Monday, October 24, 2011

Captain Picard vs. Captain Sisko

"Captain Sisko has calm, self-confident authority, to a degree that makes Picard look like Richard Simmons."
-Blogfather Harvey of BadExample


I'm currently in Season 2 and I have to say that I disagree with this sentiment. Whereas Picard shows wisdom in his actions, I would say that he is no less self-confident, and Picard allowed his passion to show, without letting it get to the degree of losing sight of reason.

So far, I find that Sisko is short-tempered, he also has wisdom, but he's largely hypocritical. On the very first episode, we see that his wife died due to the actions of Locutus of Borg (Captain Picard for those unaware). We later see his barely controlled anger at Picard for the incident, despite knowing that Picard was under Borg control and not able to do anything to prevent attacking the Federation.

In another episode, a group attempts to capture Jadzia Dax for the crimes of Curzon Dax. Sisko prevents them from taking her and the case goes to trial, with him alleging that Curzon Dax and Jadzia Dax are two separate individuals. (This later becomes moot as we find out Curzon was innocent of the charges, but this is beside the point.)

In Sisko's mind, Jadzia could not have been brought up on charges because she isn't Curzon, however, he would judge Captain Picard for the actions of Locutus of Borg, despite the two being completely different. This strikes me hypocritical, and for that I find him to be an inferior Captain.

With that said, I am nearing the end of season 2 of Deep Space Nine, and finding it largely enjoyable. I also like Captain Sisko despite his flaws.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not hypocritical, just growing as a character. He also spends the entire series scoffing at his role as Emissary only to run off with the Prophets at the end. he is not being hypocritical, he is a character experiencing change.

Anonymous said...

Plus, he thinks Jadzia is hot.

Andrew Phule said...

He is growing as a character, but there's a difference (to me) in his actions between his rejection of his role as Emissary and dealing with that vs what I mentioned about Picard and Jadzia.

Also, even as much as he's grown (I'm now in season 4) he's still quick to show his temper, something which I find undesirable in a position of that amount of authority.

Harvey said...

Ok, I'm willing to admit that my judgement may have been cloudy and my memory foggy. I didn't watch the series back to back like you did.

I think Sisko may have seemed overall more focused and purpose-driven to me because his story had an overall arc.

NextGen was just a series of random encounters.

Andrew Phule said...

The Enterprise's purpose was to seek out new life, so for the post point random encounters is to be expected. They did try to give it an overarching story-line in the form of Q, but the writers and producers didn't do as good a job as they could have in tying it together. I think they learned that lesson, because the DS9 story is much more well-rounded.

I will say that Picard was better suited to the Enterprise than he would have been to running a space station, if only because he showed a preference for exploration.