Nitpicking Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Tora Ziyal

The strange case of Tora Ziyal. We here at the Guild have covered instances of different individuals from different races having similar looks. We’ve looked at instances of twin sisters. And then we have the strange case of Dukat’s illegitimate daughter, Tora Ziyal. This poor girl has suffered some radical shifting of her facial features in the space of two years. Has she been infected with the Klingon Augment virus from over 200 years ago? Does the mixing of Cardassian and Bajoran DNA cause bone structure to be malleable? Does she have some Changeling DNA hidden in her genetic makeup?

Yes, we know in reality that Tora is played by three different actresses. Cyia Batten (in “Indiscretion” and “Return to Grace”), Tracy Middendorf (in “For the Cause”) and finally by Melanie Smith (in the character’s final six appearance in the fifth and sixth seasons). We also know that Executive Producer Ira Steven Behr was inspired by the continued recasting Felix Leiter in the James Bond films but that is reality, we need to explain the “reel-ity”.

The recasting of Tora Ziyal was partly inspired by Ira Steven Behr having seen various actors play Felix Leiter in the official series of James Bond movies. “It changed my life!” he exclaimed. “From then on, I always wanted to have the opportunity to just play with the audience’s minds. Because it really doesn’t matter on a certain level. And so, for various reasons, we changed the part once, and then we had to change the part again.” Smiling, Behr continued, “[In an ideal world,] I would have changed the role of Ziyal every single time – just to keep reminding the audience that this is all a construct.” – from Memory Alpha

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