If You Could Rewrite Dax's Death

[HugeLobes]

I liked the 'If you could rewrite' posts, so here's one that focuses on one issue: the death of Dax.

This seems to be something that most people agree was handled poorly. In fact, Ira Behr said: "I didn't want to kill Jadzia. To me, that had very little to do with good storytelling."

I think her death made sense. Dax was the character who brought people together; she was basically everyone's friend. I think moving into the final season/end of the war without that comforting presence could have been great, but the random manner of her death felt like something of a let down.

So, how would you rewrite her death?

Here's mine:

Have Worf directly responsible. In Change of Heart, Worf and Dax go on an important mission during which she is gravely injured. Worf sacrifices the mission to prevent her death, "costing Starfleet the intelligence that could have saved millions of lives."

Now, I get the rationale behind this, but it also bothers me. Honour and service are a huge part of Worf's character. Saving Dax at the cost of such a mission seems like a very human thing to do. What's the point in having a Klingon if you're going to treat that character like a human? I think this would have given Dax's death greater weight and set up fantastic conflicts between Worf and the rest of the crew during the final season. It would also have lent greater depth to Worf's character and acted as an interesting decision in its own right.

I'd also have the symbiant die. Again, greater weight when all those lives are lost. Also, I personally disliked Ezri, and I think having her step in for the last season made Dax's death all the more pointless from a storytelling perspective.

 

[DonIago]

I mean, they really missed their chance by not having "Change of Heart" be Jadzia's swan song, but a) they didn't know Farrell wasn't going to return at that point(?), and b) if they had killed Jazia there the symbiont most likely would have had to realistically die too, and I've kind of enjoyed Ezri's development in the final season and the novels, so...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The crew is surprised by a Jem'hadar attack on the station. There's heavy fighting on the promenade. Dax is stabbed in skirmish, both host and symbiot. Both die on Bashir's operating table.

ETA: Don Iago is quite correct. The writers were under the impression that Nimoy (then Farrell) was still negotiating with Berman. Nimoy herself had only just started auditioning for other parts the week or two before Change of Heart started shooting.

 

[HugeLobes]

No way! I thought they knew a lot earlier. Thanks, Don Iago!

Dax is stabbed in skirmish, both host and symbiot.

I always thought it would be more interesting to see Jadzia without Dax than Dax without Jadzia. Probably would have been too hard to do it across a whole season, but I like the idea of maybe Dax dying just before Jadzia. Imagine the gravity that comes with seeing someone lose all those lives just before they lose their own...

Always been surprised they never did that as a random episode where Jadzia somehow loses contact with the symbiot for a bit and has to react to characters without it. They never did that, right?

 

[DonIago]

They did do that. In "Invasive Procedures" a Trill who was rejected from the symbiont program steals Dax, and for a good chunk of an episode we're treated to both Jadzia without Dax and someone else with Dax.

By their own rules they couldn't do it for a prolonged amount of time, because it's established that after being joined for X amount of time a host grows dependent on the symbiont to survive.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

No way! I thought they knew a lot earlier. Thanks, Don Iago!



I always thought it would be more interesting to see Jadzia without Dax than Dax without Jadzia. Probably would have been too hard to do it across a whole season, but I like the idea of maybe Dax dying just before Jadzia. Imagine the gravity that comes with seeing someone lose all those lives just before they lose their own...

Always been surprised they never did that as a random episode where Jadzia somehow loses contact with the symbiot for a bit and has to react to characters without it. They never did that, right?

My own preference would have been to make Dax's death permanent. It's fun to think that the character is made up of the experienced of many different joinings over the course of centuries, but I didn't want a new Dax every other season. I would have rather Nicole de Boer played an entirely new character, Trill or not.

However, it would have found it interesting if we knew something more about Jadzia's background. Terry Farrell felt the character was complex enough.

 

[Sakonna]

For me, the element that always felt so random was that Jadzia would decide to go see the orb and pray to the prophets, it didn't feel like her.

I was surprised to recently rewatch "Emissary" and be reminded that literally the first thing that happens to Jadzia when she arrives on DS9 is that Sisko takes her directly to the orb, where she almost immediately has a vision.

If they really had to involve the orb in her death, there was a missed opportunity to go full circle on that. She had an orb experience at a key turning point in her life before, which provides justification for why she might go seeking one again at this new turning point she is now facing. You could have made the change with just 2 or 3 lines.

They could have also thrown in a line highlighting that Jadzia was remaining on the station during the mission as a direct result of "Change Of Heart", Worf and Jadzia no longer going on missions together.

I guess I ultimately don't want to rewrite Jadzia's death too much, though I find it dramatically ineffective as presented. But I think all the ways to make it work are right there already, they just didn't properly emphasize the correct elements.

 

[DonIago]

It is unfortunate that Jadzia going to the orb feels like dramatic license more than anything organic. I don't know that tying it back to first season would have made it feel less organic given that Jadzia hadn't expressed any interest in the orbs in the meantime.

Was Jadzia staying on the station rather than going on Defiant all that unusual? I honestly can't recall. In any case, I'd have rather seen that brought up in "Change of Heart" than brought up here, especially since we got Sisko's meeting with Worf in that episode. But it does make some logical sense, even though Worf wasn't in command in this case.

I guess they didn't have the time for it, but Jadzia being in Ops when Dukat beamed in and caused some serious havoc on his way to the orb, killing Jadzia in the process, might have been more dramatically effective.

 

[Tom]

They should have offered more to Terry to have her stay for the 7th and final season. I have worked with Terry in a recent production and she still misses that role to this day.

 

[HugeLobes]

They should have offered more to Terry to have her stay for the 7th and final season. I have worked with Terry in a recent production and she still misses that role to this day.

As far as I know, they really couldn't. Firstly, raising Terry's salary enough to make it worth her staying would have either alienated the rest of the cast or meant raising everyone's salary.

More importantly, she seems to have been pretty drained. DS9 was obviously a very taxing show, and even Dax's small amount of makeup will have added to that. She could either stay for one year or head to Becker for potentially up to seven.

Okay, she only got four years on that sitcom, but that's three years of paychecks she wouldn't get from Trek. Also, four years free from Trill makeup and fight scenes - I imagine the schedule was also a lot more forgiving. Sure, she could have finished out the show, but she gave it six years. This wasn't a Crosby-style ship-jumping.

Finally, keep in mind how hard it tends to be for Trek actors to keep finding work. With that problem looming, I can totally understand Terry's decision to take another job which seemed to promise long-term employment.

Interested what she had to say though. So, what did she say about leaving Trek?

 

[Tom]

She loved playing Dax. yes it was tiring by the end of the 6th season but she would have stayed for the final season if the terms were right. Negotiations are always tricky, its not about just money but alienating the other cast members (as you mentioned). We also had her son Max in our production as well. She has not done to much lately because she has been raising her son and enjoying her life in Pennsylvania. She was one of the most happiest cast members we had and pure joy to work with.

 

[HugeLobes]

She was one of the most happiest cast members we had and pure joy to work with.

It really comes across on DS9. I could take or leave her warrior stuff, but I loved how Dax was basically just a normal person people loved to hang out with. Terry's confidence and happiness really seemed to shine through.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

She loved playing Dax. yes it was tiring by the end of the 6th season but she would have stayed for the final season if the terms were right. Negotiations are always tricky, its not about just money but alienating the other cast members (as you mentioned). We also had her son Max in our production as well. She has not done to much lately because she has been raising her son and enjoying her life in Pennsylvania. She was one of the most happiest cast members we had and pure joy to work with.

This is one of those hindsight-is-20/20 cases. Another year as Dax would have been more professionally fulfilling, but Mrs. Nimoy herself recognizes that she had to protect her career with the hope of finding new roles. Had she stayed, she might have successfully pushed Sirtis out of Nemesis. However, I doubt that many new opportunities would have followed therefrom. The actors from DS9 who have been most successful after the series ended have been those who are most workaday.

 

[Riker'sMailbox]

I am on 'Team Dax should have died along with Jadzia'. Ezri brought nothing to the table and way too much of season 7 was dedicated to a "new" character.

I would've loved to have seen her killed off in one on one combat or by sacrificing herself to save others. Most preferable of all would have been to have had her resolve her differences with TPTB and finish the show. Jadzia was immensely likeable and multifaceted. I don't think TF was as strong an actress as NV, but her character was not written in a way that she needed to be.

 

[kkt]

I liked the 'If you could rewrite' posts, so here's one that focuses on one issue: the death of Dax.

This seems to be something that most people agree was handled poorly. In fact, Ira Behr said: "I didn't want to kill Jadzia. To me, that had very little to do with good storytelling."

I think her death made sense. Dax was the character who brought people together; she was basically everyone's friend. I think moving into the final season/end of the war without that comforting presence could have been great, but the random manner of her death felt like something of a let down.

So, how would you rewrite her death?

Here's mine:

Have Worf directly responsible. In Change of Heart, Worf and Dax go on an important mission during which she is gravely injured. Worf sacrifices the mission to prevent her death, "costing Starfleet the intelligence that could have saved millions of lives."

Now, I get the rationale behind this, but it also bothers me. Honour and service are a huge part of Worf's character. Saving Dax at the cost of such a mission seems like a very human thing to do. What's the point in having a Klingon if you're going to treat that character like a human? I think this would have given Dax's death greater weight and set up fantastic conflicts between Worf and the rest of the crew during the final season. It would also have lent greater depth to Worf's character and acted as an interesting decision in its own right.

I'd also have the symbiant die. Again, greater weight when all those lives are lost. Also, I personally disliked Ezri, and I think having her step in for the last season made Dax's death all the more pointless from a storytelling perspective.

I agree that Worf should have continued the mission even if it meant Dax's death. They are Starfleet officers in a war. They were ordered to consider themselves expendable in order to extract the spy, and that the information the spy had would save millions of people and possibly even tip the balance of the war. If this was WW II and an allied commando team was ordered to extract a spy with knowledge about German troop deployments a couple of weeks before D-Day, how would it have gone down if the team went home because one of them was badly wounded? It was unprofessional for both of them, and un-Klingon for Worf, to save Dax over the mission.

I also agree it would have made some very interesting episodes in Season 7 in Worf was responsible for Dax's death. Especially with Sisko. (I don't think Worf had a way to win with Sisko...)

I did like Ezri and de Boer and the Ezri character she created. I guess in hindsight if I were writing, I would have written Jadzia dies but the symbiont lives kind of in shock long enough to get Dax abord the shuttle and stabalized to be placed in a new host. If they still did flashbacks with Ezri, it would add another dimension to it to have his actions kill her and him feel awful about it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I would have had her die in Change of Heart.

I would not killl the symbiont though. I don’t think her death needs to be rubbed in anymore and that would kill great storytelling potential just for shock value. Worst thing you can do for a major character death is play up the shock value. All that accomplishes is to undercut the earned emotional impact of the death and make you feel manipulated.

But I would have made her replacement male and only a recurring character in the last season.

 

[Tenacity]

I would have had her die in Change of Heart

Sisko: "You did the right thing."
Worf: "I do not believe that's true."
Sisko: ....
Worf: "And neither do you."

 

[Jedman67]

They did do that. In "Invasive Procedures" a Trill who was rejected from the symbiont program steals Dax, and for a good chunk of an episode we're treated to both Jadzia without Dax and someone else with Dax.

By their own rules they couldn't do it for a prolonged amount of time, because it's established that after being joined for X amount of time a host grows dependent on the symbiont to survive.

And even better that it was Lionel Luther who stole Dax! (*Evil Laugh*)

They should have offered more to Terry to have her stay for the 7th and final season. I have worked with Terry in a recent production and she still misses that role to this day.

Farrel had a job offer with that other show and wanted to have a "recurring" schedule for season 7, like Robinson so she could take the second job.
Berman made it all or nothing, so she left.

 

[Armus]

I liked the 'If you could rewrite' posts, so here's one that focuses on one issue: the death of Dax.

This seems to be something that most people agree was handled poorly. In fact, Ira Behr said: "I didn't want to kill Jadzia. To me, that had very little to do with good storytelling."

I think her death made sense. Dax was the character who brought people together; she was basically everyone's friend. I think moving into the final season/end of the war without that comforting presence could have been great, but the random manner of her death felt like something of a let down.

So, how would you rewrite her death?

Here's mine:

Have Worf directly responsible. In Change of Heart, Worf and Dax go on an important mission during which she is gravely injured. Worf sacrifices the mission to prevent her death, "costing Starfleet the intelligence that could have saved millions of lives."

Now, I get the rationale behind this, but it also bothers me. Honour and service are a huge part of Worf's character. Saving Dax at the cost of such a mission seems like a very human thing to do. What's the point in having a Klingon if you're going to treat that character like a human? I think this would have given Dax's death greater weight and set up fantastic conflicts between Worf and the rest of the crew during the final season. It would also have lent greater depth to Worf's character and acted as an interesting decision in its own right.

I'd also have the symbiant die. Again, greater weight when all those lives are lost. Also, I personally disliked Ezri, and I think having her step in for the last season made Dax's death all the more pointless from a storytelling perspective.

The only thing I'd change is have Dukat kill Bashir as well, taking out the two characters I found most annoying. Sorry Bashir fans!

I think Tears of The Prophets is one of my favorite season 6 episode. There was a dramatic sense of foreboding in having Dax tell Bashir how good a friend he was to her before she was killed and Bashir and Quark's depression over the fact they would never have a chance with Jadzia was poignant. Plus the Weyoun/Demar reunion with Dukat was fun.

 

[DonIago]

I rather thought that was hideously unsubtle foreshadowing for anyone who didn't know ahead of time what was going to happen.