Jake Sisko - Completely Unlikeable

That’s what I’m saying.

 

No, I do remember liking the first bit with exploding stars and Q playing cosmic hide & seek, then they turned the unknowable Q Continuum into a civil war reenactment and they lost me.

 

I never really like showing Q without Picard, but that one went so bad in so many ways.

 

The hide and seek was in "Death Wish". This was Q's "puerile attempt at seduction."

 

Having a young woman finding herself, fresh out of the academy then put in a sensational moment to save a lifeform and be merge into something new and later assigned to a war station was a lot. Jake having nothing do could've been a friend and guide to this new reality for Ezri who was a young officer despite some members who can't separate the character to the actor who played her. Actors are in the pretend role business; if an actor can play a younger character and does it well, kudos to her and Nicole did a good job. Unfortunately she was in the arena where the series was wrapping up and shacking up with Bashir was the decision and felt forced and not satisfying for me. The mention of the idea of Jake having a relationship with Ezri in this thread was a good one, and I'm glad someone was actually presenting ideas in making Jake interesting since he lacked such when the showrunners made him a writer.

 

Kind of the point I was making. Ezri/Jake would have been daring, but they would have had to commit time to it, and the fallout with Ben coming to terms with it. The way Ezri/Bashir began, I get the sense that they knew the viewers by and large didn't give a tenth of a rat's arse about it. Hence the "start the turbolift ride agreeing to be friends, end it sucking face" crap.

Every Trek series needs a pairing that's just a bad idea. TOS had Kirk/Carol. TNG had Worf/Troi. DS9, Bashir/Ezri. VOY, Chakotay/Seven. And ENT had the brief Archer/T'Pol bits.

Active series, not ready to make any judgments.

 

I'm sorry... Kirk/ Carol in TOS??? Nope. In TWOK, she wasn't a love interest but a woman he moved on from who happened to have a son with. In the movie, the two looked like friends but not ready to rekindle a relationship.

 

I am not sure which members you're talking about here, and I've got to say I'm not fond of the passive-aggressive technique of responding to members without identifying them and then saying something that may misstate their actual point of view.

 

I still don't see how Ezri Dax would have felt comfortable striking up a relationship beyond friendship with Jake. Ezri Tigan, possibly.

 

I liked him fine in the beginning, even found him interesting. But he started to sort of act dickish around halfway through the series. I won't chant for his death, though,

I know some found the turn started when he ran during siege but to me he was just a kid, and an inexperienced one. I feel that when it comes to children. a difference in civilians and the son of a SF captain there *isn't* going to be much difference unless he were to specifically groomed. He revealed to not to have had an interest in being in Star Fleet. So maybe he wasn't paying attention enough so its really not surprising. Being as young as he was he would not have had the experience in a war scenario because Star Fleet was used to having it relatively "nice."

 

The problems with Jake happened when his goals shifted to being a writer; imagine the stories these showrunners could tell when this field mimics their profession. I guess their lives were just as stale as the character they awfully handled.

 

I'm not sure what 'problems' you're referring to beyond him potentially being underutilized.

 

I feel like the showrunners of DS9 probably had more interesting lives than anyone I've ever known, so maybe they just felt the writer thing worked to give some dimension to Jake's character without letting his profession overpower his main role in the show (Sisko's son), and it wasn't just some horrible botched opportunity they never revisited?

Not sure how his field would even mimic their profession that closely. I get that you didn't like the direction they went with Jake, but he's generally a well-received character. It feels like a stretch to call him 'awfully handled'.

 

What were his ambitions before turning to writing?

 

His ambition was to continue his support for his father who he loved very much. Help tutor his close friend Nog in school work so he doesn't fail. Building a subspace transceiver and having an interest in science. Still would've been nice to see that fulfill and had writing as a hobby. Jake never had to be Wesley, who I thought was not a bad character -- a kind of Will Robinson-ish but not bad, but there's more to the character which could've been explored. It didn't have to be Starfleet, it could've been Bajor related or something more. Ok, he's a writer, make something more, make it interesting, but I guess the showrunners' path for Jake was a course of making him completely unlikeable which was the genesis of this thread.

 

Except the number of people who find Jake completely unlikeable seems to be a significant minority.

 

His ambition was to be subservient to his father? That seems like a recipe for a dull, unremarkable life that ends in frustration. I don't write fiction, but shouldn't Jake have his own motivations, things that don't reference someone else.

 

One of his ambitions was to score with dabo girls...

 

Like every heterosexual teenage male on the station, I wager. Quark didn't hire them for their business sense.

 

LOL! I really wanted to see more of Mardah. Jake had a way of seeing more in people than his father once did; I loved that perspective of this character.

Jake's personal motivations should have some reflection of that series, which could've but instead of making this aspect work for the tales told - he was placed in a corner. After the episode "The Muse", that was a starting point for Jake to be Ernest Hemmingway in outer space but it was never explored. If there was something to explore for Jake being a writer it wasn't done in a manner where he had any relevance.

I enjoyed the Father and Son story and how the son branches off to doing other things and how it molds their world but the perspectives would differ as events occur and the boy grows into a man. Jake's growth as a character was stunted when he became a writer.