ENFP: Ezri Dax, “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”

ENFP – the Champion, the Energizer, the Discoverer

Jadzia took a couple seasons to settle into her personality, as she had been newly joined to the Dax symbiont. Ezri never wanted to be a host, so when the symbiont passed to her after Jadzia’s death, she had to adjust on the fly. My typing is based on the one year we have with her, but I feel like even through the mess of her emergency joining with an ancient creature, the real Ezri shines through.

Dominant Function: (Ne) Extraverted Intuition, “The Hiking Trails”

Ezri works as a counselor, and her approach is very different from Trek’s most famous counselor. While Troi used Fe to empathize and draw people out, Ezri uses Ne to speak conceptually about psychological topics and help her patients make useful cognitive connections. She diagnoses the root of Garak’s claustrophobia by talking it out with him and hitting on a sudden insight that ties it all together. She solves the murder mystery at her family’s home in a similar manner.

When she’s treating Nog for his PTSD, she gives him lots of space, allowing him to live in his holosuite fantasy for a while if that’s what he needs. She extrapolates from small pieces of evidence the psychological profile of a serial killer, concluding that it’s an embittered Vulcan. Ezri also uses her dreams as a way to interpret how she’s really feeling about Julian, walking herself through the imagery to discern what it means in relation to her waking life.

It’s this approach to her life and work that feels very much core to Ezri, outside of any influence the Dax symbiont and her previous hosts have on her, so I feel it’s safe to say this cements her as an Ne-dom both before and after joining.

DS9 MBTI: Ezri Dax, an Introduction

DS9 had a gift for acknowledging its problems and working them into the story. The station got a starship. The captain got a makeover. The cranky Klingon came aboard to boost ratings, but was worked effectively into the cast of misfits.

And when a character had to be written out and replaced in the last year of the show, the new girl in town came in with as much confusion and uncertainty as you’d expect from anyone in that situation.

I admit to experiencing unhealthy youthful nerd-rage when Terry Farrell left DS9 abruptly, just one year before the finish line. I wanted to see my favorite show make it to the end with all its main characters intact, and on a character-dependent show like DS9, that seemed even more important than most. How do you go on with one of the most spirited, vital female characters ever created for Star Trek missing from your cast?