Top Five Times When Star Trek Was the Darkest Timeline - Moving Pictures

Since its debut in the 1960s, Star Trek has been a clarion call for positivity. People of all creeds and races working together for the betterment of society, with nobody wanting for anything. Its idealised view of the universe, however, wasn’t always the shining beacon it could be.

Every now and then throughout all series of Trek, we have seen a glimpse of what could happen if events were slightly different. So here are the times that Star Trek WAS the darkest timeline.

The Next Generation — Parallels

Worf was thrown into a dimension-hopping adventure and visited a bunch of different dimensions. However, the darkest one he didn’t actually get to visit. Towards the end of the episode, the Enterprise from multiple realities were trying to fix the dimension hopping.

There was one, however, which didn’t want things to return to normal, where “normal” meant a galaxy which had been ravaged by the Borg. Low on supplies and even lower on allies, it’s probably for the best that the ship exploded…

The Original Series — Mirror, Mirror

The very first “Mirror Universe” episode introduced us to a Federation that was focused on conquest rather than exploration. The command crew of the ISS Enterprise tortured (and killed) prisoners, and you progressed in rank through literal backstabbing; Spock even kicked off the “evil twins have facial hair” trope.

It was a concept that would be looked at again and again in the shows and comics, painting a very bleak picture for everyone.

Enterprise — Twilight

Waking up 12 years after being injured on the Enterprise, Archer discovers that his entire race is made up of around 6,000 survivors. The Xindi had completed their plot to destroy Earth and were hunting down any surviving humans.

The rest of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant species were safe from the Xindi; they were literally just after humankind. Of course, thanks to some quantum/time travel shenanigans, things were brought back to normal, but genocide definitely belongs on this list.

Voyager — Year of Hell

Whilst travelling through the Delta Quadrant, Voyager was made aware of — and then forgot about — the Krenim. A crew of them manned a timeship which was trying to make changes to the timeline, bringing their race back from the brink of defeat against their enemies.

Voyager, which had equipped itself with shields effective against the effects of the changes, was hounded endlessly by the Krenim for trespassing in their space. The ship was so damaged at one point that nebula gases were seeping in through the environmental systems, and they only had one working bathroom! The timeline was reset when the ship was destroyed in a suicide run to destroy the timeship.

The Next Generation — Yesterday's Enterprise

In arguably one of the best episodes of TNG, we were finally shown one of the Enterprises that took the name after Kirk’s era, when a time anomaly sent the Enterprise-C into the future. Picard’s ship was dark, people were colder to each other and we truly discovered what a Federation perpetually at war with the Klingons would look like. It also resurrected Tasha Yar, though she led the Enterprise-C back through the anomaly to put things right.

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Of course, there have been plenty of upbeat and bright episodes of Star Trek over the years, so it’s not all doom and gloom. But, you know, occasionally it is.