Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise.
We’ve recently talked about some of my Star Trek “head canon” – i.e. theories and ideas I have about Star Trek that aren’t confirmed on screen, but make sense to me! Click or tap here to check out that piece, by the way… I talk about things like cloaking devices, the Borg, and more. If that article was about things in Star Trek that aren’t canon but should be, then today we’re gonna do the exact opposite! These are ten Star Trek storylines that I fully believe should be non-canon.
Before we go any further, a couple of important caveats. First of all, this is a controversial subject! As Trekkies, we all have different opinions about what makes a fun and successful Star Trek story… and that’s okay. There should be enough room within the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion and disagreement without spiralling into arguments. Everything we’re going to talk about is the entirely subjective opinion of one Star Trek fan, and I’m well aware that my opinion will be the minority one in some cases. As I’ve said before: no theory or opinion is worth getting angry or worked up over!
Image Credit: Forgotten Trek/Frogland Archive
It should go without saying, but none of these stories or episodes will ever actually be “removed” from Star Trek’s canon. The title is really a tongue-in-cheek way of me saying that I either dislike a particular storyline or feel that its presence in the broader Star Trek universe is a stumbling block for other narratives that I prefer. This isn’t like that awful clickbait article that did the rounds a few months ago claiming that “Discovery is non-canon now!!1!” This is just for fun; a thought experiment for people like us who like to spend a bit more time with the Star Trek franchise after the credits have rolled.
With all that being said, if you aren’t in the right headspace to get into some potentially controversial Star Trek topics, this is your last chance to nope out!
Let’s jump into the list.
Storyline #1:
The destruction of Romulus.
Star Trek ’09, Picard, Discovery, et al.
In Star Trek ’09, the destruction of Romulus was kind of haphazardly thrown in as a way to justify Spock’s involvement in the story and tee up Nero as a villain. And at the time that film was being written, I guess it’s not unfair to say that a full-scale revival of the Star Trek franchise on the small screen seemed beyond unlikely! But after Star Trek was brought back and returned not only to the prime timeline but to the late 24th Century (and beyond), the destruction of Romulus has proven to be a difficult storyline for subsequent productions to navigate.
Picard was the first to pick up this story thread in its first season, showing a few flashbacks to Admiral Picard and his Romulan rescue plan. Romulan refugees also cropped up in Season 1… but the show didn’t really know what to do with them or how to handle the Romulans as a whole after the loss of their homeworld. The character of Elnor could’ve been a great point-of-view character for exploring this post-destruction Romulan Empire… but Picard’s writers had other ideas, and the character was abandoned.
Discovery brought back the idea of Romulan-Vulcan reunification in the far future, and managed at least one creditable effort with that premise. But again, this story was a one-off and didn’t really go much further, even when Vulcan leader T’Rina became a recurring character. The fact that Romulus had been destroyed – centuries in the past from this vantage point – didn’t really come up in a big way, either, and I reckon Discovery’s Ni’Var storyline could’ve worked just as well without it.
The Romulans are one of Star Trek’s most iconic villains – perhaps in third place behind only the Klingons and Borg. To destroy their homeworld – the core of their empire – for what was essentially a throwaway scene and the backstory of an over-the-top villain… I dunno. It feels extreme, which Star Trek ’09 was in some ways. But any stories set after the late 24th Century are now constrained by this massive narrative beat, and will arguably miss out on one of the franchise’s best villains. The Romulans are certainly one of Star Trek’s most shadowy, clandestine factions, and damaging them so severely that it would take them decades if not centuries to recover, while also impoverishing at least some of their survivors… it places real constraints on future stories.
Storyline #2:
Suspiciously human-like aliens on many different planets.
The Original Series
When we reach the final frontier and explore strange new worlds… we’re going to meet aliens and totally new forms of life. We aren’t going to encounter an exact duplicate of Earth, a planet where everyone dresses like it’s Germany in the 1930s, or a planet where whose inhabitants – who don’t look even remotely alien – think they’re living in Ancient Rome. In a word… these old episodes of The Original Series (and some from The Next Generation, too) aren’t sci-fi enough!
There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, of course: it was the ’60s, and The Original Series had a limited budget to work with. The show would use stages and props that had been built for other projects, or Paramount’s backlot, meaning explanations had to be found and aliens created to fit with those existing sets. There were also limitations to the prosthetics, puppets, and practical effects that could be designed and built, and with twenty-five episodes per season to write… some liberties had to be taken with the way aliens looked and behaved.
But for me… let’s just say I’ve always been less keen on these too-human alien societies. I think there’s an interesting head canon explanation (that I go into in more detail in a standalone piece that you can find by clicking or tapping here) that basically says that these are lost or forgotten human colonies from the early days of pre-Federation spaceflight. But that only works if you buy into my theory! As presented on screen, we’re meant to take these societies to be Earth-like aliens… and I just don’t think that works if we’re taking Star Trek seriously as a sci-fi universe.
Space is big and space is weird – so there are bound to be incomprehensible things out there for our heroes to encounter. But too often, especially in The Original Series, we’d get these “aliens” that were not only physically indistinguishable from humans, but whose societies and even planetary geography was identical to some part of human history, too. Don’t get me wrong, many of these episodes are a ton of fun and they’re part of what made Star Trek what it is today. But I just don’t think they have a place in the franchise any more… and they haven’t for decades.
Storyline #3:
Most of the mission to 2024.
Picard Season 2
I’ve had a piece in my writing pile for a couple of years tentatively titled “Star Trek: Picard – The Movie,” in which I’m going to argue that Picard’s second season (which I generally didn’t like) would work so much better as a cut-down two-hour-ish movie rather than a ten-episode season. I’d keep the attack on the Stargazer and the arrival of the Borg, I’d keep the Confederation timeline and the Borg Queen’s corpse, and I’d keep Agnes’ assimilation. But after that I’d cut out almost all of the 21st Century stuff, including all the revelations about Picard’s past and Q being on his deathbed, streamline the story by saying Q’s real objective was to prevent the mysterious anomaly from destroying the Federation, and launch Picard and his friends back to the bridge of the Stargazer.
For me, Picard’s second season spent way, way too long wallowing in a boring 21st Century environment that robbed the story of basically everything that feels like Star Trek, and I didn’t enjoy it. There was the kernel of an interesting idea, with Picard having to confront childhood trauma. But that storyline completely fell apart, it didn’t expand our understanding of Jean-Luc Picard as a character in any meaningful way, and parts of it felt almost like “torture porn;” throwing Picard (and other characters like Raffi and Rios) into a series of traumatic events that served no real narrative function. Picard’s story just didn’t give us much of anything, Raffi’s was undone with seconds to spare at the end of the season, and Rios’ story was written in a weirdly contradictory way to facilitate his exit from the series.
So I’d cut out all of that, and I’d streamline Picard’s second season into a much more reasonable two-hour movie. There’d still be time for what I said in my review was one of the best and most frightening presentations of the Borg that we’d seen in decades, there’d still be a way for Q to play a part, and we could hop over to the Confederation timeline for a little while to get a Mirror Universe-inspired alternate reality look at Picard and Earth. But the mission to the 21st Century could be seriously cut back to only a few minutes, with perhaps one objective for Picard and the gang: to ensure the Europa Mission launches on cue.
I really ought to finish writing up my longer piece on this idea, because I can’t fully do justice to it in just a few paragraphs! Stay tuned here on the website, because I daresay I’ll get around to it one of these days! For now, suffice to say that Picard’s random wandering through 21st Century Los Angeles (and a suspiciously California-like France) should be dumped.
Storyline #4:
Captain Archer versus the Borg.
Enterprise Season 2: Regeneration
I genuinely enjoy Regeneration as a one-off episode, and I think it was a fun idea to bring the Borg into Enterprise… even if it was pretty obvious that the reason for doing so was to boost the show’s flagging ratings. But stepping back and thinking about what it means for the history of Borg-Federation contact, Regeneration really screws with a timeline that has already been meddled with!
There are three angles to approach this from, and all of them are bad. Firstly, we have what this storyline says about Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E. First Contact made clear that Picard had ordered his ship hidden so as not to accidentally interfere with humanity’s first warp flight and the Vulcans’ arrival on Earth. But apparently they totally ignored, forgot about, or didn’t think to scan for Borg debris from the ship they’d destroyed. It presents Picard and co. as incompetent at best when it comes to cultural contamination, and given how meticulous we know he is… it just doesn’t track that there’d be all this debris left behind, including fully intact and functional Borg drones.
Next, the Borg sent a message to the Collective in the Delta Quadrant, basically making the whole First Contact–Regeneration story a time-loop paradox. It also seriously muddles the question of how and when the Borg first encountered humanity. Was it when they received this message? Was it when they assimilated the Hansen family in the 2340s? Voyager had already messed with the Borg quite a lot thanks to Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen, so this additional complication was not helpful! Turning the story of humanity’s first contact with the Borg into this kind of paradox is not what I wanted to see.
Finally, there’s what this story says about Starfleet. Captain Archer encountered a race of cybernetic beings who sent a message to the Delta Quadrant. Years later, the Federation took in El-Aurian refugees whose planet had been attacked by the Borg. Yet for some reason, by the 24th Century, all knowledge of both of these events was suppressed, deleted, or just not taught at the Academy. Given how hard Archer and his crew had to work to stop a handful of drones, you’d think they’d have recorded the details of what they did and what they were up against so that future Starfleet explorers wouldn’t be starting from scratch. This is a typical “prequel problem” of the kind Enterprise created on more than one occasion. For all of these reasons combined, though, Regeneration’s 22nd Century Borg storyline joins this list.
Storyline #5:
Warp 10 as a hard limit on travel.
The Next Generation, Voyager Season 2: Threshold, et al.
Star Trek has been pretty inconsistent with how warp speeds and travel times are depicted. I have a head canon explanation that basically says Starfleet re-designates warp factors as newer and faster engines are created… but that only goes part of the way to plugging some of the apparent plot holes that almost six decades’ worth of stories have accumulated! Long story short, most Star Trek productions from The Next Generation onward present warp one as the speed of light and warp ten as an unachievable goal; a speed that would allow instantaneous travel anywhere in the galaxy. But that doesn’t fit with what we see on screen.
What is “transwarp?” Is it speeds faster than warp 10? The Borg seem to be able to travel beyond warp 10 through their transwarp network, potentially cutting the time needed to reach Earth from the fringes of the Delta Quadrant from decades to hours. Then there’s the notorious Voyager episode Threshold, which saw Tom Paris and Captain Janeway travel faster than warp 10 (though still not fast enough to reach Earth), before mutating into salamanders.
I think it would be so much better if Star Trek dropped this idea that warp 10 is a kind of hard limit. Speeds beyond what we understand as warp 9.9999 are clearly possible, as we see the Borg, the Kelvan Empire, Arturis’ species, and many others are able to travel far faster than Starfleet. So why not drop this idea in favour of new warp factors – perhaps a show or film set in the Picard era could introduce the first warp 12 engine, for example, and Star Trek could grow from there.
Threshold as an episode can pretty much be written off, too! I don’t think anyone will miss it. Recent developments, like the Kelvin timeline’s transwarp beaming and Discovery’s spore drive, can also be used to travel great distances in a short period of time. There’s potential for future stories to pick up these threads, too.
Storyline #6:
The Prophets are responsible for Sisko’s birth.
Deep Space Nine Season 7: Image in the Sand + Shadows and Symbols
Star Trek has never believed in things like fate or destiny, and for me, this storyline about the Prophets deliberately conceiving Benjamin Sisko so he could one day become their emissary is dangerously close to that idea. It also turns Sisko’s entire arc across Deep Space Nine into a giant predestination paradox; he became the emissary because the Prophets created him. It challenges and undermines really his entire personality all for the sake of having a twist in a couple of episodes.
Part of what was interesting about Deep Space Nine was the intersection of religion and science. The Bajorans worshipped the “gods” of the wormhole, but Sisko and the rest of the Starfleet crew saw them as just another alien race to make first contact with. And Star Trek has always leaned more on the science angle than the religious whenever questions like this have come up; as the audience, we’ve always been on Starfleet’s side, too, seeing entities and aliens like these as another race in the galaxy – not deities who are responsible for guiding the lives of our heroes. Deep Space Nine ventured into spirituality in a big way, and until Seasons 6 and 7 mostly stayed on the right side of that line.
These episodes kicked off a longer story arc across Season 7 which also involved Kai Winn and Dukat. The conflict between the Pah-Wraiths and Prophets took on this Christian apocalyptic tone, with Sisko akin to an almost Christ-like figure, predetermined from before his conception to play a pivotal role in this struggle. While this story was interesting in its own right, it’s also inherently un-Star Trek in a significant way.
Because the Prophets exist outside of linear time, that gave Deep Space Nine’s writers a lot of wiggle-room. But for me, this paradox was a bridge too far. Star Trek can and should tackle religious themes, but in my view it works best when stories take a more detached and scientific approach to these topics.
Storyline #7:
The Klingon-Augment virus.
Trials and Tribble-ations, Enterprise Season 4, et al.
I don’t believe that every single aspect of Star Trek demands an on-screen explanation. The Klingons that Kirk met in The Original Series look different from those that we’d later see in The Motion Picture and from The Search for Spock onward – and that’s okay. Fans could make head canon explanations if they wanted, but there was just no need for an in-universe explanation of this change in prosthetic makeup… especially not one so convoluted.
The origins of this can be traced back to the otherwise excellent Trials and Tribble-ations – the Deep Space Nine episode made for the Star Trek franchise’s 30th anniversary. That story saw the crew of DS9 interacting with Kirk’s crew, using newly-developed editing techniques to integrate new characters with old footage. It was an incredibly creative episode and a fun story… but it came with a problem! At one point, a couple of characters make reference to the way Klingons look, asking Worf about it. This was the first on-screen acknowledgement that something had changed.
Enterprise, several years later, took this idea and ran with it, crafting an intricate (and pretty dumb) multi-epiosde arc that introduced the Klingon-Augment virus: a genetically-engineered creation that infected Klingons with human DNA, physically changing their appearances. In the writers’ minds, this “closed a plot hole,” but I would argue very strongly that it was one that never needed to be closed. Even if it did, and even if we desperately want to find a way to acknowledge the change in makeup used for the Klingons with an in-universe explanation… I just found this particular story to be convoluted and weak.
More recent Star Trek projects have, thankfully, quietly dropped this idea. The Kelvin films and Discovery admittedly had their own issues with re-interpreting the aesthetics of the Klingons, but Strange New Worlds – which is set in the 23rd Century and has featured the Klingons on more than one occasion – has basically reset the way they look. There’s no reason to bring up this idea again – and I sincerely hope Star Trek can continue to walk away from it!
Storyline #8:
The Burn (as part of the prime timeline).
Discovery Seasons 3-5
Discovery’s second season probably had some of its best individual performances, thanks to the inclusions of Captain Pike and Spock. But for me, most of Discovery’s best episodes actually came after the series shot forward into the far future, leaving behind much of what we’re familiar with in the Star Trek galaxy. Unfortunately, though, Discovery’s writers and creatives wanted the show to focus more on Burnham’s increasingly soap opera-like personal relationships and attempts at depicting characters overcoming traumatic events (that mostly didn’t work as intended). As a result, we didn’t spend as much time as I’d have liked with either the Federation or other factions in this potentially-interesting setting.
Another piece I’ll have to write up in full one day is whether Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” idea worked or even came close to working. But for now, I think we can at least make the case that the Burn is a pretty depressing future for the prime timeline, and that pushing Discovery’s far future into some kind of pocket universe or alternate reality wouldn’t be a terrible idea for the franchise as a whole.
I’m hopeful that there will be more Star Trek on our screens in the years ahead – and that at least some of it will return to the 24th and early 25th Centuries. But any show or film using that setting (or really any pre-Burn setting) becomes, by default, a prequel to Discovery’s third season. That means, in the backs of our minds, we know that no matter what our new heroes might do, however they might find creative ways to save the day… the Federation and much of the galaxy is going to end up devastated in a few hundred years anyway. It puts a brake on future Star Trek stories in a way that we haven’t really seen before.
If Discovery had done more with the idea of rebuilding the Federation and restoring Starfleet values to the galaxy, that feeling would persist but it would be somewhat lessened, I feel. But because that didn’t happen, the Burn and its aftermath really are little more than fluff; background details for other, less-interesting stories to play out in front of. Given the sheer scale of the Burn and the devastation it wrought… that’s not good enough for me. I don’t want to remove Discovery’s latter seasons entirely, as there’s some good storytelling in there and some fun episodes. But finding some way to push it out of the prime timeline and into some kind of alternate reality… let’s just say it would be a net positive. Maybe in Starfleet Academy?
Storyline #9:
Neelix’s romance with Kes.
Voyager Seasons 1 & 2
This is an uncomfortable one… but Neelix’s love for Kes in some early episodes of Voyager didn’t have the cutsey or romantic vibes that the writers may have been hoping for. The age gap between Neelix and Kes made the whole thing feel a bit… icky. Thankfully it wasn’t in focus for too long, because if it had been I genuinely think it could’ve ruined Neelix as a character.
Ocampans are a very short-lived species, and Kes was either one or two years old in Voyager’s premiere. The implications of that when considering Neelix’s feelings are just unpleasant, but even if you push that to the back of your mind, there’s no getting away from the fact that Kes is basically a teenager or young adult while Neelix is in the Talaxian equivalent of middle age.
We’d also see Neelix getting possessive of Kes, with episodes like Parturition and Twisted being prime examples of this. The contrast between Neelix’s usual jovial, friendly persona and the jealousy and anger he could feel has genuinely uncomfortable undertones. For anyone who’s ever been in a toxic relationship with a narcissistic or possessive partner, there are parallels in this presentation of the two sides of Neelix that could be triggering.
I wish we’d got to spend more time with Kes; in my view, she was unfairly dumped from Voyager. In recent years there’s been speculation as to exactly what happened behind-the-scenes, informed, at least in part, by actress Jennifer Lien’s struggles and issues. I don’t really want to get into all of that, but suffice to say that I would have happily kept Kes as part of Voyager’s roster if I’d had the option. But I’m glad that this Neelix romance angle didn’t stick around beyond the first couple of seasons – and that it was only present in a big way in a handful of stories.
Storyline #10:
The Borg Collective has a leader.
(And she’s weirdly obsessed with a couple of random humans for some reason).
First Contact, Dark Frontier, et al.
This could be one of my most controversial Star Trek “hot takes,” but… the Borg Queen kind of ruins the Borg. What made the Collective so scary in its first appearances was that it was akin to a force of nature; incomprehensible, unstoppable, and unable to be reasoned with. The Borg operated as one hive mind, with no individuals or individuality, united in common purpose: the pursuit of technology and an unknowable idea of “perfection.”
The Borg Queen was created because the producers/writers of First Contact believed that the film needed a villain for Picard and Data to wrangle with – a unique individual Borg who could have more personality than any drone. But this completely misunderstands what the Borg represented and what made them so frightening. In doing so, it robbed the faction of one of its most important and unique features. The Borg Queen’s apparent obsession with Picard, Seven of Nine, and humanity as a whole developed from this… and really takes a lot away from the original concept of the Borg as this incomprehensible, uncaring, unknowable adversary.
A big part of many Star Trek episodes (so much so that it’s become a cliché) is “they were only trying to communicate!” Many of the franchise’s stories present our heroes with apparently hostile aliens or scenarios, only to learn later that what they wanted was to talk or be understood. Other stories introduce a villain who can ultimately be reasoned with, even if they initially seemed hell-bent on destruction. The Borg’s original presentation, prior to the introduction of the Borg Queen, precluded even the pretense of negotiation, compromise, or really any kind of meaningful communication. The Borg had one objective, and there was no way to dissuade them from it. They viewed humanity and the Federation as a resource, and nothing more.
By introducing a Borg leader, someone who has a unique personality (even though she claims to be a manifestation of the Collective; I’m not buying that based on how she comes across on screen) the most unique trait the Borg had has been erased. And what replaces it is little more than a generic “I’m evil for no reason and I love it” scenery-chewing bad guy. The Borg, prior to the Queen’s appearance in First Contact, were so much better, so much more frightening, and completely unique.
So that’s it… for now!
We’ve talked about ten Star Trek storylines that should be non-canon… at least in my completely subjective opinion!
I hope this has been interesting. It’s certainly been a bit of fun for me to revisit some of these episodes and stories. Some, like Enterprise’s Borg episode, are totally fine in isolation… but start to create problems when you think about them in the wider context of the Star Trek franchise. Others, like Neelix and Kes as a couple, didn’t work from day one and I’d be happy to just pretend the whole thing never happened! None of these storylines will ever actually be “removed” from Star Trek’s canon, though, so if one of your favourites is on the list, don’t panic!
We’ve talked about questions of canon quite a lot in the past few weeks, and I’ve had a lot of fun writing about some of these subjects. My “Borg teasing” theory is something that I’ve been kicking around for literally decades, and I also had fun adding to my list of minor things in Star Trek that bug me! I don’t know what’s next – perhaps a longer write-up of one or two of the points on this list could make for a fun article or essay. Stay tuned, though, because there’s plenty more Star Trek to come here on the website in the weeks and months ahead!
Most of the TV shows and films referenced above are available to stream on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The Star Trek franchise is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all episodes, films, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 