There has always been plenty of debate when it comes to who the best Star Trek captain is, mainly because the starship (and therefore its series) is only as good as its captain. Sure, other roles are equally important, but upon the captain’s shoulders lies the burden of responsibility, which seemingly drives the story forward. Fortunately, Star Trek isn’t really short on good captains. That makes all these debates lively. Let’s talk about Captain Benjamin Sisko.
Ultimately, it’s impossible to be objective when selecting your favorite Star Trek captain simply because it requires making such a decision against sentiment and timing. For many, the best captain is the one they first encountered. For others, the captain represents the type of person they strive to become in their daily lives. One thing is unquestionable: each Star Trek captain left an indelible mark on the franchise. This leads us to Benjamin Sisko, a captain whose character arc is considered the best among all the captains by many fans and critics alike.
1993’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a unique place in the Star Trek franchise, as it represented many of the franchise’s firsts: it was the first Star Trek series made without the direct involvement of the franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, it took place on a space station rather than the traveling starship, and the first to have an African America as its central character. Of course, we’re talking about the Starfleet Commander and later Captain, Benjamin Sisko — masterfully portrayed by Avery Brooks, whose acting range had a massive impact on how fans perceived Deep Space Nine.
The series was very controversial upon its release because it simply broke the franchise mold. As mentioned, it wasn’t set on a spacefaring vessel, and it was the first series to have a Black actor as the series lead. Trekkies, despite their cultural enlightenment, had a hard time accepting this, but Brooks’ performance absolutely shattered all of the fandom’s skepticism by providing us with a somewhat more relatable character. Unlike most captains, like Kirk and Picard before him, Sisko had depth, true depth, simply because he wasn’t just a captain.
Deep Space Nine introduces us to a man who is struggling with grief and resentment over the tragic loss of his wife to the Borg in the Battle of Wolf 359. He is an angry man who isn’t even sure that he still has a place in Starfleet, and his assignment to command DS9 is initially met with reluctance. Nevertheless, he soon finds his purpose on the station, in helping Bajoran people after the end of the years-long and quite violent Cardassian occupation of Bajor, their home planet — both new alien species were specifically created for the Deep Space Nine series and seeded in The Next Generation.
Sisko possesses an ability that allows him to communicate with the aliens that live inside a wormhole near Bajor, which Bejorans refer to as the home of the Prophets. This earns him the moniker of Emissary of the Prophets and makes him an important religious figure in Bajoran culture. Of course, he is initially uncomfortable with the status, but he eventually accepts it and works towards what was best for Bajor, its people, and their culture.
He moves past his rage over the loss of his wife during the course of the series and continues to raise his son Jake on the deep-space station, often serving as not just a father to the boy but also a mentor to him and his Ferengi friend, Nog. Being a family man is yet another defining element of Sisko’s character, which separates him from other captains, who have always been portrayed as more isolated from their families. His efforts to balance both the responsibilities of captaincy and parenthood add yet another layer of complexity and human depth to the character.
On top of everything, his character isn’t spared the hard choices a captain has to make. With the possible exception of Discovery’s Michael Burnam, no other Star Trek captain resorts to morally ambiguous decisions as much as Sisko does. The episode “In the Pale Moonlight” is the prime example of this, as he orchestrates a deception that leads to the death of a Romulan senator to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War.
Fans now theorize that Romulans found out about this but had chosen to use this knowledge after the war to either discredit the Federation or gain concessions by revealing the facts after the war. Regardless, it’s really interesting to see Sisko come to terms with his identities in the series; he’s a Starfleet captain who has to make hard choices, a father to his son, an inspiring mystical presence to the residents of DS9, and an Emissary to the Prophets to the Bajoran people.
All in all, Sisko is far from the paragon of adventure like Kirk or virtue like Picard are portrayed to be. He has to make hard decisions to secure the win for the Federation even harder decisions to do right by his son Jake, while being a religious icon to an entire alien species on a distant world. Fortunately, Deep Space Nine received its re-evaluation in the age of streaming, becoming a really important part of the franchise and its mythos, and much of that is primarily thanks to the rich and complex story of Avery Brooks’ Captain Benjamin Sisko.