10 Star Trek Characters With Wasted Potential

10. T'Rul

When the Defiant suddenly decloaked nigh-on inside Deep Space Nine's shield perimeter, you were probably sporting a similar astonished look to that of the quintet of fazed faces in Ops. ("A little surprise for the Dominion.") Had Starfleet finally taken the Admiral Pressman approach to The Treaty of Algeron? Nah! They were just borrowing a cloaking device from the Romulans, strictly for use in the Gamma Quadrant, to be supervised and operated by new arrival, Romulan subcommander T'Rul.

Played by Martha Hackett, later of Seska fame/infamy, T'Rul was originally devised as a recurring character along with the also freshly-embarked Lieutenant Commander Michael Eddington (cue Odo side-eye). Whilst Eddington would go on to appear in several more episodes, the character transforming from (seemingly) stringent Starfleet Security Officer to devoted Maquis leader, T'Rul was not quite so fortunate.

After some relatively compelling action for the character in fighting the Jem'Hadar, and a fairly epic 'death' in the Vorta simulation in The Search, Parts I & II, T'Rul simply shimmered out of existence as if she'd accidentally cloaked herself. Apparently, the Romulans suddenly decided they didn't need anyone to supervise their technology.

Having a permanent, obligatory Romulan presence on the Defiant and, by extension, on the station could have provided countless story opportunities, in particular the development of Romulan-Federation relations with T'Rul in a role similar to that of T'Pol (avant la lettre), the first Vulcan to serve aboard a Starfleet vessel (although with some obvious differences between the two). T'Rul may also have had to decide where her loyalties lay in moments of crisis: with her immediate shipmates or always, and no matter the circumstance, with the Romulan Empire?

It would have been fun to find out.