Benjamin Sisko

I've decided to take a break from episodes to go into characters. To start this series off, I'm going into my favorite captain. The Captain of the USS Black Sheep of Star Trek: Benjamin Lafayette Sisko.

Voyager's gone?! Damn! If only Starfleet sent me instead!

Ever since the first black woman on Star Trek merely pushed buttons and said one line over and over, the franchise has had at least one black person in the main cast. Sometimes they were okay, like Geordi. Sometimes they were bloody annoying, like Travis. Sometimes you just forgot they even existed, like Jake. That being said, I knew from the moment I watched "Emissary" in its entirety that Sisko was going to be the best one.

The show opened with quite possibly the strongest characterization of any captain, far better than Picard saying "Keep me the hell away from children!" We see Sisko standing as first officer of a ship at the Battle of Wolf 359. It does not go well after one minute, and he's forced to evacuate his family. Though he finds his son alive, his wife, Jennifer, is dead. As Jake is carried away, Sisko literally has to be dragged off the ship, from the arms of his dead wife. Right then, I realized how underrated an actor Avery Brooks is.

Here are some more reason why I find him to be the best captain. Some more will be posted later, but for now:

1) He's not the "black" captain: Unlike Voyager, which took its first moments to tell us that Janeway is a woman, and the best, Sisko never was the "black captain" to me. Having seen every episode of DS9, I can come up with at most two instances in which his race was brought up. The first was in "The Search, Part I", where Sisko unpacks some African artifacts he had in storage on Earth. The second was in "Badda-Bing, Badda-Boom". Sisko said that his problem with Vic's holoprogram is that he believes it misrepresents the 1960s, a time in which black people would not be customers in a Las Vegas nightclub. Wow, you know it does say a bit that a black man in the 24th Century is still peeved by silly 20th Century racism (the Benny Russell episodes don't count, since it wasn't really Sisko). Still, in "Caretaker", Janeway said she didn't like being called "sir". Never in "Emissary" did Sisko say something about how he was "black" or something.

Had the Jem'Hadar seen this, they'd been running
back to the Gamma Quadrant.

2) Best suited for the job at hand: To me, the best captains were the ones who felt like they truly belonged there. Kirk was the swashbuckler, riding around the galaxy on his mast. Picard was the officer and a gentleman, the man who stands by his principles. The other two captains peeved me in this way: Janeway was a scientist selected for a counter-terrorism mission with no established combat training and Archer was an arrogant prick who got the center seat just because his dad's name was on the engine. In "Emissary", Picard established that Sisko spent three years at Utopia Planitia Shipyards. Thus, we learned he's a construction foreman, the man who builds. What better choice for the reconstruction of an entire world, and especially the space station in orbit?

3) A father to his men: This is best exemplified in "Rocks and Shoals". The crew gets stranded on a remote planet, where a Jem'Hadar patrol has also crashed. Sisko doesn't just have Dr. Baltar Bashir examine Jadzia when she gets injured. He takes part in a display of loyalty to his own soldiers, mostly by behaving like a busboy in a hotel. Nevertheless, it is a highly touching scene, showing just how much he cares for them. It also shows that, unlike Picard, who's the colonel that stays at his tent and looks at maps, Sisko is the line officer that gets down and dirty with his men. He leads the charge in all major battles of the Dominion War that we see and immensely despises his tenure at a desk for the first few episodes of Season Six.

Allow me to thank the Cardassian architect. They know
how to respect the commander.

4) A flawed leader: When I rewatched "Caretaker", I soon came to realize why I cannot stand Janeway: she's a perfect character. She is the best science officer in Starfleet and has a handsome fiance back home. In one of her first scenes, she stops a warp core breach (something that we've seen Scotty and Geordi stop a hundred times). In one of his first scenes, Sisko is barely able to control himself when he receives his briefing from Picard, as he indirectly killed his wife. We quickly see just how flawed he is. He lost his wife, he has to raise his son on his own now, he wants nothing more than to sit behind a desk and wait for his career to end, and suddenly the Bajorans proclaim that he's their Messiah. By the end of the pilot, he's managed to overcome a couple problems (mainly his dislike for Picard). Still, the death of his wife would come up a few more times in the series and more importantly, we see him gradually warm up to his role as the Emissary.

5) Dukat...you magnificent bastard, I read your BOOK!: The best protagonists are ones who have an equal, someone who is like them on almost every level. Unlike Q was to Picard, Dukat was a mortal man, just like Sisko (until of course he went insane and turned into the Anti-Christ, but that's something for later). Sisko had his opposite in Dukat. The moment he walked into his old office, I was aware that Dukat was someone who was on the level with Sisko; the way he just strolled around and gave the obvious hint that he wanted it back. In Season 2, we saw the two working together; Sisko was never able to tell if Dukat was being truthful. By the end of Season 5, they had reached a point in their status as adversaries that they could read each other's intentions. Dukat walked into the office and found Sisko's baseball still sitting there, a message that he would return. Yes, Dukat explained the motif, but, as my screenwriting professors said, viewers are idiots. Plus, it's television. What can you do? Back to Dukat, he was in many ways what Sisko could be: the Supreme Ruler of a galactic empire, a man who is feared. I read once that the Cardassians represent what humanity could become, rather than the idealized version.

Well, that's all I have for now. If I wrote any more reasons on how Sisko is possibly the best of the captains, I could publish my own book. Naturally, if you think Sisko was a piece of crap, that's your opinion. I disagree, but I shall read why you think so.

I'll go into the other captains later. This is Lieutenant Fedora, wishing you all a good day.