Bashir and Sisko were my two favorites! It's pretty easy for me to identify with a healer-classed character in almost any setting, but Sisko always struck a very strong chord with me as well for numerous reasons. DS9 was SUCH a good show all around! It really had a lot of excellent, powerfully written characters and episodes in it.
Yes, even some of my friends who love DS9 best think I'm crazy when I say Sisko is my favorite captain. I love Picard--he and Data are really the only things I love about TNG--but Sisko is an incredible character, and Avery Brooks is an incredible and underappreciated actor.
No wonder I love the Hive!
Normally when I tell people that DS9 was my favorite Star Trek they look at my funny, and say things about how they just never bothered to watch it. Glad to know that there are some other DS9 fans out there.
So what you said made me realize why I liked that show so much. Almost all of the characters were struggling with identity in different ways. Not that that hasn't always been a Star Trek theme, but where as you often had the alien, who's place was unsure in the other Star Trek franchises, the humans, especially the Captains were always so sure they were where they were supposed to be (a.k.a. Star Fleet).
But Sisko had to struggle with how his choices to join Star Fleet effected his family, as well as the fact that another culture decided to make him apart of their religion whether he wanted it or not. Kira had to figure out her place now that she wasn't a rebel anymore, but part of a legitimate government, Garak had to struggle with the life he remembered wanting that didn't want him, and the new life he had found that did have a place. Dax. . . well Dax whose personality was in some sense the most fluid, was possibly the most sure of herself, which was interesting, since she was forced to prove to people how she was both the same and different across her life times. And so on.
You're absolutely right. Star Trek always had that one character trying to figure out what it means to be human--Spock in TOS, Data in TNG. But the TNG cast in particular just felt so
perfect (even when they weren't--Riker was an incredible jerk half the time [I highly recommend the SFDebris review of the episode "Ensign Ro"--it is hilarious how he deconstructs just how much of a jerk Riker is in that episode]), that it was nice to see a cast with some built-in conflict. I think Kira was a particularly great addition to the cast for that reason. I mean, she's such a complex character: she was a terrorist, but she's also extremely devout (which was refreshing after how TOS and TNG treated all religion like contemptible superstition)--and no matter what she's always so sure she's
right. You don't always agree with her, but you respect her for it. While season 1 is overall weaker than the rest of the show, Kira's two big episodes from season 1--"Progress" and "Duet"--still rank among my favorites. Odo, too, because really Odo doesn't care about your rules or your regulations or your process, he just wants
justice and
order.
The Cardassians and the Dominion both brought a lot to DS9, too. Even in TNG I think it was apparent that the Cardassians were the most interesting and complex rivals the show had ever presented--far more nuanced than the brutish Klingons or crafty Romulans. Honestly, the Cardassians, the Bajorans, and the Ferengi are more
human than the TNG Federation. And Dukat, Damar, and Garak were all such fantastic characters in their own ways. And then the Dominion felt powerful without feeling quite so godlike as the Borg--which meant that defeating them felt considerably less deus ex machina (except, you know, that one time it
was a deus ex machina
). And then there was the conflict because Odo was a Founder. And Weyoun was so delightfully slimy--Jeffery Combs was fantastic (as Brunt, too, of course).
My friend and I joke that the extras on DS9 got more character development than some of the main characters on other Trek shows. And even though it's a joke...it's still true. Ensign Kim could get sucked out the airlock and no one would even notice he was gone; Morn goes missing and he gets an entire episode about it. But, of course, Morn never shuts up...
(Fun fact: Morn was in more episodes than Jake Sisko. In season 7, both Rom and Nog were in more episodes than Jake.)
Also: "I like you, Quark. That's why I'm going to allow you to take your hand off my thigh instead of shattering every bone in your body."
