star trek plot generator

StarTrek Plot Generator

Over the weekend, I was (binge) watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And when I say, “Over the weekend”, I of course mean, “for the last several years” since I am a bit of a Star Trek Nerd. Time and again I noticed, the most irritating thing about Deep Space Nine is the conspicuous lack of the USS Enterprise, the flagship of the United Federation of Planets, during the Dominion War. 

A few fan fiction writers have attempted to bridge this gap; you can see a fully curated list of all the Enterprise’s (mis)adventures here . But fan-fiction always reads like Star Trek Voyager to me, that is to say: it’s unbearable- just kidding, most fan fiction isn’t as bad as Voyager, but it’s also not canon. 

But I digress- I wanted to know what the USS Enterprise and her crew were probably up to during the Dominion war. I don’t need canon- but I also don’t want to wade through the fan-fiction swamps. 

Visual representation of the problem we are facing.

So since I am only interested in what they were probably doing, I figured probabilistic inference would be my go to set of algorithms- but I saw this post on dev.to , and I got to thinking- who am I to think I know what sorts of zany adventures the Enterprise got up to. Oh, probabilistic inference might tell me what squadron the Enterprise was in in a particular battle, but really stories are about interpersonal relationships, and how the relationships among the crew developed, and how they interacted with the inhabitants of DS9, are all of which are most certainly unknown unknowns.

So based on a header image of an article I never read , I will use Deep Learning to discover the fate of the Enterprise during the Dominion War. 

My first stop on this journey was to check out a toy I made back in like 2015 I think- the Star Trek Chat Bots . So I went, and I asked- “Where was the USS Enterprise doing during the Battle of Betazed ?” As the bots are won to do, they just babbled on in a mildly amusing sort of way, but gave no answers. You see, that’s all they can do.

Src: startrekbots.com/

You see the algorithm that powers the Star Trek Chat Bots is Neural Machine Translation , which was developed for translating sequences of characters from one language to another. My clever trick was to dice up Star Trek screen plays and use some word vectors such that any 100 words of screen play would predict the next 15 words.

It worked well. In 2018, I made a Twitter interface and a few bots, over the years I made a few attempts at React UIs as well and the current edition of StarTrekBots.com was me learning on React and Firebase. You can also see the original site (my first attempt at React) on an S3 Bucket here.  

Fun as they have been as a platform for learning, they are just trying to guess at the next line- they are to storytellers, what bad improv actors are to improv: They can make some funny one liners, but plot is hard. 

But that was then and this is The Next Generation – by which I mean: my job is to do fun things with company supplied compute resources and then blog about it- sound like a fun job? Join me, we’re hiring . 

I digress, I have time and resources to play now. You may recall a bunch of hype about AI dooming us all from those writers of their own press releases at OpenAI . Spoiler: For all the hype of Open AI- trying to get it to respond or talk about what you want is like asking a three year old their favorite color: It will babble on for a while- if it answers your question it will only be by chance, and the novelty wears off quickly, which is also my impression of three year olds.

But credit where it’s due- it does craft a better story than a translation algorithm. My short blurb about GPT2 is that it is about 4 generations more modern in a field that has advanced at a dizzying pace through the 2010s. 

There were lots of important advances in technology during the 2010s such as deep learning, natural language generation, and the ability to detect cats in photos.  But also there were big developments in making that technology more accessible to end users. Enter huggingface .

Huggingface is … apparently a company? I was just looking around their website for a bit of history on the project, which I honestly thought was community driven open source, but it seems like it’s not. It is however a library of NLX (that’s a new acronym I made up for natural language process (NLP), natural language generation (NLG), or any other type of natural language whatever)  models, such as BERT, T5, GPT/2, and others. It provides some convenience wrappers around PyTorch and Tensorflow, and most importantly for my purposes make it much much simpler to finetune language models (such as GPT2).

But where does one get plot summaries from these two hallmarks of western literature? Wikipedia of course. I accidentally deleted the script, but let me walk through the highlights:

• Get the list of episodes page to build a list of links to each episode. 
• Iterate through the episode pages collecting the paragraphs in the “plot” section.
• Complications: Wikipedia is a mess of drive by commits, and sometimes the section is labeled “Plot” sometimes “Plot Summary”, sometimes its a two-parter and each part has a separate page, sometimes its “Part 1 Summary” and “Part 2 Summary”. 90% of that linked code was just dealing with all of those ‘gotchyas’. Its a pretty simple webscraping exercise to recreate- it shouldn’t take you longer than two episodes of DS9 to work it out.

For fine tuning a huggingface model, I mainly read/ copy-pasted from this notebook . I say that because the intricacies of fine tuning an algorithm are external to this post- there are other resources, which explain the process in more detail. But it is a shockingly easy thing to do. 

The key thing I will note, if you’re doing this on Kubeflow you need to do the finetuning in a pipeline . You can check the code runs in a notebook cell, but you’re going to want to use GPUs and other things that the notebook server won’t (shouldn’t) have. 

So I fine tuned the algorithm. And gave it a prompt of: “ During the Battle of Betazed, the USS Enterprise ”, and got the following results:

Which in all fairness is a good example of some of the issues with GPT2. A lot of pronoun references to vague (or non existent) (or gender non-agreeing) targets. But you do get a bit of a story- and there is usually some goofball thing in the story that is good for a chuckle. 

You can get different results based on:

• Random seed of the trained model- that is to say, your model will come up with something different from mine. 
• The input, whether you use a comma, trailing space, or other differences in the string.
• Adjusting the parameters in the generator. 

Which brings me to my next section on serving, and how to interact with my cut of this algorithm. 

When I make this into a tutorial or for almost any other use case- the right way to serve this model would be with KServing. But in my use case, I just want to post it somewhere free forever with low usage, so I went with my old stand by, Apache Openwhisk-incubating. My reason was I want folks to be able to play with the final toy, but I don’t want to pay for hosting because I’m a cheapskate.  

Apache Openwhisk-incubating is an open source Functions as a Service (FaaS) platform. Think of it as an open source version of AWS Lambda, or GCP/Azure’s Cloud Function offering. It actually is the FaaS offering at both IBMCloud and Adobe Cloud. (My time at IBMCloud was where I learned of/fell in love with Openwhisk.

A full tutorial on making Openwhisk functions is out of scope for this blog post, but the steps are:

• Tarball the output model from the finetuning and download it.
• Make a docker based on one of the other Openwhisk images
• Add the model to the Docker image
• Made a reader function that takes a an input string in a dictionary as a parameter and returns the output string (also in a dictionary).  

There is a philosophical question in English, commonly misattributed to George Berkely, “If a tree falls in the forest, but no one hears it- did it make a sound?” Let me update that to something more relevant to the early 21st century.  “If you make a cool AI algorithm, but don’t make a WebUI and host it somewhere people can play with, did you even make it?”  To that end, I (poorly) made a React app that hits my Openwhisk endpoints, and lets you play with this thing. The code for the React site is also in the repo but in short I’ll talk about what sort of magic it is doing. 

• You put a phrase in- The fine tuned algorithm generates a story based on that phrase, usually multiple sentences long. 
• That phrase is returned, but you’ll see a status indicating it is still working. By “still working” it means, it split the sentences and is using each sentence as a phrase seed for more content. 
• The final output will be a story in multiple “acts”. Each sentence from step 1 was then blown out into an act in step 2. This is somewhat reflective of the way stories are constructed in real life. 
• If you wanted to hack this and make it more meta, you could just seed a phrase that would produce a one paragraph summary of the season, which then would produce episodes, which then would produce acts. If you wanted to get more depth, you could have it take each act and flesh it out into scenes with more detail as well. 

But in the meantime, just enjoy the toy, a sort of magic 8-ball of what all might have happened in a non-existent crossover universe. The public url for the toy is https://plots.startrekbots.com/

It wouldn’t take too much work to mash up any long running show- ideas I’ve had are:

• Seinfield and M*A*S*H*
• Futurama and Friends

So here is the outline for a fun way to kill a Sunday afternoon, if you make anything fun shoot me an email and let me know about it-

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ST:TOS PLOT GENERATOR

1991–2005 Justin B Rye

The DIY Star Trek Script Flowchart

Have you ever wondered what kind of adventures the Starship Enterprise under Captain Kirk would have run into in the fourth year of their five‐year mission, if it hadn't been cancelled after three?  You have?  Well, stop it!  We all know perfectly well what they'd have run into – more of the same, as generated from the standard formula reproduced below.

To create a new Star Trek (TOS) plotline, simply run through the table from the top, following any path you like as long as you only go downwards or across within a cell , and assemble its output into an episode synopsis!  All resulting scripts are guaranteed to contain at least 20 percent authentic‐style Roddenberry flavouring and are practically indistinguishable from real episodes of the Original Series, not to mention the Animated Series (ever).

2002 Sleevenotes

This precursor to my Star Trek Rant was on my webdesign back burner for years!  The original 1991 version was published as a centrefold in Edinburgh SF 'zine New Dawn Fades (NDF#10 also featured Ken MacLeod and Dave Green before they were famous, namedrop namedrop).  Then ever since I started moving things from dead‐tree to electronic format, people who'd stuck my ST:TOS Plot Generator on their bathroom walls have been on at me to put it online.  However, I didn't want to force it into the black‐box “press this button to see another combination” model that's standard on the web… and besides, I don't trust JavaScript and Demon Internet don't trust Perl.  So I spent years hesitating between option A, giving up and scanning the whole thing in as a bloaty great piece of text‐as‐graphics, and option B, tormenting the layout into something compatible with standard HTML markup.  In the end I settled for the table you see above; ironically enough it still won't work in non‐graphical browsers like Lynx, which can't handle such fancy cell‐layouts!

2005 Postscript

Those still wondering what this would look like implemented as a script (in the computing sense) can now find out thanks to John Sensebe's PHP version !

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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

Click the button to scan the multiverse for a story!

Hours of fun!

Can you think of an episode that matches?

Use as fanfic writing prompts!

Special thanks to my Enterprise viewing buddies, Memory Alpha , and TV Tropes .

Which Star Trek series is this based on?

Elements are taken from The Original Series , The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Voyager , and Enterprise . Character names are removed whenever possible for maximum flexibility.

How does the generator work?

It's a simple Javascript program that selects elements from each of three lists. If you view the page source you can see all three lists in their entirety, but what fun is that?

I want more space adventures!

How about The Clone Wars ?

Create Your Own Star Trek Plot!

Created by Unknown, Modified by Dan Carlson

I hope I’m not breaking any of Paramount’s trade secrets by posting this handy-dandy little form. It’s a great way to come up with story ideas... somehow I get the feeling that Berman and Braga use a similar system. Many of the Enterprise stories are certainly of similar quality... 😛

The Starship Enterprise The Crew of Starbase 19 The Crew of the USS Kirk The crew of the Enterprise Captain Picard William Riker Data Deanna Troi Beverly Crusher Wesley Crusher Worf Geordi LaForge Guinan Tasha Yar Dr. Pulaski Ensign Ro Lt. Barclay Nurse Ogawa Miles O’Brien Keiko O’Brien Molly O’Brien Alexander Spot Deep Space Nine The crew of Deep Space Nine Commander/Captain Sisko Jake Sisko Kira Nerys Julian Bashir Jadzia Dax Constable Odo Quark Rom Nog Garak Morn The Starship Voyager The crew of the Voyager Captain Janeway Chatokay Tom Paris Tuvok Harry Kim B’Elanna Torres The Doctor Kes Seven of Nine Neelix Captain Archer Subcommander T’Pol Trip Tucker Malcolm Reed Dr. Phlox Hoshi Sato Travis Mayweather A Starship A Starbase ,

while on routine patrol on duty travelling via shuttlecraft/runabout en route to Starbase 87 en route to the Alpha Quadrant investigating an unexplored planet opening diplomatic relations observing an impending supernova observing the wormhole exploring the Gamma Quadrant repairing a sensor array on a rescue mission transporting diplomats floating through space visiting his/her family home enjoying shore leave on Risa relaxing in Ten Forward sharing a drink in Quark’s bar enduring Neelix’s cooking communing with his/her animal guide endulging in a holodeck fantasy drinking Earl Grey tea/prune juice playing poker/darts/pool/racquetball playing the trombone tap dancing performing one of Beverly’s plays wishing for humanity sleeping peacefully on the verge of insurrection taking the cheese to sickbay attempting to look busy ,

is attacked by is invaded by is captured by is possessed by is disabled by is affected by is recruited by is contacted by falls in love with is propositioned by is seduced by is impregnated by is transported into disappears into gets lost in leaves Starfleet for is declared an outcast by is implanted with is trapped with is reunited with is called into duty with recalls a past incident with has a fantasy about time travels and meets a Romulan Bird of Prey the Klingon High Council a group of renegade Borg a mercenary Ferengi the Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar Jem’Hadar warriors shapeshifting Changelings organ-stealing Vidiians a Kazon sect the Grand Nagus Lursa and B’Etor a scheming Seska the cunning Lore a Betazoid empath Bajoran rebels Maquis raiders his/her own people the all-powerful Q one of the original NCC-1701 crew a character played by Denise Crosby 20th Century humans parasitic aliens tribbles the Suliban a parallel universe a time distortion a mysterious probe an energy anomaly a space-borne organism the 20th Century a transporter accident an unexplained illness an exotic culture strange delusions someone else’s memories the ship’s computer a holodeck fantasy an upstart officer a Starfleet bureaucrat a Vulcan emissary a Trill symbiont some bumpy-headed babe/hunk his/her sibling his/her parent(s) the “Skin of Evil” Lwaxana Troi the Traveler Morn Wesley and/or Alexander Neelix himself herself .

Picard Riker Data Troi Dr. Crusher Wesley Worf LaForge Guinan Tasha Pulaski Ro Barclay Ogawa O’Brien Keiko Molly Alexander Lwaxana Q the Traveler Spock Scotty Spot Sisko Jake Kira Dr. Bashir Dax Odo Quark Rom Nog Garak Morn Janeway Chatokay Paris Tuvok Kim B’Elanna The Doctor Kes Seven Neelix Seska Archer T’Pol Trip Malcolm Phlox Hoshi Travis A Starship A Starbase fires launches converts transforms rerouts injects transports warps pilots bounces throws runs empties talks diverts tricks seduces sings a phaser a photon torpedo the warp engines the transporter the replicator the deflector shields the ship’s computer the ship’s sensors the main deflector array the holodeck a shuttlecraft/runabout a tricorder a communicator badge Data’s neural net Geordi’s visor Spock’s brain Neelix’s lungs Neelix’s cooking tribbles a hastily-derived cure DNA strands imaginary sub-atomic particles the Prime Directive a drinking song a Klingon opera the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition gold-press latinum a bottle of Saurian Brandy Lwaxana Troi Wesley and/or Alexander Neelix it/her/him/them

into a spatial disruption a sonic pulse a particle accelerator a tachyon stream a baryon field coil compensator a quantum energy emitter a matter-antimatter overload a pattern buffer the ship’s communication system a Jefferies tube a parallel universe a time distortion an energy anomaly a space-borne organism the 20th Century animated suspension suspended animation the Q Continuum a sun’s corona a planet’s ionosphere the airless cold of deep space a logical implausibility self-destruction leaving Starfleet giving up breaking up disrobing having a baby doing it again Morn Wesley and/or Alexander Neelix it/her/him/them ,

thereby reaffirming that all life forms Humans Klingons Romulans the Borg Ferengi Cardassians Bajorans Jem’Hadar Changelings Vidiians Kazons the Maquis snooty omnipotent beings our heroes men and women both differently-abled persons future technologies different ideologies 24th Century values 20th Century values Starfleet bureaucrats bumpy-headed aliens space babes/hunks Trekkies Trekkers Babylon 5 fans Star Trek producers Star Trek writers Wesley and/or Alexander Neelix’ humorous caperings are precious are worthy of respect deserve another chance are deep and meaningful are the pride of the fleet are superior are dangerous are “bad” are short-lived have yet to evolve are a nuisance are “goofy” will never learn will believe anything have better things to do are “hot” can’t get enough are an accident waiting to happen .

Season 1 Episode 9: Dagger of the Mind

Kirk investigates an experimental facility for holding prisoners and finds a sinister scheme.

About Star Trek:

Star Trek: A Journey into the Future

Star Trek is a legendary science fiction television series that has captivated audiences for decades. Created by Gene Roddenberry, it first premiered in 1966 and has since become a cultural phenomenon. Set in the 23rd century, the show follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew as they explore the galaxy, encountering new worlds, civilizations, and strange phenomena.

The show had a profound impact on the sci-fi genre and television as a whole. It broke barriers by featuring a diverse cast with characters of different races, genders, and backgrounds. This inclusivity was revolutionary for its time and portrayed a future where humanity has evolved beyond prejudice and discrimination.

One of the most iconic characters of Star Trek is Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner. Kirk is a charismatic leader known for his fearless nature and strong moral compass. Alongside him is the logical and half-Vulcan Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, who provides a balance to Kirk’s impulsive nature. Their friendship and dynamic became one of the show’s core elements.

Star Trek also introduced numerous groundbreaking concepts and technologies that were ahead of their time. The show popularized the idea of teleportation with its “transporter” technology, which allowed characters to instantly move from one location to another. It also featured advanced communication devices, known as communicators, which inspired the development of modern-day smartphones.

The success of Star Trek has spawned multiple spin-off series and an extensive film franchise. Each iteration has expanded the Star Trek universe and introduced new characters and stories while staying true to the show’s original spirit of exploration and hope. The most recent series, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, have garnered praise for their engaging storytelling and modernized approach.

Star Trek has left an indelible mark on popular culture and has inspired countless fans to pursue careers in science, engineering, and space exploration. Moreover, its optimistic vision of the future continues to resonate with audiences of all ages. Star Trek represents a world where humanity has overcome its petty differences and come together to explore the universe, promoting a message of unity, compassion, and the endless possibilities of the human spirit.

In conclusion, Star Trek is a television show that has transcended time and has become a beloved franchise. With its diverse cast, thought-provoking storylines, and progressive ideals, it has become a symbol of hope and aspiration. Its enduring legacy is a testament to the power of science fiction in shaping our perceptions of the future and our place within it.

• The Original Series
• The Next Generation
• Deep Space Nine
• Strange New Worlds

Battle at the Binary Stars

The vulcan hello, the impossible box.

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The Vulcan Hello The first episode of Star Trek Discovery opens with the USS Shenzhou, a Starfleet vessel, on a…

In the episode “The Impossible Box” of Star Trek: Picard, the crew embarks on a treacherous mission to uncover the…

Through the Valley of Shadows

Through the Valley of Shadows In the midst of a perilous mission to save a lost crew of scientists in…

In the “Monsters” episode of “Star Trek: Picard”, the crew of La Sirena faces imminent danger as the Borg Queen…

The Wolf Inside

The Wolf Inside The Wolf Inside, the tenth episode of the first season of Star Trek Discovery, follows Michael Burnham…

What’s Past Is Prologue

What’s Past Is Prologue In Star Trek Discovery episode “What’s Past Is Prologue”, the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery find…

Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

In “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2,” the stakes have never been higher for Jean-Luc Picard and his crew. The…

In the episode “Mercy” from Star Trek: Picard, the storyline centers around the fallout from the previous events, particularly focusing…

People of Earth

People of Earth In the second episode of Star Trek Discovery, “People of Earth,” the crew of the Discovery is…

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Circlejourney's star diagram maker

If you make anything with it pls share it with me (@circlejourney) on Twitter, I wanna see

Chart colour Max value

empathy sociability creativity stability will self-esteem Use underscores _ to add spaces to stat names. Update stat names (will clear current stats)

Or pick a premade stat set:

Basic personality traits D&D stats

Right click to copy or save chart!

Hey, Paramount! Here's your next Trek-spinoff plot...

{{ insult }}

This generator contains 12,352,163,000,000,000 bad Trek universe plots. Yes, really.

Questions? Complaints? Talk to the admiral: [email protected]

Fans, recognizing the cliches in plot , scripts, canon , and fannish behavior, create "generators," activities which poke fun at these predictabilities.

Some examples:

• Our Favorite Things #10 includes a plot generator
• The Omnipotent Third Season Star Trek Script Generator
• The Official Star Trek Rumor Generator .
• Random Pairing Generator .
• Code 7 #2 contains a Starsky/Hutch fanfiction generator by Paula Smith .
• Elf Fetish has a Bad slash Story Generator and a Mary Sue Story Generator.
• Telophase has created several random generators , including The Kinkfic generator , and the YA Dystopia Story Generator which has inspired a flashfic community and a commentfic meme .
• Seventh Sanctum houses many random generators, including a number relating to fandom , such as a crossover generator and a story title generator for Harry Potter .
• Hot from the Stereotypewriter Dept: So You Want to Write Trek-fic? (1980)

A Professionals Example

"The topic is The Ten Best Reasons for Taking Your Partner to Bed. Want to write a slash story? Pick one of these and Go For It: The girl jilted me. (Or him.) I was drunk. I was sick. I was almost dead. I was dead. I needed to Reaffirm Life in order to Go On in this lousy, depressing, death-ridden job. I wanted you the first time I saw your arse twitch. It-Was-For-Your-Own-Good-You'll-Thank-Me-In-The-Morning Cowley told me to. So no one else would. No one understands us but us ." [1]

Gallery of Some Examples

The Omnipotent Third Season Star Trek Script Generator by Jim Steele, from Warped Space #3, 1975, click to read

from Partners , part one

from Partners , part two

• ^ from Cold Fish and Stale Chips #2
• Examples Wanted

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Star Trek : Content Generators / Tables

Page contains collected, created, or referenced content to easily support Star Trek RPG Sessions and Campaigns.

This section contains pages that I have created on various topics. In some cases combining information from multiple sources.

House Rules

This section contains optional house rules.

This section contains interactive content generators.

This section contains random tables primarilly from the Descipher Star Trek RPG. Some have been modified.

External Resources

Star trek adventures, mission related, setting related.

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A Star Trek Plot Generator

Discussion in ' General Trek Discussion ' started by DWF , Jun 7, 2009 .

DWF Admiral Admiral

They don't need writers anymore. http://www.bargaintuan.com/startrekplotgenerators.php  

Myasishchev Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

Very neat.  

Middle Earther Commodore Commodore

But are these stories canon? Let's spend the next 15 pages arguing about it!  

Michael Good Bad Influence Moderator

I love it!  

Trekarama Lieutenant Red Shirt

Cool!  

Anthony Sabre Commodore Commodore

...finally Riker says something smug Click to expand...

Gryffindorian Vice Admiral Admiral

Yeah, how original. That site would've been humorous if the stuff wasn't written by some grade school amateur.  

137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

^^^ Aw, c'mmon! How many grade school amateurs do you know starts every sentence with "Whilst"?  

Mach5 Admiral Admiral

Whlist travelling through the Delphic Expanse Subcommander T'Pol suffers temporary amnesia when the Enterprise encounters an apparent temporal paradox which sends over a boarding party to battle the crew in the ship's corridors and puts them in a terrible ethical dilemma but their opponent turns out to be misled and Trip jury-rigs the engines, which means everything turns out okay, though Archer feels some guilt about his actions. Then, finally Archer says something smug and they leave at warp factor four. Sounds about right to me  

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Plot Generator

1 million plot combinations to inspire you..

Generate a random plot for your genre. Simply pick between fantasy, romance, sci-fi, mystery, or drama — and click the button below to get started. Like a particular story combo? “Lock” and save it to nail it down.

Protagonist

Secondary character.

It's story about It kicks off with

(Note that: )

And there's a twist!

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Looking to publish a bestselling novel out of this story generator?

It’s elusive, it’s shy, it’s frustratingly changeable, and it abandons you completely during a writer’s drought — it’s the perfect story idea. But that’s why we built this story generator: to try and give writers everywhere a bit of a power-up. All of the plots that you score are yours to use! But what exactly can you do with it now?  

If you’re wondering what’s the best way to construct a story out of the plot that you’ve just generated,

We’ve got you covered. Head to the free resources below to discover the writing world beyond story generators:

How to Structure a Novel Before You Write It . In this Reedsy Live video, NYT bestselling author Caroline Leavitt talks about plot structure — and a simple way to go about it.

How to Plot a Novel Using the 3-Act Story Structure . Kristen Kieffer, founder of Well-Storied.com, walks you step-by-step through one of the most popular story structures in this free 10-day course.

What is a Narrative Arc? Learn the intricacies of building a narrative arc, and how to attain a good beginning, middle, and end to your story in this blog post.

If you’re still in the search for the perfect plot ,

There are plenty of other plot generators and plot twist generators to provide more bursts of inspiration. Here are some of our favorite story generators on the Internet:

Writing Exercise’s Random Plot Generator

RanGen’s Story Generator

Seventh Sanctum’s Plot Twist Generator

If you’ve got everything but your story title and character names in place ,

Why not give our Book Title Generator and Character Name Generator a whirl?

And if you now feel ready to start building your story now? Great 👍 Happy writing. We’d be delighted if you dropped us the success story at [email protected]! 

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Unresolved Plotlines In Star Trek: The Next Generation

Launching in 1987 to great fanfare, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" revived the original "Star Trek" series with a new crew in stories and adventures aboard an all-new Enterprise. The series ran until 1994 and spawned four feature films with the same cast. Across its seven seasons, audiences would get more than 150 self-contained stories that were usually tied up within each episode's allotted 45 or so minutes. 

But every now and then, a story slipped through the cracks, whether from an open-ended conclusion that teased a possible return for a villain, a relationship that was never followed up on, or a character's personal journey that simply fizzled out over time. Some have been addressed off-screen, and in some cases,  a deleted scene  may have tied things up. Elsewhere, "Star Trek: Picard" helped to finish up a number of dangling plot threads from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," from the fate of ex-Borg Hugh to the android research of Bruce Maddox, two unresolved stories that surely would have made this list if not for 2020's new series. 

Still, plenty of story elements remain incomplete nearly 30 years after the show concluded, and we're here to give you a sampling of some of the unresolved plotlines left hanging at the end of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

What happened to Lore?

Introduced in "Datalore," the android Data's evil twin brother Lore was also created by Dr. Noonian Soong. Though blown out into space at the end of that episode, he would resurface in "Brothers," where it is revealed he was rescued by a Pakled ship. After stealing Data's emotion chip, Lore escapes to parts unknown, only to return one final time in the Season 6 cliffhanger, "Descent." In this episode, he leads a group of ex-Borg and uses his emotion chip to manipulate Data into betraying the Enterprise.

At the conclusion of this story, Data defeats Lore with the help of the Enterprise crew and takes back his emotion chip, while Lore is deactivated and dismantled to prevent him from returning again. But what happened after that? In a scene in the "Star Trek: Picard" episode "Remembrance," Dr. Agnes Jurati shows Picard what remains of Dr. Soong's work and shows only the body of Data's third duplicate, B-4, from "Star Trek: Nemesis." No mention is made of Lore, forcing us to wonder what happened to his dismantled body. Given Lore's penchant for survival and the fact that his body isn't shown in "Picard," is it possible he found a way to escape and have further adventures in the "Star Trek" universe?

Interdimensional incursion (Schisms)

"Schisms" was a borderline horror story that saw members of the crew suffering PTSD and recalling disjointed images of captivity they couldn't fully remember. With Counselor Troi's help, they are able to piece together their missing memories and discover that a race of inter-dimensional aliens has been abducting crew members for gruesome torture. Unable to survive in our dimension, the aliens appeared to be attempting to find a way to exist in our universe by means of medical experimentation on the abducted crew members. To find the aliens and recover those they had taken, Riker arms himself with a subspace homing device — and a stimulant to stay awake — and fights them off in time to save a wounded ensign and return home.

Geordi and Data are able to close the portal the aliens used to abduct the crew and prevent any future incursions into our realm. But in the episode's closing moments, it's heavily implied that the aliens' intentions were anything but peaceful, and another invasion attempt could come. Unfortunately, we'd never hear from them again, and it's too bad because "Schisms" is one of the most satisfyingly creepy episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." It would have been interesting to learn more about the inter-dimensional alien race that was torturing the crew of the Enterprise.

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Ethan interrupted (Future Imperfect)

A mind-bending joyride, "Future Imperfect" begins with Commander Riker awakening 15 years in the future as captain of the Enterprise, but with a major gap in his memory. While the ship is on a diplomatic mission to make peace with the Romulans, he's confronted with his new future life that involves a wife who has died and a teenaged son named Ethan he doesn't remember. But nothing adds up, and we quickly realize it's all some kind of ruse. At first, we think it's a Romulan plot to steal Federation secrets, but then we meet the real "Ethan," a lonely alien child whose mother left him stranded on the planet to escape invaders. Using a kind of hologram technology, the child — who's real name is Barash — created a lifelike future for Riker to live in and keep him company.

At the end of the episode, Riker makes it clear that the child doesn't need the deception, nor does he need to be alone — he and the Enterprise will take him in and give him a new home. The closing shot has Riker taking Barash back to the ship with him, but we never see the alien child again. Did he call the Enterprise his new home? Was he deposited at a starbase only to get lost in the Federation foster system? It's unfortunately never made clear.

Robin Lefler, gone for good?

Actress Ashley Judd portrayed Ensign Robin Lefler in two episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" during its 5th season, taking center stage in the episode called "The Game." In the episode, Wesley Crusher comes back from Starfleet Academy for a little vacation, and the two seriously hit it off romantically (the two actors have some genuine chemistry together). Unfortunately, Wesley's visit coincides with a sinister invasion plot by an alien woman using an addictive game that brainwashes the crew. Thanks to being distracted by their hormones, Wesley and Robin are two of the only people left who haven't been affected, and the episode's climax sees a chase through the ship as the brainwashed crew try to force them to play the game and join them in their takeover of the Enterprise and the Federation.

Thanks to their ingenuity, of course, they're able to thwart the plot and save the ship, but the episode closes with the two young officers very much in love and promising to stay in touch once Wesley returns to Starfleet Academy. But despite Wesley appearing a few more times on the show and in the final "TNG" movie, Lefler is never mentioned, and we never see her again.

Disappearance of the phasing cloak

Two different episodes of "The Next Generation" focused on the development of a new and potentially devastating piece of technology, the "phasing cloak." The new technology would allow ships and people to not just become invisible but also to pass through normal matter, making them virtually undetectable and indestructible. And it's being developed by both sides of the Federation/Romulan rivalry, too, with it first appearing in "The Next Phase." In this episode, an accident aboard a Romulan ship in distress makes Geordi LaForge and Ensign Ro cloaked and phased for the duration of the adventure. It reappears in "The Pegasus" in a story where a rogue Starfleet Admiral reveals that his old ship, once thought destroyed, had been using an experimental version of their own phasing cloak.

It's perhaps one of the biggest advances in "Star Trek" technology during the "TNG" era, and it disappears without mention the rest of the series; it's also absent in "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager." Admittedly, a Romulan treaty supposedly prevented the Federation from using cloaking devices, but the Romulans and other "Trek" powers seemingly had no such stipulation. Technology of such magnitude seems too important to not mention again, so it's possible that the writers felt the MacGuffin was just too universe-altering to be brought back and thus shuffled it off to the annals of "Star Trek" trivia.

Scotty's next adventures

The series premiere of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" famously included a brief cameo by an exceptionally aged Dr. McCoy from "The Original Series" as a passing of the torch from one crew to the next. Mr. Spock's father would pop up in a 3rd season entry , and of course, Leonard Nimoy himself would reprise his role of Spock in a two-parter that saw him attempt to re-unify the Vulcan and Romulan people. In the 6th season episode "Relics," the series would get one more visit from the classic "Star Trek" series in the form of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Discovered trapped in a transporter loop for over 75 years, they beam the injured Scotty aboard, who reveals he jerry-rigged the transporter to keep himself alive when his ship crashed into a massive Dyson sphere. 

The episode is a touching story of getting older and ends with Scotty embracing life again, promising not to retire just yet. It's heavily implied that he still has more adventures ahead, with Picard and crew loaning him a shuttlecraft to get him started. While "Star Trek: Discovery"  would tie up the story of Spock's attempted reunification, we never learn what Scotty got up to after leaving the ship. A handful of non-canon books and comics have chronicled Scotty's possible future exploits, but there's still a lot of story left untold on screen. 

Guinan and Q

Joining the series in the show's 2nd season, Oscar Award-Winner Whoopi Goldberg played the enigmatic Guinan, who tended bar, listened, and acted as Captain Picard's greatest confidant. Meanwhile, John de Lancie meanwhile played the omnipotent Q , a supreme being who made his first appearance in the show's premiere episode and would annoy the crew on and off until the series finale. But in the Season 2 episode "Q Who" — the one that also introduced audiences to the Borg — Guinan and Q come face to face, and it's obvious that it's not their first meeting. Guinan seems well acquainted with the all-powerful trickster, while Q is surprisingly intimidated by the purple-hatted bartender, describing her as "dangerous." Guinan even makes a mysterious hand gesture in a defensive posture that seems to suggest that she may have powers and abilities that could combat the Q — something nobody has ever been able to do.

But while it's made clear that Q and Guinan have a history, it's never once revealed what that history might be. His description of her as a dangerous imp leads one to believe it was not a pleasant history, and the pair may have had more than one confrontation. With Season 2 of "Star Trek: Picard" reported to include appearances from both Q and Guinan , perhaps we're finally going to get some answers.

Ro Laren's Maquis fight

Actress Michelle Forbes joined the "Star Trek" family as recurring guest star Ensign Ro Laren in the show's 5th season in what was likely an attempt to shake up the cast with a malcontent officer who didn't get along with the rest of the crew. Ensign Ro was serving time in a Federation penal colony when she was recruited by a corrupt Starfleet admiral who secured her release in exchange for her assistance locating a Bajoran terrorist. But with Picard's help, they expose the admiral and put a stop to his plans to supply Cardassian militants with illegal weapons and ships. Impressed by her integrity, Picard offers her an assignment on the Enterprise, and there she would stay for two seasons before supposedly departing for special training at Starfleet.

She'd return in the penultimate episode of the series, "Preemptive Strike," where Picard recruits her to infiltrate the Maquis terrorist organization that is raiding and attacking Cardassians and putting the Federation treaty with them at risk. But Ro soon comes to sympathize with the Maquis and opts to join them at the end of the story. While we do know the final fate of the Maquis, we never hear what became of Ro following her defection, or if she was one of the handfuls of survivors of their destruction at the hands of the Dominion who ended up in prison, as mentioned in the "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "Hunters."

Wesley's destiny

Right from the very beginning of the series, Wesley Crusher was declared a child prodigy with a special destiny. This is partially why many fans over the years have  disliked the character , who often came across as a know-it-all genius and living MacGuffin. Still, he had a very clear path ahead of him, or so claimed the Traveler in his very first appearance in "Where No One Has Gone Before." In what was one of the first ongoing character stories, the Traveler tells Picard to help nurture the young boy and encourage his talents. Picard, despite his dislike of children, does so, and Wesley the wunderkind grows from a wide-eyed naive child into a brilliant, talented Starfleet officer. 

But on his return in the 7th season installment "Journey's End," Wesley comes back from Starfleet Academy with a sudden chip on his shoulder and is ready to quit Starfleet altogether. After another visit from the Traveler, we learn that this is not his path, and in the end, Wesley transcends his corporeal existence and goes on a metaphysical journey with the alien visitor. Normally, we might consider this enough resolution, but in the fourth "TNG" film, "Star Trek: Nemesis," we see Wesley once again, and he's shown back in Starfleet with little explanation. What happened to his adventures with the Traveler, and what was his destiny that had been spoken of so many years before? He apparently gave up his god-like power and returned to serve aboard a starship again, despite his earlier claims that it wasn't the right path, and audiences will never know why.

Troi and Worf's inexplicable romance

At the opening of the series, we learn that Commander Riker and Counselor Troi used to be a couple, and at one point, were destined for marriage. On a few occasions, it even seemed like they might rekindle their romance, but the pair remained just good friends through the show's seven seasons. We later saw both Troi and Riker getting involved with other people, from visiting diplomats to secret terrorists , but no pairing made any less sense than when Troi became involved in a passionate romance with the ship's resident Klingon, Lieutenant Worf. Though the writers did a decent job of setting it up by showing them becoming close friends, beginning with the Season 5 episode "Ethics" — followed by the discovery of an alternate reality in which they're married in "Parallels" — the fact is, the two never felt like a good match. 

But just a year after the series finale, where they're seen sharing a kiss, Worf would make the jump to the sister series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," where he is shown as an eligible bachelor with no mention of his split from Counselor Troi. Riker and Troi themselves get back together in the movie "Star Trek: Insurrection" and tie the knot in its sequel. The wedding ceremony would have been the perfect time to mention off-hand how things between Worf and Troi had not worked out, but we get no such reference, and we're left to wonder what happened to the mismatched lovebirds.

Takeover of the Federation

Famous for its graphically gory climactic scene that has Commander Remmick's head explode from phaser fire, the 1st season episode "Conspiracy" sees the crew of the Enterprise become the target of an alien takeover. Captain Picard is first warned of danger by three fellow starship captains at the start of the episode just before a visiting admiral brings with him an alien space bug that can control people's minds, turning Starfleet officers into little more than puppets. The Enterprise heads to Earth to warn them, but it's too late: Starfleet's top brass have already been taken over by the mind-controlling bugs. But thanks to a daring plan by Riker and Picard, they're able to stop the alien "queen" and foil the takeover plot.

What's often overlooked about the episode is its ending, which sees Remmick — the host body for the alien leader — sending a mysterious signal out into space before he is killed. Just before the credits roll, Data makes note of the signal, calling it a homing beacon aimed at an unexplored part of the galaxy (presumably the home of the alien bugs). We then pan out of the ship and into space, where we hear the sounds of the electronic signal, giving the clear impression that the danger is far from over and a renewed attack on the Federation is imminent. Of course, no follow-up episode was ever produced, and we never found out anything more about the invaders.

Warp speed limitations

In the heavily allegorical episode "Force of Nature," a pair of alien scientists board the Enterprise to make a startling claim: the technology that powers every starship's warp engines — that have been used for hundreds of years — actually have a damaging effect on the fabric of space, and if they don't curb their use of warp soon, it could end life in the galaxy as we know it. When Picard and the Enterprise are left unconvinced, one of the scientists breaches his own warp engines and causes a catastrophic tear in subspace that makes warp travel impossible in the region, proving their claims once and for all.

The parallels with human-made climate change are hard to deny, and in the wake of the episode's events, Starfleet issues orders for all starships to limit their speed to Warp 5 until a solution can be found. A handful of subsequent episodes make passing references to Starfleet, allowing them to exceed the limitations for critical missions, but the issue is never really resolved. Over on "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager," nobody follows the restriction, and it's never given an on-screen mention. Perhaps the limit on warp was too restricting for writers, too, because they opted to abandon it altogether with no explanation.

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Published Dec 4, 2019

Enhance Your Star Trek Adventures With These Free Resources

It's #NationalDiceDay, so join the Star Trek RPG galaxy with these helpful tips!

StarTrek.com

There are a few things you need to play a game of Star Trek Adventures . You'll want at least one copy of the rules, though more than one will speed up game play. Same goes for the 20-sided dice to determine whether your characters succeed or fail. You will also need something to record character details and notes for events on the game. Then there are the optional things that might make gameplay a bit more comfortable, like a nice snack spread or spinning tracks off Star Trek soundtracks to get players in the mood.

We’ve scoured the internet for resources that will make your game easier to prep, more immersive and more fun. There are plenty of great options from Modiphius , the producers of the game, but we also wanted to focus on free and easy things that will make your game feel more authentically like Star Trek .

A Character Generation Website

Everyone playing Star Trek Adventures needs to make a character. That’s your gateway into the setting. Making characters for the game is a bit of a mini game because you follow your character through their upbringing and early career in Starfleet. These decisions can be chosen by the player or rolled randomly for those who like the challenge of assembling a character from elements that might be contradictory.

You can also make a Star Trek Adventures character online right here . This creation tool allows players to make main characters, starships, and supporting characters. It supports the main three eras of play ( Enterprise , Star Trek , Star Trek: The Next Generation ) and also lets users choose what supplemental books they have access to for additional species and talents. If you don’t own those books, building characters through this tool offers a great way to try before you buy. It’s also a great tool even if you’re not playing the tabletop RPG thanks to the lifepath system. The process creates characters and ships with interesting histories and dramatic hooks that can launch fanfiction just as easily.

Looking for a little extra immersion? Load up the website and PDF on your tablet or touchscreen computer and skip the paper and pencils. Flipping through the rules on handheld tablets adds a perfect amount of futuristic- Trek flavor.

A Living Campaign

RPGs are often supported by pre-written adventures. These are great to read as inspiration, to pull bits and pieces from to use

in your own stories or even to be run off the page for those times when you need a pre-built story because you haven’t had time to put an idea for a session together. Star Trek Adventures has dozens of adventures for sale as individual episodes or in collections like These Are The Voyages and Strange New Worlds . But it also has a massive campaign that can be played for free that spans multiple parts of the Star Trek timeline.

The Shackleton Expanse campaign not only offers a brand new part of the galaxy to explore, it offers missions set in the 2269 era of The Original Series and the 2371 era of The Next Generation . Any mission can be customized for any era, but these two timelines play to the long history of the Star Trek timeline. An ambitious Game Master might even decide to run two separate games of Star Trek Adventures with a different group in each era influencing each other. Play groups that want to be part of the living campaign can choose to be on one of the four ships included in the campaign: the Lexington in The Original Series era, or the Venture , Thunderchild or Bellerophon in The Next Generation era.

What is a living campaign? It means that, after each adventure, there’s a small questionnaire the group can send back to the company talking about the details of their game. The game designers and developers take this feedback into consideration and incorporate it into the next adventure of the game. That means players and game masters taking part influence this piece of the Star Trek setting after every new adventure is released!

Visualizing Your Character

Drawing a character adds even more life into their portrayal. You may not be an artist or be unable to afford to hire one to draw your character. That’s okay! There are still plenty of ways you can visualize your character without going the most common routes.

Screen Capture : There are about 556 hours of Star Trek media between the shows and movies. The next time you watch something, keep an eye out in the background for characters who might fit your character’s description. All it takes is a screen capture and quick crop or two to send to a game master as a character portrait.

Star Trek Online : The character creator for Star Trek Online has a lot of great options in its free to play mode. For those groups willing to buy a few costume packs, those options expand the options for crewmembers by a lot. A screenshot and a crop also works here too, but the extra control allows for more custom looks and alien type characters.

Miniature Maker : Star Trek Adventures offers an excellent line of miniatures for iconic characters. For those unwilling or unable to customize their own, this online miniature maker is surprisingly robust. Customize your character with the proper uniform and props, print them out, cut and fold, and your character exists in the real world. Even for games that don’t use miniatures, taking the time to create these cut-outs can breath another dimension into your Star Trek Adventures character.

Start Playing Now

You can download this Quickstart PDF right now to start playing Star Trek Adventures . It includes six premade characters, an essential rules brief, and a copy of the episode “Signals” featuring a lost runabout, Romulan intrigue and Ferengi negotiations! All you need are dice and friends to play.

Have any favorite tips and tricks of your own for playing Star Trek Adventures ? Let us know on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram !

Rob Wieland (he/him) is an author, game designer and professional nerd who developed the adventure classifications for Star Trek Adventures. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife, two cats, and future Starfleet Admiral daughter.

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