Star Trek, as a franchise, has been running for 60 years now, and as you might expect, the show has its fair share of mysteries.
Where did the Borg come from? Who sent the Whale Probe? Why did Starfleet discontinue the skant?
All big questions that we may never know the answer to, but as of this week, we have had one big mystery answered, thanks to the new Starfleet Academy series on Paramount Plus.
We finally know what happened to Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), the commanding officer on Deep Space Nine.
Last time we saw Sisko, he’d been rescued by the Prophets after he threw himself and Dukat into the flames of the Bajoran Fire Caves.
Before he was incinerated, the Prophets whisked him away to their home dimension, where he would learn their ways.
There was a vague promise that Sisko would return one day, but Starfleet Academy has confirmed (after 27 years of waiting) that never happened.
In Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode five, it was revealed that Sisko never returned, and his fate remains a mystery to Starfleet. As far as they’re concerned, he just went missing in the Fire Caves.
Oh, and the Bajorans consider him a god now as well, which is nice for him, I guess.
While Sisko never returned, he still managed to make a cameo in the episode.
Despite Brooks retiring from acting in 2013, he makes a voice-only cameo at the end of the fifth episode.
‘Divine laws are simpler than human ones, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them,’ he says in the closing moments. ‘Only love can understand them. Only love can interpret these words as they were meant to be interpreted.’
Comicbook.com reports that this monologue isn’t a new recording; it is, in fact, a piece from Brooks’ spoken word album titled ‘Here’.
ScreenRant, meanwhile, reports that Cirroc Lofton, who played Siko’s son Jake and also cameos in the episode, was instrumental in securing the rights to the album.
‘I just had the idea that it would be great to use this album that he recorded,’ he explained.
‘He recorded this album called “Here,” and it’s a jazz album, beautiful. I listened to it on a regular basis, and I thought, “Can we find a way to get this in the episode?”
‘And so, Tawny and I got together. I handed her the CD that I had, and I said… ‘Go listen to this CD and see if there’s something there that we can use.
‘And we can get Avery’s voice on this episode, because I think that’ll be a nice special moment at the end, that will kind of bookend everything.’ And so it actually, by the grace of God, all worked out. I can’t even believe it.’
Starfleet Academy is available to stream on Paramount Plus.
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