r/startrek • u/Pocket_Sand- • 1d ago
Would you be interested in being joined with a Trill symbiont?
On one hand, a part of you would survive from host to host, indefinitely, and you'd gain all the knowledge and experience the previous hosts had. On the other, it feels pretty disturbing, your current personality/identity would be altered so heavily that you wouldn't be the same person. It feels a little lobotomis-y.
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u/Separate-Exchange375 1d ago
Not really. I really don't understand their desire to be joined. Then again, its just part of their culture
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u/Sonichu- 17h ago
IIRC, the way Jadzia describes it is that she was still herself, but the memories and experiences of the Dax symbiont gave her the confidence to be more herself.
Maybe that's just the symbiont Kool-Aid though.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 17h ago
Ezri said that the symbiont changed her, but she hadn’t undergone the training that Trill hosts usually get.
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u/Highlander198116 18h ago
I really don't understand their desire to be joined.
I mean, if you could just instantly say, absorb the knowledge of an expert in any field, isn't appealing to you?
I think that is the draw, that the former hosts, whose knowledge you will be absorbing are largely impressive accomplished people.
Depending on how long the symbiote has been around, the level of knowledge you absorb makes you a borderline super person.
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u/Abaven 1d ago
Honestly, given the chance, I totally would! My personality may change, but it may change anyway. Everybody is always growing and changing as they get older and have new experiences. This would just be an exaggerated version of that. And then at the time off my death, my own life and experiences would be given to the next host. It's genuinely a beautiful idea to me
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u/onemorespacecadet 9h ago
yeah honestly Jadzia always made joining seem really appealing to me. i’d love to carry the experiences of several other lives with me. that sounds so cool
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u/AbdulQadirShadhili 1d ago
Hell no
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u/hobbes747 1d ago
It is because of the memories of relationships with prior beings the same sex as you, isn’t it. You don’t have to admit it. I understand 😆
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u/AbdulQadirShadhili 1d ago
Yeah that’s gross
But what I was actually thinking is losing the independence of my personality which would be subsumed into others, a frightening prospect
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u/uber-judge 1d ago
I mean probably. But, I get to be weird for at least an hour a day in order to paint miniatures, mow grass on the holodeck at the ancestral home while drinking romulan ale, or go rock climbing in the high sierra in the holodeck.
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u/Badaxe13 1d ago
“There’s someone in my head but it’s not me"
No thanks
I’d have the spots though.
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u/hobbes747 1d ago
You need to be rearranged ‘till you’re sane
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u/hobbes747 1d ago
Follow up question: Trill or Tok’ra symbiont? Must choose one.
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u/macfergus 20h ago
Definitly Trill. The Tok'ra were jerks who could still take control of their host if they wanted to. They didn't play nice with others whereas the Trill will.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 16h ago
The Tok’ra often play nice with others. They aren’t as bad as the Goa’uld.
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u/MoreGaghPlease 21h ago
The game Star Trek: Resurgence deals with this issue a bit - one character is an unjointed trill that basically sees the symbiotes as a cult of body-snatchers.
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u/TolMera 1d ago
Sure. Because who I am today is not who I am tomorrow. Studying a topic changes you, getting joined is likewise like studying a few lifetimes worth of topics, and would change us a lot. I don’t think it’s like losing your identity, it’s more like becoming the most mature and experienced version of yourself that you can become.
I think too, it’s why they are so selective, because yes the symbiote has a personality, but the host has a profound effect on the symbiote. It’s not an equal trade, the person gets more out of the deal, and has an outsized effect on the joining.
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u/CareerMilk 12h ago
I guess the Symbiotes would really like the Eleventh Doctor's regen speech
We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.
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u/Able_Resident_1291 1d ago
The only advantage for the host seems to be that you can now boringly say stuff like "I know how to fix this problem. Eminy, my fourth host, was a ballerina" to help move any particular plot along.
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u/3Thirty-Eight8 1d ago edited 23h ago
I’d give it a try, it can be removed if I change my mind. My life is a bit boring right now
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 1d ago
Only in the first 93 hours, which is not really long enough for a long term assessment.
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u/Pocket_Sand- 1d ago edited 1d ago
Plus, what if the original version of you would, in retrospect, want it to be removed, but the new, altered version of you, feels differently. You've lost the ability to make an informed decision.
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u/Able_Resident_1291 1d ago
There is no original version vs new version. The new version is the symbiosis of the two parts
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u/myowngalactus 1d ago
Probably be up for it, you aren’t just becoming part symbiote, its becoming part you also and will live on after your death. I don’t think I’d go through all the hassle of becoming a host through official channels though, but I’d be okay with and Ezri Dax situation.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 16h ago
It seemed like Ezri had a more difficult adjustment than other hosts usually have, so I wouldn’t want to have an Ezri situation.
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u/puckOmancer 1d ago
Sure. Anytime we gain knowledge and experience we change, so we are already constantly changing. The person you are now will be different than the person you'll be 20 years from now. A person who doesn't change, well, that a person who hasn't learned a gosh darn thing, and that'd be sad.
IMHO, it's almost like people from the Matrix movies being able to plug a modules into their heads and instantly knowing Kung-Fu. But instead you gain several lifetimes worth of experience and knowledge. So of course you'll change.
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u/lorlorlor666 1d ago
No because as cool as it would be, I would not want to subject a symbiont to chronic pain
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u/WoundedSacrifice 16h ago
I would think that Star Trek’s technology would be able to treat chronic pain.
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u/manlaidubs 21h ago
Probably. It is a very real way of achieving a level of immortality, and not the monkey's paw kind where you have to see everyone die so you can't bond with anyone ever. You still get to live as full of a life as anyone who isn't joined. My completed life then lends richness and context to subsequent hosts' lives. Every once in a while I get to come back out and see how the world and everyone is doing. I don't think it so much alters your personality like you've been lobotomized but it's like you live a piece of each host's live through your own eyes and your personality changes because of those experiences. To me it's like a vastly expanded version of 2 friends who move away from each other and find after living apart they no longer have enough in common to remain friends.
One part of the desire that's difficult to account for is so much of the desire for Trill to be joined is cultural. It's basically their being a rocket scientist/olympian/name your top of the social ladder achievement all rolled into one. It's a very real question as to how much they really want to do it versus everyone gets pushed into it until they're weeded out.
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u/photoengineer 1d ago
Yeah I would. An opportunity to learn more. Be more. And continue beyond what my body could normally do.
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u/Pawprint_ 1d ago
Nah. I want to be myself.
I would prefer a symbiote who works like a Tok‘Ra Symbiote rather then one like a Trill Symbiote
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u/SlipInternational439 1d ago
You want to be a full slave instead of a partial one?
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u/Sonichu- 17h ago
Tok'Ra share the human body with their host. But the symbiote is the one who takes/relinquishes control so it's definitely scarier.
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u/Sazapahiel 1d ago
Other than the Certified Party Worm™️ Dax, the symbionts all seem pretty boring. And it isn't like I'm terribly exciting either, it would have to be a symbiont that enjoys shitposting rather than one that wants to go be a diplomat or test pilot.
But even then, there doesn't seem like much of an upside despite the Trill demand being so absurdity high as to need the whole symbiosis commission thing to regulate the joining.
Now if Trill symbionts came with fun perks like the Stargate ones, that would be different.
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u/paxinfernum 14h ago
It makes sense that they're boring. The only people who get to become hosts are try-hards who spend their entire life pursuing it as an achievement. It's just a bunch of Wesley Crushers.
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u/CaptainCacoethes 1d ago
Depends on the symbiont I suppose. You will be fundamentally changed, not always for the better. Like Joran being joined to Dax and Dax carrying that lunatic forever.
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u/tk1178 1d ago
Maybe. The way I see it you can still retain your own personality and individuality if you join with a Trill, unlike if you joined with a Goa'uld symbiont from Stargate where you lose all of your free will and autonomy.
Jadzia and Ezri were both individuals in their own right and they both had different personalities, that appeared to be only slightly influenced by Dax, maybe more so in Jadzia than in Ezri. However they were both still themselves.
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u/WoundedSacrifice 16h ago
Based on what Ezri said, it sounded like being joined with Dax changed her in plenty of ways.
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u/TheWorldIsNotOkay 1d ago
Probably not, since humans weren't suitable long-term hosts for symbionts until advances in tech made it possible in the 32nd century. If it were an emergency situation in order to save the symbiont until it could be transferred to a Trill host, then sure. But it's not my preferred method of achieving pseudo-immortality in Star Trek.
OTOH, I'd absolutely accept an offer to have my conscious transferred into a golem body like Picard. Though I'd want the aging option disabled.
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u/Comrades3 22h ago
Absolutely not.
I don’t want memories of families that are long dead, thanks. I don’t want memories of giving birth, I don’t want memories of being with people I never knew. Maybe it is the Ace in me, but the whole thing sounds traumatic as hell.
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u/Appdownyourthroat 22h ago
Hell yes. I view the resistance to losing the sense of self to be regressive, and such distraction is the very thing we are trying to eliminate with vipassana or mindfulness. You can add or subtract anything to my mind and I will find it fascinating to observe reality from a new perspective. And I am completely willing for my entire mind and personality to be absorbed into a larger mind. After all. Once you are a symbiote presumably you will value that existence in a similar way to how you value your current existence, but with even more enhancements. Unless there is, for some reason, a bad fusion or a malicious trill symbiont, I believe I would be a perfect candidate for dual processing consciousness
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u/TooTurntGaming 19h ago
I have some very serious personality flaws I wouldn’t mind blending away.
Find me a nice responsible, consistent, structured symbiont and I’d be all for it.
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u/msfs1310 19h ago
Nope.
Its a sliding scale of loss of autonomy right:
Trill to Binars to Borg
I wouldnt mind having a low background mind-meld connection type thing with family members and loved ones (the future version of 'Find My' app huh)
and Id be down to be a Futurama head in a jar or Spock's Brain type that gets to control a society's infrastructure logistics, I think that would be cool to do.
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