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Ah, right, somehow I missed that!

I felt like there was an intentional nod to the Bell Riots when Sam said that Sisko wanted to start riots, and Genesis responds with "Did Sisko start riots I don't know about?"

I think they left it open for the interpretation that Sisko could have visited Jake, Kasidy and maybe even Dax and others, in ways that are lost to time.

Jake's holorecording and his book could have all been completed before Sisko returned. Or he did return prior to those being done, but Jake left those out of the record on purpose. In either case, Sam's recreation of Jake from the record could not have been privy to what the real Jake experienced.

Perhaps Sisko even returned and finished living out a full and complete life with his family, but out of the public eye. It couldn't be recorded it would have disrupted the Bajoran religious mythos too much. I would not put it past Dax to actually know what happened, but make it a point that for the sake of history and culture and religion, that the facts be forever shrouded in mystery. Dancing around the question of Sisko's fate could be a deflection, not an admission of defeat.

"Solving the mystery isn't why we study him." "I did warn you it wasn't solvable." How would you know that for sure, Dax? Unless you're part of it?

Tawny Newsome was a guest on the Greatest Trek podcast and talked about the parallel nature of having Jake Sisko in character talking to Sam the character, but also having it be a meta conversation of Cirroc Lofton the actor taking on a kind of mentorship role to Kerrice Brooks the actor, in the way that Avery Brooks was a mentor to him on DS9. This plot is why Sam was cast as a Black woman, to make the relationship between two Black characters be more meaningful to the audience, because the show isn't just a story between two fictional space characters but also a dialogue and conversation with the Black fans watching it right now. The 'sis' thing was part of that.

If I were to extrapolate an in-universe reason, it's because Sam is developing this bond with her idea of Sisko the Emissary and how he is becoming a father figure to her, as opposed to her overbearing actual-parents The Makers, that she mentally treats Jake Sisko as the brother she never had. And so her vision of Jake addresses her as 'sis'. He does note that she's the one in control of how this whole dialogue is playing out.

re: Obel Wochak's complexion, I saw a Youtube recap that said he was an albino Klingon. I don't know if the show really confirmed it, but I thought it was an interesting takeaway, because we've seen a couple in previous shows already.

Just to your point about the debate being pointless, it wasn't even meant to be in the curriculum until the students fought for it.

We could mince words about whether or not the writers forced the debate plot, but what really matters is whether they sold that it was within the characters' motivation to hold one. And for me it did.

Aha. This is the reasoning that made the whole thing click for me. Thank you!

Well, plus the Burn that made it difficult to traverse space. The "Klingon Zone" that was hinted at in Discovery probably meant that the apparatus of empire was no longer in place, but that only individual houses remained, scattered wherever they were across the region of the empire.

I wonder how much do the Klingons know that Starfleet pulled its punches?

I thought the contrivance of involving Starfleet Academy was done very well.

From an upper decks perspective, a tragedy happened, and Starfleet was compelled to act. No need to involve the Academy, but it just so happens that the highest ranking official in Starfleet with close ties to a member of the Klingon house is the current chancellor of Starfleet Academy. (That she's 400 years old is going to be a pretty handy plot device for getting her involved in all sorts of things... but it hasn't hit the point of being annoying yet.)

Separately, it also tracks that the chancellor needs to see their only Klingon cadet privately to offer support. That's a good school administration right there. No need to involve him in the diplomatic negotiations that are going on behind the scenes.

The only reason why these converged was because of the debate class, which makes total sense that it would be a required course at the Academy, and then only because the students debated the Doctor into allowing it because they were already talking about it.

I think this would be ridiculous if it was literally every episode, but this actually worked.

Rebuilding in the wake of global disaster (and honestly it's been one after another my whole life) is exactly the kind of inspirational content I think we need right now. 90s Trek was all about "things have been great, it could be better!" and I think our message today really should be "things have sucked for a bit, but how do we recover the greatness we know we're capable of?"

Glad you're back! You were down right when I just finished watching Starfleet Academy and I feared for the worst 😅