Television Review: Second Sight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S2x09, 1993)
Second Sight (S02E09)
Airdate: 20 November 1993
Written by: Mark Gehred-O'Connell, Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Directed by: Alexander Singer
Running Time: 46 minutes
Even within the franchise's Golden Age, where the budgets were substantial and the ambition vast, there are Star Trek instalments that, despite being well-acted and well-directed, fundamentally fail. They possess the technical polish of a premium production but lack the soul, the thematic resonance, or the narrative cohesion to truly belong to the Star Trek universe. One such impression can be given by Second Sight, an instalment from Season 2 of Deep Space Nine that, alongside its peers, is one of the more forgettable entries in the series' roster. It attempts to be a character study of Commander Sisko through the lens of a Hollywood romance, but the result feels like a glossy melodrama grafted awkwardly onto a gritty space station setting.
The episode opens with a sombre marking of the anniversary of the Battle of Wolf 359. Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and his son Jake remember Jennifer, Sisko's wife who perished in the catastrophic attack. This emotional anchor is handled with the necessary gravity, establishing the grief that defines Sisko's character. Soon afterwards, while stargazing in the station's Promenade, Sisko is approached by a mysterious and beautiful woman named Fenna (Salli Richardson-Whitfield). Sisko begins showing her the station, and those relatively brief encounters—marked by a palpable chemistry—make him fall in love. His emotional state is noticed by his subordinates in Ops, and frustrated by the lack of knowledge about Fenna, he asks Odo to investigate. However, Odo’s investigation yields nothing; nobody with such a description has actually entered the station.
This mystery coincides with the arrival of the USS Prometheus, a Federation starship carrying Professor Gideon Seyetik (Richard Kiley). Seyetik is a brilliant scientist and terraforming expert who is about to conduct a daring experiment of igniting a star for the purposes of terraforming. For all of his scientific brilliance, Seyetik is an egotistical maniac. He brags about his nine marriages, treating his personal life with the same casual disregard as his scientific experiments. When Sisko visits the ship to meet Seyetik and his wife, Nidell, he is amazed to see that she has the identical look to Fenna. Nidell admits she doesn't have a clue who Fenna is, nor does Fenna mention Nidell during their encounters, creating a baffling disconnect that propels the plot forward.
Intrigued, Sisko decides to accompany Seyetik on his experiment while aboard the Prometheus. His sightings of Fenna continue, and Jadzia Dax, whom Sisko brings with him, establishes that Fenna is a creature composed of pure energy. The mystery is soon resolved: Nidell belongs to a race known as the Halans. When emotionally excited, they can create an energy doppelganger in their sleep. Nidell has been increasingly unhappy with her marriage, but her race mates for life. Turning into Fenna physically exhausts Nidell, threatening her life with every manifestation. Seyetik, realising that his wife's life is in danger, decides to end the marriage together with his life by personally lighting the star with his shuttle, ensuring Fenna disappears for good.
The script for Second Sight, credited to Mark Gehred O’Connell, Ira Steven Behr, and Robert Allan Hewitt, originally had Dr. Julian Bashir as the protagonist and lacked any romantic subplot. By the time it went into production, Michael Piller noticed that of all the regular characters, Sisko lacked an episode focused on his personal life. His idea was to give him romance, inspired by the classic Hollywood melodrama Portrait of Jennie. While this was an interesting experiment, it didn't exactly work well in the context of Star Trek, and especially Deep Space Nine. The main mystery would have worked better if the script had been used for The Next Generation with a limited, single ship setting. Here, the scriptwriters had to make the USS Prometheus conveniently docked at the station and not allow Nidell to disembark in order to sightsee, forcing a narrative convenience that undermines the show's internal logic.
Despite this flaw, Second Sigh" is well-acted. Avery Brooks is solid in the role that makes his character, for the first time, actually fall in love, albeit some of the scenes have a little touch of hamming it up as he struggles with the transition from stoic commander to romantic lead. Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who would later play Dr. Allison Burke in Eureka, handles her double role competently. However, both are significantly overshadowed by Richard Kiley, who enthusiastically chews scenery as the arrogant egotistical scientist. Yet, despite his great work and the spectacular demise of his character, the episode itself isn't exactly memorable. The convenient lack of long-term consequences for major characters—Sisko moves on from the romance, Nidell is left heartbroken but alive—makes this an instalment that would be easy to forget or to ignore in the Star Trek canon.
RATING: 5/10 (+)
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