Gimme That Star Trek Ep.17: Benjamin Sisko on Leadership

This week, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine celebrates its 25th Anniversary, so Siskoid and Yardsale Artist and leadership expert Jarrod Alberich join forces to talk about Captain Benjamin Sisko and HIS leadership style. It's a love letter to the character, in podcast form! So... Benjamin Sisko... Best Star Trek captain?

Listen to Episode 17 below!

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Credits:
"Star Trek Theme" by Alexander Courage, with the Irredeemable Shagg on vocals. End theme: "Deep Space Nine Theme" by Dennis McCarthy.

Bonus clips from: Star Trek Deep Space Nine's "Call to Arms", The Ship" and "The Jem'Hadar", starring Avery Brooks, Terry Farrell, and Cirroc Lofton.

And thanks for leaving a comment!

15 responses to “Gimme That Star Trek Ep.17: Benjamin Sisko on Leadership

  1. The usual conversation about the Star Trek leaders is about “your favorite.” I really enjoyed this episode’s angle of analyzing “effectiveness” and “style”. Nicely done, gentlemen.

    Is there enough source material for a “sports in Trek” episode? Hmmmm.

    1. Baseball, racquetball, do you count darts? Kim and Paris played hockey but we never see it. Worf played soccer as a child. There’s whatever Parisi Squares is supposed to be. Archer’s water polo. And I guess the silly ultimate evolution of martial arts in The Icarus Factor. What am I missing?

      1. IMHO, darts counts.
        Wesley and a friend skiing where a real virus escaped from the holodeck, because that makes sense?
        So many fighting sports to choose from: Tasha Yar did aikido, Worf’s Mok’bara, Picard and Sulu fencing.
        What did Picard play with his “son” in Bloodlines? Racquetball or handball or something?
        Does phaser target practice count? Feels very different than archery, which would be a sport.
        What else?

        1. Few more I can think of are gymnastics which is mentioned in several of the shows, mountain climbing, boxing, and probably equestrian.

        2. Aw crud! Picard didn’t play racquetball with his “son”. It was that human boy raised by a different species that the Enterprise tried to rehabilitate. I cannot find that episode’s name. FAIL!

      2. How about the following:

        Running – Picard won the Academy marathon (mentioned in “The Best of Both Worlds”
        Martial Arts (not the “Icarus Factor” kind but the regular kind) – Kirk threw Charlie around some in “Charlie X”.

        1. For Enterprise it looks like the MACOS were trained in something like Muay Thai, or Savate with some grappling style also thrown in.

  2. This was a great episode. Really enjoyed Jarrod’s perspective on leadership as how it relates to Sisko. As I have said I have not seen most of DS9, but from the stuff I have seen it seems like he’d be a pretty ideal captain to serve under, a nice hybrid of Kirk and Picard.

  3. Benjamin Sisko is the first leading captain to not have his command style be directly based on Horatio Hornblower as Roddenberry had based Pike, Kirk, and Picard on aspects of him. Though Jake dose read Commodore Hornblower.

  4. Great episode gents. I will admit DS9 is kind of my Trek blindspot, in that it’s the only universally lauded Trek I’ve not seen every episode of. I was transitioning to college when it came on, so not a lot of free time to watch it on the weekends like TNG and old TOS reruns before. But I liked Avery Brooks on Spenser for Hire and Hawk, so I immediately accepted him as the hero type for this series.

    I wonder if Sisko’s more forthright leadership style influenced the change of Picard to action hero in the TNG films, or was that just a necessity of a change in format? It’s interesting to consider one way or another.

    With all of this talk, I’m going to have to cue up Netflix and finally give DS9 it’s due. You sold me.

    Chris

  5. DS9 was my favorite Star Trek show. I had gotten in to Next Gen around it’s 3rd season and had seen a few episodes of TOS but DS9 was the first Trek show I got to watch from the beginning as it aired. I think Sisko was shortchanged a lot during the first two seasons in favor of Kira who was a much more popular character at the time. Sisko had a lot more on his plate than the standard Trek captain though. He had the station, Bajor, the wormhole and in a sense the entire Alpha Quadrant to worry about all while raising his son. I think I related to him more than Kirk or Picard because while they were busy quoting Shakespeare or whoever Sisko was more interested in playing baseball with his son.

  6. Loved this episode, and not just because Sisko is one of my favorites. For all the reasons you and Jarrod gave, he was the guy I would have most liked to have worked with or for. I am not embarrassed to say that I have a Sisko action figure on my desk right now; I try to channel his leadership qualities while I work with the Legion of Super-Bloggers and the Fire & Water Network.
    Thanks for another great episode!

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