Star Trek: 10 Reasons Why Benjamin Sisko Is The Greatest Starfleet Captain

4. He Held People Accountable For Their Actions

Star Trek Benjamin Sisko 3

Episode Evidence: For The Uniform/Blaze Of Glory All Stafleet Captains must aspire for high standards in the crew they lead. A sense of duty. Respect for others. Holding up the ideals of the Federation. So to have to those standards broken would be a terrible betrayal. Sure these instances, while few and far between, were faced by all our leading Captains, but none moreso than Sisko. I'm talking of course about the fall of his former Chief of Starfleet Security on Deep Space Nine, Michael Eddington,. When Eddington went rouge, Sisko made it a personal mission to bring him to justice. Not just because his officer had betrayed the Federation, but because his actions looked set to destabilise the quadrant further. In 'For The Uniform' he mans the Defiant on a mission to the badlands, taking drastic action to bring Eddington to justice and hold him accountable for his crimes. Remember a few years earlier he had lost his good friend Cal Hudson to the Maquis. He wasn't willing to allow that to go unchallenged again. You could question that making an entire planet uninhabitable to humans to capture him was questionable, and I would agree, but that's another trait I'll come to later. But it is in 'Blaze of Glory' that things come to a head, with the actions of the Maquis set to plunge the Alpha Quadrant into all out war. It was something Sisko couldn't hold back forever, but he challenged Eddington to help him stop the terrorist group now - prevent missiles from striking Cardassian soil and resulting in bloodshed from their new allies the Dominion. Sisko gave Eddington a chance of redemption. As it turned out it was a ruse to rescue Maquis survivors (Eddington's wife included) but it was a chance of redemption none the less. Even if it cost him his life. Oh, and he sent Kassidy to jail for a year when he discovered the woman he loved had also supported the Maquis. Fortunately for them, they survived that little 'incident'. KIRK: Saw his best friend Gary Mitchell become a powerful entity and was forced to consider killing him to save the ship. Not an easy decision to make... PICARD: He faced a similar circumstance with the now Lieutenant Ro Laren. Sent to infiltrate the newly formed terrorist group, she went and joined them, disappointing her former mentor. Some might say is that it? But disappointing Jean Luc Picard? I'd rather disappoint my own mother... JANEWAY: Another 'Maquis' crewmember, Janeway was betrayed by Seska to the Kazon race. However, Seska had already come onboard as Maquis crewmember under Chakoty's command but was actually a Cardsassian spy. So that was a mess from the start. ARCHER: Discovered Lieutenant Reed was secretly a member of Section 31, a black ops unit within Starfleet. Immediately stuck him in the brig and demoted him. (Though he did realise that Reed had been put in an impossible situation and reinstated him as Chief of Security)
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A writer for Whatculture since May 2013, I also write for TheRichest.com and am the TV editor and writer for Thedigitalfix.com . I wrote two plays for the Greater Manchester Horror Fringe in 2013, the first an adaption of Simon Clark's 'Swallowing A Dirty Seed' and my own original sci-fi horror play 'Centurion', which had an 8/10* review from Starburst magazine! (http://www.starburstmagazine.com/reviews/eventsupcoming-genre-events/6960-event-review-centurion) I also wrote an episode for online comedy series Supermarket Matters in 2012. I aim to achieve my goal for writing for television (and get my novels published) but in the meantime I'll continue to write about those TV shows I love! Follow me on Twitter @BazGreenland and like my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BazGreenlandWriter