The Visitor

[Qonundrum]

Honestly I think the Visitor is crap. Yeah there's something nice about Jake and Sisco's relationship buried under all that crap, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a big old heap of stinking, steaming crap o top of it.

First of all I hate stories about writers (and plays about playwrights or the maki g of plays and such) it just seems too navel gazing and self-indulgent to me.
Second of all...the clichés...good god the clichés; brilliant but reclusive and aging, naturally male writer(tm) who hasn't written in years even though the whole galaxy is begging him for new material on their knees even if it was just his laundry list(tm) is visited by a plucky "passionate", naturally female aspiring author (tm) who is naturally enamoured with him (tm, that's also why the author has to be male and the plucky fangirl female so that the story can indulge in self-congratulory, hetero-normative wishfulfillment) and opens up to her because he finds her hot and rediscovers the passion he thought was lost (tm)
Screw this episode.

Hmmm, could her enamoring of him (of course, "May to December" doesn't sound like my idea of fun either...) be the reason she doesn't call the funny farm to say a nutjob is having suicidal ideations? She's so into him, or at least so gullible, she buys into his claims? That can happen in real life too, but maybe if Jake looked 30 and not 300... but this is a Roddenberryism, when he crafted his 24th century, do people just go all Beatles songs and "love is all you need" each other at the drop of a hat, no matter if they're that old and likely to die from a heart attack at precisely the wrong moment? And it's not on the Edo planet?!

If the aspiring writer were another male, would the episode really be any different? (I'm bi, can see it both ways, and can see how either way it wouldn't be significantly different.)

It's an episode I can't just stick on to kill an hour, I really need to be in the right headspace for this one. It's Tony Todds best performance in anything I've seen him in and in my Top 5 Avery Brooks performances too. And, the older I get, the more it resonates.

That's what gets me as well. I'll forget about the episode's details as I find the shiny new trinket to play with... then in a decade, do another viewing round, sit through this one, then cry enough to replenish all that disappeared during the drought (by the seashore).

As much as I am not fond of aspects of this episode, it still has moments of observation that seem inescapable. Maybe that's another reason...

 

[at Quark's]

I always thought the Visitor is slightly overrated. It's certainly no bad episode, even firmly in the 'good' or 'very good' territory, but I see no really original ideas in it, and in my view the effect depends a bit too much on its appeal to the emotions of the viewer. And that alone doesn't earn it a rating as 'one of the best episodes of Trek' in my book.

 

[Takeru]

The Visitor is one of my most hated DS9 episodes, I don't get the love.

Reasons why I hate it:

1. Everyone gets old people make up and wigs but Jake is recast for the bulk of this episode, it's like telling Cirroc Lofton "We don't believe you can carry an episode, make room for Tony Todd".
2. The way Ben behaves makes no sense, from his perspective only a few hours pass and he sees his son age to an old man and in the end he just sits there and watches old Jake sleep. Shouldn't there be some sense of panic or at least worry?
3. The framing story doesn't make sense either. A random young woman knocks on Jake's door in the middle of the night during a storm (she couldn't call him or at least visit during the day?) as if it's the last chance she gets to ever see him ... I mean it is but she doesn't know that. And Jake is like "Come in, random person, let me tell you the story of my life" when he should be focused on saving Ben. If it was important to him to share his story he would have recorded it somewhere before his planned suicide.
4. Jake erases decades and wipes out countless lifes to save his father. One of the most selfish things any character has ever done. Janeway gets criticized for her actions in the Voyager finale but she changed much less history and for less selfish reasons because she tried to help more than one person.

 

[at Quark's]

I've also been troubled by the fact that Jake allows his entire life to be messed up because his father shows up every 10 years for a whole 5 minutes or so. And though I can certainly understand Jake's wish to free his father, even Sisko himself wanted Jake to just go on with his life.

Which makes me wonder (haven't seen the ep in a long time): what would have happened with Sisko had Jake just died of old age when his father wasn't around? Would he have been stuck for eternity there or would he have been free / his existence ended all the same? In other words: why did Jake commit suicide? To save his father from eternal isolation or to change the timeline for his own benefit?

 

[DonIago]

Perhaps Jake knew that his actions wouldn't impact the timeline he was inhabiting (i.e. he wasn't 'resetting' anything) and consequently didn't have to worry about what his actions would do. I would have liked to see more of how things were in that timeline, but it's obviously not the story the writers were looking to tell, and given how it turned out, I'm not inclined to be too hard on them for telling the story they wanted to tell.

 

[Scionz]

I admit it: I largely gave up on DS9 once the Dominion War arc started and missed out on some great Trek as a result, a mistake I'm rectifying now. This means that today is literally the first time I saw "The Visitor," and... oh my God.

I did not contemplate the possibility of any Trek episode, ever, making me cry harder than "Duet." Let alone multiple times. But damn. What amazing work by Tony Todd as the Elder Jake. What a great story idea. What an episode. I'm flabbergasted that I allowed myself to miss this the first time out.

Star Trek has had a lot of great episodes, DS9 in particular. The Visitor is easily the best episode Star Trek has ever produced. It's probably one of the best episodes any science fiction series has ever produced (I'd put Stargate SG-1's "Heroes" on the list too).

I first saw it when it debuted and have watched it many times since. I tear up every time. My father and I have a very close relationship much like the Siskos, so it particularly resonates. The scene in the infirmary where Sisko is on the biobed and asks Jake how he's been in the past year and Jake can't say anything because of how upset he is, is so gutwrenching.

I do a DS9 rewatch every year or or two. When I watch the series sequentially, I usually skip "the Visitor".I have to, I think anybody, has to be in a particular mood to watch it. Even Far Beyond the Stars, another landmark episode, fits in with a linear watching because it's still fundamentally about the mythology of the show.

Not so "the Visitor". I watch that when when I want to see something truly dramatic and only dramatic. It's about a father and a son and a devotion and relationship that stretches decades.Only the set-up is Star Trek. Everything else is really about the relationship that is the foundation of countless young men's lives.

Bigger picture: Jake had some of DS9's best episodes and best moments, because he's the most human character in the entire show, and like how the Bashir-O'Brien friendship is without peer in Star Trek, the Jake-Ben Sisko relationship also stands tall as unique, and one of the highlights of the entire series.

 

[Michael]

Honestly I think the Visitor is crap. Yeah there's something nice about Jake and Sisco's relationship buried under all that crap, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a big old heap of stinking, steaming crap o top of it.

First of all I hate stories about writers (and plays about playwrights or the maki g of plays and such) it just seems too navel gazing and self-indulgent to me.
Second of all...the clichés...good god the clichés; brilliant but reclusive and aging, naturally male writer(tm) who hasn't written in years even though the whole galaxy is begging him for new material on their knees even if it was just his laundry list(tm) is visited by a plucky "passionate", naturally female aspiring author (tm) who is naturally enamoured with him (tm, that's also why the author has to be male and the plucky fangirl female so that the story can indulge in self-congratulory, hetero-normative wishfulfillment) and opens up to her because he finds her hot and rediscovers the passion he thought was lost (tm)
Screw this episode.

Interesting perspective. I'm curious what gave you the impression in the episode that Jake as an author was so sought after that “the whole galaxy is begging him for new material on their knees even if it was just his laundry list”? Because I didn't get any of that. On the contrary, I thought they hinted pretty heavily on his being kind of a failed career and him being a relatively unknown author only a couple of people are aware of. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I didn't get the impression at all that he was famous in his last days.

Also, what makes you think Jake found Melanie hot? I think he says something complimentary about her being a young attractive woman at some point, but other than that? And how does her visiting him let him “rediscovers the passion he thought was lost”? I didn't get the impression her visit made him change any part of his plan he was pursuing this night.

Again, I'm really curious where you got all this.

 

[Damian]

The scene in the infirmary where Sisko is on the biobed and asks Jake how he's been in the past year and Jake can't say anything because of how upset he is, is so gutwrenching.

Yeah, I have to admit that's a hard scene to watch. It's actually one of Lofton's best acting scenes IMO. Very heartfelt. He's talking to his dad and then suddenly all that emotion comes crashing down on him and he can't even speak. Another is when he is on one of the docking pylons and Kira comes up to tell him it's time to leave and he can't because so much of his father is in the station. His emotion there raw and palpable.

Everyone gets old people make up and wigs but Jake is recast for the bulk of this episode, it's like telling Cirroc Lofton "We don't believe you can carry an episode, make room for Tony Todd".

It would have been nice if Lofton could have played the entire episode. Like I noted above, he did an excellent job capturing the raw emotion. I guess maybe they thought he was just too young at the time to really be 'aged' convincingly. But I too would have liked to have seen Lofton the entire episode.

This episode, and the Voyager episode where the Doctor creates a family, are very challenging for me to watch (in that case one of the best Doctor episodes of Voyager, and for Paris as well as he gives some wise advice). As a father with a daughter, that one is very hard for me to get through.

 

[dupersuper]

Reasons why I hate it:

Everyone gets old people make up and wigs but Jake is recast for the bulk of this episode, it's like telling Cirroc Lofton "We don't believe you can carry an episode, make room for Tony Todd"

A common practice: they did it for Wesley, they did it for Alexander, they've done it on countless other TV
shows. I'm not sure just putting him in make up wouldn't have made it feel like a high schooler playing King Lear.

The way Ben behaves makes no sense, from his perspective only a few hours pass and he sees his son age to an old man and in the end he just sits there and watches old Jake sleep. Shouldn't there be some sense of panic or at least worry?

Why?

The framing story doesn't make sense either. A random young woman knocks on Jake's door in the middle of the night during a storm (she couldn't call him or at least visit during the day?) as if it's the last chance she gets to ever see him ... I mean it is but she doesn't know that. And Jake is like "Come in, random person, let me tell you the story of my life" when he should be focused on saving Ben. If it was important to him to share his story he would have recorded it somewhere before his planned suicide.

What's to focus on? He'd already taken the drugs, it was just a matter of waiting.

Jake erases decades and wipes out countless lifes to save his father. One of the most selfish things any character has ever done. Janeway gets criticized for her actions in the Voyager finale but she changed much less history and for less selfish reasons because she tried to help more than one person.

Fine, alternate future Jake is as selfish as alternate future Janeway and alternate future Kim/Chackotay. So?

 

[BigJake]

The scene in the infirmary where Sisko is on the biobed and asks Jake how he's been in the past year and Jake can't say anything because of how upset he is, is so gutwrenching.

This. This was the scene that truly did me in. Cirroc Lofton FTW, I didn't give him his due in the initial post but he did great work here, too.

I watch [this episode] when I want to see something truly dramatic and only dramatic. It's about a father and a son and a devotion and relationship that stretches decades. Only the set-up is Star Trek. Everything else is really about the relationship that is the foundation of countless young men's lives.

And this is what I really love and appreciate about it. I think this is a real feature of the balance DS9 struck between doing episodic and arc-based storytelling. The series' arc does have more merit than I originally was willing to admit, but while this episode fits in the longer arc, it doesn't really affect it: it's a sci-fi drama with an appeal that goes far beyond any particular arc or mythos. Just about the only other episode I can compare it to in this regard is Duet (which is really as much about our history as DS9's fictional setting).

 

[STEPhon IT]

I admit it: I largely gave up on DS9 once the Dominion War arc started and missed out on some great Trek as a result, a mistake I'm rectifying now. This means that today is literally the first time I saw "The Visitor," and... oh my God.

I did not contemplate the possibility of any Trek episode, ever, making me cry harder than "Duet." Let alone multiple times. But damn. What amazing work by Tony Todd as the Elder Jake. What a great story idea. What an episode. I'm flabbergasted that I allowed myself to miss this the first time out.

Just showed when a writer put some thought to a character like Jake Sisko; there's many stories which could've been told. I wish there were more like that one.

Tony Todd excels, but the setup of the episode - the treknobabble of the week - contrives ever so carefully and tidily to zap only SIsko... ...then to have us sit through 35 minutes of Jake telling a complete, random stranger who claims to be enamored with him that he's going to kill himself because he believes he'll be with his father again and yet she doesn't call the emergency room to beam him in thinking he's gone senile and can't tell the difference between the book and reality.

"Duet" holds up in each viewing, despite remembering most of the plot twists, and somehow never gets dull. I'd bet it does for some. But "Visitor" just falls apart by the end with shoehorning in the last 5 minutes of action action kleenex-needing action. There isn't as much to the plot and certainly no world-building. "The Visitor" still feels like filler.

Yep, I have to agree there, good point.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Yeah, I have to admit that's a hard scene to watch. It's actually one of Lofton's best acting scenes IMO. Very heartfelt. He's talking to his dad and then suddenly all that emotion comes crashing down on him and he can't even speak. Another is when he is on one of the docking pylons and Kira comes up to tell him it's time to leave and he can't because so much of his father is in the station. His emotion there raw and palpable.



It would have been nice if Lofton could have played the entire episode. Like I noted above, he did an excellent job capturing the raw emotion. I guess maybe they thought he was just too young at the time to really be 'aged' convincingly. But I too would have liked to have seen Lofton the entire episode.

This episode, and the Voyager episode where the Doctor creates a family, are very challenging for me to watch (in that case one of the best Doctor episodes of Voyager, and for Paris as well as he gives some wise advice). As a father with a daughter, that one is very hard for me to get through.

Agreed with everything you wrote, and it presented a foreshadow to the final episode, "What you leave behind." Jake's psyche appears uncannily very similar to what was seen in "The Visitor" and doesn't present an optimistic view for the Jake character.

 

[Damian]

Agreed with everything you wrote, and it presented a foreshadow to the final episode, "What you leave behind." Jake's psyche appears uncannily very similar to what was seen in "The Visitor" and doesn't present an optimistic view for the Jake character.

I have to admit, I hadn't considered those two together, I guess partly since things were reset by the end of "The Visitor," but that's a good point.

In the DS9 novels that carried on after the end of the series, Jake does go through a period of adjustment. He learns of a prophecy about what he thinks is a reference to the child of the Emissary, though he misunderstands it. He does have a tough time of it, though it helps to have Kasidy around. Kasidy, of course, has become much like a mother to him.

But Jake ends up going to the Gamma Quadrant to try to find the answers to the prophecy and ends up stranded. Eventually in the novel Rising Son he is picked up by a freighter with a rag tag crew and ends up becoming a de facto member of the crew. I actually liked the book. It's mostly focused on Jake and his new friends, but it's a different kind of story, and I thought it was kind of a fun book. For a time Jake finds a home with the freighter crew and even helps them out. They aren't exactly a by the book kind of crew, bending the law a bit, sometimes breaking the letter of the law, but they're not really bad guys. Just a crew trying to make a living.

Eventually Jake returns to DS9, but a bit wiser from his experiences, and more at peace with himself. There are a few things that pop up, in line with "The Visitor." He ends up meeting the same woman he married in "The Visitor," and they end up marrying in our timeline (I suppose because some people just are destined to be together), and he becomes a well regarded writer, though this time he sticks with it.

Also, in the novels, eventually Captain Sisko completes his journey with the Prophets, and as he promised Kasidy he does return in time to see his daughter, Rebecca, born. Then there's a whole storyline involving him that I won't get into here.

 

[STEPhon IT]

There's something about how Cirroc Lofton portrayed the character; his facets I enjoyed where at times he showed some maturity and then at times still a boy. His message expressed how important a father can be in molding a child into a man. Its a shame the writers didn't have a clue about that aspect by the end of their run. I am shocked there wasn't an element where Odo didn't have a need for this angle of family more than what was done or whether that head Dominion monster was actually his mother. Just even explore these things but all I got was solids are bad and terrible without a backstory through the perspective of the Dominion.