{"id":284082,"date":"2026-02-10T15:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/284082\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:37:12","slug":"31-years-later-star-trek-just-made-a-classic-episode-even-harder-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/284082\/","title":{"rendered":"31 Years Later, Star Trek Just Made a Classic Episode Even Harder to Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star Trek<\/a> has the gift and the curse of being one of the most relevant sci-fi franchises ever created. So many visions of the future that Star Trek imagined have actually come to pass, and even they they may be slower in the coming, so are many of the alturistic ideals the franchise introduced to mainstream audiences. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s all to say: it\u2019s impossible not to have your perspective on Star Trek change with time. Certain epiosdes that once seemded so far \u2018out there\u2019 and fantastical now seem mundane in modern context; other episodes that seemed provacatie or foward-thinking at one time, now seem woefully outdated or misguided in the modern era. <\/p>\n

Then there are the rare gems of Star Trek episodes that only get deeper and more resonant with more age, more life experience, or more Star Trek content that significantly changes or reframes or prior understanding. And one of the best examples of the latter is an episode that aired over 30 years ago, but gets exponentionally harder to watch now, emotionally speaking, since there has been so much additoinal lore built around it \u2013 including in Star Trek\u2019s latest show! <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Visitor\u201d Is One of Star Trek\u2019s Most Deeply Emotional Sci-Fi Stories<\/p>\n

\"\"CBS \u2013 Paramount<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Visitor\u201d is the third episode in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/a> Season 4, wich first aired in 1995. The story of the episode sees Deep Space Nine space station captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) save the ship USS Defiance by sacrificing himself in an warp core accident that blasts Sisko into subspace, out of sync with the normal flow of time\/space in our reality. Ben\u2019s son Jake (Cirroc Lofton) is soon visited by the \u201cghost\u201d of his father, which becomes a sporadic recurrence in the boy\u2019s life whenver certain cosmic conditions are right. Jake becomes convinced he can learn the pattern and save his dad, and it slowly becomes his life\u2019s obessession. <\/p>\n

Jake\u2019s mission costs him a career as a successful writer and a marriage to a good woman; he even pulls his old friends and colleagues from DS9 out of retirement to try to recreate the accident that made his dad disappear. The end of the episode was unusually dark for Star Trek: The entire story is framed by an elderly Jake recounting Ben Sisko\u2019s disappearance to a writing fan who tracked him down for a chat. During the climax of the episode, the visitor leaves the elderly Jake, and Ben Sisko\u2019s subpsace ghost returns to visit his son one last time. <\/p>\n

(SPOILERS!) It\u2019s reavaled that an injection Old Man Jake gave himself at the beginning of the episode was actually poison: Jake is the thether that keeps pulling Ben Sisko out of subspace for brief moments, on an endless loop. By dying, Jake gives his dad the opportunity to break the tether and ride the subspace connection all the way back to the start of the warp core accident, decades before. On the second go, Ben avoids the warp core blast and his subspace purgatory, thereby averting the entire timeline where Jake had to sacrifice his life and joy to rescue his father. Ben hugs the young Jake tightly, knowing more than ever how important his role is as a dad, an dhow much his son loves him. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Visitor\u201d Foreshadows The Ultimate Fate of Cpt. Ben Sisko <\/p>\n

\"\"Ben & Jake Sisko, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine \/ CBS \u2013 Paramount<\/p>\n

At the end of DS9, Ben Sisko was finally forced to face his destiny as \u201cThe Emissary of the Prophets,\u201d a major religous figure of prophecy in the religion of the Bajoran people. One of Sisko\u2019s formative acts for proving his power as a the Emissary was discovering the Bajoran wormhole, which was the only stable wormhole in the Milky Way galaxy. The Bajoran\u2019s believed that the wormhole provided passage to a divine place they referred to as the \u201cCelestial Temple,\u201d and that The Emissary\u2019s ultimate destiny was to reach that place and join the rest of the prophets before him. <\/p>\n

That destiny came to pass in the DS9 finale, when Sisko sacrifices himself to the hellish flames in the Fire Caves on Bajor, to stop his evil rival Dukat (Marc Alaimo) from the apocalyptic act of releasing the dreaded Pah-wraiths entities into the galaxy. Instead of death, Benjamin Sisko was transported to the Celestial Temple alongside the other Bajoran prophets, where he is informed he will still have lifetimes of divine work ahead of him. <\/p>\n

Sisko\u2019s Fate Is Even More Tragic After Re-Watching \u201cThe Visitor\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"CBS \u2013 PARAMOUNT<\/p>\n

The entire thematic point of \u201cThe Visitor\u201d is taking a deep (and sometimes uncomfortable) look at the bond between parent and child. While so many other TV shows and films present that bond as the purest form of love and connection, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine boldly added a layer of context for how that bond can also become toxic to the child, resulting in parental issues that hinder them from living their best life. On a more personal character note, The episode reinforced the father\/son bond between Ben and Jake Sisko in a way no other Star Trek show ever has. Jake loved his father enough to sacrifice his entire (alternate) lifetime and last bit of life to save his dad; Ben was forever changed as a father, knowing just how profoundly his absence could affect his son\u2019s life. <\/p>\n

\u2026That brings us back to Deep Space Nine\u2018s final two-episode story arc, \u201cWhat You Leave Behind\u201d. Part of Ben Sisko\u2019s evolution into \u201cThe Emissary\u201d was detaching from his human connections \u2013 as evidenced in one of the final scenes where Sisko appears to his wife, Kasidy (Penny Johnson), in a vision. The aloof way that Ben interacts with her and the cryptic platitudes he speaks in let Kasidy (and the audience) know that the divine being \u201cThe Emissary\u201d is not exactly the same warm, passionate, very human man she once knew. <\/p>\n

\"\"Ben Sisko says goodbye in \u201cWhat You Leave Behind\u201d \/ CBS \u2013 Paramount<\/p>\n

After rewatching \u201cThe Visitor\u201d, it\u2019s impossible not to feel the tragic loss of Jake and Ben\u2019s bond, as the latter became something more than human<\/a>, and had to leave those connections behind. It\u2019s also why the makers of Deep Space Nine had the show\u2019s final scene be one where viewers get reassurance that a fatherless Jake won\u2019t end up the same way as his variant from \u201cThe Visitor\u201d, as Kira joins him watching the Celestial Temple and remembering the respective loved ones they\u2019ve lost. Meanwhile, fans had even more reason to love Ben Sisko, and feel his loss just as much as Jake did. <\/p>\n

The new Star Trek TV series Starfleet Academy has now revisited the Sisko family<\/a>, and brought fans some nice closure to any lasting anxiety about Jake and Ben\u2019s relationship. Be sure to check that out. <\/p>\n

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine can be streamed on Paramount+. Discuss your favorite episodes with us over on the ComicBook Forum<\/a>! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star Trek has the gift and the curse of being one of the most relevant sci-fi franchises ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[145687,145688,146,85,46,145689,53235,12119,143539,93185,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-284082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-avery-brooks","9":"tag-benjamin-sisko","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-jake-sisko","14":"tag-regular-feature","15":"tag-star-trek","16":"tag-star-trek-deep-space-nine","17":"tag-star-trek-starfleet-academy","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}