'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.
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.