Starfleet Academy’s Avery Brooks Tribute Makes No Sense, Proves Writers Never Watched DS9
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Recently, Starfleet Academy released an episode intended to celebrate Deep Space Nine The legendary Benjamin Sisko, complete with holographic character SAM takes a virtual tour through the Sisko Museum. The museum is filled with artifacts important to the Starfleet officer’s life, including the baseball he always keeps in his office on the station. One of those artifacts is a typewriter held by Benny Russell, and while this is a great way to pay homage to the episode “Far Beyond the Stars,” this homage to captain and Sisko actor Avery Brooks makes no sense at all.
First, some context: “Far Beyond the Stars,” Captain Sisko begins receiving strange visions from the Prophets when he is a 1950s science fiction writer named Benny Russell. The author’s success is a series of stories set in the space station called Deep Space Nine, but as a black man, he has trouble publishing these stories because of the racism prevalent at the time. His story is eventually suppressed by the sci-fi magazine he writes for because it features a black man as its hero, and Benny collapses, leaving the shelter in a later episode.
The Dreamer and the Dream
This vision had a profound effect on Benjamin Sisko: motivated by the idea that he is “a dreamer and a dream,” he is inspired to stay on Deep Space Nine and lead the fight against the Empire. Because of this, you might think the presence of Benny Russell’s typewriter in the Sisko Museum would make perfect sense. But it’s actually crazy for a number of reasons, including the fact that, until a few years ago, there was no real Benny Russell in the Trek franchise!
In Deep Space NineBenny was only seen by Sisko through visions, first by the Prophets and later by the Pah-Wraiths. We never see Sisko look at historical Benny, which means he doesn’t exist; in fact, i The Star Trek Encyclopedia Benny Russell’s entry states that “he may have existed in another form, or perhaps only in certain parts of Ben Sisko’s mind.” The fact that Benny wasn’t there before may have been what Jake Sisko’s character Cirroc Lofton was alluding to in a recent TrekMovie interview, where he announced that the typewriter in the museum is “technically…not there.”
A Dream Come True
However, Strange New Worlds brought Benny Russell back into existence by revealing that he wrote a book, Elysian Empirethat Dr. M’Benga liked to read to her daughter as a bedtime story. At the time, this was more of an Easter egg than anything else. Fiction had to be written by someone, so why not choose a beloved character known for writing sci-fi stories?
This brings us to Benny’s typewriter from which it appears Starfleet Academysomething that seems impossible now more than ever. You see, it’s easy enough to accept that he was an original author within the Star Trek fictional canon. But how would Benjamin Sisko find a real typewriter from a writer who died centuries ago?
The Most Confusing Museum in the Galaxy
Of course, whether Benny failed as a writer is something of an open question. Opened Deep Space Ninewe see him as a man who went mad after his sci-fi masterpiece went unpublished, and commits himself to a mental hospital after a delusional disorder. How he went from being unable to publish his magnum opus to a published, respected author whose works are still enjoyed for centuries to come is never fully explained.
Or you can accept that Benny Russell was real (like, did all his friends look like all the characters Deep Space Nine?) and that he became famous and successful, there is still one final question: how does one know of any kind of relationship between Sisko and this obscure 20th century writer? In DS9, it was implied that the only person he told him about Benny Russell was his father, Joseph Sisko; it is possible he told Dr. Bashir, but this information may be protected by doctor/patient confidentiality.
Another Thing About Silly Sisko
It’s possible that Sisko filed a report about this with Starfleet, but that seems unlikely; after all, he will be admitting that he had what amounts to dementia while leading Starfleet’s war against the Dominion. That would be a bad look or anyoneand we know that Sisko has no problem with keeping information from Starfleet. That is one of the great lessons of “In the Pale Moonlight”: that he is not afraid to leave information, especially in the name of the greater good.
All of this includes a typewriter Starfleet Academy to be something of a mystery: longtime Star Trek fans understand its significance, but it’s unclear how Sisko would have acquired it, let alone why a museum would display it as one of his most valuable possessions. Still, it makes for a fun Easter egg, which continues to keep the fandom talking. Now, those fans are left with one final question: what the rest Are we going to learn about Benny Russell that completely changes what we know about Star Trek?
