The Visitor

It has all been said already. I'm just hoping that my rating can raise it above the 9.1 that it is at at the time of this review. As good as Duet, as good as Inner Light, as good as the The City on the Edge of Forever. Tissues required, woman or man.

This has got to be one of the top 5 stories ever in any of the entire Star Trek series of shows. This one brought me to tears. One of the few times any Star Trek show totally left the gee wizz high tech universe behind and told a totally human soulful story. It just doesn't get any better.

'The Visitor'~ Season four, episode two.

This episode explores the love and devotion between Jake Sisko and his father when an accident occurs which sees Ben Sisko being lost in time. As Jake, now all but orphaned, struggles to cope, Sisko re-appears and continues to do so through his son's life. Sisko remains unchanged but Jake grows up and enters adulthood, becoming an obsessive man who is unable to let his father go and is determined to bring him back whatever the cost.

This is a truly poignant episode that wonderfully depicts the bond between Ben and Jake Sisko, all the more touching because relationships between parent and child depicted in Trek are often shown to be turbulent and fractious (Picard, Riker, Bashir, Paris, Torres, Chakotay, Ezri Dax and Spock, to a degree, are such characters that this is a trend in). Cirroc Lofton and Tony Todd do an excellent job of portraying Jake through various points of his life, both as a grief-stricken teenage boy and as a single-minded, intense man who is unwilling to give up on his father. They interact well with Avery Brooks' Ben Sisko, as the father who is forced to watch Jake grow up without him and eventually realises just how far his son will go to save him. The very down-to-earth, human aspect to Jake is apparent in this episode and it is all the more clear why he always a Trek child who viewers could tolerate and identify with far more than the irritatingly perfect Wesley Crusher. 'The Visitor' is an episode which proves DS9 can do heavy emotional story lines with a flare often just associated with Patrick Stewart's Picard.

Deep Space Nine, an excellent and powerful series in its own right, absolutely outdid itself in this episode. This is not only GREAT science fiction, it is astoundingly good visual storytelling and acting. If you only ever watch one episode of any season of Star Trek, watch this episode. It is positively masterful. The characters in the series I already love outdid themselves, and grew to something more personal and touching than I was ever aware could happen between myself and television. I have never been so moved and drawn into a tragedy, so tormented and enlightened, so joyous and amazed. What a wonderful, wonderful story.

Like so many of the previous reviewers, I find this episode to be among the best of any in the entire Trek franchise ... and more, simply one of the best episodes of any TV show, any genre, over time. And I'm frankly bewildered by the couple of negative reviewers who seem unable to empathize with the quiet power & beauty of this deeply moving father-son story.

If you're reading these reviews, you already know the basic plot: young Jake Sisko loses his father in a bizarre accident that strands Benjamin Sisko in a timeless limbo, from which he emerges for a brief moment every so often over Jake's lifetime. The plot mechanics of this are unimportant -- what matters is the human story of a son losing his father, yearning for his presence, never quite whole because of that loss, and struggling to cope with it & set it right.

I just watched it again last night, which makes it at least a dozen times since it first aired. My father was alive then; he died a few years later. So the wrenching emotional punch of this story has only grown over time for me ... and, I suspect, for the vast majority of those who have also watched it. Were there tears streaming down my face by the end, this time around? Oh, yes. Anyone who loved & lost their father understands.

Next Generation justly takes pride in "The Inner Light" -- but "The Visitor" is easily its equal, and in many ways even more meaningful & rich. I'll definitely be watching it many more times to come in the future.