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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