Facets (DS9 episode)

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"Facets" is the penultimate episode in the third season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It first aired on June 12, 1995.

Quick Overview: Jadzia Dax deals with feelings of inferiority as she encounters past hosts in a Trill rite of closure.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Odo as Curzon Dax

Dax finally makes plans to undergo her Zhian'tara, in which she has the chance to actually meet her previous hosts by temporarily transferring each one's memories from the symbiont into the minds of each of her friends.

The Zhian'tara is the Trill rite of closure. This is a very emotionally intense ceremony which involves the separation of the personalities of the previous hosts from the symbiont into friends of the current host. The relation allows the current host to gain a renewed sense of his/her shared lives. The process takes place with the assistance of a Guardian who telepathically transfers the personalities.

Sisko, Kira, Bashir, Odo, Quark, O'Brien, and Leeta have agreed to participate (Although Sisko has to be in a cell as his Dax host was a murderer, and Quark experiences a more-than-slight discomfort at hosting a female when his role in the ritual takes place).

Jadzia has been putting off her Zhian'tara because she fears what she will hear from the previous hosts. In particular, she doesn't want to face Curzon, who washed her out of the Trill initiation program.

The experience has a strange effect on Odo who joins with Curzon. Due to his shapeshifter abilities, Odo/Curzon takes on the look of a Trill, but the two personas appear to get on so well that Curzon resolves to remain in Odo, leaving Dax uncertain about her role in things without Curzon's memories.

The big revelation in "Facets" is that Curzon Dax, who was the person in charge of assessing Jadzia's worthiness for a Joining, flunked Jadzia from the program deliberately because he was very attracted to her, only to reinstate her later out of guilt. Dax assures him that they will always be together through the symbiote, and Curzon leaves Odo's body for good.