The Star Trek franchise has over fifty years of rich worlds, interesting characters and intricate backstories at its disposition. To get there, some of the world’s best sci-fi writers put their minds together to create magic. To fill that many hours of television, they also had to throw a lot of things at the wall to see what would stick. Some of these background stories would eventually evolve into fully-fleshed characters, such as Miles O’Brien. He started as a helmsman on The Next Generation before turning into a transporter operator, to finally become the chief engineer on Deep Space Nine. Other stories, however, were not as lucky. Either because of time constraints, or lack of fan interests, many plot lines are abandoned before they can reach their conclusion. This article will focus on the latter.

By going through every single episode of every series Star Trek has ever produced (except for Discovery), we have been able to find 25 plot threads which looked like they were headed somewhere before being discarded by their respective series’ writers. The only caveat: if it did not happen on screen, it never happened. Because most people have not read all of the books, or have not played through all of the chapters of the popular Star Trek Online game, we decided to stick with the TV series and movies.

With that in mind, here are 25 Star Trek storylines that were abandoned, for better or worse.

25 What Could Have Been

Poor Worf lost his first wife, K’Ehleyr, during the fourth season of The Next Generation. After that, his love life was pretty quiet until the final season. At that point, it seems like the writers were eager to move away from the constant teasing between Riker and Troi to finally make Worf and the Counsellor more than friends. They even kissed a few times, and there was an episode which explored an alternate future where they were happily married. Both characters seemed like they were very much into the idea of a relationship, and quite frankly, fans also appreciated the change. Troi even started acting more or less like Alexander’s surrogate mother at one point, and then… nothing.

When The Next Generation ends, Worf is transferred to Deep Space Nine, and he never talks about Troi again. He gets married to Jadzia Dax, who also kicks the bucket like K’Ehleyr, and we just have to forget that his almost-romance with Deanna ever existed. In the TNG movies, Troi and Riker get back together and get married, without even a word of a previous relationship when Worf is at the wedding. When we see the fate of both of Worf’s wives, Deanna Troi can be thankful, as it seems like she dodged a bullet after all. Still, an acknowledgment of their past would have been fun.

24 So, Who Are You Again?

Enterprise heavily featured the Temporal Cold War storyline during the first two seasons. Unfortunately, this half-baked idea became the focus of the series for far too long. At the center of the plot was a shadowy figure manipulating the timeline and working with the Sulibans, a species of genetically-engineered soldiers without much of a backstory. Even people who watched the entire series, like me, don’t really have much of an explanation as to what everybody’s goal was in the Temporal Cold War.

Quite frankly, I am not even sure who was on who’s side.

Anyway, the shadowy man was referred to as “Future Guy” by the fans because he was never identified on screen, and this name eventually made it to the writer’s room. With a name so obviously designed to make fun of the storyline, you would think that the writers would try to rush it to a conclusion, but you would be wrong. Instead, they kept stretching and stretching, with Future Guy making appearances here and there, but the reveal never came. With Enterprise being canceled after four seasons, we never got to find out his true identity. According to Brannon Braga, the showrunner, it was supposed to be Archer himself manipulating the timeline from the future.

23 A Spitting Image Of Her Mom

Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar in the first season of The Next Generation, unceremoniously left the show because she was dissatisfied with her character. It’s hard to argue with her when you realize how little screen time Tasha had in each episode. Once TNG finally figured out how to tell a good story and flesh out its cast, Crosby was more than happy to do some guest appearances every once in a while. She did a one-shot return on “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, which features an alternate universe where Tasha is still alive. This return took a complicated detour when time travel was introduced into the equation: Tasha returned to the past to help the crew of a previous version of Enterprise, since she knew she wasn’t going to survive in her own time anyway. Somehow, in all of this, she had a kid with a Romulan officer while prisoner.

This is how we ended up with Sela, a Romulan/Human hybrid who is the daughter of Tasha and is also played by Denise Crosby. It seemed like Sela was going to be a big player in the Romulan Empire, trying to kidnap Spock at one point. She also had the overt goal of eventually avenging her mom. This never came to pass, since she was never seen again after the episode “Unification II”. The Romulans were still a pain to deal with, something which they did well without Sela’s help.

22 Repercussions From The Pegasus

I never really understood why the Federation signed the Treaty of Algeron, stating that they couldn’t develop cloaking technology even though the Klingons and Romulans both have it. It just seems like they were putting themselves at a great disadvantage, and while I am sure there’s a perfectly good reason that exists in the canon, it just feels strategically unsound. Anyway, that treaty is supposedly enough to cause a war should it be broken, and war is basically what the Romulans were craving for in TNG since the beginning of the second season. So when the Pegasus is salvaged in the episode of the same name, the Federation is forced to reveal to the Romulans that they were indeed creating a cloaking technology.

Finally! It looks like the Romulans might get what they wanted after all! All this time waiting in the shadows. All the manipulations, and the politicking. The time has come for the Empire to rise! And then, the furious Romulans just turned around, pretended they didn’t see anything, and just went back to their business. The episode ends with the Federation going “oh boy, we are in trouble, we shouldn’t have done that”, and yet, they never face any repercussions. So either the writing team forgot about one of the main villain’s entire motivation, or the Romulans were just talk with nothing to back it up.

21 Guess They Never Could Find Earth

The first season of TNG concludes with “Conspiracy,” an episode where the Federation is being taken over by parasites controlling their high-ranking officers. Riker is forced to eat bugs to infiltrate the invaders without being detected, and the whole episode looks like a big set up for TNG to show off its freaky side. Things seem dire, but Picard and Riker are able to neutralize the threat with a few well-placed phaser shots, and the day is saved. However, professional party pooper and fully-functional android Data explains to his captain that the parasites will probably come back.

That is because they had time to send a message back home which tells the reinforcement how to find Earth.

Oh no! The parasites just have to be back later for a full-scale war, don’t they?

It’s a solid cliffhanger, and despite the invasion seemingly coming out of nowhere (it was only alluded to in one other episode), it seems like a good set-up for a future archenemy to the Federation, one which seems intelligent enough to evade detection and keep up with the rest of the Quadrant’s superpowers. At this point in the article, I hope you won’t be surprised to learn that these aliens never showed up again on screen. I guess that Picard and Riker were just too much to handle and the parasites didn’t want anything more to do with them.

20 The Disappearance Of Sonya Gomez

It seems like Geordi was never able to find true love during his run on The Next Generation. He did catch some feelings for a holographic representation of Dr. Leah Brahms, an engineer who designed the Enterprise. This obviously ended badly for everyone involved, and while we would see some more scenes of the man going on a few dates over the course of the series, nothing ever came out of it. The one time he did come very close to finding a real partner made of flesh was with the introduction of Sonya Gomez in the second season.

The character was featured prominently in two episodes, even having a run-in with Captain Picard to establish her personality. With most of her screen time consisting of spilling hot tea on the Captain or tripping over her own feet, that personality was mostly “super awkward nerd.” It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s more or less a good description of Geordi, so it would have worked. It seemed like sparks were flying between the two, and they could have been a good fit, but then, nothing. She doesn’t get transferred off the ship, she does not meet her demise after an encounter with a hostile species, she just stops existing. In a universe where Reginald Barclay can become a regular character, this is just not fair.

19 What Happened To Ro?

The fifth season of The Next Generation introduced Ensign Ro Laren, a Bajoran ensign assigned to Enterprise despite her attitude problems and her troubled past. For someone introduced that late in TNG’s run, she was a cool character with a different background played by a great actress, and she adapted to the rest of the crew fairly quickly. She saw things much differently than the rest of her friends, and her fresh perspective was the source of a few good episodes. Eventually, she double crosses Riker, one of her most vocal supporter, and joins the Maquis in a bittersweet departure. It sounds like a good ending for the character, and it would have been if it wasn’t for one thing.

The Maquis are heavily featured in Deep Space Nine and they are even the starting point of Voyager’s entire premise. With the amount of screen time she received in TNG, Ro Laren has to be one of the most prominent member of the faction in the galaxy, and it’s a shame that neither shows have enough time to keep us updated on her whereabouts. Even when the Dominion massacres and eliminates every single Maquis in the quadrant, we are never made aware of Ro’s fate. The truth is, Rick Berman wanted Ro to transfer to Deep Space Nine along with Miles O’Brien. When Michelle Forbes, who portrayed Ro, did not want to commit to a long-term contract, the character was simply written off.

18 You Can Never Go Home Again

As we know, the crew of Voyager got stuck in the Delta Quadrant because of “The Caretaker”, a powerful being which can make anything travel great distances in a short period of time. The Caretaker, unfortunately, perishes at the end of the pilot episode because it was either that, or Janeway would be letting the Kazon get their hands on it. This is a big problem, because it was Voyager’s only ticket back to the Alpha Quadrant, so what can you do?

As it turns out, the Caretaker had a mate named Suspiria. That mate is for all intents and purposes identical to the Caretaker and possesses the same powers. More importantly, she blames Janeway for the passing of her friend, though it is unclear what their relationship arrangement was. After a dangerous encounter, Janeway allows Suspiria to escape despite the fact that she tried to destroy the ship, hoping that it will change her mind on humanity in general. In the end, she even promises to try and find where she escaped to in order to convince her to send them back to the Alpha Quadrant. She then spends five entire seasons completely forgetting about Suspiria, instead of obsessing about the Borg and eventually using their very dangerous conduits to make it back home.

17 Back On The Job

I’m sure that we all remember the very memorable exit of Wesley Crusher. After spending a long time being a general annoyance, he enrolls at Starfleet Academy to try and fulfill his potential. That apparently includes covering up for his friends’ involvement in the accidental explosion of a classmate’s ship, so it’s obvious that maybe this whole Starfleet thing isn’t for him.

That’s when he encounters The Traveler again, a creepy being which has basically been eyeing Wesley since he was a kid.

This strange being also believes he is “special” and that he is a prodigy. Wesley decides to follow The Traveler to wherever their journey may lead, and they live happily ever after.

It was supposed to give Wesley a good send-off from the show, which was ending soon. It was weird, but Wesley was never fully accepted by the fanbase anyway, so everyone was more or less happy. However, Star Trek Nemesis came around a few years later, featuring Troi and Riker’s wedding reception. And who do you see sitting at a table in his Starfleet uniform, as if nothing happened and he had never quit? Wesley Crusher himself. So what happened to his journey? What did he do with The Traveler? Did he realize he wasn’t that special and needed a job after all? Your only way to answer these questions is to watch the deleted scenes on the DVD, as Wesley explains that he came back to work on the USS Titan with Riker.

16 A Little Bit Of Patience Would Have Saved So Much Pain

When the Klingons and The Federation go back to being at war in Deep Space Nine, this causes a lot of problem for Worf and his family. As the only Klingon actually working for the Federation, he is seen as a traitor, and this reflects badly on anyone associated with him. His brother Kurn, until then an influential member of the Klingon Empire, thus loses his seat on the High Council, and his land on the homeworld is seized as well. As Kurn is about to take his own life (with an assist from Worf), he is stopped at the last second by his friends, who only want to see the once proud warrior happy. So what can they do?

Worf somehow gets Dr. Bashir to agree to alter his brother’s appearance with plastic surgery and erase his memory. They then change Kurn’s name to “Rodek”, convince him he is amnesiac, and that he actually belongs to a different house in the Empire. “Rodek” thus goes back home incognito, starting a new life free of his past suffering. It’s a complicated plan, one which is made even more ridiculous by the fact that the Klingon and the Federation reconcile a few weeks later. This means that Worf and Bashir went through the trouble of destroying a man’s whole life for absolutely nothing. Oops! Better not mention Kurn ever again, because that would make everyone look like they severely overreacted.

15 Brought Back To Life

In “Dragon’s Teeth,” the crew of Voyager accidentally stumbles upon a bunch of pods holding the remnants of a civilization in stasis. After waking them up, the newly-freed aliens identify themselves as the Vaadwaur. These Cardassian knock-offs had been asleep for a thousand years or so, hoping to save their civilization after losing a costly war. At least, that’s the story they are giving Janeway, but the truth is a bit uglier.

The truth is that they were the aggressors of a war against numerous species, and they are looking to pick up exactly where they left off.

This includes finding more ships, like Voyager, for example, and going back to wreck anyone standing in their way. Though they fail to steal Voyager, they do manage to escape through some fancy space shortcuts after demonstrating how dangerous they can be. Voyager cannot stop them, the Vaadwaur promise vengeance, and it looks like we have a new player in the Delta Quadrant. Once again, nothing ever came out of that, even though these guys were already more threatening after a single apparition than the Kazon ever were. I guess the writers felt the Borg were more important to the overall storyline, but it’s a shame to let such an interesting plot thread hang loose like that.

14 The Alpha And The Gamma

The Dominion War story arc had so much going on that we can forgive if some of the plot points it was building up to never materialized. One such story was approached in the episode “One Little Ship,” where the show introduces a new subspecies of Jem’Hadar purely bred in the Alpha Quadrant. These new warriors clash with the Gamma Quadrant Jem’Hadar, feeling like they are the new and superior version. It doesn’t help that Sisko is basically playing the two against each other to get what he wants.

Things get heated, and it sure seems like this brotherly feud is going to be a major thorn in the side of the Dominion for a long time. After all, the Gamma feel like being pushed aside despite their experience is disrespectful, and only their genetic programming keeps them loyal to the Founders. But what if one of the Jem’Hadar factions were to turn on the other? That would certainly bring a nice new wrinkle to a war which had so far been one-sided towards the Dominion. Instead, these issues are simply forgotten, probably because the growing discontent of the Cardassians was becoming more and more important as a storyline. The friction between the Alpha and the Gamma is never even mentioned again.

13 Borg Origins

When the Borg were introduced on The Next Generation, they were a mysterious threat which could assimilate an entire planet with a single ship. Adapting quickly, they could only be contained for a while, but never defeated. The fact that we know so little about them makes them even scarier. Even though we see the crew of the Enterprise free a Borg, and even devise some makeshift ways to resist them, they are still formidably dangerous. When the movie First Contact was released, the veil was lifted somewhat, and we learned a little more about them: The Borg Queen mentions that they used to be an organic species, and that they originated in the Delta Quadrant.

Voyager confirmed the second point, showing that the Borg were all over the Delta Quadrant, but never elaborated on the first one. Despite the fact that we would basically see the Borg every other episode, and that an actual Borg lived on Voyager, the bigger backstory was never explained. Some fans might give the whole “it would have killed the magic” spiel, but by the end, Voyager was slapping the Borg around every time they met. The mystique was long gone by that point, so it wouldn’t have hurt to tell us more about this fascinating foe.

12 The Numbers Don’t Lie

The start of Voyager established the stakes of the series pretty clearly. The journey home would take nearly 70 years. Resources were scarce, since most replicators were offline. Food would have to be grown in a repurposed cargo bay. The one point which is most important, the one that the crew keeps mentioning, is that Voyager only has 38 photon torpedoes at their disposal with no means of replicating more. In a Quadrant which has been hostile to them the moment they arrived, this is a dramatically small number. The crew would keep them as a last resort, mostly firing the phaser instead, and Janeway would look really sad when she was forced to use one. Then, the Borg came along, and a foe this formidable required a lot of firepower to fight.

The battles became gigantic torpedo-launching parties, and no one ever mentioned the ongoing countdown to the last torpedo ever again.

Maybe the writers realized that it was too constraining to the story. It’s also possible that the crew acquired more torpedoes through scavenging, although this was never shown or mentioned on screen. All we know is that by the time the show was over, the crew had fired approximately 85 photon torpedoes. At least they remembered that they needed to grow their food for the whole seven seasons.

11 Worf’s Demotion

Despite his flaws, Worf had an eventful journey through both TNG and DS9. He started mostly at the helms of the Enterprise, often more of a background character than a full-fledged cast member, his presence a mere reminder that the Federation and the Klingon were now on the same side. By the end of Deep Space Nine, he was repaid for his efforts by becoming the Federation ambassador to the Klingon empire, a title which would surely require a lot of work. Though they were back to being friends, the Klingon had been at war with the Federation very recently, and the relationship had to be a bit strained. It sounds like a difficult task, one which is worthy of a dignified character such as Worf.

Then, the movies Insurrection and Nemesis were released, which both featured the original TNG crew. If you are a producer, and you want the Enterprise’s trademark Klingon aboard for your film, how do you explain an ambassador spending all of his spare time on a ship of exploration? Why is he even there and not on Kronos? Does he just miss his friends? Any kind of explanation would have been welcome, but both films fail to mention his job as a diplomat, pretending none of it ever happened. Instead, he is still manning the tactical station like a simple lieutenant, because it’s more important to have Worf along for the ride than to explain continuity.

10 The Alien Probe

The Next Generation wasn’t afraid to surf the edge of horror when needed, so it’s only normal that the series features one of the freakiest episode of Star Trek ever produced: “Schisms” shows the crew being kidnapped by aliens in the middle of the night, and being the victims of gruesome experiments. The aliens sometimes simply amputate limbs for fun before reattaching them, or in one extreme case, they replace a crewman’s blood with polymer to see what happens. Spoiler: it doesn’t end well for the poor guy.

Eventually, it’s up to Commander Riker to step up and put an end to the shenanigans. While rescuing a crewmate from the abductors, he is able to close the portal between our dimension and the aliens’. However, they manage to send an energy pulse to act as a probe before he succeeds. Picard sees this and theorizes that they will probably be back, but the series doesn’t last long enough to prove him right. If there were no plans to bring such a terrifying race back, which even bother with the probe subplot? A race of beings with complete disregard for their victims’ well-being would have been a great recurring foe, but instead, that plot thread is just left hanging.

9 Guinan’s Hidden Powers

Guinan has a strong, if complicated, history with Picard. She also has an established background with the Borg, who she says caused her people to be displaced throughout the galaxy. However, there is also something which suggests that she has had previous encounters with Q, and that she is a lot more powerful than she might seem.

When Q first realizes that she is on the Enterprise, he appears visibly upset at her presence. Threats are exchanged, and it looks like Guinan might be one of the only beings who can truly perturb him.

He tries to play it off as a joke, but when he threatens to help send her off the ship, she lifts her hands as if ready to defend herself.

It could be a bluff, but Q also says that there is more to her than could be imagined. Q is an omnipotent being who can bend the universe to his will. Why is Guinan getting to him like that? Is she powerful enough to fight someone who can make anything happen with a mere thought? If she has any superpowers, why has she never used them to help her friends? At this point, they were so close to making Guinan some sort of space witch, so it really feels like a disappointment when this sudden development was ignored.

8 Warped

The Next Generation introduced one game-changer of a storyline with the episode “Forces of Nature.” The revelation that the excessive use of warp speed was breaking down subspace might have been nothing more than an allegory for climate change and the impact it has on our world, but it still had a lot of potential. It is never adequately explained how this process works, but the result is that the Federation imposes a hard speed limit to its ships, ordering that they must stay below Warp 5 unless it is a case of extreme emergency. Think of the stories you could tell with this: if the Federation is the only entity to enforce this rule, would it put them at a disadvantage against its enemies? What if subspace keeps breaking? What are the consequences then?

These are not questions that we will ever have to ask ourselves, because this rule is summarily ignored by the end of TNG. It is also not mentioned once in Deep Space Nine, Voyager, or any of the subsequent Star Trek movies. Everyone just travels at maximum warp all the time because it’s more convenient, and Voyager even attempts to go past Warp 10 at one point because no one really knows what subspace is supposed to do anyway. The ramifications could have been enormous, but it was just ignored.

7 So… Who Did It?

When Federation outposts near the Romulan Neutral Zone are being destroyed in an episode creatively titled “The Neutral Zone”, Captain Picard and his crew are sent to investigate right away. Picard immediately suspects the Romulans, because it would just make sense really. After investigating, it still takes the intervention of an unfrozen 20th-century businessman to realize that the Romulans did not do it. In fact, they thought that the humans did it! What a hilarious misunderstanding! After some tense words, everyone retreats in their respective territory, happy that they stopped a conflict before it could start.

But wait! If it wasn’t the Romulans, and it wasn’t the Federation who blew up those outposts, then who did it? Picard is so happy that the Romulans were not involved that it appears like he completely forgets about all the innocent lives lost and stops looking for a culprit. Originally, the Borg were going to be revealed as the aggressors, and this was going to be their first official apparition. The Romulans would then have teamed with the Federation to face the new threat, and things would have made a lot more sense. However, a writer’s strike forced the showrunners to shelve that story, since there wouldn’t be enough time to write the second part. What we got was the best they could do with the plans quickly changing.

6 The Enterprise Gives Birth

Sometimes with Star Trek, it’s not worth getting bogged down with the specifics, because the more you look into it, and the more confusing things become. One such occasion is with “Emergence”, an episode from The Next Generation where the Enterprise’s computer basically gives birth to a new life form. This new intelligence is created from the thoughts and logs of every crew member, and lives on the Holodeck in a recreation of the Orient Express. By talking to the train’s conductor, Data somehow deduces that the life form needs vertion particles from a nearby nebula to finish growing, after which they simply escape from the Holodeck, fly right through the structure of the ship, and go off into space to find their destiny, I guess.

You would think that a Federation ship creating life would be something which would be exciting for the nerds working at Starfleet Headquarters, especially the guy who’s always obsessed about Data’s rights as an artificial lifeform. Instead, everyone seems as confused as I was watching this, and Picard is just content to let this new entity leave the nest, never to be mentioned again. Was it a single being, was it an entire civilization on a microscopic scale? Who knows! For once, it’s probably better to just let things be and not ask any questions.