Before Breaking Bad, Jonathan Banks Stole The Show As Star Trek Guest Star

Jonathan Banks is the type of actor who automatically elevates whatever he’s in. Many found it at first his role as fixer Mike Ehrmantraut on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” where his soulful performance helped audiences care deeply about a troubled man in a despicable line of work, while others found him through his role as cartoon duck-drawing criminology professor Buzz Hickey. in season 5 of the college sitcom “Community.” He’s a great performer who brings wonderfully different characters to life, and back in the 1990s, he stole the show in a guest role on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

“Deep Space Nine” often delved into darker subjects than was typical for the “Star Trek” franchise, and in season 1, episode 12, “Battle Lines,” several members of the DS9 crew were thrust into a truly unpleasant situation on a moon. . where the inhabitants cannot die. Banks stars as Golin Shel-la, the leader of one of two warring factions on the moon, and he stands out even among the regular cast, who are all great themselves. Banks has been acting on television since the 1970s and has so many guest appearances on shows that his IMDb list feels like it goes on for eternity. However, his role on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” is among his best.

In the episode, Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) takes the spiritual leader of the Bajorans, Kai Opaka (Camille Saviola) on a journey through the wormhole next to the space station Deep Space Nine when their run hits a strange moon. Kai Opaka dies, which is devastating to DS9’s first officer, Bajoran freedom fighter Major Kira Nerys (Nana’s Visitor), but she is soon alive again, which boggles the mind of Starfleet doctor Julian Bashir ( Alexander Siddig), who joined for the ride. It turns out that the moon is actually a penal colony and that the people who left the prisoners there also left microbes that prevent anyone on the moon from dying, to ensure that the bloodthirsty warriors could learn their lesson from the end Instead, the Nol-Ennis and the Ennis, led by Shel-la, have continued to battle each other over and over for eternity. It’s a misery of their own making, and when Shel-la learns that leaving the planet will kill anyone dead on its face, she tries to use that knowledge to destroy her enemies once and for all. forever.

Banks is fantastic, managing to be completely convincing as a man who has died many times but still yearns for war, and his interactions with Major Kira are wonderful. As he shared his hatred of his enemy, Kira begins to relive some of her own trauma from the war and purges her inner demons. It’s powerful stuff, and just a hint of what “Deep Space Nine” would eventually become.

Some of the best episodes of “Deep Space Nine” go into very difficult topicsand “Battle Lines” was one of the first times the series dealt heavily and openly with war. By season 5, the series would have its own intergalactic war to deal with in the form of the Dominion Wars, which caused quite a bit of tension behind the scenes as “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry did not want the show to specifically deal with war. Instead, “Deep Space Nine” looked at the horrors of war and the difficult decisions we must make in the face of those horrors, and “Battle Lines” was an early indicator of how far the show is ready to go.

In “The Deep Space Log Book: A First Season Companion,” producer David Livingston praised Banks’ ability to tackle all kinds of roles:

“I was working with Jonathan Banks on ‘Otherworld’ at Universal. That’s where I originally knew him. Then I knew his work on ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ and then of course on ‘Wiseguy. ‘ He’s a very odd and unusual actor, and he wears this great make-up and has done great jobs (sic).”

“Wiseguy” was a crime drama series in which Banks starred on CBS from 1987 to 1990, and was his first major claim to fame before his Emmy-winning performance on “Breaking Bad.” Still, for the little weird “Star Trek” fan? The man who loves war will always be the one who would not die.