Star Trek-Musings about the Trill

[Lofgeornost]

I've watched some Deep Space 9 recently, and it's got me thinking about the Trill. If the name doesn't ring any bells, they are the species that has a long-lived symbiont that moves from humanoid host to host as those age and die. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) and her successor Ezri Dax (Nicolle DeBoer) are probably the most prominent Trill characters in Trek.

I never felt like the Trill concept worked on a dramatic level. It sounds neat, but you are basically asking an actor to show that he is both one person (usually a young one, in Trek) and a vastly older entity with lifetimes of experience and perspective. How the heck do you do that? Neither Farrell nor DeBoer ever succeeded at it, but I think it would have tested the limits of the best actor.

It occurred to me that maybe Trek would have been better off taking the approach used by Stargate for the Tok'ra (the good symbionts, as opposed to the goa'uld). So when Farrell was being mainly Jadzia, she would speak normally, but when Dax intervened, she would speak in a special voice. I think that would better get across the idea that you are dealing with a composite creature, one part of which is vastly older. Glowing eyes ala Stargate are optional.

Of course, this doesn't fit with the way the Trill were introduced on TNG; there it was necessary for the 'joined' Trill to be one entity that simply seemed to be the host. But Trek was not afraid of a little retconning, and it did some with the Trill anyway. The original TNG episode, "The Host," pretty much implied that the symbiont took over host body and was the 'real' person, an idea later jettisoned.

 

[Gabriel]

Refresh my memory...

What was the requirement for the Trill host? What happened to their independent psyche? What reasons were given for them wanting to become hosts?

I guess I just assumed the merged being had some sort of amalgam mind which wasn't entirely that of the host or of the Trill. Then again, the show didn't present it as clear cut as that. I think the Trill episode in TNG implied the new combination still had roughly the same mind while DS9 implied the new Dax combination had an entirely different one.

There is a bit of a grey area in Stargate, but it generally leans towards there being two separate entities in the head and the Goa'uld parasite always being dominant, even in the Tokra. The dominated mind can sometimes affect or suggest the Goa'uld, but the Goa'uld seems to only be able to either shut out or "torture" the host mind.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Refresh my memory...

What was the requirement for the Trill host? What happened to their independent psyche? What reasons were given for them wanting to become hosts?

These things are a bit fuzzy, because the various series came up with different answers. My slightly vague memory of the original TNG appearance of the Trill is that the symbiont is essentially in control. This was necessary for the main plot arc--Crusher falls in love with a Trill ambassador, who later moves into Riker, and then into a female Trill host. The story presents all of them as being essentially the same person.

By DS9, this had changed. The idea there seemed to be that if you were a Trill who got a symbiont, you became a better and wiser version of yourself, with the memories of multiple lifetimes and lots of knowledge and experience. It was possible through certain rituals to separate out the previous hosts so that the current one could speak directly with them. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people want to be hosts, and so they were rigorously screened to make sure only the best candidates received a symbiont.

I guess I just assumed the merged being had some sort of amalgam mind which wasn't entirely that of the host or of the Trill. Then again, the show didn't present it as clear cut as that. I think the Trill episode in TNG implied the new combination still had roughly the same mind while DS9 implied the new Dax combination had an entirely different one.

Yeah, basically Jadzia + earlier hosts, rather than Dax subsuming Jadzia.

There is a bit of a grey area in Stargate, but it generally leans towards there being two separate entities in the head and the Goa'uld parasite always being dominant, even in the Tokra. The dominated mind can sometimes affect or suggest the Goa'uld, but the Goa'uld seems to only be able to either shut out or "torture" the host mind.

Yes, though my impression was that the Tok'ra dealt with their hosts on equal terms--Sam's father Jacob suggests as much after he is joined with one. Of course, they could 'take over' as happens to O'Neill at one point.

I didn't mean, though, that Trek should necessarily have adopted the goa'uld paradigm wholesale, but just the practical acting trick used to show that you are dealing with a composite organism.

 

[TristramEvans]

I never felt like the Trill concept worked on a dramatic level. It sounds neat, but you are basically asking an actor to show that he is both one person (usually a young one, in Trek) and a vastly older entity with lifetimes of experience and perspective. How the heck do you do that?

 

[Lofgeornost]

I never thought it worked with the Doctor either, come to that. I suppose that's one reason I prefer the Doctors played by older actors.

 

[TristramEvans]

I think Matt Smith did a great job of playing a very old man in a young body