Star Trek: 10 Greatest Captain Sisko Speeches

10. A Saint In Paradise

The problem is Earth. By the time Deep Space Nine was entering its second season, the audience had frequently been shown the quasi-utopia that was Earth of the 24th century. Though this stretched back to Kirk's time as well, it was truly the most perfect planet in the quadrant by the 2360s and 70s, so the people living there were becoming a bit of an issue.

The issue, in a nutshell, was the ambivalence, or perhaps simple ignorance, to the struggles that other worlds in the quadrant were facing. A human from Earth may enter the Academy and find themselves deployed in a region of space utterly alien to them - yet still containing mostly humans. One such region was the Demilitarised Zone near the Cardassian border.

Well, it's easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Maquis do not live in paradise. Out there in the Demilitarised Zone, all the problems haven't been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints — just people.

Sisko was tasked with bringing in Calvin Hudson, a man he had known since the Academy, who had gone over to the Maquis. Rather than finding Hudson to be a madman, he understood the man's position, even if he didn't agree with it. In The Maquis Parts 1 and 2, the audience were given an example of a Starfleet commander facing an almost impossible position: stop a band of people with whom he sympathised. It was not be the last time Sisko was tested like this.