Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #1 — “The Visitor” And “Far Beyond The Stars”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the 60th anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September 8th, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

Currently, the youthful but legacy filled series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy holds the torch as it airs on Paramount Plus. A recent episode turned its eyes towards that legacy by tackling a story tied to the much-beloved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series.

It feels apt then to start with two episodes from that series, both focused on the father and son dynamic of Captain Benjamin Sisko and Jake Sisko. This being Black History Month also factors in since this was a healthy dynamic Black father and son relationship.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“The Visitor”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 4, Episode 3 (10/07/1995)

In the aforementioned Starfleet Academy episode, there is a moment where we get some insight into the future of Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) regarding his missing father. This isn’t the first time that Trek has done a story focused on their dynamic and what it means to lose a father.

Synopsis: An accident in the Defiant’s engine room apparently claims Benjamin Sisko’s (Avery Brooks) life. Distraught, his son Jake tries to find his place in life until he begins to be visited by his father who is out of step with time. Through the decades, the younger Sisko becomes obsessed with returning his father to reality. A tragic and heartbreaking end resets everything as the duo is given a second chance.

So much of DS9’s core rested upon the relationship of these two. While Jake didn’t appear as much over time, their dynamic was still greatly important. Sisko’s choices reflected his trying to be a good father and a good commanding officer. Over time, that familial aspect extended to create a found family aesthetic amongst the crew.

Witnessing the extent that a son would go to get his father back was devastating to behold. Benjamin meant the world to his son, and Jake was willing to sacrifice everything to get back even just one more moment with his father.

As much as Trek is about the grander questions of life, the basics of humanity and human connection are always evident.

The late, great Tony Todd guest stars as the elder version of Jake and nails every bit of it. This was not Todd’s first entry into the franchise, as he played the Klingon brother of franchise regular Worf (Michael Dorn) a number of times. Seeing Todd playing a far older Jake to Brook’s “present” day Ben pulled at all of the emotional strings.

Star Trek has a habit of using strange made up science and occurrences to make plots happen. Sometimes though, like this episode, the strange science and patented technobabble take backseat to the heart. It allowed the characters to own the screen every moment we’re with them.

“Far Beyond the Stars”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 6, Episode 13 (02/09/1998)

Despite the cries from specific corners of the internet, Star Trek has always been tackling social and political issues. The answer to the question, “When did Star Trek become woke,” is always September 8th, 1966. One of the greatest episodes of Deep Space Nine runs with this in the most in your face way possible.

Synopsis: As the losses from the Dominion War stack up, Captain Sisko, in a moment of personal grief, ponders stepping down from command. Immediately he begins to see people and images seemingly pulled from the 1950s. A vision from the Prophets places Sisko in the shoes of Benny Russell, a ’50s science-fiction writer who struggles with civil rights and inequality as he writes the story of Captain Benjamin Sisko, a black commander of a futuristic space station.

I was thirteen years old when this episode aired. Despite being a child of an interracial pairing, Black father and White mother, my exposure to racism and the impacts was minimal at this point. I knew about things from what we learned in school, but we all know that the history in school even then was somewhat sanitized.

This episode stuck in my head instantly for how raw it is with the cutting bite of racism, sexism, and more that pops up. Brooks’ portrayal of Benny Russell is real and firm and captivating. Helping this is the fact that Brooks was also the episode’s director, giving it his all from both sides of the camera. That moment at the end, when Benny breaks down, screaming about what he created, and his realness was gut-punchingly heart wrenching.

“I am a human being, dammit! You can deny me all you want, but you can’t deny Ben Sisko — He exists! That future, that space station, all those people — they exist in here! In my mind. I created it. And every one of you knew it, you read it. It’s here. Do you hear what I’m telling you? You can pulp a story, but you cannot destroy an idea. Don’t you understand; that’s ancient knowledge, you cannot destroy an idea. That future — I created it, and it’s real! Don’t you understand? It is real. I created it. And it’s real!”

Even just typing it out here gives me chills. If you haven’t watched this moment ever or in some time, I recommend you pause reading right now and give this link a click.

One of the things that made Deep Space Nine stand out throughout its seven seasons was how much it didn’t pull punches. We remember it for how much it focused on the pain, suffering, and hardness of war. Beyond that though, it tackled these sorts of things from the very beginning and until the end. Leaving characters in desperate and often emotionally fraught situations, not offering easy answers to any of the issues it spotlighted.

There is no need to wag fingers or pontificate about the horror and pain that racism has always created. What Russell goes through peels it all back and showcases it with little comment. It stands opposed to earlier attempts in the franchise where alternatives were used to poke at racism in more subtle ways. Deep Space Nine had not time for subtlety, and was better off for it.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.