The Next Creepy Big Bad

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Inspired by comments here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/wha...r-trek-opinions.304751/page-680#post-14482266

Since many think the done-to-death Borg have lost their "unknown creepy alien race" status, what could replace them as Star Trek's next scary foe?

TNG had the Borg - creepy alien robot creatures who turned out to be us but with tech implants, DS9 had Changelings, which take our faces.

What's next?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Borg, again. Again.

 

[Racefuel]

Since its apparent that the Hirogen are now either in the Alpha/Beta quadrant or at least in border regions..that'd make for a good conflict point

 

[FederationHistorian]

Since many think the done-to-death Borg have lost their "unknown creepy alien race" status

The Borg could probably be still scary if:

a) They divorce the Borg Queen from the Borg Collective and stick to solely representatives like Locutus

b) The Borg, if they insist on having a Queen, replace the Krige Queen with a new Queen. Why hasn’t a species that is always finding new ways to adapt and improve itself not figured out to get rid of their queen, considering how many times they have been defeated by the Federation? Matalas in an interview said he wanted to cast Emily Hampshire as the Borg Queen in S2, so maybe use that to re-imagine the Borg Queen

c) The Borg should have adapted cloaking tech by now and should use it more often. Maybe the Federation would develop anti-cloaking sensors (straight out of the Armada games), but at least it would be a logical progression.

what could replace them as Star Trek's next scary foe?

There’s lots of possibilities. Vidiians. Species 8472. From the novels, the Kinshaya (who terrorize Klingons!). Even the Lihn Zhee (that unique skull in Picard’s trophy room in the Confederation timeline) could be developed into a serious threat.

In fact, if the Borg are gone, there should be a race for their technology in the Delta Quadrant and they all adapt it in ways different from the Federation that makes them scarier than before.

But the best would probably be one of the numerous races seen on Trek but never seriously developed or explored.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The Borg were supposed to be a metaphor for our fear of technology taking over. I guess we should ask ourselves, what new fear do we have now?

 

[Tallguy]

I asked chatGPT and it said we're still afraid of technology taking over.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Space roaches. They can survive in any hostile environment, including the vacuum of space. Once they get onto a starship, either by secretly hitching a ride with an away team or overtly affixing to a vessel's hull, it's pretty much game over. If you see one, there are likely thousands hidden in the walls and floors, ready to pounce when your back is turned. As they are barely sentient and possessing no real technology, you can't talk to them, you can't reason with them, and they multiply and spread disease like--well, cockroaches. mindlessly infesting and taking over everything they see, including the bodies of both the living and the dead.

They laugh at phasers and photon/quantum torpedoes. Even the Borg give them a wide berth, as no amount of Raid is enough...

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

In the aftermath of the pandemic, an idea I had comes to mind:

The crew (in my case, it was the Kelvin Enterprise) come upon a dead/sick alien floating in space in a spacesuit, and they bring them aboard ship. A virus inside the alien drives their body like a ship and attacks the crew members, who are recuperating from that virus' enemy virus illness.

 

[Tallguy]

Space roaches. They can survive in any hostile environment, including the vacuum of space. Once they get onto a starship, either by secretly hitching a ride with an away team or overtly affixing to a vessel's hull, it's pretty much game over. If you see one, there are likely thousands hidden in the walls and floors, ready to pounce when your back is turned. As they are barely sentient and possessing no real technology, you can't talk to them, you can't reason with them, and they multiply and spread disease like--well, cockroaches. mindlessly infesting and taking over everything they see, including the bodies of both the living and the dead.

They laugh at phasers and photon/quantum torpedoes. Even the Borg give them a wide berth, as no amount of Raid is enough...

That still sound like the Borg. Even Melinda Snodgrass called them technological army ants.

 

[Commander Troi]

I asked chatGPT and it said we're still afraid of technology taking over.

Smartass.

Space roaches. They can survive in any hostile environment, including the vacuum of space. Once they get onto a starship, either by secretly hitching a ride with an away team or overtly affixing to a vessel's hull, it's pretty much game over. If you see one, there are likely thousands hidden in the walls and floors, ready to pounce when your back is turned. As they are barely sentient and possessing no real technology, you can't talk to them, you can't reason with them, and they multiply and spread disease like--well, cockroaches. mindlessly infesting and taking over everything they see, including the bodies of both the living and the dead.

They laugh at phasers and photon/quantum torpedoes. Even the Borg give them a wide berth, as no amount of Raid is enough...

OK, that IS scary!

Climate change is high on my personal fear-of-the-future list, but I'm not sure how to make a Big Bad out of it. Perhaps a species that "terraforms" planets without caring if they're already inhabited?

Edit: Trek has often done well with A.I. Perhaps something in that vein?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Or a sentient space weather storm swarm. Gives "Eye of the Hurricane" a whole new meaning.

 

[Commander Troi]

There's a thread in TNZ called "Generative AI - We Are Effed." Perhaps this is where our fear of technology taking over can go next: Cylons to the nth degree, where "real" and "fake" have no meaning anymore.

https://truepic.com/revel/

 

[Avro Arrow]

I think the bluegills from "Conspiracy" are a pretty good creepy "big bad", since they have that whole "invasion of the body snatchers" thing going. Granted, they do have a lot of similarities with the Borg (loss of self) and the changelings (can no longer trust people you thought you knew). If done right, you could really play up the creepy vibe and the paranoia aspect of it all.

Plus they sent out that signal that was never followed up on. The set-up is just sitting there waiting!

(And speaking of creepy, that one scene with Remmick is probably the farthest Star Trek has ever gone into body-horror. <shudder>)

 

[Guy Gardener]

Since its apparent that the Hirogen are now either in the Alpha/Beta quadrant or at least in border regions..that'd make for a good conflict point

The hirogen are a dead species.

They are so sparsely spread out that there is no culture between the ships, each an island alone, which means inbreeding or no breeding, if they can go 2 decades without seeing a friendly face who is not a cousin or a sibling or a siblingcousin.

They're done.

Although watching them erode would be interesting.

 

[dmac]

Laura, I'll have to go with The Rise Of The Tribbles on this one.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The attack tribbles?

Human fears
* Tech taking over
* Irrelevance/insignificance
* Death
* Loss of connections
* Shallowness

 

[C.E. Evans]

That still sound like the Borg. Even Melinda Snodgrass called them technological army ants.

Except they were humanoid and you could still talk with them like traditional bad guys through their Queen. I'm not calling for any of that. The more our heroes conversed and even negotiated with the Borg, the less scary they became, IMO. Unfortunately, the proliferation of sci-fi on both and small and big screen means that any new villain can be ultimately compared to someone earlier in some fashion. Even the Borg aren't that original as they were beat to the punch roughly two decades earlier by the Cybermen from Doctor Who, who even used a form of assimilation to increase their numbers.

 

[Farscape One]

I have always thought the Vidiians were the best villains VOYAGER ever created. Not only did they look disgusting (as a huge horror fan, I really appreciate this), but they have a moral dilemma built into their very premise... is it right to cut up other people so you can live?

I honestly don't think the Think Tank actually cured the phage... given how much they knew about Voyager ahead of time, they could very well have found entries of the Vidiians in their database and just told Janeway they cured them. Notice Janeway didn't seem that impressed with his list of accomplishments until Kurros mentioned them. Considering they were 40,000 light years away and Kurros 'recently' cured them, and how they wanted quantum slipstream technology, I don't buy that the Vidiians were cured.


The only thing that would make the Vudiians more dangerous is if they had transporter technology. I would love to see them return.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Except they were humanoid and you could still talk with them like traditional bad guys through their Queen.

Or Locutus.

 

[Commander Troi]

Ooh! I got it!

Based on US news, the next Big Bad will be a race of drag queens who want to read to children!