Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #29 — “What You Leave Behind” And “Series Acclimation Mil”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As we’ve reached the franchise’s sixtieth anniversary, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

While the official anniversary date has come and passed and this column is almost finished, we’ve still got more celebrations to come. Sixty years of Star Trek doesn’t end with the actual date.

With this column almost concluded, it only seems right to turn the focus to another one of the best finales that the series has produced. At the same time, the second view will focus upon an episode decades in the making to claim as spot as the quasi sequel to that previously mentioned final issue.

A war comes to an end as one of the greatest series to carry the name Trek bows out, and a canceled far too soon recent series pays homage.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“What You Leave Behind”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 7, Episode 25/26 (06/02/1999)

Synopsis: It all comes down to this as the Federation Alliance makes their move and takes the war to the Dominion on Cardassia. At the same time the evil Pah-wraiths and their allies make their own moves. The fate of the Alpha Quadrant and beyond is settled here.

Season seven of DS9 is something of a mixed bag affair. This is pretty much the case with a lot of genre shows along the way, especially often in their first and last seasons. Hard not to be for this series in particular when it dove head first into serialization over being completely episodic like its forebears.

Final seasons come with a lot of things to handle with trying to wrap up plot lines, land developing character arcs, and closing out a saga in an ultimately satisfying way. More often than not we hear about a lot of beloved series where those goals are met with varying degrees of success, chiefly the satisfying ending part. We’ve all heard the discourse about many a show’s final season and series finale where audiences were left lacking, wanting, or cold.

Unsurprisingly, this much beloved series in the Trek franchise did none of that. It delivered two hours that were full of action, sacrifice, loss, victory, character development, character exits, and a final word on the long-running Emissary through line.

Seasons five through seven (and four if you count all the Klingon stuff) were full on war related. Everything to do with the Dominion and Cardassians lead to the final hard road in this episode. We strapped in as viewers so that we could see the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans finally triumph over their adversaries and save the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

Wildly, this part of the finale is only a small sliver of the episode in the full scope of things. Ship battles are waged over Cardassia as its military turns on the Dominion, who has executed millions of their people, and victory is assured. Albeit, with a price far too high, as Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Admiral Ross (Barry Jenner) refuse to drink blood wine with General Martok (J.G. Hertzler) with so many bodies around them.

Garak (Andrew J. Robinson), long exiled from his home finds a space back there, to help his people build whatever comes next. A treaty is signed as the Dominion agrees to surrender and return home, as they are promised a cure for the (Section 31 created) disease ravaging them.

Here is where the series built on characterization continues to showcase its care and charm.

We spend time with our characters as they make new plans for the future, accepting new assignments and endeavors. Sisko is ready to spend time with his wife Kasidy (Penny Johnson Jerald) and their forthcoming child, focused on finishing the house on Bajor he wants to be in forever more.

Unfortunately, it’s not meant to be.

Alongside the Dominion plot line, there had been another running for quite some time — the Pah-wraiths, the evil counterpart to the alien Prophets of the wormhole, and long time antagonist Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo). Since the very beginning, there was a path being written towards Sisko and the Prophets, and the last few seasons really cemented it with his parentage and destiny unveiled.

DS9’s ultimate throughline was the story of a father and son, surviving and growing. In the end, even as Sisko sacrifices himself to stop Dukat, we’re reminded of that dedication to family. Brooks as an actor made it very clear he would not accept his character seemingly abandoning his family. That’s why we get a scene of Sisko speaking to Kasidy, promising that he’ll return one day from the Celestial Temple.

Forever will I remember the final montage of characters leaving and going about their lives, images from the series as a whole somberly intertwined. It all leads to a final moment where Colonel Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), now the commander of the station, heads down to the promenade and sees Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) staring out the window. She stands beside him, hand on his shoulder, as they stare out at the wormhole where Benjamin Sisko now resides. Slowly, the camera pans out from the window and the station as a whole, showing us the place we as viewers got to call home for seven years.

Perfect is a word that I do not like to use. Mostly because it’s a far too objective term with no concrete or subjective meaning. We bandy it about too often as if it actually means something, despite everything being allowed to have differing opinions.

That being said, this was the perfect ending of the series. A truly perfect bookend to a saga that has never stopped resonating, and affecting all Trek that has come since.

“Series Acclimation Mil”
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Season 1, Episode 5 (02/05/2026)

Synopsis: As a cadet sets out to solve an ancient Starfleet mystery, she embarks upon a journey of self-discovery and learns the value of forging her own path.

Following the end of Deep Space Nine, the characters and stories that were so much of that era of Trek mostly went unseen. Worf ended up back in the final Star Trek: The Next Generation movies and eventually in Star Trek: Picard for its final season. A tale that also picked up a bit on DS9 with the involvement of Changelings and a reference to Odo (Rene Auberjonis).

Outside of the non-canon novels and comics, much of what was beloved about DS9 was left to the wayside.

Thank goodness for Tawny Newsome — a.k.a Beckett Mariner of the amazing Star Trek: Lower Decks — who came out swinging for the fences as a writer on the recently debuted Starfleet Academy. She provides us with the episode most rooted in DS9 lore, since it tackled everything to do with the Siskos, albeit hundreds of years beyond that series time period.

Set in the 32nd century, Starfleet Academy picks up on threads from the final few seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. Featuring the first new class of academy students in roughly a century. Earth had left the Federation following a devastating event known as The Burn, which saw all dilithium destroyed and warp travel nullified. With things fixed in Discovery, Earth is back in the Federation and the Academy is back on the planet, ready to bring about the next generation of Starfleet officers.

This series is different than others as it’s very heavily a teen drama. Which, how could it not be with the focus being on a school campus and young adults. Other Trek focuses and genre types would feel off if they were just kind of pasted onto this series. Sadly, while the second season of the series is done and on the way, the newly instated overlords at Paramount decided to cancel the series following the debut season, while clearing house of most of this golden era of Trek.

Thankfully we got this episode though. It follows Series Acclimation Mil, otherwise known as SAM (Kerrice Brooks), a photonic (hologram) being from a planet full of photonic beings. She’s an emissary of her people, sent to determine if they should trust solids, after a bad history with their creators, and join the galaxy or not.

SAM has a bit of an identity crisis, and is forced to take a class about unexplained mysteries, one of which catches her attention: the disappearance of Benjamin Sisko. Struggling through her own emotions and struggles, SAM becomes obsessed with solving what happened to Sisko — to the point of wanting to visit a modern version of a bar that Sisko used to go to when he was in the academy.

We get an episode that is very stylized with SAM breaking the fourth wall, bar fights, glitter puking, and so much more “teen finding themselves” sort of stuff. It’s all hilarious and heartbreaking as we watch poor SAM struggle.

What really cements it, though, is the focus on Sisko and how he was a hero and a family man. Cirroc Lofton returns, marking the first live action return of a DS9-only character since the show ended, as an all grown up Jake Sisko and speaking in a recording about what his father meant to him.

In the end, SAM’s teacher sees the dedication she’s putting in and the struggle she’s having, offering her a book. It happens to be Anslem, the personal book Jake wrote but never mass produced. Why does this apparently Cardassian teacher have Jake’s only copy? Why, that’s because this character (played by Newsome herself) is actually Illa Dax, a Cardassian-Trill and the latest host of the centuries old Dax symbiote — the same one that once knew the Siskos as Curzon, Jadzia, and Ezri.

There’s a fine subplot with the teachers of the Academy and the War College, as well as the other cadets, but SAM’s story is the heart and crux. Kerrice Brooks carries this episode easily, nailing the comedy, the drama, and the other emotional beats. SAM is a breath of fresh fun air through the whole show, and taking the full spotlight doesn’t change that at all.

After finding out about Dax, SAM has a vision of Jake that interacts with her. It’s hinted to be her mind, likely after reading Anslem, but nothing is impossible when it comes to Trek.

Their conversation reminds us of the heart of DS9 and how great a father Sisko always was. Jake confirms that while his father might not have ever “returned” in the sense that others wanted, he believes that his father did return and was with him always. Standing beside and witnessing everything that happened in his life. Since Sisko was among the timeless alien Prophets, that is 100% likely the true case.

We even get to hear the first words of Avery Brooks in Trek since DS9 ended in the form of a spoken word poem from his early 2000s jazz album. Brooks has long since retired from acting, but gave his blessing to this inclusion and the episode in general. It all ends with a tribute thanking Avery, showing honor upon this actor and the greatest of captains in all of Trek.

Endings are hard, but sometimes, we get the heart healing closure we always desired.

Come back next week as we dive into our final two of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.