‘Starfleet Academy’ brings Avery Brooks back to ‘Star Trek’ for an emotional ‘Deep Space Nine’ epilogue: ‘That’s his voice’
The most beloved Star Trek captains have a habit of returning to the bridge for other installments beyond their original missions, whether it’s James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) or Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). But Benjamin Sisko — the commander of the Bajoran sector’s Deep Space Nine station, played by the franchise’s first Black leading man, Avery Brooks — has been entirely absent from the Trek-verse after Deep Space Nine‘s six-season run wrapped up in 1999. The sole exception is the poorly reviewed 2006 video game, Star Trek: Legacy, which brought together the voices of that core four, plus Scott Bakula‘s Jonathan Archer.
That changes with Episode 5 of Starfleet Academy, “Series Acclimation Mil.” Written by Star Trek lore experts Kristen Beyer and Tawny Newsome, the latest installment in the newest Trek series is an honest-to-Borg DS9 epilogue that directly addresses the scarcity of Sisko sightings since the series finale. The episode even concludes with a vocal cameo by Brooks — his first appearance in a Star Trek series in over 25 years — who is heard saying: “Divine laws are simpler than human ones, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them. Only love can understand them; only love can interpret these words as they were meant to be interpreted.” The words “Thank you, Avery,” then appear onscreen just before the credits roll.
“That’s his voice,” current Star Trek franchise mastermind, Alex Kurtzman confirms to Gold Derby, adding that overtures were made to bring the now-retired Brooks back for an on-camera appearance. In a separate interview, Newsome seconds Kurtzman’s account, noting that those discussions with the actor impacted how she and Beyer wrote the episode. “I didn’t get to the point of writing a scene for him, because I wanted to gauge what he wanted his level of involvement to be,” she explains. “We knew early on that we might not get him in the episode, and we only wanted to proceed once we had his blessing.”
“And I will say he was aware of the project all the way through,” continues Newsome, whose Star Trek bonafides also include voicing Beckett Mariner on the much-loved animated series, Lower Decks. “He knew that I would be involved and he was supportive of it. This episode is ultimately an homage to Sisko and a celebration of the sacrifices that he made in the Star Trek universe.”
As for that closing credits vocal cameo, Newsome reveals that it wasn’t dialogue that she and Beyer scripted for Brooks and the actor didn’t even step into a recording booth. Instead, it was a bit of audio sourced from Here…, a jazz and spoken word album that Brooks released in 2006. “Kristen and I found that snippet and it suited the theme of our episode so beautifully,” she recalls. “It was almost eerie.”
Bringing Sisko back
Part of the reason why Sisko has remained off-screen has to do with the way that the DS9 creative team wrapped up the character’s boldly conceived journey back in 1999. In lieu of a full Starfleet archive download, here’s the abbreviated version: during the course of DS9, the commander learned that he had a larger role to play as the Emissary of the Prophets — a spiritual figure key to the resolution of the Dominion War, which was one of the ongoing plot threads on a show famous for its serialized storytelling. In the last episode, “What You Leave Behind,” Sisko departs the mortal plane altogether and joins the prophets in another realm, unable to return during the lifetimes of his second wife, Kassidy (Penny Johnson Jerald), and his son Jake (Cirroc Lofton).
Within the Star Trek universe, the exact reasons for Sisko’s disappearance remain a mystery, one that’s largely gone unaddressed since the series finale — and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Lofton, who reprises his role as Jake in Starfleet Academy‘s latter-day DS9 epilogue. “Fans really love how DS9 ended, and we get new fans all the time thanks to the magic of streaming platforms,” the actor tells us. “But it did feel like our show was forgotten [by Star Trek producers] after it went off the air. The Next Generation cast did feature films, and that didn’t happen for us. At a certain point, you start to realize: ‘I don’t think we’re ever coming back or are ever going to be addressed again.'”
“It’s almost as if they just decided to never even talk about the Bajoran quadrant or the sacrifice that Sikso made,” Lofton continues. “Star Trek has often celebrated legacy figures like Zefram Cochrane, and it’s only right to give same honor to the first Black captain that we saw onscreen.”
Newsome credits Lofton with being the Starfleet Academy team’s main conduit to Brooks as “Series Acclimation Mil” came together. “Cirroc deserves an executive producer credit on this episode,” she says, noting that he secured permission from his onscreen dad to use that audio excerpt from Here… that closes out the episode. “His voice matters so much, and just hearing it hits all kind of emotional strings,” remarks Lofton. “It’s a magical moment that solidifies the importance of the episode.”
Unsolved mysteries
It should be noted that Starfleet Academy doesn’t attempt to fully answer the question of where Sisko currently resides — unlike the way it resolved what happened to George and Gracie, those humpback whales from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. “It’s one of those mysteries where I feel like if we answered it definitively, it would be disappointing,” Kurtzman says. “It also would have felt like a betrayal of what it represents. The fact that you get closer to understanding it in a new — but not necessarily the way you thought you would — felt like the right resolution.”
“It’s not like people are angry that they were never able to figure out what happened to Sisko and where the truth lay,” echoes Kurtzman’s fellow executive producer, Noga Landau. “That’s the essence of being a Starfleet officer. The fact of the matter is you really can’t fathom everything, and as a member of Starfleet you have to be able to live with that and kind of live it, too.”
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The story that Newsome and Beyer chose to tell finds holographic Starfleet cadet Sam (Kerrice Brooks) deciding to crack the case of Sisko’s fate for a class assignment. After that her character would be central to the DS9 epilogue, Brooks tells Gold Derby that she immediately started her own binge-watch. “They wanted me to only watch certain episodes, but I was like, ‘I can’t watch this out of order!'” the actress says, laughing. “I went all the way back, and it was so powerful to see Sisko stepping into his role as an emissary. You see this image of him and you’re like, ‘That’s what he was meant to be,’ but he rejected it at first! I didn’t know that, and it was so cool [to learn].”
Sam’s investigation brings her into contact with multiple members of the school’s faculty, including Robert Picardo‘s holo-Doctor who served alongside Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. But Picardo also appeared on a DS9 episode during the show’s fifth season playing Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the scientist who initiated the medical hologram program. “Series Acclimation Mil” specifically references that crossover, and it’s a bit of Trek continuity that the actor is glad the writers called out.
“Thirty years ago, I helped the Star Trek producers realize that if my character was a computer program, he could really be on every ship,” Picardo says about how his DS9 guest spot came about. “That’s also how I talked my way into one of the movies! I told them, ‘He really is like a popular screensaver — wouldn’t he be on every ship?'”
“It was fun to join the DS9 cast,” Picardo recalls. “They were all wonderful actors, and I’m still good friends with many of them. It was a whole different feeling from my show; part of it was their way of storytelling, the long arcs of those stories. Voyager was old school, self-contained episodes because we had to stick together on this little ship of life trying to find our way home. And Sisko is an amazing character … that fact that hundreds of years later they’re still trying to solve that mystery was a terrific callback.”
The two Jakes
Despite her best efforts, Sam’s assignment ultimately remains incomplete as she realizes that Sisko’s whereabouts are not for her to know. But she does get to know his son… or, at least, a version of him. Jake appears as a pre-recorded hologram in a virtual version of the Benjamin Sisko Museum, where he reveals that he grew up to be a father and a writer. And he returns in the episode’s closing moments, stepping out of the pages of his never-published memoir to share a one-on-one conversation with Sam in a shared space beyond the physical world.
That encounter was the last scene that Brooks shot with Lofton, and she admits to feeling like she wasn’t prepared when the cameras rolled. “We had already filmed four scenes that day, and I was going to look at that scene during lunch, but ended up taking a nap,” the actress confesses now. “Going into it, I remember telling him, ‘I really hope you bring it, because I don’t thing I’m going to!’ But he made it such a safe space for me; I felt like I didn’t need to know the words, because he gave me a reason to get their emotionally.”
For his part, Lofton says that he didn’t notice any extra tiredness from his scene partner. “Kerrice is a firecracker,” he says with a grin. “I had full faith and confidence that she was going to deliver in that moment, and while I was performing, I was admiring her work at the same time. She didn’t need any help from me!”
While he may have had his issues with DS9‘s absence from Star Trek canon over the decades, Lofton indicates that this epilogue was a healing experience — as well as a chance to pass the torch to a new generation of young franchise stars. And he’s grateful that Newsome and Beyer incorporated some of his ideas for the adult version of Jake into their script.
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“Part of Jake’s story for me was that his father was always surrounded by African artwork in their quarters, which was a conscious effort on Avery’s part,” he explains. “Because Jake grew up in that household, I wanted to make sure that his wardrobe reflected an African theme. So the outfit you see me wearing in the episode is inspired by traditional Ethiopian garments, and that’s my way of paying homage to Ben and Jake’s heritage.”
And Newsome wrote one last reveal into the epilogue’s endgame — a reveal that makes the Lower Decks star an official part of DS9‘s storied heritage. It turns out that Sam’s teacher is none other than Illa Dax, the latest incarnation of the Dax symbiont who had different hosts during the show’s run, but was always on good terms with Sisko. While Newsome says she initially wrote the role for a close friend and fellow Trekkie who she declines to identify, she ended up donning the elaborate Trill prosthetics herself.
“It was unexpected, but I’m so honored that I got to be the one to honor the Dax legacy,” she says, visibly moved. “I had a really clear idea of the voice for that character and when it came time to play the role, I just hoped that I was the next best person to do it.”
“And those prosthetics are insane,” Newsome adds, making it clear that we shouldn’t expect too many Illa Dax cameos going forward. “All love to the superhero actors on Starfleet Academy who have to wear them every day!”
