As I said during the meeting, I absolutely concur with Yochanan in appreciating the most recent Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's story line about holographic (er, photonic) cadet "Sam" (technically SAM, acronym for "Series Acclimation Mil") trying to solve the mystery of Commander Benjamin Sisko's ultimate fate (as shown in ST:DS9's two-part finale, "What You Leave Behind", that aired May 1999).
The current writers, 27 years down the pike, clearly meant well. It hit all the right notes -- except for that one jarring note they didn't realize they were hitting, the one that made me wince. I'm about to rain on Yochanan's parade. Sorry, chaver. Lead actor Avery Brooks, when he saw the script in 1999, came to scriptwriter/showrunner Ira Steven Behr and asked him to make one change he considered vital -- which request he granted, and established (and redefined) canon about Sisko, for a very good reason: Brooks thought it would be very unfortunate to show his character Sisko _leaving_ his second wife Kasidy Yates, his son Jake, and his unborn second son, never to see them again -- even though (in the script) this was not his choice, but rather that of the god-like Bajoran Prophets, and even though that had always been Sisko's destiny since his birth getting covertly engineered by a Bajoran Prophet possessing a human woman back in New Orleans, so that Sisko could become the Prophets' Emissary. Brooks felt that Sisko's wife and young son deserved better, and that a loving father, and moreover a Black role figure, _would come back_. So, the writers added a scene where Sisko appears in a vision to Kasidy, to reassure her and Jake that he _would_ return. Sisko: "It’s hard to say. Maybe a year, maybe yesterday. But I will be back." Yates: "And I will be waiting.” At the time, this canonical offscreen reunion mattered to me, because I'd seen the other outcome, when a brave widow being told by two solemn Pan Am officials, early on the cold morning of Dec. 26, 1968, that her husband and father of her two children would never return from his final flight, the doomed Flight 799. I always felt she deserved better. Her name was Faye W. Moen. I knew this brave widow and role model for 53 years, and her husband Captain Arthur Moen for 10. The ST:SA writers just broke Paramount's important, meaningful promise to now-retired actor Mr. Avery Brooks, and changed Trek canon -- very unfortunately -- unless one's headcanon arranges to have it both ways, by assuming Benjamin Lafayette Sisko _did_ return to Kasidy and Jake, about 800 years before the ST:SA timeline, but chose to never tell either Starfleet or Sam. It is unfortunate that the writers messed up -- but there's only so much faithfulness to narrative (or to solemn promises) one can expect after almost 3 decades. Further to that: You might have assumed, given the use of an Avery Brooks voiceover in his very distinctive baritone, that the retired Mr. Brooks gave his blessing to this change of his character's story, by recording that voiceover for them: "Devine laws are simpler than human ones, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them. Only love can understand them. Only love can interpret these words, as they were meant to be interpreted." This was followed by a screen showing "Thank you, Avery." Unfortunately for this interpretation, the showrunners borrowed that audio clip from an unrelated recording Mr. Brooks made decades ago, for some other purpose. It is highly unlikely he was even asked about its recent reuse. Brooks is a private man, but I read that he married in 1976, raised three kids with his one and only wife, and never left. A faithful man, a role model, a university professor at Rutgers. I don't know if the rest of us deserve him, but his family and students do. https://web.archive.org/web/20160806103100/http://www.deseretnews.com/article/66065/AVERY-BROOKS-IS-JUST-AS-COOL-AND-IMPOSING-IN-PERSON.html _______________________________________________ Basfa mailing list [email protected] http://lists.basfa.org/listinfo.cgi/basfa-basfa.org
