we finally get to "The Gathering," but suffice it to say that the Curzon to Jadzia Dax thing almost had a direct analogue over on Babylon 5.

First, though, we have a little more DS9 to cover.  So come back next time to get to an unusual mystery episode, "The Passenger."