News Starfleet Academy Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to Starfleet Academy’s Big Sisko Episode Writer Tawny Newsome breaks down the battle to pay tribute to Captain Sisko and Avery Brooks in Starfleet Academy’s latest episode By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 6, 2026 Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Note: This article contains light spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 5 “Series Acclimation Mil.” While we won’t dive into the full spoilers here (you can find more of those in this review), it’s safe to call Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s latest episode (“Series Acclimation Mil”) a massive tribute to both Deep Space Nine and Avery Brooks’ beloved character, Captain Benjamin Sisko. Starfleet Academy co-showrunner Noga Landau even referred to it as a love letter to both DS9 and Sisko in our recent interview with them. And now, in an expansive (and excellent) interview with TrekMovie, episode writer Tawny Newsome explains how the episode came about. “I was pretty adamant that for this episode, it was our job to make this an homage, a celebration, and really a bit of a correction for what I feel has been an oversight in a lot of modern Trek,” says Newsome. “We haven’t talked nearly enough about the Siskos, about Benjamin Sisko, or about the show Deep Space Nine at all, despite it being a massive addition to our canon. So I was pretty adamant. I’ll say I was frothing at the mouth some days about how important this was. So if anyone thought it was too much canon, they shared those details among themselves.” Even though Starfleet Academy‘s writers have thus far not shied away from using the series’ setting and premise as an excuse to dive deep into Star Trek lore, the Sisko storyline is its own beast. Not only is it a relatively deep cut (despite DS9‘s resurging popularity in more recent years), but addressing that storyline at all means running the risk of interfering with the deliberate ambiguity that makes it so powerful. So far as that goes, Newsome and the writers wanted to work as closely as they could with the DS9 crew in order to make sure they were doing the right thing. That process involved partnering with one of the biggest players in the Sisko storyline, actor Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko in DS9. “Cirroc and I were on the phone and at lunches for months and months and months and months trying to figure out how we could get this done,” says Newsome of working with Lofton. “Getting the episode made was such a gargantuan feat, and I have had so many partners locked arm-in-arm in battle. Between [co-showrunners] Noga Landau and Alex [Kurtzman], Cirroc, [executive producer] Aaron Baiers… don’t even know where to start, but all I can tell you is that it was seemingly so impossible to be able to address the hugeness of the Sisko story with some of the limitations that we have because of canon, some of the limitations that we have because of available actors. And we really just wanted to honor the man, Avery Brooks.” Brooks retired from acting roughly 20 years ago, but even if he was willing to appear on the show, having him on-screen again risked compromising the story the team was trying to tell. However, Brooks was a presence behind the scenes where he approved of the episode nearly every step of the way. “I don’t know if he has seen it yet, but he has read it,” Newsome says of Brooks’ involvement. “It was really important for us as the writers to get his blessing at multiple steps along the way, thanks to Cirroc, who deserves an executive producer credit for this episode. He was well aware of things, maybe even before I was authorized to share them. But I was like, ‘We got to make sure Mr. Brooks is cool with this.'” Though Brooks doesn’t make a physical cameo, we do hear Sisko’s voice towards the end of the episode. Interestingly, that audio clip wasn’t taken from DS9 but came from a more personal source. “That is a private recording that belonged to Mr. Brooks that he very graciously allowed us to use,” Newsome reveals regarding the audio that was taken from Brooks’ spoken word album Here. “I still get chills thinking about how it came to be, because I was very anxious asking him for anything. Because this man has given so much of his artistry, his life and himself to this franchise… he very graciously allowed us to have this.” Perhaps more importantly, Newsome feels that the writers were able to honor Brooks’ long-standing belief that Sisko would never abandon his family without them actually having to show the character or even definitively say what happened to him. “We had to square that with the fact that we have seen a lot added to the canon, and there hasn’t been any mention of seeing him,” Newsome muses. “So we sort of had to get into the territory of something that maybe science and Starfleet records can’t explain. So that’s why we wanted to put it in Jake’s mouth at the end where he literally says, ‘I can’t prove it.’ But all those things you think he missed, he didn’t. He was there.” And even though the entire episode is a tribute to Star Trek fandom as much as it is a tribute to Brooks and Sisko, Newsome says she snuck in one additional Easter egg few fans may pick up on. “I made them put in Kerrice [SAM] saying some version of ‘I can live with it,'” Newsome says regarding a variation of one of Sisko’s most impactful lines. “And someone who kept doing a version of the script later kept taking it out. And I kept putting it back in, probably seven or eight times. And finally, it made it to it made it to filming.” [end-mark] The post Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to <i>Starfleet Academy</i>’s Big Sisko Episode appeared first on Reactor.