Rejoined: the Perils of Taboo and Trill Sacred Tradition: Part Two

In Part One of this post I introduced the circumstances of the 1995 DS9 episode Rejoined, briefly discussed the way it respects both religious and secular traditions, and mentioned that the episode examines how individual choice is more ambiguous than is often thought today. This post will pick up on this last thought, examining how joined Trill display this general ambiguity by way of their particular relationship between past traditions and the present.

It is clear that Jadzia is primarily motivated by a passionate attraction to and electric chemistry with Lenara: the fact that this is largely a holdover from their previous hosts’ marriage is at a purely emotional level irrelevant. (Part One discussed ways in which it is very relevant.) However, another motivation for Jadzia is the excitement of overthrowing taboo, the brazen and head-strong rejection of the beliefs of the masses in favour of an individual choice. 

Benjamin Sisko, ever the supportive older brother, ultimately pledges to stand behind whatever choice Jadzia ends up making. Nevertheless, he seems uneasy with the possibility of Jadzia pursuing this relationship with Lenara. His unease is not directly because he agrees with the restriction on Reassociation, or because he thinks an individual rejection of taboo is necessarily wrong. He seems uneasy because Jadzia’s brazen headiness smacks of the very flaws that Sisko was able to detect in Curzon, Sisko’s dear friend and mentor, and Dax’s previous host.

This brazenness is put on display in Facets, which is set in the previous year (2371) and aired only a few months earlier than Rejoined. Sisko is able to confront this tendency directly, when a re-emerged Curzon directly threatens Jadzia’s integrity and the integrity of the Dax-Symbiont relationship. In this episode, Jadzia undergoes the zhian'tara ritual, in which the consciousness of Dax’s previous hosts temporarily take over the bodies of Jadzia’s friends. Since Curzon inhabits Odo, the latter’s shapeshifting existence gives them both the opportunity of permanently merging with each other, effectively extending Curzon’s life while granting Odo a far more outgoing and risk-taking personality.

While Odo and the re-emerged Curzon agree to this, the result is that Curzon’s personality would be detached from Jadzia, depriving her of an important source of the confidence and risk-taking courage that has become an integral part of her life. She is also essentially left without a choice in the matter, left to the whim of Curzon’s brazen disregard for Jadzia’s integrity as the current host of the Dax symbiont. So Sisko has none of it. While Jadzia momentarily lacks the courage to confront Curzon/Odo, Ben does not, and forcefully persuades Curzon to respect Jadzia’s integrity, to respect Trill Tradition on the matter, and therefore to reintegrate with the Dax symbiont.

I have used the words integrity, integral and reintegrate quite purposefully here. To have integrity requires two things:

1. The various things that are integral to some whole thing are held together by that whole, since they together make up the identity of the whole. The opposite results in fragmentation, which entails a lack of wholeness.
2. One or more of these integral things do not overwhelm the whole, since they merely make up the identity of the whole. Such an overwhelming would collapse or diminish the identity of the whole into one of its parts, meaning that the whole lacks integrity.

Joined Trill provide an excellent sci-fi vehicle for expressing this principle because the integrity of their whole selves in the present involves the personalities and life experiences of past hosts. In Facets, it is clear that Curzon’s memories and personality are integral to Jadzia’s ability to make responsible and courageous decisions. In Rejoined, the possibility arises that the urges of past hosts—Curzon far more than Torias (the spouse of Lenara’s previous host)—might overwhelm Jadzia’s integrity as Jadzia, and therefore her courage might overwhelm her responsibility to herself.

More broadly, these Trill-heavy episodes show how the past itself, with its histories and experiences and mindsets—its Tradition and its wisdom—is integral to the present in a complicated, rather non-linear dynamic that nevertheless seeks to affirm the integrity of the present moment. Importantly, the present moment will inevitably become a past moment, as part of a future present moment. With this in mind, we need to understand that Tradition is received from the past, then interpreted, expressed and (yes) modified or developed, and then handed down and “surrendered”—tradere (here’s some more Latin) to a future present. Whether or not you agree with Ben in Facets (you should), and whether or not you agree with Lenara’s choice ultimately to not pursue a relationship with Jadzia (you aren’t told one way or the other), these episodes take a serious look at the way choice and decision-making in the present and future are richly entwined with the past.