By Chris Snellgrove
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Not too long ago, Starfleet Academy launched an episode meant to rejoice Deep House 9 legend Benjamin Sisko, full with holographic character SAM taking a digital journey by way of the Sisko Museum. The museum is crammed with artifacts essential to the Starfleet officer’s life, together with the baseball that he at all times stored in his workplace on the station. A kind of artifacts is the typewriter owned by Benny Russell, and whereas it is a nice method to honor the episode “Far Past the Stars,” this explicit tribute to the captain and Sisko actor Avery Brooks is unnecessary in any way.
First, some context: in “Far Past the Stars,” Captain Sisko begins receiving unusual visions from the Prophets by which he’s a Nineteen Fifties sci-fi author named Benny Russell. The author’s crowning achievement is a sequence of tales set on an area station named Deep House 9, however as a Black man, he’s having bother publishing these tales as a result of rampant racism of the time interval. His story is in the end suppressed by the sci-fi journal that he writes for as a result of it encompasses a Black man as its hero, and Benny collapses, solely to pop up in an asylum in a later episode.
The Dreamer And The Dream
This imaginative and prescient had a profound influence on Benjamin Sisko: moved by the notion that he’s “each the dreamer and the dream,” he’s impressed to remain on Deep House 9 and lead the combat towards the Dominion. Due to this, you may assume the presence of Benny Russell’s typewriter within the Sisko Museum would make good sense. Nevertheless it’s truly loopy for a lot of causes, together with the truth that, till a number of years in the past, there was no actual Benny Russell within the Trek canon!
In Deep House 9Benny solely appeared to Sisko in visions, first by the Prophets and later by the Pah-Wraiths. We by no means see Sisko lookup the historic Benny, implying that he doesn’t exist; the truth is, the Star Trek Encyclopedia entry for Benny Russell claims that he “could have existed in an alternate actuality, or maybe solely in sure reaches of Ben Sisko’s thoughts.” The truth that Benny didn’t beforehand exist is probably going what Jake Sisko actor Cirroc Lofton was referring to in a current TrekMovie interview, the place he declared that the typewriter within the museum “technically…doesn’t exist.”
The Dream All of the sudden Turned Actual
Nevertheless, Unusual New Worlds retconned Benny Russell into existence by revealing that he wrote a e book, The Kingdom of Elysianthat Dr. M’Benga appreciated to learn to his daughter as a bedtime story. On the time, this was extra of an Easter egg than anything. The fictional story needed to be written by somebody, so why not select a beloved character identified for writing sci-fi tales?
This brings us as much as Benny’s typewriter showing in Starfleet Academyone thing that appears extra unattainable now than ever earlier than. You see, it’s straightforward sufficient to simply accept that he was an actual author inside the fictional canon of Star Trek. However how would Benjamin Sisko have gotten the precise typewriter from a failed author who died centuries in the past?
The Most Complicated Museum In The Galaxy
In fact, whether or not Benny failed as a author is one thing of an open query. On Deep House 9we see him as a person who goes loopy after his sci-fi masterpiece isn’t revealed, and he will get dedicated to a psychiatric hospital after a delusional breakdown. It’s by no means made clear precisely how he went from being somebody who couldn’t publish his magnum opus to a broadcast, revered author whose works are nonetheless being loved centuries sooner or later.
Even in the event you can settle for that Benny Russell was actual (like, did all of his pals truly appear to be all the solid of Deep House 9?) and that he grew to become well-known and profitable, there’s nonetheless one final query: how does anybody learn about any type of relationship between Sisko and this comparatively obscure Twentieth-century author? In DS9, it was implied that the one individual he instructed about Benny Russell was his personal father, Joseph Sisko; possibly he instructed Dr. Bashir, however this info would presumably been protected by physician/affected person confidentiality.
One Extra Factor About Sisko That Makes No Sense
It’s doable that Sisko filed a report about this to Starfleet, however that appears unlikely; in any case, he can be admitting to having the equal of a psychological breakdown whereas he was spearheading Starfleet’s warfare with the Dominion. That will be a foul search for anybodyand we all know that Sisko doesn’t have an issue with preserving info from Starfleet. That’s one of many huge classes of “Within the Pale Moonlight”: that he’s not afraid of omitting info, particularly within the title of the larger good.
All of this provides as much as the typewriter in Starfleet Academy being one thing of a paradox: longtime Star Trek followers perceive its significance, nevertheless it’s unclear how Sisko would have obtained it, a lot much less why the museum would have displayed it as certainly one of his most prized possessions. Nonetheless, it makes for a enjoyable Easter egg, one which continues to maintain the fandom speaking. Now, these followers are left with one last query: what else will we find out about Benny Russell that fully modifications what we learn about Star Trek?