Meaning, is the rumor that the original version of this episode was a military coup within Starfleet, and Gene Roddenberry bitched at this so they changed it to mind controlling aliens, true?
Was Conspiracy originally no-aliens?
- Thread starter Mr. Laser Beam
- Start date
Well the TNG companion says that it was originally GRs idea (he called it "Assassins")! Robert Sabaroff then wrote the story for it. And it was indeed that first version where the conspirators were members of the federation (even Picards friends) who were against the peace between the UFP and the Klingons. But GR didn't like it and ruled against painting Starfleet in such a dark light.
^ 
I'm not sure but I think the Borg were originally supposed to be those parasites 
And yet they basically revisited the idea in DS9 after Gene had died, and got a couple of fine episodes with social relevance and foresight that should have made Gene proud. He was really painting Trek in a corner with his insistence that all humans must be portrayed as nothing less than perfect. Even in a utopian society there can be bad apples.
And a similar plot was later used for ST VI: TUC, rouge starffeet officers conspiring with Klingons to undermine any efforts toward peace between the feds and Klingons.
^^ I agree. I can understand where Gene was coming from, and I do think humanity has made a lot of progress by Trek's time. But I think he wanted them to be too perfect, and that simply isn't realistic. To add another example, Captain Tracey turned opportunistic in "The Omega Glory."
For about five minutes, I had a theory that the then-mysterious Founders were the "Conspiracy" aliens....
Hell, most of the developed nations manage to function now without military coups. Roddenberry's insistence that the Federation be "better than that" is hardly utopian; at most it's anti-melodrama. 
Yes, heaven forbid they should contrive an exceptional event for the sake of a Trek story.UWC Defiance said:
Hell, most of the developed nations manage to function now without military coups. Roddenberry's insistence that the Federation be "better than that" is hardly utopian; at most it's anti-melodrama.
Are lame melodramatic cliches "exceptional events?" Fancy that.
^So enlighten me. How is a conspiracy orchestrated by a faction within the protagonists' government a melodramatic cliche, while a conspiracy orchestrated by worm-eating alien body-snatchers isn't?
The Parasites played a big role in several of the DS9 Relaunch novels. That's as close as you're going to get to an official follow up to their story.
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