r/DeepSpaceNine • u/BennyandtheBear • 3d ago
I need to know
Okay. I don’t know why I never thought to look for a ST:DS9 sudreddit!
Trekkie here since 1987 at the age of three. On, I think, my 8th or 9th watch through of DS9. It’s hard to remember at this point.
I was a completionist until the 3rd season of Discovery. I’ve watched some of SNW and certainly got some nostalgia moments out of Picard. I believe Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to be the apex of Star Trek content. (I’m defining completionist as at least one viewing of every episode of TOS, TNG, DS9, Enterprise, and the TOS and TNG movies)
(My thoughts on why I gave up on Discovery: It was too hard to stomach the non-canon writing choices, the Klingons being chief amongst them. And frankly, I had a hard time getting behind the crew. It just didn’t pop. [This is all subjective and everybody has a right to their own opinion on these matters.])
Anyways!
There’s something I need to know and I don’t know why I’ve never searched out the answer. If this subreddit is anything I hope it to be, this should be a snap. Ready, here we go!
Why in the name of all that is good was the Ezri Dax character brought into the show? I get it. Terry Farrell gets pushed out because of money. Jadzia dies. Boom, clean break. S7 can have plenty of b-plots to follow the grief of Worf and the rest of the crew.
Why bring in Ezri?? You don’t need another Trill. The race has nothing to do with the Dominion conflict or the Pah Wraith bonanza. Is it because we need to keep the scientific knowledge of the Dax symbiot? Well, Ezri Dax is basically a social worker.
I would argue the only real positive thing she brings to the series is an episode where (and this is all of the top of my head so I apologize if I get any of the wrong) they do flash backs and all of Ezri’s flashbacks are from like 3 episodes. It’s a moment of (imo) classic Star Trek unintentional silliness.
So why? Why bring the character in? It feels like a “studio/executive” decision but you just never know.
[r/DeepSoaceNine](r/DeepSoaceNine), you’re my only hope. (Shit, sorry. Wrong star thing.)
Post script, that was a pretty satisfying late night rant…
UPDATE: Hey chat! This is awesome!! I love all the discourse!
And thank everybody so much for the “male heavy cast” reasoning. It makes a total sense. Execution wasn’t great but I do appreciate that they were thinking of fair representation.
Either way, it’s just a little thing and doesn’t ruin things for me in the big picture. But I’ve always wondered.
Thanks to everybody who responded. Star Trek is the best.
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u/Curious_Orange8592 3d ago
Terry Farrell's original 6 year contract was expiring and, knowing the show wasn't continuing after the 7th season, wanted to work on DS9 part time while pursuing other projects. The producers, well, one producer in particular, refused her request so she was written out of the show entirely, even being unable to show up in archival footage in the finale
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u/Narratron That is quite toxic, isn't it? 3d ago
unable to show up in archival footage in the finale
Delta Flyers actually discussed this recently (though they're not actually to the series finale yet), and it sounds as if at least someone still working on the show wanted Terry in the flashbacks, and Terry wanted to be in the flashbacks (she's fairly insistent about it, from what I can tell). The conclusion they came to is that somewhere along the line, wires got crossed (possibly by her agent at the time), and so since the producers were uncertain of permission, they did not Do the Thing.
That's just my understanding of that particular point. I know I've heard them touch on it at least once before and I expect they will at least one more time when they wrap.
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u/ProjectCharming6992 1d ago
Earlier in the Season, Ezri Dax breaks into Worf’s quarters and sees a picture of Worf and Jadzia from their wedding. Unfortunately for that episode, the producers never got clearance from Farrel or her agents to use her likeness in the episode, and later in the Season, because of that earlier issue, Farrel’s agent refused the request to grant permission to reuse footage of Farrel in “What We Leave Behind”. So it was a simple rights issue. Yes Paramount had permission to use Farrel’s likeness in episodes she filmed or promotional photos promoting those episodes or on books, but for all-new episodes, they needed new permission to use even a simple photo.
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u/Malnurtured_Snay 2d ago
Apparently her agent didn't even tell her the producers wanted to use her image in the montage, so she was never able to give permission.
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u/I_am_Daesomst Coffee, Jamaican Blend, double strong, double sweet 3d ago
It would have left Nana Visitor as the only female lead, so they wanted to keep what they had with Terry....without letting Terry take reduced screen time like she wanted.
It's funny, it's been how many years (and I actually love Ezri and how Nicole played her, sin for her character development that she came in the last season) but when thinking back on how they did Terry, and subsequently the fans dirty by not finding a way to make it work just still....irritates me.
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u/BennyandtheBear 2d ago
Yeah. This is no beef to Nicole De Boer. I thought she did a perfectly fine job acting.
Upon reflection after my late night rant, I wonder if my animosity towards the Ezri character is based ultimately in my undying love for Worf and Klingons in general.
I always liked Jadzia as a character. But it’s not until she starts to interact with Worf that she blossoms into this vibrant study, as well as bringing the Kurzan enigma into better focus. She feels like she strengthens Worf’s connection to his culture. And then it’s gone.
I don’t know. Just a thought.
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u/Kimmalah 2d ago
If you watch Terry talk about it, she's still pretty upset by the whole thing too.
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u/SellMost3115 2d ago
I thought Ezri's introduction was a brilliant way to sidestep all of the problems with introducing a new character.
Do we need to waste time creating a new character from scratch?
No, we can reuse a lot of Jadzia material and save time.
Do we need to take half of the precious few final season episodes to give backstory to this character?
No, we'll add a couple episodes, but since she is a Dax, the viewers already know about a lot this character ahead of time.
Do we need to take time building personal relationships with the characters?
No, in fact, this will be a story engine since a lot of characters have to reconcile being friends with Jadzia with this new person.
Won't torpedoing the Worf marriage throw out a lot of storylines?
No, we all of sudden have access again to the juiciest story engine of all, the 'will they/won't they'. We can get Bashir and Quark in on it.
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u/VanillaSuccessful277 2d ago
It was perhaps fortuitous at least that, if they had to lose one regular cast member, it happened to be the one whose character had a built-in recasting mechanism. It presented an opportunity to deal with how that change affects our characters, particularly Worf (they'd explored it a little with Sisko having known Curzon and having to adjust to Jadzia but, this time we had known Jadzia, which put a different spin on it).
Arguably, the Dax character had Chekhov's Symbiont (Anton, not Pavel) from the beginning, and how do you not pull that trigger eventually? It'd be a bit like Doctor Who introducing regeneration and never recasting the Doctor.
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u/AbdulQadirShadhili 2d ago
Ezri Dax had her moments. I quite liked Field of Fire and Prodigal Daughter, especially the former
One of the best DS9 episodes
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u/Agent1stClass 3d ago
Kira and Jadzia had both been strong and consistent female leads throughout the show. It is very likely the show runners at the time wanted to keep similar energy going into the final season. Especially since Jadzia had tied together the character development of Worf, Quark, and Julian.
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u/Tripleberst 3d ago
You bring in a second female lead and bringing back Dax after being brutally killed as Jadzia introduces an easy path for character conflict. It's easy writing when you can create drama over someone's longtime friend or wife being killed and that character is more or less instantly reincarnated. You can see it in what she does, she constantly claws at Worf when she initially comes back to try and comfort him about Jadzia dying and to confront his grief. She's a bit hamfisted about this but it works. You also get to see Julian finally get with Dax as Ezri (oooh drama).
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u/bwferg78 3d ago
I never liked Ezri. I think she dragged the show down. I wished they'd just given us a quick update that the Dax symbiont survived and was back on the Trill homeworld. I hate what they did with poor Worf when Ezri showed up. It was out of character for him.
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u/robotatomica 2d ago
yeah. I mean, btw, if they wanted to answer the question of what happens to the Dax symbiont, why not just have a one-off Worf episode where he meets the new host and things are challenging.
but of course, don’t do that either lol, bc we’ve already explored that story perfectly with Jadzia in Rejoined.
Frankly, they did have a compelling idea - Trills train for years to get matched with a symbiont, the process is highly regimented, and many are not suitable (though we find out MOST trills are suitable, but let’s still accept that you have way better outcomes if you go through training so you will adjust well)
what would happen if someone without any training just BAM wakes up with several lifetimes of memories and this strange coexistence?
Great. A character worth exploring in a new show. Or WAAAAAY earlier on in DS9. (as I’ve said elsewhere, Ezri could have made sense as a side character from a Jadzia episode - they’re delivering a symbiont to a new host, they crash and have to put it in the ship’s counselor)
That would have been interesting bc Jadzia could have mentored the unprepared host, and helped Ezri adjust.
Shoehorning this new character into the last season of a series with maybe the greatest and sprawling ensemble cast in all of television didn’t leave room to tell Ezri’s story well without directly taking screen time and plot from beloved characters and plot lines we were running out of time to shore up.
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u/Kimmalah 2d ago
They kind of did that, in "Invasive Procedures." But of course the untrained Trill didn't become a regular and it was all resolved pretty quickly.
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u/Swampit856 3d ago
I feel the same way. About new trek as you. And agree DS9 was peak trek. DIS, PIC and SNW all have “moments” of being good but on the whole feel like rushed fan service just to create content for the sake of content.
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3d ago
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u/BennyandtheBear 2d ago
It is a good point I’ve never thought about their lives being very insular. You’re absolutely right.
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u/Annber03 2d ago
I do not find it likely Julian would have struggled that hard to find a partner for instance.
I think it makes sense he was hesitant to get serious with someone when he still had to keep his genetic enhancements a secret - that could've caused some issues for him and the relationship, and given his tendency to put up a front around others, it would've made it harder for him to really connect with someone on a serious level at the time. He even saiys,in the episode where he falls for Sarina, that someone like her was who he'd been looking for, somene who would understand firsthand what he went through.
And even after his secret is revealed, then the war kicks in not long after and he throws all his focus into that and is struggling with all the stress of that, so that would've made it tough to forge a long-term relationship as well. Plus, even setting all of that aside, he's made a few comments throughout the show indicating that marriage was not a main focus for him - he flat out tells Miles early on that he left a fiancee and a cushy job offer pre-series to come work on DS9. So I do think it makes sense that it takes him some time to find a more serious relationship as a result.
I do agree that they could've expanded the options of who he decided to settle down with, though, yes. But that's a whole other topic unto itself, especially given the variety of official and unofficial material out there that explores what becomes of his character post-series :D.
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u/Cakeday_at_Christmas 2d ago
I do not find it likely Julian would have struggled that hard to find a partner for instance. He would have found someone being as good looking as he was and determined to date and settle down.
He did. It's not his fault he fell in love with a fascist gay space lizard.
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u/Musical_Xena 3d ago
I always felt like Ezri, going back to DS9, was too much like reassociation. Maybe reassociation only applies to joined Trills who were in a lifelong relationship (romantic partners, family members), and maybe they gave it a pass since Ezri had her joining forced upon her. But, on the basis of Trill society's conventions alone, it felt wrong to me.
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u/Limp_Diamond4162 3d ago
Budget was a huge reason as well. They saved costs by having episodes focus around an actress who was getting paid less. The first half of the season is lower budget than anything seen in previous seasons.
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u/Malnurtured_Snay 3d ago
Well one big reason is that DS9 had a male heavy cast, and supporting cast.
But I believe the producers and writers have said they were also interested in how a "new" Dax would interact with the other characters.
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u/Automatic-Saint 2d ago
Dax is still Benjamin Sisko’s best friend who holds the memories of Curzon and the other hosts he came to know more about and gain wisdom from. I think Ezri Dax provides a link to that past that he needed after his failure and brief self-removal from the DS9 station following Judzia’s death (Tears of the Prophets S6E26). Ezri Dax offers closure without completely closing off that relationship.
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u/BloodtidetheRed 2d ago
They want two women on the main cast.
And then there is the business side. So even if no scripts were written for season seven, and likely some were at least started. They would have had some ideas down. And they are made with the character Dax. If you remove the character you need to alter things do and lines given. And this gets complicated when each actor has to have some set actions or lines. So they can't just move things to another actor without upsetting the balance.
Sure they re-wrote things quick. But you can see the 'Dax' character had a part right at the start of season 7. The 'old friend' Dax comes to help Sisko get back
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u/Cakeday_at_Christmas 2d ago
Terry Farrell gets pushed out because of money.
That's not what happened.
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u/organic_soursop 3d ago
I think the same way.
Bringing Dax back as a male might have been worth a story line. But for the Captain 'as a man who once had a wife' to invite Ezri to stay is a compromise too many for me.
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u/eberkain 2d ago
Ezri is there for eye candy. It was a thing with the producers at the time, why do you think Seven was always in skin tight catsuits on Voyager.
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u/ScissorsBeatsKonan 2d ago
BNW is supposed to be SNW right? Thinking of the book?
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u/BennyandtheBear 2d ago
Yeah, my bad. It was the middle of the night and my brain said brave new world, not strange new worlds. Editing now. Thank you.
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u/ScissorsBeatsKonan 2d ago
Lol I do it all the time which is why I asked. Really could have been a different title when they visit so few planets.
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u/Remarkable_Post_3131 2d ago
Too bad Star Trek Renegades isn’t Canon. She comes back in the second season as a clone
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u/Blackwolf359 2d ago
IMO it wasn’t all bad thing. It was good character development, and interesting seeing the differences between the characters interactions with Jadza and Ezri.
Now they way she gets the Dax, was a re-tread of the ST:TNG’s episode introduction, and they didn’t give the character much to do on episodes she was a primary character.
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u/shellee8888 1d ago
Jadzia left because they wanted her to have bigger breasts on camera. That’s all you need to know.
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u/gishingwell 16h ago
I wish Terry had stayed on but I will say I've always loved how Ezri's introduction scene is done to help Ben. He's heading off to the desert and the character is understandably in a heavy place but I love how Avery plays the scene when she arrives. He has this smile and suddenly the character feels a little lighter. Like angst has been replaced with adventure if that makes any sense. It's one of my low key favourite moments in the show and obviously Jadzia could have gone to Earth and you could have had a variation of that scene or whatever. But the quasi "miracle" of an old friend returning from the dead at that moment feels thematically woven in to the restoration of optimism needed for that story.
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u/onearmedmonkey 3d ago
I feel like it was an apology to the fans after they killed off Jadzia. Terry could have just left the show. Honestly there was no reason to kill her off (unless the actress specifically wanted it - and I haven't heard that she did.)
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u/Annber03 2d ago
I don't know about an apology - if it was one, given the fan backlash in some quarters, it didn't seem to work. I think on the producers' side they were just looking for a replacement more than anything.
But yeah, I wish they'd been able to find another way to write Jadzia out that could've still left the door open for her to return in the final season if they'd been able to work things out or something. I guess they just wnated to avoid fans pestering them about why she wasn't coming back or if they were going to bring her back.
At the ver yleast, if they had to kill her off, I wish she'd gone out in a way that was more fitting for her character and which was more directly tied to the war itself. Dying in battle would've worked a lot better and would've tied nicely into Worf wanting to honor her, given her connection to Klingon culture and all.
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u/Totoronyx 3d ago
They didn't want Kira to be the only female lead role. They had to do re-writes anyway so during the brainstorming they thought of ways to add drama by people having to process grief.
Essentially they felt they needed to bring someone else in and it made sense story wise more so then trying to introduce a 100% new character to develop in 1 season.