Sorry for the delay but life got in the way (that rhymes!), I came up with ideas for a story I'm working on, and on the side, bit-by-bit, I finally finished
my review for "Nixon's Women", the third episode of
For All Mankind. Feel free to check it out. But now I'm watching...
"The Visitor" (1st Half)
Great interior design for Jake Sisko's house. It really does look like an old man lives there. Then there's the aspiring writer-to-be, a young woman who comes across as an up-and-coming writer want to speak with someone she looks up to. There's the stereotype of beginning a story with "It was a dark and stormy night" because it
is a dark and stormy night but it's contrasted with it not being dark for Jake at all. It's the day he expects to see his father again. Though he doesn't let her know this upfront and begins by telling the story that led up to why today was the right day for him to finally tell this story instead of sending her away.
It's the day he lost his father, circa DS9's present timeframe. Jake ever the writer, is determined to finish the part of his story he's working on. I can relate. As I'm currently developing a new story myself for a future project. I can't talk about it, but I was in the groove yesterday and the day before, and once you're in that zone, you don't want to get out of it. For anything.
But Sisko convinces Jake to see an inversion of the Wormhole, which only happens once every 50 years, some technobabble thing happens, and then Sisko disappears right in front of Jake's eyes. It's all so fast. There's a memorial service, everyone tries to help Jake through the grieving process, a few months pass, and then Sisko appears in front of his son just as randomly as when he disappeared the first time and was presumed dead.
Nine months pass, on top of these few months, so it's been about a year, and it's interesting how tensions with the Klingons hit a boiling point around the same time they actually will at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth seasons. I think the writers knew from the beginning of the season where they wanted to take it by the end. I feel bad for the Bajorans in this timeline. First they lost Kai Opaka, the Kai who helped them through the Occupation, and now they've lost their Emissary, who they looked up to afterwards. Kai Winn is more like the politician who happened to be elected to office. I don't think Bajorans look up to Winn in the same way that they looked up to Opaka or revere Sisko. But that's going off on a tangent. Increased hostilities with the Klingons and the loss of Sisko makes the Bajorans believe the Federation can't protect them. When it the Bajorans form a mutual defense pact with the Cardassians, it makes me cringe. Not at the episode, but at the Bajorans, knowing what's to come.
The lighting, or lack thereof, is perfect when Kira enters Sisko's former quarters, where Jake still lives, and all you can make out are the outlines of Jake and Kira any color in the shot at all being a highlight to breakup what's otherwise all black. Jake doesn't want to leave the Deep Space Nine because he thinks it's leaving behind anything left of his father. While I don't entirely believe that because there has to be plenty of his father in New Orleans, I can see why Jake would think that. Kira understands and tells Jake she'll let him stay a little while longer but when she says he has to go, he has to go.
A little later Sisko appears again in front of Jake, and this time Sisko sticks around long enough for the DS9 crew to see him as well. I'm glad Sisko reappeared before Jake left the station. Not just because he reappeared but now, if Jake ever saw Sisko again, they wouldn't think he was crazy or like he was like Mrs. Kravitz from
Bewitched, my go-to when I think of someone who's seen something, tells everyone, and then no one else sees it.
Cirroc Lofton's performance is amazing when Sisko asks Jake how he's doing. For Sisko, it's only been a few minutes. For Jake, he thinks his father's been dead for a year. Sisko immediately understands. He wants to make sure Jake is going to be okay. O'Brien, Bashir, and Dax try to do whatever technobabble thing they can do, but it doesn't work and Sisko disappears again.
Before he even said it, I remembered the elder Jake saying that watching Sisko disappear that time was even worse than we he first lost him on the Defiant because now it wasn't that he was dead, it was he's still alive but somehow been forever pulled away, outside of time, making any type of closure impossible.
Right before the commercial break, when the young writer call tell Jake is having a hard time, she offers to leave and to come back another time. He says she can't, it has to be today, because he's dying. When they leave on that zinger and then come back from it, they make it look like it's fake-out even though it's not. He
is dying. And that's the whole point of why today is so important. But he softens it by letting her know that at his age you always have "I'm dying" on your mind. I wouldn't know. I'm not that age. But I imagine it'll be much more prevalent on my thoughts then. Either way, when you're watching for the first time, it lets you relax a little thinking that he's not dying right now. When you watch it from a second time on, the scene rewards you because it's letting you know in bold neon letters what's coming up before trying to make it look like it's not.
I forgot about this, but it doesn't surprise me that the Klingons took over Deep Space Nine, just like the Cardassians later would. Seems like DS9 was destined to be lost, temporarily or otherwise, one way or the other. It's also exactly midpoint of the episode where Jake leaves DS9. It's a good choice, pacing wise to have half the episode with Jake's time on DS9 and the other half being post-DS9. It also gives the audience time for Jake's loss to bake in, and let that disruption breathe, before finally showing Jake trying to move on with his life.
What else was interesting, and it's not something I thought about until now, is that the first half of "The Visitor" is an alternate look at what the fourth season of DS9 could've been, just like how "Year of Hell" is an alternate look at how the fourth season of VOY could've been.
And at this midpoint, I'll stop here and pick up my thoughts on the rest of it later.
