Could Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Solve a Long-Running Captain Sisko Mystery? 

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is set up to do many things. Continue the story of the franchise in the 32nd century. Introduce a crop of new young characters (and actors) primed to carry on boldly going into the future. Show us some new species. Give heavyweight actors like Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti the chance to chew some serious scenery. And maybe even solve a longstanding mystery about the fate of a former Star Trek: Deep Space Nine captain. (Yes, really). 

Captain Benjamin Sisko’s (Avery Brooks) Starfleet career has many notable moments and significant achievements, but one of the most memorable things about it is the way it concludes. In the Deep Space Nine series finale, “What You Leave Behind,” Sisko sacrifices himself to defeat Gul Dukat and the Pah-wraiths. But his spiritual form seemingly lives on afterward — he wakes up in the Celestial Temple, and is told his work as an emissary for the major pantheon known as The Prophets was only just beginning. On the plus side, Sisko did promise his wife in a vision that he’d return to the physical realm one day. We just have no idea if he ever really did it — or if this comment was the sort of throwaway comfort grieving loved ones are always offered about how they’ll see their family “on the other side” or some such. Did he ever make it back? Is he still missing? And what was his work for the Prophets?

These are some of the questions Starfleet Academy seems as though it might finally answer. The series’s first teaser trailer featured a shot of cadet Sam (Kerrice Brooks) gazing at a screen with Captain Sisko and the title “The Fate of Benjamin Sisko, Emissary of the Prophets.” Now, this is most likely a lesson plan for one of the students’ classes, but the screen does pose some interesting Sisko-related questions, such as “Did he die in the Fire Caves of Bajor? Did he live on in the Celestial Temple?”

It may seem a bit odd to consider that Starfleet Academy could be the place where we finally learn definitive answers about what happened to Sisko — and over a quarter of a century later, to boot! —  but that definitely seems like something that could be happening, at least according to executive producer and showrunner Noga Landau. 

Speaking to Screenrant, Landau was upfront about the series’s intention to honor the sprawling legacy of Star Trek. “I think we’ve honored everything that’s come before us, the 60 years of legacy that came before us in so many different ways. One is with the people we’ve brought to join these amazing folks. We have Robert Picardo, who’s playing The Doctor, the same Doctor from Voyager. We have multiple cast members joining us from Discovery. And you know, when you look at the wall of heroes in our atrium, our giant set, you’ll see us honoring so many of the people who came before us, who showed us what heroism is, and who showed us what the values of Starfleet are.”

And it sounds like some of the ways the show intends to honor its history is by literally revisiting it. Maybe?

“There’s also mysteries,” Landau continued. “Watch out for Benjamin Sisko! We get to do some really cool stuff that hasn’t been done in a long time, that I think really honors the fans who’ve been waiting to see what happens. So we definitely know who we are and the shoulders that we are standing on today.”

What that actually means, of course, is anyone’s guess, though Landau’s specific call-out of Sisko does make it seem as though that’s one of the “mysteries” the show might set out to solve. 

It’s unclear what, precisely, the students of Starfleet Academy could be involved with that would require them to investigate a centuries-old religious miracle—or that would prompt the intervention of the Celestial Temple or even Sisko himself at some point. (Brooks seems to have retired from professional acting, but hope springs eternal that this franchise might be the one thing that could feasibly get him back in front of a camera.) It’s Star Trek, after all, and apparently that means anything’s possible.