10 Greatest Star Trek Callbacks

In the Deep Space Nine episode Far Beyond The Stars, Sisko began experiencing visions of another life where he was a 1950s science-fiction writer named Benny Russell.

Benny also started having flashbacks of Deep Space Nine, and ended up writing a sci-fi story about the station that was extremely similar to Star Trek. In the end, Benny's story was rejected from his racist publishing agency for portraying a black main character, and he had a nervous breakdown, yelled that his story was real, and collapsed. Afterwards, the preacher with the form of his father told him that he was 'both the dreamer and the dream', and Sisko returned to the station.

For a long time, we weren't sure if Benny Russell was a real person, or simply an illusion in Sisko's mind, but the Strange New Worlds episode The Elysian Kingdom has finally cleared up some details. Benny was absolutely real.

In this episode, the Enterprise was converted into a fairy tale land by an alien consciousness. The illusion was based on a book that Dr. M'Benga read to his daughter, titled The Kingdom Of Elysian. It's super easy to miss, but if you look at the book's cover, you can see that it was written by none other than Benny Russell.

This small detail not only confirmed Benny as a real historical figure, but also gave him a new, happier ending. At the end of Far Beyond The Stars, Benny's story was rejected for having a black lead, yet we see that his other story, The Kingdom Of Elysian, which also included black main characters, was able to get published and went on to become a famous book, still appreciated well into the 23rd century.

We're still not sure why Benny and all of the people in his life had the appearance of the crew of Deep Space Nine, or why Sisko's mind became connected to Benny's. Maybe the prophets altered the past by creating Benny and the others, simply to teach Sisko a lesson.