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It’s tough to keep track of all the characters that Starfleet and their allies have encountered while boldly going where no one has gone before, but the dedication of the Trekker fandom has ensured that every single one is accounted for somewhere. Here are a few characters that were popular in their time, important to the plot, and set up as main characters for later, but their stars fell too soon and fans just forgot about them.
6 Seska
Seska appeared in the Voyager series, and she was one of the most complex characters the entire franchise ever had. She started as a Bajoran officer under Chakotay’s command, but as the show progressed, it unfolded that she was a Cardassian spy that had been surgically altered to look like another race. Her real mission was to infiltrate the Maquis and steal their secrets.
Joining the crew of Voyager wasn’t a part of the plan, and it wasn’t long before she had formed alliances with malevolent forces outside of the ship in an attempt to escape. Her last alliance was with the Kazon, and she died trying to help them take Voyager. Dangerous even in death, Seska left a trap in the holodeck that Tuvok would spring more than a year after she died.
5 Natasha Yar
Taking a look at Tasha Yar’s backstory, she looks like a foreshadowing of the darker and grittier aesthetic of Deep Space 9 and Voyager. Although she was from a Federation colony, her planet had been caught in the grip of a brutal civil war that had also claimed her parents as victims.
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More often known as Tasha among her crewmates, she didn’t talk about her past very much but was candid about it when people asked. It sounded like a rough life on Turkana IV, but it was something to prepare an officer to be head of security on a Starship.
4 Charlie X
We have met the enemy, and they are us, as the old saying goes. This is one of the earliest Star Trek episodes, the seventh in the first season, and it presents the ultimate intergalactic enemy as a naughty human child as opposed to an unknown entity.
Charlie is the only survivor of a failed mining colony, and it’s a mystery as to how he survived the initial disaster that ended the colony or the many years all alone. As the mystery unfolds, so do Charlie’s powers, and Kirk has to figure out a way to teach Charlie how to behave before he destroys them all. Luckily, Charlie’s caregivers show up at the last minute to save the crew, but the story still ends on a sad note and a dropped thread.
3 Miranda Jones
Only the medically trained and detailed-oriented eyes of Doctor McCoy knew Miranda’s secret, and after the audience figures it out, it’s fun to re-watch the show while keeping it in mind. Her history is an interesting one, to say the least. She spent time on Vulcan to train her psychic abilities, which are the key to how she communicates with her companion and mentor, Ambassador Kollos.
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Miranda Jones visited the Starship Enterprise while on route to Kodos’ home planet, and there was some intrigue while she was there. Kollos was a Medusian, a non-humanoid species, and for a human to see one often meant insanity and eventually death. Spock was able to do so without permanent damage thanks to his own considerable mental discipline.
2 Lon Suder
You’re going to remember when Bard Dourif makes an appearance, and this two-parter that fleshes out his character is some of the best material Voyager has to offer. He was briefly introduced as a member of the Maquis crew and fades into the background for a while. He appears again when he kills a crew member and Tuvok has to mete out his punishment.
Suder is “sentenced” to confinement to quarters in “Meld,” the episode in which Tuvok attempts to understand the nature of the Marquis officer’s madness. Despite his description as an anti-hero, maybe even as a villain, it was because of his heroic and selfless actions in the epsidoes “Basics, Part I” and “Basics, Part II” that Voyager can continue their journey home.
1 Janice Rand
Even the smallest of civilian ships has a certain hierarchy among the crew, and the Enterprise was staffed by literally hundreds. A yeoman is one of the most important jobs on the ship, since it usually means working directly with the commanding officers, and it’s one of the oldest ranks to exist in the Navy.
Janice Rand was a minor character on the show, but she has a more defined role in certain episodes like “Charlie X” and “The Corbomite Maneuver.” She was friends with both Uhura and Sulu, and viewers with sharp eyes will recognize her on the bridge of the Excelsior with Captain Sulu.
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