Star Trek Reveals Another Meeting Between Picard and Sisko

By Jamie Lovett

Many Star Trek fans will remember the meetings between Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Cmdr. Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's pilot episode, "Emissary." Star Trek has revealed that wasn't the only meeting between the two iconic Star Trek captains. SPOILERS for Star Trek #1 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Ramon Rosanas, Lee Loughridge, and Clayton Cowles follow. Benjamin Sisko is back, sent by the Prophets into corporeal existence with a new mission. However, for that mission, he needs a ship and a crew. For that, he looks toward Picard for help, which comes as a surprise to Jean-Luc as much as it may surprise fans.

Picard and Sisko's first meeting was tense. Sisko lost his wife during the Battle of Wolf 359, when Picard had become Locutus, leading the Borg Collective toward Earth. Sisko held a grudge and resented his assignment to Deep Space 9. However, after encountering the Prophets for the first time, Sisko gained a new perspective. He met with Picard on less combative terms and accepted command of the space station.

This history is why Sisko seeks out Picard, specifically, for his contact with Starfleet. Picard is, at first confused. However, Star Trek #1 shows Sisko pointing out that his time in the wormhole with the prophets is similar to Picard's time with the Borg, and may lead to some distrust, which may be reasonable. Both Sisko and Picard now know what it's like to be compromised by an outside entity.

This conversation is enough to get Picard to agree to give Sisko a ship, but he has a condition: Data is to join Sisko as First Officer aboard the USS Theseus, as there could be few better than he to ensure that Sisko is acting rationally in his command. Dr. Beverly Crusher also joins the Theseus crew, fascinated by what Sisko has experienced and may become. Speaking to ComicBook.com about the new series in a previous interview, writers Lanzing and Kelly explained how they chose Data and Crusher to be members of Sisko's crew.

"We knew we needed Data because if you're going to have a protagonist who is caught up in the weft and weave of the impossible to describe, and you're going to have a captain who's focused on that kind of energy, you need a second who is going to help keep him in the box," Lanzing said. "If you're going to have your head in the cloud, someone needs to have their feet on the ground to be able to hold you down."

As for Dr. Crusher, Lanzing added, "We thought it was really time for her to get her own ride, to get a place where she got to do her thing, where she got to live in an investigation of her own. One of the things that I always really loved about Beverly Crusher fundamentally is that she is a kind of a mad scientist. The only time we ever see her get really excited about anything other than motherhood is when she meets a scientist who she's a huge fan of, who she saw at that conference that one time. She loves that stuff. What's a bigger medical mystery than Benjamin Sisko? Here is a man who just spent three years in a state of fundamental space-time extraction and has come back physically and mentally changed. What is that? Who is that? And should that person be captaining a Starship? I think if you need to answer those questions, you put Beverly Crusher in the chair next to him, make sure that there's somebody there, not just checking to see if he's sane and aware, because you have Data for that kind of stuff, but to make sure that he is still human or that if he's not human, what is he and can he come to grips with that."

Star Trek #1 is on sale now. Star Trek #2 goes on sale on November 30th. The first spinoff series, Star Trek: Defiant, launches in March.

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