Star Trek: 10 Species Who Need To Get With The Times

The Predators of the Star Trek universe, the Hirogen, are feared across the Delta Quadrant for their deadly hunters, who would track down any prey that they considered a good prize.

Captain Janeway, during conflict with the Hirogen, came to a truce with them and offered them holographic technology, in the hopes that they would stop hunting sentient humanoids if they had holograms to hunt instead. Unfortunately, as Janeway knows very well, holograms like The Doctor become self-aware all the time, and of course the Hirogen went on to specifically program them to be more realistic and to actually feel simulated fear. Their suffering wouldn't even be relieved by dying, as they simply respawned over and over after each awful death.

In the end, Janeway didn't really end the suffering, but instead passed it on to an oppressed group of artificial lifeforms who Starfleet also has a long history of disrespecting and treating like property.

We last heard about the Hirogen in the Picard episode No Win Scenario, when in a flashback near the start of episode, Picard talked with a group of cadets about an encounter he had with the Hirogen while serving on the Enterprise-E. Rumour has it that the Hirogen Alpha came to the Alpha Quadrant specifically to hunt Picard, showing that their ways haven't changed much since Janeway's little experiment. Fortunately, Picard explained that Worf was able to construct a trap that turned the hunters into the prey. We still don't know how the Hirogen got to the Alpha Quadrant (or what their grudge was with Picard), but it's clear they didn't come to make friends.