Twenty years ago this week, the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted in the United States with “Image in the Sand,” a solemn story which picks up months after the depressing end of the previous year: Captain Sisko has spent the last three months on Earth, brooding the loss of his colleague and friend Jadzia Dax at the hands of Gul Dukat and the seeming disappearance of the Bajoran Wormhole.

As the episode draws to a close, and Sisko finds renewed purpose — to find the mythical Orb of the Emissary — there comes a knock at the door of his father’s restaurant in New Orleans, and a young Starfleet ensign makes her first appearance… with telltale Trill spots.

I mean, you’re supposed to get years of training and preparation before you get joined, and all I got was a fifteen minute lecture from the ship’s surgeon, and he wasn’t even a Trill.

And so we were introduced to the ninth host of the Dax symbiont: Ezri Dax, played by Canadian actress Nicole de Boer, joining the series after Terry Farrell departed Deep Space Nine. Producers decided to replace the Jadzia character with a very different kind of Dax host, who could provide a fresh opportunity for interactions with the crew in the final season.

In the DS9 Season 7 DVD interviews, writer/producer Ron Moore, who created the character with Ira Steven Behr, said:

“It felt like the best way to go was to go young, to go with a young, fresh-out-of-the-Academy kid, who is now an old soul, and to have that host not be so adept at it. This is a person who wasn’t quite ready for this whole honor that has been bestowed on them, and is having adjustment problems.”

Executive producer Ira Steven Behr added:

“It’s very tough in the last year, because you’re thinking so much about the end of the series, and you’re so busy worrying about, ‘Well, we don’t want to repeat ourselves.’ So to have this new character suddenly come on, who’s not a new character, because she’s still Dax, was just such a wonderful thing for us, because it was like, ‘Oh, we know what to do with that. We could give you twenty stories with that.’

We had to cut back on those stories because we didn’t want to have the cast up in arms about just doing Ezri Dax stories. Because she brought so much baggage with her, from Jadzia, it was like, ‘Oh, we can play in that pond for weeks.'”

The addition of Ezri, who as Behr referenced carried with her much of the same baggage as the Jadzia character, but allowed the writers to switch things up and create a character who was not as poised and put together as Terry Farrell’s portrayal of Jadzia, hit the sweet spot of creating an easy way in for interactions with the established characters but created a change up in the dynamics of the show at the same time.

The Sisko/Ezri relationship, for example, was very different from the Sisko/Jadzia relationship, especially in the early episodes of season seven. Whereas Jadzia had previously served as an advisor to Sisko, from her position both as the station’s science officer and his former mentor, Sisko had to help Ezri find her peace with the Dax symbiote and the eight other personalities she carried around within her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5FM_nwtlmo

Effectively, their relationship was flipped, and even once Ezri found her footing she was as much receiving of Sisko’s guidance as he was of hers.

Perhaps the most impacted character from the introduction of Ezri was Worf, Jadzia’s husband. The evolution of the Ezri/Worf relationship, from “Afterimage” in which he refuses to acknowledge her presence through “Tacking Into the Wind” in which they have become comfortable friends is one of the highlights of the final season of Deep Space Nine.

Michael Dorn’s portrayal of the grief, anger, and confusion of Worf, who had just accepted the death of his wife only to have the Dax symbiont return to his life, was superb. Nicole de Boer’s work to assert Ezri as her own person, filled with both the memory of the feelings that Jadzia had for Worf and the struggle to develop her own identity when the other characters default attitude was to treat her the same as Jadzia, was also fabulous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHgd0cVPsyA

Some Ezri highlights from her year on Deep Space Nine include:

• “Afterimage” – The Ezri character struggling to find her place on the station, a location that is both so familiar and yet so foreign to her, is a delight to watch. Many of the established characters get good moments, and the Ezri/Garak scenes as she tries to counsel him through his claustrophobia are delightful.
   
• “Field of Fire” – Ezri has her own run in with Dax’s seventh host, Joran, the serial killer. She employs his help to solve a murder on the station, but almost loses herself in the process. Many of Jadzia Dax’s best episodes involved interactions with her former hosts or dealing with their baggage, and this is no exception. It is a taut and suspenseful thriller.
   
• “Til Death Do Us Part” – The character scenes between Worf and Ezri in this episode are great, as they work through the awkwardness and pain of reconciling Worf’s connection with Dax towards the friendship they have at the end of the season.
   
• “Tacking Into the Wind” – My personal favorite scene involving Ezri Dax is her conversation with Worf, in which she administers some harsh truths about the Klingon Empire’s political structure. It’s such a great scene because it really sets Ezri apart from Jadzia, who was very much a devotee of Klingon culture. As her own person, and not nearly as impressed with the Klingons as either Jadzia or Curzon, Ezri is well placed to provide important advice to Worf at a key moment. Without it, Martok would likely not have ascended to become Chancellor.

Even though we only got one season of television with the character, Ezri’s story has continued in the non-canon tie-in novels that have been released by Simon & Schuster. The many authors who have used Ezri’s character over the years have chosen to continue to explore her efforts to integrate her own personality with the significant wisdom and experience offered by the Dax symbiote.

Indeed, in the “current” timeframe for the books – set 14 years after the series finale of Deep Space Nine, Ezri is captain of the USS Aventine, one of Starfleet’s first slipstream capable ships.

After deciding to switch to the command track, Ezri is field promoted to captain as a result of the death of the captain and first officer of the Aventine during the events of the Destiny trilogy of novels. She continues in that role and appears as a significant supporting character in a number of novels, including Takedown and Brinksmanship.

Her character also appears to have followed a similar arc in the Star Trek: Online game, though that is set further in the future.

Overall, the addition of Ezri shook up the character dynamics of Deep Space Nine in the final season and served as a worthy addition to the show. Nicole de Boer played the character superbly, and though we only got to see her performance in 26 episodes the character has continued to grow and flourish in the Star Trek universe through tie-in fiction.

With the Star Trek novel line seemingly about to return to a regular publication schedule in 2019, it will be exciting to see where the character goes next.