Even before Star Trek came back in a big way in the streaming era, Star Trek Online had been a haven for seeing old favorites from the TV shows continue their journeys boldly going. That’s not changed even since streaming has become a way to bring these characters back—and STO is still sometimes beating TV to the pip to bring back a few heroes.
Today developer Cryptic Studios confirmed that the upcoming 31st season of the free-to-play MMORPG, titled “Both Worlds,” will see Nicole de Boer reprise her role as Ezri Dax for the first time since the conclusion of Deep Space Nine. Introduced in the final season of the series as a replacement for Terry Farrell’s Jadzia Dax—who was controversially killed off in the season six finale “Tears of the Prophets”—Ezri was a Starfleet counselor who became the surprise new host for the Dax symbiont, the sluglike being that Trills join with to become hosts to all the symbiont’s memories and experiences of prior lives, after Jadzia’s death.
In the time since the events of Deep Space Nine—just as she did in the now non-canonical Star Trek novel series—in STO Ezri has risen to the rank of Captain, and will help players alongside Voyager’s Garrett Wang as Captain Harry Kim as they battle the threat of the Borg of the Mirror Universe before the Collective can infiltrate other realities and timelines. As well as the new story content, the update will let players team up for a new Task Force Operation that sees them go back to one of the deadliest battles in pre-Dominion War Federation history, the Battle of Wolf 359 as shown in “The Best of Both Worlds”, to master their anti-Borg tactics ready for the battle in the present.
Hopefully we’ll get to see a lot more of what Ezri is like in Star Trek Online’s contemporary, 25th-century timeline than we ever were afforded in the last season of Deep Space Nine, where here introduction as an entirely new character often had to compete with trying to wrap up character arcs for the rest of the crew as the show came to an end. We got plenty in fits and starts in the old Trek novels, but it’d be nice to see someone let Ezri enter the same kind of spotlight that Jadzia had before her. And who knows, maybe we can see Ezri make returns elsewhere in the future?
Star Trek Online: Both Worlds will release for PC players on January 23, before arriving on Playstation and Xbox consoles March 12.