I doubt that Brooks would be lured back with such a troupey part, but I can also imagine the writers of Season 1 of Picard reaching for exactly that. Since we're speaking of hypotheticals though, the idea I had about the series after they announced it would have been a much quieter, more introspective show about an accomplished man at the end of his life examining his legacy and what he's leaving behind. An episode or two focusing on Sisko would have been wholly appropriate in a show like that. For Picard, there was no bigger impact on his life than his time as Locutus, and that's a trauma that he shares with Sisko. There could be good, meaty drama mined from the two men finally coming to terms with that. At least for Picard, we've been shown over and over again that he's struggled dealing with it, while Sisko seemed to have somewhat dealt with it by the end of "Emissary", it's not something that's really touched on for the rest of the series.
Of course, with the storyline we've glimpsed in the trailer for season 2 of Picard, any role for Sisko in that story would likely be him teaching Picard about the nature of non-linear time, which is unfortunate.
We see in the trailer that the assimilation of Annika Hansen has somehow been prevented in the alternate timeline. What if the same is true of Jennifer Sisko?
I definitely feel like there's a story angle involving Ben Sisko in a such a storyline more organically, but I really don't expect it out of
Star Trek: Picard. The cameo idea I wound up focusing on is partly because that's my best chance for his appearance to be a "talkie" focused on the drama of the meeting, and not some role where he's also a part of the overly-broad epicness that Nu Trek has been so desperate to capture, due to all the J.J. Abrams profits.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Picard, but I was fairly satisfied with the ending the gave to Data. I think it might have been the thing I found most successful about the show. It was as much closure for Picard as it was for me as a viewer. I'll even defend Nemesis to some degree, but I never felt like it delt with Data's death in a satisfactory way. So there's been kind of this hanging thread ever since that I was happy Picard took care of.
I also broadly agree that the way they end Sisko's story in DS9 is not a great look, unintentionally or not. And while I like DS9 a great deal, that is an issue that also has stuck with me since the show ended.
With all that said, and with my positive reception to the end of Data's story, I still don't have a great deal of faith that the show would do any justice to Sisko if they brought him back at all. I also tend to think that they won't and any hints at DS9 lore in Picard's study are winks and nods at best.
I think Sisko deserves a better end than he got in DS9 and a better one than the Picard writers are likely to cook up. Honestly, some offhand comment like "Sisko has been retired ever since Dukat's death" or something that implies his time with the Prophets was basically no time to us would be fine with me. I don't necessarily want, or need, them to go back and touch on all/most characters.
People seem to not have any faith that the showrunners of
Picard could tie up lingering DS9 threads and I get that. It's going to take televised Trek a long time to settle down a bit and stop trying to make every episode into a J.J. Abrams movie.
But on the other hand, I didn't like the direction practically any DS9 character was taken in the
What We Left Behind theoretical eighth season pitch. Vedek Kira Nerys using Jem'Hadar as Bajoran troops? Julian Bashir the head of Section 31? Sad-looking Joseph Sisko-Yates apparently seeing his father for the first time? Yuk to all of it.
Maybe I'd like the Picard showrunners to fix up Sisko's end because I like what they did with Data's.
You and I seem to laregely agree on Nemesis. A few more talkie scenes and a few less vehicle action scene there and you could have a solid, worthy Star Trek movie. That final battle was really epic. But the cheat-out at the end with Data and B4 was just such a lame cop-out... one of the best things written in
Star Trek: Picard was the fact that the transfer didn't take and B4 didn't go on to become Reborn Data and Have Adventures. He died. He didn't overwrite his younger prototype brother and aventure on in that body. That would have been contrary to his character, to do that.
Similarly you can see by comments in this thread that people don't even consider Sisko Star Trek's best dad, given that he left his wife and unborn kid at the end of the show. That's contrary to his character. I'd take a brief mention the way they mentioned how B4 didn't take Data's brain and recover, but of course I'd much rather see somethign good and meaty for Avery Brooks and Patrick Stewart to play off each other, one final time.
