Star Trek Arcs XVIII: Romulan Elegy

The conclusion of this series on story arcs in the Star Trek franchise revolves around a thread weaving through three separate projects and interweaving two separate arcs. Unthinkable. But it happened.

Star Trek Nemesis gets little to no respect from fans, but it’s always been a personal favorite. Its plot revolves a clone of Picard created by the Romulans, who end up bitterly regretting it when he seizes power in his bid for revenge. In the process, Data sacrifices himself to stop him, and everyone thought they knew exactly what would happen next, and they were so sure they were bitterly disappointed and it seemed like nothing at all would happen.

The next Star Trek movie premiered seven years later and was somehow a reboot and a continuation. Its complicated timeline sets it after the events of Nemesis, so that we see an aging Spock involved in the response to the destruction of Romulus. Canonically we have no other information at that point involving familiar characters.

In Picard, we see what happened in the aftermath. In fact, Picard himself torpedoed his Starfleet career in bitter disgust at how the Federation effectively turned its back on the Romulan refugee crisis. Then of course he winds up being drafted right back into the action.

At the same time, he’s unraveling a mystery that leads him into a most unexpected reunion with Data, culminating in a “dream sequence” in which his android friend gets the chance to say an extended farewell, giving his final thoughts on the journey he took toward becoming more human. 

It’s bittersweet and heartbreaking, and really quite beautiful. It’s by far the most unlikely arc of the franchise, and probably impossible to occur in any other context.

Star Trek Arcs XVII: The Xindi

One of my favorite franchise arcs is the Xindi crisis from Enterprise’s third season, until Discovery and Picard the only example of full serialization in Star Trek. 

Of course, as was true of the franchise, to that point, even that left plenty of room for standalone stories, plus a few out-and-out standouts. Here’s a complete rundown:

“The Expanse” - The second season finale kicks off the arc with the Xindi launching an attack on Earth, carving a swatch across Florida and killing, among others, Trip’s sister. The Enterprise is subsequently sent into the eponymous region to seek out the Xindi to confront them and prevent further attacks.

“The Xindi” - We meet the Xindi Council, along with weapons developer Degra, in the third season premiere, but the Enterprise crew itself quickly determines that their search for answers won’t be easy.

“Anomaly” - The region of space they’re forced to travel through is itself dangerous, and contains mysterious spheres, the first of which they encounter here.

“Extinction” - Doesn’t have a ton of arc relevance.

“Rajiin” - Enterprise never understood that modern fans had a hugely different opinion of hot chicks than those of the original series. So this episode, featuring a hot chick helping the Xindi Council spy on the crew, was yet another instance of not getting the expected reception.

“Impulse” The region’s weird properties have negative effects on…everything, but here they’ve resulted in Zombie Vulcans. Fans loved this one. If there was one way to guarantee a good reception, it was to drop in a random horror episode (see also: the second season’s “Dead Stop”).

“Exile” - Sato has another in her long series of uncomfortable situations, this time with an alien who could give them actual information about the Xindi.

“The Shipment” - For me this is the first episode of the season to dig fruitfully into the arc, in which Archer meets some actual Xindi, and discovers that it’s definitely going to only get more complicated.

“Twilight” - One of the true highlights of the arc is also a classic “reset button” episode (in the vein of “City on the Edge of Forever,” “The Inner Light,” “The Visitor,” and “Timeless”) in which a great premise must be undone so there can be a happy ending, in this case Archer losing his ability to retain long term memories and thus seeing an alternate version of how all this plays out, and developing a very different relationship with T’Pol.

“North Star” - A kind of classic original series episode that serves as a kind of metaphor for how the arc will need to play out.

“Similitude” - The other major highlight of the arc sees Trip needing to be saved by growing a clone from which Phlox will harvest needed organs. It’s one of those bitter ethical dilemmas the franchise can do so well, and a great spotlight for the show’s best character.

“Carpenter Street” - The most direct overlap between this arc and the Temporal Cold War, featuring pizza and Jeffrey Dean Morgan nearly quitting acting because of his Xindi getup.

“Chosen Realm” - Another nod to the original series that serves as a cautionary tale for Archer growing too obsessed with the mission.

“Proving Ground” - Our Andorian pal Shran pops up.

“Stratagem” - Another big highlight of the arc is Archer’s considerable battle to win Degra over as an ally. It’s the “In the Pale Moonlight” of the arc, solidifying Degra’s importance and humanizing, once and for all, the enemy, in the best franchise tradition. 

“Harbinger” - The crew becomes more aware of the Sphere Builders and their role in all of this.

“Doctor’s Orders” - A Phlox spotlight. Kind of sad, because it forces him to spend a lot of time alone, and he always works best off of other characters.

“Hatchery” - Another cautionary tale of obsession.

“Azati Prime” - The crew reaches the Xindi! But it’s still going to be very far from easy to resolving all this…

“Damage” - Driving home the point that sometimes hard choices must be made.

“The Forgotten” - An episode for grief.

“E2” - The crew interact with their own descendants (like “Children of Time”), and once again the emphasis is on the cost of completing the mission.

“The Council” - Archer, with Degra as his firm ally, meets the Xindi Council. No happy ending here: Degra is murdered by the more belligerent faction of the Xindi as thanks for his efforts.

“Countdown” - Putting all the pieces together, the crew realizes that the Sphere Builders are the ones responsible for all this. But they still have the aggressive Xindi to deal with, and a second assault to stop.

“Zero Hour” - The season finale. You can guess how it ends.

“Storm Front, Parts. 1 & 2” - Well, almost! The fourth season opens by closing out the Temporal Cold War, including recovering Archer from an alternate WWII, where he was whisked at the last minute when stopping the final Xindi weapon.

“Home” - Archer attempts to recover, “Family” style, from the psychological fallout of his traumatic experiences. 

Star Trek Arcs XVI: Duras Prologue

When fans think of arcs in Star Trek: Enterprise they naturally gravitate to the season-long Xindi affair. Feeding into that, however, is a three-episode arc that rounds out the second season, which actually acts as a prequel to events from The Next Generation, previously chronicled here as Part VII: Worf/Empire in this series. The impetus for the Klingon political saga was Duras creating intrigue by claiming Worf’s father had been in collusion with the Romulans.

As it turns out, as it proved true with the son and sisters of Duras, his ancestor, also named Duras, was just as despicable.

Archer had run afoul of the Klingons as early as the first episode of the series, but it wasn’t until “Judgment” that he made an enemy. The episode plays out as a courtroom drama in the style of Rashomon, in which we see the events leading up to the trial from the perspectives of Archer and Duras. There’s a neat subplot involving Archer’s public defender, who helps prove that Klingons need not be considered the enemy for a new generation.

Archer ends up in Rura Penthe (the same prison planet seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which the trial format also evokes), but his faithful crew immediately springs him. But in “Bounty,” he’s recaptured by a Tellarite. Archer once again uses the opportunity to try and make peace with an apparent enemy.

The mini arc concludes in the second season finale, “The Expanse,” which is better known for kicking off the Xindi saga. Duras pursues Archer all the way to Xindi space, ensuring that epic space battles are a part of that story before we even meet a Xindi.

The whole affair is very similar to how the fourth season would be conceived, consisting as it would be almost entirely by two- and three-episode arcs, of which we will focus on an interrelated five episodes’ worth two entries from now.

Star Trek Arcs XV: The Andorians

The Andorians first appeared in the origin series episode “Journey to Babel,” and for all intents and purposes that was it. Their unusual look (blue skin, antennae) was both a blessing and curse. Next Generation introduced two additional blue-skinned aliens (Bolians, Benzites) but even they were used sparingly.

Then Enterprise. In its first season, the prequel gave them another shot as one of the first major encounters for Captain Archer in “The Andorian Incident,” represented , as they would be for the duration of the series, by Shran. Mostly they were used as counterpoint to the Vulcans, reluctant allies of humanity. Shran didn’t seem in much more of a hurry to embrace “pink skins,” but at least he respected Archer.

Later in the season Shran shows up again in “Shadows of P’Jem,” thanks to ongoing hostilities between the Andorians and Vulcans. In the second season, “Cease Fire,” Archer is able to leverage his unexpected rapport with Shran to peace talks between the two.

The third season, which is otherwise concerned with the Xindi arc, has Shran show up to offer his support in “Proving Ground,” another significant step in the path toward the Federation.

In the fourth and final season, “Babel One,” “United,” and “The Aenar” give us our most extended look at Shran and the Andorians, as well as the final building blocks (including roles for Tellarites and Romulans) of the Federation, which is what Archer’s relationship with Shran always pointed toward.

Star Trek Arcs XIV: Temporal Cold War

Enterprise came around when Star Trek had been on TV continuously since 1987, with one period where there was only one series airing for the length of half a season (the start of Deep Space Nine’s third season) but otherwise two running simultaneously from 1993 to 1999. It was a glut of material, and even with one breaking radically from the mold (again, Deep Space Nine) it became easy to take the franchise for granted, and for the first time there was a sustained reaction of discontent, that in this era never really went away. Enterprise entered this fray, and attempted to have its cake and eat it, too, by being a prequel series that simultaneously looked far into the future, thanks to the story arc known as the Temporal Cold War.

Fans may have disagreed, but I loved the results.

In the first episode, “Broken Bow,” Archer must rescue a Klingon from the clutches of the Suliban, who operated at the behest of a shadowy character never officially named but quickly dubbed Future Guy by fans.

The best episode of the arc came next. The face of the Suliban, Silik, attempts to convince Archer they don’t have to be enemies, but another agent, a human from the far future named Daniels who had been masquerading as a crewman aboard the ship, presents Archer with a counterpoint. The beauty of “Cold Front” is that for a brief moment you really don’t know who to trust, capturing new levels of ambiguity that have often been the hallmark of Star Trek’s finest hours, in a franchise otherwise best known for keeping things pretty straight.

The first season ends and the second opens with “Shockwave,” which sort of mashes the ambiguity back into standard shape, hammering home that probably the whole reason the Temporal Cold War is concerning itself with Archer at all is because of his role in early Starfleet history, and the birth of the Federation itself.

The arc again leaps for greatness in its next appearance, “Future Tense,” which attempts no grand statements, but instead weaves in the Tholians (heh) and simply allows the weird possibilities of temporal shenanigans (including a clever use of repeating time that’s saved as a side element of the plot) to enjoy the spotlight, Archer being frustrated that he has no control of any of it (a metaphor apt for the whole series).

Then the Xindi arc happens and in the third season Daniels again pops up to emphasize Archer’s big future, and in “Carpenter Street” helps him out with a little bit of contemporary time travel (with emphasis on pizza! and Jeffrey Dean Morgan suffering under heavy latex).

The producers got the message that fans weren’t having it, so the fourth season wraps up involvement in the Temporal Cold War with “Storm Front,” which naturally revolves around time travel and Nazis. I always liked to speculate that the head alien Nazi was in fact Future Guy (speculation had always hinged on a Romulan, admittedly). And then the series ends at the end of the season anyway.

Star Trek Arcs XIII: Seska

The two biggest lies in all of Star Trek fandom are that Voyager didn’t do story arcs and that it wasted the potential for drama from the Maquis crew.

In fact both ended up bundled together and the results are still among my favorite arcs ever in the franchise.

Seska’s arc began in “State of Flux” in the first season, in which Chakotay learns the horrible secret of his old friend, that she’s not only not even a Bajoran but Cardassian, and has just made a deal with a faction of the Kazon, the marauding aliens who had caused Voyager hassles since the first episode. Seska betrays everyone and defects, the picture of the nefarious image fans had built up for themselves of the Maquis. 

The best episode of the arc comes next, “Maneuvers” in the second season, which is a straight sequel, in which Seska manipulates Chakotay into a trap. Chakotay himself is never better than in this episode, too, full of dramatic purpose he otherwise tended to lack, being more of a quiet type (which itself is not a problem and in fact, if anything, a welcome change of pace).

The season then weaves a more deliberate arc, sometimes as a subplot or even a single scene, as Seska continues to plot against Chakotay and the rest of the crew, including a conspirator. “Alliances” might loosely be included in this, as it features the secret origin of the Kazon’s troubles, and an attempt to solve them.

“Investigations,” however, reveals the identity of the conspirator (which itself involves a number of recurring characters the series likewise never gets credit for having in the early seasons), and features as its unlikely hero Neelix, with Tom Paris getting one of his periodic shots at playing the uncontrollable rogue fans also always expected.

The arc rounds out the season and opens the next one with “Basics, Parts 1 & 2,” in which Seska and her allies take control of the ship, until finally being defeated.

All of this was received poorly by fans mostly because the Kazon themselves were greeted poorly, considered to be “dirty Delta Quadrant Klingon rip-offs.” Me, I never had a problem with them. So much of Star Trek alien design is similar as it is, a layer or two or three of prosthetics, all variations on a humanoid look…It cost the producers the confidence to pursue further extended arcs (though there were attempts here and there), and arguably led to the minimizing of Chakotay, who was the face of this most ambitious of efforts.

Anyway, Seska was a great character, and the series itself knew that well enough. She had a brilliant reprise late in the third season, “Worst Case Scenario,” arguably the mother of all holodeck malfunction episodes, and then one more time in the seventh with “Shattered,” in which Chakotay (of course) travels the ship when it’s been splintered into different time periods.

Star Trek Arcs XII: Section 31

One of Deep Space Nine’s shorter and yet most impactful arcs involved the introduction of Section 31, a secretive intelligence organization within Starfleet that played by its own rules and was alone convinced of the good it did.

In the sixth season episode “Inquisition,” Luther Sloan attempts to recruit Julian Bashir, who despite a long friendship with the former Cardassian spy Garak can’t bring himself to condone Section 31’s existence, which to this point had been largely unknown outside of its own circles.

In the seventh season episode “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” (in times of war the law falls silent) Bashir again runs into Sloan, realizing that Starfleet, in its increasing desperation during the Dominion War, has knowingly embraced Section 31’s questionable tactics. Fans as eagerly embraced this second spotlight as they had the first, both serving as pinnacle demonstrations of the morally gray areas so often associated with the series.

Late that season, Bashir confronts Sloan directly in “Extreme Measures” when he realizes Section 31 was responsible for a genocidal plague inflicted on the Founders that has inadvertently (?) also infected Odo.

Section 31 shows up in the fourth season of Enterprise, with the revelation that Malcolm Reed once worked for Section 31. Captain Archer takes a dim view on the revelation when Reed struggles to come clean in “Affliction”/“Divergence,” in which we meet his former handler Harris.

The idea is reprised on a far grander stage in Star Trek Into Darkness, in which we learn Admiral Marcus is also a part of Section 31, and thinks of nothing to use it in an attempt to launch all-out war with the Klingons.

Section 31 factors heavily into the serialized storytelling in the second season of Discovery, which features Agent Leland and new recruits Mirror Georgiou and Ash Tyler. There remains in development a full Section 31 spin-off which at one time was speculated to feature Georgiou and Tyler, although developments since that and the third season have perhaps complicated things.

With the movie appearance and heavy presence in and potential spin-off from Discovery, Section 31 has turned into as significant a development of modern Star Trek as anything else you could name. A certain step away from the original hopeful vision of the future Gene Roddenberry envisioned, Section 31 instead of a contradiction often serves to distinguish the enduring morals of the main characters. When Bashir or Kirk reject its tactics, we cheer them as heroes. When Mirror Georgiou embraces Section 31, we’re not surprised. When Tyler finds a temporary refuge in his crazy life, we can even begin to see it in a different light. In modern Star Trek, too, is the ability to see the good even in the bad (a legacy dating all the way back to “Balance of Terror”).

Star Trek Arcs XI: The Dominion War

Now, to this day when Star Trek fans think of extended arcs they really have just one in mind, and that’s Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War arc. 

The war itself doesn’t begin until the end of the fifth season, and I’ve broken it down to thirty-six key episodes (six of them consisting of two-part episodes with the same name, although the series features multiple two-part episodes with separate titles, including in the war arc). Since this one’s so long I won’t waste much time with preamble or dwell much on any one installment, instead a brief note on what it contributes to the arc.

At the end of the second season, “The Jem’Hadar” at last let’s us see the Dominion after many previous references to what dominates the other side of the wormhole introduced in the first episode, the Gamma Quadrant equivalent to the Federation. It ends with a big swerve when we learn that the Jem’Hadar are mere foot soldiers, and that they are controlled in part by the Vorta.

The third season begins with the two-part “The Search,” which serves the dual purpose of exploring the initial ramifications of contact with the Dominion as well as revealing the truth of shapeshifting Odo’s origins: he hails from the Founders. As in, Founders of the Dominion…

In “Improbable Cause”/“The Die Is Cast,” factions within the Romulan Star Empire and Cardassian Empire attempt an invasion of the Gamma Quadrant, and are met with a spectacular and definitive defeat.

The season ends with the further threat of Founder infiltration in “The Adversary.”

The fourth season begins by ramping up the threat in the two-part “Way of the Warrior,” in which the Dominion manipulates the Klingon Empire into war with the Cardassians.

In “Homefront”/“Paradise Lost,” the Founders infiltrate Earth and sow chaos within Starfleet itself.

In the fifth season premiere “Apocalypse Rising,” the true identity of the Founder infiltrator within the Klingon Empire is finally revealed.

Later, we meet the real Martok (the guise of the infiltrator dating back to “Way of the Warrior”) in a Dominion prison camp also hosting the remains of the Romulan/Cardassian fleet, as the Cardassians officially join the Dominion during “In Purgatory’s Shadow”/“By Inferno’s Light.”

Then, in “Call to Arms,” the season finale, the station is evacuated and the war begins.

The sixth season kicks off with the famous six-episode continuous arc, the first real extended serialization in franchise history: “A Time to Stand,” “Rocks and Shoals,” “Sons and Daughters,” “Behind the Lines,” “Favor the Bold,” and “Sacrifice of Angels,” which of course culminates in the retaking of the station.

The season continues to explore the war in a variety of ways from that point. “Statistical Probabilities” is a pessimistic view of its eventual outcome. “Waltz” sees the psychological fallout for Dukat. “In the Pale Moonlight” is probably the single best episode of the whole arc, in which Sisko grapples with his conscience.

Finally, in “Tears of the Prophets,” the biggest casualty of the war occurs: Jadzia Dax.

The seventh and final season continues and concludes the war. “The Siege of AR-558” is a straight-up war story, complete with a post-traumatic stress fallout follow-up, “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”

The final ten episodes of the series are a second grand serialization: “Penumbra,” “’Til Death Do Us Part,” “Strange Bedfellows,” “The Changing Face of Evil,” “When It Rains…,” “Tacking Into the Wind,” “Extreme Measures,” “The Dogs of War,” and the two-part finale, “What You Leave Behind.”

Star Trek Arcs X: Kor

Here’s a fairly loose arc but it’s a pretty interesting one that goes deeper than it might seem, which is why I’m pulling one particular character from the many to appear in Deep Space Nine, and somehow not even one most fans are going to think about.

A somewhat lost element of Star Trek lore is that the first Klingon to ever appear was going to be a recurring character if actor John Colicos hadn’t been so busy. Kor makes his debut in “Errand of Mercy,” and would have also shown up in “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “Day of the Dove” (the other major Klingon appearances of the original series) if Colicos had been available.

So his replacements (Koloth in “Tribbles” and Kang in “Dove”) instead make their debuts, and the three of them then resurface three glorious decades later in the Deep Space Nine second season gem “Blood Oath,” which also finally cements Jadzia Dax’s credentials as a formidable character after a fair bit of waffling and uncertainty.

Long story short, Kor is appropriately the last of these Klingons standing, and he becomes subject to a prolonged arc of deciding what makes an aging Klingon’s life worth living.

First he shows up in “Sword of Kahless,” in which he competes with Worf on a mad quest to discover the legendary warrior’s weapon. Here he gets to nudge Worf into having a working relationship with another Klingon, which would eventually lead to his bond with Martok.

Which...would kind of be bad news for Kor himself, as we learn when we see him for the last time in the seventh season episode “Once More Unto the Breach,” in which we learn Martok’s backstory and Kor’s domineering role in it, and as such more about Kor’s backstory itself.

But the episode resolves Kor’s later dilemma by giving him the belated warrior’s death he had long sought.

The short arc is, all the same, a remarkable opportunity for the franchise to give a full story to a character (and species) that might have seemed one-note initially. But that’s Deep Space Nine in a nutshell, both in its own regard and how it deepens the franchise as a whole, sometimes in quite surprising ways. In no other series to date has an effort been made to flesh out such a seemingly minor character from another series, let alone itself. 

Star Trek Arcs IX: Bajoran Politics

When it comes to Deep Space Nine, a whole series of articles about its many arcs could be written, but for these purposes I’m only going to cover some of them, the ones in clearest focus. The first (I don’t count Sisko’s role as emissary, because in most instances it was a secondary element that didn’t really carry episodes) kicks off at the end of the first season, “In the Hands of the Prophets,” the episode many fans consider to be the start of the identifiable Deep Space Nine, where the rich tapestry of the series, and the confidence to explore it, kicked in.

Significantly, the recurring characters Kai Winn and Vedek Bareil are introduced. The death of Kai Opaka earlier in the season (introduced in the pilot as such a friendly personality) left a huge void in Bajoran affairs, one Winn, as fans would certainly come to see, was more than willing to fill. Bareil, meanwhile, becomes the touchstone that humanizes Kira as more than just someone struggling to overcome a brutal past.

The second season kicks off with the longest-to-that-point continuous story in franchise history, a three-part episode, “The Homecoming,” “The Circle,” and “The Siege,” that never receives near enough recognition for its significance, or achievement. Kira is tasked with rescuing a lost Bajoran hero from a Cardassian prison camp, but the ramifications end up being far more complicated than anyone could have anticipated. Kira herself is replaced aboard the station by the guy, but more importantly, Winn and her pal, played by Frank Langella (he opted to go uncredited at the time but it’s a huge casting coup that still demands trumpeting), are so obsessed with retaining power they engineer a massive conspiracy and even a hostile takeover of the station! 

Later that season “The Collaborator” marks the deepest exploration of how murky the Occupation really was, implicating saintly Bareil but ultimately challenging even Opaka’s legacy (it’s basically the Bajoran equivalent of “Sins of the Father” from Next Generation).

In the third season, the series featured its last major highlights of Bajoran politics. Fans were never that interested in Bajoran politics, alas, but the season still delivered two big moments: the death of Bareil and the rise of his successor.

Bareil dies in “Life Support,” agonizingly, a small piece at a time, as Winn manipulates Bashir into keeping him alive long enough to settle peace talks with the Cardassians. No single appearance does a better job of establishing how cold a villain Winn really is, the price of politics in any culture.

In “Shakaar,” Kira finds a potential new lover and Bajor a new leader when she’s given a chance to duplicate that bring-the-hero-back-from-the-dead trick, which turns into an old-fashioned western showdown in a canyon, at least ending this particular arc of the series on an appropriately high note.

Kira segues into a sustained slow burn romance with Odo for the duration of the series. Bareil, Mirror Bareil anyway, shows up again in the sixth season, “Resurrection,” though Shakaar quickly becomes lost in the shuffle, eventually never to be seen again, well before the final episode, which is a shame. Even Winn ends up relevant only as an ironic foil, and ally, of Dukat. 

The Bajorans in the series were in a lot of ways the first time fans got to explore what Vulcan society might look like, something Enterprise later accomplished (another link between the two series I always enjoyed). Not Kira and nor Ro before her reached the iconic status of Spock, however, so it was easy to take all this for granted. Is it that Kira wasn’t in Starfleet? Well, just perhaps.

Star Trek Arcs VIII: The Maquis

Arguably the most ambitious arc of the franchise was envisioned to help launch Voyager, and yet it continued down fascinating roads even from that point: the creation of the Federation rebels the Maquis.

The Maquis were Federation citizens who lived on worlds affected by treaty stipulations with the Cardassians, most famous for their Occupation of Bajor, a concept introduced in The Next Generation but played out most dramatically in Deep Space Nine. Eventually it wasn’t just those directly affected, colonists living on those worlds, but Starfleet officers who renounced their commissions to stand up for what they believed in.

The first appearance of the Maquis was in the eponymous two-part episode during the second season of Deep Space Nine. In it, Sisko and an old Starfleet friend confront the problem together until Sisko realizes his friend has actually already defected.

The same basic premise plays out in “Preemptive Strike,” Next Generation, airing about little more than a week later (if you were watching at the time, it was nearly three straight weeks of Maquis intrigue across Star Trek programming, with a few weeks’ gap; if it had happened later no doubt there would have been an actual crossover, which still has yet to happen in the franchise, and probably even the debuts of some of the actual Voyager characters). 

“Preemptive Strike” resonates more with fans than “The Maquis, Parts 1 & 2” thanks to pivoting around a known character rather than someone introduced in the story. That character of course is Ro Laren, the Bajoran who had been a recurring character in Next Generation for years, who was even originally considered to continue on in Deep Space Nine (and subsequently replaced by the new character Major Kira).

By the end of the episode, Ro feels conflicted by her decision to join the Maquis because she feels she’s betraying Picard directly. In that way, we end the initial experiences with the Maquis with the ability to view them in a positive manner.

When Voyager begins, “Caretaker” of course sees Starfleet and Maquis ships stranded in the Delta Quadrant and deciding to function as a single crew to find their way home again. A lot of fans expected the series to be an endless sequence of the competing ideologies in conflict, and never really forgave it for making a different creative choice. Though, to be fair, the Maquis were former Federation and in most cases even former Starfleet; the biggest hurdle was reintegrating into rigid Starfleet procedures (played out in the episode “Learning Curve”).

The Maquis story instead picks back up in Deep Space Nine, third season, “Defiant,” in which Riker’s transporter duplicate Thomas (“Second Chances”) is the third major defector we see play out, although the fourth and final one, in the fourth season’s “For the Cause,” ends up being by far the most dramatic one. 

At first Sisko believes it’s his girlfriend Kasidy Yates, which would certainly be bad enough, but it turns out to be straight arrow security officer Michael Eddington, a reliable recurring presence since the previous season.

We find out how powerfully Sisko feels this betrayal in the fifth season. “For the Uniform” is arguably the pinnacle of the pre-Dominion War period for the series. Sisko swears to bring Eddington in, but this proves incredibly difficult.

However, once accomplished it becomes a definitive turning point for the Maquis. When the Cardassians join the Dominion, they enact a scorched earth policy against the Maquis, and Eddington finds himself imagining a heroic last stand in “Blaze of Glory.”

The fate of the Maquis is transmitted to Janeway’s crew in Voyager, and in “Extreme Risk” we see how powerfully it affects B’Elanna Torres, the hotheaded half Klingon, half human engineer.

Finally, in “Repression,” a sleeper suggestion is awakened among the former Maquis members of the crew, implanted by a zealous Bajoran years earlier, thereby somewhat bringing the whole arc full circle.

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. 

Star Trek Arcs IV: Mirror Universe

The first truly ambitious arc of the franchise became one across eras. One of the most famous episodes of the original series is “Mirror, Mirror,” the Mirror Universe episode, in which Kirk accidentally ends up in an alternate reality where the Federation never existed, with the Terran Empire in its stead. By the end of the episode, he’s convinced the goatee-sporting Evil Spock to fight for change.

Now, Deep Space Nine revisiting the Mirror Universe some thirty years later probably would have felt like a much bigger deal if, say, Evil Spock had been in it, or if Deep Space Nine itself hadn’t later developed its own rich legacy revolving around the Dominion War. The first instance occurred near the end of its second season, in an episode called “Crossover.” The big shock is that Evil Spock did succeed! But that, at least as far as humans were concerned, it turned out to be a terrible idea!

When the Terran Empire turned its back on its old ways, it created a void filled by the Alliance, led by the Klingons and Cardassians, and overnight humans ended up in much the role the Bajorans had just before the series began, when they were subjugated by the Cardassians during the Occupation.

By the end of the episode, they begin their journey back to freedom.

The following season, that journey continues! In “Through the Looking Glass,” Sisko travels to the Mirror Universe to replace his dead doppelgänger, and in the process “reunites” with his dead wife’s lookalike. It’s the most personal Mirror Universe story...until another season later, in which his son Jake, in “Shattered Mirror,” experiences yet another painful family tragedy.

In the sixth season, the Mirror Universe Bareil (his counterpart died in the third season) visits the prime universe, which for fans always leaves “Resurrection” to be the least enjoyable entry in the Deep Space Nine sequels, as it mostly revolves around a personal story for Kira that does little to advance the arc.

In the seventh and final season, the arc, as it has certainly become by this point, concludes in “The Emperor’s New Cloak,” in which I’m pretty sure no Ferengi manage to die in the Mirror Universe for the first time! Probably!

That’s the end of the arc, but not the end of the Mirror Universe! A second arc begins in Discovery fifteen years or so later, although viewers don’t know it at first. Captain Lorca is eventually revealed to have come from the Mirror Universe, and his efforts to return introduce Mirror Georgiou, whose arc concludes in “Terra Firma, Parts 1 & 2.”

There’s more! Enterprise shows us the origin of the Mirror Universe, suggesting that if the events of First Contact hadn’t played out like that, and Cochrane had been left to his own devices, wary humanity would have reacted very differently to their Vulcan guests. And then “In A Mirror, Darkly, Parts 1 & 2” put on a fun little romp that also revisits “The Tholian Web.”

The Mirror Universe remains a unique experience in franchise lore, a pocket adventure with unique surprises that comments on the hopeful nature of Star Trek in the most unlikely way.

Star Trek Arcs III: The Trilogy

The third arc of the franchise is the first to be a deliberately continuous one, although it’s also somewhat invisible, the second through fourth films.

This is possible at all because two of them stand out as individual experiences, and they’re the bookends. Wrath of Khan is still talked about today as a singular achievement in Star Trek, the film by which all Star Trek films are judged. But in terms of box office, the most popular of the three, and of them all until the Kelvin trilogy, is The Voyage Home.

Somehow the one direct sequel and most obvious act of the trilogy, The Search for Spock, ends up lost in the shuffle. It also happens to be my favorite.

To even think of it as a continuous story, you have to think of Spock’s arc. In Khan, of course, he dies at the end, sacrificing himself so Kirk can achieve his victory. In Search, obviously, the whole story is about getting him back, as the Genesis Planet created in Khan serves as the impetus, backdrop, as stage of that project. Kirk sacrifices his career and his ship in order to get it done, and even his own son, David Marcus, who also originates from Khan. 

The neatest trick of Search, for me, is Kirk and Sarek, Spock’s father, recreating, via mind meld, Spock’s death. For some it might feel needlessly repetitive, especially if they watch the trilogy in one sitting. For me, it feels as moving and effective a moment, selling the impact, for Kirk, in ways that sharing the moment, originally, with Spock couldn’t, driving home how much it affected him. It’s also the moment Sarek becomes more than just Spock’s father, a standout character in his own right, an overlooked legacy of the films, and the trilogy itself.

Kirk, Spock, and the Klingon ship acquired during Search, sail through Home, with of course a sidetrack to rescuing some whales. By the end of the trilogy, they have to face what they have so often avoided, which is an official Starfleet reprimand for flouting the rules. The Klingons are furious over what Kirk did in Search, which itself creates another arc, which becomes the march to peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, which evolves from The Undiscovered Country to The Next Generation, which I’ll cover for the TV material later.

But this film trilogy bears greater attention. Clearly there was an effort, at least by Search, to find a Star Trek version of Star Wars (a concept many fans would claim the Kelvin films belabor), but no one watching, whether as a fan or the more casual, is likely to confuse the two. If it’s possible at all, it’s very much just that, a Star Trek version, that results. But that’s a worthy distinction. Star Wars didn’t tell its story across three initial films. With Star Trek there are three distinct acts with three distinct goals. With Star Wars it’s three variations of the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire. Certainly no room for “colorful metaphors”!

In a lot of ways, the existence of the franchise itself relies on the trilogy. The huge success of Home leads to a new TV series, while Khan gives fans a rallying point beyond the original series. The idea of an arc itself was to become a hallmark of Star Trek, steeped so heavily in episodic storytelling in its origins. Before fans realize the genre tide is turning in that direction, the films have already gotten there. In the 90s and 00s, fans think Star Trek is playing catch-up, but the franchise in fact got there already, in the ‘80s, when most genre material is still struggling to recognize how big Star Wars really is, how much and how drastically it changed the landscape.

Suddenly the “imitation” of Search doesn’t look so poor in comparison. There isn’t another franchise even making an effort that decade. Everything else is one movie at a time, and none of them even get another installment. It’s easy to take the Star Trek films for granted. But it shouldn’t.

Star Trek Arcs II: Khan

The second Star Trek arc is probably the most famous arc of the whole franchise: Khan Noonien Singh. 

Khan comes from our own lifetime, a genetic superman who rose to power in the 1990s as part of the Eugenics Wars, which other than this biographical detail have never been explored except in books. (Slightly more examined but still sketchy: WWIII.) Anyway, Khan loses power, is exiled into space in a sleeper ship called the Botany Bay, there to linger for hundreds of years until stumbled upon by Kirk and company near the end of the first season of the original series in “Space Seed” (which, for those keeping score, is of course before Chekov joins the cast).

And Khan immediately attempts his old shenanigans again, and once more finds himself in exile for his efforts, this time on a planet called Ceti Alpha V.

And then, in the second film of the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he returns once more. Fans still claim this particular adventure is the high water mark of at least the films, and were none too pleased when Star Trek Into Darkness revisited it. Like the other Kelvin films it essentially exists in its own timeline, so it doesn’t technically connect with the rest of the arc, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Enterprise provides that. Remember how Data’s creator was named Noonian Soong? Well, we meet his ancestor, Arik, whose work begins with other “augments” from Khan’s heyday, similarly revived for additional mayhem, in the trilogy of episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” before he decides to switch to robotics (the evolution of which itself carries into the first season of Picard).

That’s still not the end of the story!

The augments, during the course of their misbegotten adventures, crossed paths with the Klingons, and in “Affliction” and “Divergence” we learn the canonical explanation for the lack of ridges in the original series: they attempted an experiment to create augments of their own, and mostly the results were cosmetic (mostly so they didn’t accidentally annihilate themselves!).

A side note: Deep Space Nine revisits the idea of genetic engineering in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” in which we learn that Bashir, naturally enough, is controversially entangled in it, thanks to his parents, and that the Federation still finds it otherwise as much a taboo as the Genesis Planet Khan helped create.

Star Trek Arcs I: Pike

One of the great underappreciated legacies of Star Trek is the idea of the story arc. On the surface this seems to be a simple riddle to unfold, as Star Trek began, as with all TV programming of its era, as episodic storytelling. Yet, somehow, arcs have been a part of the franchise from the very beginning.

The first pilot of the original series, “The Cage,” featured Captain Pike and a completely different crew, aside from Spock, aboard the Enterprise. In the episode, Pike discovers a planet populated by beings who are capable of casting powerful illusions. 

NBC passed on the pilot but opted to let Gene Roddenberry take another swing, which with “Where No Man Has Gone Before” turned out to be worth three seasons.

Now, towards the middle of the first season, of course, “The Cage” was repurposed as flashback material for the two-part “The Menagerie,” in which we learn that Pike has been horribly mutilated and confined to a mobile chair. Spock has agreed to bring him back to Talos IV, the planet of the powerful illusions, so that he might continue some semblance of a normal life. The episodes themselves carry the framework of a trial Starfleet is prosecuting against Spock, as we watch footage from “The Cage” as evidence.

The idea of this being an arc is kind of a matter of hindsight. In 1966 audiences would really only have known of “The Cage” as part of “The Menagerie.” It’s later fans who get to enjoy the full scope of the story. Pike himself would later resurface in the Kelvin films, as well as Discovery, in which  material relevant to the arc is inserted during “Through the Valley of Shadows,” where he is given a glimpse into his fate and even the chance to avoid it.

The next franchise arc would prove to be more deliberate, not to mention dramatic. And cinematic!