Trill ideas

[Michael]

It’s been years since I last saw “Equilibrium”, but wasn’t the reason for the conspiracy about potential hosts having to undergo training and not everybody being suited for joining the fact that there simply aren’t enough symbionts for all Trill to be joined? So the reason for that conspiracy isn’t merely that they want to create some elite upper class of joined Trill (although that certainly seems to be the effect), but that they want to protect the symbionts from becoming luxury items everyone is fighting over. I’m not saying the conspiracy is a good thing, but one could certainly see the reason for why they made it that way.

By the way, I often thought it would have been interesting to learn more about unjoined Trill and what their perspective on joined Trill is. Understandably whenever they introduced a Trill character on Trek it was one of the joined variety.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

You are right, it was that there was nit enough symbionts. Or so that doctor claimed. At this point, I don't trust her. And then then, it's the same thing like Valeris justyfing her actions in Undiscovered Country, or Sakonna with Maquis, or similar. Just because something is a rational thing to do, doesnl;t mwan it is good.


Bsides, from whatwe know of the choosing of the candidates, it looks like there is certain view of the symbionts as "prizes". Not for money ,sure (unless bribery is involved), but for... other things.

 

[Michael]

Agreed, the process seems super shady. What would probably make a little more sense is some sort of lottery where every Trill who desires to be joined can take part.

Regarding the candidate process: From what little we know it at least doesn’t seem totally arbitrary or without any merit. In my mind it’s basically some very involved school where over the course of years you not only learn and specialize in some field, but also get to know the joined Trill whose symbionts you might one day inherit. There was also that one Trill candidate that visited Jadzia on the station; he seemed rather young and Jadzia was pretty young herself, so it seems like you basically form some sort of relationship with the host and its symbiont that may last decades before you’re actually joined yourself.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

I don't say there are no merit. What I am curious about is if they took the candiates ideological aligment under cinsideration when deciding.

 

[Lady Mondegreen]

Have we really seen the Trill at all? Actually we always see people with symbionts. And these are parasitic lifeforms that go "Hey it'd be great if you put me in you. It's a great deal. Plus.. oh yeah.. you can't remove me ever."

I mean removing them kills the host, it's not a good deal.

The only people that can say it are good are those already 'infected'.

And as to the question above as to who was the first person to have the worm in them... well I imagine that would be involuntary/an accident. Like a Trill fell unconscious near the symbiont pool. Then they come out and go "Guys, I have a great idea!"

We definitely see unjoined Trill -- first one that popped into my head is Ensign Barnes in LD but outside of animated Trek we spend an episode with Ezri's family on Trill, all of whom are unjoined, in S7 of DS9.

 

[AntonyF]

We've seen her family in passing in one episode. We also saw a bit in Equilibrium too.

But I don't overly count that as a proper look at the Trill race.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

It is a schame. They really should have focused more on the Trill, rather than making jadzia so Klingon - focused character. Ezri helped a bit, but it was too late and they had too many other things to take care of in Season 7.

 

[FredH]

Didn’t they establish that there was some telepathic component in play? What with the Guardians being able to somehow converse with the unjoined symbionts swimming in those underground pools. So I don’t think some curious Trill just randomly decided one day to cut their guts open and stick one of those slugs inside. My guess would be that it was something that came about through talking to them via some form of telepathy. Maybe some latent form of joining is even possible without the symbiont being inserted into a host. So that’s how they found out that symbiosis could be a thing.

But then again, there’s so many things in our real world where you just gotta wonder how and why humans ever came up with it in the first. I always think that when I look at mold cheese, for example. Who was the first human who just had to find out how that moldy piece of old milk would taste.

Despite appearances, maybe the humanoids and the slugs were closely biologically related from the start — say (I’m making this up), the humanoids evolved first, then started developing a primitive internal organ that evolved into a sort of tumor-with-neural-system, then separating those out (of medical necessity) led to the proto-slugs evolving separately even as the humanoid population was “cured” of developing them, the slugs being maintained in “captivity” when recognized as sentient, then finally led to a situation where, realizing the advantages, the now-separate humanoid and slug populations set up an arrangement to “recombine” in select individuals. And modern Trill society developed out of that.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

Good theory. "Making things" up here is all right, at least for me. If you state you are doing so.

 

[Kor]

Regarding the Trill concept of "reassociation," this was the actual dialog from Rejoined:

BASHIR: Well, it's more of a taboo, really. Having a relationship with a lover from a past life is called reassociation, and the Trill feel very strongly that it's unnatural.
KIRA: Unnatural? How can it be unnatural for a married couple to resume their marriage?
BASHIR: Well, the whole point of joining is for the symbiont to accumulate experiences from the span of many lifetimes. In order to move on from host to host, the symbiont has to learn to let go of the past, let go of parents, siblings, children, even spouses.
KIRA: I don't understand how two people who've fallen in love, and made a life together, can be forced to just walk away from each other because of a taboo. There must be some Trill who have reassociated with people from their past lives.
BASHIR: I asked Dax the same question, and it seems there have been a few.
KIRA: And what happened?
BASHIR: They were exiled from the Trill homeworld.
KIRA: That means the symbionts would never be joined to a new host.
BASHIR: Exactly. So when the hosts die, the symbionts die with them. So you see, even if Dax does harbour feelings for Lenara, she can't take that risk. For a joined Trill, nothing is more important than to protect the life of the symbiont. Nothing.

In Penumbra, Ezri treated it as more of an "I won't tell if you don't" thing, considering the heat of the moment, and all that:

WORF: You do not regret what happened last night, do you?
EZRI: Why do you say that?
WORF: Jadzia explained to me that joined Trill are not supposed to become involved with anyone they were intimate with in a previous life.
EZRI: I bet you've broken a few Klingon rules in your time.

Kor

 

[Turtletrekker]

It was never established as to whether or not Kell Perim was joined, but I do recall that non-canon materials portrayed her as non-joined.

Perim

Ensign Perim was a Trill Starfleet officer, assigned to the USS Enterprise-E in 2375. In that year, she manned the operations station during Commander Riker's attempt to take the Enterprise out of the area of space known as "the Briar Patch," in order to inform the Federation Council of the...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Ohk (from PIC) probably was joined, tho. She is a senior officer, after all. And Trill symbionts tend to have very short names.

@Lady Mondegreen, remember when Barnes spoke of her sister who "wouldn't shut up" about being joined? In my headcanon, that's Ohk.

Oh and also in my headcanon, the reason Barnes has a human name is because she married a human crewmember and took his name. Guess I'm way too old-school for my own good.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

Perrim was a nice charatcer. and I aLSO THINK SHE'S NOT JOINED. sHE COULD BE A good charatcer to work with in some stories.

 

[Lady Mondegreen]

Ohk (from PIC) probably was joined, tho. She is a senior officer, after all. And Trill symbionts tend to have very short names.

@Lady Mondegreen, remember when Barnes spoke of her sister who "wouldn't shut up" about being joined? In my headcanon, that's Ohk.

Oh and also in my headcanon, the reason Barnes has a human name is because she married a human crewmember and took his name. Guess I'm way too old-school for my own good.

It strikes me as pretty old-fashioned but it does comport with what we tend to see of married couples in the ST future (like Keiko taking O'Brien's last name). I guess we don't have any particular evidence that Captain Freeman took her husband's last name rather than the other way around...

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What if the symbiont used to be a parasite the Trill nearly eradicated, before discovering they were sentient? Personality changes and strange foreign deja vu memories with no apparent cause on the part of those so inflicted were written off as paranormal, coincidence, witchcraft, mental illness etc (infection is similar to amoeba getting into people's brains via the nose, when people would swim in the caves, which would become the stuff of urban legends - "he went in there and when he came out, he was never the same again"), before the connection was made between the parasites and their effects. When they made contact with the symbionts and discovered what they'd almost done, they came to a mutual agreement to atone for their unknowing slaughter of sentients and preserve what they could of the endangered species.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I prefer the explanation propounded in the novels, like Unjoined and its ilk.

Spoiler

The symbionts were purely water-dwelling creatures, but had long desired what it would be like to experience life on the land. So they gently and telepathically enticed the first hosts to approach the water's edge so that they could be joined, peacefully Link.

 

[kkt]

Have we really seen the Trill at all? Actually we always see people with symbionts. And these are parasitic lifeforms that go "Hey it'd be great if you put me in you. It's a great deal. Plus.. oh yeah.. you can't remove me ever."

I mean removing them kills the host, it's not a good deal.

The only people that can say it are good are those already 'infected'.

And as to the question above as to who was the first person to have the worm in them... well I imagine that would be involuntary/an accident. Like a Trill fell unconscious near the symbiont pool. Then they come out and go "Guys, I have a great idea!"

Ezri's family in "Prodigal Daughter" were apparently unjoined. At leat they seemed to have no idea how it felt for the host or sympathy for her confusion.

And Dax was kidnapped by Verad, and we saw him both before he was joined and after Dax was removed.

I expect the host-symbiont relationship evolved gradually, from a weak but useful telepathic link when the symbiont was nearby, to a stronger link when they were touching, to evolution of a pouch like marsupials have, to fully internal with a really great telepathic connection including transmitting memories.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

I left a long reply on the other thread. I'd copy and paste it here, but I'm unsure if that's allowed. So I'll focus on the literature and mythology aspect.

Apparently there is, or was, a "Star Trek Online" fan project with multiple contributors, which gives us Gaunt, a mythical Symbiont that had 40 hosts; which is fantastical in-universe, where normal Symbionts can only have about 12 hosts.

With that in mind, I imagine there could also be myths about a Host managing to join to multiple Symbionts at once, which Trill doctors would likely tell you is either impossible or really not recommended.

Maybe there's a culture that joins Symbionts to animals (possible in the novel-verse), then joins then to a humanoid, so they now have memories of fish, birds and so-forth.

There must also be plenty of conflicting legends about where the Symbionts came from. Some religions might say they're divine beings that created the world. Others, that the Symbionts are a gift from a divine being.

There's one other idea that will sound troll-ish. But it's inspired by a real-life mythology. On Earth, Ancient Sumarians believed that the god Enki....I'm just gonna say this: Enki fapped the world into existence. The world came out of a god's divine jizz. That's the Sumerian creation myth.

With that in mind, there may be a Trill religion that believes this: the God of Memory was stood up by his lover, the Goddess of whatever, and in his loneliness, he whacked off over the planet from the heavens, raining his divine memory sperm--the Symbionts. They seek companionship, powered by their creator's loneliness. Imagine a Trill officer havimg to explain that one to his human and Vulcan superiors, before some serious diplomatic meeting with this branch of Trill.

I'll post more ideas as I think of them.

 

[BohandiAnsoid]

I read your other post too. Between all these Trill things and the Alternate timelines, you seem to have a lot of good ideas.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

I read your other post too. Between all these Trill things and the Alternate timelines, you seem to have a lot of good ideas.

Thanks! I really should get back into writing fanfiction.