DS9 Actress You Forgot Played Jerry’s Girlfriend On Seinfeld

The fictional Jerry Seinfeld (played by his namesake, the real Jerry Seinfeld) has never been particularly lucky in love. Sure, he dated plenty of women throughout the show’s nine seasons, but he didn’t exactly have long-lasting, meaningful relationships with any of them. His closest female relationship is with his ex-girlfriend and ever-present friend Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which is kind of refreshingly open-minded for a guy like Jerry, but that means there just weren’t very many long-term girlfriend guest roles on “Seinfeld.” In fact, Seinfeld’s longest onscreen romance lasted for just four episodes, and it was with Rachel (Melanie Smith), who made out with him during a screening of “Schindler’s List” and absolutely horrified Seinfeld’s nearby nemesis, Newman (Wayne Knight). While she’s not the most memorable of Seinfeld’s girlfriends because she’s at least somewhat normal, Smith gives a good performance and manages to hold her own alongside some of TV’s funniest comedians of the ’90s. 

Maybe it was her time playing a character who dealt with the insane narcissism of the “Seinfeld” gang that helped her with her next big role because she was going to play the daughter of a megalomaniacal wannabe dictator from the deep reaches of outer space. Just three years after Rachel said goodbye to Jerry on “Seinfeld,” Smith was back on our screens in a very different role: as Tora Ziyal, the half-Bajoran daughter of Cardassian war leader Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” was a little more willing to get into complicated, morally sticky topics than its franchise brethren, and Ziyal was a great example of a challenging character for whom existence held no easy answers. Ziyal was half-Cardassian and half-Bajoran, the result of an affair between the married Cardassian Gul Dukat and a Bajoran woman who somehow fell in love with her colonizer, Tora Naprem. Dukat sent them away to live away from Cardassians or Bajorans, unable to kill them but knowing their existence was a liability. Eventually, father and daughter are reunited, and Ziyal becomes close friends with Bajoran freedom fighter Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), though it was not an easy relationship for anyone involved. Ziyal would also befriend the Cardassian tailor/spy Garak, played by Andrew Robinson, the only other Cardassian regularly aboard Deep Space Nine.

The Cardassian occupation of Bajor has plenty of real-world corollaries, and it serves as the backdrop for some of the series’ darkest episodes, including one inspired by an Agatha Christie novel that examines the corruption of morals it can take to survive in wartime that pits Kira against a Cardassian assassin. Ziyal is one of the only good things to come of the occupation, but she is unfortunately killed when she helps her friends escape during a Cardassian takeover of the space station, leading to her father’s eventual total mental collapse. She’s a truly tragic figure in every way, but thankfully Smith injects a great deal of humanity into the half-Cardassian, half-Bajoran with a heart of gold during her time as the character. (Younger versions of Ziyal were played by Cyia Batten and Tracy Middendorf.)

Smith’s Rachel’s claim to fame came when she infamously caught George in the buff in a scene that introduced many of us to the word “shrinkage,” a far cry from Ziyal’s role as the catalyst to her father eventually starting a doomsday cult, but she’s not the only “Seinfeld” guest actor to also have a spot on “Deep Space Nine.” Phil Morris,who played Jerry’s neighbor Kramer’s (Michael Richardson) lawyer Jackie Chiles, played several roles on “Deep Space Nine,” including spots as a Klingon and a Jem’Hadar, which is stinking fun. Brian George, who played put-upon cafe owner Babu Bhatt on “Seinfeld” also played Dr. Julian Bashir’s (Alexander Siddig) father on “Deep Space Nine.” There are actually dozens of crossovers, which is kind of surprising given the fact that one of the most important cast members on “Deep Space Nine” absolutely hated his time on the sitcom “show about nothing.” 

At Florida SuperCon in 2017, Shimerman was asked about his time in a guest role as Kramer’s caddy in a season 7 episode of “Seinfeld,” to which he said that he “hated them” because “they were non-communicative, ugly, non-responsive, what’s the word? Insular.” It’s not hard to imagine some of the cast becoming a little more like their self-centered characters and becoming a bit insular after seven seasons together, but it’s still a bummer to hear that Shimerman had such a rough time. Thankfully, he had a much better time on “Deep Space Nine,” because Quark is one of the best characters in the entire “Star Trek” franchise. No Tarkalean tea for you! Solana Token Creator