Starfleet Academy Episode 5 Is The Closest Live-Action Star Trek Has Gotten To Lower Decks

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

The latest "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" episode has a special guest star pulling double duty. Tawny Newsome, who played the amazing Ensign Beckett Mariner on "Star Trek: Lower Decks," both co-wrote the episode with Kirsten Beyer and guest stars in it. Her role? Illa Dax, the latest incarnation of the Trill symbiont from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."

True to its title, "Lower Decks" followed the less important people of "Star Trek." It was set on a minor Starfleet ship, the U.S.S. Cerritos, and centered not the senior staff, but four ensigns, one of them Mariner. As an animated comedy not unlike "Futurama" or "Rick and Morty," "Lower Decks" was much more madcap than "Star Trek" usually is. It was also very self-referential and loaded with cameos from "Star Trek" characters big and small. For example: The twist villain of "Lower Decks" season 4 was Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill), a one-off character from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Newsome brought that "Lower Decks" energy to "Series Acclimation Mil." The episode focuses on comic relief character SAM (Kerrice Brooks), a holographic "Photonic" who is a fish out of water among organic species. This episode, SAM goes out with her fellow cadets to the local Bajor Club and experiences intoxication. (She doesn't actually drink anything, but puts her settings equal to having downed 12 shots.)

SAM's slurred happy drunk act, culminating in her giving into the music and dancing, is a comedy beat right out of "Lower Decks." It's easy to picture a scene like this happening to any of the "Lower Decks" leads.

But "Series Acclimation Mills" doesn't just bring the laughs from "Lower Decks," it's got the same sense of reverence to past "Star Trek."

"Series Acclimation Mill" focuses its references on "Deep Space Nine." In fact, the episode isn't just a homage to that series, but an epilogue. "DS9" concluded on an open note: Captain Ben Sisko (Avery Brooks) had served as emissary to the godlike alien Prophets. In the series finale, "What You Leave Behind," he left his family and friends behind to join Prophets, uncertain when or if he'd return to the mortal plane.

This episode now confirms that Sisko never returned and Starfleet history recorded him as MIA. SAM undertakes a school assignment to learn about who Sisko was and his true fate. Eventually, her teacher Dax gives her a crucial bit of evidence: Jake Sisko's unpublished book "Anslem," which includes a holographic replica of its author (Lofton reprises his role). Sisko himself is heard at the episode's end in voiceover. (Avery Brooks is long retired, but agreed to let "Starfleet Academy" use spoken audio from an album of his for this Sisko cameo.)

Tawny Newsome loves "Deep Space Nine," and "Lower Decks" had previously carried on some of that show's open threads. "Lower Decks" wrote a love letter to "Deep Space Nine" when Cerritos visited the eponymous space station, with guest appearances by Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) and Ferengi bartender Quark (Armin Shimerman). "Lower Decks" season 4 then picked up a "DS9" subplot about Quark's brother Rom (Max Grodénchik), who ended that show becoming leader of the Ferengi.

In her new role at "Starfleet Academy," Newsome got to resolve the deepest lingering "DS9" question, and in a way that would make "Lower Decks" proud.

"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" is streaming on Paramount+.