Trek-a-Week #29: The Visitor

Ben:
Much as with The inner Light, The Visitor is one of my all-time favorite Trek episodes and yet it’s also one that I’ll likely not have a whole lot to say about. It’s a wonderfully-executed episode about families, grief, mortality, and the value of stories. We don’t get a usual Trek-style moral question to ponder; the episode succeeds because of the strength of the characters and characterization. Like last week’s episode, The House of Quark, The Visitor showcases how different Deep Space Nine is from its predecessors in its emphasis on characters and character development.
The Visitor is often mentioned in the same breath as The Inner Light. They’re both among the most revered Trek episodes of course and they’re both episodes that tug at the heart-strings. But the episode that The Visitor reminds me most of is the TNG finale, All Good Things. In All Good Things, Picard is shifting around in time and in The Visitor Sisko is similarly shifting through time — albeit in a linear fashion rather than back-and-forth. The big difference between the two is perspective: in All Good Things we’re seeing events from Picard’s point of view; In The Visitor we’re on the outside with Jake as he helplessly watches his father appear and then disappear. And, similar to All Good Things, we get a “rounding up the old gang” bit in The Visitor, complete with an aged and bickering Dax and Bashir. I guess in this timeline Bashir’s finally been successful on that front.
Speaking of time travel: other than the giant “reset switch” at the end (sigh), I was more comfortable with the sort of time travel depicted in The Visitor, as it’s largely free of the “it only works if you don’t think about it too much” problems that a lot of Trek time travel can have. All of the technobabble in this episode aside, we know that time really can move at different rates for different objects/locations a la Jake’s aging vs. Sisko’s. (The whole “rubber band” bit doesn’t hold up to a whole lot of scrutiny, but whatever…)
What I like the most about The Visitor, though, is how it addresses three topics that at first glance don’t seem like standard Trek fare: families, the value of stories, and mortality/aging.
Themes related to families haven’t been wholly absent from Trek of course. We’ve gotten material before like the TNG episodes Family and The Icarus Factor, but these were one-off episodes with family members who aren’t regular cast members. In The Visitor we get something wholly different: a look at a father/son relationship that’s been presented with main characters throughout the series’ run. Unlike the show’s similar attempt at family dynamics via Miles/Keiko, the Sisko/Jake relationship shown in The Visitor comes across as genuine and complex.
Along with The Inner Light, The Visitor is notable for its emphasis on the value of stories and storytelling. Most obviously, Jake is a writer and his “writer’s journey” starts to unfold throughout the main storyline of DS9. In this episode, though, his status as a writer takes center stage in a way it never has before. More to the point, though, we see Jake desperate to finish telling his story to Melanie before he dies. Or more accurately, before his plan to kill himself concurrent with his father’s final materialization succeeds. I’m thankful that I’d forgotten this element of the story so that I was able to receive the full gut-punch at the end of the episode when Jake reveals to Melanie what’s truly going on — ending his story but allowing his father’s to continue on from where it abruptly ended.
Mortality and aging have been addressed before in Trek, most notably in The Wrath of Khan but again, they’re placed front and center here in a way that’s unusual for Trek. In a reversal of the norm, we witness a father seeing his son grow old and die. We see a son with a lifetime at his disposal throw years of it away — and we see a father with only a few fleeting moments of life available use that time to tell his son to move on, to live and enjoy life. Sisko: “What’s happened to you?” Obsession and guilt are ultimately about the self — Jake’s obsession with saving his father is as much for his benefit as his father’s — but what ultimately saves his father is Jake’s sacrifice — a truly selfless act. The title, The Visitor, obviously refers to Melanie, who initially comes to visit the aging Jake in the episode’s framing story. But it can refer to Sisko’s intermittent “visits”to Jake as well. I think it also refers to Jake though, whose entire life we see run its course in the episode. He, like all of us, is just a visitor.
Extras:
- I did some Googling to find out if the title Anslem is a reference to anything and turned up no obvious answers. Ideas anyone?
- Morn “Talking his customers’ ears off.” Har har.
- Jake’s “You should read more” crack reminds me of this line from Patrick Stewart.
- No, you’re the one crying.
Katherine:
I’m not really sure how to address this DS9 episode. It has an okay plot. I just can’t help feeling that it relies more on manipulating the viewer’s emotions than on telling a interesting story. The Visitor has a single plot line that follows Jake, the son of Captain Sisko. I don’t think I’ve seen this character yet but I get the idea that he’s a teenager living on the space station and that the mom has not been in the picture for a while so he and his dad have a close relationship. The episode begins in the future with Jake as an old man living in a house in “the bayou”. If this can mean anywhere other than Louisiana, I am not aware.
It was a dark and stormy night… No, seriously, it was, which is all the more fitting for the girl showing up at Jake’s door saying that she’s an aspiring writer and admitting that she’s come looking for him since she loves his books. Let me just say that this character is so dopey and contemporary that I found her presence jarring. She did not fit in at all with any other DS9 characters and her gushing, fan-girl, “You are my favorite author of all time” was just weird and unbelievable. She serves only for Jake to relate the story of how he got to this point in his life — he seems very old and unwell — and why he stopped writing after two very successful books.
We flashback to DS9 in the current timeline in which Captain Sisko is urging Jake to come with him to witness the wormhole undergo a “subspace inversion,” which apparently only happens every fifty years. Problem is, this event causes a surge in the gravimetric field which nearly results in a warp core breach. The captain manages to divert excess power. But immediately following, some kind of aftershock sends a bolt of energy around Sisko and he disappears. Everyone assumes that he is dead and gone.
We follow young Jake through the process of grief and loss as time passes and eventually he must leave the station because of mounting tensions with the Klingons. He is reluctant to do so because of a brief vision he had of his dad in his quarters. The attachment Jake has to the only real home he’s known, and the place where he lived with his father, is heart-breaking. “If I leave I won’t have anything left of him.” How does a person balance honoring memories of a loved one with moving on with their life?
Before he leaves DS9, Jake has another vision of his dad. This time he is able to touch and hold his father, even bring him into the infirmary where the other officers determine that the warp core discharge caused by the wormhole pulled Sisko, who is not aware of the passage of time since the accident, into “subspace.” At least they didn’t call it a “temporal disturbance.” It is, though, a functionally similar science fiction concept of an alternate, parallel space-time continuum. It seems that Sisko now resides there, only occasionally reappearing in Jake’s time. And after only a few minutes with him, flickers out again. Watching Jake plead, “Don’t leave me!” as his father disappears is gut-wrenching.
More time passes and we jump between aged Jake narrating to the sappy girl and scenes of him as an adult having moved to Louisiana, where his grandfather lives, to try to move on with his life. He seems almost happy but then Sisko appears again. Jake is in tears, apologizing for giving up on his dad. On the contrary, Sisko is happy for their brief moment together and tells him he’s proud of his writing and hints at wanting grandchildren. When he flickers out again, Jake resolves to give up writing and study subspace mechanics. He becomes so absorbed in his studies that even his marriage fails.
He plans to take action at the next subspace inversion and gets the old DS9 crew together. Sisko does appear and Jake momentarily ends up in subspace with him where they have a few awkward moments for Sisko to inquire about his life and Jake to have nothing to say because he’s spent the last fourteen years preparing for this moment instead of living his life. Sadly, the crew is unable to lock onto Sisko and Jake loses him again.
Having brought the narrative up to the point where Jake is talking to the young writer, he says he’s come to understand the problem, which is some vague explanation about him being linked to his dad and that if he “cuts the cord”, i.e., kills himself, when his father is closest, this will somehow send him back to the time of the accident which, with foreknowledge, Sisko can now avoid. Um, okay. The captain appears one last time and the old Jake dies, then we re-experience the original wormhole event where they are able to dodge the energy discharge. Father and son are reunited in the same timeline and I was nearly weeping seeing them finally together.
So was this a good episode? Or just a weak story that tugs at your heartstrings like watching a Hallmark movie or a sad commercial while you’re PMS-ing? I couldn’t help but think of that loathsome “Cat’s in the Cradle” song where the father and son are too busy with other stuff to have a relationship. Is the episode just meant as an overdone morality tale admonishing us, multiple times, not to miss life while it’s happening? Although, Jake’s dedication to research is what ultimately resolves the problem. I even looked for some interesting hidden meanings, like why was Jake’s one novel titled “Anselm”? Is this a reference to the saint who convened a church council in 1102 to decree an end to slavery in England?
Maybe The Visitor is intended only to reinforce what an admirable character Sisko is, cherishing the few short encounters with his son, never criticizing, only concerned with his child’s well-being, “It’s not your fault, Jake….I need to know you’re going to be all right.” This is, however, another story in which Star Trek allows events to be altered and people to have a second chance to make things right. While this may be something we all want, I think it’s a cheap plot gimmick and not very good science-fiction, to boot. Jake himself says it best in the first scene, “There’s only one first time for everything, isn’t there?”
Next week: Trials and Tribble-ations
