Star Trek loves to make use of as many sci-fi tropes as possible, although the franchise thankfully limits itself to only a few at a time. While I’ve always loved watching the various Starfleet crews exploring the Prime Timeline, I’m always especially excited when it’s a multiverse episode. Star Trek has showcased countless alternate realities throughout its 60-year history, but they don’t all get equal attention. Far from it. While settings like the Mirror Universe have been pretty heavily chronicled, some of the more compelling alternate realities can sometimes have barely a minute of screen time.
Whether these divergent worlds are the result of a relatively recent event that caused the Prime Timeline to splinter off into a new branch, or an occurrence that’s buried centuries in a reality’s past, I’ve always found it fascinating to see what’s changed and what’s the same. Furthermore, I’m a firm believer that just because a seemingly undesirable future is “fixed” during a Star Trek episode, it isn’t erased from the timeline. My theory is that they’re still out there, and the characters simply return to their original universes. So, even though I doubt the franchise will ever revisit these alternate realities, it’s fun to think about their untapped storytelling potential.
Honorable Mentions
- Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s two-part finale – This wildly different future from the one we got is filled with potential, but I also like that the story stayed centered on Patrick Stewart’s character.
- The Universe From “The Visitor” – Deep Space Nine brilliantly explores a creative take on Jake’s (Cirroc Lofton) life without his father, but this timeline fulfills its purpose very well within the space of a single episode.
- Strange New Worlds‘ “Balance of Terror” remake – A fantastic episode with a fascinating divergence point, but pairing it with the Original Series effort it’s adapted from is the superior option over exploring the alternate future in SNW.
The Deep Space 9 Descendants Universe
There is often an impressive sense of scale to Star Trek‘s multiverse episodes, but Deep Space Nine‘s “Children of Time” is a massive outlier in this respect. Several of the show’s main characters meet their own descendants, who have come into existence since the USS Defiant crashed there 200 years earlier. Kira (Nana Visitor) and the others are left with the heartwrenching decision of whether to prevent their own demise or allow this future to go ahead so that their descendants can continue to exist. While arguably more of a time-travel episode than the exploration of an alternate reality, both are technically true. As I discussed earlier, the two needn’t be mutually exclusive. The existence of a universe where the DS9 crew has multiple descendants is, in essence, no different from a universe where the Federation never formed. “Children of Time” is a self-contained masterpiece, but elements of the episode’s setting feel unexplored from a sci-fi perspective.
The Borg Domination Universe
Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Parallels” turned out to be exactly the kind of episode it sounds like. Michael Dorn’s Worf spends most of the installment sliding through various alternate realities. Most are quite similar, and revolve around subtle shifts in inter-character dynamics. Worf is married to Troi (Marina Sirtis) in several of them, for example. However, other worlds in “Parallels” are profoundly different. Near the end, we get a brief glimpse of a desperate Enterprise-D, led by an even-more-heavily-bearded version of Riker (Jonathan Frakes). The ship is on the brink of falling apart after a prolonged resistance effort against the Borg. In that universe, the Federation fell long ago, and the Borg’s total domination of the Alpha Quadrant is imminent. It would have been grim, but I can’t help but think this reality deserved more than just a few seconds of screen time.
The Federation-Less 23rd Century Universe
In Strange New Worlds‘ “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” La’An (Christina Chong) finds herself not in an alternate future, but an alternate present. That’s much rarer than the alternative in Star Trek. The universe in which she lands lacks a Federation and a Starfleet, with both being replaced by the United Earth Fleet. A human-only spacefaring organization brings to mind the villainous, xenophobic Terran Empire from the Mirror Universe. The UEF isn’t like that, though. It’s more like the Terrans still opted for peace rather than domination, and the galaxy’s other species also kept to their own sects. Sadly, most of this Strange New Worlds effort focuses on a 21st-century storyline that aims to prevent that version of the 23rd century from ever coming to pass. It’s a shame; I’d like to see more of it.
The Xindi Victory Universe
The conflict between the Xindi and Starfleet is one of Star Trek: Enterprise‘s biggest storylines. The biggest issue was that, because the show is set before The Original Series, it was always obvious that the Xindi would lose. Otherwise, they’d have appeared quite heavily in the project that started it all in the 1960s. Still, Enterprise‘s “Twilight” found a great way to show what the Star Trek universe could have looked like if the Xindi had emerged victorious. Told through the eyes of a confused and older Captain Archer (Scott Bakula), “Twilight” offers a fascinating examination of Enterprise NX-01 serving as a refugee vessel as the Xindi try to snuff out the last of the resistance. This could easily have been an entire season, or at least a two-parter. The original timeline is restored by the end of the episode, though.
The Purple Universe
Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 was something of a multiverse epic. There were several alternate realities I could choose to include in this list, but it’s the more gimmicky ones I found myself more strongly drawn to. After all, most Star Trek shows wouldn’t dare attempt anything quite so silly as the Purple Universe. “Fully Dilated” is a creative crossover with The Next Generation, using the latter’s ship and some of its characters – only they’re all purple. Certain comments from the Purple characters suggest a conscious obsession with the color, rather than it being an unavoidable part of their native reality. On the other hand, purple does also seem to be an intrinsic element of that universe’s quantum makeup. I have to know more! Why purple?!
PURPLE DATA: “What color is your Enterprise?”
CAPTAIN FREEMAN: “No color, just neutral gray.”
PURPLE DATA: “That seems like a missed opportunity when purple is an option.”
– Purple Data and Captain Freeman in Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 5, Episode 7, “Fully Dilated.”
The Extended Klingon War Universe
One of the most iconic Star Trek multiverse episodes is The Next Generation‘s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” The installment understandably treats its new version of the 24th century as unsavory and something that needs rectifying. If it weren’t for Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and her El-Aurian intuition, I’m convinced that the Prime Timeline would have never been restored. The arrival of the USS Enterprise-C in an era to which it didn’t belong, after vanishing from a pivotal point during Klingon-Federation peace negotiations, resulted in the war between the two continuing for far longer than it was supposed to. There were “only” 22 years unaccounted for in this episode, but I think there could have been a little screen time dedicated to that lost era.
The Crashed Voyager Universe
One of the more obvious alt-reality Voyager stories is the “Endgame” two-parter that concludes the series. I certainly wouldn’t object to that future being fleshed out a little more, but I’m far more interested in seeing what happened in “Timeless” right after Voyager crash-landed in the Alpha Quadrant. When a doomed journey through a quantum slipstream results in only Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) surviving the disaster, “Timeless” jumps to a future that sees both characters violating the Temporal Prime Directive to save their found family. It’s inarguably one of Star Trek: Voyager‘s greatest efforts, but the one downside is that the reality is largely unexplored. I’d have liked to see some flashbacks to Harry and Chakotay trying to adapt to everyday life in the more immediate aftermath of Voyager’s crash landing.
The Destroyed USS Kelvin Universe
This is most commonly referred to as the Kelvin Timeline rather than the Kelvin Universe, but either term makes sense. J.J. Abrams’ creative Star Trek reboot movies created a new reality in the franchise’s multiverse rather than building up the entire thing from scratch. The destruction of the USS Kelvin and the death of George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) cause a fresh timeline to splinter off before the events of The Original Series. Granted, there were three full movies set in the Kelvin Timeline, but given how much source material exists that could be revisited, it seems like a huge shame that the saga has ended as a trilogy. I’d have loved to see how the Kelvin Timeline handled the 24th century and beyond.
The Confederate Earth Universe
Star Trek: Picard was one of the series that sidestepped a visit to the Mirror Universe, which I found disappointing. The Next Generation legacy follow-up did do something very similar, though. After Q (John de Lancie) altered the timeline, Picard (Patrick Stewart) and company are thrust into a reality that feels like a very deliberate tribute to the Mirror Universe. While they look distinct from each other, the same sense of xenophobia and lust for power over other alien races is still very much present. Still, there were some other pretty big differences that warranted a more in-depth exploration beyond Star Trek: Picard‘s “Penance.”
USS Voyager’s Generational Trip Universe
Captain Janeway’s (Kate Mulgrew) ship was flung so far from home in the Voyager pilot that it was supposed to take decades to reach the Alpha Quadrant. Thanks to various shortcuts, that didn’t end up being the case, and it only took seven years. Still, the arrival of children aboard toward the latter stages of the series suggested that the crew was preparing for the very real possibility that a new generation would eventually be required to replace them. A version of this future was previewed in Season 7’s “Shattered,” where the younger crew members had grown up and become fully-fledged contributors, with Voyager still stranded and making the journey home. My headcanon is that the ship was filled with characters like this, although we never got to see it given the need for “Shattered” to show as many periods of Voyager’s potential Star Trek timeline as possible.
Are there any Star Trek alternate realities you’d have liked to see more of? Let me know in the comments!
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William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, Sonequa Martin-Green, Anson Mount, Jeri Ryan, Holly Hunter
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Star Trek Beyond
