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A little research project concerning Sisko

Trubinator

Trubinator

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Hi folks,

So I have a bit of an odd request from the Niners here. My friend (who happens to be a vegan, enviro nut and anti-alcohol) and I were having a discussion about Sisko's virtues recently. He kept yapping about how he's the most virtuous man in the whole universe, yadda, yaddda, yadda. I told him he probably ate meat and drank, but he claimed he never did that in the entire show. So that brings me to my request. Does anybody know if he ever ate meat on camera or drank booze? And if so, could screenshots be provided? Think of this as a funny "caption this" type game. Thanks guys!
 
Off the top of my head.

He celebrates by sipping Champagne in the opening teaser of The Adversary.
He downs a fair bit of blood wine in Apocalypse Rising.

And The Memory Alpha page on him remarks about drinking a few times
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Benjamin_Sisko

As for eating I can't quite be able to think of when he eats, though he prepares food on a fair few times though can't recall if it was meat or just other food.
 
Aside from the mentioned drinking, Sisko is a connoisseur of Creole food and a chef. We know for certain he eats jambalaya and gumbo, which both have meat, and (having just re-watched Homefront and Paradise Lost) he enjoys shrimp.

Oh, and his confession to Kas in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" boils down to "I got wasted and drunkenly challenged a Vulcan to a wrestling match."
 
Also, while Will Riker mumbles about it being bad form to "enslave animals for food purposes", he shares a violent hobby with Sisko: hunting and killing fish (and other sea creatures such as clams).

Sisko also seems to be unusually racist for a 24th century man, having a strange obsession with the 20th century treatment of blacks in the United States, an era the events of which any other Trek hero dismisses as bygone barbarism of no relevance.

As for the environmental angle, Sisko bombarded an inhabited planet till it no longer could sustain human life, just to catch one fugitive. :devil:

Timo Saloniemi
 
I definitely second what Timo said--and his guts in calling it "racism." When he decided to take it out on a hologram, who couldn't help his programmed appearance and time period, and who had been showing signs of sentience for a long time already...that was something that just hacked me off BIG time.

But on the subject of drinking...probably his biggest "drinking" moment was at the end of "In the Pale Moonlight." That looked like a bourbon or some other kind of hard liquor.
 
I just want to note that this only comes out after Far Beyond the Stars, if I remember correctly. In which case I don't find Sisko's thought processes on that point at ALL unusual. He was put through a period that was as real to him as his life as Ben Sisko, where he couldn't be respected or have the same rights in the same ways as a white man who was the same in every other way. Living through that personally is bound to change your perspective a little. Not that I'm saying Vic deserves hate or anything, but I can't blame Sisko for being sensitive about it after his experience as Benny Russel.
 
Yeah--but Vic was an AI. He was much more like Data, who shouldn't be called a "white" man, either ("gold man," maybe? ;) ). Now it would NOT have been excused either, had he decided to take it out on a white, American-descended member of his staff (not sure he had one--but if he had, the point would stand). But with Vic--what galls me is that Sisko was willing to let this alien life form die. That's more than just sensitive. That's callous.
 
Wasn't it more that he didn't want to take part in this world (Vic's holodeck world, that is) because it pretended that racial issues didn't exist? IIRC, it wasn't "Screw you, Vic" but more like he found it hard to deal with until Kassidy gave him his little pep talk.
 
The trouble was, though--Vic WAS sentient. And he needed all the help he could get. Had it been any other life form in any other environment, I doubt Sisko would've hesitated. Instead, he decided that because he didn't like the way Vic was programmed, he was going to let him die.

Plus, the whole REASON Vic's world was programmed the way it was--was because the way things happened in reality were wrong! There's nothing wrong with remembering that Vic's world is basically an AU...it doesn't diminish what happened IRL. The fact that it had to be edited is reminder enough, or SHOULD be. It wasn't about pretending racial issues never existed. The very editing was an acknowledgment that in the past, something WAS badly wrong.
 
Oh, I know. But that was how Sisko saw it, which is what I meant. And I'm not saying Sisko was justified in sitting around doing nothing, and he needed the pep talk and I'm glad he came around. I understand his motivations for not wanting to help, but I don't particularly agree with them. I mean, it makes sense, but I think he was right to listen to Kassidy and help out. Like you said, Vic is a person, and a good person who needed help.
 
Exactly--Vic was a person. And as an AI, Vic has a fundamentally different life experience and knowledge of himself than what a "real white person" with flesh and blood would have. Even more compelling is the fact that Vic recognizes he's living in a simulation. He knows he's something else, and that the world he's embedded in isn't real. Hell, I think if Sisko had expressed his misgivings about the simulation to Vic's face...Vic would've been willing to talk in the open about it. (Look at how he conducted himself with Nog and with Odo/Kira--I think the precedent's there.)

It's just that I think Sisko's conduct before Kassidy's pep talk made Sisko look very small as a person. There is a point where you have to learn forgiveness--especially when those who committed the injustice are dead.
 
Didn't the Vic hostile takeover whatever it was happen in the middle of the Dominion war?

Sure, Sisko's stated reasons for not wanting to help were poor, but who would seriously care about a hologram when real people are dying?
 
Because Vic was a living being, for starters--confined to the holosuites, but a self-aware, feeling being, just like the rest of the crew. Second, he was playing a major role in crew morale during said war, not just playing a USO-type role, but you could even make a strong argument that he was serving as a counselor for those not comfortable seeing Ezri. So he WAS helping the war effort in his own way.
 
Sisko may have been wrong in his discomfort about Vic's, but I can't see any reason to demonize him for it considering what he'd been through as Benny Russell. For him, 20th Century racism was a very real, very lived experience, not the relics of a barbarous past. And as far as he knew/could see, his crew - and his girlfriend - were playing in that era as though racial issues had never been a problem. Hey, for all Kira or other Bajorans knew, that *was* an accurate representation of Vic's time.

Fortunatley Kas was able to change his perspective and give him a fresh way of looking at Vic's, but I have no real issue with him reacting the way he did. For that matter, do we know that Sisko ever really talked to anybody about his experience as Benny? And do we know for sure that Sisko understood the self-aware nature of Vic?
 
I would think that after the incident with Pup, which was pretty much a sentient AI that had to be corralled in a virtual "playpen" in DS9's systems, and was till there as far as we know, Sisko would HAVE to be alerted to the fact that he had another sentient AI in his computer system at the very least for security reasons, as well as for the preservation of life. Remember, too, the incident with the rogue "civil defense" program the Cardassians left. Yet another reason I think he'd be sure to require a report on a computer program he couldn't control.

And even if you HAVE had a difficult experience--guess what? You still have to treat people as PEOPLE. Kira and O'Brien were wrong when they would make rude comments about Cardassians they didn't even know, and it was made very clear that failing to treat them each as individuals on their own terms was wrong. That was an example where others DID have experiences in their own lifetimes of that nature. But THEY weren't cut any slack--they weren't allowed to be racist towards Cardassians. Why should Sisko be allowed to get away with being racist towards an AI who lives in what amounts to a virtual alternate universe? Like I said--he should've ASKED Vic about it. Knowing the guy, he'd answer and have a real conversation on the topic. Vic's sole purpose in existence is to help people feel better, and I know that if Sisko asked, he'd want to help.

I hate to drag out the phrase "double standard," considering the way we've seen it ill-used on this forum lately, but that is what comes to mind.
 
Last edited:
Trubinator said:
Hi folks,

So I have a bit of an odd request from the Niners here. My friend (who happens to be a vegan, enviro nut and anti-alcohol) and I were having a discussion about Sisko's virtues recently. He kept yapping about how he's the most virtuous man in the whole universe, yadda, yaddda, yadda. I told him he probably ate meat and drank, but he claimed he never did that in the entire show. So that brings me to my request. Does anybody know if he ever ate meat on camera or drank booze? And if so, could screenshots be provided? Think of this as a funny "caption this" type game. Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
Not eating meat doesn't make one virtuous. If that was the case, Hitler would have been virtuous since he didn't eat meat. For the record, I'm anti alcohol myself, and even that doesn't make one virtuous.
 
I can't see any reason to demonize him for it considering what he'd been through as Benny Russell. For him, 20th Century racism was a very real, very lived experience, not the relics of a barbarous past.
Click to expand...

So we can add being detrimentally insane to the list of Sisko's vices.

Why should we feel sympathy towards a person who snaps at Englishmen because he thinks he's the reincarnation of Napoleon I? Pity, perhaps. But sympathy? A 24th century man should fight his racist impulses, not endorse them, even if said impulses are the result of mental illness he can't help having. If Sisko fails to make the effort, then that's no different from not fighting alcoholism or violent urges.

Timo Saloniemi
 
This thread got me curious enough to break out the DVD and watch the episode, something I don't think I'd done since it originally aired.

Sisko's supposed "racism" is being vastly overblown. At worst, he comes off like one of those nutters that throws a fit every time a new Grand Theft Auto game is released. Even that's probably unfair, since Sisko only expressed his own disgust with the game rather than try to forbid anyone else from playing.
 
If we were dealing with a non-sentient program, I would be more inclined to agree with you. But this is more than just the release of a computer game that for whatever reason was offensive to someone.

The trouble is, we have a sentient life form (i.e. Vic) whose very life and existence were in danger. And as I illustrated with the three previous cases of self-aware and/or uncontrolled programs running around on DS9's computers, there is NO way that Sisko would not have been made aware of this fact, for safety and security reasons at the very least. Vic had already demonstrated control over systems he technically should not have been able to: he could intrude on other people's programs, read data off the main computer, and knew who and what he was--there is NO way there would not have been a very serious report given to Sisko as soon as this confluence of circumstances became apparent.

He HAD to have known Vic was alive--and ignored it because he didn't like the way Vic looked.
 
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