#Joseph sisko

[dreadbirate]

Creole food becomes popular on Bajor after Sisko leaves to be with the The Prophets because of its connection with him, and they even innovate on it with local Bajoran ingredients.

Sisko’s Creole Kitchen in New Orleans becomes an occasional pilgrimage site for Bajorans who want to see the place that The Emissary was raised. Joseph is generally unfazed by this and doesn’t change the restaurant for the new visitors, but he does sometimes tell stories of Ben’s childhood if they’re really polite.

[quasi-normalcy]

Found this on Facebook

[purplespacekitty]

Three generations of Sisko men gathered close for a jambalaya dinner in Ben's ancient Bajoran lightship, as illustrated by celebrated science fiction writer, Benny Russell. Russell keeps a souvenir baseball on his desk, signed by the legendary Willie Hawkins. In the corner, Russell stashes the sketch that gave him the inspiration for this family's story: space station Deep Space Nine.

Deep Space Nine is my favorite Trek. It has nuanced, 3-dimensional characters who become part of the show's world over the course of 7 seasons. There are some off plot lines here and there but for the most part, the story seems to write itself. I've written at length on here about how much I love Captain Benjamin Sisko and I'd like to share a project of mine I did for a class (I have so far managed to fit Star Trek into three separate final projects for three separate classes, one of which I already posted about here).

Through the lens of Sisko's character, I wanted to examine Deep Space Nine's portrayal of Black masculinity, fatherhood and Afrofuturism with three episodes (although one's a two-parter): "Homefront" (Part I), "Paradise Lost" (Part II), "Explorers" (which I made a post about here) and "Far Beyond the Stars". Initially, the idea was to focus on Ben's fatherhood to Jake, how from the viewer's side of the screen, the two of them break down numerous racial stereotypes around Black men, an important thing to remember with DS9's debut not being far removed from the end of the Reagan Administration, from which sprung stereotypes of "absent Black fathers" and "welfare queens." As I continued with this project, I found I also wanted to analyze how Sisko's relationship with his own father informs his parenting of Jake and what it means to have three generations of Siskos in one room, on one planet. That was how I got "Explorers" and "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" in there, as I wanted to showcase episodes that focus on these exact dynamics.

"Far Beyond the Stars" offers a window into Earth's history as a commentary on racism within creative circles and the systemic racism that shapes the world we live in today and the world of Deep Space Nine. It not only invites viewers into the life of Benny Russell, a Black science fiction writer from the 1950s, but also invites us to consider the link between the future he envisioned of the life that Sisko leads in the 24th century as a Black spaceship/space station captain, father, son, husband and cook who carries the weight of his ancestors' legacy on his shoulders and the reality Russell himself lives in day by day. "You are the dreamer and the dream" has a whole lot more gravity to it when you recognize it as less of an obvious observation of what we've known and been shown throughout the episode (Avery Brooks plays both Sisko and Russell) and more of a nod to the Black future that Sisko inhabits and that Russell dreams of. As a creation of Benny Russell, Sisko and his family are Afrofuturism in a nutshell, carrying on the cultures, stories and knowledge of their ancestors as they live their lives in a future those ancestors imagined and built. Furthermore, Benny Russell's Deep Space Nine is not only important because it features a Black space station captain but also because it encapsulates a fragment of Russell's drive to write his own stories for himself and his Black readers, to breathe life into his creations, to share his art in the ways that he wants to. To cherish his experiences and ideas and imagination and reality through the creative process of putting pen to paper, stamping ink to page, painting scenes to canvas.

The DS9 finale was originally going to see Benny Russell wistfully wandering the promenade alone and implicate him as the creator of not just the story of Deep Space Nine, but of the Star Trek franchise as a whole. Obviously, this concept did not make the cut, but Strange New Worlds' "Elysium Kingdom" follows another story written by Russell, solidifying him as a real person who lived in the 20th century within the Star Trek universe and who presumably continued to write stories that got published after the events of "Shadows and Symbols".

Comprised of screenshots from "Explorers", "Homefront", "Paradise Lost", "Far Beyond the Stars", "Shadows and Symbols" and "Civil Defense" - in which Dukat flicks Sisko's baseball off his desk - (and also a picture of a random coffee table taken by me because we see surprisingly very little of Benny's desk), the collage above is my humble attempt to honor Benny Russell and his creative vision.

[vaguely-concerned]

cinnamon tophography.....

(they made my brain do such a cool little lurch when the imagery fell into place tho holy shit. joseph sisko framed by the bars of a cage, and us realizing with sinking dread that he's not looking out of that cage -- he's looking in, at where his son is in this moment, imprisoned by mounting (inevitable) paranoia and suffocating responsibility...!!)

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

#1010

Despite the focus on Nyota Uhura, I'm still very frustrated with her writing. I wish they didn't kill off most part of her family or even her mentor Hemmer. If we look at Ben Sisko, he was well written but what make a character interesting is the interaction and relationship with other side characters: Ben had Jake Sisko, Joseph Sisko, Dax and of course he had other friendship, but that was the starting background for him. It's important for the evolution of a character because right now I feel like the only background we have for Nyota is how smart and brillant she is as a Starfleet officer. And that all.

[defconprime]

[old-type-40]

"You're seeing shape-shifters everywhere. Maybe you ought to think about something for a minute. If I was a smart shape-shifter, a really good one, the first thing I would do would be to grab some poor soul off the street, absorb every ounce of his blood, and let it out on cue whenever someone like you tried to test me. Don't you see? There isn't a test that's been created a smart man can't find his way around. You aren't going to catch shape-shifters using some gadget." - Joseph Sisko (Star Trek DS9 - Homefront)

It was never really addressed on screen but Joseph Sisko was later proven right. The original changelings could fake the blood test as was demonstrated when General Martok did the whole knife to the hand thing to prove he was real. But they didn't find out he was a changeling until much later.

[trekdilfs]

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k d e e p s p a c e n i n e created by rick berman, michael piller [homefront, s4ep11]

'I'm going to say this one time and one time only. I am fine. I'm happy, I'm healthy, and I'm planning on celebrating at least fifty more birthdays.' - joseph sisco

[halestromthewhoobsessed]

Joseph Sisko’s restaurant is a subtle but surprisingly invaluable look at how “businesses” like restaurants might operate on the post-money Earth Star Trek posits

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

thinking that maybe the Changelings from Star Trek: Picard decided to heed Joseph Sisko’s advice

[annegris]

Star Trek showing us the most unbelievable things from the future...

Like parents and children having the kind of relationship where they trust and love each other and show it effortlessly.

(I mean, I have a good relationship with my Mom, but the effortlessness gets to me still)

[raurquiz]

#remembering #BrockPeters #actor #AdmiralCartwright #startrek #thevoyagehome #theundiscoveredcountry #JosephSisko #deepspacenine #soylentgreen #tokillamonkingbird #jag #staticshock #thepretender #murdershewrote #battlestargalactica #TheLastPlaceonEarth #startrek57 @TrekCore

[purplespacekitty]

Magnifying Glass: "Explorers"

Episode: "Explorers"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 3, Episode 22

Original Air Date: May 8, 1995

Teleplay Writer: René Echevarria

Screenwriter: Hilary J. Bader

Director: Cliff Bole

“Explorers” provides a window into which we, the audience, peer and see dimensions of Sisko’s character and his relationship with Jake that he is not often allowed to nurture. He’s the captain of a space station; he’s busy at all times of the day with the demands of his crew, of the governments of Bajor and Cardassia and with the imminent threat of invasion from the elusive yet brutal Dominion. In this episode, Sisko gets the time to spend doing something he is purely passionate about, exercising his creativity and the side of him that’s a big history nerd (”Why [build an ancient Bajoran lightship by hand]? Because it’ll be fun!”). We also get to see him spend some quality time with his son, Jake.

For a project of mine exploring Afrofuturism and Black masculinity, I chose this episode as one of three to study and analyze under Sisko’s importance as a character not just within the Star Trek franchise but in the broader world of television.

Benjamin Sisko’s role as a Black father is particularly pertinent to the plot of “Explorers”. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine first aired in 1993, not far removed from the hell that was the Reagan Administration. Reagan contributed grossly during his presidency to the denigration and humiliation of popular notions of the Black family and the framing of Black Americans as criminals. Mainstream films and television during and before the era, if they include Black characters at all, portray Black men as aggressive, violent and insolent, an image very much in line with Reagan’s manipulative message. Avery Brooks’ casting in Deep Space Nine as it’s Starfleet commander was an historic first for the Star Trek franchise and a step against the popular stereotypes of “welfare queens” and “absent Black fathers.” Ben Sisko - whose most defining characteristic aside from being the commander and later, captain of a space station is being a father to his son Jake - completely demolishes the “absent Black father” stereotype and all the others, firstly, by just existing. Sisko is very present in Jake’s life. Even with his duties keeping him at the station’s beck and call, he makes the time he spends with his son an unconditional priority and is quick to assure Jake of that fact. The two of them share common interests in cooking and baseball, threads that bind them to each other and to Jake’s grandfather, Joseph, who owns and runs the family restaurant back on Earth. Sisko is diligent in his care of Jake as he is for all that he loves. He is an actively loving, caring, protective and supportive father every step of the way. Sisko’s strong sense of justice means that Jake can’t really get away with his and Nog’s various shenanigans, but he is lenient and fair and always there to comfort Jake when anything goes wrong. There are multiple moments throughout the series in which they both learn from each other (this episode being one of them): a quality of their relationship that Sisko warmly welcomes. It is Jake’s care for and faith in his Ferengi friend that helps Nog earn Sisko’s respect. Their closeness allows them to have difficult conversations, to resolve arguments in a place of understanding and compassion, to be vulnerable with one another unconditionally. While initially disappointed when Jake tells him he’d rather be a writer than follow in his father’s footsteps by enrolling in Starfleet Academy, Sisko is ultimately supportive of his son’s interests because all he wants is for Jake to be safe and happy. Which is where this episode picks up from the last time the two of them discussed Jake’s future.

At this point in the series, Jake is ready to apply to college and has been hard at work writing pieces to submit to schools he’s interested in. Yet, even with his father’s enthusiastic blessing to pursue what brings him joy, Jake is hesitant to share his acceptance to Pennington back on Earth. Not because he thinks his father will be angry with him about going behind his back but because he doesn’t want his dad to be alone. By no means would they be losing each other to this new stage of Jake’s life. However, it would be the longest time they’ve spent truly apart from each other and they wouldn’t even be in the same region of space. They certainly won’t be able to go off on impromptu trips in ancient space ships on a whim or watch historical baseball games in the holosuites together as often as they do on DS9. And above all, what this episode most emphasizes is their father-son relationship, this relationship in which they are each other’s security in a turbulent, violent world that placed them at the threshold of a wormhole in the middle of a war-torn sector of the galaxy directly after losing Jake’s mother and Ben’s wife, Jennifer. Whether or not either of them are ready for it, Jake going off to Pennington means that that security in each other will change. Hence Jake’s ultimate decision to defer admission for a year to spend more time with his father and gather more experiences to write about.

This episode showcases our hero doing exactly what Starfleet is all about: exploring the cultures of other worlds and engaging with their ways of knowledge. At the same time, he is beginning an exploration of what life will be like with Jake off at school (and what life will be like with a beard) and he is also getting an insight into his son’s inner world. Both are journeys the two of them embark on together, even if one must be undertaken across many lightyears of space.

Sisko stands out as an intentionally Black character against the backdrop of the undeniably important if, comparatively, rather flat representation in Lt. Nyota Uhura and Lt. Geordi LaForge. Deep Space Nine’s writers and Avery Brooks made a conscious effort to ensure that Benjamin Sisko’s Blackness was not simply seasoning sprinkled sparsely on top of his character, but instead the essential binding factor that brought all the elements of the Captain’s personality together. Not only do we know he has his family’s Creole restaurant to thank for his cooking skills, but we get to see him be at home and with family more than once in this series. And aside from what is clearly directly tied to his Blackness, he has other interests and hobbies, like baseball, building, art and studying ancient technologies. He uses his experience as a Black man and father and his deep knowledge of Black Earth history to inform his actions multiple times throughout the series (i.e. “Far Beyond the Stars”, “Past Tense“, “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang”, “The Abandoned”, “By Inferno’s Light”, “Waltz” and “The Maquis”, to name a few). In this episode, we even see him wearing a top inspired by West African dashiki patterns.

Commissioned on Deep Space Nine, his identity as a Black man, even in the supposedly utopian Federation, positions him as someone able to sympathize with the Bajorans in a way that none of his contemporaries Kirk, Picard, Archer, Pike, Lorca or Janeway ever could: both his people and theirs have histories of violent systemic oppression and persecution, as well as continuously developing histories of liberation. He understands their need to reclaim their land, knowledge and ways of life because that is what his ancestors began and saw through. And it is what he, Jake, Joseph and Kasidy, their descendants, carry on and embody in the 24th century. He builds the Bajoran lightship in order to prove that the ancient Bajorans were capable of such technological prowess as to get all the way to Cardassia without a warp drive despite dubiety from both his coworkers and the Cardassians themselves. So not only does he connect with the Bajorans’ struggles in a way that a white human captain cannot, but he actively participates in bolstering the repatriation of their culture and history. Little wonder why the Prophets chose him as their Emissary.

[enbycrip]

Mmmm, creole-style hasperat

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

#1107

Everytime I watched Ben Sisko cooking, I was hungry too. The resstaurant of Joseph Sisko seems so good... it make me want to test News Orleans food, but the only american restaurant we got in my country are Burger King, KFC... well actually Americans don't only eat junk food. I think they could have merchandising a Sisko cookbook.