How Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Resolves Deep Space Nine's Biggest Storyline

This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" episode 5, "Series Acclimation Mil."

In the latest episode of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" (read our season 1 review here). the character of Sam (Kerrice Brooks) reveals that she's serving as an emissary for her home planet of Kasq, a planet populated entirely by living, intelligent holograms. Sam was programmed to look, think, and behave like a 17-year-old, but she was actually only created a few months earlier, giving her a valuable, childlike naïveté. Her programmers created Sam to be the emissary to her species, sent to Starfleet Academy to gather information about organic life forms — something Sam's photonic people know little about.

Because she is an emissary, Sam is drawn to other famous emissaries in "Star Trek" history, notably, the long-lost Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." On "Deep Space Nine," Sisko was the first person to come into contact with a species of non-corporeal aliens that lived inside a stable wormhole near the planet of Bajor. The Bajoran clergy felt that the wormhole aliens were actually godlike Prophets in their religion, meaning Sisko became an important Bajoran religious figure called the Emissary to the Prophets.

"Deep Space Nine" ended in 1999 after seven seasons, and Sisko, after struggling with his status as a religious figure, finally accepted that there is a spiritual dimension to the universe. He entered the wormhole and never emerged, perhaps becoming a non-corporeal deity himself. The fate of Captain Sisko has been a question mark ever since. 

"Starfleet Academy" however, finally reveals what happened to Sisko — or rather, what didn't happen to him. Over eight centuries after the end of "Deep Space Nine" (when "Starfleet Academy" is set) there is still no report that Sisko ever returned.

In recent years, "Star Trek" has revisited the characters and settings of "Deep Space Nine" a few times. On "Star Trek: Picard," a new generation of characters looked at the U.S.S. Defiant, a starship from DS9, on display at a ship museum. The characters from "Star Trek: Lower Decks" also visited DS9 on one occasion, although that series was set only a few years after the events of "Deep Space Nine." There was no mention of Captain Sisko in those instances, however, as he was, as far as anyone knew, still inside the wormhole. Or perhaps dead. No one could say. 

"Starfleet Academy" is set many centuries after the events of "Deep Space Nine," and it seems Sisko's mystery was never solved. After 820 years, one can safely assume that Sisko's disappearance is officially a cold case, and people have long accepted that he will not return. In a way, that solves the mystery. That's the resolution. As far as Trekkies know, his last action on our plane of existence was to psychically contact his wife, Kassidy (Penny Johnson Jerald), after ascending. Sisko announced that he may return someday, but is still clearly biding his time after nearly a millennium. 

Benjamin Sisko has, in the timeline of "Starfleet Academy," become an ancient conundrum, one that can never be solved. He vanished into the wormhole, never to emerge. He's like the lost colonists of Roanoke, or the civilization of Indus Valley. Sisko mysteriously vanished from history, leaving historians baffled and Academy students eternally intrigued. Sam learns a lot about Sisko via recovered relics and logs and pictures, but the end of his life remains a question mark. And for a character who essentially evolved into a deity, this is wholly fitting. 

Sam never comes to any solid conclusions about Sisko, but "Starfleet Academy" does kind of put a button on the matter. Sam looks through old books and records, and finds some personal essays written by Sisko's son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton). Sam reads through them, and imagines herself talking to Jake, learning about Sisko's actual value in this universe. Sisko was a good friend, a great role model, and a great father. He may have been the Emissary to the Prophets, but to Jake, he was just Dad, and Jake missed his dad when he vanished. As far as Trek's own history is concerned, Sisko's strength of character remains, even if his actual whereabouts are unknown.

"Starfleet Academy" doesn't seem to address that Sisko was also a confessed war criminal. It seems that Sisko's personal logs, wherein he admitted to committing atrocities, remained deleted in perpetuity. Sisko was, more than other "Star Trek" captains, a complex figure with sometimes dubious morals. That makes him a much more interesting character than a lot of other "Star Trek" captains.

Sisko did actually emerge from the wormhole after the events of "Deep Space Nine," although it's not considered canon, as it was part of a "Star Trek" comic book called "Godshock," published in 2023. The events of "Star Trek" comics are not historical, nor are parallel timeline stories wherein Sisko emerged and had a longer life. Sam wouldn't be aware of those timelines anyway. As far as the central timeline is concerned, Sisko vanished and remained gone. 

He could still return, his life extended by being non-corporeal, but until it happens, that remains mere speculation.