By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has spent pieces of its third season building up a mystery, a mystery that may lead us to one of the biggest unanswered questions in Star Trek: The Next Generation. That question is: Who were the aliens in “Conspiracy?”
It’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ fifth episode of the third season, titled “Through the Lens of Time,” that began hinting at a return to the story of “Conspiracy.” The episode involves an archeological dig where a crewman becomes controlled by an evil, parasitic creature with a penchant for galactic domination. The creature Captain Pike and his crew end up battling seems a lot like the ones from “Conspiracy.”
Conspiracy” was the 25th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, airing May 9, 1988. In it, Captain Picard is warned by an old friend about a covert takeover within Starfleet. The Enterprise investigates and uncovers parasitic aliens controlling high-ranking officers.
The climax features a graphic scene in which an alien-controlled admiral is killed, revealing a large creature inside his chest. It’s one of the most violent moments in Star Trek history. The parasites are destroyed, but a signal is sent into deep space, hinting at their return.
Except they never do return, and Star Trek never mentions these aliens again. They don’t even have a name.
In the real world of production decisions, they’d planned for “Conspiracy” to become a show-spanning subplot. However, that was scrapped, and they turned it into the Borg instead.
But now they could be back in the world of Trek. Maybe we should start calling them the Vezda, because that’s the name the Enterprise crew has attached to the parasitic aliens encountered in the fifth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. We only get a glimpse of them, but not only do they behave like the “Conspiracy” aliens, they look a lot like them.
In Strange New Worlds, we learn there’s some sort of dimensional well where many of these beings are being held. If they escaped, they’d try to take over the Galaxy because they are pure, malevolent evil. Again, this sounds a lot like the “Conspiracy” aliens.
The planet the well is on is a dead world called Vadia IX, a place we learned in a previous episode may be the original home world of the Q. One more Next Generation connection to throw into the mix.
There are two big differences between these aliens and the ones in “Conspiracy.” The first is that we never saw the small nub that protrudes from the neck of someone being controlled, which showed up in The Next Generation. The second is that there was no mention of the Next Gen aliens leaving their victims brain dead, though that’s what happens in Strange New Worlds.
But the way in which this Strange New Worlds parasite took over its host was unusual; it was escaping from its prison, it wasn’t in its victim very long, and nobody really examined the host body to look for that sign in the episode. There wasn’t exactly time for it to settle into its host.
Maybe these Vezda aren’t the same creature, but if they are, Strange New Worlds may be pulling at a thread left hanging by Star Trek since The Next Generation’s very first season. With five episodes left in season 3 and one of the creatures still sitting in the Enterprise’s transporter pattern buffer, there’s a good chance we’ll know more soon.
