Writing , who previously played
Beckett Mariner in
Star Trek: Lower Decks, co-wrote and played Professor Illa Dax in the episode. The episode was written by
Kirsten Beyer and series co-producer
Tawny Newsome, marking the first writing credit on the show for both. Newsome is best known for portraying
Beckett Mariner in the animated series
Star Trek: Lower Decks and appearing once in live action in "
Those Old Scientists", an episode of the
second season of
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. After being impressed by her improvisations during the filming of the latter episode,
Star Trek executive producer
Alex Kurtzman hired her as a writer for
Starfleet Academy. Describing herself as a "die-hard fan" of
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Newsome expressed her "singular focus" when she entered the writer's room was to reference the show in a "meaningful way" on
Starfleet Academy. Landau stated that she, Newsome, and Beyer, who was co-creator of
Star Trek: Picard, were in agreement about making a "love letter" episode to
Deep Space Nine and the Sisko family, but that they "worked hard" to ensure it also fit in with the tone and theme of
Starfleet Academy. Regarding the decision to leave Benjamin Sisko's ultimate fate ambiguous, series co-showrunners Noga Landau and
Alex Kurtzman felt it was important not to interfere with
Deep Space Nine's conclusion, with Kurtzman explaining that, "if we had given you a definitive answer, no matter what answer we'd given, I think you would have been really disappointed because it would have broken what the point of that show was and what the point of that ending was about", adding that he believed the reveals of the episode would give fans a "newer understanding" of the ending of that series. Kerrice Brooks, who plays SAM, explained that she drew on her own experiences with loss to help her emotionally connect to her character's arc in the episode, stating, "the way that Sisko died was unexplainable. For me, when my granddad died, it felt very unexplainable, too", adding that on the set, it felt like "like [she] was talking to two people at the same time that were merging into one. It felt like everything was collapsing in and colliding." She also expressed that some of SAM's personality traits or behaviours, such as her insulting of the Bajorans, comes from a place of "naïve arrogance" and a lack of total understanding of organic culture and society. Of SAM's connection to Benjamin Sisko and his influence on her development despite the two character having never met, she explained, "she knew so much about Sisko and she knew what he liked, what he didn’t like. He liked tomatoes, he ate gumbo, Creole kitchen, baseball, Jake. She knew Bajor. She knew so much about him, but also at the same time, felt so cut. There was a cut cord somehow and for whatever reason. And so it felt like the entire time Sam’s like grasping in the dark, trying to find and feel her way to maybe what her destiny could look like.
Filming The episode includes scenes featuring SAM
breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the camera. Newsome stated that the unique structure and break from ''Starfleet Academy's'' usual format was proposed by Kurtzman, who felt it was a "special episode" that should look and feel different due to the focus on SAM, a non-organic character. Of this, Newsome stated, "I think we were just so inspired by the fact that we don’t know much about Kasq yet, and so we got to be the architects of this new species. And the fact that they process information so differently gave us the liberty to process the information differently for the medium, for the audience. And it just also spoke to my tendencies as a writer, which are a little bit outside of this genre. This is my first time writing narrative TV. I’ve written a lot of sketch and I primarily only do comedy. So while this episode has incredible heart – largely thanks to Kirsten — the format break was more suited to my style of writing. And the only person in my life who’s read nearly everything I’ve written is Alex Kurtzman, so I think that was intentional on his part." Newsome noted that the original draft of the episode was 72 pages long and included a lot of the on-screen graphics that made it into the final product, and that she pitched many comedic suggestions to director
Larry Teng during filming to give to the background actors to give the impression that characters are "living full lives" despite them not being the focal point of the show. She also called her scenes with
Cirroc Lofton as a "special" experience, and that his presence made her "step up [her] game".
Casting , portrayed by
Avery Brooks. Main cast members
Oded Fehr and
Gina Yashere do not appear and are not credited. The episode features recurring cast members
Raoul Bhaneja as Commander Kelrec, the Chancellor of the War College, Romeo Carera as Academy cadet Ocam Sadal, Alexander Eling, Cecilia Lee, and
Dale Whibley as War College cadets B'avi, Dzolo, and Kyle Djokovic, and the voice of
Stephen Colbert as the Digital Dean of Starfleet Academy. Newsome makes a guest appearance as Professor Illa Dax, while
Chiwetel Ejiofor voices SAM's Maker. ''
RuPaul's Drag Race competitor Jackie Cox cameos as a bartender at the Academy bar. Newsome noted that she did not initially intend to appear in the episode herself, but that Landau suggested it once they had confirmed that the "shepherd" of the story would be a host of the Dax symbiont, which appeared in Deep Space Nine'' played by various actors. == Release ==