The Visitor

[BigJake]

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.

 

[FanST]

Arguably the greatest episode in Star Trek history!

 

[Oddish]

Trek doesn't make me cry that often... but did it ever this time.

 

[Qonundrum]

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.

 

[DonIago]

"Way of the Warrior" followed by "The Visitor" may have been the greatest 1-2-3(?) gut punch the franchise has ever delivered, despite the latter not being explicitly linked to the former.

The only thing I'm coming up with that really compares is BoBW followed by "Family", but I'd argue that BoBW2 struggles a bit.

 

[Oddish]

I don't know if Way of the Warrior was a gut punch, but it was a high point in a series that had a lot of high points. And Visitor was as well, but a completely different type of high point.

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, that was kind of what I was getting at. It demonstrated that the writers of DS9 were capable of doing two (or three) high-quality episodes that were hitting very different emotional points.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don’t think that highly of Way of the Warrior. Blowing up the Khitomer Accords as a flimsy excuse to summon Worf left a bad taste in my mouth after all the TNG development.

Yesterday’s Enterprise/The Offspring/Sins of the Father ranks higher for me.

Or take your pick from the Dominion occupation and finale arcs.

 

[saladdays]

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.

I agree that it is more a filler episode with what is happening with the Dominion War. But why is a filler episode inherently bad? Especially since if this episode happened before the Dominion War, it wouldn't be seen that way at all (since DS9 was much more episodic before then).

 

[dupersuper]

I agree that it is more a filler episode with what is happening with the Dominion War. But why is a filler episode inherently bad? Especially since if this episode happened before the Dominion War, it wouldn't be seen that way at all (since DS9 was much more episodic before then).

"filler episode" is a horrible term and I stop listening/reading as soon as people start using it.

 

[DonIago]

DS9 in particular finds itself in a Kobayashi Maru scenario regarding "filler episodes", caught between those who got tired of the war being an omnipresent mistake and those who felt that with a war going on the crew shouldn't have any time to do anything else.

 

[Oddish]

Compared to most of the series, DS9 had relatively few "filler episodes". TNG and Voyager consisted of mostly material of that nature.

 

[Orphalesion]

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.

 

[Coops]

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.

 

[Coops]

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.

There's some damn good points in all that, even if I don't fully agree with all of them.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

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.

This would be a matter of personal taste, not a fault of the episode itself.

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)

From what I can tell, the vast majority of personal mentoring relationships, and arguably the most prominent, were male to male at the time the episode aired: Karate Kid, Dead Poet's Society, the Star Wars movies, Back to the Future, ... . The only prominent exceptions were My Fair Lady (which was a pretext for romance) and Mary Poppins. Fewer stories about a mentorship relationship focused on a mentored girl or woman. There may have been aspects of the story that were conventional, but that would not make it intrinsically flawed.

 

[Pikirk_Janesisko]

I'm glad you liked it, it's one of the best episodes of Star Trek. DS9 does have a lot of emotional and sad episodes, something that the other series rarely achieved, aside from the ending of TWOK.

 

[Orphalesion]

This would be a matter of personal taste, not a fault of the episode itself.

I don't know why people like you so often feel the need to point out it's a matter of taste/opinion.
Of course it is! Are you under some delusion that you are telling me something here that I don't already know or wasn't aware of?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I don't know why people like you so often feel the need to point out it's a matter of taste/opinion.
Of course it is! Are you under some delusion that you are telling me something here that I don't already know or wasn't aware of?

Let me help you out by helping you notice your own words:

that doesn't change the fact that there's a big old heap of stinking, steaming crap o top of it.

Where does this crap come from? You. It is your personal tastes, not something intrinsic to the episode. Certainly, there are people who note how their perceptions and biases may shape how they see an episode, but they don't make it the fault of the episode, nor do they do so with as much drama.

 

[Qonundrum]

I agree that it is more a filler episode with what is happening with the Dominion War. But why is a filler episode inherently bad? Especially since if this episode happened before the Dominion War, it wouldn't be seen that way at all (since DS9 was much more episodic before then).

After seeing certain Orville episodes, a show made in a day when there are 10 or so episodes combined with a running theme building up to something -- and as people have also said "fewer episodes means no filler" (despite it existing anyway, but I digress), and those Orville episodes just wasted time on treacle, I've looked back on old shows and started thinking contemporary thoughts. Maybe the episode stands out because I didn't get as wound up in it as others, especially after the first viewing and became more disappointed in the plot falling apart around Jake faster than Jake was. As a character piece I can't deny it's anything but a great episode, but it doesn't gel as much as it could - and, of course, the stranger knocking on the door listen to an old guy say really weird things and how suicide puts it all right. But now I'm trapped in 20th century thinking and not 24th and how denizens of that era might live... so on that level, it's not that bad either... also, circular logic can make me giddy...

And TBH, IMHO, the days more episodes would be churned out - especially in an excellent season like season 4 - means even the episodes one might find to be lesser still aren't bad by any measure. The longer seasons do give more time to breathe, which reminds me of the season 6 episode "The Sound of Her Voice", which I'd still rate higher than "The Visitor" but YMMV.