Characters | Acting
I don’t have any complaints when it comes to the talent appearing in Starfleet Academy’s fifth episode, “Series Acclimation Mil,” but most of the ensemble cast is pushed to the side for this Deep Space Nine love letter.
Fortunately, SAM is still central to the plot, but everyone else seemingly takes a sick day as the promise of Benjamin Sisko, which is mind-blowing but barely delivered, Dax’s return, and Jake Sisko’s appearance overshadow everyone else. It's great that they're all in the episode, but it shouldn't have come at the expense of the storytelling.
Certainly, Avery Brooks’ retirement made bringing back Captain Sisko in the flesh an impossibility but just hearing him utter a few lines at the very end of the episode seemed quite anticlimactic to me. The revelation that Professor Illa is Dax in a new host body some 800 years later is, as Mr. Spock would say, fascinating!
However, I wasn’t the biggest Jake Sisko fan, so seeing Cirroc Lofton reprise his DS9 role as an adult didn’t exactly engage a powerful, warp core's worth of nostalgia for me, as I'm sure it will for other Deep Space Nine enthusiasts.