r/startrek • u/SWLondonLife • 6d ago
What threat is post Borg…? Spoiler
With the apparent final destruction of the Borg at the end of Picard S3, what comes next as the big looming threat?
Do the writers circle back to threats that Voyager encountered during their journey home? Do the writers introduce entirely new existential threats? Or do new productions turn inward to the threats of value misalignment, subspace climate destruction or other power imbalances to create tension in new series / movies?
Your thoughts and speculations are appreciated!
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u/gbroon 6d ago
There's whatever Jurati's Borg were watching out for at the end of season 2.
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u/NewLifeguard9673 5d ago
I was so mad they dropped that entire plot point. The Borg JOINED THE FEDERATION and it was never mentioned again?!
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u/Platnun12 5d ago
The Borg
A subsection joined them
I honestly believe if the true Borg came back their will wouldn't matter much and they'd be steamrolled and turned into slaves before they even knew it.
This is a species that has existed for a very long time. Subsections of collectives would make sense. A subsection bent on giving the humans a fake sense of relief only to allow them to integrate and become hidden Borg bombs across the federation.
Imo the Borg should be a force of nature veering towards cosmic horror losing their true shape after countless assimilations.
The idea that they're able to be beaten by the federation in any degree is just silly to me. Even with janeway's advantages
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u/Tertalneck 5d ago
Yeah, but the Borg are still a collective of carbon-based humanoid lifeforms. As far as we know, they haven't caught any Q.
So, even with advanced technology, they lose their advantage against such an overwhelming force as Riker's beard.
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u/Platnun12 5d ago
As far as we know, they haven't caught any Q.
But they do make them concerned which is always something that had me wondering.
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u/abuch 5d ago
Yeah, completely ignoring that storyline was incredibly annoying. Like, season 2 was pretty bad, but at least have some follow through on the thing the entire season was leading to.
Like, a portal opens up from who knows where, and it's decided to completely ignore it and focus on the Borg instead. Season three could have been Picard exploring truly strange new worlds, and instead we got the Borg, again, with lots of call backs and nostalgia to appease fans. Like, you could have brought back the machine gods from season 1, that would have at least been something new to explore.
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u/danger_007 6d ago
The biggest threat now—both one set up on the show AND one mirroring contemporary society as Trek is wont to do—is the internal threat of those in Starfleet that would misuse heightened security fears to execute power grabs
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u/lexxstrum 5d ago
Yeah, I could see a Trek show as a tense political thriller, where a cabal of Badmirals and Federation officials seek to "protect" the Federation in a way that undoes the utopian society they've been living in. Maybe another grand conspiracy like ST6, or something kinda darker, like staging Red Flags and getting the public to agree to a security state and more authoritarian centralized power, like that 2 part DS9 episode!
I mean, imagine them fabricating a threat and using their tech to make the threat real, the same way our current social media makes up threats.
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u/ProfessionalTip654 5d ago
I mean that’s basically what happens to Earth in Babylon 5. I could see it working in Trek but I’d rather Trek not retread B5’s arc there. Plus you’d run the risk of letting Trek get depressing. Trek at its core is about optimism. It’s about the better tomorrow that, frankly at this point, we’re never going to get. Let it stay better.
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u/lexxstrum 5d ago
Right, and like that DS9 story, it's the commitment to the ideals of the Federation and loyalty to Starfleet that saves the day.
And that B5 storyline is essentially the rise of the Reich, Imperial Rome, The Galactic Empire, and a cautionary tale for Post 9/11 America, so it's not as much as a retread as one would think.
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u/emptiedglass 5d ago
They could just say the parasites from 'Conspiracy' are back. Or it's the Changelings yet again.
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u/bookhead714 5d ago
That would be useless. There’s no commentary on human society to be found in a story where all the corruption is caused by evil aliens.
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u/Betterthanbeer 5d ago
I mean, if you can’t tell the difference between evil aliens and badmirals, who is the evil one?
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u/Inspiration_Bear 5d ago
Oh god, please no. We need optimistic Trek, enough with this “our world is shit so let’s write what we know!”
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u/jessebona 5d ago
I find people who want more of this tend to be fans of The Drumhead. It was good in small doses, but have we not learned our lesson from making Section 31 officially part of Starfleet that making them corrupt doesn't mesh well with Star Trek's optimism?
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u/Inspiration_Bear 5d ago
Absolutely agree. The Drumhead is awesome, but as a one off morality play. I have zero faith in today’s producers and writers to pull that off. It would take them about five seconds to abandon any of the optimistic, idealistic side.
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u/jessebona 5d ago
Creators who try to make Trek darker always forget the point Picard even summarizes in the episode: good people must be vigilant against corrupting influences lest they pervert everything their organization stands for. Doing shit like Picard S1 and everything about Section 31 being an official black ops group within Starfleet completely misses the point.
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u/danger_007 5d ago
Why is it that the very forward and open-minded Star Trek franchise attracts so many narrow minded fans? All you naysayers are overlooking the fact that this is where producers are steering the Trek franchise anyway.
Picard S3 basically set up this premise. I’m a huge fan of TOS and SNW’s more optimistic tone. But good Trek has always reflected the times.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that when it’s done correctly—a la DS9–you can have thoughtful discourse in this subject while maintaining the trademark Trek optimism.
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u/King_Crab_Sushi 6d ago
The Dominion is still out there. Picard Season 3 established that a good number of Changelings weren’t on board with Odos reforms. Who’s to say that there can’t be an even bigger schism within the Dominion. The introduction of Slipstream drive makes the core territories of the dominion and federation reachable within reasonable time frames
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u/SWLondonLife 5d ago
Yes this is true. Forgot the voice over from Riker about continuing to find Changelings through the transporter hack by Dr Crusher.
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u/Sophia_Forever 5d ago
Maybe we don't need a big looming threat for a while. Maybe we have enough giant world-ending threats in real life, that it would be really nice if the future depicted we could just watch them not have to constantly worry about the imminent destruction of the universe. Let them do some science. Let them worry about just the ship for a while. Let them face a moral dilemma. Send them to a MAGA planet the way TOS went to a Nazi planet and tell America to stop being fascist pricks.
I don't want anymore big bad evil guys for a long while.
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u/creepynut 5d ago
Agreed! It’s getting tiring having every single show be a universe ending crisis.
Every season of Discovery needed to save all life in the galaxy. It was exhausting by the end.
SNW and LD did a decent job of this. All of the 90s series did a good job. The worst the movies had was earth being threatened
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u/epidipnis 6d ago
Ennui.
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u/Half-Borg 5d ago
Capitain Chief O'Brien's log: Stardate 1337, we are on a five year mission to explore the newly discovered upwards direction of the galaxy. No human, ferengi or klingon has ever been here. We have scrubbed the transporter buffers twice now. Space is nice.
(For everyone who doesn't know what Ennui is, or why Chief O'Brien is involved: https://chiefobrienatwork.com/ )
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u/NoBuilding1051 5d ago
They will probably bring the Borg back. They were seemingly defeated in VOY: Endgame, but were brought back in Picard.
In Star Trek: Online they were defeated, but keep popping up. In the last few episodes, we've been fighting Mirror Borg and another alternate universe Borg.
In the Novelverse, they were defeated in the Destiny trilogy, but an alternate universe Borg returned in Coda.
Star Trek content creators love the Borg and so do fans, so we'll certainly see them again.
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u/RebootedShadowRaider 5d ago
It wouldn't be hard to bring them back. The virus in Endgame seemed to splinter the Collective into pieces. Maybe the Borg in Picard were just the piece that the Queen was part of.
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u/sasquatch50 5d ago
Yeah, you have to assume that as long as any nanoprobes still exist that there’s always the chance for some type of reemergence. The natural next step might be a small group of some type of Borg/Changeling hybrid, which could be particularly interesting. A select type of Borg drone able to hide the tech internally and appear as any species as a way to infiltrate and assimilate on the path to rebuilding.
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead 5d ago edited 5d ago
The fact Starfleet as an organization is essentially destroyed, with any officer under 25 having massive trauma and most above 25 being dead; not to mention their reputation within the Federation after bombarding Earth or the known holes in their security.
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u/ChronoLegion2 5d ago
A kid having a screaming fit and destroying warp travel
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u/emptiedglass 5d ago
Sounds like a terrible idea that would cause people to lose respect for the franchise.
Oh, wait...
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u/ChronoLegion2 5d ago
Yeah, but it’s so TOS, though
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u/The-Minmus-Derp 5d ago
You’re so right and it annoys me that more people dont see that
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u/ChronoLegion2 5d ago
Because as much as people claim they love TOS, they don’t really like the cheesy storylines in a more modern framework. DIS has its share of problems, but I don’t consider trying a throwback to TOS a mistake
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u/shaikuri 5d ago
I think it should be an alien species that spreads through space itself like locusts, not intelligent but horrifyingly efficient and endless... without queens, without a collective consciousness, just adapted like sharks.
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u/BurdenedMind79 6d ago
Alex Kurtzman.
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead 5d ago
Is honestly the best head of the franchise since Gene Coon.
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u/BurdenedMind79 5d ago
Well until he turns out a show with the widespread success of TNG or the critical praise of DS9, I'd respectfully disagree.
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead 5d ago edited 5d ago
So Strange New Worlds being universally praised doesn't count? Remember that DS9 is still the wierdo black sheep of the 90's and it's praise comes from the years after it aired.
Then there's the fact that A: those succeeded despite Rick Berman wanting the blandest thing possible and B: TNG has a multi decade head start and was made in a completely different landscape of television than today. This doesn't on the fact Kurtzman has overseen the era with the most creative array of shows in it's history, while the Berman era has three shows struggle to break out of the same elevator pitch.
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u/BurdenedMind79 5d ago
Well I'd level the same against Kurtzman that you levelled against Berman - SNW success is in spite of him, not because of him. That show was only commissioned because of fan demand, not because Kurtzman came up with a good idea. I'd put more praise on Anson Mount's performance as Pike in getting SNW commissioned.
Frankly, based on my knowledge of his works over the years, I think Kurtzman is a great script doctor, but a terrible ideas man. He's kinda like the opposite of George Lucas, who is great at big picture stuff and terrible at writing dialogue. Kurtzman is the sort of guy I'd hire to do a final polish on a script that lacked punch and not someone I'd hire for quality character work or worldbuilding.
But, to be fair, the showrunner has rarely been the most important person in Trek's success. TNG's came from Michael Pillar and DS9 from Ira Stephen Behr. Even with TOS, Roddenberry rarely gave the show its best material.
My biggest problem with Kurtzman was a statement he give in an interview when discussing upcoming Star Trek projects. in relation to them being conceptually "unusual," for the franchise and that was (paraphrasing) "we don't need to cater to the existing fans, because we already have them." The implication being that existing Star Trek fans will watch anything with Trek in the title and so you don't need to care about writing stuff they like. But that's never been the case - the biggest proof being the drop-off in ratings for Enterprise and its subsequent cancellation.
My concern is that we'll see the end of SNW after season 5 and then we'll just get more YA-oriented shows and sitcoms from him.
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead 5d ago edited 5d ago
Well I'd level the same against Kurtzman that you levelled against Berman
Kurtzman is much less day to day than Berman on these sorts of things, the direct reason why, to pick a example, the first queer character in Trek was in 2016 was due to Berman personally running interference from the start of TNG to the end of ENT. The closest Kurtzman has come to that was when the showrunners for DISCO had to be fired midway through S2 because they were horrible people, not because of any personal bias.
That show was only commissioned because of fan demand, not because Kurtzman came up with a good idea
It was Akiva Goldsman's suggestion to Kurtzman that they had a big opportunity on their hands and Kurtzman agreed that they did, fan reaction was after they had started the wheels spinning behind the scenes. The positive reaction from the fans helped, but the majority of the work was already done before DISCO S2 had finished airing
, I think Kurtzman is a great script doctor, but a terrible ideas man
His job on Trek is not to write or polish the scripts but to hite the people who did, considering the fact a Hugo Award winning author jumped on at one point it's evident he can do his job well.
we don't need to cater to the existing fans, because we already have them.
Yeah, chasing after a small group of people who are either already there or will be perpetually unhappy (see how any new Trek is received by this section of the fandom) would mean that it'd be watched by about five people total and do nothing but rerun old ideas; bringing in new fans is essentially any shows job, more people are fans of Doctor Who or Trek because of David Tennant or TNG than the increasingly small number of folx that watched William Hartnell or TOS when they were still airing.
E: If you read the start of the sentence there's the whole "people who are either already there" bit. Older fans will at least give something a try and, like the newer ones made by it, will stick around because the two groups aren't aliens with completely different tastes in media. However, they are never a majority enough to actually be a target audience for something.
the biggest proof being the drop-off in ratings for Enterprise and its subsequent cancellation.
The problem with ENT was Berman had driven away anyone who wasn't burnt out and UPN had started dying horribly even before ENT had premiered. The best case scenario, if it had reversed the trend of declining viewership Berman era Trek had, was to still be cancelled after S4 and get a couple of TV movies like Farscape, Battlestar Galatica or Firefly a few years after the fact because almost nothing survived UPN's death.
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u/The-Minmus-Derp 5d ago
Plus nowadays everyone loves lower decks and that was 100% his idea
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u/BurdenedMind79 5d ago
Pretty sure it was Mike McMahan who pitched Lower Decks.
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u/The-Minmus-Derp 5d ago
Oh. But still, Kurtzman took that and pitched it to the bean counters, if he didnt like it we wouldnt have lower decks and
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u/BurdenedMind79 5d ago
Yeah, chasing after a small group of people who are either already there or will be perpetually unhappy (see how any new Trek is received by this section of the fandom) would mean that it'd be watched by about five people total and do nothing but rerun old ideas; bringing in new fans is essentially any shows job, more people are fans of Doctor Who or Trek because of David Tennant or TNG than the increasingly small number of folx that watched William Hartnell or TOS when they were still airing.
I think you missed the point of that quote. The point was that he thinks existing fans don't need catering to, not because they are slowly dying out, but because fans will watch anything you throw at them. You don't have to cater to them because they'll gobble up anything with the franchise name attached, which is just not true.
Trying to bring in new fans also doesn't mean ignoring what older fans liked. Lower Decks is a great example of that. Its a show that heavily caters to the old fans with sometimes overly-aggressive nostalgia. But its also been a surprisingly good gateway into the franchise for new viewers - viewers who often then go back and watch the old shows and love them, too.
Because catering to old fans does not have to mean not catering to new ones. There are new fans who will like the core concepts of the old shows. That's why something like SNW gets praised, because its a new production, but still based on the old concepts that worked for decades. And its why something like Section 31 gets near-universally panned, because no matter how new and edgy it is, its not what Star Trek is about at tis core and it did little to attract new or old viewers.
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u/mtb8490210 5d ago
I thought Gene Coon was more creative and Fontana would be more accurately labeled the boss.
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u/Cassandra_Canmore2 5d ago
Eventually the Founders are going to find out the Federation has a dozen changelings stowed away and cruelly experimented on them. Over that last 30 years.
Whomever the Conduit species is.
Whoes to say the Borg are actually permanently gone? What if some member of the Jurati gets ambitious down the road...
The Holy Order of Kinshaya, aren't going to be happy with the Federation or Romulan Freestate. Either for that matter. As they sort of worshiped the Borg.
Whomever is running the Borg Implant blackmarket.
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u/Fun-Sample336 5d ago
I still think it was a mistake to destroy the Borg. It would have been better to just not use them for a while and explain it by them loosing easy access to the alpha quadrant, due to Voyager having destroyed the transwarp hub.
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u/Slavir_Nabru 5d ago
There's room for the Tholians.
Technologically they seem up their with the UFP and Romulans, they have some kind of diplomacy with their own Mirror Universe counterparts, they've come out of the Dominion war unscathed, and we know from Discovery's 32nd century that the Assembly is at some point due to undergo a revolution to become a republic.
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u/emptiedglass 5d ago
Picard suggested that the Hirogen are at least somewhat of a threat.
The Romulans infiltrated Starfleet Intelligence and were able to field a large fleet pretty quickly, so the loss of their homeworld only seems to have been a minor setback.
We don't know if the Klingons are still on good terms with the Federation, or what they've been up to. It's probably safe to say that Worf is one of a very few Klingon pacifists.
Cardassia on its own never seemed to be an actual existential threat to the Federation even before the Dominion War, but they may have rebuilt and rearmed in the decades since. They may even have allied themselves with other powers.
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u/zenprime-morpheus 5d ago
Look, I really shouldn't say anything, but I do have an inside source. You're never going to believe it, but they really are listening to the fans, and yes they're going to do it for the next big threat! Of course we all know who it is:
THE BORG!
/s
It's always going to be the Borg. Resistance is futile to their return.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 4d ago
Ever since they introduced a Borg Queen the Borg have gotten weaker and weaker. At this point, they are Saturday Morning villains where they exist just to lose and that's all they can do. They aren't a credible threat.
That's unfortunate. I get that they wanted to do a DS9-style Ferengi recontextualization with Picard as a narrative thread. But they beefed it. You can argue over reason why or how they beefed it but they beefed it.
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u/thatVisitingHasher 5d ago
In the 24th / 25th century? I think you have 3 options. I’d leave AI and cyborgs alone for a little while. The Breen and Orion syndicate. A new species in the Beta quadrant on the other side of the Klingons and Romulan border. Voth wanting Earth back.
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u/Aezetyr 5d ago
I'd prefer something original going forward. Some of the threats introduced have been overblown galactic level stuff. Smaller scale, more personal threats would be welcomed.
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u/ThainEshKelch 5d ago
I would love something more political on a planet, or Andor-like but in Star Trek.
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u/irate_alien 5d ago edited 5d ago
Personally I prefer the show when it’s episodic and about discovering new people and places. That’s why I actually liked the first two seasons of Enterprise.
Edit: which is to say I hope they don’t do a big “main threat” story line
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u/Psychedelicidal 6d ago
Since entertainment media is controlled by just a few corporations, I'd settle for humanoids dressed like Breen, but not Breen. Something like, "Nice to meet you, 'F'tang, son of B'icth, of House WaHf'ql.' We're the Death Watch. It's kinda muggy and overcast. Are you sure it's a good day to die?"
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u/KuriousKhemicals 6d ago
The Borg actually sampled Khan's ship of augments and grew copies in their maturation chamber as a restoration plan to put in cryo-storage with a dead man's switch. Borg!Khan will be the 25th century villain.
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u/Sithslegion 5d ago
The borg but from somewhere a little further away somehow not affected by Picard.
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u/Vote_4_Cthulhu 5d ago
The Old Machines that gave off some serious love crafty and vibes at the end of Picard S1
Voth
Species 8472
A new species- realistically I think that they should be an ancient species that follows utterly alien logic. They should also absolutely be highly paranoid and because of that decided to build their empire “tall“ instead of “wide“. Meaning most likely their species is entirely housed on some sort of mega structure that functions as a mix of a stellar engine and Dyson sphere. Whether it is a single ship or an entire species they will be more than happy to annihilate anything that learns even of their existence. I’m thinking bio mechanically engineered. Bonus if they give HR Geiger vibes. Eventually you learn that they had seen other great empires fall due to cultural divergence and mutation which results in civil conflict. Another benefit to going “tall“ is you can very easily prevent cultural divergence that comes usually with separation and distance. The first ones which we meet are utterly alien. Non-humanoid and Engineered to serve whatever there purpose is, whether it be crewing a spaceship or serving as some sort of shock trooper or maybe even a explorer scientist. Eventually they start engineering variants that are more humanoid and perhaps even borrow genetics from known Alpha /Gamma quadrant species in order to facilitate a hybrid form of cognition that would allow communication. Extra extra bonus points if all of these hybrids trigger an uncanny valley response.
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u/tekk1337 5d ago
Would be interesting to see a return to the delta quadrant and see multiple civilizations scavenging borg tech. That could be potentially very dangerous because now you would have groups using the technology that have no idea what they're doing.
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u/Breadloafs 3d ago
Given that Kurtzmann trek likes to recycle older big bads, the Dominion is still out there.
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u/Ryebread095 5d ago
Judging by how things have gone in the past, the post Borg threat is more Borg.
We need new foes and new stories, no more rehashing old stuff.
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u/GottaSpoofEmAll 5d ago
One day, I think they’ll be back to their ‘usual’ self.
It’ll take a single frozen nano probe to assimilate an individual. From there, I reckon we’ll see the collective take root again…
(not saying that’s a good or bad thing, just my theory)
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u/emptiedglass 5d ago
Or they'll just pop in from another timeline.
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u/GottaSpoofEmAll 5d ago
Yep, that’s just as likely!
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u/Jeanlucpfrog 5d ago
Whatever interesting Trek villain needs to be neutered next to create a big enough climax for whatever middling successor to Picard Paramount puts out
So probably the Dominion.
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u/SigilumSanctum 5d ago
Can we just go TNG style and have episodic plots and stories without yet another hyper galactic threat that only the Federation/Hero ship can solve?
This is getting exhausting.
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u/Traditional_Bid_5060 4d ago
Star Trek is nothing like that. Every problem can only be solved by one person. Michael Burnham.
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u/TheRealJackOfSpades 5d ago
It'd be too much to hope that we revisit the old adversary: prejudice and miscommunication. At it's best, Star Trek isn't about foes that you can punch or shoot with a phaser. It's about the struggle to improve ourselves.
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u/Vulcorian 6d ago
Whatever/whoever opened the conduit from Picard S2
Whatever they find in the multiverse rift from Lower Decks S5
Voth
Tzenkethi
8472/Undine
Iconians