"What You Saw Was Real": Avery Brooks On Star Trek: DS9"s Greatest Captain & Jake Sisko Episode

Summary

• "The Visitor" remains a powerful and emotional episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• Avery Brooks' love for Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko, was real and genuine on and off-screen.
• The episode accurately portrayed the strong bond between Captain Sisko and his son, challenging the traditional portrayal of fathers and sons in Star Trek.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Avery Brooks looks back on the classic season 4 episode, "The Visitor," which centered on the loving relationship between Captain Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake. "The Visitor" saw the young Jake (Cirroc Lofton) lose his father, which altered the course of his life. The older Jake Sisko (Tony Todd) dedicated his life to bringing his dad back, and he sacrifices himself to restore the timeline in the past so that the Siskos can remain together on Deep Space Nine.
In the Star Trek oral history "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Avery Brooks discusses his approach to acting in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "The Visitor," and Brooks says the emotion Captain Sisko felt for Jake on-screen was as real as his own love for Cirroc Lofton. Read his quote below:

The preparation for an episode like that is that every day is brand-new. You wake up every day with the full knowledge after you are awake to be grateful for this day, and therefore you go to work or do whatever it is. All I’m interested in is telling the truth. It’s so simple in another way, because I loved Cirroc Lofton then and I love him now. Most of what you witnessed in the exchange between us, and indeed Tony Todd in the assistance, most of what you saw was real.