Jonathan Banks is the kind of actor that automatically elevates whatever he’s in. Many first discovered him through his role as fixer Mike Ehrmantraut on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” where his soulful performance helped audiences care deeply for 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 fantastic performer who brings some surprisingly 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 topics 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’s a standout 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 listing feels like it goes on for an eternity. Even so, his role on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” is among his best.

In the episode, Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) is taking the Bajoran spiritual leader Kai Opaka (Camille Saviola) on a trip through the wormhole next to the space station Deep Space Nine when their runabout crashes on a strange moon. Kai Opaka dies, which is devastating to DS9’s first officer, Bajoran freedom fighter Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), but soon she’s alive again, which boggles the mind of Starfleet doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), who tagged along 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 prevents anyone on the moon from dying, so as to ensure the bloodthirsty warriors might finally learn their lesson. Instead, the Nol-Ennis and the Ennis, led by Shel-la, have continued to battle one another 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 who has died on its surface, he tries to use that knowledge to destroy his enemies once and for all. 

Banks is great, managing to be totally convincing as a man who has died countless times yet still craves war, and his interactions with Major Kira are phenomenal. As he shares his hatred of his enemy, Kira begins to relive some of her own trauma from wartime and purge 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” get into really difficult topics, and “Battle Lines” was one of the first times the series dealt heavily and openly with war. By season 5, the series would have an intergalactic war of its own to deal with in the form of the Dominion Wars, which caused quite a bit of tension behind-the-scenes since “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry didn’t want the show to deal explicitly with war. Instead, “Deep Space Nine” stared 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 just how far the show was willing to go.

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

“I worked with Jonathan Banks on ‘Otherworld’ at Universal. That’s where I knew him originally. Then I knew his work with ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ and then of course on ‘Wiseguy.’ He is a very odd and unusual actor, and he wears this wonderful makeup and did a terrific jobs [sic].”

“Wiseguy” was a crime drama series that Banks starred in on CBS from 1987 through 1990, and it was his first real big claim to fame before his Emmy-winning performance on “Breaking Bad.” Still, for this weird little “Star Trek” fan? He’ll always be the war-loving guy who just wouldn’t die.