I don't like Sisko...

[Bones2]

He's a completely unsympathetic character. I can only think of two episodes where I found him emotionally involving: Emissary and The Visitor. In the case of Emissary, his moments with the Wormhole Aliens where he's forced to relive the death of his wife, and the idea that he exists there because it's so often in his mind. That's quite a powerful thing, because if you have bad experiences that you can't help remembering, they never really leave you.

As for The Visitor, that pretty much speaks for itself. Almost all the emotion from that comes from Jake and the idea of their relationship, much more than we ever see. The closest Sisko ever came to being engaging outside the pilot and this were his moments with Jake, but that's not enough to make me like him.

This perhaps diminished some of the effect of ITPM for me. I love it as much as anyone, and consider it one of Trek's best, but his actions didn't shock me considering what we'd seen of him. And I think what really did the character in for me was his pursuit of Eddington. Beating in a punchbag and whining about how he'd been beaten by him? What is he, a bloody child? Personally, I'd like to believe a Starfleet Officer would be above throwing his toys out of the pram and going on a vendetta like that.

Voyager haters often like to characterise Janeway as evil, but though I definitely agree DS9 is the superior show, I think Sisko is far more morally questionable, and ultimately just unlikeable. What other character development did he have outside of doing bad things? He liked baseball, he had a dull relationship with Cassidy, knowing and cliquey old man chats with Jadzia, and sometimes there were some nice moments with Jake. Not really much for the lead character.

Again, I love DS9. It may well be my favourite TV show ever, and there was a wealth of interesting characters and emotional moments and the like, but precious little of that involved Sisko. Part of me enjoyed him getting beaten in with a pole during Waltz. Just wish Dukat had finished the job.

 

[indolover]

I like Sisko, largely because of his bold and confident persona, and his shrewdness. One better point he had over Picard (both he and Sisko are my favourite captains) was that he was less quick to take the moral path. i don't think Picard could have done what Sisko did in In the Pale Moonlight.

 

[Baconnaise]

I don't understand what you're complaining about and why. You go on about episodes where they focus on jake and his relationship at least somewhat then go on about a completely different aspect of emotional aspect in another like itpm episode.

What more do expect? Sisko over seven seasons has a relationship with the opposite sex, fatherhood, religious issues or faith based, and the various problems through work.The main cast is many not unlike your mainstream shows like the greys anatomy csi whatever city and so on. They can't focus entirely on one or two people usually so it's all little bits or a heavy influenced episode.

Janeway has a relationship with a hologram in one episode kind of that's it. Picard well somehow picard finds time to rub one out as captain because he somehow remains mostly celibate. The other ST series do not bring up or show such emotionally charged parts of their lives as DS9 does. I know I like the show more than the others partly because it does and granted it isn't perfect but it does a pretty good job.

I believe you miss the point about all of it. The visitor it's all about how jake can't cope without his father's influence. Losing a parent or both maybe not at the same time is a trauma hard to replicate. It changes people when this happens to them and doesn't matter if it's now or two hundred years ago it still screws you up. I'm an adult with my own kids and wife and if my parents died right now it would hurt and change me even today. What if I was a teenager or younger? It doesn't matter that you don't see constant interaction with jake and sisko 24/7 they imply it on the series and most of the time you had sisko in quarters you at least saw jake leaving or coming anyways so it's implied quite well.

Eddington is partly about him losing his other friend and his guilt and pride. Itpm and this episode show us some grit instead of the sterile ST we've been shoveled. I don't know but racism among other things like religion have been around for thousands of years. We will not just drop all this in two hundred years it just won't happen. Miles calls the cardassians cardies which adds a nice touch to the show imo. I can say from experience my grandparents in ww2 one fought in europe the other in the pacific since guadal canal and I can tell you they called you by your races nickname regardless if they liked you or not half the time.

Anyways I'm curious as to why you feel this way? How did you grow up? I've met some people that kind of lived very empty and sterile lives that had no sense of family among other things. They tend to look at the world through odd glasses imo.

 

[Baconnaise]

I like Sisko, largely because of his bold and confident persona, and his shrewdness. One better point he had over Picard (both he and Sisko are my favourite captains) was that he was less quick to take the moral path. i don't think Picard could have done what Sisko did in In the Pale Moonlight.

That's why I like Sisko over picard. Sisko acts more human than picard does in every way. Sisko is all about protecting the Federation and Humanity where as picard is just there.

 

[Withers]

Voyager haters often like to characterise Janeway as evil

Really? I'm as quick to discuss Voyager's failings as anyone currently present and I haven't seen any mention of her as evil. Off balance and unevenly written perhaps... but certainly not evil. She was what the writers made her in my opinion.

I think Sisko is far more morally questionable, and ultimately just unlikeable.

He is certainly more morally questionable than Janeway based on the situations he was placed in that she wasn't and what actions he took that she never had to. If you think about it Sisko had the weight of the Quadrant on his shoulders and Janeway had the lives 150(ish) people; the stakes were higher for Sisko. Whether what he did was right or wrong is ultimately irrelevant as it pertains to comparing the morality of these two specific Captains.

What other character development did he have outside of doing bad things? He liked baseball, he had a dull relationship with Cassidy, knowing and cliquey old man chats with Jadzia, and sometimes there were some nice moments with Jake. Not really much for the lead character.

I think that's sort of short changing all the work they did with Sisko. They started out with a very broken man, distraught over his wife, who had no love of Bajor and was certainly opposed to being a religious figure. Over time they "repaired" Sisko, made him comfortable with his role as the emissary, and gave him a strong love for the Bajoran people. His journey from Emissary to What You Leave Behind also includes getting to know and work with a whole host of people and him coming to conclusions and terms with his adversaries. I can understand, perhaps, being unhappy with the execution but to say that the development pain out wasn't there is... omitting a lot of stuff where, whether you believe they succeeded or not, they did try (which is something that can't be said for every Trek series Captain...)

Again, I love DS9. It may well be my favourite TV show ever, and there was a wealth of interesting characters and emotional moments and the like, but precious little of that involved Sisko.

In a way I agree; I don't really need Sisko to make DS9 work for me. I thought there were a lot of strong performances from him and I think the character was pretty well fleshed out but he isn't what makes the show for me. If anything I guess I like him as a sounding board for the other characters I like more (not that I really have a problem with him per se.)

Part of me enjoyed him getting beaten in with a pole during Waltz. Just wish Dukat had finished the job.

...and they say I have a mean streak.

-Withers-​

 

[CommanderRaytas]

I like Sisko, largely because of his bold and confident persona, and his shrewdness. One better point he had over Picard (both he and Sisko are my favourite captains) was that he was less quick to take the moral path. i don't think Picard could have done what Sisko did in In the Pale Moonlight.

That's why I like Sisko over picard. Sisko acts more human than picard does in every way. Sisko is all about protecting the Federation and Humanity where as picard is just there.

I agree with this completely.

 

[Diddle]

I have no particular feelings for Sisko. I do like him as a captain, he's honestly the most badass one, but really, as a character in general, for me just meh, you know. I don't mind scenes with or without him.

Except when he's going emissary and religious babbling rampage, or over bonding with Jake, then I'd just like to stab him.

 

[Withers]

Except when he's going emissary and religious babbling rampage,

I've wanted to bring this up for a while and that felt like the perfect opportunity; In Tears of the Prophets, Sisko gets a vision from the Prophets essentially telling him not to go to Cardassia. He has a conversation with Ross about this where he is told "You can either be a Starfleet Captain or you can be the Emissary but you can't be both." Ross goes on a tirade about he's given Sisko a lot of leeway and has gone out on a limb for him many times but this situation is where he draws the line.

Did anybody else think that was a little harsh? I mean... thanks to Sisko's role as the Emissary, the Prophets saved the Alpha Quadrant from annihilation by the Dominion reinforcements. Ross, in that scene, completely disregards that fact. It has always irritated me a little bit.

-Withers-​

 

[M-Red]

Except when he's going emissary and religious babbling rampage,

I've wanted to bring this up for a while and that felt like the perfect opportunity; In Tears of the Prophets, Sisko gets a vision from the Prophets essentially telling him not to go to Cardassia. He has a conversation with Ross about this where he is told "You can either be a Starfleet Captain or you can be the Emissary but you can't be both." Ross goes on a tirade about he's given Sisko a lot of leeway and has gone out on a limb for him many times but this situation is where he draws the line.

Did anybody else think that was a little harsh? I mean... thanks to Sisko's role as the Emissary, the Prophets saved the Alpha Quadrant from annihilation by the Dominion reinforcements. Ross, in that scene, completely disregards that fact. It has always irritated me a little bit.

-Withers-​

Yes. And not only that but also -- it happens right after Sisko has received a special SF accommodation for being so amazingly awesome.


So, The Sisko had obviously balanced the two roles pretty well up to that point. Ross's demands just didn't make sense (also in that episode, I also didn't think Sisko leaving at the end made sense either but....)


For me, Sisko improved dramatically after Season 2. I don't know why, but I didn't really care for him early on. But by S4, the character was ideal for the show imo.

 

[Kirby]

The great thing about Sisko is that he had to balance his roles of Captain, single father, and an icon for the Bajorans.
Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and Archer were pretty much only Captains. Sure they had other stuff going on; Kirk had women to seduce, Picard had books to read, Janeway had coffee to drink, and Archer had waterpolo to watch and the constant struggle to keep cheese away from his dog, but at the end of the day they could chill out. Sisko still had to be a dad.

 

[Baconnaise]

The great thing about Sisko is that he had to balance his roles of Captain, single father, and an icon for the Bajorans.
Kirk, Picard, Janeway, and Archer were pretty much only Captains. Sure they had other stuff going on; Kirk had women to seduce, Picard had books to read, Janeway had coffee to drink, and Archer had waterpolo to watch and the constant struggle to keep cheese away from his dog, but at the end of the day they could chill out. Sisko still had to be a dad.

This is a great example of why I find Sisko more realistic than all the others. When I leave work along with millions of other people the actual work doesn't stop. We have families chores and more to deal with. Vacations are nice and dandy but those are few and certainly not a trip to Risa often like some of the other shows have frequently. The man actually makes dinner! Men in my family including me love cooking and food in general and it's nice to see some of that in the show.

 

[Navaros]

I agree that the Sisko is unsympathetic and morally questionable. The most offensive thing to me his how he banged Mirror Dax under the false pretense that he was a totally different person, her lover. That's some really sick stuff. In fact, I'm shocked that almost no one (other than myself) ever criticizes the Sisko for that.

I don't watch DS9 for the Sisko. There are definitely a wide variety of much better & more interesting characters than he. I.e. Odo, Quark, Weyoun, Winn, Dukat, Garak etc. etc. It's funny IMO that because of them, DS9 didn't really need to have a fascinating Captain to be a great show, wheras on other Trek shows without great supporting characters, not having a fascinating Captain sticks out like a sore thumb and makes them all the more unwatchable.

 

[NKemp3]

Sisko is easily the most well-rounded Trek captain and one of the most well rounded characters ever in Trek.

Unlike the other captains he is a real family man. That makes him more true to those in our real world who serve nations and governments by working in the military. TPTB of Trek always wanted to make their captains loners who put duty ahead of family, love, relationships. It became a cliche. Finally with Sisko TPTB displayed how one can have both a strong personal life AND a career. This was a man who got married and had a child. This was a man who raised a son on his own. This is a man who remarried again obviously because he liked that experience the first time.

Someone called Sisko's sleeping with the Mirror Dax disgusting even though he did so to keep his cover. You know what's disgusting? A whore like Kirk bedding every chick he can get, including coming on to women who served under him. Or how about getting a woman pregnant and not knowing he had a son in part because he was too busy going on to the next conquest to ever get around to checking up on that woman again. Yeah, but many of you still worship the ground Kirk walks on. Figures.

You know what's also great about Sisko? His growth. He grew more than any character on any other Trek series. In fact the only Trek characters who can perhaps challenge him in terms of growth are on DS9. The man we saw at the beginning of the show was filled with anger, did not want any part of being at Deep Space Nine, was not very comfortable with Bajor , was not remotely interested in seeing himself as a religious figure, placed the objectives and goals of the Federation ahead of the Bajor’s perspective, and was a play-by-the book kind of guy who would not compromise his values nor realistically comprehend the extreme tactics of the Maquis, Bajoran terrorists or any other person/group of people who operated outside the norm. The man he became after seven seasons though was in many ways far different. By having Sisko developed like this TPTB simply pointed out the obvious: that life experiences shape us and change us in ways we can't always predict. But in previous Trek shows like TNG (and in the Trek shows following DS9) the characters stayed mostly unchanged. Which is why when Rick Berman was talking on that TNG finale special about how TNG characters changed over seven seasons he would point out how Riker grew a beard! That’s the difference between DS9 and the other Trek shows.

Sisko was interesting because of all the Trek leaders he easily had the most on his plate. Getting Bajor up to speed to join the Federation. Dealing with all the strife and conflicts between Bajor and the Federation as well as strife between fellow Bajorans. Dealing with people under his authority that were not members of Starfleet. Dealing with being viewed as a religious figure and all the unwanted responsibility that came with it. Having to keep an eye on Cardassia which was still bitter over what happened with Bajor and Terek Nor. The discovery of the wormhole and the opportunities and headaches that came along with it. The trouble with the Maquis and the DMZ. The discovery of the Dominion threat on the other side of the wormhole which would make DS9 the first line of defense (or casualty) if the Dominion came through the wormhole. The paranoia that grew as a result of the changelings/Founders. His growing relationship with the Prophets. The growing hostilities of the Klingons. The collapse of the Cardassian Empire and its rise again thanks to Dukat and the Dominion. The growing Dominion threat. His acceptance as being the Emissary of the Prophets and how that didn’t make his superiors at Starfleet happy. The destruction of the Maquis. The war that broke out between the Dominion and the powers in the AQ which made DS9 the most strategic piece of real estate in the Alpha Quadrant. And he did this all while raising his son as a single parent. Sisko had more to worry about than all of his other TV Trek counterparts because they flew from one planet to the next each week. Sisko though was essentially in charge of nation building and had to deal with all the politics and thorns that came with that responsibility. He had to play the grownup while the other Trek captains got to do the the "fun stuff" like play cowboys, explorers and travelers.

Did he always make the right moral decisions? No. But that made him more fascinating, not less. That made him more human, not less. That also made him more three dimensional, not less. I thought he was likable guy who still had his negative qualities. But I liked how he allowed the people who served under him to be adults and handle their own affairs rather than meddle in everything. Janeway was a mother hen. Picard was the Big Daddy whom everyone had to come to or answer to when they were on the verge of making big decisions or after they had done something controversial. Sisko cared about his crew but TPTB realistically showed how he could not be the final judge or decider in everything his crew did.

Sisko is the type of boss we relate to more. He wasn’t some star of his college graduating class but he was competent. He didn't like his job assignment either but he made the best out of it and tried to set an example for those who worked for him. Every day he tried to bridge cultural gaps and worked on getting his crew to work together as a team, unlike most of the other Trek TV captains who inherited/were given top of the line Starfleet crews who got along splendidly and didn’t have nearly as many cultural differences. Sisko made the best out of it what was initially a bad situation; he took on an almost thankless and unglamorous job. You got a chance to see him EARN his status as a captain rather than being introduced to a character who had already ascended to the captaincy. And when the stakes were raised and his job had become arguably the most important in the AQ for a time, you knew that after all he had been through he was now ready to be at the forefront of the battle to save the galaxy. That made him plenty likable to me. Most of all that made him plenty interesting.

Edited to point out that I forgot to mention that the man could cook to. Of all the hobbies of the Trek captains (and I consider Kirk's to be bed hopping) Sisko's was the most useful. :0

 

[Reanok]

I like Sisko, largely because of his bold and confident persona, and his shrewdness. One better point he had over Picard (both he and Sisko are my favourite captains) was that he was less quick to take the moral path. i don't think Picard could have done what Sisko did in In the Pale Moonlight.

That's why I like Sisko over picard. Sisko acts more human than picard does in every way. Sisko is all about protecting the Federation and Humanity where as picard is just there.

I agree with this completely.

I definitely agree with this I always liked Sisko better than Picard.

 

[Degobunny]

why Sisko is the best...
Kirk fought gods, Picard negociated with gods, but Sisko was a god.

 

[Magnum]

Sisko is easily the most well-rounded Trek captain and one of the most well rounded characters ever in Trek.

...

Outstanding post! Thank you for articulating many reasons as to why Sisko is my favorite Captain.

why Sisko is the best...
Kirk fought gods, Picard negociated with gods, but Sisko was a god.

Haha, that too!

 

[Jax]

DS9 got rid of the flawed perfect world and people vision that Gene wanted to create a better sense of drama and the characters reflected this and the tone of the show --- WAR. In times of war people have the right to be morally akward to a certian level and DS9 was right to do this.

Sisko is a powerful character just like the show.