Deep Space Nine 4x3, “The Visitor”
I adore how Benjamin Sisko encourages and nurtures his son’s fledgling writing career, while also ensuring that Jake doesn’t let life pass him by. That’s a tough balance to strike, but you can tell that Benjamin does it and does it well by Jake’s response at the close of this conversation: Ben promises to read and discuss what Jake’s written so far if Jake will just come watch the wormhole with him; Jake says “Deal.” Jake lets Ben read his drafts, and values his father’s insight! Let me tell you, when I was Jake’s age I was secretive af about my writing; I didn’t like my parents to know it existed and I certainly never let them read a word of it. Jake trusts his father, respects his father, because Benjamin does the work to ensure that Jake knows how loved and respected he is.
This exchange is even more poignant when you know which episode of DS9 this is – it’s the one where, just minutes after this conversation, Benjamin is zapped by the warpcore and eventually discovered to be not dead, but lost in subspace. Jake is devastated by the loss of his father, his greatest supporter; and for all the long decades of his life, he is unable to gain closure for his grief because Ben is not dead, but truly, simply, “lost.” Not unlike his father, Jake drifts through the years – unable to make marriage work, scarcely able to write, because the need to help his father who had so often helped him eats at him so intensely.
“It’s life, Jake! You can miss it if you don’t open your eyes” – or if you are too overcome by grief without closure to pursue your own joy. But, spoiler alert for the episode, the love between father and son wins out – at the close of his long life adrift, Jake saves his father and gives them both a second chance to live life together.
Executive producer Ira Steven Behr wrote: “A love stronger than death. Usually that’s romantic love, but for this show, this series, we chose the love between a father and son” (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 270.
In her article on DS9′s revolutionary depiction of Black fatherhood, Angelica Jade Bastién writes:
“No series before or since has a portrayed a black father with such complexity, crafting him as a widow, a powerful authority figure, a religious icon, a man whose morals are formed in shades of gray and whose love of his son remained his guiding principle.
…‘The Visitor’ brings to the fore what separates Deep Space Nine from the more widely praised representations of black fatherhood: its continued dedication to revealing the emotional vulnerability of the black family at its center. Throughout ‘The Visitor,’ Sisko and Jake laugh, weep, and reveal just how deep their love goes for one another. Seeing black men cry, grapple with the historical importance of their existence, and remain beautifully, dynamically human is something no other science-fiction series on television has done with such panache.”
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