Star Trek: 10 Plot Twists Everyone Saw Coming

9. Pre-Empting Pre-Emptive

Star Trek: The Next Generation went out in the finest of forms, and that includes its penultimate episode, Preemptive Strike. It is by no means a critique to say that we'd all seen the twist coming before the barrel of that phaser. In fact — sorry, Captain — it only ever made perfect sense. Until quite late in the day, according to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, the episode was called 'The Good Fight'. Ro Laren had to join it.

Sent undercover into the Maquis, Ro could never have remained indifferent to their struggle, could never have remained insensitive to the plight of those in the Demilitarised Zone. Ro grew up under the boot of Cardassian domination during the Occupation. Choosing her for the mission in part "because [she was] Bajoran" was downright cruel in the first place. Captain Picard might have taken less than several decades to understand and accept the consequences of his and Admiral Nechayev's decision, to understand Ro.

By the point of Macias' death on the colony during a Cardassian assault, the 'turncoat' twist was all but inevitable. Its predictability was, in this case, the great strength of the episode. It would have been the apotheosis of the character, were it not for an even greater surprise years later. In her final moment of Preemptive Strike, Ro beamed away from one shuttle. Now, the ultimate twist would be that she made it off another.