Star Trek: 5 Great Storylines The Show Left Hanging

4. The Neural Parasites

Introduced: "Coming of Age" (TNG, Season One)Last Seen: "Conspiracy" (TNG, Season One) In "Coming of Age," Admiral Quinn arrives onboard the Enterprise-D with Lieutenant Commander Remmick in tow. Remmick is with the Inspector's General Office, and he spends much of the episode leading what appears to be a witch-hunt, aggressively questioning the crew over past missions. We don't learn the purpose of these inquiries until Quinn and Remmick prepare to depart. It seems that Admiral Quinn wanted to be absolutely sure that Captain Picard and his crew could be trusted. He tells him that there are problems brewing in Starfleet, and that someone is trying to destroy the Federation from within. A few episodes later, we learn the full extent of this conspiracy. It seems that a race of neural parasites €“ which enter a host body and take complete control of their actions €“ have infiltrated the highest members of Starfleet Command. They have begun issuing strange orders, and it is only a matter of time before they have complete control over Starfleet and the Federation. Luckily, Captain Picard and Commander Riker are able to uncover this conspiracy in time, disable the infected officers, and kill Lieutenant Commander Remmick, who is host to the neural parasite's mother. The mother parasites destroyed, the rest of the parasites begin to die. However, as the episode ends, Lieutenant Commander Data informs his Captain that Remmick may have been transmitting a homing beacon to the neural parasite home world before he died. If the neural parasites receive it, they will now how to find Earth... Despite this ominous ending, however, the neural parasites are never seen or mentioned again. The decision to abandon the neural parasites was probably a budgetary decision as much as it was a creative one. According to one account, Maurice Hurley, head writer of Star Trek: The Next Generation during its second season, objected to "Conspiracy" due to its violent content and unresolved ending. According to the 48th issue of the Star Trek Magazine, however, Hurley considered bringing the neural parasites back in the second season "as a major adversary embodying faceless, relentless and yet horrific danger...until production reality kicked in and their threat was replaced by an altogether easier-to-realize faceless, relentless adversary... Out went the pink cockroaches and in came upscale villains the Borg." The novels, however, are unrestrained by such budgetary considerations. There, the neural parasites eventually reared their ugly heads in a series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels, where they attempted to disrupt Bajor's admittance to the Federation, and were ultimately revealed to be genetically engineered from trill symbionts. According to the Customizable Card Game issued by Decipher, their species was called the "Bluegills."