“Equilibrium”
Written by Christopher Teague and Rene Echevarria
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 3, Episode 4
Production episode 40512-450
Original air date: October 17, 1994
Stardate: unknown
Station log: The Siskos are cooking a huge meal for the senior staff. While waiting for dinner to be ready, Dax starts playing Jake’s old piano quite skillfully—which is something of a surprise, since none of the hosts of the Dax symbiont have ever had musical talent. She quickly becomes obsessed with a particular piece she’s playing, which she never heard before and doesn’t know, but can’t stop playing.
The next day, Dax is humming the same tune while she and Sisko are playing chess. She’s not even doing it consciously. When Sisko makes a move, Dax insists he was cheating and storms out of his office. Kira goes to talk to Dax in the replimat, and Dax blows her off, too. As she walks down the Promenade, she hears the music again, then hallucinates that she sees people in hoods and masks—but every time they take off the masks, there’s another mask under it.
She reports to the infirmary, and as Bashir checks her over she apologizes to Sisko. She has a ton of anger inside her for some reason. Her isoboramine levels (a neurotransmitter that regulates the connection between host and symbiont) are 73% of normal. Bashir checks back through the symbiont’s history, but finds only one major trauma that’s similar: Torias, the host prior to Curzon, who was in a coma for six months, and when his isoboramine levels went under 40%, they had to remove the symbiont. Bashir suggests she go back to Trill to have the symbiosis commission doctors look her over.
Sisko takes the Defiant to Trill. Dax can’t sleep, and talks to Bashir about stuff. She swore she’d never go back to the symbiosis commission after her grueling three years as an initiate. And worse, she’s going back as a patient. Bashir offers her one of the bunks in his cabin, and she finally gets to sleep.
They arrive at Trill, and Dax goes through a battery of tests. She, Bashir, and Sisko meet with Dr. Renhol, and the latter starts a treatment to get her isoboramine levels up. Bashir and Sisko refuse to let Dax give them a tour of the sights of Trill because she needs her rest. On her way to (very reluctantly) get that rest, she hears the music again and sees the hooded masked guy. She’s then grabbed by two Trill—who turn out to really be Bashir, wondering what’s wrong with her.
She goes back down to Trill. Renhol theorizes that her isoboramine levels are going up too fast. She has Bashir alter the treatments—smaller doses more often. Dax, meanwhile, is concerned because the two Trill who grabbed her in her hallucination wore uniforms worn by the symbiosis commission a hundred years ago.
Dax goes to talk to the guardians, unjoined Trill who take care of the symbionts who aren’t yet joined or are between hosts. The trio travel to the symboint pools in a subterranean cave, and meet with Timor, who recognizes Dax right away, and also knows that something’s wrong. The balance between host and symbiont is off—though it could be balance with one of the other hosts. Timor insists that the hallucinations are memories of a previous host—but Dax doesn’t remember them.
The Defiant computer finds Dax’s music: it was a piece composed by a Trill named Joran Belar 86 years earlier. Seeing his face prompts a flashback: an old man in a room being killed by a hooded man in a mask. She rips the mask off, and it’s Joran.
And then Dax collapses on the bridge in neural shock.
Renhol treats her. She asks Sisko for information on the wormhole, since that might be affecting her. Sisko and Bashir go to Timor, who’s backing off his certainty that it involves a previous host. This just makes the two of them more curious. Bashir investigates Joran, and they find a virtually empty record, albeit one that has had a lot of information deleted. Joran’s date of death is the exact same date that Torias died and the Dax symbiont was placed in Curzon.
There’s no record of Joran Belar in the Trill music academies, but they do find a Yolad Belar, who’s still alive, and was Joran’s brother. Yolad’s surprised that there’s no record of Joran’s attendance at the music academy since they graduated together. Yolad also reveals that Joran was a Trill initiate. According to the symbiosis commission he was dropped from the program, and then killed the doctor who dropped him, dying himself shortly afterward. But Yolad remembers speaking to him six months prior to his death, when he claimed to already be joined.
Sisko theorizes that Torias wasn’t in a coma for six months, that he died immediately, and the Dax symbiont was placed in Joran—who then committed murder. They confront Renhol, who insists that a symbiont is never put in an unsuitable host because the host would die in a few days. Yet Joran—a psychopath—was successfully joined for six months. This indicates that the suitability of the host is less of a factor than the symbiosis commission would have the general public believe.
Sisko isn’t interested in exposing Trill’s secrets, he just wants to save his friend. But if Renhol lets Jadzia die, he’ll tell the entire galaxy what happened and why. Renhol admits that half the population is capable of being joined, and if the public learned that, there’d be chaos, the symbionts traded like commodities, hence the rigorous initiate program.
Renhol still objects, because the only way to save Jadzia is to let her have unfettered access to Joran’s memories, which could negatively affect the symbiont. Sisko insists that she make that decision, so she’s taken out of sedation. She goes to the symbiont pool and confronts an avatar of Joran and embraces it, incorporating his memories fully into herself.
Back at the station, Sisko visits Dax in her quarters. She’s glad she found out about Joran. She feels she knows herself more fully. After Sisko leaves, she goes to Jake’s old piano and starts playing Joran’s song.
The Sisko is of Bajor: We already knew that Sisko’s father is a chef, whom he helped out as a kid. Now we know that the restaurant he owns is in New Orleans.
The slug in your belly: We learn about two more hosts, Torias—who died in a shuttle accident 86 years ago—and Joran, whom the viewer learns about at the same time as the main cast, who had the symbiont for six months before he committed murder. The symbiosis commission covered up his crime and his unsuitability by saying Torias was in a coma for six months. After that, the symbiont went to Curzon. We now know the names of four of the six pre-Curzon hosts: Lela, Tobin, Torias, and Joran.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo volunteers to help Sisko with the stirring the soufflé, which he does in a hilariously uncomfortable manner. (Kira at one point says he looks cute, and he totally does.)
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Amazingly, when Bashir invites Dax to stay in his cabin on the Defiant, there’s nothing remotely sexual or creepy or flirty about it, which is a welcome step forward, as pretty much all of Bashir’s interactions with Dax in the first season were at least one of those three things.
Tough little ship: There’s absolutely no reason why Sisko should take the behemoth of the Defiant on a trip to Trill that really only required him, Bashir, and Dax. Given Bashir’s comments on the inadequacy of the Defiant sickbay in “The Search, Part I,” a runabout would’ve done the trick just fine.
Keep your ears open: “You don’t like beets, Doctor?”
“Well, they’re not exactly a personal favorite of mine, no.”
“That’s because you haven’t had them prepared properly. Beets are a very misunderstood vegetable.”
“Well, I look forward to understanding it better.”
Sisko and Bashir discoursing on beets.
Welcome aboard: Lisa Banes plays Renhol, Harvey Vernon plays Yolad, and illusionist Jeff Magnus McBride plays Joran, while Nicholas Cascone returns as Timor, having previously played Davies in TNG’s “Pen Pals.”
Trivial matters: Joran’s full story is told in “Allegro Ourobouros in D Minor” by S.D. Perry & Robert Simpson in the anthology The Lives of Dax.
Joran will return in the episodes “Facets” (where his personality will be channeled through Sisko’s body) and “Field of Fire” (where he’ll be played by Leigh J. McCloskey due to Jeff Magnus McBride being unavailable). All the previous Dax hosts will be seen in “Facets,” including Torias, and more details about the latter’s life will be seen in “Rejoined.”
Renhol and Timor won’t appear again onscreen. The former shows up in your humble rewatcher’s Demons of Air and Darkness and the latter is in “Aversion” by Michael Jan Friedman in New Worlds, New Civilizations. Both characters are mentioned in Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin’s Trill: Unjoined (in Worlds of DS9 Volume 2).
This is the first DS9 script by Rene Echevarria, who came over from TNG with Ronald D. Moore.
Walk with the Prophets: “It’s important to know who you’ve been.” This is another one like “The Collaborator” that’s more of a useful episode for what it establishes in the lore than it is an actual good episode, only far more so, because honestly it’s pretty terrible.
We start with Dax being bitchy, a mode at which Terry Farrell does not at all succeed. Her snarking off of Sisko and Kira is utterly unconvincing and takes the teeth out of those scenes. (This is made more frustrating by her later fear and vulnerability with Bashir on the Defiant, which she plays magnificently.)
Then we arrive on Trill, which is apparently two cheap sets. All the events on Dax’s homeworld take place in a virtually empty hospital room and Yet Another Trek Cave Set (latest in a series, collect ’em all!). Thankfully, “Playing God” let us know how tough it is for initiates, and how miserable Jadzia was in her time as one, because this episode does nothing to give us any sense of the symbiosis commission, except present us with a single doctor, played by Lisa Banes as a third-rate Gail Strickland. The scene where Sisko confronts Renhol about Joran’s being joined has the life drained out of it because Banes doesn’t give Avery Brooks anything to play off of.
The symbolism of masks is wasted; it’s a good metaphor for Trills, masks covering masks covering masks, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Also, why does no one mention the events of “Invasive Procedures,” which might go a ways toward explaining what’s happening? As it is, we get no explanation whatsoever for why Dax suddenly started remembering stuff regarding Joran.
The only effective scenes in the entire episode are the teaser and the very end. The former is a tour de force for the cast, from Sisko’s gadding about keeping up with all the food to Jake’s joyful assistance to Kira’s anticipation to Bashir’s lack of enthusiasm regarding beets to Odo’s hysterical stirring of the soufflé. The latter is a nice quiet coda to the whole thing, ending with Dax playing Joran’s piano piece as we fade out.
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido is pleased to announce that The Klingon Art of War, which will be out in May 2014, is now available for preorder on Barnes and Noble’s web site in hardcover and for the Nook. (You can also preorder it on Amazon in hardcover or for your Kindle.)
Wasn’t this episode inspired by a producer seeing McBride’s mask trick in a magic show and wanting to build an episode around it?
I thought this was a reasonably good episode; the idea behind it is pretty compelling, and I don’t recall having any major problems with it. Except for the symbiont tenders being apparently psychic or something. Between them and Bajoran clerics, this show had a way of giving aliens apparent psi abilities that were never explained and only seemed present in a minority of the population.
And Terry Farrell not being very good at acting nasty doesn’t strike me as much of a problem. It just highlights how unnatural such behavior is for Jadzia.
The Lives of Dax also reveals more about Torias’s accident, in the story “Infinity” by Susan Wright.
I’m pretty much in agreement with krad here. This episode has never done anything at all for me, though it seems like it should. I think it’s a lot of very unrealized potential. If they had done more with the mask symbolism or made the council seem a little more hinky, it would have done better. In some ways, what it comes down to is that Trek writers from TNG on just aren’t all that good at doing mysteries. It comes up a lot in TNG, but DS9, as in this episode, suffers as well.
I didn’t really buy the doctor’s explanation of what would happen to Trill society if they kndew 50% of people can be joined. I mean, maybe if the secret got out NOW after the cover up, there would be outrage…but why the cover up? If there aren’t enough symbionts for the potential hosts, why not have a highly selective program for the best hosts, even if ones who don’t make the cut would technically be good enough?
Creepy type stuff like this always gets a few extra points for me, but I also agree that at the end I was not quite sure what the deal with all the masks was, aside from the symbolism of the past selves. It just seemed like there could have been more to it.
Regarding the use of the Defiant: I always assumed it was simply due to her being a lot faster than a runabout, which would make sense in case of a medical emergency.
@5: I agree, that’s the likely explanation.
@3,
If a friend or relative was joined, and was dying of old age, would you return the symbiont to the keepers, or would you sell it to the highest bidder, if everyone knew that half the population was compatible? I can easily imagine people being kidnapped and their symbionts forcibly removed and sold on a blackj market.
Torvald: But it wasn’t a medical emergency. At best, it was a medical issue — it didn’t become an emergency until Dax collapsed on the bridge, when they’d already been at Trill for two days. The Defiant has a crew complement of 40, and it’s main purpose is to help defend the station against possible Dominion incursion. There is no justification for using it to deal with one science officer’s medical problem.
Christopher: No, the real reason is that they had a shiny new model and shiny new sets and wanted to show them off. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8: Or maybe that they had an expensive new model and new sets and wanted to amortize the cost thereof by getting as much use out of them as possible.
I don’t remember much about this ep outside of it giving us Joran (something that was almost never brought up again for any reason so it was kind of pointless. Outside of giving Brooks a chance to play bad once and then in a terrible season 7 episode) and establishing that more Trill are able to be joined. So, was it established here that Joran was a psychopath because he only killed one guy? I know that that is terrible enough, however, TV killers usually have more victims when they are psychopaths and he’s played as much when he is channeled by Avery Brooks and the whole purpose of Ezri using hismemories in that terrible season 7 episode was because he was such an effective killer. But was it so terrible of a murder that he was essentially erased from Trill history and Dax’s memory and labled a psychopath?
@7: But it seems that with the way Trill society is now, that the Establishment would probably monitor when hosts were dying, or would go inquiring after the symbiont after the host died, etc. Besides, what’s to stop a family member from selling a symbiont now? This is already the second example of someone we’ve seen rejected from the program actually acquire a symbiont (Dax in both cases). It seems there should be a fair number of people who feel entitled and like they should be chosen anyway despite no one really knowing that more trill can be joined. If the family of a joined trill is willing to sell the symbiont (even to a potentially crazy person) than return it to the center, what does it matter to them what they think about about the suitability for joining? If they care about their family member’s memories going on, you think they would return it to the people who can pick the best possible fit. If they just care about money and will sell it to anyone, why do they care who gets it at all then? After all, in knowing the truth, how do they know the high bidder isn’t in the lower 50%ile? So if you believe that’s somehow prevented now, they can use the same means to prevent it if people knew the truth.
I liked this one quite a bit, actually. I find it interesting that although so few Trills are joined, a lot of Trill culture (or what little we see of it, admittedly) seems to be based around the symbionts. This makes the concern over reducing the symbionts into a commodity understandable. Mostly, though, I like the symbionts’ quirky caretaker guy. His exchange with Bashir was a highlight. Basically, whatever rare insight we’re given about the Trills, I’ll take it.
As for taking the Defiant to Trill instead of a runabout, it’s the same in-story reason Sisko is going in person, right? To say, “We’re going the extra mile because Jadzia means that much to us.” (Quark sure didn’t merit a Defiant rescue when he was abducted last week. Guess he’s still too much an outsider.)
@10: The Joran incident wasn’t covered up because it involved a murder. It was covered up because it exposed the dirty secret that unsuitable hosts could be successfully joined to symbionts, that the selection criteria were not nearly as narrow as the Commission had always claimed.
The scene of Dax and Bashir in the bunkroom is very well done- Terry Farrell does play on the vulnerability of being ill without knowing the cause very well. I like the character exposition there, but the whole thing feels like a B-Plot that just got blown up.
As far as why take the Defiant, I sort of figured that it was due to the greater speed, and I suppose that had another starship been within range of DS9 then why not take the new hot rod out for a spin. Behind the scenes is probably that we have these new sets and we want to use them…
Two things that stuck out to me when re-watching this and the relevation that half the population could be joined was: What was the reason that the other half of the population can’t be joined. Is it physical, psychological, something else? We hear how rigorous the initiate process is during the series, but we don’t actually get into what makes it up. The bigger question though, is what role do the symbionts have in choosing who they are joined with? While it is unclear how intelligent a symbiont is by itself, they seem to have some form of communication with each other and are generally more intelligent than a pure animal life form. While the Trill get the advantage of shared memory by joining with the symbiont, what does the symbiont get from the deal? It seems to me that we have a relativley intelligent species that is being harnassed and controlled by the symbiont commission.
@14: “While the Trill get the advantage of shared memory by joining with the symbiont, what does the symbiont get from the deal?”
Eyes, ears, and teeth. Hands and feet. Greater size, speed, and strength. Mobility on land, and the adaptability of the humanoid organism to diverse environments.
@@@@@ 14 & 15: I don’t recall if it’s been outright stated, but I believe the symbionts also enjoy getting to experience different lives via the joining. But related to that, I’m curious about how the joining process began in the first place. How did primitive (?) Trill look at these slug things and decide to start putting them in their (vestigial?) marsupial pouches? Did they sense their electrical impulses through shared swimming waters, and first commune with them that way? The DS9 novels reveal an interesting (and inspired) cousin species for the symbionts, but I’m not sure if that has anything to do with how the Trill began joining with them in the first place.
-Andy
Everything about this episode seems a little off to me: the pacing, the setup vs. payoff, the exploration of the Trill. It feels half-finished.
Watching Voyager with my kids, I realized what a problem the Star Trek writers often had writer the Riker/Tom Paris characters. They write them so smarmy and obvious that they are not even remotely attractive. (YMMV, of course.)
But somewhere along the way, they course-corrected with Bashir; after third season, he generally approaches women like, you know, people — particularly Dax.
In general, the Deep Space Nine writers seemed to be able to tell what worked and what didn’t, and go from there. Maybe one of the reasons it was my favorite Trek.
The reveal in this episode didn’t strike me as much of a reveal. It honestly never occurred to me that there was supposed to be a biological basis for the selectiveness of the Trill, I always assumed it was for social reasons. I mean, if the symbiont can be successfully hosted by an Earth human (Riker) for a a day, it defies imagination that it would reject 99.99% of actual Trillians.
In a way, this episode paints a somewhat unsettling picture of Trill society, above and beyond the issues they describe. Their whole society is acting as a host to the symbiont population, creating a permanent underclass of the vast majority of the population while the symbionts live in luxury and get their pick of the population. By the portrayal, it seems like the individual symbionts and hosts that are joined are acting of their own free will and volition (so it’s not an outright violation of “human” rights), but still the outcome is pretty crappy for Trill society as a whole. For all we know, there are a bunch of symbionts that want to be joined too, but aren’t getting to for political reasons among their own society.
The doctors theorizing that it would lead to a black market in symbionts seems wrong to me. I mean, involuntarily joining a symbiont would be pretty damned evil, on the order of slavery, so it seems like normal moralty would lead to the base rate of such a thing being very low in the first place.
This episode committed the worst crime an episode could commit. It bored the pants off of me. The trill could have been so intriguing, but Dax was just a wasted opportunity. A little bit of Sybil would have really made the Trills pop. Instead, we just get some fairly weak acting from Ms Farrell and storylines that are just…meh.
I know this is late but I’m a first time watcher and I have really enjoyed reading these rewatches after every episode. Not sure if anyone is still even reading these comments, but I had a question. What were they going to do with the Dax Symbiont after Jadzia died? If they put it in a new host, wouldn’t they run the risk of the same thing happening where the memories would start to come back? Or did they have some sort of treatment where they could repress the memories again and then put Dax in a new host? And if that is the case then why couldn’t they remove the symbiont, perform that procedure, then rejoin with Jadzia? We’ve already seen she can survive a short time without the symbiont. Even still, how would they know the same problem wouldn’t resurface? Weren’t they just delaying the inevitable? Am I missing something?
irinas: My guess is they would put the symbiote in stasis until they could figure out a workaround….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wow, I remember this episode from when I first saw it years ago, but not from my current rewatch with my kid… and I should have watched it a few months ago. I wonder if due to our interspeded-in-airing-order VOY/DS9 watch I skipped it unintentionally. I probably did, because when I watched Facets, I didn’t remember Joran had killed only one person.
@14 – MikeKelm: Taking the Defiant could have been easily justified in-story by having Sisko say “The USS [PLACEHOLDER] is currently on station, they can guard DS9 while we’re away, let’s take the Defiant.”, but the writers missed that opportunity, thus leaving this glaring plothole.
I wonder why O’Brien wasn’t invited to the party? Is it just me or does Joran with a mask look like Victor Von Doom? Sisko said the planet KRAD, not the Galaxy. And they do give a bit of an explanation why Jadzia suddenly remembers Joran, that the memory block is breaking down. Lisa Banes was in Gone Girl recently, as Amy’s mother.
David Sim: Yes, I know the memory block is breaking down, but why now? The episode does nothing to explain the catalyst.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@24/krad: Does it need an explanation? I don’t think “The Wire” explained why Garak’s implant started to fail at that particular time, or “For the World is Hollow…” explained why McCoy developed xenopolycythemia at that particular time. Sometimes things just break down or go wrong. Assuming the memory block was imperfect from the start, it would’ve broken down sooner or later, and it just happened to be now.
Well, it’s the song, isn’t it? Everything starts with the song that Dax vaguely remember. That’s the cathalyst.
Just pointing out that Jadzia’s hair is experimented with again here, with a twist at the base of her ponytail and hair extensions to make it fuller and longer (for this and the next episode).
I always preferred her simple, flat and shorter ponytail with a silver clip, in future. It complimented that posture of hers with the hands behind her back, and her long, not-strictly-feminine stride. The simplicity with a bit of decoration made me think of how Curzon might wryly adapt to a feminine lifestyle.
Anywho, that’s all headcannon on my part, obviously.
Totally random minor thing. I found it amusing that it takes a Starfleet computer hours to figure out Dax’s song, when just yesterday I wanted to know what the generic trailer music that Netflix plays for this series was and an app on my phone was able to determine the exact song and artist almost instantly, based on a short recording. Of course I remember what computers were like in the 90’s, and that’s all they had to go on at the time, but boy has some technology evolved wayyy faster than we expected.
(It was “A Universe Unfolds” by Gothic Storm, in case anyone wanted that oddly specific tidbit as much as I did.)
Yes, it’s funny how short-sighted science fiction can sometimes be in regards to technology.
You’d think Sisko would know the difference between sautéed and braised beets…
@27 – Ronnie: Late to the punch here, but Jadzia is not Curzon. Curzon is in there somewhere, and perhaps early in Jadzia’s tenure as Dax she might have tried to keep it simple, but as time went on and she asserted herself more, she allowed herself to experiment with her hair. And in any case, Jadzia’s hairdo was always quite simple.
Lockdown rewatch. There are some good moments in this even though it’s a weak episode I particularly liked the scene between Bashir and Dax in the Doctors quarters, much better to see this type of relationship between them than the horny lovesick puppy routine Bashir was pulling in the first season. Otherwise it’s a bit of a failure, I get the feeling this was a money saving episode following the costly Dominion and Klingon episodes as after the teaser it’s almost a three hander between Sisko, Dax and Bashir. As for them taking the Defiant it makes absolutely zero sense plot wise I guess that they had spent a lot of money on the Defiant sets and hadn’t used it since episode one so they decided to start getting their money’s worth.
I feel that Joran was rather a wasted opportunity.
His brother mentions that post-joining he was more confident and colder in temperament that he had been, which would seem to indicate a more three-dimensional personality than we see in later appearances where he comes off as a manipulative psychopath (“Facets”) or zero-dimensional (“Field of Fire”).
I may be seeing something that isn’t there, but in the few seconds we see him, his actor seems to play him as being vulnerable, which adds an interesting nuance to the character.
Part of me thinks an episode where Dax sought to understand this mentally-ill past self and integrate him properly (instead of repressing him as we later learn she did) would have been worthwhile, but the rest of me thinks it might not have made for very compelling television.
I don’t recall ever having seen this episode before so Discovery’s “Forget Me Not” brought me here. I agree with others that this was not good and was boring with the pacing being off. The story is more important for what it introduces to Trill lore than being an effective story on its own. It does feel cheap and low budget. At least “Forget Me Not” rectified this and makes the planet Trill feel like an actual realized planet. Farrell does vulnerable well and I liked the scene of her bunking with Bashir and the last scene for her embracing Joran, faults and all. Since Joran was a violent murderous person, it would have been more effective to have Jadzia actually attack someone than merely act peeved at her fellow officers. Well, no need to ever rewatch this one again.
The story is more important for what it introduces to Trill lore than being an effective story on its own.
Yeah. For me, it’s also one of those episodes that’s retroactively stronger because of the tie-in literature.
The DS9 Relaunch followed up on this episode during its early years (along with Verad Kalon from “Invasive Procedures”). Both storylines massively developed Trill culture and moved it forward in a way that DS9 never really did on-screen.
It’s truly unfortunate how many “Dax” episodes range from boring to straight up bad. But what really frustrates me about this one is that there’s never any follow up on the Earth Trill-shaking revelation that half the population is capable of being joined. Given that joined Trill seem to have a massive structural advantage over the unjoined and occupy the upper echelons of their society, it paints a picture of a sort of oligarchic civilization in which the Symbionts live in luxury (waited on, even in their pools, by the unjoined) and get to pick and choose which of the humanoids they deign to elevate to the elite. The cover-up here is the sort of thing that could lead to a revolution, and yet Dax never really reflects on her part in it.
@36/jaimebabb: But there is a valid case on the other side, that if it were known so many people could join, it could lead to people fighting for control of the symbionts and reducing sapient beings to a resource to be owned and controlled. The symbionts are far more vulnerable than the humanoids — there are far fewer of them, they’re small and physically helpless, and they can’t live outside their pools. So while lying to the public isn’t the best option, it doesn’t seem right to me to paint the symbionts as oppressors when they’re the ones in far greater need of protection.
@37/ChristopherLBennett I admit that there’s a risk of that, but it’s also true that the current state of affairs is built around the systematic gaslighting of half a planetary population into thinking that they’re limited by some ineluctable fact of their biology, while the Symbiosis Commission is actually selecting applicants based on their own opaque criteria. You can’t really blame the symbionts for this (if Dax is anything to go by, most of them have no idea), but it certainly seems to give an awful lot of power to the Commission.
I’d never noticed how low-budget Trill was here. It’s a valid point if maybe an inevitability for how the show would portray a world that would likely only come up in Dax episodes. (And I don’t believe it would appear again until the show needed to establish Ezri’s background.)
If I had to guess why I missed Trill-on-a-budget, though, it might be because the episode (more clumsy in a lot of places) presents a familiar idea of how officialdom treats a problem it doesn’t want to acknowledge. Its public face to those in need of help is someone like Renhol, a professional who might know something personally about the wider problem but whose job is to manage it, not address it. A “flak-catcher”, as Tom Wolfe put it. Timor and Yolad are more helpful but no more high-ranking or powerful. I think we can all relate, if on some less dramatic level than accidentally revealing a secret that could shake the foundations of our society.
The approach is not unique to this episode, but it seems like an uncommon one for Star Trek, which often puts its heroes up against high-ranking alien ambassadors, global leaders, world-ruling computers, etc., or at least people uniquely positioned to change the history of their civilization for the simple fact that they’d met real space travelers. Dax, Sisko and Bashir have a bit more of the everyday experience here—even if the problem ends up affecting Dax’s entire species —something Deep Space Nine could probably do more effectively than Next Generation and its main-character cast of student-government types. Dax’s secret might change Trill, but it won’t be Renhol who pulls the levers. She’s just there to catch flak, and she’ll probably still be doing it tomorrow. As low-budget settings go, it’s none the worse for that.
The little melody Dax plays is haunting. I know it was composed by Jay Chattaway, not Dennis McCarthy, but I’ll take this opportunity to mention that the latter’s opening theme is so good that even if watching a couple of episodes in a row I can’t skip the credits until the lovely, piercing lone horn comes in over the show’s title.
Per Memory Alpha, Ira Stephen Behr has said that beets were swapped in for rutabagas as the vegetable Bashir disliked because René Echevaria “didn’t think rutabagas were funny enough.” He’s wrong. Rutabagas are much funnier than beets.
Whereas I can’t hit “skip intro” fast enough when rewatching DS9. To me, it’s just a warmed-over rehash of “Fanfare for the Common Man,” and Aaron Copland did it better…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What, you haven’t heard of comedy beets? :D
Only at a roast, but as the seasoned professional knows, when it comes to roasted beets it’s all in your thyming.
You’re both fired….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who agrees that rutabagas are funnier than beets