Within the many additions to the Star Trek universe, there are pockets of truly heartbreaking moments that are impossible to think about without welling up. The Next Generation had Picard live an entire life inside a long destroyed civilizations' simulation, and the Original Series cast had the fabled goodbye to Spock in The Wrath of Khan film. It seems, however, that there is one series that is far more prone to turning on the waterworks, containing not only the truly tragic death of Jadzia Dax but also the sad tale of Jake Sisko: none other than Deep Space 9.
Jake Sisko is one of those characters that might be easy to forget. The son of the sometimes overly dramatic and often morally ambiguous space station commander Benjamin Sisko, he pops in and out during the series, but is often overlooked when focusing on the whole dominion war and political quagmire that is Deep Space 9. This said, there are plenty of episodes and storylines that revolve around him, and none so pivotal and heart-wrenching as “The Visitor.” This episode not only shows the deep and profound love between father and son, but also how the ghosts of the past can make it impossible to properly grieve and move on.
The episode begins with an old man, who is later revealed to be an elderly Jake. It starts fairly mysteriously: He injects himself with a strange liquid, after which he receives a knock at his door and finds a young aspiring writer, who is a big fan of the books Jake has written over the years. He shows her in and they begin to talk. She asks him why he stopped writing, to which Jake replies that it all started the day his father died. This is as dramatic as it sounds, and theatrics aside, is one of the best opening sequences to a Star Trek episode ever made. He goes on to tell her of the accident that caused his father's apparent demise, but that he was not in fact dead; instead, he was lost in time.
Time passes and Sisko is mourned, his colleagues, friends, and family unable to even find his body. A number of years pass. The wonderful Nog becomes his own Starship captain, and Jake himself moves on from the loss of his father and gets married. His life seems pretty good, and despite still deeply feeling the void left by his father, he has a happy marriage and is a successful writer.
It is during this time that Sisko appears, years and years after his disappearance — but for him, it was merely seconds. He appears for a short amount of time and then is gone again just as quickly, leaving Jake re-traumatized by what must have felt like losing his father all over again. He becomes obsessive and spends years researching what happened during the accident, even calling in favors from his old friend Nog. The two of them, alongside a much older Jadzia Dax and Dr. Julian Bashir, as well as ambassador Worf, band together on a totally unsanctioned mission to recreate the accident that caused Sisko’s time entrapment. However, the mission fails, leaving Jake even more depressed and distraught than before. His life starts to fall apart around him, having quit writing and lost his wife to his obsession with his father. He continues researching though, learning more and more for what is suggested to be another 50 years.
Coincidentally, the night that he received his writing fan visitor is also supposed to be the last time his father would appear, or at least the last time Jake will see him, as he is old and will not survive long enough to see him again. It is suggested that it is their connection that is keeping Benjamin Sisko relatively bound to reality and that after their connection is severed and Jake dies, Sisko will be lost forever in time. Jake sends his fan away with an original manuscript and falls asleep in his chair. He is woken up much later by his father, who has rematerialized and had been quietly watching him as he slept.
There is a visible pain in Sisko’s face — no father should ever see their child grow so old and die before they do. Jake explains that the moment he dies and their connection is severed, the first thing that will happen is that Sisko will return to the exact moment of the accident, just to repeat the same series of events time and time again. It’s revealed that all of Jake's research, the years and years of study that destroyed his marriage and career, was not just about understanding the accident and bringing his father out of the time prison he was trapped in. It was also about how to avoid the accident in the first place. Jake tells his father how to survive and the steps he must take in order to avert the disaster.
It is at this point audiences learn that the suspicious liquid from the start of the episode was in fact poison and that in order to send Sisko back to the exact right moment in time, the connection between the two had to be severed while they were together in one moment in time. Jake committed suicide just so his father could live, not knowing if it would work or even if it would affect his timeline. As he passes, Sisko mourns his son. It’s a moment that should go down in Star Trek history for being one of the most heart wrenchingly profound moments in the franchise. As he dies, the connection is broken and Sisko is indeed sent back to the moment of his accident. With the advice of his son, he is able to avoid getting trapped.
The scene ends with Sisko emotionally hugging his still young son, realizing the incredible extent of his love for him and what extreme lengths Jake would go to in order to save his dad. He also realizes the impact he has on his son's life and that with the horrific loss of his mother at the hands of the Borg, he cannot take the loss of another parent and that he needs his father much more than Sisko first thought. It’s moments like this where audiences see into the deep personal lives of the protagonists, and each and every decision Sisko makes to protect his son makes sense. While episodes such as “The Inner Light” and “The City of the Edge of Forever” are often remembered for their emotional storylines, “The Visitor” is often, wrongfully, overlooked and stands as some of the best Star Trek storytelling and acting out there.