10 Best Individual Performances In Star Trek
7. I Created It
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Far Beyond The Stars (S6EP13)
Now, for those of you who were wondering why Avery Brooks’ performance from In The Pale Moonlight wasn’t the one selected – this is why, and if we’re all honest with ourselves, doesn’t it make sense? The portrayal of Benny Russell is simply one of the finest pieces of television acting that Star Trek has ever seen.
There are so many layers to Far Beyond The Stars. There are moments when Sisko is forced to jump between two lives – his own, and Russell’s. There is the reveal of his friend, Quentin Swaford’s, death, while he expresses his sadness to his father, played by the late, great Brock Peters. And then, seemingly from nowhere, the audience is transported to Earth, in the 1950s.
Star Trek had dealt with racism in the past – most notably in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. But the struggles that Benny Russell, a struggling writer, who happens to be a black man, endures in the space of forty minutes is brutal. The episode wisely doesn’t shy away from the bigotry targeted on Benny, juxtaposed with the hope for a brighter tomorrow.
When that hope is stripped away in Russell’s final moments, the breakdown that follows is gutwrenching to watch. Brooks, who also directs the episode, is raw, sending waves of passion and rage into every word. It is all the audience – and the rest of the characters in the scene – can do but to watch this man, beaten down again and again, finally succumb to the evils surrounding him.
That the episode then ends on a more contemplative note, along with Sisko’s decision to remain in Starfleet to ‘fight the good fight’, is the perfect coda to this story. Seriously, though it hardly needs to be said – Far Beyond The Stars is top-tier television, and stellar acting rolled into one.