So we know that Curzon Dax was a Federation ambassador and that he and Ben met early in Sisko's Starfleet career. In what capacity would a diplomat and a military dude have regular contact? Does this suggest that Starfleet provides security to Federation diplomats? Or perhaps that some Starfleet ships/stations have attached ambassadorial staff?
Did Sisko ever serve in security? Now that I think about it, we really don't know too much about Sisko's past. Other than his father is a chef, his mother was a prophet and his wife died at Wolf 359. But I think Ben serving as a guard to Curzon is plausible. Perhaps, a vessel that Sisko served on early in his career devoted a majority of its time to diplomatic relations and maybe they always had a diplomat, or diplomats on board.
Kind of in line with this question, did we ever see Curzon on screen as Curzon Dax? What I mean is, I know we never saw the real Curzon Dax in DS9 but was he in any of the other shows/movies? I have a "history of the federation" book back at home and there is a painting of Curzon Dax with the Federation President from STIV: TVH (the older blad man with the white beard). I'm assuming that there was a character, perhaps an aide in the background or something in the movie, and Trekkies later said "Oh that was Curzon Dax" once the character was created. Am I making any sense at all? LOL
^ We see Curzon in the orb vision Jadzia had in 'Emissary' when she first opens the case in the science lab. And no, details about Sisko & Curzon's earliest meetin' hasn't been covered, not even in the books, though there was a "Lost Era" novel that came close (the one written by KRAD). But, really, is it so hard to see how a meetin' could happen? A diplomat needs to get somewhere, a ship is sent to serve as a taxi, and the captain assigns some junior officer to deal with the diplomat, thus Ensign Sisko met Ambassador Dax. He did tell Jennifer that he was had just graduated & was on his way to his first shipboard assignment, if ya take his first orb vision at face value of their initial conversation. And in DS9 'The Forsaken', Sisko does give Bashir a similar assignment, pointin' out that he once had to do the same thing.
This question remembered me of a short story in the DS9 anthology "The Lives of Dax", which i read ten years ago, where a answer was given. Here is a summary from Memory Beta: "Dax first met Starfleet officer Benjamin Sisko when the young cadet was assigned to him as attaché at Pelios Station in 2353. The two would form a close mentor/student relationship and Curzon would once describe Sisko as "The best friend I ever had." (DS9 - The Lives of Dax short story: "The Music Between the Notes")"
I always imagined that Sisko was a young engineer assigned to Curzon's team on some diplomatic mission and that it turned into an adventure that both made them friends and demonstrated that Sisko had command potential.
I always envisioned that Curzon was partying it up in a Lounge, with a girl on each arm, and Sisko just happened to be in the same Lounge, and for some reason or other Ben had to sink his fist into the face of some obnoxious punk, which led to Curzon inviting Ben over for a drink
I always figured it was something more casual than official. Curzon sees Ben try to pick up a girl at a bar and gives him some pointers or something like that.
Indeed, "capacity" is probably too fancy a word for describing their meeting. "Incapacitated" might be more like it. Timo Saloniemi
That was never expressly indicated. I know of at least one of the novels indicating he was chief engineer of the Okinawa before being promoted to first officer, with a few episodes indicating his engineering experience. Maybe early in his post-Academy career, he was a "utility player" like Lieutenant Leslie on TOS and Worf and O'Brien in the first season of TNG. The OP's hypothesis is certainly sound, especially with inconsistencies early on about whether or not Curzon was a Starfleet officer. For instance, Sisko mentioned they "served together on the Livingston". And when Bashir was assigned to show around a group of ambassadors, Sisko mentioned Curzon used to dump those assignments on him, and now has the privilege of doing the same to Bashir.
We can of course also speculate on the degree of obfuscation Sisko had to engage in, in order to keep secret the true nature of Dax the Incredible Joined Trill. Perhaps much of the Sisko/Dax backstory is in fact a lie, that is, an otherwise true story that nevertheless is always told with an emphasis on false detail that speaks against Dax being a scary parasite... Timo Saloniemi