Why didnt Conspiracy get a follow up?

[somebuddyX]

Unicron, hear me!
Do you have a link to 'The Assassins' script? I have been fascinated/obsessed with it ever since I read about it one of the reference books. I even started building a whole alternate universe TNG with the starting point as that one episode.

 

[Terok Nor]

I agree with the poster who said it was better to leave it as a mystery. Same with Schisms. It's creepier that way and leaves your mind to conjure up all sorts of explanations. I do not like the novel universe's explanation about the parasites being evil mutant Trill symbionts.

Conspiracy is my favourite Season 1 episode and one of the best episodes in the entire series. A sequel was unlikely to live up to expectations. However, Best Of Both Worlds did just that so maybe...

 

[TheSubCommander]

Just rewatched Conspiracy last night, actually. It's also one of my favorite season 1 episodes, and liked the fact it does have a call back to Coming of Age. I also wish there was at least one follow up to this episode, be it in TNG, DS9, or maybe have worked it into (or in lieu of?) Insurrection somehow. Had the episode NOT ended with the reference to the homing beacon, I would have been a lot better with the episode being a stand alone episode that was fully resolved.

 

[Timo]

...OTOH, it makes no sense that the signal (which the heroes could not decode) would be a homing beacon.

The parasites had been clearing a path for an invasion from the outside, that much seems clear from the objective evidence. However, that path could only be kept open for a brief while: the critters couldn't hope to stretch their "quiet weekend at SF HQ" beyond a few days before somebody cried foul. So whoever was waiting for a signal from the Remmick-beast would actually have been receiving a frantic "ABORT! ABORT!" as the plan went horribly wrong.

The other option, a "Go! Go! Go!" in the vain hope of salvaging that which could still be salvaged, is obviously out of the question, as nothing happened in the timeframe available for action.

No need for a homing beacon, either: the plan required the invasion to happen along a predefined path, and it certainly doesn't seem as if the invaders would have been unaware of the location of Earth, or in disagreement over whether this was their prime target.

That the signal went out was actually a sign of closure, then. The invaders would not try again, not that way at any rate. And since "that way" was defined by the very biology of the creatures, it's not all that likely that they could come up with a Plan B on short notice!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

Just rewatched Conspiracy last night, actually. It's also one of my favorite season 1 episodes, and liked the fact it does have a call back to Coming of Age. I also wish there was at least one follow up to this episode, be it in TNG, DS9, or maybe have worked it into (or in lieu of?) Insurrection somehow. Had the episode NOT ended with the reference to the homing beacon, I would have been a lot better with the episode being a stand alone episode that was fully resolved.

Yeah maybe it could've worked in DS9, except the whole Changeling thing effectively stole its Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque thunder.

Maybe it could've been a cool thing for Voyager to revisit. Did we ever get told exactly where the parasites came from? Maybe they originated in the DQ somewhere...

 

[Timo]

Well, we got graphic evidence that they came from the left of the UFP...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Richard Baker]

One thing that I never understood about this episode- why go through the trouble to infiltrate Starfleet Command to send a beacon? The first captain to get compromised had a modern starship with the data locating Earth and the Federation structure and the ability to send the information while far away from any supervision if he wanted to.

 

[TheSubCommander]

So whoever was waiting for a signal from the Remmick-beast would actually have been receiving a frantic "ABORT! ABORT!" as the plan went horribly wrong.

Well, since nothing did ever come of it, I suppose we have to assume Data was wrong, and it was an abort signal, rather than a beacon, as Data called it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Despite the intriguing opening on Dytallix B, I thought "Conspiracy" was an awful episode, a pedestrian attempt to jump on the Alien bandwagon, and I'm glad the "cliffhanger" died on the vine. A body snatcher treatment in TNG should have been much better, and upping that game would have afforded an opportunity to kill off Yar more horrifically: have an infected and unsavable Yar return from shore leave and be the means by which infestation of the Enterprise was attempted.

 

[TheVortaKeevan]

It was a cool episode that needed modern CGI. Now if they were introduce when Enterprise aired in the early 2000s it could of work.

 

[tomalak301]

I think we were due at least one follow up here. Yes, on the TV budget TNG had it might have been hard to do a Bug World. but another attempt to take over, with a more definite ending would have worked well.

I know the bugs did come back in the Novels though, DS 9 Novels as the Anti Trills I believe.

I'm currently reading Unity and yeah the Bugs did come back. It's great how they are written now, especially with what we know about the Trill Symbionts.

 

[Leviathan]

Actually, the bugs took over just before season 2. You can tell by the slightly more realistic personalities...

They improved the uniforms a bit, changed out the doctor, slightly redesigned the bridge, and limited the ship to just 22 outings. 4 years later they pretty much drove things into the ground.

 

[MikeH92467]

*shameless plug alert* For audio drama fans, Star Trek Excelsior has built a long-running series around those creepy crawlies. It is a long form program and several caveats are only fair: first off some of the first episodes are a bit, shall we say, 'clunky', but the production values constantly improve. Also it takes some serious time to listen to enough episodes to fully grasp the arc of the story. (Full disclosure, I am co-producer and fill various other roles in front of and behind the mic) If you're game, please give us a listen and feel free to join us in our forum and/or Facebook page. *end shameless plug*

 

[The Old Mixer]

For a few minutes in the 90s, before we learned otherwise, I had a working theory that the Founders were the "Conspiracy" aliens.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Just rewatched Conspiracy last night, actually. It's also one of my favorite season 1 episodes, and liked the fact it does have a call back to Coming of Age. I also wish there was at least one follow up to this episode, be it in TNG, DS9, or maybe have worked it into (or in lieu of?) Insurrection somehow. Had the episode NOT ended with the reference to the homing beacon, I would have been a lot better with the episode being a stand alone episode that was fully resolved.

Yeah maybe it could've worked in DS9, except the whole Changeling thing effectively stole its Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque thunder.

Back when it first aired (before the Founders showed up), until its last five minutes, I was convinced the DS9 episode "Whispers" would turn out to be a sequel to "Conspiracy."

 

[somebuddyX]

In my fan AU I had the events of conspiracy be about a group of Starfleet officers, including Walker Keel, secretly funding or supplying weapons to a Klingon faction through the Ferengi as a proxy. Their intention was to use this as evidence that Klingons were building up arms and for Starfleet to start a war to eliminate the Klingons once and for all. I then combined the alien bugs part of Conspiracy with The Neutral Zone as a two-parter season finale/starter to just be about the Enterprise preparing for battle with an enemy they haven't seen in fifty years, but both sides being manipulated by a third party.

 

[Arpy]

I've always kind of liked the non-canon followup even though I haven't read the specific books.

Spoiler: DS9 book spoilers

The conspiracy parasites are an offshoot of the Trill, from a colony that suffered a natural disaster. The symbionts were radically altered in an attempt to preserve them, but the process also drove them insane and they became totally parasitic.

See, I didn't like that at all, as I thought it took the small-universe syndrome to a whole 'nother level. Now whole alien species had some unlikely connection to each other.

The homing beacon at the end didn't make sense if it was supposed to alert the aliens to the location of Earth: they were already there and had been patiently planning the body-snatching invasion already. It was pretty cheesy sci-fi, but then so was the over-the-top neck-ballooning "We seek peaceful co-existence!" head-exploding ending overall. As I type this I wonder if the reason the episode captivates us still is a strange alchemy of the forgotten cliffhanger, the rare graphic violence of a phaser-skinned/exploding head and repugnant shrieking mother-parasite, the brief glimpse of Earth and Starfleet Command, and the threat to that paradise.

On that last point, I found the end of BoBW, Part II also haunting - when Picard notes how close they had come to losing it all and the final shot of the Enterprise orbiting Earth. The world they'd established up to that point I felt emotionally connected to. Conversely, I didn't buy paradise during DS9's "Homefront" and didn't feel we were really seeing Earth so much as that series's muddy-colored glasses vision of it.