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For those of you who did not witness the decease of Jadzia Dax, a Trill Federation lieutenant commander who was as beautiful as she was brilliant, it is probably best you never do.
Off the record, Terry Farrell, the actress who portrays Jadzia, was unhappy with the "stagnation" she felt her character has reached. "Six years later, I still have the same wardrobe and same hairstyle," she is quoted as citing how little development Jadzia had gone through in all this time.
Yes, Terry, you have had the same outfit and the same hair more or less, but being a Federation officer does come with uniforms and a hairstyle that is becoming of one. Granted, the superficial constants of wardrobe and hair are not what she was really pointing to, one has to wonder why she opted to leave so abruptly.
However, this column is not bent on criticizing Terry's motives for leaving Deep Space Nine. Rather, it is meant to examine the awful manner in which the writers have disposed of Jadzia Dax, surely one of the most loved characters in DS9. And to add insult to injury, replace the vibrant and timeless Jadzia with bland and luckless Ezri.
The writers were faced with the challenge of writing in an exit for a regular. Mind you, a permanent exit, not a death-awaiting-ressurection a la Spock and Picard. No. Dax would be transferred to a new host and Jadzia would be out of the picture altogether except in retrospect. One would imagine they gave her a heroic death that somehow forwarded the interests of the Federation or that of science, her lifelong passion. One would hope that Jadzia is remembered with reverence and love even after her demise, and that her death would leave viewers with a pang and regret not to be forgotten for decades.
Instead, we see Jadzia Dax smiling happily, thinking about having a baby with Worf, and abruptly killed in the Bajoran shrine by a Pagh-Wraith inside the possessed Dukat. The red-eyed Pagh Wraith lifts Jadzia up with a stream of energy and strangles the very life out of her.
In a few moments, Jadzia tumbles down and lies unconscious, and Dukat, the Pagh-Wraith having vacated his body and into the Bajoran Orb of Prophesy, bends over her to say. "I know this is small comfort to you now, but I never intended you any harm."
I believe it's the producer's way of saying, "Sorry, dear audience, we couldn't think of any other way of getting rid of Jadzia." Truly, I was left numb with indifferece. The whole setup was contrived to say the least. The "in the wrong place at the wrong time" plot is tired, but on someone like Jadzia, the situation was flat-out unbelievable and extremely poorly done.
I demand emotion when dealing with the death of a major character. I demand respect to the memory of the dead person in later episodes. I demand most of all a compelling reason to believe that person died for something, for a cause worth dying for. But Jadzia had none of that.
Not four months after the death of Jadzia, everyone seems complacent and fully forgetful that she even existed. For six years she contributed much to the station's administration as a member of Sisko's senior staff. The moment she's buried, she's as good as forgotten.
We see instead, a perky, naive Ezri. She's cute and I do think Nicole deBeor is doing all she can with the role, but she simply has proven to be insignificant and underdeveloped as a character when push comes to shove. We spent half of the last season exploring Ezri Dax trying to sort out her personality. We spent precious screen hours seeing Ezri trying to "adjust", and in the end what did it gain any of us? Nothing. She might as well not have appeared in the Final Chapter for all the difference Ezri made. I think this is simply a case of an underdeveloped character not being able to assimilate itself into the main plot. We see Ezri's romances, but don't you wish the screen time was spent on something else. I know I do. I wish I could see Jadzia or a character that was on the same level of depth.
Lastly, I implore to the writers of Trek episodes: Don't be so callow. Don't treat the death of characters lightly. Most of all, don't have someone die so uselessly like Jadzia again.
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