Top 20 Episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine #11: The Visitor

Our episode opens in the future with an elderly Jake Sisko (now played by Tony Todd) who has since become an accomplished novelist receiving a visit from an admiring fan. Jake is welcoming to the young lady and decides that the time has finally come to tell the story of how Ben Sisko died.

Back in the present, Jake is accompanying his father on an expedition to witness a rare cosmic event, but Jake is too absorbed in his writing to notice. Sisko makes a point to remind Jake that if he doesn’t stop to look around once and a while, so much of life will pass him by. However, the ship’s warp core ruptures and when Sisko goes to save as many people as he can, an energy discharge seemingly vaporizes the captain right before his son’s very eyes.

After his father’s funeral, Jake does his best to move on with his life, but it’s clear that the loss of his father has taken a toll on him that is not easily recovered from, especially when ghostly images of his father that seem too real to be dismissed as dreams begin appearing to him. It turns out that Sisko never actually died, but was instead sent forward in time at random intervals. At least, that’s the best I can figure it, there’s a lot of techno babble involved that I don’t care to interpret. The point is, Sisko is alive, though there seems to be no way to prevent his movement through time. Sisko once again reiterates his point from earlier, to take the time to enjoy life. Sisko vanishes once again, and though Jake is now heartbroken than ever, he honors his father’s wishes.

Years later, Jake is all grown up, has become an award winning novelist, and has settled down back on Earth with his Bajoran wife. Everything in life seems happy for Jake, until Sisko once again returns to remind him of what he’s lost. Sisko is proud of his son, but it’s clear that Jake cannot accept the fact that his father is alive but out of his reach. After Sisko vanishes again, Jake has now set aside everything in the pursuit of getting his father back, sacrificing his career and his family in the process. He finally finds a way that may get Sisko back, and as the two talk, his father is dismaye that his son, now older than he is, has thrown his life away like this. And to make matters worse, the plan fails and Jake is once again cut off from his father and wracked with regret. Now, back where the story began, the elderly Jake is now a broken man who laments his wasted life and the lack of his father’s guidance.

The Visitor is a great character piece and does much to show how one person’s influence can make such an impact in our lives. Jake was truly lost without his father, and as the years went on, his pain never went away. Much of this episodes success can be attributed to the incredible acting of Tony Todd, who of course, played Kurn in our last entry. It’s usually a gamble to let the guest star carry the episode, but with Todd at the helm, they were definitely in safe hands. We’ve finally reached the half way point, so next time, we take a break from DS9 and head over to Voyager as a cartoonishly evil holodeck character plots to take over the world.