Episode Behind the Scenes

TREKCORE > DS9 > EPISODES > FACETS > Behind the Scenes
 
This episode originated with Ira Steven Behr's desire to do a version of the 1976 Daniel Petrie television movie Sybil in the sphere of DS9. Sybil was a psychological study of a woman, played by Sally Field, who, due to a traumatic childhood, suffered from an extreme form of multiple personality disorder, and had at least 13 distinct personalities. Behr thought this would be a fascinating approach from which to examine Jadzia Dax in a new light, and he assigned René Echevarria to write the teleplay. However, at first, Echevarria couldn't shake the notion that if Dax suddenly started to experience resurgences of her past hosts, there would need to be a reason why. In the case of Sybil, it was a dark psychological trauma in her past, but Dax had already had one such trauma revealed this season (in the episode "Equilibrium"), and Echevarria felt it would be unacceptable to present viewers with another nasty experience from her past. Echevarria next came up with the idea for the zhian'tara ritual, but originally, the ritual involved simply the suppression of the Jadzia host, and the resurgence of the former hosts, one at a time. This meant however that the episode was essentially going to focus exclusively on Terry Farrell, with her simply playing various different characters, and Echevarria was unhappy with this because it meant that there could be no interaction between Jadzia and the previous hosts; "Once she became each host, it was kind of 'Okay, let's sit back and watch Dax be this person now.' There was no true interaction between Jadzia and that host." It was then that Echevarria hit on the idea of using the cast regulars to 'embody' the various hosts. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 246-247)
   
When composing the teleplay for this episode René Echevarria soon realized that there were three female hosts, but only one female character (Kira) in which to embody them. Dax's first host was Lela, so Echevarria used Kira for her. He then decided that it would provide some good comedy to use Quark for Audrid. This left him with Emony. Originally, he wanted to use Keiko, as the only recurring female character in the show, but actress Rosalind Chao was unavailable. As such, he decided to use the character of Leeta. There had been no indication of a friendship between Dax and Leeta prior to this episode, so the writers added a line in the teaser about the two "spending quite a bit of time together." Ira Steven Behr noted, "It didn't make any sense. We paid lip service [to the relationship], but it never really paid off again. It was just one of those things. Sometimes you've just gotta shoehorn ideas into an episode to keep it going." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 246-247)
   
Neither René Echevarria nor Ira Steven Behr were overly happy with how Curzon came across in this episode. According to Echevarria, "If I had to do it over again, I would have been more careful about his character. He was almost always drinking or talking about drinking." Behr, for his part, says, "The way Curzon came across was by no means the way I saw the character. I saw him as a kind of bon vivant. Instead he was like Shecky Curzon, a wacky, funny guy." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 248)
   
The scenes involving Sisko as Joran had to be shot twice because the producers were unhappy with the first set of dailies. The reason for this was they felt that Avery Brooks' performance was too creepy. According to visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel, Brooks spoke in an almost inaudible whisper that "literally sent shivers up your spine". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 247)
   
To achieve Odo's new look after he embodies Curzon, make-up designer Michael Westmore got a photograph of actor Frank Owen Smith, who had portrayed Curzon in "Emissary", and digitally morphed it onto the Odo makeup. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 248)
   
Ira Behr commented that the episode is "all over the place. The story doesn't begin until act three. Before then, you don't know what it's about. Is it about Dax? Is it about Odo? Is it about Curzon? I dare anyone to figure it out until the show is halfway over. It's filled with scenes that exist just for the hell of having the scenes. They don't all advance the story. We do a whole act of meeting these hosts, one after the other. But the fact that the story moved so fast, and so many outrageous things are happening every two minutes, it works a lot better than I thought it would when I was watching the dailies. It has all the ideosyncracies and eccentricities of a Deep Space Nine episode. Terry really does her best work when she's vulnerable, worried and trying to wrestle with problems". (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages p 98)