Jadzia Dax (), played by Terry Farrell, is a fictional character from the science-fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Jadzia Dax is a joined Trill. Though she appears to be a young woman, Jadzia lives in symbiosis with a long-lived creature, known as a symbiont, named Dax; Jadzia is Dax's eighth host. 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 chief science officer of the space station Deep Space Nine and is close friends with station commander Benjamin Sisko. Later in the series, she becomes involved with the Klingon character Worf, and they marry during the sixth season of the show. In the sixth-season finale Jadzia dies but the Dax symbiote survives, and in the seventh-season premiere returns with a new host Ezri Dax, played by Nicole de Boer.
Development Make-up When selecting the characters for Deep Space Nine, the production staff knew that they would have humans, Bajorans, and a changeling; for other characters, they wanted to pick "a species that had already been established" on Star Trek: The Next Generation. They decided on a Trill, as seen in the form of Odan in the TNG episode "The Host".
Although Michael Westmore's alterations to make the Odan headpiece more feminine were 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 had already come to like the idea of an "old man", a person with centuries of experience to guide Sisko, Westmore suggested, "just give her spots like we gave Famke [Janssen]", 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.""New Frontiers: The Story of Deep Space Nine", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features
In 2014, Farrell admitted she found playing 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?"
Piller 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 early in the series. 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."Crew Dossier: Jadzia Dax, DS9 Season 2 DVD, special features
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 28, and they kind of wanted me to be wiser than my years, just have the physicality of a 28-year-old, but have a 350-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."
Rejected ideas Following the confirmation of Farrell's departure and plans to kill the character off, Michael Piller wanted to add a few lines to Star Trek: Insurrection (which was still in development) 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 did not 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 Trills. 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: In the first-season episode "Dax", the previous host Curzon Dax is accused of murder. This leads to an extradition hearing to determine whether Jadzia can be held responsible for crimes committed during another lifetime. While the moral question remains unanswered, the legal issue is resolved when evidence arises of Curzon's innocence. In the second-season episode "Invasive Procedures", an unjoined Trill named Verad attempts to steal the Dax symbiont. Verad is upset that his application for a joining has been rejected by the Trill Symbiosis Commission, and he plans to steal the Dax symbiont and escape into the Gamma quadrant. He manages to remove the Dax symbiont from Jadzia and partially join with it before his escape is thwarted. Later that season, Dax mentors a Trill initiate in the episode "Playing God". Dax is responsible for training the young Trill, and for evaluating his suitability for joining. During the episode, Jadzia and Sisko discuss her own training under Curzon Dax, as well as the role that joining plays in Trill society. In the third-season episode "Equilibrium", Dax begins to experience unsettling mental problems. She travels back to Trill to discover the source of the problems. While undergoing treatment, she visits a network of caverns in which unjoined Trill attendants care for symbionts that have not been implanted into hosts. She eventually learns that the Dax symbiont had been previously joined with Joran Belar, a psychologically unstable host candidate who later committed a murder. Her memories of Joran's life and crime were suppressed, but her mental problems subside once she regains and confronts them. Later that season in the episode "Facets", Jadzia encounters each of Dax's previous hosts in the Trill "rite of closure", including the insane Joran. This episode reveals much of the backstory for the Dax character, and explores the relationship between Jadzia Dax, Curzon Dax, and Benjamin Sisko. In the fourth-season episode "Rejoined", Jadzia Dax encounters Lenara Kahn, the current host of the symbiont Kahn, who had been previously joined to Nilani Kahn, the wife of Torias Dax. Because Torias died suddenly, Dax's relationship with Kahn through its previous host was never resolved, and the two current hosts struggle in the episode with their feelings towards one another. This is complicated by a taboo in Trill culture against romantic relationships with partners of previous hosts.
Portrayal 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," and she in turn frequently addresses him by his first name rather than his rank or "sir." 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 early 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 (cf. "Starship Down"). 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", 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: