Star Trek: 10 Characters Who Must Return (2023)

10. Elim Garak

Given Garak's appetite and aptitude for deception, he has probably already made his return to Star Trek without us even realising it. If he wasn't impersonating a Romulan in Picard's vineyard, then he was no doubt lurking in the background at 10 Forward Avenue or catching up with Beckett Mariner at Quark's. Officially speaking, however, we don't know if he got to have another lunch with Doctor Bashir.

Garak was a huge hit with fans. Endlessly fascinating, he counterposed Starfleet's stringent moral precepts, providing an outsider's take on humanity and its foibles and fables. For Garak, spinning a tall tale was a skill, if not an art (just never tell the same lie twice). It comes as little surprise that the character was front and centre of what is still considered to be one of the best Star Trek episodes of them all, and one which thoroughly challenged the ethics of Captain Sisko.

Garak has been equally popular in beta canon (although he would likely prefer the term 'apocrypha'). Andrew Robinson himself penned the novel A Stitch in Time which expands on Garak's life pre- and post-Dominion War and devastation of Cardassia. Towards the start of the pandemic, Robinson also teamed up with Alexander Siddig on YouTube for a reading of Alone Together: A DS9 Companion. In the piece, set about 25 years after the war, Garak is now "castellan [governor] of the Cardassian assembly," a position he holds in numerous Star Trek novels.

The possibilities for Garak's come back are nigh on boundless. His exploits in the Obsidian Order pre-DS9 could fill an entire series, and we'd definitely tune in for a season or two with him as the new leader of the Cardassian Union. There is a lot more left to tell about Garak.