“I hate temporal mechanics.” – O’Brien

Ahhh … what a way to summarize “Visionary” – an episode which dabbles, then fully immerses itself in the honor and majesty of time-shifting technobabble. In truth, the episode is hopelessly esoteric in its narrative construction, forcing audiences along obscure and literally meaningless theoretical plotlines. It’s an exercise in the obscure, with almost nothing to ground the story in any semblance of realism. Fortunately, though, DS9 has spent a great deal of time and energy on developing its characters. And it is the minor, almost forgotten character moments that make the entire installment worth watching – even if it is … well … hopelessly esoteric.

Events kick off with Miles O’Brien recovering from an accident while working on a plasma conduit in Ops. The event will go on to trigger a number of temporal events (time travel incidents) in which O’Brien is able to witness events from the future. The nature of O’Brien’s affliction, as well as the increasing doom he witnesses (from bar fights to the destruction DS9) will take up the majority of the episode. And, in all honesty, the mystery is well-developed, despite its technobabble nature and solution.

But really, how compelling can an episode be when one of its most revelatory lines of dialogue is, “If you could flood my body with high concentrations of delta series radioactive isotopes it might trigger a time shift into the future.”  This is the poorly beating heart of “Visionary” – an episode which hinges entirely on not only O’Brien’s ability to travel back-and-forth through time, but also on the almost nonsensical explanation for why the time travel is happening.

As it turns out, the subplot involving a Romulan delegation sent to DS9 to be briefed on intelligence regarding the Dominion is actually the source of the O’Brien’s ordeal. The Romulans play at gathering intelligence, but in actuality, they want to collapse the wormhole to be rid of the Dominion threat (which, of course, begs the question: Why didn’t they just attempt to do so straight away?).

But that, of course, would have been too straightforward for an episode that so desperately needed to be obscure about … everything.  If not for some of the incidental scenes involving Kira, and Odo and Sisko, for example, the episode would be a complete loss.

“Visionary” is a perfect example of how a concept can take over a story.  Put simply, this is a tale about the mystery of O’Brien’s timeshifting — and that mystery is comprised of completely meaningless technobabble.  The whole exercise reveals precious little about the characters and doesn’t provide anything by way of thematic commentary.  DS9 will experience a far greater success at a time-shifting tale early in Season 4.  But that won’t save this episode from being one of the worst of the series.

Filed under: Deep Space Nine