Jadzia Dax


Jadzia Dax, played by Terry Farrell, is a fictional character from the science fiction television series .
Jadzia Dax is a joined Trill. Though she appears to be a young woman, Jadzia lives in symbiosis with a wise and long-lived creature, known as a symbiont, named Dax. The two share a single, conscious mind, and her personality is a blending of the characteristics of both the host and the symbiont. As such, Jadzia has access to all the skills and memories of the symbiont's seven previous hosts. Prior to the symbiotic joining, Jadzia earned academic degrees in exobiology, zoology, astrophysics, and exoarchaeology.
Jadzia Dax is the station's chief science officer, and is close friends with commander Benjamin Sisko and Bajoran first officer Kira Nerys. Later in the series, she becomes involved with the Klingon character Worf, and they marry during the sixth season of the show. Her character is killed by Gul Dukat during the sixth-season finale, due to Farrell's desire for a reduced role so that she could have time for other things, which producer Rick Berman refused to allow. Dax reappears in the seventh-season premiere in the form of Ezri Dax.

Development

Make-up

When selecting the characters for Deep Space Nine, the production staff knew that they'd have humans, Bajorans, and a changeling; for other characters they wanted to pick "a species that had already been established" on TNG. They decided on a Trill, as seen in the form of Odan in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Host".
Although Michael Westmore's alterations to make the Odan headpiece more feminine was as good as all of his work, the writers simply did not like it. Apparently, after she had put on the Odan forehead appliance, Rick Berman looked at Terry Farrell and said to Westmore, "What did you do to her head, she used to be beautiful?" Instead of changing species, as they'd already come to like the idea of an "old man", a person with centuries of experience to guide Sisko, Westmore suggested to "just give her spots like we gave Famke", who played a Kriosian in TNG: "The Perfect Mate". This make-up was used on all Trill afterwards, comprising lines of dark spots that run from the temples and down both sides of the head, neck, and body.

Characterization

When the show began, the writers had difficulty defining the character of Dax. Michael Piller explained, "Having a Trill seemed like a really, really good idea at the time, but it was the most difficult character for us to define. Jadzia Dax escaped us. At first we thought she was going to be ethereal, a Grace Kelly/Audrey Hepburn kind of goddess, and ultimately I think Ira Behr really figured it out, probably not until the second season, when he really made her a smart-talking, wise-cracking tough cookie." In 2014, Farrell admitted she found the character initially frustrating. "The writers didn't know what to do with the character they created", saying she was asked to portray the character as a cross between Grace Kelly and Yoda. She was also annoyed by a scene written where Dax gossiped about who was dating whom on the station, questioning "Why would a 350-year-old person care about who you're going out with?" Pillar explained, "The more we've written her, the more we're finding that she is not what she appears to be. That underneath this placid exterior, there's all these various personalities that she's gone through that are in turmoil and there's a lot of inner conflict. You know all the voices we hear inside ourselves are all made up of different subpersonalities; well she's got them all screaming at her in a variety of different ways."
Ira Behr spoke further on the character, announcing that they had intentionally changed the character by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He said, "We changed Dax in year two. Originally, she was going to be the Spock character, the wise old owl, the wise old man. And then we realized that she could be the one who's ready to go out and kick anyone's butt, and go out and have an adventure and have fun, and be kind of witty and mercurial. And that turned out to be great. When we found that part of the character, we just ran with it."
Speaking in 2002, Terry Farrell said of playing Dax, "It was a character who had lived seven lifetimes, been a man and a woman. Before I walked in and actually met everybody, I felt a little bit intimidated about this, I thought 'Oh my God, I need to meet them so they're going to tell me what I need to know.' And when I actually got here and spoke to everyone, they kind of didn't really know. And I was twenty-eight, and they kind of wanted me to be wiser than my years, just have the physicality of a twenty-eight-year-old, but have a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old wise person inside me. They tried to find what they wanted in adjusting me here and there, and I think really what happened was surrender to that it was all new for this Dax, Jadzia Dax, this experience of the seven lifetimes, and Michael Piller made the decision that she was trying to come to terms with all of these entities, all of these memories that were inside of herself. And I think that helped me a lot as an actress to try to assimilate the job, period, and in a lot of ways, made me feel a little lost and uncomfortable as Terry, which got played out as Jadzia, so it was okay that she slowly felt more comfortable, so did I, and by the time they decided to make me a little bit more roguish in the second or third season, I felt much more comfortable about the dialogue and the other actors, and my lack of stage experience. And when I had to start doing action sequences, and work with Michael Dorn, I felt a lot more comfortable. I had my own voice."
When asked how she would like Jadzia Dax to be remembered, Terry Farrell said, "wisely mischievous."

Scrapped ideas

Following the confirmation of Farrell's departure and plans to kill the character off, Michael Piller wanted to add a couple of lines to Star Trek: Insurrection acknowledging Jadzia's death and the impact it had on Worf. Rick Berman eventually overruled this, arguing that this would confuse film audience members who didn't follow the show regularly.
Early in the run of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Michael McGreevey pitched a story to the writers that featured Jadzia and Bashir falling in love. McGreevey commented "It was a love story, a simple concept. I don't know why they didn't want to do it. The symbiont inside Dax becomes ill, making her ill, and Dr. Bashir must separate them in order to treat the symbiont. We would come to see the personality of Jadzia, which of course is different from Dax. Bashir falls in love with her, and she feels for him, too. But the most important thing in life is to be joined with the symbiont. Bashir realizes that the only way to save the symbiont is to put it back into Jadzia, and thereby lose the girl he loves".

Joined nature

Jadzia Dax is a joined Trill. "Jadzia" is the name of the young Trill woman, while "Dax" refers to a slug-like symbiont that resides in her abdomen; Jadzia's actual family name was never revealed on the show. In the novels, her original name is said to be Jadzia Idaris. While Jadzia is 28 years old at the beginning of the series, the creature Dax is roughly 300 years old, having previously been hosted by seven other Trill. As a result, Dax may be considered the oldest crewmate on Deep Space Nine.
Prior to Jadzia, the Dax symbiont had been hosted by Lela, Tobin, Emony, Audrid, Torias, Joran, and Curzon.
The burden of seven lifetimes' worth of memories is not always a positive one; several episodes of Deep Space Nine focus on Dax's struggle with her dual nature:
At the beginning of the series, Jadzia has just recently been joined with the symbiont Dax after the natural death of the previous host, Curzon Dax. Curzon had been a friend and mentor to station Commander Benjamin Sisko, and as Jadzia Dax, they continue this friendship despite the change in circumstances. Throughout the series, Sisko refers to Jadzia Dax by the affectionate nickname "Old Man." She begins the series at the rank of Lieutenant; at the start of the fourth season, she becomes a Lieutenant Commander and remains one until her death in the sixth-season finale.
During the first few seasons, Jadzia Dax is pursued romantically by Dr. Julian Bashir. Dax consistently but politely rebuffs him, though she later admits that she somewhat enjoyed the attention. After Jadzia's death, Dax's new host Ezri begins dating Bashir.
During the first season of the show, Jadzia Dax is often portrayed as somewhat reserved and aloof. In the early second-season episode "The Siege |The Siege", she is ill-at-ease in the spider-filled caverns of a Bajoran moon, and is later disoriented by Kira's reckless piloting of a Bajoran starfighter. The writers' portrayal of the character begins to change in the second season, as they emphasize Jadzia Dax's gusto for life and extensive knowledge of other cultures:
Jadzia Dax's connection to the Klingon culture would become increasingly important as the series progressed, especially after the fourth-season arrival of Worf. In the episode "The Sword of Kahless", Dax joins Worf and Kor in the search for the titular Klingon artifact. In "Sons of Mogh", she becomes aware of and subsequently warns Captain Sisko of Worf's attempt to kill his brother Kurn, and in "Soldiers of the Empire" she and Worf go on a tense mission aboard a Klingon ship. Jadzia Dax would eventually marry Worf and join him as a member of the Klingon House of Martok.

Sexuality

Terry Farrell was happy with the story line, saying that it made sense for Dax to have this issue because the symbiont had been in both male and female hosts, adding that "Gender wasn't the issue. For the worm/symbiont, it was a matter of the being it was embodied in." She was pleased to be able to "stand up" for the LGBT community. A similar story had been approached during the first appearance of the Trill in The Next Generation episode "The Host |The Host". In this story, however, when the symbiont is transferred from a male to a female host, the Trill is rejected by the character who was the Trill's female partner, Beverly Crusher. The subplot featuring Kahn's artificial wormhole was described as a "MacGuffin" by Moore, and simply a way to get the character into "Rejoined". This was not the first subplot to be considered for the episode, with the main plot from "Bar Association |Bar Association" originally thought of as being suitable to appear in either "Rejoined" or "Crossfire |Crossfire". Instead, the plot, which involved Rom forming a trade union, was expanded into the main plot of its own episode.
The episode was directed by main cast member Avery Brooks, who played Benjamin Sisko in the series, who later said that "Rejoined" was his favourite of the episodes he directed. He said that the episode was about love, and the choices that result from that, and that it was an extraordinary story about losing someone you love and having that person restored to you some time afterward. Following the death of Jadzia in the finale, "Tears of the Prophets", Farrell suggested that the symbiont could be moved to a male character resulting in a similar situation as "Rejoined" between the new Dax host and Worf, as the two were in a relationship at that point. Instead, the symbiont was placed in a new female host called Ezri, as the producers did not want Kira Nerys to be the only female main character. The prejudice against re-association first highlighted in "Rejoined" was mentioned in the episodes such as "Afterimage |Afterimage".
Writers on Deep Space Nine had previously hinted at a potential same-sex relationship in the episode "Dax |Dax", when Jadzia Dax says goodbye to Enina Tandro, a former lover of Dax's previous male host, Curzon. The first take of the scene resulted in a situation in which it was unclear whether Dax and Enina were about to kiss. It was decided at the time that it was not appropriate, although the writers had hoped that there would be a time when the viewers would accept such a relationship. This theme was eventually realised in "Rejoined". Allen Kwan has argued that Deep Space Nine is the only series of Star Trek that resists the heteronormativity typical of the franchise, citing both "Rejoined" and the Mirror Universe episodes as examples, even if the presented bisexuality is problematized.
During that 1995/96 television season there had been an increase in the number of homosexual characters appearing in major television series, and so the same-sex kiss in "Rejoined" was reviewed in this context. An article published by the Associated Press suggested that the kiss in Deep Space Nine was not truly a same-sex kiss due to "extenuating circumstances"; namely, one of the characters was an "alien who used to be a man". A similar opinion was offered by Jan Johnson-Smith, author of American Science Fiction TV, who said that the situation was "ambiguous" as, despite presenting a same-sex kiss, the episode was clear that Jadzia was "actually kissing the symbiont who has the memories of the former host, her male lover , not the current female host".
For film studies scholar Jean Bruce, the ambiguity of the kiss is foreshadowed in an early scene revolving around a magic trick. On the one hand, the magic trick produces a "pleasurable surprise", while, on the other, this mirrors the deception necessary, due to Trill norms, in the reacquaintance of the characters. At the same time, the juxtaposition of very different shots serves to "convey physical distance and the desire to bridge it", which mirrors the fact that the Trills' love for one another transcends gender, identity and death. Though the kiss is "informed by the fact that Dax was a man in her past life", once it occurs, it can "never be taken back", and remains the queer image of two women kissing.
Nonetheless, "Rejoined" was still considered controversial because of its subject matter, which depicts two women who engage in a same-sex romantic relationship, and included one of the first televised lesbian kisses. During the course of the episode, no characters register concern about Dax being involved with a woman, only that she was an ex-spouse. David Greven, literary critic and author of Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek, said that "Rejoined" was one of the better-received episodes of Star Trek that dealt with homosexuality as a theme, but that the franchise overall had typically avoided LGBT issues. Bryan Fuller, who also wrote for Deep Space Nine, said that the franchise had usually avoided those story lines because of the paranoia of the studio regarding homosexuality. Dale Palmer, in an essay on gender and sexual politics, suggested that the choice was made to have a female same-sex kiss on screen because a male one would have alienated the main viewer demographic for the series.
In August 2019, Terry Farrell confirmed that Jadzia was pansexual.

Romantic interests

Jadzia Dax was initially pursued by Dr. Julian Bashir aboard the station. The Ferengi bar owner, Quark, also has a special affection for the Trill scientist, even after the Dax symbiont was transferred to Ezri. However, her most notable and serious suitors include:
In the fourth season, Michael Dorn joins the cast of Deep Space Nine as the Klingon character Worf. Perhaps because of her past interactions with Klingons, Dax is fairly flirtatious with Worf. Worf appears at first to be oblivious to this attention, and in the fifth-season episode "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" he becomes enamored with a female Klingon named Grilka. This is resolved by the end of the episode, with Quark ironically winning the heart of Grilka, and Worf becoming romantically involved with Dax.
In the beginning, their relationship is very sexual, with the strong implication that their encounters are somewhat rough. In the season 5 finale "Call to Arms |Call to Arms", the station is overrun by Dominion forces, and Dax and Worf are assigned to different starships for the Dominion War. Near the end of the episode, they agree to get married after the war is over. Worf and Dax's marriage is the centerpiece of season 6 episode "You Are Cordially Invited...". During the episode, Dax must obtain permission from the lady Sirella to join the House of Martok. At first Dax is loath to pay Sirella the required respect, and the lady is unwilling to accede to Dax's request. The situation is resolved by the conclusion, with Sirella admitting during the ceremony that nothing can stand between "the beating of two Klingon hearts".

Death

Jadzia is murdered in "Tears of the Prophets |Tears of the Prophets", the finale of the sixth season. She and Worf had been trying to conceive, despite the doubts of Dr. Bashir that such a pregnancy was possible. After Major Kira tells Jadzia she has been praying for a conception, Jadzia receives encouraging test results from Julian, and goes to the station's temple to thank the Prophets. It now appears a pregnancy will be possible. The Cardassian Dukat arrives, possessed by a Pah-wraith, with the intention of destroying the orb-like Bajoran artifacts known as the "Tears of the Prophets". Jadzia is no match for Dukat while he is infused with the Pah-wraith. He mortally wounds her and destroys the orbs. Upon her death in the infirmary, a distraught Worf screams out a Klingon wail of sorrow for his beloved and to let the Klingon afterworld know a warrior was on the way. Her death shakes the crew to its core: by the beginning of season 7, Sisko has left the station in despair.
Though the host Jadzia is dead, the symbiont Dax survives and is implanted in a Trill named Ezri Tigan. The resulting joined Trill, Ezri Dax, becomes a main character during the seventh and last season of the series.

Reception

In 2016, Screen Rant rated Jadzia Dax as the 19th-best character in Star Trek overall. In 2018, TheWrap placed Jadzia Dax as 26th out 39 in a ranking of main cast characters of the Star Trek franchise prior to .
In 2017, CBR ranked Jadzia Dax the 13th-fiercest female character of the Star Trek universe.
In 2018, CBR ranked Jadzia the 18th-best Starfleet character of Star Trek, ahead of Tom Paris but behind Sulu.
In 2019, Jadzia was ranked the 12th-sexiest Star Trek character by Syfy.