Terry Farrell wanted to be a recurring character on DS9

Terry Farrell wanted to be a recurring character

At the end of the sixth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Terry Farrell, the actress who portrayed Jadzia Dax, wanted to reduce the number of episodes she was in for the seventh season. With her contract up and with so many regular characters, she didn’t think it would be that big of a deal to move her to a recurring character.

According to the actress, who was quoted in The Fifty Year Mission The Next Twenty-Five Years by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Rick Berman didn’t give her the option to reduce the number of episodes. She said Berman said she was hardballing him while she just wanted to have a conversation about changing the number of episodes. Instead, Berman said “at the end of the year, we had to suddenly kill Jadzia.”

Dying wasn’t Terry Farrell’s choice for her character

Farrell didn’t want her character to die, but if she did have to, she suggested that she be killed off in the episode, “Change of Heart.”

"“I had asked not to be killed, but if you need to kill me because that’s what you need to do, that would have been the perfect episode to do it because it would have been so much more for Worf’s character to play in the long run.”"

Unfortunately, the producers went in a different direction, and Jadzia was killed by Gul Dukat at the end of season six. Her death devastated viewers, especially those who were fans of the Jadzia/Worf romance.

Had Farrell gotten her wish and Jadzia died when Worf had to leave her behind, it would have been just as devastating, but it would have made more sense. Jadzia had already been wounded and was, in essence, dying. The ramifications of Worf’s decision to fulfill his duty could have played out over the course of the rest of the season.

Instead, producers allowed the couple to talk of having a child and gave fans a kernel of hope for the next season. Then Jadzia was killed in a nonsensical moment by Gul Dukat. So many years later, her death still doesn’t make sense in that scene. And the series had to introduce a new Trill for the final season, which was a loss for Terry Farrell and a challenge for Nicole de Boer, who played Ezri Dax.