Jake Sisko
Jake Sisko was the son of the famous Starfleet Captain Benjamin Sisko and Jennifer Sisko. He chose not to join Starfleet, instead becoming a writer. He made many friends on Deep Space 9, but his closest was Nog. Having lost his mother as a child, he found maternal and caring figures in his stepmother Kasidy Yates-Sisko and Kira Nerys.

Early life

Jake was born in 2355, one year after his parents met. () His birth was planned: his parents decided to have a child, and his father excitedly created a nursery, including a starscape on the ceiling which the future Jake came to love. When they moved out of their house, young Jake couldn't understand why they couldn't just take the starscape with them. ()

In 2366, Jake was living with his parents on the , where his father was first officer. Late that year, eleven-year-old Jake lost his mother at the Battle of Wolf 359, during which the Saratoga was destroyed by a Borg cube shortly after he and his father escaped the ship. Jake subsequently moved to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars, where his father moved into a new posting. Together, they frequently played baseball on the holodeck there and often went fishing at a lake on Earth. ()

Prior to 2367, the Sisko family made a camping trip to Itamish III, where Jake learned water skiing. While on a camping trip on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant in 2370, Jake would recall this vacation as the happiest time he and his parents had had together. ()

Deep Space 9 
In 2369, Jake accompanied his father to his new posting, Deep Space 9 in orbit of Bajor. He was not enthusiastic about living on the space station and would initially have preferred living on Bajor. However, he gradually came to accept it after meeting Nog, who became his best friend. Jake was a good influence on Nog, who enrolled in a school run by Keiko O'Brien. There, Nog learned to read and write, and Jake expanded his studies. () Jake's father became concerned with his friendship with Nog, worried that Nog would be a bad influence on Jake. When Nog was forbidden to attend school, Commander Sisko was relieved and hoped the relationship would end. But the two still spent time together and it was discovered that Jake was tutoring Nog. Seeing that the friendship, rather than being a bad influence, was beneficial to Jake, Commander Sisko allowed the two to continue spending time together. ()

Jake had many adventures on the space station. He was one of the first infected by a virus left by the resistance on the space station that caused aphasia. () During a camping trip in the Gamma Quadrant, Jake and his father ran into the Jem'Hadar. When his father was captured, Jake, along with Nog, used the runabout Rio Grande to alert a search party looking for them. () In 2371, Jake, his father, and Miles O'Brien became trapped in an former ore-processing unit when an old Cardassian security system was activated and the station was threatened with destruction. They were saved when they were able to reach the main control junction and shut down the program. ()

During the Bajoran Gratitude Festival, Jake became enamored with Major Kira, who was in love with Vedek Bareil at the time. However, this later turned out to be a side effect of Lwaxana Troi's Zanthi fever, which projected amorous feelings for the person who was closest to her at the time – and that was Kira. () He also helped his father pilot a replica of an ancient Bajoran space vessel, which Sisko built, on a journey to Cardassia to prove that the Bajorans reached Cardassia without the aid of warp technology. () When Sisko was later promoted to Captain that year, Jake had the honor of placing the fourth pip on his father's dress uniform. ()

In 2372, he accompanied his father to Earth during the Changeling scare. There, he experienced a taste of martial law, with troops in the streets and everyone subject to blood screenings, which was a way of verifying if one was Human or a Changeling. () While on Earth, he was able to spend time with his grandfather, Joseph Sisko. He also witnessed the attempt by some Starfleet members to attempt an overthrow of the civilian government. They believed that a military-run government could best meet the threat of the Dominion. () 

Professor  of the mirror universe kidnapped Jake in order to lure Captain Sisko back to her universe to help the rebellion build a copy of the  for the rebels. She and Jake became very close, only to have Jake experience another loss when Jennifer was killed by the mirror . ()

Over time, Jake became involved in Bajoran spiritual activities. When his father began having visions of the future of Bajor and Jake learned that the visions were harmful and could kill him, he ordered Dr. Bashir to operate and repair his father's synaptic nerves. He was taken over by a Pah-wraith, an evil prophet, who wished to destroy the wormhole. He was stopped by a Prophet who had taken over Kira. () 

Jake got a first-hand look at war when a Federation colony was attacked by Klingons. Amid the fighting and killing on Ajilon Prime, Jake helped out in the infirmary and was horrified to realize that war is not a romantic adventure. When trying to retrieve a generator for the infirmary, he became frightened by shelling and ran away terrified. After wandering across a wounded soldier he was unable to save or help, he returned to the infirmary and hid during another Klingon attack as the hospital was evacuated. As the Klingons entered the facility to give chase to those trying to escape underground, he grabbed a phaser rifle and fired in panic, causing the ceiling to crash in on the Klingons, stopping their advance. He was hailed as a hero for having delayed the enemy and bought everyone else time to escape, despite having courageously revealed the truth and writing an article about the fine line between courage and cowardice, which only served to further impress his father, who told Jake he was proud of him. ()

The Dominion War
Jake played a prominent role in the war against the Dominion. After the Second Battle of Deep Space 9, Jake elected to stay behind as a front line reporter on the war, reasoning that his status as the son of the Emissary would prevent the Dominion forces from harming him for fear of angering the Bajorans. () Jake clashed somewhat with Weyoun 5, the Vorta leader of the Dominion forces aboard the station. Weyoun was disturbed by Jake's use of the word "occupation" in his reports for the Federation News Service to describe the nonaggression pact between the Dominion and Bajor and concluded that Jake was biased against the Dominion and refused to transmit his stories to the outside world for publication. When Jake insisted on freedom of the press, Weyoun smiled and replied, "Please, tell me you're not that naïve." ()

Jake joined Major Kira and Rom in forming a resistance cell on Deep Space 9. They attempted to sabotage the station. () Later, they were arrested, with Rom sentenced to death. Tora Ziyal and Quark rescued them and together they took the weapons off-line, with the help of Odo, which helped lead to the retaking of Deep Space 9. () Later, after the station had been retaken by the Federation, Jake successfully published a collection of his stories about living on the station under Dominion rule. ()

In 2374, Jake and Nog were attacked by a Jem'Hadar ship and rescued by the , manned and captained by an elite group of Starfleet Academy cadets called Red Squad. The ship was originally on a training mission, but became trapped in Dominion space at the outbreak of the war and all the officers were killed, leaving the cadets to run the ship. Although Nog immediately hit it off with the crew, Jake had reservations. The captain of the ship decided to carry out the original mission, and obtained information on a new Jem'Hadar battleship. They were able to complete their mission, but then the crew decided to attack the ship. Jake believed that this was a suicide mission. Captain Watters had Jake arrested and put in the brig. The Valiant was destroyed in the attack, with all hands killed except for Jake, Nog, and one crewman, all of whom escaped and were rescued by the . ()

When Captain Sisko took an indefinite leave of absence and left Deep Space 9 after the death of Jadzia Dax and the closing of the wormhole by a Pah-wraith who entered into the body of Gul Dukat, Jake returned to Earth with his father to stay with his grandfather, Joseph Sisko. () After an assassination attempt on his father by a Pah-wraith cultist and a reunion with Ezri Dax, he helped his father find the Orb of the Emissary on the planet , which reopened the wormhole, freeing the Prophets. Jake then returned with his father to Deep Space 9, where he remained until the conclusion of the war. ()

Hobbies

Writing

Jake did not follow in his father's footsteps to enter Starfleet, contrary to his father's initial expectations. () However, he did inherit his father's love for art, surprising his father with the fact that he wrote poetry. () Eventually developing a fondness and talent for writing, he considered enrolling at the Pennington School in New Zealand on a writing fellowship. He started at least two works: Anslem, a novel, and the short story "Past Prologue". Later, Jake joined the Federation News Service as a war correspondent, remaining on Deep Space 9 while it was under Dominion control and placing himself in considerable danger. He was present on the USS Defiant during the invasion of the Chin'toka system. Jake was a gifted writer but a horrible speller. ()

Cooking
Like his father, Jake had been taught cooking from an early age by his grandfather and regularly enjoyed cooking, his skills gaining the surprised admiration of his mirror , calling his family's expert cooking skills the "cooking gene" which supposedly all Siskos shared. () Jake frequently impressed residents of Deep Space 9, including his father, with his abilities in the kitchen. ()

Sports and games
Jake and his father shared a fondness for baseball, a fondness shared by Kasidy Yates; the pair or trio often visited the holosuites on Deep Space 9 and re-enact famous historical matches. Jake considered London Kings player Buck Bokai to be "the greatest hitter of all time". Jake also enjoyed playing dom-jot with Nog. ()

Personal relationships

Family
Jake Sisko's family came from New Orleans, Louisiana, with ancestry from Africa. His father kept several African masks on the wall in his quarters, after retrieving them from storage on Earth. () His aunt, Judith, lived in Portland. ()

Jake and his father enjoyed a strong relationship; the two especially shared a love of baseball, and regularly played the game together in Quark's holosuites. (, etc.) Jake and Nog even went to great lengths to acquire an original Willie Mays baseball card for his father as a "cheering up" present. ()

Jake introduced his father to his second wife, Kasidy Yates, despite some initial reluctance due to her occupation as a "freighter captain", and served as best man at their wedding. ()

Jake's paternal grandfather was Joseph Sisko. Whenever Jake visited his grandfather's restaurant, Sisko's Creole Kitchen, the latter made him scrub oysters or peel potatoes. When Jake was young, Joseph would tell him that the alligator that hung off of his restaurant's ceiling came down at night and guarded the restaurant, and that during the day it was in stasis. ()

Both his father and grandfather would call Jake by his nickname, "Jake-o", from time to time. (, , , , , , , )

Friends

Nog

Upon arrival at Deep Space 9, Jake quickly became friends with Nog despite the differences between their cultures, even teaching the young Ferengi how to read and encouraging him to attend Keiko O'Brien's school. This friendship endured, and Jake and Nog eventually moved in together when Nog returned from Starfleet Academy on Earth. He encouraged Nog to apply to Starfleet. ()

Jake and Nog occasionally sat on the Promenade and watched "the women" arriving on the station. ()

In 2373-2374, Jake and Nog shared quarters together. They were located in Section M of the habitat ring. Prior to this he lived in his father's quarters. ()

When Nog was wounded during the Siege of AR-558 and lost a leg, Jake tried to help him adjust. Nog was spending a lot of time in the Vic Fontaine holoprogram. When Jake came into the holosuite, Nog became enraged and punched Jake, but Jake continued to try to help his friend. ()

Quark
For a short time while Nog was on a mission with the Defiant, Jake hung out with Quark and observed him as he was conducting a "nefarious deal." ()

Romances
Jake went on his first date in 2370, with a young Bajoran woman named Laira. () Following the end of that relationship, Jake started going out with another Bajoran, this time a dabo girl named Mardah, until 2371, believing he was in love. () Following their break-up, Jake began dating a Human woman named Leanne. () By 2375, Jake was dating a Bajoran woman named Kesha. ()

Alternate future

In an alternate timeline, Jake was a great writer who retired at the age of forty. He revealed to a young admirer who visited him in his New Orleans home that he retired because of the death of his father, when Jake was eighteen years old. Captain Sisko was "killed" when he and Jake were on the Defiant to view the inversion of the wormhole. Sisko was killed when a bolt of energy from the warp core hit him as he pushed Jake out of its way.

After his father's death, Jake was visited several times by his father who, it turned out, was not actually dead. His father's temporal signature had been altered and he was appearing and disappearing due to the fluctuations of the signature. Attempts by the crew to save him failed and he dematerialized.

During this timeline, the station was turned over to the Klingon Empire, and Jake returned home, where he married a Bajoran woman named Korena and began writing.

In his thirties, however, his father appeared to him again, and, obsessed with trying to find a way to save him, Jake abandoned his writing and devoted his life to trying to free his father from the subspace field in which he was trapped. All attempts to free his father failed; it was only near the end of his life that Jake realized that the only way to save his father was for Jake to die, at the moment when his father returned and was with him in normal space, so the bond between the two would severed and the elder Sisko would be returned to the time of the accident. He poisoned himself to ensure that he would die when his father was with him; as he died, his father was returned to the Defiant, and dodged the energy burst, thereby avoiding the accident and giving Jake a second chance at life with his father. ()

Appendices

Appearances
 (Season 2)

 (Season 3)
 (only as part of the Dominion-induced hallucination)

 (Season 4)

 (Season 5)

 (Season 6)

 (Season 7)

Background information
Jake was played by Cirroc Lofton. The young Jake seen in  was played by Thomas Hobson. The middle-aged and the elderly Jake in  was played by Tony Todd.

The original 1992 Writer's Bible for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine  gave this biography for the character:
Jake Sisko, the commander's son. An Army brat who doesn't remember life on Earth, has been aboard four different starships, and stationed on two planets. This transient life style has taught him how to scope out a new terrain and assimilate quickly. At the same time he has an inner fear of forming new friendships because he loses them so easily. He dreams of going to live on Earth. He collects holodeck programs of various places on Earth that he uses to try to fulfill his fantasy. Deep inside he knows that his mom would still be alive if they did not live in space, and he has a suppressed bitterness about it. His father promised there would be other kids on the station; as it turns out there are only a handful of various alien species. Only one is his age, Nog, a Ferengi teenage boy who is a bad influence. Jake is close with his dad; they are buddies. The boy has no technical expertise at all. He struggles with his homework but is dedicated to doing his best.

On creating the dynamic of Jake and Ben, Michael Piller explained, "We felt that a father and son relationship would be a different relationship than any other Star Trek kind of hero that we've seen before." (Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Unauthorized Story, p. 9)

Ronald D. Moore has commented, "Until we hit on Jake as a writer (in  as I recall) we didn't really have a role for him within the context of the show. No one wanted to go down the Wesley Crusher super-genius road again, and it just took a while to find Jake's niche on the station." 

Speaking in , shortly before filming finished on , Cirroc Lofton said, "Jake, like most children, was finding himself, and trying to see where he was going to be in the whole overall scheme of things, and I believe that he just really grew up on the show, he went from adolescence to manhood, where he's now discovering himself, on his own, and coming into his own self, so he knows what he wants to do, he's found things that he's interested in, and he went from being a kid to being this young man ready to face the world, and ready to take on new challenges. I think that's really the evolution of this character, he was just there to show you there are children, and there are ways to cope with this lifestyle in space, and you can mature, and you don't have to be a Starfleet officer necessarily." ("Crew Dossier: Jake Sisko", DS9 Season 7 DVD, Special Features)

Despite being a regular cast member throughout all seven seasons of the show, Jake Sisko appeared in only seventy-one of the show's 173 episodes. In season 7, again despite his status as a regular for the whole season, he was in only nine of twenty-six episodes – and less than that of two recurring characters, Nog and Damar (eleven each). Another recurring yet nonspeaking character, Morn, appeared in ninety-two episodes across the series.

Jake is the only member of the main DS9 cast to not have a mirror universe counterpart as the mirror counterparts of his parents,  and , separated before his counterpart could be born. He is the also the only character in the Star Trek universe known not to have a mirror counterpart.

Although the Dominion creates a hallucination including him, Jake is one of only two main characters in the spin-offs of Star Trek made from 1987 to 2005 (TNG-ENT) to not have appeared as a holographic duplicate. The other is Ezri Dax.

Jake is the only Human regular character on any Star Trek series who was not in Starfleet and never wore a Starfleet uniform.

Apocrypha
In the Pocket DS9 series of novels, Jake's full name is given. His full first name, "Jacob", is mentioned in the novel , and his middle name, "Isaac", in Avatar, Book One.

According to the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel Deny Thy Father, Jake was born in San Francisco on Father's Day, June 12th, 2355. His father was on paternity leave from the  at the time and was able to attend the delivery.

In Rising Son, he travels into the wormhole looking for his father and becomes lost in the Gamma Quadrant. He joins a ship of treasure hunters and eventually discovers Kai Opaka. He helps bring her home and unwittingly participates in finding a lost civilization in the Idran system.

In Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novella Fragments and Omens, Jake meets and marries a Bajoran woman called Azeni Korena (Rena for short), whom Benjamin Sisko met in the alternate timeline of the .

In the  novel The Good That Men Do, Jake is approached by Nog with recently declassified files from the early days of the Federation, and the two investigate the "death" of Charles Tucker III and the actual founding of the Federation. It also mentions that Jake and Korena had a daughter named Jennifer after Jake's mother.

In the 1990s, several  young adult novels featured several adventures of Jake and Nog.

In the short story "Ha'mara" from the anthology book Prophecy and Change, Jake accompanied his father, Major Kira, and Dr. Bashir on a trip to Bajor shortly after their arrival to Deep Space 9 and Sisko and Kira get trapped in an underground cave-in, and are believed dead. During the rescue operation, Bashir gives Jake a PADD on which to write his thoughts. This would prove to be the beginning of his love of writing.

In Star Trek Onlines background material, including the novel The Needs of the Many, Jake is working as a journalist, and conducts interviews with a number of characters on current events in the chronology. Among other things, he sneaks into First City on Qo'noS in 2388 to interview Worf as the latter is recuperating from injuries sustained by Nero in Star Trek: Countdown, and is warned not to return to Klingon space for his own safety due to the Federation's current unpopularity in the Klingon Empire. The Needs of the Many also states that his novel Anslem is considered one of the great works of contemporary literature in the 25th century.

The alternate reality version of Jake Sisko appears in the fifth issue of the Star Trek: Ongoing story arc The Q Gambit where he is a member of the Free Federation Resistance stationed on the Resistance outpost planet Paradise alongside Jadzia Dax until it was bombed by the Dominion. They manage to gather survivors and take cover among the trees and dodged ground forces until they left. When the Defiant arrives the next day, Jake and Dax are reunited with Benjamin Sisko and Odo and Jake is surprised to see  with them as Jake explains that he grew up reading about Kirk from Starfleet histories his dad would sneak past the Klingon quarantine on Earth. He then asks Kirk how he got here, to which Kirk explains that he and his crew were brought over a hundred years into the future by Q to face a no-win scenario. When Sisko later becomes a host to the last Prophet, Jake believes it was killing him, but Sisko assures his son that he was okay and has never felt more alive.

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