Jake Sisko - Completely Unlikeable
- Thread starter spinagogue
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There is an episode of the podcast The Orb which discusses director Cliff Bole. Part of the episode reflects on the unwillingness of some directors to work with child actors. The decision to use Jake in a script was probably done with the directors in mind.
I appreciate all the thoughtful replies to this thread. I guess I just felt like venting a bit. (Do you think? haha)
It's true that it would have been easier to make him just a "mini-Sisko", and that making him flawed like any adolescent and then teenager was more realistic. I'm just thinking of some moments where I wish someone had punched him:
1. When he was SUCH a cowardly crybaby in "Nor the Battle . . .". It's understandable that he'd be afraid, but he was just gutless and pouting to the point that if it were real life I just wouldn't respect him.
2. At dinner with Captain Sisko in their quarters when Cassidy is under suspicion of being a Maquis smuggler. Jake doesn't know this fact, but he repeatedly makes sexual innuendos to his Dad about why his Dad misses Cassidy (which is a weird thing for a son to do anyway), LONG PAST the point when Benjamin has made it clear that he is not amused by it. Finally Benjamin says "Alright, that's enough!" A very tempered response to such flagrantly annoying behavior by Jake.
3. When Captain Sisko is having the "visions" sent from the Prophets in the "Balhalla" (sp?) episode, Jake decides to have Bashir perform the surgery on his father that he knows will stop the visions, in direct defiance of his father's wishes. This may have been a realistic action, as it seems possible (tho far from certain) that Sisko would have died without the surgery, but Jake acted selfishly in making this decision. Major Kira basically said as much, and she was right.
4. "It's a Klingon bachelor party. Use your imagination." - Jake to Major Kira. Jake copped this line from Quark, and when he says it to Kira, she responds with nothing but a look of disdain. Deservedly.
SPIN
It's true that it would have been easier to make him just a "mini-Sisko", and that making him flawed like any adolescent and then teenager was more realistic. I'm just thinking of some moments where I wish someone had punched him:
1. When he was SUCH a cowardly crybaby in "Nor the Battle . . .". It's understandable that he'd be afraid, but he was just gutless and pouting to the point that if it were real life I just wouldn't respect him.
2. At dinner with Captain Sisko in their quarters when Cassidy is under suspicion of being a Maquis smuggler. Jake doesn't know this fact, but he repeatedly makes sexual innuendos to his Dad about why his Dad misses Cassidy (which is a weird thing for a son to do anyway), LONG PAST the point when Benjamin has made it clear that he is not amused by it. Finally Benjamin says "Alright, that's enough!" A very tempered response to such flagrantly annoying behavior by Jake.
3. When Captain Sisko is having the "visions" sent from the Prophets in the "Balhalla" (sp?) episode, Jake decides to have Bashir perform the surgery on his father that he knows will stop the visions, in direct defiance of his father's wishes. This may have been a realistic action, as it seems possible (tho far from certain) that Sisko would have died without the surgery, but Jake acted selfishly in making this decision. Major Kira basically said as much, and she was right.
4. "It's a Klingon bachelor party. Use your imagination." - Jake to Major Kira. Jake copped this line from Quark, and when he says it to Kira, she responds with nothing but a look of disdain. Deservedly.
SPIN
God, have I wondered this a billion times -- most of my professional life has been in casting, so it also interests me from that angle, negotiating the deals was one of my favorite parts of the job and I love the contract minutiae. Now it's so common to sign your series regulars to contracts for only some of the episodes, but back then it seems like pretty much all regulars were signed for ASP -- all shows produced -- so you get paid whether they use you or not. But that can't actually have been what was going on here, what a crazy waste of money it would have been. Unless his episode rate was so low they felt it a reasonable price to pay to just keep him available, which could be, since he was hired as a kid.
The behind-the-scenes of Cirroc Lofton's situation on this show is something I've wondered about a lot. Since they lost interest in him so completely the last season or two, did they discuss just cutting him from the cast and sending Jake to study at the Pennington School? That's totally what you'd do today. Back then, it felt like an outgrowth of an attitude that: your regulars are your regulars. You have committed to these characters, and you're sticking with them unless something weird happens that forces a shake-up. (I wish TV would swing back this way a little, now we're too far in the direction of "characters come and go constantly as story dictates!")
Ha, this is the episode that turned me off The Orb! The way they kept trying to extract some conspiratorial meaning from Cirroc Lofton not being in all of Cliff Bole's episodes. Cliff Bole directed seven DS9's, Jake is in three of them, and one of them is "Explorers"! There is no conspiracy here!
It's likely they wrote themselves into a corner with Jake. They didn't write for him consistently, thus he didn't really get full development. The whole thing about writing and journalism was interesting, but it meant that he would be more or less confined to being an observer and interpreter, not an agent. And the last season was very lopsided: after a few connected episodes, there was a slew of bottle shows to pay the bills with paramount, followed by the 10 episode arc. Jake wasn't big enough to carry his own episode; he didn't have a place in the war; and the writers crammed the arc with so much detail as to be suffocating at times.
Something that is interesting is that three of the most iconic episodes, The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars, and Pale Moonlight all originated as Jake vehicles. Only two remained that way, and the third did not have Lofton playing the Jake character throughout.
ETA: With regard to Bole, I think they were just carrying over the director's prejudices from TNG. That show had a lot of child actors, many of which only appeared in one episode.
I really liked the Jake character. He represents one of the strengths of the show by having a character defy what people most likely expected, going into the show and that he would grow up to be a proper Starfleet character. Another thing is he more than anyone else on the show had the best chemistry with Sisko. You can tell the actors in reality must care about each other and they felt like the most realistic father/son realtionship in all of Trek.
Jason
Jason
I think I remember reading somewhere that the Sisko/Jake relationship was crucial to Avery Brooks because it's something we never see represented in entertainment -- a black man being a great single father to a son. It was a corrective to what we see portrayed much more frequently, the story of the absentee black father. I had never considered the Sisko/Jake relationship in that context before -- and it sort of blew my mind that I hadn't. I already liked the Sisko/Jake relationship, but that made me appreciate it even more.
Aside: another great Jake ep that I think gets overlooked a lot is "Shattered Mirror." That unhealthy family dynamic with Mirror Jennifer gives such a strong emotional core to the story, it really grounds all the MU wackiness.
Aside: another great Jake ep that I think gets overlooked a lot is "Shattered Mirror." That unhealthy family dynamic with Mirror Jennifer gives such a strong emotional core to the story, it really grounds all the MU wackiness.
Yep I heard that as well. In fact I heard it was the main reason he chose to do the Sisko character. I think Lofton was even best man at his wedding or it might have been vice versa.
Jason
And on the topic of "Valiant" -- when I watched it last, I had forgotten that the setup was that Jake and Nog are on their way to Ferenginar to deliver a message from the Federation Council to Zek. I like "Valiant" more than most, but I would much rather have seen "Jake & Nog go to Ferenginar!" It could have been a bit of a sequel to "In The Cards."
Or a comic "In The Pale Moonlight" -- we must bring the Ferengi into the war! I did always think that was the direction they should have gone with the Ferengi eps in the last season or two -- have them start doing business with the Dominion, but somehow working as double-agents to undermine them from within.
Or a comic "In The Pale Moonlight" -- we must bring the Ferengi into the war! I did always think that was the direction they should have gone with the Ferengi eps in the last season or two -- have them start doing business with the Dominion, but somehow working as double-agents to undermine them from within.
I loved Jake. I was pretty annoyed when he all but disappeared during the last two seasons.
Not everyone is going to like every character. For me Jake and his relationship with his dad is a significant part of why I rate DS9 so highly. A few of my favourite DS9 episodes are ones that feature Jake heavily. Not that I think everything they did with the character was great, but for me there was far more good than bad.
Jake played a believable, human child growing up in the semi- perfect 24th century. I like him.
OTOH Wesley Crusher was the Lassie of TNG
OTOH Wesley Crusher was the Lassie of TNG
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Jake was real. He didn't want to go into Starfleet, he wanted a normal civilian life. Being on DS9 didn't really help that, but he did the best he could under the circumstances.
Jake was a good guy, just not a dominant character. Like Wesley in TNG, his destiny just wasn't Starfleet. Becoming an aspiring writer surely didn't make him a bad character, but it also didn't make him a favorite with most fans. I found it interesting that Nog took the path that it seemed Jake would have followed.
The same could be said for Benjamin Sisko. He's been literally shipped out of the series.
Cirroc Lofton was an opening-credits regular for all seven seasons.
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