January Meme: Season 7 without Dax?
Jan. 17th, 2023 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenaklightofdaye wanted to know: Did DS9 really need to replace Jadzia in S7? (By which I mean not 'should they have given Terry Farrell what she want to stay' but 'Having killed off Jadzia did they need a replacement in s7 or could/should they have just used the rest of the cast more and saved some money?' Not an easy question to answer, because of the wild mixture of Watsonian and Doylist aspects to consider here.
Now, Dax is one of my favourite DS9 characters (Jadzia more than Ezri, but I do like Ezri, and I also find Curzon very interesting), and I think the friendship between Sisko and Dax is important for the show overall. Specifically in s7, I have my issues with the storyline in those opening episodes, but one thing they handle perfectly is that by the time Ezri Dax shows up, Sisko and the audience (at least yours truly)n are glad in equal measures. As incredibly important as his son and father are to Sisko, I don't think another character could have ended his existential crisis in quite the same way. And in a season that ends with Sisko becoming a God, err, a Prophet, his continuing friendship with Dax is an important human counterpart (for lack of a better term) that's not limited to his being a family man. As for Dax herself, as a symbiotic life form with the perspective of centuries (yet also with constant reinvention when a new host happens) she brought something unique to DS9. (Incidentally, how well or badly s7 used this is of course debatable; to me, there were both good and bad examples, the bad one being the Joran-the-serial-killer-detective episode while a good example is Ezri's conversation with Worf about the Klingon Empire, which isn't something Jadzia would have said yet which only a Dax with a front row seat to Klingon history since Curzon at the latest could have said.
Yet for all of this, could the plotlines of s7 have happened without Ezri (or any other version of) Dax being present? Sure, pot wise. However, and now I move on to more Doylist terms, Dax was one of only two female regulars. This automatically makes the question as to whether or not replace the character with a new regular in the last season different than it would have been if, say, Colm Meany would have quit and they'd have to make that decision about O'Brien. It's also why my answer to a related question I've come across more than once in fandom - whether it wouldn't have been more interesting and challenging re: the on screen presentation of same gender relations to make the next Dax host male? -: Maybe, but then we'd have ended up with just one female regular. Now Kira is a fantastic character, but I'd rather not have her als the only woman among the regulars.
There's of course another option: promote one of the female recurring characters already established to regular and give her more screen time and a larger impact on the plot. Let's face it, Kai Winn at least in the second half of the season is so important to the show and gets so much screen time that she should have been a regular anyway. However, no matter how you credit Louise Fletcher, this wouldn't add anything to s7 we don't already have, i.e. she needs no additional scenes to play a huge role in s7, while we're still short of a non-Kira female with the screen time of a regular. So realistically, I think it would have to be either Kassidy Yates, or Cretak, the female Romulan Senator who is Kira's liason to the Romulans early on DS9 and later ends up starring as Fiedler in the DS9 take on The Spy who came in from the Cold (with Julian Bashir as Alex).
Instinctively, my choice would be Cretak, but Kassidy would also work. It would have given the show the opportunity to explore her beyond her relationship with Sisko. True, the Maquis had already been wiped out the previous season, but you still could do more with Kassidy's past decision to work with them, and build on that for the pov of someone who is human, but not part of Starfleet, doesn't have the same politics as Sisko without being a villain for it. (It wasn't until Enterprise, btw, till we saw a bit more of the kind of work non-Starfleet human captains do, and DS9 could have already done that with Kassidy.) Moreover, and here of course I can't resist bring my pet DS9 peeve in (THE FREAKING PROPHETS), Kassidy could have become the resident sceptic and at the very least point out that what they did to Sarah was rape, plain and simple, and how are they better than the Pagh Wraiths again? And okay, even that aside since clearly the DS9 writers never thought of the Prophets in those terms, Kassidy could have been instrumental in coordinating civilian life in war time on DS9, for example, or her not-Starfleet background could have been key to bringing down Section 31, and for sure she could have developed relationships so some of the other regulars and recurrent characters.
All this being said: my choice for this hypothetical Alt!s7 still would have been Cretak, who was great in the three episodes we had with her, but who could have contributed a lot more if screen time had been available. More Romulan pov and Romulan culture exploration in a situation where they are allies (and that doesn't change the entire season) but as wary of the Federation in the long term as the Federation is of them! More of the relationship with Kira which is both mutually respectful but also trying to get the upper hand, just my kind of thing. More, perhaps, of other relationships - just imagine a scene between Cretak and Garak, for example! Or Cretak and Kai Winn!
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges would still have happened - it makes an important point of how far the Federation (not just Section 31, but the fleet command) is willing to go by now - but would not have been the end of her. Kira or some of the other regulars save her from execution, which she has mixed feelings about as she finishes the series the way Garak has begun it - as the resident exile on DS9 who is a patriot with decided non Federation views and methods but also one seen as a traitor back home.
In conclusion, my reply to the original question therefore is: if TPTB had done this with either Kassidy or Cretak, then yes, s7 could have been done without replacing Jadzia. Otherwise, my answer is no.
The other days
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Date: 2023-01-17 05:26 pm (UTC)Dax as Sisko's best friend is an important point, I'd overlooked. I think I've said this before but I always wish they'd play more with the dichotomy there that Dax is both incredibly experienced but also a young officer until Sisko's command, so can be both truth teller and friend to him but also occassionally need setting straight. (love the bit in You're Cordially Invited where Sisko does that)
And the doyalist consideration that yes, Ds9 is very short on female characters, when considering this I could only come up with Yates and Leeta, and only remembered Keiko after reading this post.
Your Cretak idea is brilliant though, have her around as a permanent Romulan equivalent of Martok would be great. It would give a better look into Romulans than even the eventual romulan main character in Picard does him from being a never seen before romulan sect. (Elnor! took me this long to think of his name).
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Date: 2023-01-18 07:08 am (UTC)I love the bit in You're Cordially Invited where Sisko does that
Oh, me too, or his adjusting her communicator in the episode with Lenara Kahn. The "mutual" element of this friendship - i.e. neither of them was the wise advisor all the time, they took also turns being the one who needed advice/a talking to - made it so appealing to me. As did the fact that male & female friendships that weren't about to evolve into romances were even rarer back in the 1990s on screen than they are today.
Keiko: arggh, should have remembered her and didn't. I think the problem with Keiko for promoted recurrent to regular character would have been that neither of her jobs - botanist and teacher - could be worked into the overall s7 story very well, and you'd have to explain who is taking care of the two kids since Miles is part of the war effort.
Your Cretak idea is brilliant though, have her around as a permanent Romulan equivalent of Martok would be great.
Wouldn't it just? And the actress playing her certainly would have been up for the job, if her three episodes are anything to go by. Not to mention that the Romulan/Federation/Bajor alliance really was important to the overall story and completely new in Star Trek history until that point.
With Cretak as a regular, the writers might have decided to do something they'd been wavering about, to wit, whether or not to go the Jake Sisko episode where he finds out about the events of In the Pale Moonlight and has to decide what to do about that information. (As far as I recall from the DVD commentaries, they didn't do it because they thought it wouldn't be possible to devote as much time to heal the father/son relationship as would have been necessary after that falling of the pedestals within the last season.)
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Date: 2023-01-18 05:23 am (UTC)You say you liked Ezri -- I got the impression a lot of people didn't. (I watched DS9, of course, long after it aired, if not quite as long after as B5 -- at which point I thought Ezri was fine though it took me a while to warm to her.
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Date: 2023-01-18 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-18 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-18 10:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-18 10:49 am (UTC)The other thing they could have done that might have been interesting is bring in a different female character to be the science officer, which would have given another female character and also been an avenue for exploring "what does it mean for Starfleet to fight a war, and what does that mean for all their other pursuits such as science and exploration?"
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Date: 2023-01-21 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-22 09:26 am (UTC)