Star Trek

For my 2 cents on dax, I hated the descriptions of kirzon. The guy would sleep with married women, take girlfriends away from boyfriends, start bar fights for fun, and just seemed to be an overall asshole. I never understood why sisko liked him so much.

I could take or leave jedzia. She was a decent character, but never really grabbed me like she seemed to with others. Same thing with ezri tbh.

in DS9, my favorite character was Garrack. You never quite knew where where his alegences were.

Ezri is one of my least favourite characters in Trek. Jadzia was a moderate character I found attractive but lacking depth. She kinda got joined at the hip with one of my favourite characters (Worf) so I had mixed feelings at the time.

Kind of E3 spoilers... sort of.

DAX

I always thought they missed an opportunity when Jadzia was killed,  but I can sympathise with the writers as It's hard to write a character when an actors contract is up and there is uncertainty about whether they will extend it.  I believe there were protracted contractual negotiations which dragged out to a very late stage, to no avail, so they may have had very short notice to come up with something.

So they replaced Jadzia with Ezri who I liked as she was flawed and was a reluctant host who has this fundamental life changing symbiotic joining due to force of circumstance.  I find her a very sympathetic character because of this.  She is an "ordinary" person dealing with a psychologically traumatic event and being ill prepared to do so.   This is opposed to the usual hosts,  one of the dedicated Trill elite who have went through a rigorous selection process and years of training and preparation.   We can place ourselves in her shoes and can only imagine the overwhelming nature of suddenly dealing with all these new memories, personalities and emotions.

On the missed opportunity point.  Wouldn't it have been interesting if Jadzia was replaced by a man.  If macho tough guy Worf was uncomfortable with Ezri wouldn't it have been absolutely delicious to see him deal with a male Dax, can you just imagine the look on his face.


Curzon Dax

I liked the "Facets" episode where Odo and Curzon "blended" and Curzon didn't want to go back to Dax.  I thought it was entertaining to see Odo with a more "humanoid" or should I say "solid" personality.  I liked it when he was under the influence in Quarks, I do believe he even kissed Quark.

DS9

I thought Nicole de Boer did a great job with Ezri in such a short time, it helps that she's a very likeable personality.  Also she has the most charming smile in popular tv Sci-fi.  Wasn't Famke Janssen the first choice to play Jadzia but she turned them down.

Is it true that Terry Farrell wasn't very popular with the cast and crew and was disruptive throughout the series? Or is this just sour grapes from exec's and show runners after she refused to resign? Personally IDK, but I do remember reading words/quotes to this effect.  I read somewhere a long time ago that some of the cast thought she couldn't act and wasn't up to the job.

DS9 trivia: Originally, they wanted Alexander Siddig to play the lead as the station commander, but they didn't realise that he was younger than they first thought and therefore too young to play the lead (an older, family man).

So far as I know, it was quite untrue about Terry. I've heard rumors about that, but so far as every fan, cast member, and crewmember not named Rick Berman account that I've come across goes (RB was the executive producer, creator of DS9, VOY, and ENT, as well as franchise runner after Gene kicked the bucket,) she was well loved and well-regarded by everyone. She regularly goes to Conventions, gets along great with her former cast-mates, and she previously dated Michael Dorn (before he came onto the show, and is still close enough with him that I believe that she stated that he was made her sons' godfather.) She also does adorable photo-shoots with Nicole de Boer, and has stated that they're both great friends.

In fact, the Visual Effects Director for her final episode stated that she was the epitome of professionalism and good character, who didn't whine, make excuses, or be generally obnoxious like other actors he had worked with, and that she had a massive going-away party thrown for her and attended by the entire cast and crew of both DS9 and Voyager. She's also on record saying that she regrets leaving DS9 for the final season, and that she wouldn't trade her time on Trek for anything. 

I haven't heard about the comments from cast regarding her acting chops, though in all honesty, I don't know if I could totally deny them, at least for the first couple of seasons. That said, I'd dispute anyone who said she wasn't up to the task in 'Rejoined' (S4,E6). That episode was incredibly powerful (in a subtle, nuanced manner) and carried by a very haunting performance by Ms. Farrell.

I think the 'disruptive' stuff comes from her less-than-stellar relationship with Rick Berman, particularly near the end of her run on the show: As TF puts it, she was burned out and tired of the 3AM make-up calls for her character that often only culminated in a handful of shots. She wanted to renegotiate her contract for less appearances (even willing to take a pay-cut as a non-salaried guest star) but Berman left her with a take-it-or-leave-it contract. She stated the issues started when she was offered and wanted to do a guest appearance on Seinfeld, and Berman said no, even though she'd only be shooting for a week at most. She took issue with it because Armin Shimmerman (Quark) had previously been allowed to make an appearance on that show, and that she didn't understand why she couldn't take 5 day break from shooting (particularly during a period of shooting when the focus was on the character arc of a guest actor.) She stated that as time when on, this cascaded into more and more denials as she wanted to do other projects during off-time but found she had little time to prepare for them, since Berman specifically denied her the opportunity to try out for anything else. 

One of the rumors (totally unconfirmed) was that Berman had a major thing for Terry, and that her rejection of him led to an acrimonious professional relationship that deteriorated as the years went on. One reason not to believe this rumor is because both Berman and Farrell were involved with other people at the supposed time of the falling out. For what it's worth, Farrell seems to pin most of the blame on Berman alone for her departure. 

Farrell also asked the head writer and creative director for DS9, Ira Behr about the issues behind her departure, and she stated that Behr thought that it was a non-issue that Berman intentionally turned into a problem, and that he'd have had no problem at all with Jadzia having a recurring role for the final season if he'd been in charge. So to me, it seems that Berman (and a few other higher-ups at the network) had Jadzia killed off out of spite for the most part.

Famke Janssen was considered as a potential candidate, and was approached with the possibility of auditioning, but she wanted to focus on making films instead. She did have a guest appearances in TNG. 

And Alexander Siddig actually was a leading contender for the role of Sisko, but of course was recast as they felt he was too young. That was another case of nearly getting screwed by the execs; word was that due to Bashir's relative unpopularity with fans, they were going to can him in the middle of Season 4 until Behr and his deputy literally had to write out that Bashir's characterization was intentional, with the intent to mature him and grow him into a more adult character (including hooking him up with Dax.) At that point however, ratings were slipping, and they brought in Worf to boost viewership at the networks' insistence, as well as thrusting Bashir's genetic modification plot onto him. 

Lastly, as I've stated, I don't normally go for the Ezri-type characters, but she is just so freaking adorable, while also having an underlying facet of strength - as one character said about Ezri in summing her up, "The day she realizes she's more than the sum of her parts, she's really going to be something," and in the novels, boy, oh boy, do they deliver (she goes from being an insecure assistant counselor to a badass Captain blowing up Borg cubes left and right.) Of course, I don't like them splitting her and Bashir up, but given the nature of the novels not being technical canon, I take the initiative to pick and choose what I like and interpret it the way I like. 

But yeah, Nicole de Boer has always been one of those incredibly beautiful and wonderful actresses - I hope to meet her at a Convention next year. I've met William Shatner, Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Garrett Wang, and Robert Picardo, and it'd be great to add some female Trek alumni to the list (particularly Terry Farrell and Nicole de Boer, who actually do a lot of events together.) 

There is only one Star Trek episode that truly outraged me, I was absolutely livid and I would class it as the worst Star Trek episode ever.  That was the disgraceful series finale of Enterprise "These Are the Voyages".    Parachuting Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis in was extremely insensitive and disrespectful to the Enterprise cast, this was their moment and it was taken away from them.  At a 2009 Star Trek convention, Jonathan Frakes simply said this episode "stinks."

"The final episode of Enterprise was an idiotic move on my part. I thought it would be cool to do a valentine to all of Star Trek. To me there was something really post-modern about the idea of saying this was an episode of Next Generation you have never seen – where they go on the holodeck with their heroes aboard Enterprise. It sounded good in my head – what ended up airing was really bad and not successful completely. It should have been Enterprise's finale – it was a misstep," having added, "The Enterprise actors? They hated it. It was the only time Scott Bakula got pissed off at me."  Brannon Braga, 2014.


For me, Jeffrey Combs as Commander Shran was excellent in this series.  He was also great as the impeccably polite but Machiavellian Weyoun and the malicious Brunt in DS9.





Quotes taken from Memory Alpha.

Yeah, the last episode of Enterprise killed a lot of the goodwill it had managed to scrape together from fans for its last couple of seasons. That was when it started to develop into its own and come together. Sadly, given the high-stakes nature of modern television, few network executives will have the patience (if any) to sit through the teething problems of a series in order to wait for it to click. It has to hit the ground running, or it's out. Enterprise was a victim of that. 

If DS9 is the 'Black Sheep' of the Star Trek family, I wonder often what that makes Enterprise. The adopted second cousin who lives on the other side of the world? Enterprise is often the most forgotten of the Treks, and sadly, for good reason in a lot of ways. Whether it be the awful theme (it does grow on you eventually, but you have to admit that a more traditional, symphonic theme would have worked better than a rock-ballad,) the fact that it's separated so far in time from any other recognizable Trek, or having most episodes of the first couple of seasons usually be, at best, no better than a 'meh' run-of-the-mill Voyager episode (a series that itself had issues of producing episodes that weren't more or less completely forgettable at times,), or, most of all, the intriguing-in-another-show-but-completely-awful-for-Enterprise Temporal Cold War arc (Star Trek Online salvaged that story for me, but it still stands as crap that helped kill interest in Enterprise,) though to be fair to the writers on this last one, that was foisted on them by the executives. 

There's a lot, lot more to say about Enterprise. To me, it's a deeply flawed show that was seriously wonky on quality and continuity (in all honesty, if there is such a thing as being 'too' hindered by keeping to canon, Enterprise was it.) Captain Archer had even more of an inconsistent personality than Janeway, which is saying something - I do actually wonder how he got to command the Enterprise, and I do believe in the fan-theory that it was his father who got him the ship. Eventually, he grew into the role, but there were times were you didn't know if he was going to ram the space anomaly with the ship, or break down in tears and put Porthos in charge.

Frankly, it's like that for any character someone likes, and someone else dislikes. It always seems unreasonable, and you do want them to see it your way. I am happy she has lots of adoring fans, but I do not number among them. It is not unreasonable, it is how we relate to characters, shows, games, etc. It's normal. I like the rest of the cast, and the overall stories, so it's not like I am going to drop the show because of her, but I am still going to do eyerolls every time she say or does something that annoys me & I will be glad to see her gone every time I watch it. Don't take it personally.

I already listed it. You wrote a very long post how it is not true, and how it is justified by her specific character set-up. I still remain with my impressions, feelings and opinion on the topic. If they simply removed her from the show, I would be okay as well. But a death of a character you do not like - a character in a game, book or movie - is often more satisfying. It's like that in games as well. Maybe I am desensitized by playing games were I was able to kill off characters I do not like, but well, that's that. Obviously, it has nothing to do with real life. It's just fictional stories and yes, sometimes you do not like a character that has done nothing wrong and is good aligned, and sometimes you like the most obnoxious villain. Gul Dukat is a terrible person, but was he killed off, I'd have a fit of pique. Jadzea is nothing but caring and kind and gentle and everything else anyone can possibly imagine... but to see her die would appeal to me.

If you want one thing that is different, Seven continuously fail at is forming realistic relationships, understanding others, and connecting to people, her friendships and romances are always awkward, she is almost always in conflict with someone over not initially getting their motives, customs or being sensitive about it, she dos not notice obvious things, but Jadzia is perfect even in that sphere (as well as EVERY OTHER ONE, she is fit, artistic, and smart), with any species, any situation, and on top of it has every remotely attractive male character fall in love with her on the spot as well in every second episode, even Bareil who is otherwise fully devoted to Kira.

In other words, following Jadzia's character logic, if Jadzia was to meet Seven, she'd outperform her in astrometrics, know more about Borg than Seven does, and that would impress Seven, after which Chakotay would get infatuated with Jadzia. Seven would try to fight her, and would lose, and Jadzia would be really nice about it... and smirk.

It is up to you to chose to miss these treats in her as well, and/or like her despite it. This is how she comes across to me. You are obviously very fond of the character, and I have no quarrel with it. You are the one that keep asking questions, and then exclaim that the answers you get are unsatisfactory and feel hurt by it somehow. Just, stop asking, will you? You enjoy writing out your thoughts on why she is a great character and an actress for this role etc, well, you go for it. Enjoy loving her. But do no feel bad if someone else, like me, does not and feel the need to argue about it to prove something either to me, or to discredit my feelings somehow. It's fine. We are all free to feel.

I am rather happy with the Discovery characters so far, none of them rubs me the wrong way, though the bubbly Cadet might get trying if she gets too many scenes. But her last conversation with Michael started to feel better.

Really hope Discovery doesn't end up as a lamer version of the later seasons of DS9.

I also hope that we get so some standalone episodes that are actually deal with interesting sci-fi concepts and dilemmas.