Dear Johnny Fanboy,

While watching Seasons Four and Five of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I think I have stumbled upon a very lucrative opportunity to provide not one, not two, but three nit-picks. And they will only cost you two strips of gold-pressed latinum!

1. How come, in the fourth season episode Rejoined, Dax falls in love with her old partner?

While each new host inherits the memories of the previous hosts, is it really likely that this would influence Jadzia's emotions? She is her own woman and surely not that susceptible to past hosts' feelings. Otherwise, if one host hated wine with a passion and another host loved it, what would be the outcome for future hosts? I know love for fellow beings is a little different from a love of wine, but still...

2. In the Season Five episode The Darkness and the Light, Worf quotes a Ferengi rule to Jadzia. Dax looks surprised and asks: "You know the Rules of Acquisition?" To which Worf replies: "I'm a graduate of Starfleet Academy. I know many things."

Well, he may well do, but his memory is not what it should be. Starfleet didn't make proper contact with the Ferengi until Season One of The Next Generation. OK, so Captain Archer's crew encountered some Ferengi in Enterprise, but they didn't even catch the race's name, never mind learn any of its rules, so Worf certainly couldn't have learned those rules while he was still in the Academy.

3. Finally, I have also found what appears to be a major problem with the Founders.

In the episode The Begotten, Quark finds a baby Changeling, which he sells to Odo. Talking to Sisko, Odo says: "Centuries ago, my people sent a hundred of us out into the galaxy so we could learn about other races." Sisko asks: "Why would the Founders send such helpless creatures out into space?" To which Odo replies: "To find out if the species they encountered posed any threat. What better way to gauge another race than to see how it treats the weak and vulnerable?"

So from that conversation we must assume that the Founders wanted to explore the galaxy and meet other friendly aliens. In that case why, when Odo found his people in the third season and proved that both the Federation and the Bajorans had treated him with kindness, did the Founders wage war against those people?

Amanda Hughes

Johnny Fanboy replies:

I am going to deal with your questions in reverse order, because that's the kind of wacky guy I am!

3. Ah, but that same tactic would also be very effective at finding out which races are soft saps who are ripe for conquering. I think that was the Founders' plan all along.

2. Yes, Worf's statement is open to that rather misleading interpretation. I would surmise, however, that he is simply stating that because he is a graduate of the Academy he is capable of learning many new and varied things, even after his formal education has ended. When he was posted to DS9, he evidently made it his business to learn the Rules of Acquisition.

1. Actually, we have seen many examples of emotions being passed down from one host to the next. What about Dax's friendship for Sisko, for instance, which survived two changes of host? Or Jadzia's enduring fondness for Leonard "Bones" McCoy, as stated in Trials and Tribble-ations, which dates back to her days as Emony Dax? Or Odan's love for Beverly Crusher in the TNG episode The Host?

I suppose conflicting emotions must sometimes get confusing or frustrating for joined Trill, but then that is why they have laws governing how they should manage those emotions. In most cases, I guess they must just get used to having mixed feelings.

In the case of a symbiont whose previous host hated wine but the present one loves it, I imagine that the more dominant personality would take precedence. Either that, or the opposing emotions would cancel each other out, so we would end up with an ambivalent Trill who could take it or leave it!

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