Wow, that was a good episode! Poor Sam, struggling with predestination and free will as a hologram. Letting Mir mess with her programming seems like asking for trouble, but it also seems like a very real thing for older teens to do. I just loved the bit with Professor Illa (spelling?) at the end! I'd been wondering the whole time what other species she was besides Cardassian. Didn't expect Trill. That seems like a good choice for the plot--Cardassian ridges and coloring would hide the spots quite a bit. I'm also delighted to see (again, like in Discovery) that by the 32nd century the Cardassians have produced kids with enough other species that there are a whole lot of part-Cardassian people, which seems likely to mean that Cardassians now are more than they were back in DS9. I loved Jake in this episode. Now, about Sisko: i've always thought it was clear that he was alive and with the Prophets, based on Kassidy seeing him at the end of DS9 after the fire pit thing. I wonder how much Kassidy told anyone other than Jake. Or maybe her vision of him wasn't considered as real. I've always thought the only question was when Sisko might show up somewhere again, not whether he was alive (in a prophet sort of sense). I was sort of hoping he would eventually show up to somebody in the future, but oh well, I guess the writers feel it has to stay ambiguous. I so enjoyed seeing a version of older Jake who is so much happier than older Jake in The Visitor. He mostly lost his father, but in a way he could live with much better. I'm so glad he wrote his book Anslem in this future as well as in the less happy one of The Visitor. #StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy #StarfleetAcademy