Starfleet Academy explores the mystery of Sisko in Deep Space Nine's finale

Episode 5, ‘Series Acclimation Mil,’ explores what really happened to Sisko in the Deep Space Nine finale

Starfleet Academy breaks the mold of Star Trek shows by focusing on students studying to join Starfleet in San Francisco, rather than the elite crew of a starship exploring the galaxy. But even as it forges a new path, it also celebrates the franchise’s history. That dichotomy is on full display in episode 5, “Series Acclimation Mil,” which follows a student working on a school project on the groundbreaking ’90s series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

“When I first joined the show, all of these people from my past came out of the woodwork and were DMing me, saying, ‘Well, we're so excited for you. When is someone going to do something for Sisko? When is someone going to do an homage to DS9?’" Starfleet Academy co-showrunner Noga Landau told Polygon in a video interview. “[Writers] Tawny Newsome and Kirsten Beyer felt the same. They have a deep love for DS9 and for Captain Sisko. We worked hard to break a story that really felt like it was part of our show, but also felt like it was the love letter that we wanted it to be.”

[Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for Starfleet Academy episode 5.]

Co-written by Newsome (star of Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Beyer (co-creator of Star Trek: Picard), the episode centers on the hologram Series Acclimation Mil, aka SAM, played by Kerrice Brooks. (No relation to DS9 star Avery Brooks.) SAM was programmed to attend Starfleet Academy to help the Kasquians, a new Star Trek species, get to know the United Federation of Planets and decide whether they can be trusted. The photonic Kasquians were created as servants, and now that they're free, they're wary of interacting with organic life, for fear of being enslaved again. If SAM convinces them of the Federation's good intentions, the Kasquians might join; if she fails, they'll retreat from the rest of the galaxy.

All the Starfleet Academy cadets have big issues with their parents, and in this episode, SAM’s creator is revealed to be an overbearing jellyfish-like creature who’s disappointed with her studies. Specifically, they think that SAM taking a music class is a waste of time, and they demand she instead enroll in a course called “Confronting the Unexplainable.”

That class turns out to cover the weirder aspects of Star Trek, like the Vulcan katra stones that block telepathy and the various immortal incorporeal beings Starfleet has encountered. But the mystery SAM becomes interested in is the fate of DS9’s Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), who either died confronting the Pah-wraiths in the Fire Caves of Bajor in the series finale or ascended to the Celestial Temple to continue his work as the Emissary of the Prophets. SAM, who is also an emissary struggling with the burdens of her duty, finds an immediate kinship with Sisko, and promises her professor, Illa (Newsome), that she will figure out what really happened at the end of DS9.

SAM’s research involves reading an extremely intense Bajoran children’s book about Sisko and visiting a gathering of Bajoran students, where she gets in trouble for pulling on someone’s ear and then questioning their entire belief structure. She also spends a lot of time breaking the fourth wall, as she talks through her experiences trying to solve this mystery and understand organic life in general.

“The whole entire thing was essentially one 36-page monologue, and that was insane. Normally, acting is being and reacting. So because I'm not reacting to anything, it's like, how on my toes can I be to motivate [myself] to even want to say these things to whoever I'm speaking to?” Brooks told Polygon.

When the project turns out to be harder than she anticipated, SAM worries her creators are going to pull her out of school and decide to fully isolate themselves from organic life. Determined to at least have some fun while she can, she lets a fellow student mess with her code so she can get drunk during a night out at a cadet bar that devolves into a brawl between the Starfleet Academy students and their War College rivals. That incident earns her a surprisingly intense talking-to from the Doctor (Robert Picardo), a 900-year-old medical hologram turned Starfleet Academy professor whom SAM has claimed as her mentor.

“As humans, we worry about our mortality. He worries about his infinity,” Picardo told Polygon. “He’s seen too much, and it affects his interest in forming interpersonal relationships, certainly intimate ones.”

Yet SAM finds help from another near-immortal character, discovering that Illa is actually the latest host for the Trill symbiont Dax, who was Sisko’s good friend and science officer. Illa gives SAM a copy of a book about Sisko written by his son, Jake (played by original DS9 actor Cirroc Lofton), and SAM learns to accept ambiguity and to stand up to her creators.

DS9 was controversial when it first came out because it broke from Star Trek tradition by focusing on a space station and dwelling more on war than any previous Trek narrative. But it’s become one of the franchise’s most beloved series. Starfleet Academy’s tribute to the show is a sweet way to find commonality by celebrating the boundary-pushing stories that have allowed Star Trek to endure for 60 years.

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The first five episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are available to stream now on Paramount Plus. Future episodes release on Thursdays through March 12.