Warning! The following contains SPOILERS from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 episode 5 “Series Acclimation Mil.”
Star Trek fans who haven’t seen Starfleet Academy yet, or are sadly among those not interested, will still want to stream the show’s most recent episode, “Series Acclimation Mil.” And the reason is very simple: Jake Sisko returns, as does his father, the Emissary of the Prophets, and Dax! The biggest of the three reveals is arguably that of Benjamin Sisko, though, who speaks at the end of the story in his mind-blowing return.
However, squeezing Benjamin Sisko’s brief, audio cameo into episode 5 wasn’t conventional. In fact, Avery Brooks didn’t record a single line of dialogue for the “Series Acclimation Mil” scene where the Emissary of the Prophets' voice can be heard after SAM thanks him for meaning so much to someone he never even met: herself. Cirroc Lofton, who reprised his role as Sisko’s son, Jake, from DS9, said in an interview with ScreenRant:
“I just had the idea that it would be great to use this album that he [Brooks] recorded. He recorded this album called ‘Here,’ and it's a jazz album, beautiful. I listened to it on a regular basis, and I thought, ‘Can we find a way to get this in the episode?’ And so, Tawny [Newsome] and I got together. I handed her the CD that I had, and I said, 'Go…'”
Tawny Newsome, who co-wrote the episode with Kirsten Beyer (penned the Star Trek: Khan podcast), “knew from the beginning” they wanted to honor Brooks and needed to get his permission to use the audio snippet from his jazz album, which, of course, they did. Lofton elaborated on Benjamin Sisko’s voice cameo by saying:
“I said [to Newsome], ‘Go listen to this CD and see if there's something there that we can use. And we can get Avery's voice on this episode, because I think that'll be a nice special moment at the end, that will kind of bookend everything.’ And so it actually, by the grace of God, all worked out. I can't even believe it.”
Now, what Star Trek fans aren’t going to believe is that they get not one, not two, but three Deep Space Nine characters in Starfleet Academy’s fifth episode. And, personally, even though the whole episode revolves around unraveling the mystery of Benjamin Sisko, I found Jake Sisko and Dax’s appearances more memorable. (Continued on page 2…)