We might be about to learn the answer to one of Star Trek‘s greatest mysteries. Like all great sci-fis, Star Trek is as much about questions as it is about answers: the Enterprise’s first mission statement was always about exploration, but exploration isn’t necessarily about removing space for faith. That means leaving open certain mysteries, and most Star Trek shows have ended with something unresolved. The simplest tends to be “what comes next”? What happened to the Founders after Deep Space Nine? What became of the Borg after Picard Season 3? What exactly are the Q up to? Or Wesley Crusher, for that matter?
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And arguably the biggest of those stories concerns what happened to Benjamin Sisko after the end of Deep Space Nine. In the show’s 1999 finale, “What You Leave Behind,” the commander sacrificed his physical form in the Fire Caves of Bajor to stop the Pah-wraiths, becoming a spiritual entity with the Prophets in the wormhole. Before vanishing, he appears to his wife Kasidy Yates, promising to return “someday.” Whether he did has remained an almost romantic mystery, but the next Star Trek show, Starfleet Academy is finally going to engage with the question. Hidden in the show’s first trailer, we see Kerrice Brooks’ Sam in front of a display that reads ‘The Fate of Benjamin Sisko: Confronting the unexplainable. The fate of Benjamin Sisko, Emissary of the Prophets. Captain Sisko’s fate: Did he die in the Fire Caves of Bajor? Did he live on in the Celestial Temple?’
Sisko’s Fate May Well Be Revealed in Starfleet Academy
It would seem that Sisko’s fate has become part of Starfleet Academy’s curriculum; and the suggestion that his fate remains unknown in the 32nd century would seem to suggest that he didn’t return to his wife. But wouldn’t a lesson that simply says “we don’t know, actually” be a wasted lesson for cadets? Crucially, there’s more of a hint that we’ll learn more of Sisko’s story, as Starfleet Academy’s executive producer Noga Landau told ScreenRant recently:
“I think we’ve honored everything that’s come before us, the 60 years of legacy that came before us in so many different ways. One is with the people we’ve brought to join these amazing folks. We have Robert Picardo, who’s playing The Doctor, the same Doctor from Voyager. We have multiple cast members joining us from Discovery. And you know, when you look at the wall of heroes in our atrium, our giant set, you’ll see us honoring so many of the people who came before us, who showed us what heroism is, and who showed us what the values of Starfleet are.
And there’s also mysteries. Watch out for Benjamin Sisko! We get to do some really cool stuff that hasn’t been done in a long time, that I think really honors the fans who’ve been waiting to see what happens. So we definitely know who we are and the shoulders that we are standing on today.”
That last part sounds a lot like we’ll get to see the show actually address Sisko’s fate and his future beyond the end of Deep Space Nine. It doesn’t feel like he’ll return (as great as that would be), but we have a period of 700 years between his disappearance and when Starfleet Academy is set, so there is more than a small chance that he dropped in for visits. Even Wesley Crusher did that.
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