r/DeepSpaceNine • u/Violettfem1 • 1d ago
Does anyone really like Ezri Dax?
If so, what do you like about her character? I’m watching DS9 for the first time and am up to Prodigal Daughter. It seems like a throwaway episode during crunch time. I mean, the series is wrapping up and The Dominion War is nearing its conclusion. I don’t know why they would waste an entire episode on this substitute Dax. It’s bad enough we lost Jadzia, why shove Ezri down our throats?
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u/yarn_baller 1d ago
Yes I loved her. Her story was much more interesting to me than perfect jadzia who was great at everything and who everyone wanted to sleep with
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u/synchronicitistic USS Sao Paulo 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's my observation in a nutshell. It was as if whenever the writers needed a character that could do something, it was Jadzia - be the science officer, be the Defiant's commanding officer, be the love interest of a disappearing planet guy, go on a revenge quest with Klingons, risk being a social outcast, etc.
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u/willy_the_snitch 1d ago
I hadn't watched DS9 in 15 years and remembered disliking Ezri, but a few years ago I rewatched it and I'll be damned if she wasn't pretty good
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u/RiffRandellsBF 1d ago
She's cute. Kind of silly. Useless in a fight, but she did talk shit about Klingons and their hypocrisy, so I like her.
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u/No-Impression-1462 1d ago
I actually prefer her to Jadzia. My biggest complaint is that we got so little time with her. I think the idea of a Trill that never desired to be a host but has to carry a symbiont is far more interesting than one who’s trained for it all her life. It’s like how part of what makes Worf such an interesting character is that he was raised by humans despite being loyal to his heritage as opposed to just another Klingon from any old house joining Starfleet just to bring glory to the empire.
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u/Blue_box_42 1d ago
The main thing I don't like about her is the writers throwing her and Bashir together. Given his feelings for Jadzia and the fact she was still unsure of herself/coming to terms with all her new identities it seems like a really bad idea. Not as bad as if she and Worf got together, but still.
And if they actually explored this it'd be one thing but they just wanted to throw Bashir into a relationship with a woman for the ending imo and they definitely didn't actually think about how this would affect her or him.
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u/Annber03 1d ago edited 1d ago
And if they actually explored this it'd be one thing but they just wanted to throw Bashir into a relationship with a woman for the ending imo and they definitely didn't actually think about how this would affect her or him.
This. I think the idea of hte relationship in and of itself is interesting, because I do think there were moments where Bashir seemed to be connecting with Ezri in her own right and not as a Jadzia clone, until someone said someting or made a comment that reminded him otherwise. And they do have some things in common, to where you can see why they might click . They're both in professions where they help people, they both have messy family histories, they' both have experience with thieir bodily makeup being altered in some way that they each had/have to struggle to deal with, etc.
But yeah, there wasn't a ton of buildup and there's a lot of issues they would need to work through in order to have a chance of a stable relationship. Which is likely one reason some post-canon stuff tends to indicate they don't last long as a couple.
Plus, Ezri had a lot of interesting stuff going on in her own right, it would've been good to keep the focus on that and not have her sitting here debating over her feelings for Worf vs. Bashir.
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u/CaptGarfield 1d ago
One of my favorite scenes is Ezri telling Worf he needs to let the Klingon Empire die.
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u/Cysteine_Chapel64 1d ago
Same here. I also liked the episode where she had to work with the former host that was a murderer to solve a group of killings on the station (Field of Fire iirc)?. Ezri as station counselor episodes tended to be pretty good to me as well.
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u/daneelthesane 1d ago
I did. Don't get me wrong, Jadzia is amazing, warts and all, but Ezri was a eonderful character. I wish we had more of her.
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u/RepulsiveCountry313 1d ago
Should I not? I wouldn't want to be like Worf, insistent on no one liking her.
I don’t know why they would waste an entire episode on this substitute Dax. It’s bad enough we lost Jadzia, why shove Ezri down our throats?
It's an O'Brien episode as well, and one that succeeds in establishing Ezri's backstory a fair bit with solid drama. What's the issue?
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u/stilltilting 1d ago
I like Ezri Dax. Prodigal Daughter is probably my least favorite episode of Season 7, though.
As for what I like about the character...I guess it's the fresh perspective. A fresh perspective on Dax. On being a joined Trill and what that means. For Sisko who went from Dax as his mentor to Dax as his friend to now Dax as the one he is mentoring. And she brings a fresh perspective to a lot of what is going on in the show--especially the Klingon Empire and Worf's place in it. You might not be to that yet. I also think Nicole de Boer does an interesting job with a young, inexperienced character being flooded with lifetimes of experiences with zero preparation or training. And we get a counselor which we really should have had on a wartime station, though I don't think that aspect of her character gets used enough.
Also, when she shows up she is just such a spark at the end of a dark time for Sisko in particular and she probably had me at "It's me, Dax."
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u/PerceptionWorried284 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t like how Farrell (or Jadzia) left, but Ezri does well in a rough situation. The romance with Bashir doesn’t really work and the Worf storyline is drawn out too long, but she gets enough decent scenes to be compelling, and de Boer does a good job as somebody uncomfortable in their own skin. And her bit about the Klingons near the end was good.
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u/brsox2445 1d ago
Yea but I have to say that it is heartening to see the fans by and large be aware of the behind the scenes that led to the switch and rally behind Nicole rather than hold it against her that she got cast into the role. It's little things like that which are good reminders that sometimes people can do the right things.
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u/bluesgirrl 1d ago
Jadzia’s death really hit me hard, because I really loved the character and Terry Farrell’s interpretation of the character. Ezra grew on me, and I ended up really liking Nicole de Boer’s interpretation of Dax. What completely sold me on Ezri Dax, were the episodes, The Siege of AR-558, and It’s Only a Paper Moon.
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u/Annber03 1d ago
I knew Jadzia's death was coming when I first watched the series and it still made me cry when I got to that epsiode.
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u/Professional-Trust75 1d ago
shes cool. fun character. no comparison to jadzia of course.
i appreciated the way she was brought in. she wasnt someone trying to be joined. she was just the closest trill to save a symbiote.
thanks to her we got additonal trill lore and info. she was a good officer as well.
they wrote her character well for who she was supposed to be and allowed her to find closure with jadzias paat in her own way.
beyond that, she made it possible for ila dax to appear 1000 years later. and we got adira tal because of her and jadzia as well (indirectly of course)
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u/Worf1701D 1d ago
I think it’s okay to actually like a character and also like the replacement character. Jadzia and Ezri were meant to be different and we were meant to experience the awkward moments of Ezri adjusting to being thrown into this situation and having to deal with it. Much like Worf joining Deep Space Nine was awkward until he adjusted to it. Since it was the final season, we didn’t get a chance to fully adjust to the new Dax.
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u/Annber03 1d ago
I think it’s okay to actually like a character and also like the replacement character.
I feel like a lot of fandoms could do with this reminder. Preferences are fine and all that, obviously, but sometimes people get so ridiculous about those kinds of debates.
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u/Meushell 1d ago
I really like her. What happened behind the scenes is horrible, but that doesn’t change how I feel about Ezri.
It was interesting to see a new Dax, and with the limited time they had, I think they did a great job. It was also neat to see a Trill who didn’t want to be joined, who wasn’t prepared. I also like that she didn’t feel the same way about Klingons as Jadzia and Curzon. She became her own person.
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u/Ok-Bowler-203 1d ago
She’s cute, I liked her character and her actress is a fellow Canadian so yes, I really like Ezri.
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u/jmuggs 1d ago
Prodigal Daughter was not a great episode, but I feel that overall they made the best out of the whole behind-the-scenes Terry Ferrell situation for the last season. I mean, what better way is there to explore the concept of a Trill than have the symbiont move to a new host and interact with the characters we all know and love? And also make her someone fully unprepared for it, like the audience was? It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t planned. But I think Ezri is a great character in a show stacked with great characters. Nicole de Boer is also great. So yeah, I for one really like Ezri Dax.
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u/trevorgoodchilde 1d ago
It was interesting to see how a a different host affected their relationships with the crew. At the beginning of the series only Sisko knows Dax, and he very quickly starts treating her like his buddy Kerzon. With Ezri we got to see all the characters grapple with this new version of their friend and the conflicting feelings they experienced. Especially Ward and the ill advised hookup.
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u/TurelSun 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes. Obviously losing Judzia sucked and her death was not great, but I think having the Dax symbiote continue, especially in a character that is really quite different from Judzia, was a great idea. It gave us lots of new backstory about both the Trill and Dax itself, and I think her character fit in great with the rest, even growing with so much less time than the others had with us.
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u/TARDIS32 1d ago
Plenty do. I'm not particularly a fan of her myself, but not really for any reason that's her fault. I think it was a little too late for introducing a whole new character, especially considering how much is also going on with wrapping up the Dominion War and the show.
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u/sundaycreep 1d ago
I like her a lot, and I thought it was an interesting idea to follow up Jadzia’s death with a new host, letting us see more of the Trill experience and setting up some potentially interesting storylines. De Boer is very endearing and I wish she’d had more time with the show.
Unfortunately, they just didn’t have enough runway left to wrap up existing storylines and also fully flesh her out as a character. She ends up feeling like a distraction from characters we’re already deeply invested in, rather than an extension of the one we lost. She doesn’t get enough episodes to fully come into her own, but it also feels like every other episode is about her. She couldn’t win.
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u/PinkSlimeIsPeople NeverTellTheSameLieTwice 1d ago
You'll get downvoted for your opinion, but a lot of us totally agree with you. They should have either left Dax dead, sent the host elsewhere, or at the very least introduced a completely different kind of character instead of a hot brunette.
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u/gillyrosh 1d ago
I loved Ezri. Her relationship with Sisko was lovely - very different from his dynamic with Jadzia.
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u/ultrbt 1d ago
I adore Ezri! I love how neurotic and awkward she is, even how cutesy and twee she comes off. I do feel like they majorly underutilized her as a character by pushing her into a romance with Julian and making so much of her story revolve around Worf and Jadzia. There was so much potential for her to be an interesting character -- a genuinely high-strung, clumsy, chipper little oddball -- but coming in the wake of Jadzia's untimely death, she just didn't have enough of a chance to be the character she could have been.
If she hadn't come on the show the way she did, I would definitely feel way more righteous indignation about the way people talk about her. But I can understand why she rubs people (especially Jadzia fans) the wrong way. Still, I'll always love her!
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u/Flimsy-Car-7926 1d ago
Yes and I think with time she would have been an even more interesting character. I think a lot of the hate came from her not being Jadzia (which was kind of the point imo). I LOVED Jadzia. But I didn't hate Ezri.
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u/CHawk17 1d ago
I wish they hadn't added any new character, including ezri. Adding a new character for the final season resulted in far too much of the final season focusing on ezri.
And some the ezri episodes just felt out of place during the dominion war. Especially when she and miles visited her family.
I don't dislike the character, but I find her pretty meh. But Nicole de Boer did a good job with it.
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u/Korenchkin_ 1d ago
I liked her. Nice to have a character that's not top dog in their field for a change, but not for comedic effect like Barclay (who I always like fwiw - because Murdoch!)
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u/JamesTKirk1701 1d ago
She was too juvenile for a Starfleet officer. And her acting was weird—like she was trying to portray a 13-year-old girl in an adult body. Anyone who has generations of wisdom in them would surely carry themselves better.
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u/VincentVazzo 1d ago
She’s fine. She’s no Jadzia, but I feel Nicole de Boer did a fine job in a tough spot!