And the best captain in Star Fleet is...

 by Guy Stewart

The best captain in Star Fleet is not named Kirk or Picard?! What is this madness?!?!?!

But seriously, consider...

Captain, father, diplomat, religious figure?

For three seasons, Benjamin Sisko held the rank of Captain, and was then promoted to Commander for the last three. In my humble opinion, Sisko blew away Kirk (both Shatner and Pine), Picard, Janeway, Archer, and Lorca—blew them right out of the water—plus, he didn't have a starship to flash around in, just a dumpy old space station that broke down every other episode.

Picard was given the top-tech flagship of the Federation. Kirk captained the first starship to actually go on an exploratory mission (though the TOS version of the Enterprise didn’t seem to do much actual exploring or research). Lorca’s job was to save the Federation from a devastating war with the Klingon Empire. Archer took the very first Warp 5 starship and led the very first mission out of Human space, albeit under the watchful eye of the Vulcans, who stood ready to mop up any mess Archer got into. Janeway, with an amazing ship, had to rip disaster out of the mouth of diplomacy as practiced by the Federation and the Cardassian Empire.

Sisko got a ruined space station, intentionally sacked by the departing Cardassian former owners, a deeply suspicious population below who wanted nothing more than to get rid of all these frickin’ aliens and go back to Life As We Knew It…

Oh, and Siskko’s “liaison” with the Bajoran Transitional Government was one of their most celebrated terrorists, who saw the Federation as just another version of the Cardassians.

“Here you go, Sisko. Let’s see what you can do with this. Hehehehehehe…”

Woops, I forgot: along with an actively hostile civilian government on the world below; and an actively hostile military government a few moments away by starship (which neither he nor the Bajorans had access to); there’s also a clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity that can detach bits of itself to take on the shape of anything in order to spy on you.

His son Jake’s best friend was so altered by his relationship with the Siskos that he chose to become the first Ferengi to enlist in Star Fleet (and he eventually became a captain, too), which of course, ended up ameliorating the ”money-grubbing” nature of the Ferengi so much so that Rom, Quark’s brother, became the new Grand Nagus.

Oh, and another thing: Benjamin Sisko was the only one of the captains who dared to take the really risky voyage of marriage and family life. [Though Kirk apparently tried, briefly, and admittedly failed, except for the making-a-kid-part. In the canon Kirk tolerated fatherhood for an undisclosed amount of time, then ditched that ball-and-chain like an irritating Orion slave girl—though apparently in Orion culture it’s actually the men who are the slaves of the women who only pretend to be slaves, which is yet another interesting and kinky little corner of the Star Trek universe that remains unexplored.]

In addition to the above, Sisko’s son chose to be a writer, and eventually became deeply involved in Bajoran spirituality and Fulfilling the Prophecy and Freeing the Prophets and Restoring Balance to the Universe and all that stuff that made some sort of sense if you watched all the episodes in sequence, but that is impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t. 

Back to Benjamin Sisko. When confronted with the clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity called The Great Link, whose stated intention is to destroy all Solids; and which could detach bits of itself that could assume human-like form in order to spy on Humans, one of which ended up on DS9 and called itself Odo; Odo became so loyal to Sisko that he very nearly refused to halt a plague given to The Great Link because he’d fallen in love with a Solid. Odo’s respect and love for Nerice and Sisko then made him reenter The Great Link with the cure for the plague and save all of it/them, bringing about the end of the Dominion, the downfall of the Cardassian Empire (again), and the integration of a bit of Star Fleet into the Prophets of the Wormhole.

Talk about your big redemption series ending!

So let’s just tot this up. Benjamin Sisko:

• saved Bajor
• reformed the top Bajoran terrorist
• forever altered Ferengi social fabric
• became a religious icon
• fulfilled sundry religious prophecies, including the Final Prophecy of the entire Bajoran civilization
• saved and reformed an entire collective alien life form, in the process ending the Dominion War
• earned the respect of the Cardassian Empire

And he did this all without a starship, using just a dilapidated, booby-trapped, former prison of a space station as his base.

So tell me again, exactly what did Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer, or Lorca ever do that compared to that?    

Finally, from a reality standpoint, Benjamin Sisko has been relegated to being an unsung hero of the Federation. Why doesn’t he receive more accolades? How many real biases did he topple? At the very least, two: he was the anti-absent black father and the anti-uneducated black male. Despite all of this, not only is Sisko—or more correctly, Avery Brooks—pretty much forgotten, he should in fact be a major hero in Star Trek canon.

But he’s not. People rave all the time about Kirk or Picard. Not only did Sisko/Brooks end up being a fictional invisible man, he actually tried to bring this up in the infrequently mentioned DS9 episode, “Far Beyond the Stars.”

Brooks commented: 

“If we had changed the people's clothes, this story could be about right now. What's insidious about racism is that it is unconscious. Even among these very bright and enlightened characters – a group that includes a woman writer who has to use a man's name to get her work published, and who is married to a brown man with a British accent in 1953 – it's perfectly reasonable to coexist with someone like Pabst. It’s in the culture, it’s the way people think. So that was the approach we took. I never talked about racism. I just showed how these intelligent people think, and it all came out of them.” 

However, it wasn’t supposed to be entirely about racism. Brooks added, 

“The people thought it was about racism, well maybe so, maybe not [….] But the fact of the matter in 'Far Beyond the Stars' is that you have a man who essentially was conceiving of something far beyond what people around him had ever imagined, and therefore they thought he was crazy.” 

This episode was Avery Brooks' personal favorite. 

“I’d have to say, it was the most important moment for me in the entire seven years…It should have been a two-parter.”

Rene Auberjonois commented: 

“Brilliant episode. One of the best of the whole series and Avery did a fabulous job of directing it.”

Michael Dorn said: 

“It was wonderfully shot.”

Penny Johnson commented: 

“This was beautifully handled and beautifully shot. But it still, in the heart, it got me.” 

J.G. Hertzler commented:

“I thought it was one you could have built an entire series from. There was a scene toward the end where he falls apart with the camera right in front of his nose. It was just riveting.” 

The same scene was also extremely memorable for Nana Visitor. Armin Shimerman thought highly of how the installment serves as a reminder of prejudice, especially racism, the actor commenting, 

“That's what that episode does terrifically well…it’s perfect science fiction. I think it stretches the imagination of the viewer and breaks down the fourth wall to talk about the real heroes of any TV shows, which are the writers.”

 

As for me: Benjamin Sisko and Black Panther should have had a face-to-face...*sigh* 

—Guy Stewart