“To my father, who’s coming home”

I loved this week’s episode of Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy. It was a beautiful tribute to Deep Space Nine and especially to Avery Brooks’ work as Benjamin Sisko.

Having watched all of DS9 for the first time last year, I didn’t quite realize what an impact it had on me until watching this love letter to the series. From the moment Jake’s writing enters the equation, I started thinking about “The Visitor,” and Tony Todd’s beautiful work as an older Jake.

I appreciate the decision to lean into the ambiguity in SFA. I think that choosing to say that whether Sisko returns to his family or not isn’t for us to know is the right choice, that it fits more completely into the complicated world of DS9 than hard and fast answers we’ve gotten in books and comics.

But I think about Sisko’s promise to return to his family, and I think about his last visit with a dying Jake in a future that would not come to pass, and I think about that cabin in the Kendra Valley, and my heart says that Ben Sisko returned.

To my father, who’s coming home.