One of the fascinating things about this “third generation” of Star Trek (starting either with Star Trek 2009 or with Discovery) is the way the Star Trek universe has started to knit itself closer together by referencing existing backstory. For example, Discovery wholeheartedly embraced the idea that Andorians and Tellarites are key Federation members and should therefore be highly visible in Starfleet, building on lore originally implied in TOS, largely ignored by TNG, DS9, and VGR, and re-embraced by ENT. Prodigy, for its part, leaned very heavily on VGR for its worldbuilding source material.
This has also produced some interesting quiet exclusions from recent stories – not to suggest they’ve been “decanonized” or anything like that, but clearly have been deprioritized. The Tholians come to mind as a ready example of this. Like the Gorn, they debuted in TOS, received stray mentions in DS9, before making an on-screen return in ENT. I wonder if the SNW writers considered using the Tholians but balked at a villain that had such different atmospheric requirements, and all the consequences that entails in terms of dramatic presentation. The Denobulans also seem to fall into a similar bucket; outside of a pair of appearances in PRO, they have received nary a mention since ENT.
Then of course we have the lengthy list of “one-off” civilizations, including the likes of
-the Sheliak
-the Husnock
-the Tzenkethi
-the Jarada
-the Miradorn
And in terms of “underexplored corners”, I’ve only been focusing on the civilizations, but there are any number of other corners we could poke into. The Department of Temporal Investigations, the Corps of Engineers, the Federation Council, the Lunar Colonies… the Trekverse is littered with these little crumbs all over the place – tiny seeds of ideas that suggest opportunities for imagination.
For my part, I would love to learn more about the Sheliak. For one thing, they seem like they would benefit from the advances in CGI over the last 30 years. But I like that they seem equally matched to the Federation in terms of strength, and that their hyperfocus on legal compliance gives them a generally underused “hat” to wear in the Trekverse. They have some similarity to Vulcans, but taken to an extreme, and layered in with real disdain for “lower life forms” that I think would make for a fascinating “adversary” – I’d love to see Captain Pike or Captain Seven in a verbal jousting match with a Sheliak commander.
What is an underexplored corner of Trek lore that you think merits exploration?
I had a similar thought about the Denobulans the other day (I’m on an ENT watch through). I guess I missed them in Prodigy.
Back on point, have the Suliban or the Xindi been mentioned at all since ENT?
I wonder if it’s too late for the suliban in SNW given how heavily they’re leaning into human augments. I imagine their story would be pretty similar. Like after the Temporal Cold War, Starfleet should have spent plenty of time and effort forcing them to roll back all those upgrades they got from the future, but there’s probably a group of still-advanced suliban out there practicing the old ways yadda yadda…. Most of that potential got taken by Una.
When the kids find that Federation outpost in episode 11, the one guy staffing it is a Denobulan
Xindi showed up in the later half of PRO. They ran security at a seedy trade hub the kids were trying to hitch hike from. The thing was though that these were Xindi Reptilians and this was a snowy Ice world… Kinda a problem when ENT dedicated screen time to saying Reptilians were cold blooded (though to be fair Reptilian’s did have an inclination to bio-engineering they could have just made themselves warm blooded).
Apparently I did not pay close attention to Prodigy at all. I missed both the Xindi and Denobulan appearances.
I wouldn’t think the Xindi Reptilians would bio-engineer themselves into warm-bloodedness. In ENT, they were really proud of their cold blood and considered it “superior” to the other warm-blooded Xindi races.