“Second Sight”
Written by Mark Gehred-O’Connell and Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Directed by Alexander Singer
Season 2, Episode 9
Production episode 40512-429
Original air date: November 21, 1993
Stardate: 47329.4
Station log: Sisko’s been having trouble sleeping. It took him a few days to realize that it’s the fourth anniversary of his wife Jennifer’s death at Wolf 359. He’s concerned that the date almost passed without him noticing it consciously. Jake also is having trouble sleeping—he had a weird dream about not being able to find his way back to their quarters or his father. Before going back to sleep, Jake says, “Dad—I miss her.” Sisko quietly says, “Me, too.”
Still sleepless, Sisko walks the Promenade, staring out into space. He’s surprised by a woman named Fenna, and they start to chat about constellations and commanding the station and such. At one point Sisko looks away, starting to offer her a tour of the station, but when he turns back to her, she’s gone.
The next morning, Sisko shows up at ops in a spectacularly good mood. He also orders a tea instead of his usual morning raktajino. Dax then summons him to the science lab to meet the terraformer, Dr. Gideon Seyetik. The professor is charming, gregarious, outgoing, and incredibly full of himself. He’s here to reignite the sun Epsilon 119, which will be his crowning achievement as a scientist.
Later, Dax and Sisko are having dinner, and she notices that he’s distracted. After she leaves, Fenna appears out of nowhere. She apologizes for disappearing and asks if the offer of a station tour is still open. The tour goes swimmingly, and he invites her to have a picnic with him on an upper pylon the following evening. But when he asks her to talk about herself, she panics and runs away.
At breakfast the next morning, Jake guesses that Sisko is in love and gives the notion of his father in a relationship his blessing. Sisko then asks Odo if he can find out anything about Fenna, though the amount of information he can provide is minimal. Dax takes Sisko aside and asks him to tell her about Fenna, which he promises to do as soon as there’s something to say.
The senior staff boards the Prometheus to have dinner with Seyetik. The meal is prepared by hand by Seyetik’s wife, Nidell—who turns out to be a dead ringer for Fenna. She looks miserable, and after dinner she insists that she never met Sisko before this evening. She reacts oddly when Sisko mentions the name Fenna, but she also insists that he’s mistaken her for someone else. As an added wrinkle, Odo informs Sisko that Seyetik is the only person who has left the Prometheus since it docked.
When he returns to his quarters, Fenna appears and embraces him. She insists that she isn’t Nidell and she isn’t married to Seyetik—and she doesn’t have a twin sister that she’s aware of. They kiss—and then she suddenly disappears right in front of him.
Sisko decides to join Dax on the Prometheus for the reignition of Epsilon 119 to see if he can find out what the hell’s going on. Seyetik regales him with the story of how he met Nidell.
To his surprise, Fenna appears in Sisko’s cabin. He immediately calls Dax to his quarters. She insists that she’ll never leave him again—but when Dax examines her, she finds no mass, only energy. They go to Seyetik’s quarters, only to find Nidell in a coma. To Sisko’s shock, Seyetik recognizes Fenna, saying Nidell promised him she’d never return. Seyetik explains that Nidell is a psychoprojective telepath, and that Fenna is a subconscious expression of her. Dax takes Fenna to Sisko’s quarters, and Seyetik admits the truth to Sisko: in times of deep, emotional stress, this sort of thing can happen. She’s grown weary of living with Seyetik, just like all of his previous wives, but her people mate for life, so she’s stuck with him, and that misery is leading to the projection of Fenna.
Sisko convinces Fenna to go back to Nidell, even though it means her “death.” Their relationship is only a dream—Nidell’s dream. They kiss one last time, then Dax summons Sisko to the bridge. Seyetik is on the shuttle that’s delivering the protomatter, which is a suicide mission (it was supposed to be a remote controlled shuttle). This is his crowning achievement, which he’d be hard-pressed to top, and besides, this is the only way to free Nidell. She deserves that much.
Seyetik crashes the shuttle, the sun is reignited, Fenna disappears, and Nidell recovers. She comes to say goodbye to Sisko, and says she wishes she could remember Fenna. Sisko says it’s all right—he can remember for them both. He also lies and says that Fenna was just like Nidell.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Seyetik’s plan to reignite the sun involves delivering protomatter that will convert the star’s elements to hydrogen.
The Sisko is of Bajor: For the first time since Jennifer died, Sisko is able to flirt with a woman and consider the possibility of a relationship. But it all goes to crap when she turns out to be a telepathic projection. Don’t you hate when that happens?
Rules of Acquisition: Quark instantly recognizes when Sisko is having woman issues and offers him a drink and a holosuite, both of which he turns down. Quark drinks the drink himself.
The slug in your belly: Dax gives Sisko a hard time for not telling her about Fenna, saying that he used to tell Curzon everything, and admitting that it’s harder to have a man-to-man talk with a woman.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: According to Nog, as reported by Jake to Sisko, there are three signs to being in love: loss of appetite, daydreaming, and smiling more than usual. Jake sees those signs in his father after he gives Fenna the tour of the station.
Keep your ears open: “Commander, do you think he’d notice if we weren’t here when he got back?”
“Don’t even think about it, Major. I’ve had dinner with about two dozen Bajoran ministers. I think you owe me this one. Besides, Seyetik is one of the Federation’s greatest minds.”
“I know—he told me.”
Sisko and Kira on Seyetik’s insufferability.
Welcome aboard: The late great Richard Kiley plays Seyetik with verve and panache, while Mark Erickson creates no impression whatsoever as Piersall, the Prometheus CO.
But this episode’s Robert Knepper moment is the dual role of Fenna and Nidell, played by a woman credited here as Salli Elise Richardson, but who’s probably better known these days as Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who played Dr. Allison Blake throughout the entire run of Eureka.
Trivial matters: The Battle at Wolf 359 happened during TNG’s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” and Jennifer Sisko’s death during that battle was seen in “Emissary.”
Protomatter was last seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, where its inherent instability led to the failure of the Genesis device.
Seyetik appears again, after a fashion, in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers story Ishtar Rising by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels, which is about terraforming. Martin and Mangels also named a ship after him, the U.S.S. Seyetik, in the Titan novel Taking Wing.
Piersall is identified in the script as a lieutenant commander, but his uniform has a junior-grade lieutenant’s pips (the same mistake would later that year be made on Data’s uniform in the past segments of TNG’s finale “All Good Things…”). The Prometheus itself is unsubtly named after the Greek god who brought fire to humanity.
Seyetik and Sisko talk about a poem entiled “The Fall of Kang,” which is implied to chronicle the final battle of Kang, the Klingon first seen in “Day of the Dove” on the original series. However later this season, Kang will show up alive and well in “Blood Oath.”
Walk with the Prophets: “Let there be light!” To give you an idea how memorable this episode isn’t, when Mike Martin and Andy Mangels turned in their manuscript to me for Ishtar Rising, I assumed that Seyetik was a character they made up. I may have even mentioned that with a name like that, shouldn’t he be a Vulcan? At which point Mike gently reminded me that this was a character who appeared in DS9.
Yeah.
Having said that, the episode isn’t as bad as I feared it would be (I still had almost no memory of it, despite rewatching it back in 2003 when Ishtar Rising came in), which is entirely on the backs of the guest actors. Richard Kiley attacks the role of Seyetik with gusto, finding a nice balance of egotism and charm (a balance that Ken Jenkins failed to manage with a similar role in TNG’s “Evolution”), and the actor formerly known as Salli Elise Richardson does a very nice job in her dual role, displaying both Fenna’s joy and Nidell’s miserable reserve. And the flirting between Sisko and Fenna is well played by both Richardson and Avery Brooks.
But it doesn’t make up for the fact that this feels like yet another transplanted TNG concept—and honestly this probably would’ve worked better on TNG (c’mon, we can all see Riker in Sisko’s place, right?), since it’s really more of a shipboard adventure, and the Prometheus just fits awkwardly into the whole setting. It’s not even clear why the ship needed to be at DS9 in the first place, except that the plot called for it, and the Prometheus crew is strangely absent (like why doesn’t Seyetik call for the ship’s doctor instead of asking Dax, who has no medical training, to help Nidell?).
Warp factor rating: 3
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest book is Ragnarok and Roll: Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet, a collection of urban fantasy short stories taking place in Key West, Florida. Look for more on the book on Tor.com in the coming weeks.
Is it bad that the only thing I remebered about this episode is Richard Keily crashing into the sun? Sisko flurting with a pretty woman is a good thing especially Salli Richardson. I miss Eureka a lot.
You didn’t mention Salli Richardson’s other major starring role in a genre series, as Elisa Maza in Gargoyles. That series came along a year after this, so it wasn’t until seeing this one in reruns that I realized, “Hey, that’s Elisa!” (Other Gargoyles players included Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Avery Brooks, Colm Meaney, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nichols, and Trek guests Paul Winfield, John Rhys-Davies, David Warner, Clancy Brown, Matt Frewer, W. Morgan Sheppard, Michael Bell, Gerritt Graham, and Clyde Kusatsu.)
This episode never did that much for me, but I loved Richard Kiley in it. His final moment — “Let there be light!” — was amazing. And Richardson did a good job with what she had, but man, her hairstyles were very unflattering.
Forget Eureka; I miss her on Gargoyles as the voice of Elisa Maza.
I have absolutley no recollection of this episode. It is, as krad notes, utterly forgettable. So based strictly on this writeup, I have to say that Seyetik’s sacrifice doesn’t really ring true. This is supposedly the absolute pinnacle of his career and he a) doesn’t want to see that it really worked and b) bask in the glory and acclaim of success? I’m not buying it.
Of course it’ll work: I never fail! Well, I did once, but I found it didn’t agree with me, so I swore never to do it again, and I never break my word.” – Seyetik (quoted from Memory Alpha’s entry on the episode).
Probably the only memorable thing aboiut this episode, and Kiley says it. I watch anything starring him to this day just because of that one line. Go fig.
Trivia tidbit: I did not know Ms Richardson was the voice of Elisa Maza in Disney’s animated series, Gargoyles. One more Star Trek actress on that show, who’s gonig to notice?
@@.-@ DemetriosX – to be fair he probably was so full of his own ego that he couldn’t conceive of how it wouldn’t work.
I remember this episode only because I thought it was rather inconvenient on Nidell’s part to not fully think about what being mated to him would be like.
For some reason, I remembered only the beginning with Sisko missing his late wife and Jake doing the same but nothing else about this episode AT ALL. I must have thought that that beginning simply wasn’t this episode but another because I don’t even remember this one existing…not sure I do now if I hadn’t just read that.
@@@@@ 2, Either your memory is much better than mine, or your Google-fu skills are world-class. I remembered all the TNG stars save Levar, and none of actors after him in your list. Nice work!
Maybe it’s just me, but I found Sisko’s closing “She was just like you” to be vaguely creepy. Maybe it was supposed to be flattering or complimentary, but it was still weird, given that he was pretty involved with the “other” version of a married woman, who was now a widow.
This is that strange period when the timeline seemed to deviate slightly from previously established rules. The fourth anniversary of Wolf 359 should have been at the end of the year. DS9 and TNG scripts around this time were somewhat haphazard with the 1,000 stardates=1 year concept.
Agreed. A forgettable episode and not one of my favorites. The plot seemed to be missing enough to keep it interesting.
Bobby
Wow. I watched this episode recently, but completely failed to recognize Salli Richardson-Whitfield. Her face has, IMO, benefitted greatly from the intervening years.
DemetriosX @@.-@: This is supposedly the absolute pinnacle of his career and he a) doesn’t want to see that it really worked and b) bask in the glory and acclaim of success? I’m not buying it.
He was overcome with guilt about Nidell’s misery, and could only release her by dying. He’d failed her as a husband, and couldn’t stand failure. And it’s just the sort of grandstand gesture an egomaniac would come up with.
I remember loathing this episode when I first saw it, but it grows on me with each re-watch and I have a fond spot for it now.
Odd detail, and I know it’s for the purposes of plot, but none of the crew of the Prometheus popped out to have a look at DS9? Really? All shore leave cancelled? Had the captain just had a unhappy love affair?
Really, it would have made more sense if the Prometheus had been one of the little Oberth-class ships instead of a Nebula. It’s more conceivable that such a small (by TNG standards) ship could have a lieutenant or lieutenant commander in charge and a tiny crew with no proper doctor.
I thought this episode was terrible. There are a few nice bits that rescue it from the true nether-regions, but on the whole: bleh.
The stuff with Sisko and Dax is fun. I like seeing them as friends. And I like the general notion of Sisko starting to realize he can have romantic feelings, particularly when this gives Jake a chance to show that he’s a good kid. But this episode utterly fails to actually explore any of that stuff.
Instead of giving us some sense of what it’s like to start thinking about love again, we get a VERY abrupt transition from ‘vaguely interested for the first time’ to ‘obsessively in love.’ It makes no sense and only seems to happen because the plot has veered wildly toward mystery/exploration for no particularly good reason.
Also, maybe I’m in the only one, but I felt less and less chemistry between them with every scene. The first meeting kind of works, but everything after that falls totally flat. The characters all struck me as weird, saying things that did not seem normal at all, and behaving irrationally all over the place for no good reason.
Bad acting, stupid plot. Not a strong moment for this season.
You have to admit that, in casting Richard Kiley as Seyetik, they spared no expense.
CharlesO: I think the chemistry between Brooks and Richardson-Whitfield was fine until the end of the tour of the station. The minute she ran away rather than give out personal info, the technobabble part of the plot kicked in and it went into the waste extractor….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A rather forgettable episode which, as Keith notes, probably would’ve fit better on TNG – though whether or not it would’ve been more memorable there, I’m not sure. It might have been nice to have seen more of Ben and Fenna’s initial romance, instead of rushing forth into the technobabble-laden final act and letting all the air out of it. Check out Avery Brooks’ body language through the episode, though – first when he thinks everything’s above board, then when he assumes that he’s been an unwitting participant in an affair, and finally when the truth is revealed and he realises that they can’t be together. Brooks has always been good at conveying strong emotion with his performances, and this episode is a good example.
Thought of the day: the Sisko men do seem to have a habit of falling in love with incorporeal energy beings, don’t they?
What made this rather meh for me was that I just wasn’t sold on the relationship being as deep as the actions seemed to suggest. They met and chatted a few times, were intrigued and attracted to each other, but I just wasn’t seeing this deep soul connection that I think it was trying to imply. I did like the general development of Sisko (and Jake)’s character though.
‘Let there be light!’ was a pretty great moment. But it actually immediately broght to mind when Sisko wanted to stop Li Nalis from killing himself instead of leadnig his people – much easier to die for a causae than to live for one. And how sad that for this guy, it’s easier to kill yourself and go out with this blaze of glory than to actually try and be a better husband. Off the hook!
You know, it’s interesting – I keep finding one common theme in most of the recent rewatches of the episodes that weren’t that memorable. Almost everyone says something like, “Yeah, the story sucked, but the interactions between the characters were spectacular.” Here, the interplay between Sisko and Dax and Sisko and Jake really rang true for me.
Since this is a common theme, I wonder why people are so hard on the first two seasons of DS9. In the first two seasons of TNG, you get terrible plots AND not great character development moments. Granted, DS9 does get better as we move along…
What Lisamarie said.
Yeah, I can see this with Riker, but it has more punch with Sisko and his missing his wife. The episode is mediocre, but not for a 3.
@15 – CharlesO: I wonder if the abrupt transituion to “obsessively in love” stems from the Niddel’s telepathy, as if she’s somehow influencing Sisko’s already existing attraction, because she feels lonely.
The plot contrivance of having the most egotistical narcissistic personality in the history of Star Trek end himself that way aside, I liked this one. The way Fenna’s dress shows the silhouette of her body makes this a 5 all by itself.
I agree that this would have worked better as a TNG episode with Riker in Sisko’s place. I can also see the plot working with Tom in the early seasons of Voyager (or as one of Harry’s many doomed romances) or with Trip in Enterprise. That said, I definitely enjoyed this episode more than most people here seemed to have done. The concept is interesting even if the script doesn’t really do it justice. Plus the excellent performances of both Richard Kiley and Salli Elise Richardson make it more memorable than it would have been otherwise, at least for me. Kira’s reaction to Seyetik’s planet sized ego was probably my favourite part, not least because I tend to react to such people in the same way in real life.
I had a bit of an epiphany while watching this episode this afternoon. I realised that I enjoy Avery Brooks’ performance in his quieter, sensitive moments, which abound on this occasion. Even though it’s still pretty early days, rewatching the series has already given me a greater appreciation of my least favourite captain (though he is still a commander at this stage). However, I have always really disliked his shout acting – with the sole exception of the breakdown scene in “Far Beyond the Stars” – and that shows no signs of changing.
The “sun igniting” plot doesn’t really make sense. I don’t think a sun will just “burn out” and can be “reignited” by crashing a shuttle into it. But hey, I am no expert.
The other plot about Sisko and Fenna isn’t really interesting, either. I mean, I get how important this is for Sisko to be able to move on after his wife died, but it doesn’t make for an interesting episode.
As a one off outing with the Sayetik character, I have to agree with Dr. Bashir that he was delightfully entertaining. However, if I met an egomaniac like him in real life, I’d probably have to side with Kira and get as far away from that person as possible. Else, I would probably want to punch him in the face.
Despite all the negative comments here, I LOVE this episode. Much like the entire DS9 series, it’s really grown on me. I didn’t think much of it when I first saw it, but it’s become one of my favorites. I think the story is very creative, and everyone in it gives a strong performance. Of course, a big part of this could be that I’m a big fan of Salli Richardson – I think she’s great in this episode. I’d love to know what she thought of this episode and the character she plays in it.
Sayetik isn’t a narcissist, he’s a dedicated self publicist and a brilliant one. The scene where he describes his past marriages (and the earlier scene where he questions why she could love him, directly contradicting his “narcissism”) shows what a sad and insecure figure he is under the bluster.
the sacrifice at the end was entirely in keeping with his character, and a man that old isn’t likely to change anything drastic about himself, nor have the ability to salvage his moribund marriage. For all its flaws this episode is a good character study, and I suspect anyone saying differently needs to get out and meet more people. I found the sacrifice at the end very moving.
I agree with #13. It seems awfully strange for none of the crew to have visited the station except the Professor. But thinking about it, I got the impression that the Prometheus was operating with a skeleton crew for some reason and it’s plausible that this project had what was left of the crew busy enough to not have time to take advantage of DS9‘s amenities. Admittedly I’m kind of reaching here, but it’s some kind of explanation I guess
Wow, I liked this a lot more than you, Krad, and some of the others, for a couple of reasons. First I have never been a big Sisko fan, Not of the character or the actor who portrays him. That said, I thought Avery Brooks did an amazing job here and that may have a lot to do with the screenplay, which, as someone noted before, allowed him to be more quiet and understated instead of exhibiting the weird mannerisms and histrionics that the character is prone to.
I also liked Jake in this episode, which is another rarity. The side-eye he gives his father at the end of their dinner conversation made me laugh out loud.
But the best thing about this episode for me was the interplay between Sisko and Nidell at the end, And the way it hinted at what the characters must have been going through since they found out about who Fenna was, and wasn’t. It was that much more poignant that Nidell wasn’t kept in the dark about Femna, and knew Sisko had been romantically involved with a creation of her own subconscious. I’m so glad they did not give in to the temptation of having Nidell remember anything about Fenna’s attraction to Sisko… Because it made Sisko’s last line that much more bittersweet. “She was just like you.”. The actors played that last scene perfectly and I was moved.