- Main Index
- Site Map

Season four continues the general good quality that DS9 had enjoyed the previous year, but I think that quality is slightly more diluted this time around. Michael Dorn's Worf makes a solid and welcome general addition to the cast, but I have to say I didn't care much for the Klingon stories over the next year-and-a-half of DS9, which weren't quite up to the same par. Perhaps the "action" they brought to the stories was just too primitively violent and lacking in philosophically redeeming values to inspire much emotional investment on my part. Thankfully, the non-Klingon episodes were still very good, and the season gained much momentum in its final third, making it all very worthwhile.

The Visitor (Star Trek - Deep Space Nine episode production code 476) written by Michael Taylor This is a very unusual and emotionally powerful episode for any of the Star Trek shows, and it resonates on many levels. Three cheers for the performance by Tony Todd, previously famous for playing Worf's brother Kurn, now giving an emotional tour-de-force as a more mature Jake Sisko. But the plot also rests on time travel, one of Star Trek's great Achilles' heels. How well did they do on this occasion to overcome their usual problems? The general premise seems sound enough, placing most of what we see during the episode in an alternate universe that branches off of the familiar one at the beginning of season four, one in which there is no Sisko to command the DS9 station during what would have been seasons four through seven. As always, my take is that this future history coexists with the one you'll be watching as the rest of DS9's future seasons unfold.

The "Alternate Realities" box set features The Visitor along with: "Alternate Lives, Part 1" retrospective production featurette, with a revealing interview of actor Tony Todd (Jake Sisko). NTSC Region 1 version includes English, Spanish, and Portuguese audio tracks and subtitles More info & buying options

And although Benjamin Sisko's role in this story is the McGuffin, the object of everyone else's goals and efforts, he is poised to come out of it as the only regular character of the show who actually has the adventure and remembers it, skipping through an alternate future before being returned to the point at which he left. Another major point to the episode's good.

But the episode also has two significant caveats. The first is that it doesn't quite snap Benjamin back into place very elegantly. Instead, it attempts a re-wind on the action, inexplicably dropping a more experienced Benjamin on top of some prior version of himself. One hopes he is back at the same point of time, space, AND CHOICE that he left at the beginning of the story, namely back in the same parallel/branching universe. I think it would have been better had he been seen to materialize just after he first vanished, thus acknowledging the journey he had just completed.

Mind you, doing that without buggering up the explanation of Jake "dragging him through time like an anchor" might require that we also address the other caveat of the story. I just hate it when writers reach for the daftness of "death" as a way of exiting dreams, fantasies, and time-travel conundrums. It's so lame, destructive, counter-productive, and unlikely to be any kind of accurate blueprint for how to deal with such things for real. I think it sets a bad example for viewers, and other Trek writers like Ron Moore abuse and overuse death and loss so often on this show that it feels a bit cliché and re-run.

A better solution specifically for this episode might be, after Jake watches his father vanish from the engine room, and while he is still holding onto that piece of equipment and the energy discharge is still flowing around him, he gets a determined look, extends his arm, the discharges coalesce on the other end, and the father rematerializes there and then. Now not only is Benjamin remembering the adventure, but something from the older parallel Jake has bled through to our familiar younger version as well, inspiring a bit of proactivity and assertiveness on his response to the situation.

Either way, there will always be a parallel world out there where Jake Sisko wrote Ansolom and two collections of short stories, to be enjoyed for Millennia ever after. Sweet.

This story gives us a nice peek into a possible future where we get to see what may happen to many of the DS9 characters in the future, almost doing the same thing as "All Good Things...." in brief. In my opinion, this episode is the better one. And eerily enough, one has to wonder if the future we do follow along with is really all that different, having simply delayed Sisko's departure for about four more years....

I have to say, I found Worf's cameo presence in this episode to be both a bit jarring and unsatisfying. I had thought he was merely a guest star in the opening two-parter of the season. His continued presence in this next episode here is what would make real the idea that he had joined the crew, and yet the episode tosses his presence off into the background and gives him next to nothing to do, as though we should have already accepted it. It isn't until his brilliant clash with Odo in the next episode that Worf really gets his due from the idea that he has joined this crew, and I have to consider that it might have been a better idea to swap the two episodes in the running order, as indeed they were in production order. Still, "The Visitor" is a stronger attention-grabber, so the case is not all that clear cut.

While we're here right at the beginning of Season Four, we may as well comment on the new title sequence. I do really like the extra activity all around the DS9 station in the opening, featuring more runabouts early on and showcasing the Defiant in the final segments very nicely. The music is also upgraded, which seemed like a good idea. I had always thought it was missing a good strong, driving rhythmic bassline. But I have to take issue with what was thrown together here. The familiar melody and new bassline here appear to be completely out of sync with each other, each doing its own thing and paying no attention to the other. Additionally, the bassline has no chord movement. It's a mindless piece of filler, disrupting far more harmony than it created. All things considered, the title cue for the first three seasons was better.

Contact page

LYRATEK.COM