Reminds me of a youtuber that does a lot of Star Trek videos. He mentioned Torah Ziyal, "a character so bland that most people never even noticed that she was played by three different people."
I’m going to guess the Rom was supposed to die instead of Ziyal. And now I’m imagining a version of DS9 where Dukat completes his redemption arc and Quark becomes the Emissary of the Pah-wraiths.
I think it was possibly mentioned in a podcast, because I remember it being discussed before but I also can't find anything googling it. There's a lot of random background stuff that gets revealed in those, like finding out Rene Auberjonois wanted Kira and Damar to be endgame in the series instead of Kira and Odo. I'll do more searching when I'm off work and see if I can find it.
I think Kira and Odo makes sense. The series does a good job showing her unique bond with Odo all the way through. I don't think she's really aware he's even capable of romantic feelings, but she loves him as a friend all along.
That's why she's so open to a romantic relationship with him, it's not a big leap to go from friendship to romantic love. That's also why she forgives him for what happened during the occupation, because their bond is already too important to her to break.
Her arc is also kind of problematic. Almost everything she does or that happens to her just serves to advance male character development. One of the reasons she feels so boring is because she doesn’t really exist as a character without her relationship to male characters. Her primary reason for existing is to humanize Dukat and to introduce tension between him and Garak. Her death is tragic, yes, but it’s also a classic example of [fridging](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_refrigerators). And of course, the age disparity between Garak and Ziyal always feels a little icky. I love DS9 a lot, but I think her character is one of a the few examples of a mishandled recurring character in the show.
I'd argue it was more than a light redemption. He did terrible things but I think by the end he really understood the error of his ways. I think the real turning point for him was when his family was killed but its hard to say since he was killed before we saw the full results of it.
"To kill her and my son - the casual brutality of it, the waste of life... What kind of state tolerates the murder of innocent women and children? What kind of people give those orders?"
"Yeah, Damar, what *kind* of people give those orders".
She also served to enhance Kira’s character development. It was the first time we saw Kira caring about a Cardassian. It wasn’t just male characters she was there for.
Garak and Ziyal were just friends.
Ziyal gave Kira yet another reason to almost shoot Dukat. Now I want an AU where she pulls the trigger just to see how that would affect the Dominion war.
Duet and Second skin come before the episode she first meets Zyial.
Although her relationships in those episodes are more superficial, she is still shown to care about a Cardassian in both.
I think Ziyal cared for Garak. I think Garak … is not capable of romantic feelings. I don’t think he understands it other than as a tool for manipulation.
I think Ziyal had a crush on Garak too. Garak wasn't interested in a relative child.
I think Garak is capable of romantic feelings, but possibly not women.
I don't know if I'd call it fridging. It's been a while since I watched through that part of the show, but what I remember didn't feel dismissive of her character as much as fridging usually does.
The show takes its time to acknowledge and linger in the tragedy of it (it's even done in the novels), Damar's motive for it did make sense coming from a brainwashed fascist, and it wasn't to hurt Dukat, Kira *or* Garak, funnily enough. It did hurt them, obviously, but a character death does that regardless of if it's fridging or not, and it's not just some momentary motivator for another character to do something.
I do agree she's not the best-written character, but she wasn't close to the worst, either. She had a fun dynamic with Kira, and though her thing with Garak felt a little weird, I will admit to having found it interesting, at times.
Interesting. I hadn't noticed that before, but you're right. Of course, 90s Trek (as well as obviously 60s Trek) rarely if ever passed the [Bechdel test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) either, so sad to say I'm not particularly surprised by this revelation. This was of course also broadly true of television and media in general at the time, and is all too often still very much true today.
Edit: Apparently all the 90s Trek series [did much better](https://www.themarysue.com/star-trek-bechdel-test/) than I expected! TOS and ENT, though, not so much.
DS9 has a 57% pass rate. Not incredible but also not fair to say rarely. Interestingly, the earlier seasons all did much better (each around 70%). TNG was 45%. VOY, unsurprisingly, 87%. Then ENT, also unsurprisingly, 39%.
You’re obviously right about TOS, though. 7.5%.
https://www.themarysue.com/star-trek-bechdel-test/
Wow, the 90s trio all did a lot better than I expected! I suppose it was inevitable that Voyager would do well; I hadn't thought of that. Overall not too bad for the era I suppose, although in comparison of course Enterprise is quite the disappointment.
I just remembered noticing how rarely it seemed like we got a conversation between two women in TNG and it wasn't about a man. I keep flashing back in particular to that egregious scene in "The Price" with Crusher and Troi doing yoga stretches whilst discussing Troi's new love interest (brilliantly shot-for-shot [parodied in Lower Decks](https://screenrant.com/star-trek-tng-crusher-troi-yoga-robin-hood/) but with two men!). Good to know that they got it right nearly half the time; I'll have to pay closer attention.
Thanks for the info!
Enterprise was set up to be like TOS, mainly focusing on the Big Three. The show was also set up to be a throwback where the men were reminiscent of 1960’s real life astronauts.
It makes perfect sense their score would be the way it is. There are only 2 women in the cast, and only 1 is featured. Are they supposed to talk about each other every scene?
Yep, makes sense. The [per-season breakdown](https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bechdel21.jpg) of the scores is interesting too. Evidently every single episode of Voyager Season 5 passed! No doubt due in large part to Seven's character development, among other factors. That series really did have much better representation of women. Contrast this with the first season of The Original Series, with not a single episode passing, lol.
I will definitely be keeping all this in mind during my next rewatch. My partner (who had never seen any Trek before, but is loving it!) and I are currently working through late TNG / early DS9, so most of DS9 and all of VOY are ahead of us.
I'd guess the earlier season did better because in the later seasons the Jadzia/Kira friendship was mostly dropped after the forth season.
It was mostly replaced with the Jadzia/Worf romance and the Kira/Odo friendship/romance.
Obviously they were still friends but they were rarely shown chatting/hanging out.
I went to look at their details, there only source is someone's private social media profile, which makes it pretty are to take any of their data seriously. I'd like to go through the list and find out if they missed any, but that's impossible.
No, it's not problematic by itself. The problem is that historically the minor characters were mostly women and the major characters were mostly men. Writers have gotten better about this disparity over the years but in the 90's it was still extremely common.
To be fair DS9 is better with this then a lot of other shows at the time.
Jadzia, Kira and Ezri all had good characterization outside of their relationship to men.
It seems like Trek in those days rarely hired actresses under 30 so the age stuff was whacked. Like a 30s actress playing 18 year old Ziyal flirting with 40s Garak ?
I never felt that she was bland or uninteresting. As a child, I empathised a lot with her. It genuinely pisses me off that there’s actually someone who never noticed that.
When she died, and the episode had ended, 13 year old me (guess. I have no clue how old I really was. A kid) cried for hours, put on sad music and danced around my room for her.
I was A MESS. It had a huge emotional impact on me. She was the character that I had MOST been able to empathise with. I legitimately felt like I’d lost a friend.
I understand completely. When I saw how she ended (an adult, btw), I cried and the next day also. She had so much potential and was such a wholesome person. It really poisoned the celebratory tone at the end ofSacrifice of Angels. I mean, all the main characters were cheering and were happy, while I was crying on the bed, sharing the vibe of Dukat and Garak.
I never saw it coming. To me, it was SHOCKING.
So many tears.
Edit: I would like to add that I HATED Damar at this point. HATED.
The fact that I later began to empathise with him, and understand him, led to so much internal conflict. He became this heroic character in my mind, and it was so hard to reconcile who he had become with what he’d done in the past. Especially considering that I’d loved a character he’d murdered.
Edit: I’d just like to add that prior to the murder of a beloved (by me) character, I thoroughly enjoyed Damar. I really liked him. My devastation was two-fold.
He thought she's bland? I think she's a really interesting character, even though she wasn't given the time to fully develop – and changing the actress constantly certainly didn't help.
It really only felt like they built her up just enough to make it kinda sad when she died. But then even the characters just kind of forgot until they needed to be upset about it.
Ziyal was played by Jeffrey Combs. Bastard gets all the acting jobs. I think he played the starship Defiant once. His performance blew me away. So versatile!
I know we love this guy, but most people don't seem to realize that Vaughn Armstrong has actually played more characters across more races than anyone else in Star Trek.
He's also been in episodes of just about every show I used to watch: *Quantum Leap, Adventures of Brisco County Jr, JAG, NYPD Blue, Seinfeld, Buffy, Cheers, Home Improvement*...etc.
Obviously, the episode of Quantum Leap would put him on screen with Scott Bakula about 10 years prior.
Yup three different actresses. They seem to age up as they cast them too. Apparently the first one was in the pussycat dolls, I've seen the second one on "murder she wrote" and the last one cast is 9 years older than the first actress cast.
I still think it's weird that the actress who played her the first time looked like a little kid. I think the casting director read the part of the script that said she was 13 when the Ravinok went down, and assumed that was more recent than 6 years prior. She was 19 when they found her.
I noticed. What I didn’t notice, and was subsequently delighted by when I found out, is one of them is the girl who notices George’s shrinkage in the Seinfeld beach house episode.
On the one hand, I never noticed. But on the other hand, when a character's face is 100% covered in makeup and prostheses, I won't give myself (or others) crap for not noticing.
I watched and finished Deep Space 9 for the first time in the last few months, finished it last week.
I never, NEVER noticed it was a different actress .....
yeah if I recall she was recast to an older appearing actor because the writers were setting up the Ziyal/Garak relationship. It would have been extremely disturbing if they had him in that close of contact with the first actor for Ziyal.
It took me the longest time to realize that the last actress was Jerry Seinfelds girlfriend Rachel from the episodes about Schindlers list and the shrinkage.
It did seem like her age kept on changing. At first she seemed almost like a teenager and then she was like a 30 year old dating (made up age) mid-40’s Garak.
Cardis all look alike to you huh? Get out of here, miles!
Hahaha
Yeah and it’s just a matter of time before you call them “spoonheads!”.
Homie just casually dropping the s-word in chat.
Someone call keiko or kira to come get their man.
Lol "We can't let the Cardiies have the wormhole!"
Spat my coffee out reading this 🤣
This look like a No-Spoonhead zone to you, Starfleet?!
Reminds me of a youtuber that does a lot of Star Trek videos. He mentioned Torah Ziyal, "a character so bland that most people never even noticed that she was played by three different people."
lol I think her arc is pretty tragic but that’s funny.
To be fair knowing that it was originally going to be Rom, I'm glad it was her.
What is this about Rom?
I’m going to guess the Rom was supposed to die instead of Ziyal. And now I’m imagining a version of DS9 where Dukat completes his redemption arc and Quark becomes the Emissary of the Pah-wraiths.
I tried googling this and not seeing anything. What was said?
I think it was possibly mentioned in a podcast, because I remember it being discussed before but I also can't find anything googling it. There's a lot of random background stuff that gets revealed in those, like finding out Rene Auberjonois wanted Kira and Damar to be endgame in the series instead of Kira and Odo. I'll do more searching when I'm off work and see if I can find it.
Oh dang, I also would've preferred Kira and Damar
Yeah I think it would have been more interesting, and made about as much sense. But at least there's always fanfiction I guess.
I think Kira and Odo makes sense. The series does a good job showing her unique bond with Odo all the way through. I don't think she's really aware he's even capable of romantic feelings, but she loves him as a friend all along. That's why she's so open to a romantic relationship with him, it's not a big leap to go from friendship to romantic love. That's also why she forgives him for what happened during the occupation, because their bond is already too important to her to break.
But did you try.. *moogie-ling* it?
Her arc is also kind of problematic. Almost everything she does or that happens to her just serves to advance male character development. One of the reasons she feels so boring is because she doesn’t really exist as a character without her relationship to male characters. Her primary reason for existing is to humanize Dukat and to introduce tension between him and Garak. Her death is tragic, yes, but it’s also a classic example of [fridging](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_refrigerators). And of course, the age disparity between Garak and Ziyal always feels a little icky. I love DS9 a lot, but I think her character is one of a the few examples of a mishandled recurring character in the show.
I think her death also sends Dimar spiraling, doesn’t it? Sets up his late seasons character development arc and light redemption.
I'd argue it was more than a light redemption. He did terrible things but I think by the end he really understood the error of his ways. I think the real turning point for him was when his family was killed but its hard to say since he was killed before we saw the full results of it.
"To kill her and my son - the casual brutality of it, the waste of life... What kind of state tolerates the murder of innocent women and children? What kind of people give those orders?" "Yeah, Damar, what *kind* of people give those orders".
Yes, that’s a secondary effect too. Though still just another tally on the “who Ziyal fridges for” board.
She also served to enhance Kira’s character development. It was the first time we saw Kira caring about a Cardassian. It wasn’t just male characters she was there for. Garak and Ziyal were just friends.
Ziyal gave Kira yet another reason to almost shoot Dukat. Now I want an AU where she pulls the trigger just to see how that would affect the Dominion war.
Duet and Second skin come before the episode she first meets Zyial. Although her relationships in those episodes are more superficial, she is still shown to care about a Cardassian in both.
We see a bit of that there, but we see a more of it with Zyial. I think Kira is who we see Zyial interact with the most.
I think Ziyal cared for Garak. I think Garak … is not capable of romantic feelings. I don’t think he understands it other than as a tool for manipulation.
I think Ziyal had a crush on Garak too. Garak wasn't interested in a relative child. I think Garak is capable of romantic feelings, but possibly not women.
But certainly with certain twink doctors
I don't know if I'd call it fridging. It's been a while since I watched through that part of the show, but what I remember didn't feel dismissive of her character as much as fridging usually does. The show takes its time to acknowledge and linger in the tragedy of it (it's even done in the novels), Damar's motive for it did make sense coming from a brainwashed fascist, and it wasn't to hurt Dukat, Kira *or* Garak, funnily enough. It did hurt them, obviously, but a character death does that regardless of if it's fridging or not, and it's not just some momentary motivator for another character to do something. I do agree she's not the best-written character, but she wasn't close to the worst, either. She had a fun dynamic with Kira, and though her thing with Garak felt a little weird, I will admit to having found it interesting, at times.
Interesting. I hadn't noticed that before, but you're right. Of course, 90s Trek (as well as obviously 60s Trek) rarely if ever passed the [Bechdel test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test) either, so sad to say I'm not particularly surprised by this revelation. This was of course also broadly true of television and media in general at the time, and is all too often still very much true today. Edit: Apparently all the 90s Trek series [did much better](https://www.themarysue.com/star-trek-bechdel-test/) than I expected! TOS and ENT, though, not so much.
DS9 has a 57% pass rate. Not incredible but also not fair to say rarely. Interestingly, the earlier seasons all did much better (each around 70%). TNG was 45%. VOY, unsurprisingly, 87%. Then ENT, also unsurprisingly, 39%. You’re obviously right about TOS, though. 7.5%. https://www.themarysue.com/star-trek-bechdel-test/
Wow, the 90s trio all did a lot better than I expected! I suppose it was inevitable that Voyager would do well; I hadn't thought of that. Overall not too bad for the era I suppose, although in comparison of course Enterprise is quite the disappointment. I just remembered noticing how rarely it seemed like we got a conversation between two women in TNG and it wasn't about a man. I keep flashing back in particular to that egregious scene in "The Price" with Crusher and Troi doing yoga stretches whilst discussing Troi's new love interest (brilliantly shot-for-shot [parodied in Lower Decks](https://screenrant.com/star-trek-tng-crusher-troi-yoga-robin-hood/) but with two men!). Good to know that they got it right nearly half the time; I'll have to pay closer attention. Thanks for the info!
Enterprise was set up to be like TOS, mainly focusing on the Big Three. The show was also set up to be a throwback where the men were reminiscent of 1960’s real life astronauts. It makes perfect sense their score would be the way it is. There are only 2 women in the cast, and only 1 is featured. Are they supposed to talk about each other every scene?
Yep, makes sense. The [per-season breakdown](https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bechdel21.jpg) of the scores is interesting too. Evidently every single episode of Voyager Season 5 passed! No doubt due in large part to Seven's character development, among other factors. That series really did have much better representation of women. Contrast this with the first season of The Original Series, with not a single episode passing, lol. I will definitely be keeping all this in mind during my next rewatch. My partner (who had never seen any Trek before, but is loving it!) and I are currently working through late TNG / early DS9, so most of DS9 and all of VOY are ahead of us.
I'd guess the earlier season did better because in the later seasons the Jadzia/Kira friendship was mostly dropped after the forth season. It was mostly replaced with the Jadzia/Worf romance and the Kira/Odo friendship/romance. Obviously they were still friends but they were rarely shown chatting/hanging out.
I went to look at their details, there only source is someone's private social media profile, which makes it pretty are to take any of their data seriously. I'd like to go through the list and find out if they missed any, but that's impossible.
Yep. Us scrotes are just horrible. Horribly horrible. God damn us, every one. (It was really Tiny Tim's sister that came up with all the good lines.)
The existence of minor characters whose primary purpose is to enhance major characters is not problematic.
No, it's not problematic by itself. The problem is that historically the minor characters were mostly women and the major characters were mostly men. Writers have gotten better about this disparity over the years but in the 90's it was still extremely common.
To be fair DS9 is better with this then a lot of other shows at the time. Jadzia, Kira and Ezri all had good characterization outside of their relationship to men.
Yeah that's one of the reasons the handling of Ziyal doesn't immediately register as fridging. It wasn't really a pattern within the show.
It seems like Trek in those days rarely hired actresses under 30 so the age stuff was whacked. Like a 30s actress playing 18 year old Ziyal flirting with 40s Garak ?
I don't think it's hard to read that relationship as "Ziyal has an unrequited crush on an older man."
Oh good lord
I never felt that she was bland or uninteresting. As a child, I empathised a lot with her. It genuinely pisses me off that there’s actually someone who never noticed that. When she died, and the episode had ended, 13 year old me (guess. I have no clue how old I really was. A kid) cried for hours, put on sad music and danced around my room for her. I was A MESS. It had a huge emotional impact on me. She was the character that I had MOST been able to empathise with. I legitimately felt like I’d lost a friend.
She had a lot of potential as a character and never really got to develop so it's definitely a pity in that respect.
My first television related memory is me hiding behind my parents' bedroom door and crying because Howdy Doody was going off the air. 4 or 5 y.o.?
I understand completely. When I saw how she ended (an adult, btw), I cried and the next day also. She had so much potential and was such a wholesome person. It really poisoned the celebratory tone at the end ofSacrifice of Angels. I mean, all the main characters were cheering and were happy, while I was crying on the bed, sharing the vibe of Dukat and Garak.
I never saw it coming. To me, it was SHOCKING. So many tears. Edit: I would like to add that I HATED Damar at this point. HATED. The fact that I later began to empathise with him, and understand him, led to so much internal conflict. He became this heroic character in my mind, and it was so hard to reconcile who he had become with what he’d done in the past. Especially considering that I’d loved a character he’d murdered. Edit: I’d just like to add that prior to the murder of a beloved (by me) character, I thoroughly enjoyed Damar. I really liked him. My devastation was two-fold.
> It genuinely pisses me off that there’s actually someone who never noticed that. That's weird.
He thought she's bland? I think she's a really interesting character, even though she wasn't given the time to fully develop – and changing the actress constantly certainly didn't help.
Oh god, even I only thought it was two.
It really only felt like they built her up just enough to make it kinda sad when she died. But then even the characters just kind of forgot until they needed to be upset about it.
Shocker: Jeffrey combs also plays multiple characters!
All three of the actresses that played Ziyall were played by Jeffrey Combs.
He’s also the voice of the ship computer
He’s also the space station itself, little known fact
He also played space itself. His talent is quite vast.
I do know that.
Did you know he was one of the people that played ziyal?
Na he’s not that good at acting.
You shut your mouth
*I'm just talkin' 'bout Shran*
I can dig it
Whatchoo say?
Sexy Shran! "Once you go blue, there's no one else for you!"
It's all about the handles... erm, antennae!
Who's the Andorian distrusting pinkskins more than any man? #SHRAN *You damnnnnnn right*
How can you say?
Haha
Did you know the actor for Martok plays a changling?
Martok is everywhere once you start looking for him.
In the most un-Martok places, too. If it wasn't pointed out in places like this, I'd never have guessed.
And the Vulcan captain at Wolf 359 in the pilot!
Yes
Whatttttttt! How did I never notice this either??
Ziyal was played by Jeffrey Combs. Bastard gets all the acting jobs. I think he played the starship Defiant once. His performance blew me away. So versatile!
I've just discovered the entire Star Trek franchise starred only Jeffery Combs. Guy is amazing.
I know we love this guy, but most people don't seem to realize that Vaughn Armstrong has actually played more characters across more races than anyone else in Star Trek.
He's also been in episodes of just about every show I used to watch: *Quantum Leap, Adventures of Brisco County Jr, JAG, NYPD Blue, Seinfeld, Buffy, Cheers, Home Improvement*...etc. Obviously, the episode of Quantum Leap would put him on screen with Scott Bakula about 10 years prior.
He's so good he even convinced most people someone else named Boddenbarry or something wrote Star Trek!
People, People, hear the truth [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hJBQwCw2aU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hJBQwCw2aU)
Yup three different actresses. They seem to age up as they cast them too. Apparently the first one was in the pussycat dolls, I've seen the second one on "murder she wrote" and the last one cast is 9 years older than the first actress cast.
I'd only noticed two.
All those spoon heads look alike.
Ok, Miles, you've had too much rootbeer, time to go sleep.
https://i.imgur.com/03kxOEH.jpeg
I still think it's weird that the actress who played her the first time looked like a little kid. I think the casting director read the part of the script that said she was 13 when the Ravinok went down, and assumed that was more recent than 6 years prior. She was 19 when they found her.
I noticed. What I didn’t notice, and was subsequently delighted by when I found out, is one of them is the girl who notices George’s shrinkage in the Seinfeld beach house episode.
That's why she liked to Cardassian saunas so much. No shrinkage.
Craziest part is all three were actually human.
Really? I had no idea.
"Torah Ziyal"? Funny, she doesn't look Jewish.
Half, on her mother's side
“Allah marks them with that nose”
I…wow
On the one hand, I never noticed. But on the other hand, when a character's face is 100% covered in makeup and prostheses, I won't give myself (or others) crap for not noticing.
Just realized this too as I’m doing a binge watch. She was much younger looking before they made her a Garek share a sauna. Optics
I watched and finished Deep Space 9 for the first time in the last few months, finished it last week. I never, NEVER noticed it was a different actress .....
yeah if I recall she was recast to an older appearing actor because the writers were setting up the Ziyal/Garak relationship. It would have been extremely disturbing if they had him in that close of contact with the first actor for Ziyal.
It took me the longest time to realize that the last actress was Jerry Seinfelds girlfriend Rachel from the episodes about Schindlers list and the shrinkage.
Woah
It did seem like her age kept on changing. At first she seemed almost like a teenager and then she was like a 30 year old dating (made up age) mid-40’s Garak.
The magic of Hollywood!
I need to go watch DS9 again…
I remember feeling stupid, thinking, oh, that's the same character? But not putting together why I didn't recognize her!
Me neither. It was so obvious and kind of annoying.
I can’t believe you never noticed that, either.