Jadzia Dax is being troubled by an elusive memory of a strange melody. Soon, odd visions escalate into terrible nightmares. When Dr. Bashir is unable to cure her, Sisko decides to take Dax to the Trill homeworld to see what the Symbiosis Commission can do for her. But they may be unwilling to help, as the core problem plaguing Dax may have to do with a secret they're trying to protect.
This episode was spawned when executive producer Michael Piller saw a magic show by Jeff Magnus McBride. Piller was taken by a particular routine in which McBride would remove a seemingly endless number of masks, only to reveal more hiding beneath. A mutual friend, Christopher Teague, was hired by Piller to pitch a Star Trek episode involving this routine. The result, a tale of a traveling circus visiting the station (with a murderer in its midst), was immediately rejected. But there was the idea of magic and the masks, bought and paid for, needing something to be made of it.
Staff writer René Echevarria kept the "murderer" tidbit of the original piece and proposed a story focused on Odo and involving a series of disturbing dreams. When the tale still refused to come together, a different staff writer, Ronald D. Moore, suggested that perhaps the masks were a good metaphor for the Trill species, and that the story should be centered around Dax.
Though the writers had finally hit on the final shape of the episode, the finished product would still reflect the troubled creation. It's not exactly that you watch it and know that you're seeing a mountain made out of a molehill -- an entire story built around a single magic trick. It's that the story doesn't quite work. The last half is particularly dry, a half-baked mystery centered on Sisko and Bashir. The gathering of clues is dull, and involves a lot of characters shoveling exposition at the heroes in emotionless performances.
The Trill coverup here, that any of them is capable of being joined with a symbiont and not just a select few, doesn't make much sense. For starters, the first time we ever saw a Trill, it was joining with Commander Riker (at least temporarily), suggesting joining isn't actually that difficult at all. Any one specific accident or odd circumstance might be rare, but it's impossible to believe that over time, there wouldn't have been enough of them for the Trill secret to have gotten out long ago. The reason for the secrecy feels overstated too: if people knew, everyone would want a symbiont. Really? Everyone would be champing at the bit to have their personality subverted by a parasite whose life society regards more highly than yours? I suppose as long as demand exceeds supply, the premise works. Still, it seems a secret impossible to keep.
There are moments in the episode that do work, mostly in the first half, and mostly thanks to the heavy lifting done by the actors. Terry Farrell gets some fun and different material to play here, spewing harsh venom at her friends, and showing a childlike fear of returning to the Commission on her homeworld. But when the show yet again sidelines Dax in a story that's supposed to be about Dax (after "Dax" and "Invasive Procedures"), it begins to falter.
There are some good moments for other main characters sprinkled throughout the episode. Sisko's pure joy in cooking is infectious, and Rene Auberjonois' take on how Odo would become fascinated with stirring a bowl is quite funny. Nana Visitor has a great moment in which Kira jokes with Dax... until suddenly realizing Dax isn't joking. There's also a nice arc for Bashir, who finally gets to be something other than a horndog around Dax -- he comforts her as a friend when she confesses a fear of doctors.
But the guest cast isn't rising to the level of the main cast, and the back half of the episode is increasingly reliant on them. The "wacky, socially awkward" Trill Guardian is a dull cliche. The leader protecting the secret about Trill joining is flat and one-note. And the man playing Joran Dax? He's Jeff Magnus McBride, the magician whose act spawned this whole episode in the first place. He isn't really an actor, and it shows in his performance.
Other observations:
- We're back on the Defiant for the first time since the series premiere, and getting to see and appreciate it a bit more. The bunks in the quarters are tiny, like on an aircraft carrier. The hallways are similarly inspired -- not quite that narrow, but noticeably more compact than on, say, the Enterprise.
- Decades before Shazam was invented, they're totally using the idea of it in this episode to identify the piece of music Dax keeps humming.
- It's odd, for an episode in which music plays a key role, how little music there actually is in the episode. Another element that makes the back half so dry is that there's very little score to accompany the lengthy scenes of exposition.
- Here, Joran is presented more like a troubled youth who snaps in one bad moment. Later on, Dax's past host would be reimagined more as a raging psychopath -- a more stark and intriguing thing to put in her back story.
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