[judayre]

Can we talk about Joran Dax?  Because damn he gets it rough.

The first time we find out about him, we learn that he was a top graduate of a prestigious music academy and a famous and respected composer and musician.  He was also a hard person to deal with and had a very changeable and unpredictable temper.

He was host for the Dax symbiont for 6 months and it went so badly that upper level Trill kept expecting him to reject attachment to the symbiont.  The fact that he didn’t was a huge deal that showed that moreover Trill were capable of being hosts than there were symbionts in need of hosting.  This fact being public knowledge was likely to lead to harm to the symbionts, so it was decided to hide it by putting out information that Joran was kicked out of the candidate program and erasing all data about the joining.

That bad reaction I mentioned?  Being joined made Joran increasingly violent and paranoid.  He killed the man who made the suggestion that they say he was kicked out of the program.  Dax was then moved to Curzon, along with memory blockers so that Joran and his actions would be forgotten.

We find this out when the memory blockers stop working so well and they search out the information to save Jadzia.  The blockers are completely removed and she accepts Joran as part of her, welcoming his image with a hug that nearly brings him to tears because he’s so happy to be recognized and included.

The next time we see him is when Jadzia is going through a ceremony to “meet” the other hosts.  They have to do the ceremony with Joran in a holding cell because he’s dangerous and tries to manipulate and hurt both Jadzia and Sisko (who is his temporary form).

The next time after that where we see him is in the seventh season where Ezri is investigating a murder and needs Joran’s help to learn about the murderer’s psychology.  Also, he apparently has at least two more murders than we learned about the first time.  And he spends a lot of time trying to convince Ezri to kill someone for the hell of it.

Now, the first time we learn of him he was a guy who was difficult to live with because he was a temperamental artist.  And he should not have been joined.  It was the joining that set him on enough of an edge to commit murder.  Any other time we hear about him, murder is the only thing mentioned.  This complex character whose tragedy comes from being joined is reduced to the single word “murderer” - and his actions when we see him back it up,

The host doesn't “live on” in the symbiont.  All that remains is shadows of the impression left on the symbiont.  The joining with Joran was a bad time for Dax as well as Joran.  All Dax can remember of him is this violent, paranoid man and that’s all the Joran that lives on in Dax is.