One of Star Trek’s greatest ideas is that its world isn’t only populated with captains, scientists, explorers, and warriors. There are also bartenders, gardeners, barbers, artists, and yes, writers. And perhaps the greatest metafictional writer of them all is Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton), son of Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks). Unlike the resident teen in The Next Generation, Wesley Crusher, Deep Space Nine’s Jake didn’t want to join Starfleet or explore space, only explore the human condition. And although Jake’s journey is often analyzed in the context of his famous father, his story is unique within all of Star Trek.
Although Starfleet Academy’s fifth episode, “Series Acclimation Mil,” is focused on the legacy of Sisko, and even gives us a new version of Dax, Lofton’s Jake Sisko is the legacy character whose appearance is perhaps the most bittersweet.
“I wouldn't have been involved if I didn't have the blessing of Avery Brooks,” Lofton tells Inverse. “I also look at this episode as a bridging of two different generations of Star Trek; we are part of the legacy Star Trek now, one of the first five shows, and now this is the future of Star Trek.”
The idea that Starfleet Academy is the future of Star Trek is as literal as it is philosophical. It's set at the end of the 32nd century, over 800 years after Deep Space Nine concluded in 2375. Jake appears in an archived holographic recording as the man who became an author after the final curtain fell on DS9. In DS9’s finale, “What You Leave Behind,” Ben Sisko ascended to a higher plane of existence to be with the Prophets, though he promised to return someday. In Starfleet Academy, Jake reflects on this promise and Sisko’s support of him.
“I knew a man who always championed me,” Jake says. “Especially in my writing.” Later in the episode, when Dax (Tawny Newsome) and SAM (Kerrice Brooks) discuss Jake’s novel, Anslem, Dax shows SAM the only copy of the book.
This fictional book exists in two different Trek timelines: in one discarded future, seen in the DS9 episode “The Visitor,” an older Jake Sisko (played by the late Tony Todd) published Anslem in the years following his father’s apparent demise. But even though Jake worked to rescue Ben and reverse that timeline, it seems Jake still wrote a book with the same title. The new Dax says Jake did write the book, “but never published it... it was one of the many ways he kept Benjamin close.”
The question of Ben Sisko’s return is a murky one. At the end of the episode, we learn from Jake that the question of his father “was always there. He never really left us.” It’s unclear if Sisko was hanging out with Jake like a kind of Star Trek force ghost, or if there was a more literal return.
But for Lofton, Avery Brooks and Star Trek are huge parts of his life. Lofton is a big part of the Trek fan community, and he’s been hosting Trek podcast The 7th Rule since 2019. The franchise is in his soul.
“I think what Tawny [Newsome] did so eloquently in writing this episode is to point out the sacrifices that Sisko made to the canon of Star Trek,” Lofton says. “And so this was an opportunity to say, we admire him, we acknowledge him. It was sacred and important to me.”
