The next Big Bad?

[F. King Daniel]

As of Destiny, the Borg are no more. Watching the Clock wrote them out of Treklit's future, too. Romulus is living on borrowed time. The Typhon Pact are engaged in a TOS Klingon-style cold war with the Federation. Fleets of slipstream-powered ships are crossing the galaxy. A lot is changing.

Who would you like to see step in as the new supervillainous presence in the Trekverse? Or not?

My picks:
The Undine/Species 8472
The large-scale infiltrations, and their effects, in Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many were fascinating. Much like The Founders but instead of merely mimicing their targets, they truly become them.

The Klingons
They annexed Romulan space in the alt-future of "All Good Things". There will never be a better time for it than 2387.

The Grigari
Although vaguely Borg-like, these guys are more like a race of insane cultist Hannibal Lecters with more WMD's than all the other galactic superpowers combined. I envision them as a sleeping giant that nobody dare wake.

 

[JB2005]

The Pakleds...I feel they are sorely in need of retconning!

 

[Therin of Andor]

The Pakleds...I feel they are sorely in need of retconning!

We look for ways to be bad by Therin of Andor, on Flickr

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Who would you like to see step in as the new supervillainous presence in the Trekverse? Or not?

Star Trek doesn't need Big Bads. Big Bads are beside the point of new life, new civilizations, and boldly going where no one has gone before.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They already have the Typhon Pact. Isn't that enough?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

But, as many people, including Christopher, have pointed out, the Typhon Pact isn't any sort of "Big Bad." They're not evil, just opposed to the Federation for a variety of reasons, ranging from conflicting interests, self-preservation, and rival ideologies.

 

[BillJ]

I don't really care for "big bads", I'd like for them to start concentrating on "strange new worlds again".

 

[ryan123450]

I'm not interested in another "big bad" either. I do love the idea of the Klingons ending up in the same situation from "All Good Things..." after the destruction of Romulus. That would shake things up quite a bit because I doubt anyone, the Federation or the Typhon Pact would be very happy about that.

But I hope that's all way down the line. Let's explore the immediately Post-Destiny status quo alot more before heading down the timeline any more.

 

[Christopher]

As of Destiny, the Borg are no more. Watching the Clock wrote them out of Treklit's future, too.

No, Destiny did that, quite definitively. It showed the Borg ceasing to exist, therefore it follows that they won't be around in the future. WTC was just following that lead.

Romulus is living on borrowed time.

The planet, yes, but it is a whole interstellar empire. We've already seen one Romulan government, the Imperial Romulan State, that was able to exist without needing the planet Romulus to be part of it.

Who would you like to see step in as the new supervillainous presence in the Trekverse? Or not?

Not. Why do we need a single "Big Bad" in Star Trek? It's a big enough universe by now that having only one overarching threat would seem oversimplistic.

In TOS, the Klingons were only in six episodes (Kahless in "The Savage Curtain" wasn't a real Klingon) and the Romulans in three. Even the "big" bads weren't that big a part of the story.

 

[Sci]

Big Bads are a dramatic conceit of the superheroic genre. I love me some superheroes, be they Buffy or Batman, but Star Trek is not a superhero story and there's no reason for it to include Big Bads.

 

[sojourner]

Having one "big bad" is what caused the Star Wars book line to flail around without a decent antagonist for so long after the empire was conquered.

 

[JB2005]

As of Destiny, the Borg are no more. Watching the Clock wrote them out of Treklit's future, too.

No, Destiny did that, quite definitively. It showed the Borg ceasing to exist, therefore it follows that they won't be around in the future. WTC was just following that lead.

Romulus is living on borrowed time.

The planet, yes, but it is a whole interstellar empire. We've already seen one Romulan government, the Imperial Romulan State, that was able to exist without needing the planet Romulus to be part of it.

Who would you like to see step in as the new supervillainous presence in the Trekverse? Or not?

Not. Why do we need a single "Big Bad" in Star Trek? It's a big enough universe by now that having only one overarching threat would seem oversimplistic.

In TOS, the Klingons were only in six episodes (Kahless in "The Savage Curtain" wasn't a real Klingon) and the Romulans in three. Even the "big" bads weren't that big a part of the story.

I don't see the Romulan Empire surviving the loss of Romulus and Remus, it's less like the USA losing Washington DC and more like the British Empire Losing England. The IRS was being held together by the sheer force of will of Donatra and her having sufficient loyalty from the various military fleets to stop the RSE simply re-invading.

My imagining is that the RSE will fracture into un-aligned systems all contesting to be recognised as the "true" Romulan Empire (The People's Front of Romulus, The Romulan People's Front etc etc) and rather than just having the Klingons invade I'd imagine the Typhon Pact trying to maintain sovereignty over all of them, but the Federation making overtures to systems close to their shared border and the Klingons moving in as "peace-keeping forces" to "maintain stability" in the systems adjacent to their borders.

As for the big bad, I think that there isn't really the need! The Typhon Pact as a distant threat seems to work quite well for the time being and the novels have been pretty innovative in the past at presenting challenges for the crews to overcome without needing to resort to a "Big Bad" that they are constantly facing - case in point, the Voyager re-relaunch has focused on 4 distinct "threats" without having a looming "big bad" as such.

 

[DarKush]

Though I haven't been impressed with the Typhon Pact books as a whole, I think the Pact still has a lot of potential. As for other big bads, I would like to see Species 8472, Vaadwaur, Swarm, or Voth. Others with potential: Sphere Builders, Na'Kuhl, Sheliak, Hunters (DS9), Silent Enemy aliens. From Lit: Hive, Herans, Ascendents, Grigari, Teuthis, Dmyurj (sp), Totality (I know it will never happen, but I still liked the concept)

 

[captcalhoun]

the Redeemers.

 

[DrBashir]

Who would you like to see step in as the new supervillainous presence in the Trekverse? Or not?

Star Trek doesn't need Big Bads. Big Bads are beside the point of new life, new civilizations, and boldly going where no one has gone before.

BRAVO!!

If you introduce the Big Bad then people will start wanting them to be defeated. Knock them down and they'll just keep coming back. You'll have to do a big story to take them out once and for all in whatever fashion works best. (You couldn't defeat the Borg in combat for instance).

We've had the Dominion War, the Borg and now the Tyhon Pact as big, multi-series crossover threats. Let's get back to some stand alone stories.

Even now, 3 years after Destiny, Watching the Clock is still talking about the events of that story. I totally understand why, it was a MAJOR event for the Federation. However, we don't need another event that will so dominate Trek lit.

 

[Relayer1]

But, as many people, including Christopher, have pointed out, the Typhon Pact isn't any sort of "Big Bad." They're not evil, just opposed to the Federation for a variety of reasons, ranging from conflicting interests, self-preservation, and rival ideologies.

The reason for a 'Big Bad' is to create story possibilities - conflict, intrigue etc. The Typhon Pact does that - you don't need a 'villain'.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, Destiny did that, quite definitively. It showed the Borg ceasing to exist, therefore it follows that they won't be around in the future. WTC was just following that lead.

WTC prevented any kind of Borg resurrection in the current continuity. An awful lot of things and people die or transform or cease to exist in sci-fi, only to be back awhile later.

 

[Christopher]

^And I think it's very sad that SF has used the cliche of resurrection so often that fans come to expect it. It should be an exception to the rule. It robs stories like this of any meaning if readers or viewers just assume that whatever change was made will be temporary.

The unambiguous intention of Dave Mack, Marco Palmieri, and Margaret Clark when they developed Destiny was to eliminate the Borg once and for all, decisively and permanently -- not merely as a cheap fakeout that would quickly be undone. Destiny was meant to be the final Borg story, and it eliminated them quite definitively without any help from me.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'm another who thinks Trek doesn't need a villain...that's for the movies. The books should be self-contained stories that continue to explore the human condition and explore strange new worlds, and new civilizations, to continue boldly going where no one has gone before!

 

[Charles Phipps]

Eh, Doctor Who showed that no matter how many times you kill the Daleks, they'll always come back. Besides, I'm personally HOPING the Borg come back. I'd like to see the Borg from an alternate reality or perhaps V'Ger remaking them or whatever come back and promptly eradicate the future we saw in WTC. Frankly, those time cops annoyed me so much that it'll do them good to have them dealt with.

I think, however, in this Post-Cold War world, that it'd be better to deal with terrorists and the ever present threat of small groups as opposed to large Soviet Union-esque organizations. The Romulans under (even though he doesn't exist in this reality) Nero illustrated a much more powerful threat than they ever really got to illustrate as Red Chinese analogues.

Privately, I'd like to see a return of the Terran Empire in all its Human-o-centric savage glory. Wipe those Klingons out and rule the nonhumans with an Iron Fist! FOR THE EMPEROR!