SDS9 – S4E3: "The Visitor" (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on March 21, 2024.

Sam and Scott discuss "The Visitor," where an accident leaves Captain Benjamin Sisko frozen in time, leaving his son Jake with a lifelong obsession with rescuing his father. The episode was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1996 and consistently ranks in polls as one of the most popular episodes of the entire series.

SDS9 seasons 1, 2, and 3 can be found wherever you stream Southpaw. Season 4 is only available to paid subscribers.

You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app

(Note: Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also other ways to watch DS9 that we're sure you internet space explorers can figure out. Otherwise, since Scott does such an excellent job with the play-by-play, you don't have to watch the episodes to enjoy our breakdowns.)

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 4.

If you don't know what SDS9 is,

it's Southpaw's completest DS9 watch-along show,

where we watch every episode,

recap it,

and analyze it.

We are your hosts, Scott and Sam.

Scott is someone who's watched DS9 more than once,

whereas I'm someone who's casually watched some episodes when it first aired,

but this is my first time watching each episode in earnest.

One of the cool things is this also gives us different perspectives.

After we watch each episode, we come together and talk about it.

Scott gives us the play-by-play along with his insights while I analyze scenes that

stuck out for me from a political perspective or a media studies perspective.

We are discussing Season 4, Episode 3, The Visitor.

Scott, will you tell us about this episode?

Only if you insist, Sam.

An old man is mething.

Meth-ing?

That's next episode where we're mething.

This episode, we're messing.

An old man is messing with a baseball in Louisiana.

A young woman named Melanie comes to see him.

He is the famous novelist Jake Sisko, who has written two books and some much-loved short stories.

She wonders why Jake never wrote more.

Jake gets wistful and poetic and talks about wasted life.

Melanie asks Jake why he stopped writing at the age of 40.

He says he lost his favorite pen, but it is a long story.

And Melanie says that she has nothing but time.

Jake says any other day he wouldn't tell the story, but decides that today he will.

And he says that when he was 18, his father, Ben, Captain Sisko, died.

Jake is played deliciously by Candyman Tony Todd.

Don't say that name too many times in the mirror.

That movie holds up, though, as a socialist film.

But that's another day.

Jake explains he was so close with his dad,

but a lot of that was because they both lost mother and wife,

you know?

So they had this bond.

We go to a flashback where they're going to a subspace inversion.

It's a Bajoran wormhole eclipse type thing.

It happens every 30 or 40 years, and Ben gets Jake to come with him.

And Jadzie is also there on the Defiant.

And Jake is just struggling with writing.

But Ben's like, it's all good.

Just live a little.

If you want to write, you got to live.

The Defiant is jolted as the wormhole starts to do its inversion thing.

It causes a disturbance.

The crew is knocked out.

And then we presume Benjamin to be vaporized by energy.

Everyone eulogizes Ben.

And everyone is sad.

though people try to move on.

Jake could go to writing college on Earth where Nog is going for Starfleet, but he's really bummed out.

And at that same point, he hallucinates Ben.

Jake tells Jadzia, and she says, well, we'll look into it.

With the Klingons being around and Ben being the emissary,

and he's gone,

it's a big loss to the Bajoran people.

And so for about eight or nine months, Jake just plays games instead of writing.

Bajor enters into a pact with the Cardassians, which obviously is crazy.

People start leaving Deep Space Nine.

Worf wants Jake to leave,

but he won't,

even though his grandfather asked him to come back to New Orleans.

Jake can't leave because this is a reminder of his fatherly bond.

He's grieving still.

There's no length of time that one can grieve.

Grief is a pulse.

It goes up and down.

If he leaves, he won't have anything left of his father.

But Kira has Jake promise that when the day comes that he actually does have to leave, he does.

And then Jake sees Ben and touches him.

He's back.

We believe it's a temporal anomaly.

Ben is rushed to the infirmary.

He's in some sort of temporal inversion, trapped in time sort of trope.

He's fading in and out of sync with time, going in out of it.

It's kind of trippy.

Everyone works very hard, but Ben disappears again.

We see old Jay.

He's dying, and he needs to tell his story.

Jake can tell that Melanie will be a good writer one day,

as she is a good listener,

and she has curiosity.

Back in the past,

the alternate past,

for months Jadzia and Miles try to find Ben,

the Klingons gain control of Deep Space Nine,

and Jake is forced to leave,

where he goes to Earth,

and goes to Pendon College to write,

and lives near his grandpa who owns Cisco's,

and they're just happy to have Jake around.

Jake gets married.

Ansley is a popular book he writes.

We find out that Quarks has turned to Morns.

Nog is a ranking member of Starfleet.

And we see old Jake, he's getting sicker, and he just wants to explain why he stopped writing.

So we go back to the near past.

One night, Jake is writing a new book, and Jake asks his wife to illustrate the cover.

When Ben shows up again, and Jake gets older, but Ben stays the same.

But Ben doesn't want to waste any time.

Jake's wife shows Ben his books.

Ben is so happy,

but Jake can't stop crying and feels guilty that he lost faith in Ben,

that he thought he'd never see him again.

and Ben just asks for grandchildren and disappears.

The accident,

we believe,

must have created a subspace connection to Jake and Ben,

and that Ben might come by much later in life.

Jake goes to become a scientist to try to recreate the accident and find his dad.

He stops writing.

Jake loses his wife.

Then Jake puts together the old crew on the Defiant with Ron, who's now captain, and all the people.

They go as the same subspace inversion is happening.

They do science to get Ben's signature.

Ben and Jake are sucked into a subspace dimension where Jake is older than Ben.

And Ben wants to know what Jake has made with his life.

He wants to know about his grandchildren.

But Jake has wasted his life trying to find Ben.

Ben begs him to let him go and make a life for himself.

Ben disappears again,

and Jake honors Ben's request and starts writing again and has unpublished books

left to be published posthumously.

Jake knows that as he dies, Ben will come, and if Jake can cut the temporal cord, he may save Ben.

Jake tells Melanie to live life and keep her eyes open.

Melanie thanks Jake and takes the manuscript old Jake is working on.

Jake plays with a baseball and waits.

He nods off and is awoken by Ben.

Jake has been expecting Ben.

Ben is moved that Jake is writing again and sees that the dedication is dedicated to Ben for coming home.

It's realized that when Jake dies, Ben will go back to before the vaporizing content warning self-harm.

It's realized that the cord is being cut,

that Jake is unaliving himself,

that he is poisoning himself because he knows that if he does this,

they can have a second chance.

They can live their life together.

Fuck, this is when you clue QN Luther Vandross dance with my father.

As this all happens,

Ben is brought back to the past right before the vapor and saves himself and young Jake.

Ben hugs his son and cries.

So I got lots of thoughts.

So let's just dive right into it.

For longtime DS9 fans,

You might not realize this, especially if you skip most, if not all of seasons one through three.

But season four is when we get the first Jake episode where he's the main character

rather than part of a side plot.

It took writers until season four to give him his own identity building episode.

And really, most of it was not played by the main actor.

It was played by Tony Todd.

Jake,

the character,

has had a father and son episode,

but it was mostly a Cisco episode about him tinkering,

building.

Or there's been episodes where there's been a plot element about Cisco and the son

of Cisco rather than an episode about Jake.

This makes me think that it's really from season four on where the memories of DS9

that fans cherish must begin.

But as someone working forward and not backward,

let me tell you that the first three seasons,

now that we've been through them and you've followed along with us,

the first three seasons were rough,

okay?

I can be honest now because now we're getting to better stuff.

A lot of the magic people mentioned weren't really there.

Even if you try to project it backwards, it's hard.

There's just not a lot for you to work with in the first three seasons.

So I can see why people skip them in the rewatch and start from season four.

But really, season four could have been season one or almost a restart for the show.

It's really easy to start from season four.

because it very much is a fresh start.

If the season four premiere was the series premiere,

no one would think anything was missing or would complain about any holes because

then it's just a fresh start with Worf with new enemies and plot.

You're just following Worf to a new place.

Spinoffs have started off like this, following a character over to an already established situation.

Many shows in general start off like this,

where you're just following the new kid into a school or a kid you know into a new situation.

Asking a writer friend who's worked in the Trek universe and knows all the actors

and old writers and goes to conventions with them,

he said season four was in fact a reboot.

And a new starting point for new fans to join in and not feel like they missed

anything or to pull in next generation fans without making them feel lost.

Because at this time, there was no streaming.

So if you missed it, you missed it.

Which also speaks to the excitement of viewers at the time that can't be replicated in a rewatch.

And me watching it now, there's a lot of elements I cannot replicate and a lot of feelings I cannot have.

The feeling that if you miss it,

you missed it unless it got picked up as reruns,

but then you might have to wait years.

So I will never be able to replicate the feelings that people have when they

watched it the first time,

or even when I watched some of these episodes when it caught them on TV.

Scott,

do you remember what watching TV was like in the 80s and 90s where you knew if you

missed it,

you missed it,

and other people will talk about it and you will never be able to catch up?

And it's a FOMO,

that you can't have today.

And that added something to that TV viewing experience.

It was everything.

With Star Trek,

it was a little bit different because at least where I grew up in New York City,

Deep Space Nine was on the WB.

So...

If you missed it on its normal night, that week's episode would play Sunday night at 10 o'clock.

You knew the time.

So Deep Space Nine was 10 o'clock,

and then Earth Final Conflict was 11 o'clock,

and then Andromeda was at midnight.

Yeah, it goes deep.

My love of the Roddenberry verse is a lifelong experience.

Wait, wait, we got to mention the tape trader kid, right?

If you missed the replay,

then you had to find some kid or somebody you knew who might have taped it and then

try to get it from them,

right?

That was like the only way.

Yeah,

there was,

because we tried,

I remember me and my parents,

we tried to get the VCR Plus,

which would supposedly record shows while you were out.

It was like a precursor to DVR, but on VHS cassette, but we couldn't get it to work.

It doesn't work.

It just don't work.

Nobody can do it right.

It just didn't work.

I remember on Sundays,

which was the night of Simpsons,

if my parents were like,

let's go out to dinner for the night,

I might not go if we were leaving at 730 because I was going to miss the Simpsons

and I couldn't show up to school the next day.

not knowing what happened on The Simpsons.

So I'm not saying that the 80s and 90s were a better time,

but there was something about this sort of collective conscious that a lot of us

were enjoying and experiencing similar things.

The stakes were high.

The stakes were high.

And if you miss something, you might miss it forever.

Like the series finale of M.A.S.H.,

Got like 80 million views, dude.

Don't quote me on the number, but like... They set a record that hasn't been touched.

And Game of Thrones has never been close.

Right.

And that was because no one knew when they were going to be able to watch this episode of M.A.S.H.

ever again.

It's just wildly different the way that we take in content.

And so I actually,

I remember sometimes like being like,

dad,

we,

we got to rush home so we could watch Star Trek because,

because we,

because we would watch at this point seasons one through three,

because by the time Worf has joined the show,

my dad has lost interest and my dad has gotten very sick.

And this is just towards the end of his life.

And it's just a different sort of thing.

where i really got back into deep space nine around like season five season six

when my dad died because it was just like a way to connect and i it was just also

like sunday nights were really hard because i didn't look forward to going to

school so i really enjoyed

you can keep this in if you want,

but smoking a joint and watching Star Trek on Sunday nights as a teenage kid before

hoping that Mondays would be easier.

Because let me tell you, I'm not saying that

Being a 16-year-old, losing your dad, not having siblings can be very tough.

So getting lost in art and stuff that you love and stuff that makes you feel closer

is really profound,

which is especially why I think I connect so much to Deep Space Nine because at the

crux of all of it is a father and son story.

And I want to talk about that.

Because this episode is the first time I felt that Jake and Ben relationship that fans talk about.

This was deep, whereas in previous scenes with them, it was fun, or comedic, or awkward, or lazy writing.

Or when it came to the child Jake dating a woman, it was cringe and, you know...

inappropriate, but this episode was the first time it felt deep.

A lot of what made this episode for me was Tony Todd's acting,

especially him at a campfire in this dark New Orleans home,

very stylized house,

and then also his chemistry with Cisco.

I have yet to see chemistry like that on this show.

As a dad, I cried several times.

But the full emotional resonance of this episode, I think, can only be felt now.

Because I just talked about how we can't replicate the past.

And we shouldn't even try.

The stakes were different.

There was that kind of, if you miss it, you miss it.

But there's also something about watching this now.

Because for me to explain that,

I have to first get into the science and philosophy of this episode,

which I like to do on occasion.

So this episode is taking place in the main continuous timeline.

Continuous.

We've talked about continuity before with the ship of Theseus in the past,

which is a philosophical thought experiment.

So Jake, by trying to cut the cord is creating an alternate happier timeline.

This episode is not an alternate world.

This is the continuous world.

We continue with Jake from the show that we know into the show's future.

And when the court is cut, Cisco is going back to the non-continuous world.

Back then, when it first aired, audiences probably saw it as a redo or a self-contained episode.

Or what was popular back then were time travel episodes where you just go back in

time and everything is back to normal.

It's all about just getting the show back to the status quo.

And that might be also how the writers even understood it back then.

But in 2024, we're all more aware of

alternate timelines and multiverse stories,

or even the theory that everything we know might be a simulation.

So this episode has more emotional impact because we're more educated as viewers.

Because rather than thinking this episode never happened,

for me watching right now,

this episode,

everything that happened in this episode did happen.

It's just that Ben went to a timeline where it didn't.

But that sacrifice and pain all were part of the main timeline.

And in the main timeline,

Cisco died.

In that universe, Jake died and Cisco died.

They both died.

We, the audience, got to see that.

We, the audience, and Cisco then got taken to a different universe where those things didn't happen.

So then think about that.

Jake saw his father die.

Then Ben saw Jake die.

Understanding how alternate timelines work,

but also understanding sacrifice and having my parents die and wishing I could go

back in time to somehow prevent that or wishing I could go to an alternate timeline

where they were still alive,

but also having my own son in this timeline.

This episode hit me very, very hard.

When Jake said that for the boy that he was,

that he needs his father,

and that's why he needs to cut the cord,

that hit so hard.

Yeah.

So much of my life philosophy is about things I needed to hear when I was growing up.

To be the parent I never had.

To be the advocate I never had.

So much of my writing and things I tell people are things I wish someone told me.

The boy that I was.

The grace I never got.

Who would I have been if my parents never died?

But then again, would I have my son if they didn't?

And for Ben, he has to carry that knowledge of what really happened all by himself.

His son died saving his life.

If Jake never went on that trip with his dad on the Defiant, Ben would have never had a second chance.

He wouldn't have had a son who would have waited till he was an old man to cut the

cord and bring him back.

So everything that happened had to happen the way it happened to save Ben in this

at least alternate timeline,

or you would have lost him in every timeline.

So that hit hard.

There's also an allegory that could only be felt and understood now.

We can't replicate the past.

We can't relive the past.

Yet, Jake is trying to live in the past and recreate the past.

And it has to do with being unable to accept the present for what it is,

not being able to move on,

not being able to let go.

Nostalgia actually is a form of sadness.

And so in today's context, you look at how many reboots there are.

We're permanently living in the 90s.

And people can't get enough of it because they want to recreate that era.

They want to recreate that feeling.

They want to go back 20,

30,

40 years,

recreate that FOMO,

recreate that excitement that they can't get today.

That childhood.

Look at this show.

We did this show because so many people wanted us to do this show.

And I guess this episode made me really think about that motivation.

Why do so many seek the past?

Why is the past so appealing?

A part of that is a fear of death.

Part of that is unhappiness with now.

And part of that is the Western inability to deal with impermanence.

Death is not something the West talks about a lot, even though they do a lot of it.

They do a lot of the world's killing.

So there's that element.

A lot of Americans right now are Jake Sisko.

Constantly re-watching and re-listening to things from the past, reboots, sequels, remakes.

So the sadness that Jake has is the motivation.

So how many people now must feel that?

The fact that these things like X-Men 97, so many of these old things are so popular now.

If it's well made, great.

But the fact that people are seeking old things instead of new things is also very revealing.

Happy people look forward to things.

Unhappy people look to the past, generally.

So as an allegory, there's a way to read this about us, that we are all Jake Sisko.

And maybe a lot of us wish they could relive the past.

There's an uncomfortable reality here.

It's not just conservatives or liberals who look fondly to the past.

Leftists do it too.

We can learn from the past, but we shouldn't replicate it.

We have to learn from the past to create a better future.

Instead of bringing back the ancestors, we have to learn from the ancestors.

Why doesn't the future excite us?

Well, settler colonial capitalism has sucked all the fun out of it.

And it's already created a trajectory where the way things are headed,

it isn't a future to look forward to.

Revolutionary politics to me is about looking to the future, not trying to replicate the past.

So ultimately revolution is about creating an alternative future.

So there's that political philosophical read of this episode as well.

Scott, with death, alternate timelines, regrets, and the boy that you were and could have been.

Do you have thoughts about the philosophy of this episode?

Sacrifice?

So, as an episode, I wasn't loving it, you know?

And then,

because sometimes I get lost in the makeup,

but I still am glad that they did makeup versus having the same actor.

It's something that...

I really hate about the new de-aging process that's been done in film these days.

Yes.

Where they just have the same actor play all the characters.

Like I like getting a little visit from some new people and, and seeing how they do it.

Um,

So I think in listening to you talk about the episode,

I am reminded that this episode really helps show this bond that father and son

have with each other and how much they love each other and how much they're

connected to each other.

And what Jake did for Ben, Ben would 10 times over do for Jake.

And just this need for them to have each other in their life is just very compelling storytelling.

And again,

what makes Deep Space Nine different from all other Star Trek shows is the family,

the connections,

the characters.

And I think a lot of that is because you stay in one place as opposed to traveling

to a new place every week.

I think there's a difference between,

let's say,

emotional impact and just what's in the writing,

how well it was executed.

And for me, I felt a lot more of the episode emotionally.

If all those same things I mentioned, right?

If I was a different person, how would I perceive this episode?

I don't know.

I can only perceive it as I am, right?

If my wife watched this or somebody else watched this, who knows how they would feel about it.

But I gave the context, right?

And this is a theme, right?

in general of not just SDS nine,

but just the whole Southpaw philosophy context contextualizes everything.

Everything is always in relationship to context.

You can never think about anything in isolation.

Everything is always integrated.

So with that said,

I'd love to know how you rated this episode,

especially with the new relative scale for season four.

So in the new relative scale,

it is very interesting because like,

even though when I was first thinking about how I was going to rate this episode,

it wasn't that high,

but again,

it's still better than like a third of season three and all of season one and much

of season two.

Right.

So yeah,

From an emotionally resonant point of view, I'm going to give it a three and a half.

Especially because you could argue whether it's a mythology episode or not,

but I'm giving it a solid three and a half.

There's nothing particularly wrong with it.

I just don't always love time travel episodes,

even though you pointed out that it's technically not time travel because all of it

does happen.

But

Time travel frustrates me.

I'm curious also if I ever watch this episode again,

how I feel because,

you know,

the thing about emotional impact,

right?

The first time you watch it, you're like, damn, damn, I felt that.

And then you watch it again and you're like, wait, some of this was cheap.

They use music.

They used a lot of like tricks to kind of get you to feel something emotional, right?

Rather than just making it really,

really rock solid,

like you remembered,

there's a lot of like cheesy movies where I was really hit hard emotionally.

And then you watch it again and you're like, wait a minute.

It wasn't as deep or as like emotional as I thought.

They just like used a lot of, you know, they know how to like manipulate people's emotions.

My point is, is just because it's emotional doesn't necessarily mean it's always good.

And maybe this episode will stand for me if I watch it again.

Oh yeah.

Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

Bashir takes a look at harm reduction.

Until then...