So I previously wrote a thread asking people to critique my Star Trek story ideas and the feedback can mostly be summed up as "derivative" which I can totally agree with with regards to most of the episodes. They were generally a story idea that had been done but with only a new twist.
But I've spent a while in the past couple of weeks thinking up unique story ideas for Star Trek- Deep Space Nine and Voyager stories really and am really excited about them. If they are in any way similar to any novels or fan fiction, its totally a coincidence!
I would love your feedback, it would be really good if you could give feedback on both the concept itself as well as the execution of the idea laid out in the extension.
Hollow Image, Voyager
An ensign in engineering successfully replicates the Doctor’s mobile emitter which he uses to secretly create a hologram of his girlfriend who died 6 months previously and attempts to reintroduce her to the crew as the real article.
During an engineering shift, the crew are shocked to see their lost crewmate Ensign Sonya Knight appear for duty. She appears dazed and confused and says she doesn’t remember much about the last 6 months other than being abducted and undergoing some experiments.
An initial medical examination by the Doctor assisted by her boyfriend Ensign Michael Rhodes shows that she is indeed the same Sonya Knight who disappeared on an away mission 6 months ago. Sonya is eager to reintegrate into the crew and reunite with Ensign Rhodes. Soon, small suspicions begin to form regarding Sonya as she refuses point blank to work on a project involving long wave cyclophasic radiation- a field in which she is talented, and appears to have suddenly forgotten some things about her time on Voyager.
An accident in Engineering is attended by the Doctor when suddenly a bust of the cyclophasic radiation destablisizes his matrix and the mobile emitter drops to the ground. Later on in engineering another mobile emitter is discovered and when activated Torres discovers that it is Ensign Knight.
Rhodes is brought to Janeway’s ready room to be told when he admits that he had spent the last 6 months making a replica of the holo-emitter in the hope that he could recreate her by using her extensive logs and the logs of the entire Voyager crew. He further admits that Knight does not know she is a hologram and it could cause her program to self destruct if she finds out.
The discovery that Rhodes had successfully created another mobile emitter sparks a debate among the crew. Ensign Rhodes argues that with Knight’s memories, the hologram is still her but only in another form, while other members of the crew have a more spiritual view of the situation.
The crew also begin to discuss the possibilities and ethics behind creating new sentient holograms to assist Voyager in its journey to get home .
Soon however the holo-emitter of Ensign Knight begins to degrade and Ensign Rhodes must once again lose his love.
Notes
-Holograms and the ethics and philosophy behind holographic life is still a well that keeps on giving within Trek and there is much to be explored. The idea that crewmembers of Voyager would create loved ones as holograms to help adjust to an emotionally difficult situation has always interested me.
-I don’t ever feel the ethical implication of even creating the EMH’s were discussed, is it ethical to create a computer program with sentience and simply use him as a tool as most EMH’s are used? The opportunity for the Voyager crew to make even more mobile holograms brings this issue out.
-I previously came up with an episode idea where the B story had Neelix creating a holographic version of Kes in a recreation of early Voyager to help ease his loneliness but the A story didn’t work so I ditched it.
Looming Shadows, Voyager
On an away mission to a planet where they hope obtain vital supplies from a technologically advanced civilization, Seven, Harry, B’Ellana and the Doctor must evade capture and escape the Borg when dozens of borg cubes arrive to assimilate the planet.
The show opens with Seven, Harry, B’Ellana and the Doctor attempting to barter with an engineer in a busy alien market for supplies, we discover that Voyager is adrift 60 lightyears away after an ion storm seriously damaged the nacelles and shuttles were sent in all directions in order to try and find the materials needed to repair them.
While nearing the end of their negotiations with the trader shadows form overhead and upon looking up the crew see dozens of borg cubes. We also see this from the perspective of other people around the planet.
Seven informs the crew that attempting to escape in the shuttle back to Voyager would be too dangerous and that hiding on the planet would be a safter option. They must safety to the other side of the planet where Seven believes there is a crystalline formation underground that can shield them from Borg sensors and they will be able to wait until the cubes depart. Flying towards their destination, their shuttle crashes and is destroyed near a village, there they must race against time to repair an old shuttlecraft belonging to a villager in order to reach safety.
Notes
-The idea for this episode really excites me because we’ve never seen the mass panic that comes with an armada of borg spheres arriving at a planet to assimilate it. I definitely see this episode as like a disaster movie but the desperation and emotion of the crewmembers and the villagers would make for a really meaty episode.
A Fresh Perspective, Deep Space Nine
A civilization at war with the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant sends a delegation to DS9 to request assistance from the Federation.
The Noratii Republic is an advanced gamma quadrant civilization at war with the Dominion. Having heard about ships with cloaking technology in the alpha quadrant, they sent a diplomatic envoy to DS9 to request that Sisko use the Defiant to help them destroy a military installation currently under construction behind enemy lines that, if completed, could mean victory for the Dominion.
The Noratii delegation reveal they are on the verge of developing a new weapon that could severely weaken the Dominion and that the outbreak of war between the Dominion and the Alpha quadrant civilizations allowed them time to re-strengthen their defenses and further develop the weapon. The Federation, seeing possibilities for gathering more intelligence on the Dominion and gaining a gamma quadrant ally approves of the mission and the Defiant goes through the wormhole. On the way to the military instalment co-ordinates under cloak, members of the Noratii share information regarding the Dominion and the political situation of the Gamma quadrant with members of DS9. Once the military installation has been successfully destroyed in a sneak attack, Sisko exchanges their cloaking technology with the Noratii in exchange for weaponry that is more effective against the Dominion.
Notes
Some of what we discover in this episode includes
-The Dominion are facing a war on at least 3 fronts. They are fighting a mysterious “cybernetic species” on their eastern border about which the Noratii know very little about and attempts to send delegations have failed, as well as the Noratii themselves and the Alpha Quadrant civilizations.
-There was, until recently, a strong resistance movement within the Dominion that was crushed ruthlessly by the founders.
-The Dominion usually “culls” the population of each planet by around 25% it conquers to decrease resistance.
-During their 10 year war with the Dominion, their 4 allies have all fallen and the Noratii are the only warp capable species within 100 lightyears.
-I think it would be not only interesting to know more about the shifts in the balance of power the discovery of the wormhole created.
-Another option for the story was that the Noratii would actually be on their last legs and were planning to steal the Defiant but then it occured to me that there's no reason they couldn't just have a technological exchange. The trying to steal the Defiant stuff seemed too unoriginal.
Into the Fold, Voyager
Kes must work with a telepathic species bent on enslaving and destroying non-telepaths in order to try and save the captured crew of Voyager from almost certain death.
Voyager enters a region of space when it begins to detect a large number of planets that have experienced cataclysmic events and at the same time Kes begins to be affected by telepathic imprints that show destruction on a massive scale carried out by telepathic humanoids.
Kes insists that Voyager reverse course immediately and Janeway agrees but before they can fully clear the space, all of the crew except Kes is disabled by the telepaths and abducted. Meanwhile Kes is taken to the leader of the telepathic race known as the Rokani and is told that she is special and could hold the key to helping the Rokani subdue their most powerful enemy the Mesoans. They give her the option between working with them or being imprisoned along with the rest of the Voyager crew. Kes agrees to work with the Rokani in the hope that she can somehow use her new position to save them.
She must work amongst the Rokani in attempting to subdue a powerful enemy while hiding her true motives to get Voyager home, but it soon becomes difficult for Kes to resist the power with which telepathic bonding with the Rokani brings and she edges closer and closer to helping them to carry out their plan before her love for the Voyager crew finally triumphs and she turns their own telepathic weapon against them and saves Voyager.
Notes:
-A species that uses telepathy as their main weapon has for the longest time been my idea for a Star Trek episode, I believe the idea really works here.
- The idea I have for the Rokani is a species that uses telepathy as their main weapon, their society would be separated into certain castes and the most powerful telepaths would link together to unleash telepathic energy on ships and planets – disabling or destroying depending on their numbers.
I have a powerful image of a group of telepaths simply linking hands in a circle and closing their eyes to focus their telepathic energy into a destructive force.
-The caste system idea for their society would reinforce their belief that non-telepathic species are lower forms of life that do not deserve to be treated equally and are to be treated with disdain.
-Touch telepaths like Vulcans would be of little interest to the Rokani and while they may be treated better than the rest of the Voyager crew, they would not be given the treatment and opportunity of Kes.
-While the Rokani are aware that Kes would be wanting to get the Voyager crew back the entire time, they are arrogant enough to believe that the power with which the Rokani’s telepathic bonding would bring Kes would be enough to make her forget…and she nearly does.
-The reason Kes has the power to turn their telepathic weapon against them is that the unique powers the Rokani see lying within Kes allow her to act as a conduit that can amplify their own telepathic powers, she is therefore able to control that force when she remembers Voyager..
Re-Emergence, Deep Space Nine
After an accident causes the Dax symbiont to shut down, the full personality of Jadzia emerges and claims Dax took full control after joining leaving her a prisoner in her own body.
While exploring an abandoned colony in the Gamma Quadrant, Jadzia Dax is hit by a burst of cyloplasmic radiation from an unknown source. She falls into a coma and when she awakens, reveals that the Dax symbiont has shut down, allowing her consciousness to re-emerge for the first time since before she was joined. Jadzia reveals that after joining, the Dax symbiont completely took over her body and it was not a joining of two consciousnesses meaning she has been trapped behind her own eyes for over 4 years.
She remains adamant that no measures be taken to reawaken Dax and refuses to return to the Symbiosis institute in fear they may extract or reawaken the Dax symbiont. After returning to her duties on DS9, the crew must get used to a new Jadzia who is radically different from the one they knew. While most of the crew reluctantly but slowly accept the new Jadzia, Julian and Quark are suspicious and, after Jadzia repeatedly brushes off his requests to perform some particularly time consuming medical scans, Julian abducts her and covertly performs the scan while she is anaesthetised and in co-operation with the Symbiosis institute discovers “Jadzia” has been lying and that the body of Jadzia has in fact been possessed by a non-corporeal lifeform. After being confronted, the lifeform attempts to escape through the wormhole in a shuttle but the crew of DS9 quickly recapture it. The lifeform reveals that it was trapped on the planet and possessing Jadzia was its first chance to leave in decades, it also reveals that the only way to now extract the lifeform from Jadzia is to kill it, allow it to enter another body or re-enter the energy matrix on the planet. It opts to allow the DS9 crew to euthanize it in fear of being trapped once again on the planet.
Notes:
-I know what you’re wondering, why does it go through the whole ruse of saying the Dax symbiont is shut down? The reason is because the corporeal lifeform can only inhabit the host and draw on their memories, and so would be unable to assume the personality of Jadzia Dax, only Jadzia.
-While I think it would fascinating if it was actually the case for joined trills that the symbiont takes over completely and only pretends to join with the host, it would be too disruptive to the Trill mythology and the character of Dax, so this is a good alternative and a safer pitch.
-I considered using an anaphasic lifeform as seen in “Sub Rosa” but I think its probably to go with a different type of lifeform to make it fresher.
---I'm working on a story idea about a civilization that worships the Borg that I am REALLY excited about but its not finished yet, this stuff is enough for now!---
But I've spent a while in the past couple of weeks thinking up unique story ideas for Star Trek- Deep Space Nine and Voyager stories really and am really excited about them. If they are in any way similar to any novels or fan fiction, its totally a coincidence!
I would love your feedback, it would be really good if you could give feedback on both the concept itself as well as the execution of the idea laid out in the extension.
Hollow Image, Voyager
An ensign in engineering successfully replicates the Doctor’s mobile emitter which he uses to secretly create a hologram of his girlfriend who died 6 months previously and attempts to reintroduce her to the crew as the real article.
During an engineering shift, the crew are shocked to see their lost crewmate Ensign Sonya Knight appear for duty. She appears dazed and confused and says she doesn’t remember much about the last 6 months other than being abducted and undergoing some experiments.
An initial medical examination by the Doctor assisted by her boyfriend Ensign Michael Rhodes shows that she is indeed the same Sonya Knight who disappeared on an away mission 6 months ago. Sonya is eager to reintegrate into the crew and reunite with Ensign Rhodes. Soon, small suspicions begin to form regarding Sonya as she refuses point blank to work on a project involving long wave cyclophasic radiation- a field in which she is talented, and appears to have suddenly forgotten some things about her time on Voyager.
An accident in Engineering is attended by the Doctor when suddenly a bust of the cyclophasic radiation destablisizes his matrix and the mobile emitter drops to the ground. Later on in engineering another mobile emitter is discovered and when activated Torres discovers that it is Ensign Knight.
Rhodes is brought to Janeway’s ready room to be told when he admits that he had spent the last 6 months making a replica of the holo-emitter in the hope that he could recreate her by using her extensive logs and the logs of the entire Voyager crew. He further admits that Knight does not know she is a hologram and it could cause her program to self destruct if she finds out.
The discovery that Rhodes had successfully created another mobile emitter sparks a debate among the crew. Ensign Rhodes argues that with Knight’s memories, the hologram is still her but only in another form, while other members of the crew have a more spiritual view of the situation.
The crew also begin to discuss the possibilities and ethics behind creating new sentient holograms to assist Voyager in its journey to get home .
Soon however the holo-emitter of Ensign Knight begins to degrade and Ensign Rhodes must once again lose his love.
Notes
-Holograms and the ethics and philosophy behind holographic life is still a well that keeps on giving within Trek and there is much to be explored. The idea that crewmembers of Voyager would create loved ones as holograms to help adjust to an emotionally difficult situation has always interested me.
-I don’t ever feel the ethical implication of even creating the EMH’s were discussed, is it ethical to create a computer program with sentience and simply use him as a tool as most EMH’s are used? The opportunity for the Voyager crew to make even more mobile holograms brings this issue out.
-I previously came up with an episode idea where the B story had Neelix creating a holographic version of Kes in a recreation of early Voyager to help ease his loneliness but the A story didn’t work so I ditched it.
Looming Shadows, Voyager
On an away mission to a planet where they hope obtain vital supplies from a technologically advanced civilization, Seven, Harry, B’Ellana and the Doctor must evade capture and escape the Borg when dozens of borg cubes arrive to assimilate the planet.
The show opens with Seven, Harry, B’Ellana and the Doctor attempting to barter with an engineer in a busy alien market for supplies, we discover that Voyager is adrift 60 lightyears away after an ion storm seriously damaged the nacelles and shuttles were sent in all directions in order to try and find the materials needed to repair them.
While nearing the end of their negotiations with the trader shadows form overhead and upon looking up the crew see dozens of borg cubes. We also see this from the perspective of other people around the planet.
Seven informs the crew that attempting to escape in the shuttle back to Voyager would be too dangerous and that hiding on the planet would be a safter option. They must safety to the other side of the planet where Seven believes there is a crystalline formation underground that can shield them from Borg sensors and they will be able to wait until the cubes depart. Flying towards their destination, their shuttle crashes and is destroyed near a village, there they must race against time to repair an old shuttlecraft belonging to a villager in order to reach safety.
Notes
-The idea for this episode really excites me because we’ve never seen the mass panic that comes with an armada of borg spheres arriving at a planet to assimilate it. I definitely see this episode as like a disaster movie but the desperation and emotion of the crewmembers and the villagers would make for a really meaty episode.
A Fresh Perspective, Deep Space Nine
A civilization at war with the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant sends a delegation to DS9 to request assistance from the Federation.
The Noratii Republic is an advanced gamma quadrant civilization at war with the Dominion. Having heard about ships with cloaking technology in the alpha quadrant, they sent a diplomatic envoy to DS9 to request that Sisko use the Defiant to help them destroy a military installation currently under construction behind enemy lines that, if completed, could mean victory for the Dominion.
The Noratii delegation reveal they are on the verge of developing a new weapon that could severely weaken the Dominion and that the outbreak of war between the Dominion and the Alpha quadrant civilizations allowed them time to re-strengthen their defenses and further develop the weapon. The Federation, seeing possibilities for gathering more intelligence on the Dominion and gaining a gamma quadrant ally approves of the mission and the Defiant goes through the wormhole. On the way to the military instalment co-ordinates under cloak, members of the Noratii share information regarding the Dominion and the political situation of the Gamma quadrant with members of DS9. Once the military installation has been successfully destroyed in a sneak attack, Sisko exchanges their cloaking technology with the Noratii in exchange for weaponry that is more effective against the Dominion.
Notes
Some of what we discover in this episode includes
-The Dominion are facing a war on at least 3 fronts. They are fighting a mysterious “cybernetic species” on their eastern border about which the Noratii know very little about and attempts to send delegations have failed, as well as the Noratii themselves and the Alpha Quadrant civilizations.
-There was, until recently, a strong resistance movement within the Dominion that was crushed ruthlessly by the founders.
-The Dominion usually “culls” the population of each planet by around 25% it conquers to decrease resistance.
-During their 10 year war with the Dominion, their 4 allies have all fallen and the Noratii are the only warp capable species within 100 lightyears.
-I think it would be not only interesting to know more about the shifts in the balance of power the discovery of the wormhole created.
-Another option for the story was that the Noratii would actually be on their last legs and were planning to steal the Defiant but then it occured to me that there's no reason they couldn't just have a technological exchange. The trying to steal the Defiant stuff seemed too unoriginal.
Into the Fold, Voyager
Kes must work with a telepathic species bent on enslaving and destroying non-telepaths in order to try and save the captured crew of Voyager from almost certain death.
Voyager enters a region of space when it begins to detect a large number of planets that have experienced cataclysmic events and at the same time Kes begins to be affected by telepathic imprints that show destruction on a massive scale carried out by telepathic humanoids.
Kes insists that Voyager reverse course immediately and Janeway agrees but before they can fully clear the space, all of the crew except Kes is disabled by the telepaths and abducted. Meanwhile Kes is taken to the leader of the telepathic race known as the Rokani and is told that she is special and could hold the key to helping the Rokani subdue their most powerful enemy the Mesoans. They give her the option between working with them or being imprisoned along with the rest of the Voyager crew. Kes agrees to work with the Rokani in the hope that she can somehow use her new position to save them.
She must work amongst the Rokani in attempting to subdue a powerful enemy while hiding her true motives to get Voyager home, but it soon becomes difficult for Kes to resist the power with which telepathic bonding with the Rokani brings and she edges closer and closer to helping them to carry out their plan before her love for the Voyager crew finally triumphs and she turns their own telepathic weapon against them and saves Voyager.
Notes:
-A species that uses telepathy as their main weapon has for the longest time been my idea for a Star Trek episode, I believe the idea really works here.
- The idea I have for the Rokani is a species that uses telepathy as their main weapon, their society would be separated into certain castes and the most powerful telepaths would link together to unleash telepathic energy on ships and planets – disabling or destroying depending on their numbers.
I have a powerful image of a group of telepaths simply linking hands in a circle and closing their eyes to focus their telepathic energy into a destructive force.
-The caste system idea for their society would reinforce their belief that non-telepathic species are lower forms of life that do not deserve to be treated equally and are to be treated with disdain.
-Touch telepaths like Vulcans would be of little interest to the Rokani and while they may be treated better than the rest of the Voyager crew, they would not be given the treatment and opportunity of Kes.
-While the Rokani are aware that Kes would be wanting to get the Voyager crew back the entire time, they are arrogant enough to believe that the power with which the Rokani’s telepathic bonding would bring Kes would be enough to make her forget…and she nearly does.
-The reason Kes has the power to turn their telepathic weapon against them is that the unique powers the Rokani see lying within Kes allow her to act as a conduit that can amplify their own telepathic powers, she is therefore able to control that force when she remembers Voyager..
Re-Emergence, Deep Space Nine
After an accident causes the Dax symbiont to shut down, the full personality of Jadzia emerges and claims Dax took full control after joining leaving her a prisoner in her own body.
While exploring an abandoned colony in the Gamma Quadrant, Jadzia Dax is hit by a burst of cyloplasmic radiation from an unknown source. She falls into a coma and when she awakens, reveals that the Dax symbiont has shut down, allowing her consciousness to re-emerge for the first time since before she was joined. Jadzia reveals that after joining, the Dax symbiont completely took over her body and it was not a joining of two consciousnesses meaning she has been trapped behind her own eyes for over 4 years.
She remains adamant that no measures be taken to reawaken Dax and refuses to return to the Symbiosis institute in fear they may extract or reawaken the Dax symbiont. After returning to her duties on DS9, the crew must get used to a new Jadzia who is radically different from the one they knew. While most of the crew reluctantly but slowly accept the new Jadzia, Julian and Quark are suspicious and, after Jadzia repeatedly brushes off his requests to perform some particularly time consuming medical scans, Julian abducts her and covertly performs the scan while she is anaesthetised and in co-operation with the Symbiosis institute discovers “Jadzia” has been lying and that the body of Jadzia has in fact been possessed by a non-corporeal lifeform. After being confronted, the lifeform attempts to escape through the wormhole in a shuttle but the crew of DS9 quickly recapture it. The lifeform reveals that it was trapped on the planet and possessing Jadzia was its first chance to leave in decades, it also reveals that the only way to now extract the lifeform from Jadzia is to kill it, allow it to enter another body or re-enter the energy matrix on the planet. It opts to allow the DS9 crew to euthanize it in fear of being trapped once again on the planet.
Notes:
-I know what you’re wondering, why does it go through the whole ruse of saying the Dax symbiont is shut down? The reason is because the corporeal lifeform can only inhabit the host and draw on their memories, and so would be unable to assume the personality of Jadzia Dax, only Jadzia.
-While I think it would fascinating if it was actually the case for joined trills that the symbiont takes over completely and only pretends to join with the host, it would be too disruptive to the Trill mythology and the character of Dax, so this is a good alternative and a safer pitch.
-I considered using an anaphasic lifeform as seen in “Sub Rosa” but I think its probably to go with a different type of lifeform to make it fresher.
---I'm working on a story idea about a civilization that worships the Borg that I am REALLY excited about but its not finished yet, this stuff is enough for now!---
Last edited:
) See the TNG episode "Power Play".
