It helps, of course, that Kerrice Brooks is a literal ray of sunshine throughout, with an infectious demeanor that fully conveys Sam’s excitement and wonder at the situations she finds herself in, from drinking and bar fighting to recreating classic New Orleans dishes she can’t actually eat herself. Sam’s makers insist that she must gain admission to a course called “Confronting the Unexplainable” to remain at the Academy, as they are, for some reason, convinced it will hold the secrets of the organic experience. In an attempt to impress Professor Ayla, she learns about the life (and mysterious disappearance) of Deep Space Nine’s Captain Benjamin Sisko, and in the process, ends up questioning both what it means to be an Emissary of her people and the duty that comes along with it.
Longtime Trek fans will, of course, enjoy the ways this episode connects to the franchise’s past, from the return of Cirroc Lofton as an adult version of Sisko’s son Jake to the various items from the Earth-based Sisko Museum recreated in virtual form. There’s even a Bajoran children’s book that recounts his role as an Emissary of the Prophets. Thankfully, the hour smartly doesn’t attempt to really answer the question of what happened to Sisko at the end of Deep Space Nine. (Several characters seem to draw their own conclusions, but the show itself doesn’t put its foot down one way or another, and viewers can decide for themselves how they feel.)
Instead, the journey is more important than the destination, and it’s a lesson for Sam about what it means to carry both a destiny and a personal identity, and finding a way to thread the needle between the two. As she follows in the footsteps of the man she’s sort of adopted as a role model, it helps her not only understand that she’s something more than a conduit for the hopes and dreams of those who made her, but someone capable of making her own choices for her own reasons. And for a being who’s something like 200 days old, that’s no small thing.
The hour’s more young adult vibe means we also get the chance to see the students just, well, being students. Thus far, Starfleet Academy seems to work best when it leans into the inexperience of its protagonists. Though this episode still just cannot seem to help itself when it comes to reminding us that Caleb is some kind of genius hacker, the majority of it focuses on the sort of escapades one might expect from a show with this name. The gang’s trip to a cadet bar night is the highlight of the hour, full of the kind of dumb hijinks most of us probably remember from college.
Unfortunately, the episode stalls out whenever we switch back to its more adult-focused B-plot, which involves a complicated rehearsal for a fully ridiculous diplomatic dinner that War College Commander Kelrec has set up with a visiting alien chancellor. Pretty much everything about this subplot is awful, from Holly Hunter attempting a very weird posh accent and dinner guests being forced to talk to one another through cone shaped mouth trumpets to a strange blob fish-based main course that occasionally passes gas in a deeply uncomfortable way. We really all could have survived not knowing what Chancellor Ahke and the grown-ups were up to this week, is what I’m saying.
Thankfully, none of the blobfish stuff is remotely relevant to the rest of the episode, which concludes with a Sam who’s confident enough to claim agency over her own fate in a way she never realized was possible before. Its positively lovely to see Lofton’s Jake get the chance to give her the same sort of heartfelt pep talk he so often received from his father, and the confirmation that, no matter what actually happened to him, Sisko’s legacy still lives on in so many ways — through Jake’s book, through Dax’s instruction, and now through Sam herself — is ridiculously moving. But more importantly, “Series Acclimation Mil” isn’t a nostalgia fest for its own sake. It’s a story that makes use of the franchise’s past to truly inform its present, and it’s a lesson we can only hope the rest of the season will follow.
