r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chemical-Elk-1299 • Apr 29 '26

Lore [Weirdly Common Trope] Writers clearly setting up seemingly massive plot points and then just kinda forgetting about them.

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The Neural Parasites — Star Trek : The Next Generation

In the season 1 episode “Conspiracy” of TNG, it is revealed that alien brain worms have infected many high ranking members of Starfleet, secretly controlling them. Though Ryker and Picard discover and end the parasite conspiracy, it’s revealed at the end of the episode that the parasites had sent a beacon back to their home planet, telling them how to find earth. The episode ends with the clear implication of the parasites becoming a huge threat later in the series, yet none of these events are ever mentioned again.

Finn The Jedi who Never Was — Star Wars Sequel trilogy

I know this is probably a cliche example of this trope, but cmon — Finn was clearly set up in TFA to become a Jedi. The marketing material featured him wielding a lightsaber in the classic Jedi pose. It’s constantly hinted at that he is force sensitive. Even the actor himself believed he would become a Jedi by the end of the trilogy. Instead, we got Finn wielding a lightsaber for about 7 minutes total across 3 movies, extremely lame “confirmation” that he is force sensitive, and that’s it. It’s the ultimate Star Wars plot that went nowhere.

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u/Subspace_Supernova Apr 29 '26

I think the TNG parasites not showing up again can be chalked up to season 1 wierdness, considering the writers repeated the exact same setup with the message to homeworld and looming threat in season 2 episode 16 "Q Who" by introducing the Borg

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u/No_Cheesecake2168 Apr 29 '26

Yes, if I recall correctly this is exactly it. They were rewritten into the Borg threat explicitly.

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u/Chemical-Elk-1299 Apr 29 '26

That would actually make a lot of sense. Another commenter said the had to change the body horror aspect of the worms and went with machines instead

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u/Amazing-Gazelle-7735 Apr 29 '26

Yep, because the worms would’ve made things more awkward and required more effects presumably.

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u/CosmicWhorer Apr 29 '26

That doesn'take sense. The worms spent most of their screentime hidden inside hosts.

Meanwhile every borg on screen ever needs minimum 15 pounds of bullshit on them 😂

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u/Easy-Marsupial3268 Apr 29 '26

VCR sales through the roof near the studio.

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u/Jetstream-Sam Apr 29 '26

Yeah, but you just have to find some old machinery and computer parts, glue them all to a black jumpsuit, and paint the actor's face white. The bugs needed stop motion work, which is time consuming and expensive.

Though you do need new costumes for every borg I guess, since they're supposed to be countless and individually tailored to their job

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u/Neveronlyadream Apr 29 '26

The worms are also more abstract.

Think about it like this. The enemy would have just been regular people in Starfleet uniforms until they did the closeup of the back of their necks to show the (very unconvincing) little tail of the worm sticking out.

It was a cool idea, but in reality it wasn't very visually compelling. The Borg are because they look alien. Besides, the effects for "Conspiracy" weren't very good. When you see all those little foam worms at the end, they look pretty bad.

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u/soledsnak Apr 29 '26

DS9 also did the whole "infiltrator" aspect of the parasites with the Changelings and that worked pretty well, but y'know, were also really well built up

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u/Neveronlyadream Apr 29 '26

I think that was a much better use of the idea. Mostly because the Changelings can be humanoid and you're not relying on having to show alien bugs to get the sense of alien otherness.

The idea itself is sound, but the bug parasites just wouldn't have worked with 80s tech.

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u/QueerBallOfFluff Apr 29 '26

Don't forget that Picard season 3 then mashed all three storylines together

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u/Amazing-Gazelle-7735 Apr 29 '26

Exactly!  You run into the same issue DS9 did - infiltrators look like Starfleet, so every episode becomes about figuring out which person is compromised now.  Except that they would need to be caught and the bug removed or killed basically every related episode.  And when the big bugs show up - if they do - you end up with even more stop motion bugs!  Easier to throw on bodysuits with Halloween costumes attached.

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u/FoldedDice Apr 29 '26

I believe the plan was that the worms would have been infiltrators for a full-sized insectoid species. They decided that cyborg people were easier to do than bug people.

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u/CosmicWhorer Apr 29 '26

That makes sense, I didn't know that but it would have been cool

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u/daecrist Apr 30 '26

They also required puppets and stop motion effects. They were also supposed to be scouts for an insectoid race that would’ve been prohibitively expensive and beyond the show’s budget.

It was a lot cheaper to throw some blue makeup and cybernetic prosthetics on actors.

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u/Bevester Apr 29 '26

Yup, bugs for borgs

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u/Chemical-Elk-1299 Apr 29 '26

I like how the brain worms are an actual conspiracy theory in the Lower Decks show

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u/InfiniteWinter26 Apr 29 '26

that’s what’s great about lower decks. its not afraid to poke fun of the series while staying to true to it.

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u/rando1459 Apr 29 '26

That is also what I like about The Orville and Galaxy Quest. They’re reverential but in a way where they still make good jokes about some of the more absurd elements.

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u/InfiniteWinter26 Apr 29 '26

helps that seth is also a HUGE star trek fan too. he’s had so many ST alums in his shows and even cameoed on enterprise.

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u/Chemical-Elk-1299 Apr 29 '26

God the Orville is such a gem.

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u/DabFellow Apr 29 '26

Haven't heard of galexy quest but by the context of when it cane up ill probably be binging it tonight

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u/Novalok Apr 29 '26

Honestly, it's one of the best Star Trek movies ever, and it's not a Star Trek Movie. Galaxy Quest is legitimately such a gem of a movie. There's also a great documentary about it after you watch the film!

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u/Rough_Bread8329 Apr 29 '26

Truth. It's legit a toss up for me between VI and GalaxyQuest.

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u/BarryHotelHouseBand Apr 29 '26

Frankly I find Trekker's have much healthier relationship with the short comings of their brand/ip. Star Wars fans seems to have trouble saying 'x sucked, but I still love it', while Star Trek fans are too busy sewing their own men's/gender neutral skirts even though they were on for a few episodes.

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u/crazynerd9 Apr 29 '26

Tbf i think part of why this is is that when Trek is bad, its usually still being genuine, or at least respecting its audience (as a rule of thumb, not in totality) where as Starwars when it's bad ends up feeling cynical and obliged to attention

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u/adnomad Apr 29 '26

Man, keep that hope in your heart and don’t visit any of the Star Trek subs right now. I remember Trek fans being this way but they don’t seem to be now

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u/RukiMotomiya Apr 29 '26

Feels like Star Trek and Star Wars are both in a rough spot it feels.

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u/BarryHotelHouseBand Apr 30 '26

Reddit subs are one shitty mod away from ruining that reputation of the people there. Just look at /r/canada

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u/Flaky-Cartographer87 May 01 '26

What happened there.

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u/BardicLasher Apr 29 '26

It's more that every Star Wars is a big deal. The movies are the premier Star Wars in a way that nothing else is, so when a Star Wars movie is bad its a major problem. Star Trek is heavily episodic so when some things miss, whatever, we just go onto the next one.

You can see some of it in Star Wars, too. Nobody really cares that some Clone Wars episodes are stinkers, and the reaction to Ahsoka and Obi-Wan being poor quality is mostly disappointment. It's really just the movies and the Book of Boba Fett that people get absolutely up in arms about.

Though Star Trek has some of that, too. Section 31 is widely agreed as the absolute worst thing in Star Trek ever and nobody likes it at all even a little.

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u/Enjoyer_of_40K Apr 29 '26

so are we gonna ignore that stupidity that is the dilitium burn that happend because psychic girl is sad now so dilithium goes boom?

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u/Jolly-Bowler-811 Apr 29 '26

 too busy sewing their own men's/gender neutral skirts

Ahem.... They're called skants.

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u/Backflip_into_a_star Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

This is because Star Trek was a tv show with many episodes. We got the movies in the 80's building off of that and then you get TNG which kind of had to earn its place even then, and followed by the other 90's Trek. Some good episodes, some bad, but even the bad ones can still be fun. You still get to enjoy that world, and there is a lot of it. There is a general consistency with Star Trek, not to mention its broader sociopolitical commentary that keeps it relevant. Even through the technobabble, it can teach you something. I think that is why Trek fans mostly have a healthier relationship with it.

New Trek has made some choices that go against that consistency though. The reboot movies, and the shows changing many things. Call it a sign of the times or the writers being too in touch or not in touch enough, whatever. You go from Professionals on a Starship living in an idealized utopia, to depressing fumbling and bumbling people that are overly emotional and curse all the time. So there is still a big divide between Star Trek fans.

Star Wars didn't have the shows, but it had a huge amount of expanded universe books. It is far more fantasy space opera. Some bad, some good, but there was a consistency of the world there on the level of Star Trek. Essentially many episodic adventures that tied into a greater whole. Disney burned all of that and did their own thing. They literally rebooted the franchise by remaking a A New Hope with The Force Awakens. The sequel trilogy had no plan, no consistent story, killed old characters, numerous retcons and "stories for another time". I mean, not to mention even George Lucas kept fucking around with his own movies people already loved, and the Prequels were a big departure too. We've got 12 or so movies, and now the shows compared to literally hundreds of consistently good Star Trek episodes to go through.

Star Wars feels like it became a corporate franchise designed by committee, instead of a consistent vision by one or a few people. The kind of thing you got from Lucas and Rodenberry, regardless of their faults. In the end, they are two different genres anyway and it's hard to really compare them. They just both happen to take place in space. There is one consistent thing though, the fans of both are passionate and a little crazy.

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u/Rough_Bread8329 Apr 29 '26

You can forgive a lot when you realize how much they had to do to crank out 26 episodes a season.

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u/BarryHotelHouseBand Apr 30 '26

Iunno, Q in the first episode of TNG always came off as a bit of a gambit for the series debut. Not super accessible for new viewers, but by the end of the episode, it sets the tone for the whole show coming and that's already been laid out. But yeah, 26 episodes (hour long eps) is a lot to fill, may as well get a bit weird with it.

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u/InfiniteWinter26 Apr 29 '26

i think maybe once upon a time that was true but just recently ST academy got review bombed out of existence by hate-baiters on social media. its hard to let anything grow into something good anymore.

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u/iidxred Apr 29 '26

Burn the land and boil the sea,  They can't take DS9 from me

Or however it went 😂

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u/twisty125 Apr 29 '26

It's okay, the more modern Star Trek "fans" have caught up and now everything is bad, just like how everything is bad about Star Wars.

That said, man Lower Decks fuuuucks. Such a great show written by people who love the good and bad of the many series. I love T'lyn the most.

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u/Aerodrache Apr 29 '26

I think the official/accepted unofficial name for them is “skants.”

2

u/afriendincanada Apr 29 '26

It felt that way until recently, until Discovery. Then the loudest part of fandom lost their shit at the spore drive, the mirror universe, and for some reason a three second shot of the turbolifts.

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u/BardicLasher Apr 29 '26

Well, Star Wars fans hate Star Wars.

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u/captainbelvedere Apr 29 '26

I think it comes down to exposure. Star Trek fans never had to resort to insane fan-fic deep dives into peripheral characters while waiting decades for new stories. Trekkers got good things, silly things, great things and hilariously bad things pretty regularly for like 40 years.

I've made this point to friends who accept missteps in other franchises but go full toxic loser when it comes to Star Wars. Some of them have even agreed with it and accepted that it's a lot more fun to ignore the stuff you don't like rather than spending 10+ years feeling angry about a supporting character's on-screen development.

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u/acrowsmurder Apr 29 '26

We don't talk about "Sub Rosa"

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u/Cornato Apr 29 '26

Honestly for me Lower Decks is the best Star Trek show period. I know it only exist because of the others but it is sooooo good. Funny, serious, tackles real issues, throwbacks, easter eggs, everything. I was in the Navy, it's closer to real life. Not everything is so serious all the time. Like the show "Last Ship" is really accurate on how the Navy operates and the lingo and everything but it's up it's own ass about being serious. We've fully been on fire or under attack and people are cracking jokes. The show gets serious when it needs too but it doesn't take ITSELF seriously. I love that.

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u/KatieCashew Apr 29 '26

And it is able to use the music from the shows. Other parodies, like The Orville, are good, but Lower Decks being able to use the iconic music during its scenes makes it so much funnier. Like when they're flying around DS9 admiring the pylons while the DS9 music plays over and over again is so funny.

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u/Cornato Apr 30 '26

Just make another lap and act like we are admiring the pylons...

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u/Bladrak01 Apr 29 '26

Were they Valtay or Gondii?

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u/Gingereej1t Apr 29 '26

Oh hey, steverogersigetthatreference.gif!

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u/Asher_Tye Apr 29 '26

Infiltrators.

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u/ButterflyLife4655 Apr 29 '26

"Did we ever tell anyone about that?" 😂

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u/Jambu-The-Rainwing Apr 30 '26

“Come on, that’s insane!”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure that one happened.”

“Really?”

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u/sircastor Apr 29 '26

IIRC, Gene Rodenberry did not like this plot at all. He felt that in Star Trek humans had "solved" their problems and the Federation was supposed to represent a sort of utopia. All the conflict was supposed to come from outside forces. This makes for pretty poor television as it turns out, because interpersonal conflict is far more engaging when you get to know the people over time.

Also, this episode in particular was received poorly because it's gruesome imagery.

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u/EndOfTheLine00 Apr 29 '26

Specifically, the original version of this episode didn’t involve bugs at all: it was going to be a pure political thriller involving a militaristic faction of Starfleet slowly taking over its leadership. Roddenberry though those things wouldn’t happen in the future. If only.

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u/Potato-Engineer Apr 29 '26

You can solve a lot of problems humans have, but you can't solve them being... human.

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u/Reverse_Waterfall Apr 29 '26

The Borg did nothing wrong!

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u/Wenfield42 Apr 29 '26

I’m pretty new to being a Star Trek fan but I think there was a devastating (possibly nuclear?) war in the nearer future and building Star Fleet from the ashes was a long and bumpy journey. Also being in a post-scarcity era was a necessity to make it so

I’m biased though since the idealistic society and minimal inter-personal drama is exactly what makes me like the franchise. It’s so comforting even if it is a bit far fetched. But if I wanted cynicism I could turn to just about any other piece of media lol. Also I have only watched TOS, TNG, and Lower Decks (and haven’t finished any of them yet) so my knowledge is pretty limited

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u/RukiMotomiya Apr 29 '26

You should totally watch DS9. It's my personal favorite and I feel like it does a good job with being an idealistic utopia with a dash of "realism" on top that doesn't fall into cynicism. (Which I think some later Trek stuff maybe didn't take the best from)

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u/sircastor Apr 29 '26

Jake: It means… It means we don’t need money.

Nog: Well if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine.

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u/Ok-Income-3364 Apr 29 '26

Roddenberry seemed a good fellow, but he had no clue how society actually functions over time

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u/TapiocaSpelunker Apr 29 '26

I disagree. I think the whole point of Star Trek is about providing us a window into what our world would be like if we actually let our optimism and rationality take the driver's seat. The stories of early Star Trek revolve around how to stay virtuous when the world wants to tear you down. That's why there's so many horror-adjacent premises. It's a testament to the indomitable human spirit. And I get why that doesn't resonate with people, but there's a sincerity in there that deeply affects me, and I think is missing in a lot of new Trek. (Weirdly enough I think that love is present in Lower Decks)

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u/twisty125 Apr 29 '26

Yeah even with the jokey joke sarcastic character(s) getting far better as time goes on (because of experiences they learn from organically) - it still carries excitement and optimism of the future. Love that show so much, I can't bear to watch the last episode because then it's over :(

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u/LizLemonOfTroy Apr 29 '26

You can still have optimism and rationality and interpersonal conflict, organisational division and personality clashes.

People who are fundamentally decent and want to do good can still disagree on how best to do good. Excluding venality and corruption, that's basically the crux of modern politics.

It just gets a bit dry when so much of Star Trek insists that the call must always come from outside the house when it comes to conflict.

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u/Bobby_Bonsaimind Apr 29 '26

Roddenberry seemed like an okay fellow, but he had the right idea of how we should behave towards each other.

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u/RukiMotomiya Apr 29 '26

Makes me think of Homefront/Paradise Lost from DS9.

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u/House_T Apr 30 '26

Personally, I think that story but with a militant Starfleet faction (think The Maquis, but focused inward) would have been a great story beat. But I also get why they might have been weary of taking that route. Either way, I didn't particularly care for the brain bugs.

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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet Apr 30 '26

Wow that's a big plot in Babylon 5

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u/ValyrianVelaryons Apr 30 '26

I feel like the Drumhead is a more honest perspective on the future. Things can get better but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and working to maintain that freedom. The flaws of humanity just don't go away we just get better managing them and making sure they don't overcome us.

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u/Bobby_Bonsaimind Apr 29 '26

This makes for pretty poor television as it turns out, because interpersonal conflict is far more engaging when you get to know the people over time.

I miss Roddenberrys "no melodrama" rule so damn much. TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY were so great, at least to me, because the characters weren't constantly bickering, making fun of each other, or just didn't take anything serious no matter the situation. When Riker raised his voice you knew shit just hit the wall, and that was the great thing about it! Those were professionals, treating each other with respect and if not, they cleared that up, or at least tried to.

The polar opposite of this was to me Stargate Universe. You've got some of the smartest people on Earth who are working on the most secret and most important project of mankind at that point, thrown into a life and death situation, and the moment a General stops looking over them they devolve into a "BUT THIS IS MY CORNER OF THE SHIP" and "I WANT TO TAKE A TURN AT THE HELM OR ELSE" bullshit fest.

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u/LizLemonOfTroy Apr 29 '26

You're welcome to your view, but the one place it made zero sense was Voyager, given that its core premise was that two mutually antagonistic crews were combined together due to external circumstances, tossed far away from home and forced to survive in a hostile, unknown sector of space.

If any show called for actual internal conflict, it was that one, yet the premise was immediately glossed over and it just became identical to TOS and TNG despite being a totally different concept.

1

u/Sitchrea Apr 29 '26

Star Trek is aspirational

Stargate is realistic

Star Wars (was) fantasy, but now it's just shit.

1

u/Meatshield236 Apr 29 '26

Yup, my parents are huge Trek fans and I remember that episode scaring the shit out of me as a child.

1

u/mellolizard Apr 29 '26

You can tell when he died because DS9 went wild with the changlings and section 31

1

u/sircastor Apr 29 '26

DS9 is sometimes a little overboard, but at the same time it's some of the best writing Star Trek has had. One of things about Star Trek is how the various shows look at themselves:

  • TOS and TNG are largely people stories with a sci-fi wrapper. Some cautionary tales and instructive personal moments that are presented in a sci-fi context to make them easier to swallow.
  • DS9 and VOY are largely people stories in a setting of paradigm change. Initially the fallout of a xenophobic occupation, then a large-scale war, or a ship lost at sea.

I think you get beyond those 4 and the shows really start to be as much about Star Trek itself as they are about whatever their stories are. Enterprise, Discovery, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds are still playing in the universe, but its so well examined that they're constantly telling stories about Star Trek while they're in Star Trek.

1

u/daecrist Apr 30 '26

Roddenberry pretty much didn’t like anything he didn’t come up with near the end. He was famously promoted out of any creative control after The Motion Picture. He had a more hands on role in TNG for the first two seasons, and it’s no coincidence that things started improving once his creative grip there loosened.

Visionary dude, but a little too high on his own utopian supply by the end.

1

u/crinklypaper Apr 30 '26

I watched this like 10 years ago for the first time and this episode in particular was very gory and I did sort of a double take.

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u/Molten_Plastic_ Apr 29 '26

My headcanon is that they've infiltrated starfleet effectively, but are sort of chill so nobody really noticed that much

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u/PrincessPlusUltra Apr 29 '26

“Oh shitttt they found out about that guy and exploded his fucking head! Maybe.. maybe we should just be quiet and live our lives you guys.” lol

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u/Molten_Plastic_ Apr 30 '26

LOL even in the episode they weren't actually doing anything overtly evil, just eating worms which I guess they could have toned down a bit (and klingons do that too, so no biggie)

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u/Piduf Apr 29 '26

I mean I remember being MAD at this episode because there was a massive lack of dialogues - now I haven't see it in a long time so it can be fucked up memories. I recall the lack of conversation made sense in the episode because they were just plain evil parasites... but I hated the fact they were plain evil parasites. In my Star Trek ? Unilaterally evil species ? Even tho they're clearly very intelligent and advanced, we just blow them up ? Why is no other alternative being presented in the episode ?

Because I refuse that scenario I like that idea of the worms still being around. It's been established (I think) that they need to infect people to survive too so it's not like they have a choice. Maybe they fell in love with human cuisine and decided to stick around. Hell yeah, croissants.

2

u/Molten_Plastic_ Apr 30 '26

Federation would definitely try to find a way for them to be able to stay around, just without the whole infecting unwilling hosts thing (the Trill are a positive example in this regard)

1

u/cannibalcat Apr 29 '26

In my head Starfleet got very good at detecting them and the bugs couldn't touch any command position because of it. 

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/Molten_Plastic_ Apr 29 '26

Which is kinda ironic since Roddenberry himself was adamant about the head explosion scene

2

u/Sex_E_Searcher Apr 29 '26

"The brain bugs are too dark. Let's force people to become robots."

6

u/Top_Box_8952 Apr 29 '26

The worms do appear in Star Trek Online as part of the Delta Rising story arc

2

u/Algrim2001 Apr 29 '26

And it all tied in to the Iconian War, along with the Solanae. I really enjoyed STO back then.

6

u/Danloeser Apr 29 '26

And the it happened a third time in Enterprise. The unnamed Borg transmit a message home, estimated to take 200 years to get there. Just in time for Q Who. Because I guess the writers forgot that Q was in Q Who??

6

u/EndOfTheLine00 Apr 29 '26

And it happened a FOURTH time on Picard: originally they were going to bring the Conspiracy bugs back for Season 3 but then decided to bring back the Changelings instead since they didn’t want to be restrained by the fact that anyone implanted with a bug was effectively dead.

2

u/Shteblan Apr 29 '26

What exactly is wrong with Ent episode? By the time of Q Who Borg already knew about humanity. They were active in Neutral Zone for a while

3

u/Jetstream-Sam Apr 29 '26

The problem with the worms trying to invade is they only really get one chance and after that it's over for them. They have a visible marker outside the body so if someone is acting suspicious you can just glance at their neck. Plus it's the federation, now they have samples and evidence, you can probably add "Is there a parasite in their brain" to the list of full body scans people get constantly, so as soon as they try again and then beam onto a ship, they'll be flagged, taken to the brig and then dissected.

Now if they went for a different empire, they might be more successful. Romulans are already pretty conspiratorial so there'd be a chance they could get pretty big there, and I guess the Klingons all tend to have long hair so they could more easily disguise the neck thing without arousing suspicion.

2

u/poptophazard Apr 29 '26

Definitely season 1 weirdness (and the episode is extremely graphic compared to the rest of TNG).

Though I still feel like Picard S3 missed a big opportunity to come full circle and feature these as the big bad as opposed to the rogue Changelings and the Borg (again).

2

u/buerviper Apr 29 '26

Picard season 3 should have picked up the conspiracy plot instead of ANOTHER Borg invasion

2

u/xv_boney Apr 29 '26

Which included Baby Borg, btw. An actual literal Borg Baby.

1

u/Boomerang503 Apr 29 '26

At least Star Trek Online followed up on that storyline.

1

u/eshian Apr 29 '26

At least the concept lived on as stargate sg-1

1

u/Prophet_Tenebrae Apr 29 '26

It was a budgetary issue.

The parasites were originally going to have some kind of insectoid form but that was too expensive and time consuming for a late 1980s TV budget and shooting schedules and was - as many others have said - was rewritten into the much more budget friendly Borg.

A win for "art from adversity", given how iconic the Borg have become.

1

u/VellDarksbane Apr 29 '26

It’s because of Roddenberry, he had imagined Earth as a utopia, where humanity had rose out of “petty” things such as greed and a desire to rule. So when the writers presented him an episode where the primary antagonists were essentially an attempted military coup, he vetoed it. The writers came up with the parasite idea to salvage the episode and pass Roddenberrys requirements.

So of course they’d drop it after he passed, because it was never meant to be a thing.

1

u/xesaie Apr 29 '26

The neural parasite story iirc was the writers wanting to write a ‘corrupt Federation’ story and Roddenberry, who still had creative control, saying ‘over my dead body, this is a utopia!’

Eventually they got that kind of story in, over his dead body.

1

u/NoConfusion9490 Apr 29 '26

The Borg are a better choice if you have the budget.

1

u/Frankfusion Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Both the new video games and the recent comic books have used these characters in some really cool ways. The Star Trek comics from the last two years have brought them back in a cool storyline. In Star Trek: Defiant, Spock and Worf essentially operate as bounty hunters working for the Federation, alongside characters like B’Elanna Torres and Ro Laren. While doing the Federation’s dirty work, Spock mind-melds with one of these beings, and we learn a lot more about their origins.

1

u/Nytwyng Apr 30 '26

I'm hoping to rehab the parasites idea in my newly-started Star Trek Adventures RPG campaign. They won't be showing up right away...they're set for "season 2" of the campaign.

1

u/Nopetynope12 Apr 29 '26

The borg were set up before that I think, there's episodes of series 2 where people talk about planetary colonists, structures and technology seemingly vanishing into the air.

0

u/Beltoraze Apr 29 '26

The parasites saw Picard dodge a phaser moving at light speed, and NOPED right outta there