2x09 Second Sight

[5.9/10] Benjamin Sisko is unique among Starfleet captains we’ve seen so far. He is a family man raising a young son. He is a widower. He is one of the few senior officers we’ve seen lose a civilian loved one as a consequence of their service. There’s unique ghosts, distinctive circumstances, you can explore with him that you cannot (or at least have not) explored with the other headline characters in the franchise.

So there’s something to the idea of four years passing since his wife’s death, and Benjamin taking the first steps toward letting himself love again. Starting over romantically is a tricky business. Having Benjamin and Jake admit to themselves, and to one another, that they miss Jennifer, is a worthy idea to center here. Having Ben Sisko start to fall in love again, for the first time since he lost his wife, is equally worthy.

But by god, if you’re going to go there, you have to build a romance the audience can connect with. While wandering the Promenade late in the evening, Benjamin meets Fenna, a young woman who enchants him, but who also harbors a dark secret, as so many single-serving Star Trek paramours seemingly must. What follows is a bevy of stock standard meetcute tropes, unavailing flirty dialogue, and a romantic entanglement that cannot support the weight “Second Sight” tries to put on it.

That’s the central, debilitating flaw in the episode. “Second Sight” isn’t without its good ideas. There’s a Vertigo-esque energy at the heart of the story, with Commander Sisko loving someone who is, at once, both real and unreal. There’s a compelling, supernatural take on the idea of someone in an unhappy marriage who fantasizes about a more fulfilling life for themselves. And there’s a colorful side character who shows, despite his unrivaled ego, there’s some compassion within him. You could construct a good episode around these ideas.

But all of them require you to be invested in a relationship between Sisko and Fenna that just isn’t worth it. It is, inevitably, difficult to put together a heartstring-tugging romance in forty-four minutes. (See also: “Melora” from earlier this season.) It can be done (see: “Half a Life” or “Lessons” from TNG), but it’s hard. Relationships take time. They require the steady coming together of two people into one grander whole. There’s shorthand you can use to communicate those notions, but at base, it comes down to how two people connect, in real life and on the screen.

God bless them, Avery Brooks and Salli Richardson-Whitfield (who would also share a “set” on Gargoyles) just don’t have the chemistry to pull that off. That’s the cheat code for romance on television. If two actors pop on screen, you can cover for a lot of convenience and contrivance. Brooks and Richardson-Whitfield simply don’t, and the script does them no favors. It mainly delivers facile romcom cliches and dopey daydreaming from the commander himself, to where by the time the actual sci-fi elements and intrigue finally kick in, you can’t be bothered to care about the romantic element the whole episode hinges on.

What’s funny is that it’s the exact opposite with Seyetik, the egoistical terraformer who’s using DS9 as a temporary base to conduct his experiments. The dude is about an inch deep. He’s a self-involved gloryhound who’s not shy about boasting his accomplishments, and basically gets one monologue to communicate the idea that despite his half-dozen marriages, he loves his current wife very much. There’s not much more to him than his bluster, and “Second Sight” doesn’t give the guy enough screen time or space in the script to develop him beyond it.

And yet, Richard Kiley gives such an energized, infectious performance that you can’t help but be entertained by the dude. He’s extraverted, self-aggrandizing, but somehow charming in his bombast. The gregariousness, the shamelessness, they all work with Kiley’s smiling visage and chummy demeanor. Hell, he even manages to sell the paint-by-numbers monologue about his wife being the one thing he really loves. It’s a testament to how much performance can elevate these things.

Seyetik eventually factors into the main plot, despite the fact that he seems like a side dish at first. His wife turns out to be an exact double of the woman Sisko ran into on the promenade. What Benjamin took to be a simple (albeit thorny) love triangle turns out to be even weirder. Seyetik’s wife, Nidell, turns out to be a sort of telepath who, in times of distress, can end up in a coma where she projects another version of himself, in this case, one unfettered by her unhappy marriage.

There’s a lot to untangle there! You have an undercooked Edna Pontellier, unhappy with the life she’s made for herself but unable to fully escape, with enervating but doomed dalliances her only outlet. If you spent more time with Nidell’s plight and less time with Fenna’s Hallmark Channel romance, you could take advantage of the weight and meaning to that predicament.

Likewise, it’s late in the day, but there’s some force to Seyetik sacrificing himself as part of his terraforming experiment, both to go out in a blaze of glory as befits a man so beholden to his own self-image, but also with a certain selflessness, as it’s also a means to free his wife from their marriage, despite the fact that her species mates for life. It’s fun, and at least grazes something poignant, even if the episode doesn’t quite earn it.

The heart of the episode, though, is still Sisko and his relationship with Fenna. And sci-fi twist or not, there’s just not enough meat there. This story needs you to be invested in the two of them, in their love, in the possibilities. Whether it’s the lack of chemistry, the clunky writing of their interactions, or the late arrival of the science fiction angle to their dalliance, you don’t feel Sisko’s hope or devotion or sense loss because the whole thing rings false.

What it means to unlock your heart again after a grave loss, how we seek connections with others in unhappy times, the ways in which even the most egotistical among us can have a compassionate side are all ideas worth exploring. But if you’re going to hinge all of that on a single romance introduced in twenty minutes, it had better be a damn good one. Sadly, “Second Sight” can’t deliver.