The Star Trek Universe has FTL. It can fix anything. Including multiple
Siskos if it wants to. --GDN
Gerald D. Nordley
[email protected]
www.gdnordley.com
On Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 02:30:33 PM PST, Rick Moen via Basfa
<[email protected]> wrote:
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
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