Character Insight No. 248: Best of Ezri Dax

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we return to the Best Of series for Deep Space Nine with a look at Ezri Dax, the main character who joined the show for the final season when the Dax symbiont needed another host following Jadzia's death.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp248

Ezri Dax serves as a Lieutenant counselor aboard the station, and she's got plenty of personal adjustment and baggage to work through as she mixes her young host with the decades of experience Dax has. Ezri was the only Trill available to join with the symbiont when an emergency happens while trying to return to the Trill homeworld, which leads to the adjustment issues as alluded to in the episode Shadows and Symbols.

QUOTE (from Shadows and Symbols, S7):
Ensign Ezri Dax: [nods] I lay down on that operating table one person and I woke up a completely different person - well, I should say eight different people. I was not prepared for this at all. I mean you're supposed to get years of training and preparation before you get joined and all I got was a 15-minute lecture from the ship's surgeon and he wasn't even a Trill...
Sisko: I'm starting to see the problem.

It takes a while for the crew to adjust to having a new version of Dax around, but at least this replacement is nicer than Dr. Pulaski.  She and Worf take the longest to finally get along, but Ezri is always a realist about how hard it is for Worf to overcome the loss of Jadzia, and they finally figure things out in the episode Strange Bedfellows.

QUOTE (from Strange Bedfellows, S7):
Lt. Commander Worf: I realize, Jadzia saw physical love differently than I do. To her it could mean many things, but to me it was a deeply spiritual act. When I made love to you... my motives were not spiritual. It was an unworthy impulse.
Lieutenant Ezri Dax: Worf, we're not gods or prophets. We're people. We make mistakes.

Although the show writers definitely took advantage of the new fertile storytelling ground they had with a new character in the final season, the dramatic push to the end of the Dominion War storyline kept this from being overdone.  However, the rapid development of Ezri's character included her own romance that had plenty of false starts, this time with Dr. Bashir.  They finally admit their feelings and become a couple right before the end, as shown in the episode What You Leave Behind.

QUOTE (from What You Leave Behind, S7):
Lieutenant Ezri Dax: We have to get up.
Doctor Bashir: Are you sure?
Lieutenant Ezri Dax: It's a big day.
Doctor Bashir: [sighs] It was a big night. Cleared up a lot of unanswered questions.
Lieutenant Ezri Dax: Such as?
Doctor Bashir: Such as, just how far these spots really go down.


As the DS9 crew never had a regular counselor, it was interesting to see one added to the mix in the final season.  Ezri was no Jadzia, but in some ways, that was yet another interesting twist in this most unique of the Star Trek series.

Ezri Dax was played by Nicole de Boer, who continues to act today after overcoming shyness as a child with stage acting in Toronto, Canada.  Some of her most notable work outside Trek includes as a regular on The Dead Zone and more recent bit roles on Reign and Private Eyes.
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Character Insight No. 247: Musical Instruments

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we congratulate Mike and Darrell on 300 episodes, and celebrate the centerpiece of The Inner Light with a review of musical instruments featured on Star Trek.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp247


Star Trek has many core ideals, one of which is the exploration of other worlds and species, as well as celebrating the commonalities and differences found.  One commonality among many different cultures is music, and we see many different musical instruments and devices over the journeys of the crews of Star Trek.  According to Memory Alpha, we have already seen nearly 30 alien musical instruments over the history of Star Trek, to go along with a healthy dose of 25 or so familiar human musical instruments.

Sometimes these instruments serve as an important centerpiece or memorable contributor in episodes.  Certainly Picard's Ressikan Flute from his 40 years of experience in The Inner Light fits this bill, as does the Betazoid chime that Homn brings along in multiple Lwaxana episodes in TNG. 

Other times, they simply give more character to alien worlds or Federation crew members.  The Vulcan lute is seen played on multiple occasions by Spock and Tuvok, and the well-known trombone is played often by jazz fan William Riker.  It definitely appears that music has not lost any importance in the 23rd and 24th Century, but quite the opposite.

Although not typically thought of as a musical instrument, the voice of some characters is on full display with talent for singing.  Uhura was known to sing a tune at times on TOS, and the character development of the holographic Doctor on Voyager depended in large part on a passion for singing and music.  One of my favorite episodes is Virtuoso, in which the Doctor must decide whether to stay as a musical performer on a planet with a technically advanced civilization who adores him and had not heard music before Voyager arrived.

Although we see the usual gamut of string, wind, and percussion instruments on the show, Star Trek is always looking towards the future, and this came in so-called mental instruments that were played or controlled by thought and a touch of the hand.  Examples of this are the Enaren musical instrument from Voyager's Remember, and the Aldean musical instrument in TNG's When The Bough Breaks.  It will be interesting to see if musical tech follows some other tech shown on Trek to become a reality.

Congratulations again to Mike and Darrell, and here's to another 300 episodes with fun musical interludes.

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Character Insight No. 246: Jim Shimoda and Sarah MacDougal

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we take a request from "K
enP" and review Jim Shimoda and the moving parts of engineering in early TNG episodes.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp246


In the first season of TNG, the chief engineer and their leadership personnel would change almost as quickly as someone's underwear.  Until Geordi gets his hands on the job, nobody could seem to keep that department running smoothly.  That made for a nice corollary to the show writers getting their sea legs using many rehashed or callback scripts in the first season.

One such example is the episode The Naked Now, which of course is a similar story to what Kirk's crew faced with polywater intoxication in the episode The Naked Time.  In this episode, Sarah MacDougal takes her short stint as chief engineer, and she has to deal with a crazed Wesley Crusher locking her out of engineering, as kids do.  However, her most notable scene comes later in the episode thanks to a much more entertaining character, her assistant chief engineer Jim Shimoda.

You see, Shimoda was one of the crew members quickly affected by the polywater intoxication, and his way of acting out was to pull all the isolinear chips from the ship's computer and stack them in a game of tower building and Jenga.  Obviously you cant run a starship without some tabletop gaming enthusiasts, and Shimoda is clearly living out a great fantasy we can all relate to.  MacDougal has to try and put the chips back, but it turns out Data can do it better to restore control to the ship...which may help explain why we didn't need MacDougal much longer in charge.

QUOTE
Jim Shimoda: Never got as far as sickbay, Wes. I feel too good for that.

So here's to you, assistant chief engineer Jim Shimoda.  Hopefully you were able to retire after the polywater intoxication and live out your dreams of tabletop gaming for a living...you know, just like Wil Wheaton ended up doing!  It will be interesting to see if there's any department like TNG engineering that sees personnel turnover in the new Discovery show, given the similar long gap since writers had their hands on making Star Trek work.

Sarah MacDougal was played by Brooke Bundy, who had plenty of small TV roles over a 30 year career in shows like Lassie, Bonanza, and The Brady Bunch.  She has been retired for 25 years, but she did appear in the Elm Street Legacy documentary a few years ago thanks to her notable roles in the 3rd and 4th films of that horror franchise.

Jim Shimoda was played by Benjamin Lum, who had many small acting roles throughout his career before death in 2002 at age 48.  Shimoda did have a long recurrence on the show Guns of Paradise.  We will always have isolinear chip jenga to remember him by!

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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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Character Insight No. 244: Best of Miles O'Brien

Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue the Best Of series for Deep Space Nine with a look at Miles O'Brien, the Chief of Operations aboard the station.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp244

Miles gets a promotion when he moves over from the Enterprise-D, but he unfortunately has some tough times on DS9 like in the episode Tribunal, in which he experiences the horrific Cardassian judicial system, and then questions himself and how he looks as a role model to his daughter.

QUOTE (from Tribunal, S2):
Chief O'Brien: I've been in service to the Federation - Starfleet - all my adult life. No one has ever questioned my loyalty. No one in my entire life has ever had cause to ask "Miles O'Brien, are you a criminal?" I took an oath to defend the Federation, and what it stands for. I don't steal from them, I don't lie to them. I'm no angel. But I try to live every day as the best human being I know how to be. I need my little girl to wake up in the morning and look up at me and see a man she can respect. Until now, she always could.

One of O'Brien's best character building pieces is Hard Time, an episode where Miles has trouble adjusting back to real life after 20 years in a virtual prison, and he nearly commits suicide in the process of PTSD.

QUOTE (from Hard Time, S4):
[Chief O'Brien is holding a phaser under his chin, preparing to commit suicide]
Dr. Julian Bashir: Chief?
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: Get outta here, Julian.
Dr. Julian Bashir: You don't want to do this, Chief.
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: The hell I don't.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Look, I don't claim to know what you're going through, but whatever it is, it's not worth dying for.
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: You don't understand at all. I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing it to protect Keiko and Molly and everyone else on this station.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Protect us from what?
Chief Miles Edward O'Brien: From me. I'm not the man I used to be. I'm dangerous. I nearly hit Molly today. All she wanted was a little attention, and I nearly hit her.
[He begins to sob]
Dr. Julian Bashir: But you didn't. You're a good man, Miles Edward O'Brien, and whatever it is you think you've done wrong, you don't deserve to die.

However, when it comes down to it, Miles is a great operations and transporter chief who is incredibly loyal to his crewmates and to his family. We learn about how he mentors best friend Julian Bashir to enjoy such family relationships in the episode Extreme Measures:

QUOTE (from Extreme Measures, S7):
Chief O'Brien: Well, I'd better get home. Keiko is holding dinner for me.
Doctor Bashir: This late?
Chief O'Brien: Yeah, well, she's a helluva woman.
Doctor Bashir: That's why you love her.
Chief O'Brien: M-hm, that's right - that's why I love her.
[he is about to leave but comes back once more]
Chief O'Brien: You wanna come?
Doctor Bashir: Sure.

O'Brien does have a sense of humor, and it comes out often in his family dealings like this one from the episode Children of Time:

QUOTE (from Children of Time, S5):
Molly: Aren't you gonna help?
Chief O'Brien: I'm busy.
Molly: You don't look busy.
Captain Sisko: [laughs] She's an O'Brien all right.

Miles O'Brien was played by Colm Meaney, who has had recent appearances in shows like Hell on Wheels.  He holds the distinction of being the only Star Trek actor to appear in more than one pilot episode and more than one finale episode.

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