The first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 8 was plotted in 2015

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended in 1999 on a cliffhanger of sorts with Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) leaving his wife and unborn child to join the Prophets. Though he promised to return, that promise has gone unfullfilled, unless you count IDW Publishing's current series of comics that has not only brought Sisko back but given him adventures galore.

In 2015, however, there was a different kind of adventure worked out in idea form. Ida Steven Behr, the showrunner for the series, gathered his team of writers, which included Rene Echevarria, Hans Beimler, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and Ronald D. Moore, and together, they plotted out what could have been the first episode of the 8th season of Deep Space Nine. [Via Screenrant] On the Deep Space Nine documentary, What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine, Behr revealed what they envisioned.

The new series was set twenty years after the end of Deep Space Nine and started with Captain Rom at the helm the USS Defiant, with the space station having become a shrine for the Bajoran prophets, honoring Emissary Sisko. Major Kira has since then become the Vedek. Everyone is gathered on the station as the hologram, Vic Fontaine, is "dying." Together, they all see the destruction of the Defiant and the death of Captain Nog.

The Jem'Hadar return on Bajor, and the present lives of the Deep Space Nine characters are revealed as Ezri Dax, now a Starfleet Captain, is married to Dr. Julian Bashir, and Jake Sisko is with his adult half-brother, Joseph Yates-Sisko. As a conspiracy unfolds with Jem'Hadar and weapons are drawn, Captain Sisko suddenly materializes at the space station. And the first episode ends on that stunning note.

What an incredible first episode this could have been! And it would have been the perfect way to reunite the former teammates to fight yet another battle with one of their most powerful enemies. The odds of an episode, or even movie, like this happening are slim to none, but the talented minds behind Star Trek: Deep Space Nine really did set the scene for what could have been!