Every Star Trek Villain in Lower Decks’ Opening Credits

From the beginning Star Trek: Lower Decks announced itself as the class clown of the franchise, starting with its very funny opening credits. They parody the epic grandeur of other Trek openings, as the USS Cerritos travels boldly through the cosmos only to end up in trouble of their own making. It includes one joke that has undergone subtle changes over the years, as the ship encounters a set of Federation foes in pitched combat, and scoots away after determining that discretion is the better part of valor.

The Season 1 credits included just two villainous species, as a fleet of Romulan warbirds took on a collection of Borg cubes. Each subsequent season has added a new foe to the scrum, turning it from a formidable fleet battle to an over-the-top free-for-all. With the arrival of Season 5, Lower Decks has pulled out all the stops on the gag, with no less than nine specific entities involved in the fracas. All of them are canonical and have origins elsewhere in the series. A list of each of them follows, presented in the order they appeared in the franchise.

9 Romulans Are One of Star Trek’s Original Foes

The Romulans have always been a part of Lower Decks’ opening title gag, and the sequence features a handful of their D’deridex class warbirds from The Next Generation era. The species goes back far earlier in the saga, of course, starting with the classic Original Series episode “Balance of Terror.” That episode hinged around the revelation that they looked exactly like Vulcans, a seemingly incidental plot twist that has since become one of the biggest running plot lines in the entire saga.

Lower Decks has a blast taking the steam out of the Romulans’ stride, presenting them largely as pompous aliens obsessed with palace intrigue. It also respects the franchise’s history, however, and while the Borg may be a galaxy-threatening terror, there was only one Star Trek foe dastardly enough to join them in the inaugural opening credits. The Romulans remain in the fight for Season 5, stubborn as ever.

8 Klingons Joined the Lower Decks Fight Swiftly

The Klingons evolved from stalwart foes of the Federation to grudgingly loyal allies by the time The Next Generation arrived. Like the Romulans, Lower Decks thoroughly enjoys mocking their less palatable traits, even as it develops their culture in new and interesting ways. The show features several recurring Klingon characters, most notably Ma’ah, a young captain who himself was a Lower Decker in the Klingon fleet.

The opening credits sequence added them to the equation fairly quickly, with a cluster of birds of prey mixing it up with the other opponents onscreen starting in Season 2. The Season 5 version is almost too crowded to fit them in, but a few can still be spotted here and there. Considering their reputation, it would be unconscionable to leave them out of such a colossal struggle.

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7 Apollo’s Big Green Hand Is a TOS Legend

The Original Series had its share of eye-popping moments, but few stand out like the opening of “Who Mourns for Adonais?” As the Enterprise approaches an unexplored planet, a giant green hand appears from the surface and grips the ship tight like a child’s toy.

The hand belongs to Apollo, an alien being who inspired legends of the Greek gods on Earth, and who intends to keep the crew trapped there so they can worship him. Lower Decks delivers a version of the hand for its Season 5 opening credits, gripping the central Borg cube and presumably attempting to crush it to pieces. The Borg ship’s resemblance to a Rubik’s Cube keeps the toy comparisons alive and well.

6 The Tholian Web Spells Doom for Trapped Ships

The insect-like Tholians are one of Star Trek’s most enigmatic races, making a memorable late inning appearance in “The Tholian Web.” As the Enterprise attempts to assess the state of a Federation vessel trapped between two dimensions, the Tholians arrive and order them out of their space while slowly constructing a web made of living energy around them.

The franchise has used them sparingly ever since as “The Tholian Web” is a tough act to follow. However, their appearances tend to be memorable nevertheless. They appear in the Lower Decks title as they did in “The Tholian Web,” creating beams of energy around their foes to trap and destroy them. The unique weapon helps them stand out amid the gaggle of ships they’re fighting.

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5 V’ger Is One of Star Trek’s Most Powerful Entities

When the franchise made the leap to the big screen with 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it wanted an epic storyline to better compete with the unprecedented success of Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope. The result was V’ger, a vast artificial intelligence comprising one of the most powerful beings in all existence. At its core is an unmanned Earth probe, Voyager 6, which an unknown race of machines augmented until it attained sentience.

In the course of the movie, V’ger threatened to destroy Earth, hoping to return home and merge with its creator. The crew of the Enterprise successfully intervened, and assisted it in evolving into a higher place of existence. Lower Decks brings it back for its opening credits battle, where it appears as the vast blue cloud behind the other combatants.

4 Star Trek IV’s Whale Probe Returns

The black tube-shaped ship with the floating sphere below it is one of the most enigmatic vessels in the entire franchise. It has appeared only once before, as the central Macguffin to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. It arrives on Earth seeking to communicate with its population of humpback whales, whom humanity had wiped out centuries earlier. Its efforts threaten to destroy the planet, forcing Kirk and the gang to travel back in time and bring a mated pair back to the 23rd century.

Lower Decks has quietly nodded to Star Trek IV in other ways, notably with the Cerritos’s two Beluga whale navigators, Matt and Kimolu. The probe itself didn’t enter the opening credits until Season 4. The distinctive pulsing noise heard amid the mayhem most definitely belongs to it, and – as with its previous appearance – it seems to be impervious to damage.

3 The Crystalline Entity Is a Memorable TNG Antagonist

In its early seasons, Star Trek: The Next Generation borrowed multiple concepts from The Original Series, with beings like the Crystalline Entity standing in for the Doomsday Machine and similar seemingly unstoppable forces. The colossal snowflake-shaped being sustains itself by converting organic matter into energy, stripping planets of all resources and organic matter. It joins forces with Data’s treacherous brother Lore, who schemes of genocide in “Datalore.”

It is apparently destroyed in Season 5, Episode 4, “Silicon Avatar.” Numerous questions remain around the Crystalline Entity, however, most notably whether there was only one specimen in existence or if there are others in the galaxy. Lower Decks is canon, which suggests that the Entity in its opening titles is a new one, and therefore a member of a larger species. The being was added to the sequence starting with Season 3.

2 The Borg Are One of The Franchise’s Most Terrifying Foes

Few Star Trek villains large or small can hold a candle to the Borg, a collective hivemind that transforms individuals into cybernetic drones to serve its relentless purpose. They were first introduced in The Next Generation Season 2, Episode 16, “Q Who.” They truly came into their own with the Season 3 finale, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,” which ended with Jean-Luc Picard assimilated into the collective.

Since then, they’ve been so overwhelmingly powerful that the franchise has used them with great care lest they squander the menace surrounding them. Lower Decks has taken its share of digs at the Borg, but even it readily admits how scary they are. It’s no surprise that they’ve been the centerpiece of the Cerritos’ opening-credits retreat to safety since the first episode.

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1 Lower Decks Has Adopted the Pakleds as Big Bads

Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the Pakleds as a one-off foe. They are exceedingly dim, self-serving humanoids who abducted Geordi to fix their ship in “Samaritan Snare.” The episode is something of a lark — lightening the mood after the grim possibilities of “Q Who” just one week earlier — with the aliens played strictly as comic relief. Lower Decks brought them back, still dense as a box of rocks, but metastasizing into a genuine threat while the Federation wasn’t looking. The Cerritos has cleaned up their mess more than once.

Lower Decks added them to the opening sequence starting in Season 2, lending their own flourish to the gag as well as punctuating the idea that the Pakleds are more dangerous than they seem. The vessels onscreen are “clumpships,” tearing enemy fleets to pieces then retrofitting the components of their own vessels. The competence of their crews remains a serious Achilles’ heel, however.

New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks stream every Thursday on Paramount+.

Star Trek Lower Decks

Release Date

August 6, 2020

Cast

Jack Quaid , Gillian Vigman , dawnn lewis , Noel Wells , Eugene Cordero , Fred Tatasciore , Jerry O’Connell , Tawny Newsome

Seasons

4

Story By

gene roddenbury

Writers

Gene Roddenberry

Streaming Service(s)

Paramount+

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