Character Insight No. 289: Admiral Leyton and Erika Benteen

Welcome back to Character Insight! Sorry I missed last week buried in tribbles, but to make up for that, I'm covering a doubleheader this week.  We review Admiral Leyton and Erika Benteen, two recurring characters who appear together on Deep Space Nine.

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp289

Admiral Leyton personally recommended Ben Sisko for the commanding role on the DS9 station based on his past experience working with Sisko.  We learn about their time together on the USS Okinawa in the episode Paradise Lost.  Leyton was captain and Sisko was executive officer, and in flashbacks we see how Sisko learned to respect the chain of command from Leyton when he provided honest counsel and disagreed with his superior officer during the Federation-Tzenkethi war.  It's a bit reminiscent of the lesson Michael Burnham learns from Captain Georgiou in Discovery.

When Odo learns that some Changelings have infiltrated the Federation during the build up to the Dominion War, he informs the Federation and Leyton, now a vice admiral, leads a contingent of high-ranking officers to try and convince the Federation President to implement sweeping security measures to discover and clean out the changelings.  We are introduced to Commander Erika Benteen at this stage, as she is the right hand of Admiral Leyton and helps him in trying to implement these security measures.  The President refuses to implement such measures, calling them too extreme.

Later, when the Dominion bombs a diplomatic conference between the Federation and the Romulan Empire, Admiral Leyton decides to take things into his own hands and stage a military takeover of Earth to remove the President from power.  

Leyton assigns Sisko to be head of Starfleet security, and then uses an elite Starfleet cadet squad to sabotage Earth's power grid to spread paranoia about Changeling infiltration.  Sisko uncovers Leyton's plot and captures one of Leyton's conspirators at Deep Space 9, intending to bring him to Earth to testify against Leyton and his plot.  Leyton then promotes Erika Benteen to captain of the USS Lakota and orders her to stop the Defiant from reaching Earth, telling her the entire crew had been replaced by Changelings.

QUOTE (Paradise Lost)

Benteen does have the Lakota attack the Defiant, but the Defiant's ablative armor prevents her from disabling the ship.  Benteen defies Leyton's orders to use quantum torpedos to destroy the Defiant, as she talks with Sisko and becomes convinced by his impassioned arguments that Leyton was the one deceiving her.  Thus, Benteen ends up saving the day as she escorts the Defiant safely to Earth to let them uncover Leyton's plots against the Federation leadership.

This set of episodes is Star Trek at its best, as it shows complex character dynamics and echoes political problems we still face in some parallels today.  Erika Benteen finds a way to do what is right even in the face of orders from superior officers who are trying to do right, even if their plans are contrary to the core ideals of the civilization.  We hope we can all be like Benteen when the situation demands it.

Erika Benteen was played by Susan Gibney, who had previously played Dr. Leah Brahms on TNG and can more recently be seen as a regular on Crossing Jordan and in bit roles on The Mentalist and Lost.  Admiral Leyton was played by Robert Foxworth, who still provides voice work today such as for the character Ratchet in all of the Transformers movies.  Both of these actors have provided multiple characters to Star Trek in long acting careers primarily based in TV.

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