Thoughts on the whole Troi/Worf/Dax/Bashir progression?

[Lady Mondegreen]

I have mixed feelings about a lot of the relationships in this string of romances and it seems like a good topic for discussion -- I'm curious about other people's opinions.

Worf & Troi
I thought this relationship had a lot of potential. I never found Troi and Riker to be particularly compelling and I really liked the interactions we got between Troi and Worf toward the end of the show developing their relationship. I don't mind that it didn't work out, though...although I wonder whether it makes more sense to imagine they split up as a result of Worf taking the assignment on DS9, or that the post-breakup awkwardness was a factor in Worf deciding to take the new assignment.

Worf & Jadzia
I loved these two together. It really does seem like Worf needs someone with a sense of humor to stop him from being so freaking serious all the time, and conceptually I think it was smart to have Worf (who's a bit of an outsider to Klingon culture despite being Klingon) end up with a non-Klingon who has personal experience with and appreciation for Klingon culture. It sucks that Farrell's departure from the show meant this had to end tragically.

Worf & Ezri
I like the idea here (Worf struggling to be around Ezri because she both is and is not his dead wife, convincing himself he can have Jadzia back through a relationship with Ezri, and having to let go again -- it's a good dramatic arc) way more than the execution. The whole slap-slap-kiss thing that leads to them hooking up is unpleasant, and throwing in Ezri's totally subconscious feelings for Bashir as a way to start the fight that breaks them up feels forced and lazy to me.

Ezri & Bashir
Not really a fan. Maybe it could have worked if there was more time to build it up but I really don't feel any chemistry between them with what little time we have in those few episodes...and having Julian end up with a woman who has the memories of Jadzia, who he spent so long unrequitedly lusting after, feels like something of a step backwards.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I largely agree with your assessments. I would say that Ezri-Worf was well played, but needed more thought on execution. Trek generally does romance poorly, but this was somewhere they could explore problems of breaking up and mourning. Ezra was still a poorly adjusted personality, and given Worf's emotional vulnerability, it made sense that their interactions had an unhealthy dependency. It happened. It was two people trying to capture something no longer present. It was not magical. It was understandable.

 

[Dr Helen Noel]

Troi/Riker worked well in Imzadi, though their plotline felt unresolved in TNG. Troi/Worf always felt awkward to me. What would they talk about together? I've read Imzadi Forever which Memory Alpha tells me is about Troi/Worf but I don't remember anything about it.

Worf/Jadzia worked well together. Worf/Ezri was awkward, as was Ezri/Bashir. I wish they had just let Ezri be her own person with no connection to Jadzia.

 

[kkt]

I agree pretty much with Lady Mondegreen.

Worf-Troi I don't think was a well-told story in TNG. If you want to tell a story about them in love, fine! but conclude it somehow. Either have them get married, or happily dating, or else split them up due to differences or huge fight or something.

Yes, Worf and Jadzia worked very well. They had chemistry. And, yes, Worf-Ezri was a good way to tell a mourning story. It would never have lasted but was a good story to tell.

Ezri and Bashir had no chemistry. I'm glad they never got a full episode primarily about their relationship, because they wouldn't have known what to do with it. Besides, Bashir was probably 34 during season 7, while Ezri was probably 21 or 22. That's a huge age difference. Some such relationships work, but a lot of them break up pretty quickly. If there had been a Season 8, one of the secondary arcs should have been Ezri and Bashir gradually realizing that it wasn't working.

 

[Lady Mondegreen]

I do think introducing Worf/Troi and then not resolving it in any way (besides I guess DS9 and the post-TNG movies making it clear that they're broken up and Troi is with Riker) is a weird choice.

 

[Dukhat]

Most relationships in Star Trek are contrived nonsense that goes nowhere. All of the above are examples of this.

 

[DonIago]

Worf/Troi: I liked it, and I especially liked that they took a bit of time to build up to it. I'd still like to know why it didn't work out, and I deeply hope that Riker wasn't a factor in it not working out, because that's so beneath him. I can't see how DS9 was a factor, because even in GEN they didn't seem to be in a relationship.

Worf/Jadzia: No notes, other than I kind of would have liked to see what a Trill-Klingon baby would look like, and it's somewhat lazy writing that it comes up in the episode that's also Jadzia's swan song. +3 pathos!

Worf/Ezri: I don't think we were ever meant to think that this was going to go anywhere, but at least it ultimately allowed them to resolve things. I didn't really care for Worf's initial hostility toward Ezi; he surely knew it was a possibility (if not a hope) that Dax would live on, and obviously Ezri wasn't to blame for helping Dax do so; would Worf have preferred Dax had died? I guess it's understandable, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I admit some of their later 'relationship' hijinks amused me a bit, though I'm not sure how plausible they were.

Ezri/Bashir: I wonder how much of this was done out of a desire to not have Bashir still be single and in arguably ambiguous relationships with Garak and O'Brien. As a last-minute development I think it's okay, though I think it's for the best that it doesn't ultimately work out per the novelverse, and perhaps this could be viewed as the last of Ezri's major adjustments to being Joined with Dax. It feels a bit like fan-service for everyone who remembered the Bashir-Jadzia flirtations and wanted to revisit that.

 

[somebuddyX]

Worf/Troi was great because it never existed. It was a parallel universe, a hallucination, a virus, and an alternate timeline. God herself said "No!"

Worf/Jadzia was fine but kinda boring.

Worf/Ezri was even more boring.

Ezri/Bashir was whatever. I stopped caring.

Ezri/Jake, now that's the spice.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I'm not much of a het pairing expert and absolutely not a fan of the whole Riker and Troi and Worf stuff, but if I had to choose I'd pick Troi and Worf over Troi and Riker any day. It just seems more interesting to me. Especially when I think of how Worf and Lwaxana would get along.

It kinda made me cringe how much Worf seemed to dislike Ezri at first. I mean he knew Dax is a Trill and this might happen if something happened to Jadzia? It just gave me a lot of uncomfortable echos of the way Crusher reacted to Odan's new host. If you date a Trill, shouldn't you take into account that their host might change and that you have to be able to deal with this in at least SOME way? Idk. Maybe I'm asking too much?

Ezri and Bashir never made any sense to me. I think the only person Bashir makes any sense with is Garak. Sorry, but not sorry.

 

[Lady Mondegreen]

It kinda made me cringe how much Worf seemed to dislike Ezri at first. I mean he knew Dax is a Trill and this might happen if something happened to Jadzia? It just gave me a lot of uncomfortable echos of the way Crusher reacted to Odan's new host. If you date a Trill, shouldn't you take into account that their host might change and that you have to be able to deal with this in at least SOME way? Idk. Maybe I'm asking too much?

Eh, Worf definitely isn't the most emotionally intelligent guy. Knowing intellectually that one day your spouse will die and another person may have their memories is definitely different than accepting your spouse being murdered pretty shortly after you get married and another person with their memories immediately turning up and becoming your coworker. I think that Worf being a dick to Ezri for a while is pretty realistic -- I just wish there had been a longer arc of him warming up and becoming kinder to her before they got together, because I find the whole scene where he's shaming her for Jadzia having had previous sexual partners and they then immediately hook up to be a little gross.

Ezri/Jake, now that's the spice.

I can see them going well together but I have a bit of a hard time with the idea that Dax has known Jake since he was like, 12 years old.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I can see them going well together but I have a bit of a hard time with the idea that Dax has known Jake since he was like, 12 years old.

Which is why we needed Ezri/Nog.

 

[Frontis]

Worf and Jadzia are my favorite DS9 couple, followed by Odo and Kira.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I wonder whether it makes more sense to imagine they split up as a result of Worf taking the assignment on DS9, or that the post-breakup awkwardness was a factor in Worf deciding to take the new assignment.

I do think introducing Worf/Troi and then not resolving it in any way (besides I guess DS9 and the post-TNG movies making it clear that they're broken up and Troi is with Riker) is a weird choice.

Supposed, their relationship status was supposed to be addressed in GEN, but it complement forgotten about.

Worf/Troi: I liked it, and I especially liked that they took a bit of time to build up to it. I'd still like to know why it didn't work out, and I deeply hope that Riker wasn't a factor in it not working out, because that's so beneath him. I can't see how DS9 was a factor, because even in GEN they didn't seem to be in a relationship.

Maybe that relationship fizzling out is more on Q and the anti-time anomaly. Since Picard told them of the potential future that awaited them.

Bashir was probably 34 during season 7, while Ezri was probably 21 or 22. That's a huge age difference.

The Dax symbiont being hundreds of years old probably evens it out.

 

[Oddish]

I saw Ezri/Bashir coming, but found it utterly insipid. When I saw them kiss in the turbolift, my attitude was "fine, whatever, they got that over with."

Worf/Dax... I liked them as a couple. Part of why I regard killing off Jadzia as one of DS9's most severe mistakes, was losing this power couple and replacing it with the Ezri/Bashir snoozefest.

Worf/Troi... no thanks.

 

[Paul755]

Worf/Dax was a fantastic couple. Helped alot that Farrell and Dorn had real good on screen chemistry. The way they bounce off each other in the runabout scene at the start of “A Change of Heart” is so good. I’ve often wondered, if Farrell had retuned and they had done the baby storyline…what would they have done with Tom and Belanna. Surely they wouldn’t do the baby thing twice.

Worf/Ezri was fine to resolve feelings between Worf and Jadzia. Beyond that it would have just been awkward. Having them be friends was a good solution.

Worf/Troi and Ezri/Bashir just felt thrown together. Like they got to season 7 of both shows and really didn’t have anything for Worf, Troi and Julian to do. So why not pair them off in the short term.

 

[DonIago]

I don't really see how Worf/Troi feels thrown together. I felt they actually laid some groundwork for it going at least as far back as "Ethics".

 

[kkt]

Perhaps everyone else already noticed this, but just in case I'll point out what I noticed in my recent rewatch of "Once More Unto the Breach" in the Quark-Ezri scene that starts:

QUARK: You heard me. I know how Jadzia felt about Worf, but that was her life, not yours. You're Ezri Dax. You need to give yourself a chance to explore other relationships. You're young and beautiful and full of life. Why go after a man who's only a memory to you?

at the end of the scene we notice that Jake was listening intently from a couple of barstools down. It does seem like they were laying the groundwork for a possible Jake-Ezri relationship. And they were about the right age, which is more than you could say for Ezri and Bashir. That would have been interesting, even if it didn't go very far. Trying for a relationship and not getting anywhere is one of the rites of passage for an adolescent!

Ezri/Bashir: I wonder how much of this was done out of a desire to not have Bashir still be single and in arguably ambiguous relationships with Garak and O'Brien. As a last-minute development I think it's okay, though I think it's for the best that it doesn't ultimately work out per the novelverse, and perhaps this could be viewed as the last of Ezri's major adjustments to being Joined with Dax. It feels a bit like fan-service for everyone who remembered the Bashir-Jadzia flirtations and wanted to revisit that.

Yes they were throwing Bashir and Ezri together in the finale because Bashir hasn't gotten any action since Leeta two years before. However, the writers abandoned the Bashir-Garak idea in season 1 and never looked back. And Bashir and O'Brien were never going to be more than best friends.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

Speaking as someone who liked Jadzia/Julian once, and still think it was far from being bad (althought I no longer like it that much), I did like the idea of Worf/Ezri, probably even more than Worf/Jadzia due to Ezri being more willing to criticize Klingon culture than Jadzia. But execution was bad. As for Julian/Ezri, I didn;t like both the idea and execution due to contrsdicting to what I liked about Jadzia/Julian thre most (that is, Julian being attratced to Jadzia the host and not Dax the symbiont and treating her as Jadzia first and Dax second. see how he always called her "Jadzia" whle others were calling her "Dax"). As such, the very idea of Julian/Ezri was annoying to me. Since Jadzia was dead, he should have completely move on.