Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Benjamin Sisko
Star Trek's greatest goatee also happens to be a father, an Emissary, and the commander of DS9
The beard and the shaved head may well have been Avery Brooks' desire for Sisko from day one of Deep Space Nine yet it would take some convincing to make the look part of the character by the show's fourth season. A galvanising lead character, Sisko would tackle Bajoran religion and politics and the occasional Dominion War on a daily basis perhaps making him Starfleet's most experienced and skilled commander. Betrayed by friends, taunted by his Cardassian nemesis Gul Dukat, Sisko wore his emotions as openly as a loaded torepedo bay on the USS Defiant.
A veteran of stage and TV, Brooks was a polar opposite to Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard with that comparison becoming ever more apparent during the Dominion War. Having stepped back from the limelight of the acting world, Brooks no longer attends conventions although Jake actor Cirroc Lofton has suggested he would be open to returning to the franchise at some stage.
So while Kirk, Picard and Janeway have all seen their stories expand beyond the confines of their televised adventures, Captain Benjamin Sisko's fate remains truly enigmatic. His story is self contained to a single show yet even within those confines there are some truly eye-opening aspects of Brooks and his onscreen persona that are begging to be explored.
10. Significant Sixth
Sisko's turning points can be narrowed down to several key episodes; Far Beyond The Stars, In the Pale Moonlight and the preceding season's For the Uniform.
Regarding the latter, writer Ronald D Moore noted that Sisko took a step that "Picard probably wouldn't have" but maybe one that Kirk would. It got results to ensure a greater good, no matter the cost. The story for In the Pale Moonlight was proposed by Peter Allan Fields, the writer responsible for Sisko's gear change against Eddington.
For Far Beyond the Stars, Brooks took double duty as director and lead. What started as a Jake story morphed into a tale that focused on Ben himself as both "the dreamer and the dream" with the topic of 1950s racism front and centre. In the Pale Moonlight also started life as a Jake Sisko story before a substantial rewrite.
In The Fifty Year Mission, Brooks was quoted as saying:
It talked about who we are or who we were, at least. I thought it was incredibly clever.