The Star Trek Conspiracy Iceberg Explained

Houses Of Cards

Still above the waters, we begin tier two in 2376. That year, two competing theories emerged aboard the USS Voyager — the 'Federation Conspiracy' and the 'Maquis Plot'.

Captain Janeway was implicated in a Starfleet-Cardassian scheme to establish a military presence in the Delta Quadrant (in violation of the Jankata Accord). Commander Chakotay was accused of conspiring to resurrect the Maquis rebellion by using 'graviton catapult' technology to launch attacks on Federation and Cardassian starships.

In the end, only one theory was correct — the 'Seven of Nine Conspiracy,' or as Captain Janeway put it, "a conspiracy of one". That wasn't a Starfleet ruse to capture and analyse Seven to "gather tactical data to fight the Borg," but it did all start with "those damned photonic fleas".

Seven had been downloading vast quantities of data into her cortical processor. Why read when you can assimilate? As a drone, that wouldn't have posed a problem. For her human mind, it was far too much information to process. To make it all make sense, Seven had to connect and categorise into theory upon theory.

In Janeway's words once more, Seven had built a "house of cards," or several — a shaky construction of conjecture and supposition that could collapse at any moment. That is the essence of the conspiracy theory. Humans are masters of making connections — an evolutionary imperative. Overapplied in the modern world, we connect the dots where no dots need to be connected. We build our own houses of cards.

Always remember the adage: "Correlation is not causation."

Conspiracies Of One

By definition, by etymology, and by law, a conspiracy must involve at least two people — literally 'to breathe together'. However, like Captain Janeway and that old-Earth music album, 'conspiracy of one' can be used more metaphorically to apply to the plots or machinations of a single individual, organisation, or entity. Galactic history contains several examples as such. Here are but a few.

Captain Braxton

Captain Braxton was a human from the 29th century, part of the Temporal Integrity Commission, pilot of the timeship Aeon, and commanding officer of the USS Relativity. His job was to monitor and maintain the timeline, and to uphold the Temporal Prime Directive.

After a few encounters with Captain Janeway and crew, Braxton conspired to do the exact opposite — to erase Voyager from existence and restore himself to a life without 'temporal psychosis'. Not quite the original prankster, unless a 'force-3 temporal disruptor' counts as a practical joke.

Rear Admiral Nora Satie (retd)

Rear Admiral Nora Satie was a distinguished and uniquely devoted Starfleet officer, daughter of a highly respected Starfleet judge. In 2363, it was Satie who gave the orders to a certain Captain Jean-Luc Picard to take command of the Enterprise-D. In 2364, she played a key role in exposing the bluegill conspiracy discussed in tier one of this list.

By 2367, Satie had taken her retirement but was promptly taken out of it by Starfleet Command to investigate an explosion by possible sabotage aboard the Enterprise. The Admiral did unmask one spy — Klingon J'Dan, who was sending information to the Romulans — but then began to see "the spectre of conspiracy" across the whole ship.

Even after the explosion was proven to be an accident, Satie was unrelenting. Crewman Tarses paid the price. She then made the ultimate error of putting Picard on the stand. Her drumhead trial was over.

Nicholas Locarno

Nick Locarno was the epitome of the 'conspiracy of one'. Even with outside support, the galaxy still revolved around him. Worse, he thought the universe was out to get him, and that he was owed something in return. That's not to let his Nova Squadron co-conspirators off the hook. None of those who sat in front of the board of inquiry in 2368 had a phaser pointed to their head. All chose to lie, until one, at the last second, chose to do his duty to the truth.

The Nova Squadron accident and cover-up marked a low point in the history of Starfleet Academy. Though Locarno somewhat graciously accepted full responsibility at the time, thirteen years later, he hadn't moved on. In 2381, Locarno convinced lower deckers from multiple ships to mutiny against their captains and ally with him instead. From Nova Squadron to Nova Fleet.

Harry Kim

When the crew of Voyager used their newly built version of the quantum slipstream drive, things ended in disaster. Or rather, they did the first (and second) time round. To try to correct his phase corrections, to send a message to Voyager in the past, the version of Harry Kim that had made it back home aboard the Delta Flyer engaged in a little "conspiracy to violate the Temporal Prime Directive".

Harry did have help from Chakotay, Chakotay's other half, Tessa Omond, and eventually the Doctor. The project, the plan, the persistence, and eventually the success in saving Voyager from an icy graveyard were still all very much Ensign Kim's. To paraphrase Tessa, charges of conspiracy are no good if they never existed in the first place.

Commander MacDuff

Commander Kieran MacDuff wasn't a commander, nor was he a Kieran, nor was he a MacDuff. He wasn't human, and he wasn't Starfleet. In fact, 'MacDuff,' or so he claimed, was a Satarran who'd come aboard the Enterprise-D in an elaborate plot to get ship and crew to destroy an enemy target, Lysian Central Command.

MacDuff altered memories, manipulated computer records, and caused two officers in particular to do unspeakable things. Even without knowledge of who they really were, the crew of the Enterprise-D were no fools, nor were they butchers with (far) superior weapons. MacDuff's deception was uncovered, and Lysian Central Command was spared.

Warmonger Admiral Marcus

On the side of the 'Narada incursion,' different events led to different outcomes with the same people. We don't know much about Prime Admiral Marcus, but over in what others call 'Kelvin,' he conspired to put Starfleet and the Federation on a warpath with the Klingons, believing war was all-but-inevitable anyway.

In that timeline, Marcus found the sleeper ship, and woke up Khan Noonien Singh. Marcus blackmailed Khan (now 'John Harrison') into designing new ships and weapons systems for Starfleet — notably the USS Vengeance — upon pain of injury to the other Augments.

Khan rebelled and then compelled Section 31 officer Thomas Harewood to blow up the Kelvin Memorial Archive — itself a secret Section 31 facility — in London. Khan continued his rampage, killing Marcus in the most horrific fashion possible along the way.

Landru (And Other Computers)

We'll make this one relatively quick, as 'evil computers' or 'AI gone wrong' could be icebergs all to themselves. In fact, the galaxy was so littered with sentient machines who wanted nothing but death and/or subjugation that, by 2381, the Daystrom Institute already had a whole lab dedicated to 'Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage,' study, and rehabilitation. That year, AGIMUS and Peanut Hamper became the latest inmates, alongside the aptly named Tyrannikillicus.

AGIMUS himself had conned and connived his way into lording over an entire planet, launching them into a hundred-year civil war with 'murder drones'. He did it again, however briefly, to the inhabitants of Plymeria.

Long before AGIMUS, there was Landru, a machine built by, and named after, Landru, once leader of planet Beta III millennia ago. Landru (the computer) forced its own kind of "peace and tranquillity" on "the Body" (i.e. the inhabitants of Beta III), interspersed with the annual "Festival" — their version of the Purge. No self-aware anything was a match for one of Captain Kirk's famous paradoxes, though by about a century or so later, the Betans had returned to worshipping Landru.

In all that, we've not even had time to talk about the god-like Vaal of Gamma Trianguli VI. We haven't had the chance to discuss the Custodian of Aldea, or the Master computer of the Shore Leave Planet, or Nomad, or V'Ger. There has been no room to debate the wayward M-5 multitronic unit, or to lay it all out about Lore.

Doctor Julian Bashir

At some point after the Eugenics Wars, genetic engineering was banned on Earth. Later, genetically engineered individuals were expressly forbidden from serving in Starfleet. Genetic enhancement was illegal under Federation law. Though there were some (often strange) exceptions, genetic research was restricted. Genetic engineering for purely medical purposes was also extremely limited.

There were those within Starfleet and the Federation who sought to circumvent the ban. Doctor Julian Bashir was one notable example. As a child, his parents had taken him to a clinic on Adigeon Prime to undergo DNA resequencing in a process known as "accelerated critical neural pathway formation".

Bashir's parents were responsible for his genetic 'enhancements,' but it was Bashir himself who falsified his way into Starfleet. In the 23rd century, Una Chin-Riley, an Illyrian and first officer to Captain Pike, had hidden her genetic status in order to serve. Thankfully, both Bashir and Una won their right to remain.

Winn Adami

Where to even begin? Winn Adami craved power. She would stop at little to grab it. By 2369, after the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor, Winn was already a Vedek, but she had her eye firmly set on becoming kai. That same year, she plotted to create enough of a brouhaha around Keiko O'Brien's new school that Vedek Bareil would be forced to come to the Station. That way, her lacky Neela could try to assassinate him. Of course, there was no evidence to make any formal link back to Winn.

A little later, Winn quietly aided Minister Jaro Essa in his attempted coup against the Bajoran Provisional Government, all with the promise that she would be kai. In 2370, Winn implicated Bareil in the Kendra Valley Massacre. He had to drop out of the running for kai to protect the memory of the 'real' collaborator, for want of a better word — Kai Opaka.

As kai (finally!), Winn would eventually commit to the most heinous of conspiracies in collaboration with former enemy and occupier, Gul Dukat. Both plotted, and failed, to release the Pah-wraiths from the Fire Caves. Had they succeeded, the so-called 'Restoration of Bajor' would have meant death for all, or most, on the planet, and across the Alpha Quadrant.

UAPs & Aliens

Before Vulcan survey ship the T'Plana-Hath set down in Bozeman, Montana on 5th April 2063, UAPs (formerly UFOs) were the focus of many alien conspiracy theories. Were these 'Unidentified Aerial (or Anomalous) Phenomena' in fact extraterrestrial craft? We touched on the subject in our entry on Roswell in tier one, but beyond the Ferengi, there were several other-worldly visitations to pre-warp Earth.

In 1937, pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean during a round-the-world flight. Despite an extensive search, neither they nor any trace of their twin-engine plane were ever found. Though speculation abounded, their disappearance remained a mystery for centuries.

That mystery was solved by the USS Voyager on its way through the Delta Quadrant. A theory mocked at the time, Earhart and Noonan had actually been abducted by aliens called the Briori, as were many others for use as a labour force. Both Earhart and Noonan were amongst eight from the 1930s still left in stasis chambers when Voyager arrived. In a similar manner, the Skagarans, a warp-capable species of unknown origin, abducted thousands of humans during the 19th century to serve as workers on a colony planet in the Delphic Expanse.

Alien abductions continued well into the 24th century. Whilst the Enterprise-D was exploring the Amargosa Diaspora, several crewmembers, including Commander Riker, were taken in their sleep and experimented upon by a group of solanogen-based lifeforms whose domain was a tertiary subspace manifold. Through their experiments, it seemed likely the mysterious aliens were looking for a way to survive in our universe. Either way, Lieutenant Hagler was dead, others traumatised.

Captain Picard was also once abducted by aliens, trapped in a room somewhere, and replaced on the Enterprise by a replica. Geordi La Forge was kidnapped by Romulans, and then by the Klingons and Soran. Data was captured as a prize by collector Kivas Fajo. A mishap during a mission on Malcor III saw Riker become the alien on an alien (pre-warp) world. That's not to forget all those times Q snapped people away without asking.

In a similar manner, the USS Voyager's arrival in the Delta Quadrant was the result of an alien kidnapping on the part of the Caretaker. The crew then suffered a set of painful experiments to see if they were compatible 'mates'. Later, all of Voyager would become "one big petri dish," having been silently invaded by the Srivani. Shortly before their return home, almost the entire crew of Voyager had their memories altered and were forced to work on alien planet Quarra as part of a vast criminal conspiracy.

Voyager itself was responsible for its own set of UFO/UAP sightings. In the mid-1990s, the ship was caught on camcorder as it flew through Earth's lower atmosphere. That footage was then sent to the news. Later, Voyager became a UAP of sorts for an alien civilisation over the course of several centuries — the mythic "Sky Ship" over Kelemane's planet "displaced in time". In 1969, Kirk's Enterprise also caused a UFO sighting and interception on the part of the US Air Force over the skies of Nebraska.

In terms of aliens on the ground, the Vulcans themselves had visited Earth's surface before First Contact, either deliberately or by accident. Three Vulcans, including T'Pol's second foremother T'Mir, survived a crash landing near the town of Carbon Creek in 1957. Rumour has it that T'Mir introduced humanity to Velcro, and that one of the Vulcans — Mestral — even chose to stay behind on Earth after rescue arrived. A little later in the 20th century, a pair of Vulcans were carrying out research on Earth when they were happened upon by a young child, later FBI agent Martin Wells.

Of course, Guinan had been on Earth in the 19th century, and was there again, or still, in the early 21st, as were Supervisor (and Romulan) Tallinn, Q, and a Borg Queen. During the same period, Lanthanite Pelia was also living on Earth, and had been for centuries, in fact. Let's not forget about Flint either, whatever he was. Then, there are all the aliens who have come to Earth to pose as gods and devils over the years — from Apollo to Satan (or Lucifer) himself.

Kira Is A Cardassian

Kira Nerys had spent a good chunk of her life fighting the Cardassians during the Occupation of Bajor. In 2371, she woke up to be told she had, in fact, been one of them all along — an undercover operative of the Obsidian Order, brought back home. Her name wasn't Kira. It was 'Iliana Ghemor'.

Naturally, even with the surgical alterations, even when she was shown what appeared to be her own corpse, Kira never believed a word of it. That was also the point. Entek, her Cardassian kidnapper, actually of the Obsidian Order, had made it all up. At least, he and the Order had made half of it up.

The true conspiracy was Entek's sadistic plot to 'flush out' Legate Tekeny Ghemor whom the Order suspected of being involved with the Cardassian dissident movement. The real Illiana was Ghemor's daughter, also of the Order, who had gone deep undercover on Bajor in 2361, her appearance and memories altered to appear Bajoran. She bore a striking resemblance to Kira.

Entek played on that resemblance, transforming Kira as he knew she would resist. The real Illiana would have regained her memories and cooperated. Eventually, Ghemor was forced to try to help Kira escape Cardassia, and in doing so, exposed his political allegiances. Sisko, Odo, and Garak intervened just in time.

The real Illiana's whereabouts remained unknown. But then, maybe Doctor Bashir was wrong about Kira's genetic structure. Perhaps Kira was Illiana all along. Failing that, there's still Beckett Mariner's conspiracy board!

The Pakled-Freeman Fabrication

The Pakleds weren't exactly what one might call the brightest torpedo in the spread. What they lacked in intelligence, they made up for in deviousness. Geordi La Forge found that out for himself in the mid-2360s. About fifteen years later, Captain Freeman of the USS Cerritos would have several run-ins with the dim-witted species.

Unbeknownst to the Federation, the Pakleds had been salvaging and stealing technology from a few dozen species, combining it all to create powerful 'Clumpships'. In 2380, a group of Pakled rebels began a series of attacks on the Federation. The USS Solvang was destroyed, and the Cerritos nearly went with it, but for some last minute heroics from the USS Titan.

Later, Starfleet began to suspect that "another player" might be involved in the Pakled attacks. The "puppet master" turned out to be Captain Dorg of the Klingon Defence Force. He had been channelling weapons and information to the rebel Pakleds as part of his plan to destabilise the Federation and claim victory for the Empire that had apparently "lost [its] way".

Dorg had notably provided a 'Varuvian bomb' — two Varuvian bombs, in fact — to the Pakleds. The first was meant for Earth, but the Pakleds wasted it on an asteroid. The second they used to blow up their homeworld in a dubious effort to get the Federation to move them to a new, resource-rich planet.

The Pakleds managed to frame Captain Freeman for the attack. She was arrested and falsely accused of conspiring with Klingon extremists to plant the Varuvian device in 'Big Strong City'. Thankfully, a crack team led by Captain Morgan Bateson, and including Commander Tuvok, pursued a "known data fabricator" into the Romulan Neutral Zone in order to uncover the conspiracy.

The Paxan Pretext

On approach to a T-Tauri type star system in 2367, the Enterprise-D passed through an unstable wormhole, rendering everyone but Commander Data unconscious for apparently just 30 seconds.

When the crew woke up, it seemed like the whole ship was somehow conspiring against them. Doctor Crusher's Diomedian scarlet moss had a full day's growth. Ensign Locklin's electrolyte levels were off by the same amount. The ship's chronometer had been altered, and Data was clearly lying, even actively thwarting investigation efforts.

This wasn't a conspiracy of one (android). In fact, the entire crew had conspired against themselves. There was no wormhole, but there was a missing day. The T-Tauri system was actually home to xenophobic species the Paxans, who categorically refused that outsiders have any knowledge of their existence. Their usual method to ensure this failed on the crew of the Enterprise-D. Biochemical stasis was untuned to positronic brains.

With death the alternative, Captain Picard negotiated another option — a memory wipe. The rest of that missing day was then spent erasing all evidence of the Paxans and giving strange orders to Data. In the end, too many clues were left behind to follow. But, you know what they say, if at first you don't succeed, conspire, conspire again.

The Equinox Cover-Up

At first glance, the USS Equinox was 'just' another Starfleet ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker. With only a Nova-class, a science vessel, built for short term research missions, and limited to warp eight, Captain Ransom and crew had then seemingly pulled off the practically impossible. They had crossed the same distance as Voyager, but with nowhere near the same resources to begin with.

When both ships met, the Equinox was under attack. Outwardly the aggressor, the extra-dimensional nucleogenic lifeforms were, in fact, merely defending themselves. Ransom and co. had captured and murdered the aliens en masse to use as fuel to enhance their warp drive.

The Equinox crew conspired to hide their dark truth from the crew of Voyager, playing happy reunions all the while. Quietly, they made plans to continue their experiments, to take Voyager's field generator, and be on their merry way back to the Alpha Quadrant at best speed. Found out, relieved of duty, and confined in quarters, they plotted their escape.

Back on the Equinox, Ransom schemed and manoeuvred every which way to avoid recapture by Captain Janeway. He used Voyager's EMH as a pawn to extract information from Seven of Nine. The Equinox EMH was passing information from Voyager, having aided in his crew's escape. "No choice," was Ransom's dictum. Only towards the end did he make the right one.

Ba'ku Relocation

In the depths of the Briar Patch — or the 'Klach D'kel Brakt,' if you prefer the Klingon name — lay a very special planet. The metaphasic radiation of its rings could continuously regenerate a person's genetic structure, offering a form of immortality and perfect health. In essence, the planet was the fabled 'Fountain of Youth'.

It's not difficult to see why the Federation would want to get their hands on "metaphasics". As Admiral Dougherty noted, it could "help billions," double life spans, and lead to a whole new medical science. The only problem was that collecting the radiation would make the planet uninhabitable, and that would be more than a little unfortunate for the people living there.

And so, Dougherty and Ru'afo of the Son'a contrived to secretly relocate the 600 Ba'ku to another world first by use of a cloaked holoship. (Where's the Treaty of Algeron when you need it?) They did have the approval of the Federation Council, too, inasmuch as the Federation Council were told the full story.

Moving 600 might well have been worth it, but Captain Picard wasn't in the mood for moral relativism, and especially not for counting. With the full backing of his crew, he led an insurrection against Dougherty and the Son'a to 'save' the Ba'ku and their planet. Adding to the plot, the Son'a and the Ba'ku were, in reality, one and the same people. The conspiracy was also a "blood feud".

Now, it's time to jump down below the surface into the icy waters of tier three.