Anyone else feels that Discovery needs an another big bad guy faction?

[Timo]

if anything, we're Goldilocks now for the conflicting requirements from preexisting Trek: "The galaxy is at peace now, Starfleet has kept the peace for a century, violence is a thing of the past" vs. "Klingons are our arch-enemies, unremittingly hostile for half a century already, we have these great veteran warriors, we're armed to the teeth".

A single adversary who elevated the threat level from "hostility" to "slaughter" for a brief moment a decade before TOS and managed to kill a grand total of 10,000 people is just plain sweet. Two such adversaries would make it "a galaxy at constant war" instead.

An additional adversary who doesn't yet kill anybody but intimidatingly has the potential to do so would be doable, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wadjda]

if anything, we're Goldilocks now for the conflicting requirements from preexisting Trek: "The galaxy is at peace now, Starfleet has kept the peace for a century, violence is a thing of the past" vs. "Klingons are our arch-enemies, unremittingly hostile for half a century already, we have these great veteran warriors, we're armed to the teeth".

A single adversary who elevated the threat level from "hostility" to "slaughter" for a brief moment a decade before TOS and managed to kill a grand total of 10,000 people is just plain sweet. Two such adversaries would make it "a galaxy at constant war" instead.

An additional adversary who doesn't yet kill anybody but intimidatingly has the potential to do so would be doable, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

You can make a big bad faction without making them a permanent fixture, they can commit atrocities outside of the Federation easily raising the stakes. There are historical examples of these factions going away quick like the Macedonian Empire, i think there was Korean ruler who vassals in Mongolia etc...

 

[137th Gebirg]

To the OP: Yes - the Kzinti!

 

[Timo]

Well, those guys were clearly said to have lain low in the recent past of TAS (that is, the past two centuries).

Which is sorta the opposite of the Klingons who supposedly unremittingly spat hostility at the Feds even when, according to DSC in a surprise reveal, nobody actually saw them much.

So yeah, bring them on, as criminals and hoodlums. Just don't expect them to go to war against the UFP.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bigglesworth]

Along with the Kzinti, I think the Tholians would be a good adversary for a season. Too bad the Federation won't know about the Gorn for another 10 years as they could be interesting opponents. Maybe the Breen?

 

[137th Gebirg]

The Breen would be cool, although since their nature by the 24th still seems to be a mystery, we shouldn't canonically get any new insights into that species, sadly.

 

[cooleddie74]

To the OP: Yes - the Kzinti!

Who were likely going to appear in Season 5 of ENT because concept art of a Kzinti vessel was created before the series was cancelled and it appears B&B had been tossing around the idea of reviving the Kzinti within the live-action universe and bringing them to life for the first time as flesh-and-blood aliens. Based on the colors in the conceptual drawings the Kzinti vessels would have used a color scheme similar to the ships seen in TAS, only with the pink toned down quite a bit to make them look slightly less cartoonish and campy. We'll never know, but it's possible that the Kzinti may have popped up as a complicating factor in the Earth-Romulan War.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Breen would be cool, although since their nature by the 24th still seems to be a mystery, we shouldn't canonically get any new insights into that species, sadly.

I remember the theory that the unidentified alien ship in "Fight or Flight(ENT)" may have been a Breen vessel, though that idea was either never addressed or shot down. I also believe both the Klingons and the Romulans had occasional border and deep space run-ins with the Breen before the 23rd and 24th centuries but we know nothing about them as a species until the Picard era.

 

[DaveyNY]

Who are the good guy faction?

In my opinion...
Anybody who's into BD/SM is a Good Guy and/or Gal.

 

[Refuge]

In my opinion...
Anybody who's into BD/SM is a Good Guy and/or Gal.

I'm sure the spore drive uses nipple clamps

 

[cultcross]

The Breen would be cool,

 

[Prax]

If not Tholians, then there's only one other option...Mirror Binars.

 

[137th Gebirg]

To them, "on" is zero and "off" is one. Insidiously sinister!

 

[Wadjda]

If not Tholians, then there's only one other option...Mirror Binars.

There are probably a zillion options.

 

[cooleddie74]

At least with the Tholians we've already seen their MU versions so there's an established history of encounters with the Tholian Assembly in that universe.

 

[Prax]

There are probably a zillion options.

I was trying to make a funny. I would have said "mirror Pakleds," but it's probably been used already.

At least with the Tholians we've already seen their MU versions so there's an established history of encounters with the Tholian Assembly in that universe.

I like the idea that the tholians sort of operate in both universes, or that they experiment with transdimensional portals or something.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Tholians may be naturally able to move between universes by altering the resonance frequency of their crystalline state. Could be a cool hook for the species if they become a regular.

 

[eschaton]

Stories need conflict, but they do not need to have "bad guys." Look at the Trek corpus as an example. Sometimes the antagonist was a species (the Borg or the Dominion). Sometimes the antagonist was a particular villain (Q, Dukat, or Khan). Sometimes it was a force of nature (the many anomalies/negative space wedgies). In some of the most interesting episodes, the conflict doesn't come from an antagonist directly, but is internal to the characters themselves.

 

[The Wormhole]

I remember the theory that the unidentified alien ship in "Fight or Flight(ENT)" may have been a Breen vessel,

IIRC, wasn't their ship a reuse of the Breen ship CG mesh?

 

[Tim Thomason]

Romulans.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Romulans *are* the big bads this season. They are the ones who've been developing cloaks for 100 years, the ones with an old feud with the Federation (specifically Vulcans and Humans, both of which being represented by our main character), the ones who will be known for their technological alliance with the Klingons.

They're masters of subterfuge who work behind-the-scenes and toy with other polities to get what they want (see: ENT Babel Crisis and TNG Klingon Civil War). How the series will reveal this without breaking canon is still unknown. Maybe they will drop it for a moment to explore the mirror universe.

The producers have gone on record saying that the Romulans are off limits, which says to me that they will almost certainly be involved. I don't expect to see Romulans next week, but I do expect to see them in Season 2, if not before.