Nowadays.
Fair enough. Agree to disagree.
It wasn't unknown in the 90s either. Armin Shimerman missed 17 episodes of DS9, including 4 in Season 7.
Despite his talents, Shimerman was lower down on the call sheet than Farrell. He also negotiated extensively for all his outside appearances, working on his own with the line producers of both DS9 and Buffy to make it happen. He didn't just announce one day he wanted to be part time. And on DS9, he was never part time recurring actor. 17 episodes over the course of seven seasons isn't remarkable, and Farrell could have kept her starring status and do a small number of appearances.
ETA: Colm Meaney was higher on the call sheet, but his scheduled was negotiated well in advance. He wasn't taking time from the series to pursue auditions for films, and his filming times on series were always known to the producers before writing began for the season
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Maybe it would have worked for Farrell to do fewer episodes, but that's a problem between Farrell and the producers and the writers have little if any input. A lot has been said on both sides and it's way above my pay grade to figure out what's mostly true and what's mostly not true. Writers just had to do the best they could with the actors available.
They shouldn't have killed off Jadzia.
They should have come up with something about her becoming an officer on the Enterprise for some secret missions behind Dominion lines and then sjhe could have turned up occasionally on the Deep Space Nine station.
Ezri could have been a sister to Jadzia or something like that.
Considering that one of the concerns that led to Ezri's appearance was that if Jadzia wasn't replaced then there'd be only one woman in the primary cast, I'm a little leery of discussing the idea of keeping Jadzia but in a reduced role if we're all just a bunch of men (which may or may not be the case). Which is to say, I think a female perspective on this could be valuable to the conversation.
In any case, I liked some of the refresh elements that came with Ezri's introduction, and I maintain that Jadzia never would have given Worf the reality check that Ezri did, so keeping her, or at least not introducing Ezri, would have robbed us of a great moment in late S7.
In any case, I liked some of the refresh elements that came with Ezri's introduction, and I maintain that Jadzia never would have given Worf the reality check that Ezri did, so keeping her, or at least not introducing Ezri, would have robbed us of a great moment in late S7.
Jadzia finally gets sick of Worf monologuing about honor all the time and arranges a surprise transfer to USS Sutherland to spend some more quality time with Lt. Atoa.
Farrell and de Boer don't look anywhere near enough alike to be sisters.
The TNG movie writers would probably have preferred that DS9 not pin down where the Enterprise was and what she was doing.
Given that Farrell was leaving, Dax joining with a new host was a good thing to explore.
If that was the concern, there were a few existing characters who could have taken a role in the primary cast.
Honestly they would have been better served with stepping up one of the other women. Bring Kassidy Yates in full-time and have her pick some kind of like, merchant-marine posting for Starfleet based off DS9, coordinating civilian shipping in the sector or something... and then have Dax come back in "guest role" so to speak at the end, but... bum bum buuummmm Dax is a dude again.
Hell, not to beat this dead horse and it wouldn't have happened at the time anyway, but I would be totally cool with a scene where Worf is kind of like "I don't know how, but I would make it work.", only for Dax to be like "That was a past life Worf, we couldn't even if we wanted to."
Vic was awesome. I liked him. I thought he was really cool.
And he gave us one of the greatest eps ever, "It's Only A Paper Moon", so there's that.
Hell, I even liked Mirror Vic. If he even was Vic.
(my headcanon is that wasn't Vic, it was Felix - the MU counterpart of Vic's programmer. In the prime timeline I see Felix as an overworked, underappreciated cubicle drone, but in the MU, he's a badass warrior.)
And he gave us one of the greatest eps ever, "It's Only A Paper Moon", so there's that.
Hell, I even liked Mirror Vic. If he even was Vic.
(my headcanon is that wasn't Vic, it was Felix - the MU counterpart of Vic's programmer. In the prime timeline I see Felix as an overworked, underappreciated cubicle drone, but in the MU, he's a badass warrior.)
I feel like that's fair.
I always figured something similar. MU is supposed to be CLOSE to Prime, so Vic just being Vic, but not a hologram, shouldn't really track.
Makes sense... Felix wouldn't be programming holonovels in the MU, he would be a slave like most other Terrans. For whatever reason, he probably goes by "Vic Fontaine" though.
A good solution.
Ah, they could have been cousins then.
It wasn't necessary to do that. It could have been "some secret mission", nothing more.
Still a waste to kill off the character with one season left. They could have replaced her with Ezri and had jadzia as a recurring character in some episodes.
I'm envisioning an alternate timeline where Farrell remained on the show and the Dax portions of this thread were instead talking about how much better it would have been to kill off Jadzia and implant Dax in a new host than to have her remain on the show in such a limited capacity...
None of which has much of anything to do with Vic Fontaine...
None of which has much of anything to do with Vic Fontaine...
Kill off Dax and make Vic a main character.
Or Implant the Dax symbiont into Vic (no hosts around).
Or Implant the Dax symbiont into Vic (no hosts around).
Doesn't address the concern that we'd then only have one female main character.
I'm enjoying pondering the logistics of that.
I mean, with an intricate enough hologram... we know they can't make life but they should be able to simulate/replicate physical bits. It's actually kind of an interesting idea.
This female thinks 1) Terry got screwed over; 2) Ezri was a good character anyway; 3) NONE of 90s Trek had more than 2 women in the main cast. VOY had a female captain, but arguably she and Belanna were the main women until Seven showed up - I didn't watch a lot of VOY, but Kes always seemed a secondary character to me. DS9 *could* have used Kassidy or even Keiko more. TNG just had Troi and Crusher.
It was the 90s and it was Berman. Better representation of women was still to come.
