Star Trek: 10 Disturbing Side Character Backstories

Space is vast, and the crews aboard the Federation's many starships and outposts know all too well that you can never predict what you will find next, boldly going through the cosmos. As Q told Picard in the Next Generation episode Q Who, "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Although nearly every Starfleet officer has to go through a lot of horrific stuff, as Star Trek: Lower Decks has routinely shown us, some characters stand out as survivors of the final frontier, rather than explorers of it.

Star Trek: Picard's second season has done a lot to expand on Picard's life and the tragedies he endured growing up, but this list will instead focus on ten characters outside of the main casts, whose disturbing backstories may have been forgotten. Characters with extremely dark histories that make Q's quote to Picard ring true.

Doctor Noonian Soong, the creator of the Soong-type androids like Data, Lore, and B-4, was one of the most respected scientists of all time when The Next Generation began, but prior to his breakthrough of creating the first functional positronic brain he was mocked as a deluded madman that his colleagues dubbed "Often-Wrong Soogn."

In his past, Doctor Soong failed to deliver on many promises. This gave him his sour reputation and led to him disappearing into a life of seclusion on the planet Omicron Theta. Here, he finally made progress on creating a positronic brain with help from his wife, Juliana, but one of his creations, Lore, ended up betraying him and leading to the destruction of Omicron Theta by the Crystalline Entity.

After his android Data was recovered from the wreckage of Omicron Theta, Soong finally got the recognition he deserved for creating the first positronic brains, but the Federation presumed that he died in the attack on the colony. In reality he escaped the colony and resumed his research, working on perfecting Data's emotion chip.