Last weekend brought with it the sad news of death of Tony Todda beloved actor with a career that spans a litany of iconic roles in film and television. While many will consider everything about its history a horror story the greatest enemies of candy man until his delightful performance last year as Spider-Man 2the venomthere will always be a special place in our hearts for Todd’s connection to Star Trek– and in particular the role he played in the creation of one of the New deep spacebiggest episodes.

Todd had several Hiking appearances in his storied career – a light but fun role as Alpha Hirogen in Traveler“Prey”, examining the ethics of the Discount Predator species newly introduced to the series, or perhaps most famously from his guest role in TNG and finally DS9 as Kurn, Worf’s tragic brother. But by far, his best turn is anchored by one of the latter’s all-time greats, and perhaps one of the finest hours of Star Trek there has always been “The Visitor”.

The third episode of New deep spacethe fourth season of (as the series began to pivot its examination of Starfleet and its saints in heaven with the impending storm that would Dominion War arc), “The Visitor” follows a heartbreaking timeline centered on Todd as an older Jake Sisko. Acting as a framing device where old Jake is visited by a young woman who dreams of becoming a writer like him – and dismayed that Jake has abandoned his writing career after only a handful of published stories – “The Visitor ” follows Jake as he tries to live without his father after an accident aboard the Of challenge while on a routine science mission, apparently kills Captain Sisko.

Much of the episode is a back-and-forth between the tragedy of Jake being completely uprooted by the loss of his father and the mystery surrounding the eventual revelation that the elder Sisko was not killed in the accident , but stuck outside of time in subspace. , becoming the titular visitor as he is occasionally brought back into Jake’s life as he ages and becomes obsessed with finding a way to save him.

It is one of the best played pieces of Star Trek story – Avery Brooks is on fire as Ben Sisko, with an emotionality on display that will ultimately be rivaled only by his turn in “Far Beyond the Stars,” and Cirroc Lofton, Jake’s regular actor, gives a better performance of the series by going through the initial story. grief over losing Sisko in his flashbacks. But even side by side with show-defining introductions, it’s Jake, Todd’s eldest, who really cements the emotional arc of “The Visitor.” We meet Jake’s version of Todd in two forms in the episode: initially and primarily as an old man, in the twilight of his life, and briefly as a young adult reserving one last attempt to get Captain Sisko out of the sub. space, and what is happening? What’s fascinating about Todd’s performance as Jake’s different forms is how radically in tune he is with Lofton’s incarnation of the character – until he doesn’t. absolutely not do it.

When we are introduced to Jake, the eldest, there is at first a kind of discomfort that Todd quietly delights in. feel as the same character, not only because of his age, but because there’s a spark that’s all but disappeared from the man Todd brilliantly conveys. When he begins to tell the story of how he lost his father to his own visitor, Melanie, you sometimes begin to see a spark in Todd’s eye, the storyteller in Jake manages to weave a tale worthy of hourly television prime time, but it also disappears quickly. , as Older Jake and the episode begin to focus on flashbacks and establishing the truth behind Captain Sisko’s “death”. Todd’s Jake, when we meet him, has lost so much of himself in his dogged pursuit of his father’s memory that the tragedy becomes how little of him we can see in Todd, and the tragedy behind that, and everything is relayed in manners. we see Todd take on his version of Jake.

It’s only when the flashbacks start to catch up with an older Jake that everything starts to come together. Eventually, Sisko returns briefly from subspace to find his son living his life beyond the grief of loss. He is married to a young Bajoran woman, Korena, and his last (and ultimately last) published work received a prestigious prize. But it’s Jake himself who is the most joyous thing for his father and for us as an audience: Todd changes direction by playing the adult Jake in these scenes, taking on Lofton’s mannerisms and intonation a bit more clearly for the public. , but also by adopting some of Brooks’ ways of merging father and child. The spark that was buried deep in his performance as Old Jake is brought to the forefront, a lightness and playfulness that hits the audience like an emotional truck, because as soon as it’s there, it’s gone.

As quickly as we see this version of Jake who has managed to move on from his father’s tragedy, the cycle of grief leads him back to obsession – and Todd depicts this decline as skillfully as he does any other moment in Jake’s life in the episode. Abandoning his career and ultimately even his wife to pursue the know-how to bring his father out of subspace for good, the final act of “The Visitor” culminates when Jake, having collected most of the former DS9 crew, attempts to recreate the accident that took his father from him all those years ago.

Again, this Jake is Todd in another form, the bridge between the older man we were first introduced to and then this brief, brilliant moment of adult Jake. He fails, briefly breaking into subspace with Captain Sisko, but this time Jake emerges not to have seen his father again, but to be obsessed by this failure, while Sisko “the elder” (who thinks that her son is now older than ever). was) led a wonderful life following in his father’s footsteps. The bitterness, the anger, the frustration, Todd goes through it all while creating a distinctly unique version of Jake for the third time in the episode, hammering home the wound of Jake’s generational trauma.

And again, it’s when “The Visitor” brings him back to the older Jake we first met in his final moments that Todd ties all of these forms of Jake together. His mercuriality sparkles in the final twist scene he has with Brooks, explaining the final gamble he made to bring back his father and the “real” timeline of DS9, ending his own life while Sisko is in the he real space to breathe the “elastic” bond that has kept father and son connected over the years. Todd relies on everything: this bitter regret, this joy of weaving a story, this eternal love between child and parent: the audience not only mourns this form of death of the character, even if it is defeated, but the same idea that Jake must have cost himself dearly, over decades of suffering, to undo this life and restore DS9 to normality. It’s an incredible thing to have to convey as a guest star, in a single episode, taking on the role of a legacy character. But Todd’s masterful performance achieves it and is a huge part of what makes “The Visitor” one of the Star Trekthe greatest episodes of.

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