Star Trek Arcs VII: Worf/Empire

If Gene Roddenberry had had his way, this one would never have happened, and modern Star Trek (and I suppose, Battlestar Galactica) would be a different story.

You see, when The Next Generation was being developed, he didn’t want to use any of the familiar aliens from the original series. That’s why there are so few Vulcans in the series. It’s also why we got the Ferengi, and even the Borg. But then Worf, who of course is Klingon, became a part of the regular cast of characters, although even at first he had a relatively minor role, no clearly defined post (Yar, after all, but the chief security officer).

As the first and second seasons developed, things changed again, and we even met Worf’s former lover, K’Ehleyr, in “The Emissary,” which indirectly started out the arc that would come to define him.

But it wasn’t until a jealous and manipulative rival named Duras attempted to lie his way to power in “Sins of the Father” that the high drama of Klingon politics finally became a thing. Worf ends up losing honor among his people, a rare unhappy ending for a Star Trek episode, but only the beginning of the story. We also meet his brother Kurn in the episode, by the way.

“Reunion” is the episode where everything really changes. We meet Gowron, who goes on to be chancellor of the Klingon Empire (and idol of bug-eyed aliens everywhere), K’Ehleyr returns, Duras attempts one last great plot, and...Alexander. That’s a whole arc, in a manner of speaking, as is how Gowron eventually loses power, which involves Worf’s relationship with another Klingon, Martok, but I’m limiting myself to the strict causality of events, so I won’t get into all of those details.

Anyway, Duras kills K'Ehleyr, Worf kills Duras, Gowron becomes chancellor.

This leads to the two-part “Redemption,” which itself involves another quasi-arc involving Yar and her Romulan daughter Sela (won’t get into that, either), in which the Klingons experience a civil war, exactly what the events of “Sins of the Father” were supposed to avoid. Clearly that didn’t work out so well.

The story picks up in Deep Space Nine, in the two-part “Way of the Warrior,” in which Worf, having sacrificed so much already, finds himself caught once more between the Empire and the Federation, as Gowron, who unbeknownst to him is being manipulated by the Dominion, declares war against the Federation, and asks Worf to stand by his side, which of course he refuses to do, compounding all his previous problems.

Finally, in “Sons of Mogh,” Kurn has had enough and wants his misery, at always being the victim to Worf’s choices, to end. But this is Star Trek, so every time suicide seems to be the answer, another one must be presented, and his memory is completely replaced instead. Worf gets to continue his journey alone. Until Martok. Long story short, they bond, and the increasingly dishonorable Gowron forces Worf to kill him near the end of the Dominion War, in “Tacking into the Wind,” which leads Martok to become the new chancellor.

Without all this, the idea of serialized storytelling, in Star Trek and genre television in general, might have taken longer to standardize. It’s the first time Star Trek made a concerted effort to tell a continuing story, especially one with so gosh darn many unhappy developments. Ronald Moore tends to get a lot of credit for it, which gave him enough of a reputation that he found himself in the position to totally reimagine Battlestar Galactica as a modern, grim, heavily serialized drama, in which the robotic Cylons are basically a lot of Duras fans. 

Star Trek Arcs VI: Picard versus the Borg

Arguably the biggest Star Trek arc ever was conceived in the least likely season of Star Trek ever (just like the last one). I’m talking, of course, about the Borg.

In the first season finale of The Next Generation, “The Neutral Zone,” the Romulans are reacting to the emerging threat of the Borg. That’s the whole point! 

But we don’t actually meet the Borg until the second season, in a Q episode, of all things, “Q Who?,” the unlikeliest thing ever, perhaps. In a lot of ways, that was an episode that redefined Q, took him seriously for the first time, and arguably too seriously! Every subsequent appearance (except maybe “Death Wish” in Voyager) veers far from the darkness of Q literally showing Picard how little he really understands about the dangers of space.

But it at least shows Picard as the one who needs to understand the threat of the Borg, because that becomes the big story.

At the end of the third season, “The Best of Both Worlds” makes franchise history as Picard finds himself assimilated into the Borg Collective, ending the episode on one of the most important (serialized) cliffhangers in television history. The fourth season premiere concludes the story, and of course Picard is rescued. But the fallout lingers for decades.

The first follow-up is the next episode of that season, “Family,” during which Picard deals with the emotional impact of his assimilation. He later encounters the Collective again in “I, Borg,” in which he’s forced to admit that even something seemingly as simple as how he should feel about this is actually quite complicated.

Then of course First Contact, in which he’s run through the ringer again. It remains my personal favorite Picard memory, especially the ready room scene where he admits how obsessed he remains, uncontrollably so.

The arc technically concludes in “The Impossible Box,” from Picard, in which he steps foot aboard a Borg cube again for the first time since his assimilation. 

Enterprise features a tie-in with all this in the episode “Regeneration,” in which we learn the time-traveling Borg from First Contact are in fact responsible for sending the signal that eventually brings the Collective on a collision course with humanity.

Finally, in the pilot of Deep Space Nine, “Emissary,” we meet Sisko, who lost his wife in the big battle from “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2,” and he still blames Picard, regardless of his assimilated state at the time. It’s the rare moment in franchise lore we see a significant separate story set during a more famous one.

Star Trek Arcs V: Data/Lore

This arc is the first one to play out deliberately within a single Star Trek series (and beyond).

It’s all the more incredible, since the first season of The Next Generation is seldom considered to be the origin point of a lot of good things, other than the second act of the franchise itself. 

In “Datalore,” we get the secret origin of Data himself, as well as the fact that he has an “evil twin,” Lore, created just before him by Noonien Soong. Lore, it seems, was too mischievous, too unpredictable, so Data himself was conceived as a more innocent being.

This had the unintended effect of causing Lore, once discovered, to double up on his mischief, and for Data ever to yearn for more. In “Brothers,” the dying Soong intends to bequeath Data with a component that would help him achieve that goal, an emotion chip, but like Jacob and Esau, Lore tricks Soong into giving the chip to him instead.

In the two-part “Descent,” Lore uses the chip to manipulate Data, who’s unable to process emotions and so becomes easily controlled, for a time, but by the end he’s permanently deactivated Lore. For an android who has had to fight for his own right to exist, and that of his “daughter,” even, this is a surprisingly little-considered decision.

In Generations he finally installs the emotion chip into his positronic net, and again he exhibits great difficulty reconciling his new abilities. Eventually he figures them out, and in later movies even has the ability to switch them off or have the chip easily removed.

In Nemesis we meet a third Soong android of the same appearance, B-4, a prototype that predates Lore, less sophisticated than either previously encountered. Data again chooses to deactivate a troublesome sibling, although since he himself dies at the end of the movie, B-4 is subsequently reactivated, left to wrestle with the downloaded experiences of his brother.

In Picard we meet Dahj and Soji, who are so sophisticated they aren’t even aware they’re androids, much less directly associated with Data. The dilemma Lore forces Data into in “Descent” plays out a little differently between these sisters, who find themselves as the unlikely heart of a dark controversy.