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Benjamin Lafayette Sisko is a character in the fictional '''', in which he is the commanding officer of the space station Deep Space Nine and the starship USS ''Defiant'' . He began his role in the series pilot "Emissary" as a Commander , and was later promoted to Captain in "The Adversary" . Because of Sisko's discovery of the Bajoran wormhole also leads the Bajorans to acclaim him as the '''Emissary of the Prophets''', an important religious figure in their culture. He was the first African-American lead character on a ''Star Trek'' series, and the first ''Trek'' series lead to not hold the rank of Captain or command a starship at the beginning of his series. OVERVIEW Born in 2332 in New Orleans , Louisiana , Benjamin was the son of Joseph Sisko , a New Orleans chef and owner of the restaurant "Sisko's". Ben has a sister named Judith. He is the father of Jake Sisko and the widower of Jennifer Sisko, who was killed in early 2367 . During the last season of the series, Benjamin marries Kasidy Yates , who at the end of the series is carrying his child. Throughout the series, Benjamin distinguishes himself as a dedicated military commander and political tactician against the Klingon s, the Romulan s, and the Cardassian s, and also the Dominion throughout the Dominion War . But the deeply-religious Bajoran people have decided that he is the "Emissary of the Prophets", and the expectations placed on him are not always compatible with his role as a Starfleet officer. Sisko loves Baseball , a sport which has largely disappeared by the 24th century and is kept alive only by a small group of aficionados. He keeps a baseball in his office and is often seen clutching it in times of deep thought. EARLY STARFLEET CAREER Ben Sisko entered Starfleet Academy in 2350. During his sophomore year, he was in a field-study assignment on Starbase 137. Early in his career, he was mentored by Curzon Dax , a joined member of the Trill species, when the two served aboard the USS ''Lexington''. Joined Trill were humanoids in whom were implanted sentient slug-like creatures called symbionts, the joining of which created a hybrid personality distinct from the individual two. The significance of this aspect of Trill culture, and the difficulty of maintaining relationships as the symbionts are passed down from host to host became an important point in Sisko's later relationships with his Deep Space Nine science officer Jadzia Dax , who inherited the Dax symbiont from Curzon, and Ezri Dax , who received it after Jadzia's death. Sisko later served aboard the USS ''Okinawa'' under the command of Captain Leyton, who saw command potential in Sisko, whose interests at the time lay in engineering. Leyton promoted Sisko to lieutenant commander, making him the ''Okinawa'''s Executive Officer. It was during this assignment that Sisko and Leyton fought in the war between the Federation and the Tzenkethi . Sisko eventually transferred to the USS ''Saratoga'' as its first officer, and in early 2367, fought the Borg in the Battle Of Wolf 359 , as the Borg advanced toward Earth in an attempt to invade it. In this encounter, he faced Locutus of Borg, a Borg drone created from the assimilated Jean-Luc Picard , the Captain of the USS ''Enterprise'' . The Borg used Picard's knowledge of Starfleet to annihilate the Starfleet ships making a stand there, and ''Saratoga,'' along with 38 other ships, was destroyed in this battle; among the 11,000 lives lost was Sisko's wife, Jennifer. Sisko was then assigned to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars , overseeing the development of new ships, such as the USS ''Defiant'', which was designed to combat the Borg. ON ''DEEP SPACE NINE'' In 2369, Sisko is assigned to the Bajor an sector. He and his son Jake take up residence on Deep Space Nine , a space station in orbit around the planet Bajor built by the Cardassians in 2351 to process ore. The station had been the headquarters of Gul Dukat , the last prefect of Bajor during the Cardassian Occupation , who would become Sisko's archenemy (and occasional ally) during the course of the series. The Cardassians had been forced by the native resistance movement to relinquish Bajor after 60 years of brutal tyranny. The newly-freed Bajorans were experiencing great turmoil in the wake of the Cardassian withdrawal, with a provisional government that many worried was not strong enough to prevent Civil War . Because they did not possess the resources to run the station, they requested Starfleet assistance. Starfleet's hope was that Bajor would eventually apply to join the United Federation Of Planets , and Sisko's assignment was to do everything to help guide Bajor in that direction, short of violating the Prime Directive . Sisko, who since the death of his wife at the hands of the Borg two years earlier at the Battle Of Wolf 359 , had been less enthusiastic about his Starfleet career, accepted the assignment, but warned Captain Jean-Luc Picard , who briefed Sisko on his assignment, that he was considering resigning from Starfleet. Because of Picard's role as Locutus of Borg in the Battle of Wolf 359, Sisko continued to feel a great deal of animosity toward him. By chance (or so it was thought at the time), Sisko and his crew discovered a stable Wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and the aliens living therein. The devoutly spiritual Bajorans believe them to be the Bajoran Prophets and the wormhole their Celestial Temple. These aliens live outside of linear time, which means that they can perceive what we think of as the past, present and future simultaneously. Communicating with the Prophets also tends to reveal intimate details and psychological insights about oneself, and as a result of his initial encounter with them, Sisko came to realize that he was holding on needlessly to the memory of his wife, and needed to move past his grief. The novelization of "Emissary" says that Sisko let go of that hatred and learned to see that Picard was just as much of a victim of the Borg as Sisko was, if not more so. This was less explicit in the aired episode, the end of which showed him merely extending his hand in friendship to Picard, and indicating subtly that he had overcome his personal demons. The crew of Deep Space Nine decided to move the station to the mouth of the wormhole, in order to lay claim to it, making Bajor a new hub of scientific, commercial and political activity. This gave Sisko a greater degree of importance as the commander of the Bajoran sector. Sisko's discovery of the wormhole also led the Bajorans to acclaim Sisko as the "Emissary of the Prophets", a role about which Benjamin was decidedly ambivalent through at least the first five seasons. Slowly however, Sisko came to accept his role, in particular in the fifth season episode "Rapture". The Prophets intervened in the Dominion War and gradually revealled that Sisko's destiny was intertwined with that of Bajor. In the seventh season premiere "Image in the Sand", after the murder of Jadzia Dax and the collapse of the wormhole entrance by the Pah-Wraith-possessed Gul Dukat, Sisko learned that the Prophets had arranged his birth. In a vision sent by the Prophets, Sisko saw a woman on the planet Tyree. He drew her image on a PADD with a facial reconstruction computer program. Jake then remembered seeing the same woman in a photograph in a storage room in his grandfather's restaurant. Confronted with this information, Joseph Sisko reluctantly told them about Sarah, his wife and Ben's mother. She was possessed by a Prophet so that she would marry Joseph and give birth to Benjamin. Sarah left two days after Ben's first birthday. After three years of searching, Joseph discovered that she had been working as a holophotographer in Australia until her death in a hovercraft accident just one month before he tracked her down. He then produced a locket that belonged to her; it has an inscription in ancient Bajoran that Ben translated as "Orb of the Emissary". Ben then journeys to Tyree with Joseph, Jake and the newly-joined Ezri Dax, where he found and opened the Orb. This released the Sarah Prophet within, who then reopened the wormhole, from which the Pah Wraith were vanquished. In the series' finale, "What You Leave Behind" , Sisko's destiny was fulfilled. He confronted Gul Dukat , still possessed by the Pah Wraith —the antithesis of the Prophets — and imprisoned him forever with the rest of the Pah Wraiths by pushing both Dukat and the Kosst Amojan, the powerful Pah-wraith who possessed Dukat's body, into the fiery abyss of the Bajoran Fire Caves. Shortly thereafter, Sarah informed him that it was time for him to live with and learn from the Prophets; Ben said a final goodbye to his wife, Kasidy, and told her he didn't know when he would be able to return to her.
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