Synopsis
Jazia Dax is wanted by the son of an old war hero who believe her past host was responsible for murdering and betraying his father (hang on have I got the right sci fi show here!!), and the writers concoct an excuse to try to hammer out how all this slug / Trill; symbiont stuff works for us schmucks bumming out in front of the box.
Review
Bashir is still trying (and failing) to get in Jadzias pants. He is even upfront enough to suggest he has ways of keeping her up all night, bleaugh. Fortunately this nonsense is put in to start the plot ball rolling. Some men hide behind a grille spying on her, they confirm it is Dax, and as Jadzia is eager to get penisbrain off her case - she leaves - and they pounce in a corridor taking her hostage. Bashir attempts to rescue her but fails miserably. Poor lovestruck fool. He may be a complete jackass in season one, but the writers seem keen to compound his boorish buffoonery at times. They almost manage to escape on a ship, but the tractor beam is fixed (the abductors sabotaged it) before they can jump to warp, and they are reeled back in.
The lead abductor is an alien from Klaestron IV named Illon Tandro, which when I hear it; makes me get that Lady Gaga song "Alejandro" on the brain. Seems Allitandro; allitandro - Ally andro ally ally tandro .... thinks that Dax killed his old man General Tandro who was the victor of a civil war on his planet. You see Curzon Dax - who had the slug before Jadzia did - mediated in this war. So Tandro thinks Jadzia Dax should carry the can for his old man as she is essentially still Dax, even though she wasn't born when her "victim" bought it. Sisko is of course horrified at this whole thing. In a nice reversal of "A Man Alone", Sisko refuses to believe his old buddy could kill, even though Odo points at several times in the episode; that Curzon does seem implicit. There is one bit where Sisko says if Trill law concerning the complicity of current hosts to previous ones crimes shores up Tandros reasoning, then unreason it. The impartial face of justice doesn't always seem that way if it is your mate on the receiving end! It also doesn't help that Jadzia has become so reticent about the whole thing. What is she hiding?
There is unfortunately going to be a big blob of Trill themed exposition here. This story is essentially designed to flesh out this whole Trill symbiont; slug; x amount of lives concept for us the audience. The mystery story which we shall return to after this interlude, is put in to build a story narrative around the extradition hearing scenes, which are there to look at the whole philosophy of a joined species. So here we go.
This part of the episode is divided into two parts. The whole Trill concept is the main bit, and Sisko's relationship with Curzon, and by extension Jadzia, is the other part. The Trill were first introduced in the TNG episode "The Host". They were a secretive race who - unknown to everybody else - had a slug like thing inside them that was the brains behind the outfit. The host body (a forehead of the week) was essentially little more than a receptacle for the slug. So if you stuck the slug into another host (even a human), then sluggo would subsume the body it took over, so that they would be the same person in a different body (as happened to Riker, when he became host to a slug that had once been in the body of a Trill ambassador who ended up playing tonsil tennis in a turbolift with Doctor Crusher. Cue ensuing awkwardness, and more so when the next host was a woman!) All of this (even the original makeup, as they felt it detracted from Terry Farell's good looks, hence the more refined spots.) was retconned for DS9. The Trill V.02 were not recluses, and everyone knew that they had the slugs. Sisko obviously knew about Curzon, they are said to have been buddies for over 20 years (hence why he calls Jadzia "old man"). Hell even the Klingons knew! The symbiotic relationship was on more equal terms, the host had the slugs own personality and previous hosts memories, but they augmented that to their own personality. Only the select few were joined, not all of them. This episode serves the purpose just like "The Nagus" a few episodes down the line does. It sets up the retconning of the Trill (or the Ferengi for that episode) for the purposes of the show.
As I said the episode is a "trial show" (every US TV show has to have one of these episodes. It's the law or something.) and the hearing scenes are designed to flesh out the Trill concept. The Trill race is quite a clever, high concept idea for a TV show. You have this humanoid host with a long lived slug symbiont. Thus what looks like a human is actually a really alien (and saves the creators of the show from splashing out on alien effects too) being. Now this is a fairly counter intuitive concept to both pull off and describe (this has been by far the most challenging review I have written). I tend to agree with the Agony Booth review for "Let he who is without sin." (Christ the daggers will be out when this pile of shit gets the Betty treatment!!) that the writers had trouble pulling this off onscreen. As reviewer "Albert" said in that review, Terry Farrell didn't really ever seem like a 300 year old in a 28 year old models body. The writers are clearly struggling to articulate the whole Trill thing in this episode. D.C Fontanna, who wrote this episode is one of my favourite Trek writers. She perhaps did more than anyone else to "humanise" the Trek universe, to delve into the back story and make it a more "real" place. But even she is struggling a bit here (I hear this script went through several rewrites.) The logical arguments about whether Jadzia can be guilty for a past hosts crimes, and the nature of how separate the host / symbiont's personality is are difficult to put across because we have no real precedent in real life. It also doesn't help that neither Curzon or the slug can speak independently in the hearing either, if we want to play the blame game in this case. I'll be here all day rattling off all the minutiea of the case so I'll surmise. The gist of Tandros argument is that although Curzon and Jadzia are different Dax is Dax, and as it takes two to tango with a joined Trill the symbiont is at best accessory to murder, or at worst guilty of the deed itself. Sisko counters it is ridiculous a woman can be extradited for a crime committed before she was even born (technicalities eh?) Some old Bajoran bag they shipped up to arbitrate chips in and says why don't they extract the slug from Jadzia - who on her own is blameless - and just extradite that instead. But as Trill physiology read the script, they can't as the host dies 93 hours after being "slugged" if it is removed. Tandro shoots back, the relationship between host and symbiont is like salt and water, you put one in the other and they combine to create a new combined substance Sisko points out that the circularity of this argument is self evidence of the fallacy of the point he is trying to make. Boil the water and recollect the salt, and pour that in another liquid, you get something else; Ding! A totally new identity.
Now as I said, this case is so outside of everyday experience that it impossible to say whether Tandro has anything more than cigarettes and hush (look you try putting spurious Lady Gaga references into this review!) to his case. I'm also not a barrister or anything, so I can only draw on my own knowledge of legal matters (known by the term "none at all"). Jadzia alone is obviously blameless. The symbiont physically can't carry the can alone (and I thought it takes two to tango anyway). Curzons popped it. So I suspect that if this were real life that his [Tandros] case would be dismissed.
As we have to nip all this philosophical stuff in the bud before the episode ends, this is where the mystery part of the story comes in. Odo has gone to Klaestron 4 (which is that matte painting that was used tons of times on TNG) and found Mrs. Tandro (the generals widow) She is utterly insistent Curzon didn't kill her hubby, and that her son is a bit of a nutter, even though Odo discovers that a message was sent to the Generals enemies which allowed them to find and kill him (hence why he wants Dax done for murder.), and that Curzon is pretty much the only one who knew where the General was headed on the night he was killed, who doesn't have an alibi. Sisko confronts Dax about this, but she is still reticent. Sisko eventually manages to get a semi confession that not all was well on Klaestron. Curzon you see was a bit of a partier and a player. A lot of his major "diplomatic gestures" probably occurred when he didn't have his trousers on. She implies that Curzon and Mrs. Tandro were more than friends. She also points out that unlike the maverick Curzon, she acts so cooly at times because when a joined Trill personally fucks up like this, it can cascade down to further hosts, so she has to be extra careful. This trait although quite intriguing doesn't really square with how the Dax character evolved in the later seasons, though a fourth season episode called "Rejoined" would eventially play on this idea. The hearing comes to an abrupt end when Mrs Tandro shows up in person at DS9. Curzon didn't kill the general, he couldn't have. Yes, he was - as the youth of today would say - was getting jiggy with her at the time the message was sent. Before Allejandro can call his mom a filthy whore (Gregory Itzin's expression at the revelation is priceless!) the old Bajoran judge lady winds it all up, and they all go home for tea. Mrs Tandro walks with Jadzia who tells her that Curzon truly loved her. Mrs Tandro says she knew the real reason her husband was killed, he wanted to sell his own side to the rebels, and in disgust at his treachery they shot him. But as he is a hero on their world she feels obliged to honour the "official" memory of her husband. But perhaps one day the truth should finally come out.
Mistakes & Questions
Odo manages to locate Alijandro Tandro's bunch of kidnappers at the airlock their ship is at, and calls for a security team. What a pity then that there isn't a device on the station that can instantly teleport people from one place to the other in no time at all, and thus stop them in their tracks!
Tandro says Dax is wanted for charges of treason on Klaestron 4. Neither Curzon or Jadzia are from that world, so how can you charge them for this specific crime.
Odo says that the only place the hearing can take place on DS9 (they don't do it on Bajor so Dax is at less risk of being Shanghaied on the way.) is at Quarks. Why not use one of the conference wardrooms on the station? There is only about 6 people participating at any one time.
Ali Tandro says both Jadzia and Curzon were Federation officers. I don't ever recall Curzon being in Starfleet. He was a diplomat wasn't he?
Bashir says at one point that there is no actual evidence that Curzon Dax, and Jadzia Dax are different people. Oh only something like - yes they are two separate fucking people! Yes I think I first noticed this small detail when the Dax host changed sex and lost about 80 years m'lud!
Betty's Thought for the Day
There is a scene in this episode where Mrs Tandro says that being the relative of a person as famous and well regarded as her husband is an enormous burden. That she constantly has people telling her how great he was, and she has to constantly give after dinner talks about how awesome a man he used to be, when she knows the man behind the mythos, and that he wasn't like that at all. In fact the opposite. This sort of thing actually has strong echoes in real life. The sons of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill always suffered in living in the shadow of their fathers titanic reputation, when they knew that as parents and people; they left a lot to be desired. Mrs. Tandro's comments about strangers approaching her about how they loved her husband always remind me of Cynthia and Julian Lennons (more the latter) comments about actually living (or in Julian's case not.) with the legend. Julian was particularly irked that strangers couldn't see past John's musical talents, and that he was actually a cruel; distant; absent and even (not sexually) abusive father and spouse in reality.
Summary
This episode is primarily a functional one. The hearing scenes exist as a vehicle to exposit the whole "split personality" and symbiosis thingy that goes on with Trills, so the viewers know what the hell is all this stuff is actually about. It is clear that they struggled a bit to put this esoteric stuff across in a 45 minute episode (I actually think the whole Trill concept really need novelising to really get to grips with it all.), and some of the arguments are laboured and don't stand up too well. The mystery part of the story, and the Mrs Tandro scenes are the ones that help drive the episode, and it is an interesting story at heart. So although a functional one, it is a good one too.
Rating 7 / 10
Next Time
Starfleet's (second) finest doctor thinks you only use 10 percent of your brain. Na'toth of Babylon 5 acts like a paranoid wierdo. And you too can be evil by talking slowly and acting badly.
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