Sisko of Arabia

So I'm rewatching the DS9 episode "Starship Down," a rather contrived, thinly plotted story about the Defiant being badly damaged, and the resultant personal struggles of survival that are meant to illuminate character relationships. A badly injured Sisko is trapped on the bridge with Kira. In an effort to keep him awake, she tells him Bajoran stories. The thought crosses my mind, How Arabian Nights-like. And that's when it hit me.

Benjamin Sisko is Lawrence of Arabia. I've never encountered that idea before, but now it makes so much sense that I can't unsee it. Certain characters enter the cultural consciousness as archetypes that pop up in fiction again and again, often with no conscious reference to the original, yet the influence is clear. I'm not saying anyone intentionally set out to create Sisko in the image of Lawrence (the movie version, not the historical one), but he fits the type so well. (If you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, you should, if for no other reason than that it invented a good deal of the visual language we now associate with the "sweeping epic," including Star Wars. And if you ever get a chance to see it on a big screen, it's well worth going out of your way for.)

So how is Sisko like Lawrence? He's an officer sent to a remote location as a liaison from a colonial power that sees itself as enlightened and benevolent (British/Federation), but is not above pursuing its own interests in global/galactic conflicts. In this case, it is inserting itself into the conflict between a backward but noble, spiritually oriented people (Arabs/Bajorans), and an empire against which they are rebelling that is brutal, oppressive, and, one suspects, on the decline (Ottomans/Cardassians), but nevertheless remains a threat to remote colonies under British/Federation protection. In many ways, the depiction of Bajor in DS9 is reminiscent of the orientalism oozing from Lawrence of Arabia -- simultaneously admiring and condescending. Along the way, Sisko/Lawrence becomes a spiritual figure to the Bajorans/Arabs and comes to value their independent interests more than the distant ones he's supposed to be representing, which he never fully abandons, either. He is not one of them, but he respects them and is willing to use their regard as a valuable tool, a means to an end. He inhabits an awkward position between two worlds, never comfortable with the veneration directed toward him, but ultimately coming to see himself as chosen for some greater good.

(I know a lot of people bristle at the idea of the Federation as an inherently colonialist enterprise, pardon the pun, but it is. The Federation is yet another version of the grand tale we in the West like to tell ourselves about our highly evolved values that we have but to expose the world/galaxy to, and they will inevitably come to appreciate and share them, and when they do, they will be ready to join us in a kind of secular holy alliance. It's the story America tells itself, and Britain told itself before that. In aspiring to be better, we tend to take what we know and idealize it. When we set that story in the future, we call it sci fi.)