Jadzia Idaris (mirror) - Joined to Dax, or not??

[chrinFinity]

This has been driving me crazy.

I don't see how it makes sense that Jadzia is joined in the Mirror Universe, but Sisko calls her "Dax" in Through the Looking Glass and she doesn't bat an eye.

What's the deal here? protip: Dark Passions and Shatnerverse don't count so let's not even bother with that. But I've read all David Mack's stuff, and if it was covered in there, it escapes me now.

 

[Idran]

I can't explain Through the Looking Glass, but Rise Like Lions makes it explicit that the Dax symbiont went from Curzon to Ezri in the MU.

 

[Tosk]

I can't explain Through the Looking Glass, but Rise Like Lions makes it explicit that the Dax symbiont went from Curzon to Ezri in the MU.

That makes Rise the wrong one then. In the show Jadzia has the symbiont and Ezri doesn't.

First time I watched DS9 I thought Sisko had put his foot in it by calling her Dax, and expected her to expose him as a fake because of it.

 

[Idran]

I can't explain Through the Looking Glass, but Rise Like Lions makes it explicit that the Dax symbiont went from Curzon to Ezri in the MU.

That makes Rise the wrong one then. In the show Jadzia has the symbiont and Ezri doesn't.

First time I watched DS9 I thought Sisko had put his foot in it by calling her Dax, and expected her to expose him as a fake because of it.

No, Rise Like Lions was years after Emperor's New Cloak; it spanned 2377 to 2381. Curzon was kept alive by Memory Omega beyond the limit of his natural lifespan, but they were reaching the limit of their tech, and they asked Ezri to take on Dax in his stead.

Seeing as the other symbionts besides Dax had been extinct for decades before Jadzia was even born and modern Trill didn't even seem to have all that much awareness that they'd ever existed going by Ezri's reaction to the request, Jadzia probably didn't recognize the name "Dax" and just thought Sisko had said some nonsense word or something. That's the best I can think, at least.

 

[chrinFinity]

That's what I thought. I was pretty sure she wasn't joined.

Jadzia probably didn't recognize the name "Dax" and just thought Sisko had said some nonsense word or something. That's the best I can think, at least.

That's the best I can come up with too. And it's frustrating. I wish Terry Farrell could have managed a sideways glance or something, it would make the whole scene a lot easier to reconcile.

Also the on-screen credit for SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE - TIM RUSS as "TUVOK" totally spoils an otherwise awesome dramatic reveal.

Ugh.

 

[chrinFinity]

Like honestly -- If the union won't let you put the credit at the end of the show, could you at least not have it say "TUVOK?" For crying out loud.

It would have been like putting a card up at the front of Star Trek III, that said "HE'S ALIVE AGAIN AT THE END OF THE MOVIE"

 

[borgboy]

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure the MU Jadzia card from the collectable card gave has text that describes her as being joined, and may actually have her name as Jadzia Dax.

 

[Christopher]

I think it's clear enough that the makers of "Through the Looking Glass" assume Mirror Jadzia was joined, but they didn't really think it through (since they rather obnoxiously reduced her to nothing more than a sexual conquest for Sisko), and there's nothing else that really suggests she was joined. So it's easy enough to rationalize it away. The only ones who call her Dax are Sisko himself and Jennifer (after learning her name from him). And the others do give him weird looks after he calls her Dax, which was meant to be surprise at his decision/plan, but could be interpreted as puzzlement at what he called her.

The part I have more of a problem with is Mirror Bashir, in the context of what we later learned about the character. Presumably he didn't have genetic enhancements, so he should be mentally disabled. Granted, he didn't seem all that bright, but not to the extent that Bashir reputedly was before his genetic engineering.

Like honestly -- If the union won't let you put the credit at the end of the show, could you at least not have it say "TUVOK?" For crying out loud.

It's not like they wanted it to be a surprise. A crossover appearance by a cast member from the sister show is something they would've wanted to promote in advance, not hide, because it would draw in viewers from that show. Indeed, Tuvok is glimpsed in the episode preview (at 10 seconds in), although no particular attention is called to him.

Anyway, the specific phrasing of credits determines how much someone gets paid. Drop the "as Tuvok" part and it would mean a pay cut.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Perhaps the genetic issues that our Bashir had were caused by some form of mutation early in the pregnancy when his mother was on a ship flying past a solar flare, which didn't happen in the mirror universe? So while he wasn't super-Bashir, he didnt need the augmentation to keep up with the rest.

To be honest the way so many generations of slaves managed to get together with the right counterparts to produce the same children is more of a issue for me

 

[20fridge]

Perhaps the genetic issues that our Bashir had were caused by some form of mutation early in the pregnancy when his mother was on a ship flying past a solar flare, which didn't happen in the mirror universe? So while he wasn't super-Bashir, he didnt need the augmentation to keep up with the rest.

To be honest the way so many generations of slaves managed to get together with the right counterparts to produce the same children is more of a issue for me

I just assumed that Bashir's problem was more academic. I mean kids in the 24th century do calculus (See TNG "When the Bough Breaks" or VOY Mosaic). So, I just thought that perhaps his impairment prevented him from being "normal" by prime universe 24th century standards but isn't so disabling in Mirror Universe society where academic excellence/intelligence isn't as valued.

 

[Paul Weaver]

I just assumed that Bashir's problem was more academic. I mean kids in the 24th century do calculus (See TNG "When the Bough Breaks" or VOY Mosaic). So, I just thought that perhaps his impairment prevented him from being "normal" by prime universe 24th century standards but isn't so disabling in Mirror Universe society where academic excellence/intelligence isn't as valued.

That's a very good point. if there had been serious problems, then genetic engineering was allowed.

"banning genetic engineering for anything except for repairing serious birth defects......"

However Memory Beta states

"Julian was born with serious learning disabilities, and at age six, he still had trouble telling the difference between a dog and a cat."

That's a long way below what you'd expect. Perhaps in the mirror universe he would have caught up a bit later?

If you can set that statement aside (where is it from?) as hyperbole, you could have Bashir's father, acknowledging his own failure to excel (in his view) in life, wanted more for his only son. He didn't want a son who was a moon-shuttle conductor and played tennis with friends at the weekend, he wanted a son that designed the next moon shuttle, while being a wimbledon champion (which as an englishman is very unlikely, no-matter how much genetic engineer went into him, and probably why he really gave the game up)

On a planet with a population of 5 billion, there will be 5,000 people there who find that they are the least advanced out of a set of them and a million other people. Doesn't mean they can't fight for their lives in a slave uprising though.

 

[20fridge]

On a planet with a population of 5 billion, there will be 5,000 people there who find that they are the least advanced out of a set of them and a million other people. Doesn't mean they can't fight for their lives in a slave uprising though.

That makes a lot of sense. I mean, there are some cultures like ours where dyslexia is a serious impairment and others where it is not much of an issue at all. Fighting for the Terran Rebellion probably requires a different skill set than being a doctor in the Federation.

On a somewhat related note: Is there any explanation given as to why Vic Fontaine is a person and not a hologram in the Mirror Universe?

 

[Christopher]

On a somewhat related note: Is there any explanation given as to why Vic Fontaine is a person and not a hologram in the Mirror Universe?

I don't think that's been addressed in the books. My theory is that Vic is a fictional composite created by Felix, rather than an actual (in-universe) 20th-century Rat Packer, and that Felix used some friend of his (or hired an actor) named Fontaine as the template for the holographic character. And the guy we saw in "The Emperor's New Cloak" was the Mirror counterpart to that guy.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Personally I think that "mirror Vic" is actually Felix himself. They do call him Fontaine, but they never use his first name...perhaps in the RU, Felix is some kind of nebbishy cubicle drone who created Vic as a kind of idealized image of himself, and that in the MU, Felix really is the badass that his counterpart in the RU only dreams of being.

 

[Leto_II]

To be honest the way so many generations of slaves managed to get together with the right counterparts to produce the same children is more of a issue for me

Yeah, same here. I can buy it taking place for story-purposes prior to the fall of the Empire, when things are still relatively stable and settled, but it starts to stretch credulity slightly starting in the 24th century, when all of the death and chaos and splitting-up of Earth's population to serve as slave labor in far-flung regions of the galaxy still somehow results in nearly every human DS9 character having an exact Mirror Universe counterpart.

Of course, in real life, they had to use the actors who were already available to them on the television show, but in the case of the enslaved Terran characters especially, the odds of some characters by some miracle not having a critical ancestor either killed or otherwise separated from their Prime Universe spousal-counterpart during all that turmoil and upheaval seem rather small from a real-world standpoint.

I've always quite like the Litverse's notion that some of the alien characters, including the Dax symbiont, actually ended up in just-ever-so-slightly-altered circumstances compared to their Prime analogues, despite slightly bending canon; it makes the whole thing that much more plausible.

 

[Leto_II]

[Accidental double-post.]

 

[chrinFinity]

Anyway, the specific phrasing of credits determines how much someone gets paid. Drop the "as Tuvok" part and it would mean a pay cut.

I know that's how it normally works, but can't they negotiate around that if everyone agrees? Nimoy wasn't credited at the beginning of Search for Spock in order to avoid the spoiler, but he got the first card, "ALSO STARRING," at the end of the movie.

 

[Christopher]

^Maybe, but as I said, a crossover appearance like that is the sort of thing you'd want to promote, not hide. It won't do any good at bringing in fans from the other show if they don't even know it's going to happen.

 

[Therin of Andor]

can't they negotiate around that if everyone agrees? Nimoy wasn't credited at the beginning of Search for Spock in order to avoid the spoiler, but he got the first card, "ALSO STARRING," at the end of the movie.

Nimoy also orchestrated that there would be a space in the opening credits, between Shatner's and Kelly's, where there was time for his credit to have appeared.

 

[Tosk]

I know that's how it normally works, but can't they negotiate around that if everyone agrees?

They can. And did it with Salome Jens in Heart of Stone.