I hope the Aetherians don't turn out to be just another backstabber, that trope is way, way overused nowadays, and Trek has traditionally been more about the road least travelled, not part of Hollywoods cynical traffic jam of lemmings. Jumping into the middle of the "anything good has to be a trick" pack mentality is the expected thing, something actually surprising would be to make it look like they are heading for that worn out trope but have a plot twist where the "too good to be true" aliens actually ARE as morally good as they seem.
That could still produce some friction, of course, and the tension could make diplomacy rather brittle at times if the devs were subtle enough with it, which would be good off-the-beaten-path storytelling. Playing the Aetherian/Borg arc straight also would be an excellent way to resolve the current problem of STO being too far in the future to effectively do SNW content while at the same time Paramount seems to be ramping up that era and giving later eras a rest, by way of making certain beachheads in parallel universes whose fates are somehow tied together on an ongoing basis.
It is one way Paramount's era-blindness actually works in STO's favor since they have already established that despite the look of technology and some minor size changes in certain props Star Trek suffers from the same effective tech stagnation as Star Wars and it really does not matter much what era the heroes come from, their neat toys are all pretty much just as effective in any other era as the tech of whatever era they are in.
I think that's what happens when most of the franchice's shows revolve around crews with an extensive scientific background, while being equipped with fancy stuff like deflectors and tricorders. Especially if you're also going to throw in some fantasy-science.
It's relatively easy to have them fire yet another burst of particle X or modulate their toys to yet another frequency or whatever. The problem isn't so much that our heroes' tech is stagnant, it's that it can already do basically everything.
Star Trek (and STO, where we seem to overcome almost everything rather instantaneously) suffers from a severe lack of impossibilities. I mean, we even have magic tools that only require one's imagination to carry out repairs now.
I doubt there's much of a challenge left that can't be overcome already. But maybe that's just my limited imagination.
As for the back-stabbing thing: I agree that it would be nice to not have it end cynically and have the good guys be actually good.
But I feel that they should have been made less powerful for this to work. Things could have been true and not require a plot twist, had they not been so good.
The Aetherians may not be as powerful as they seem overall, they could be very specialized after being at war with the Borg(s) for so long and it is possible that we are just seeing that specialization in action. It would fit in with their need to rally the locals the way they have been doing rather well for instance, and after the Borg epidemic slows down they could fade into the background as a sort of inter-universe/crosstime/whatever police sort of like the Department of Temporal Investigations does for the "prime" and STO timeline branch(s).
And there is the benefit of them being a convenient way of connecting STO with SNW and other eras as live connections without the writing hassles of single-timeline paradox.
Comments
I think that's what happens when most of the franchice's shows revolve around crews with an extensive scientific background, while being equipped with fancy stuff like deflectors and tricorders. Especially if you're also going to throw in some fantasy-science.
It's relatively easy to have them fire yet another burst of particle X or modulate their toys to yet another frequency or whatever. The problem isn't so much that our heroes' tech is stagnant, it's that it can already do basically everything.
Star Trek (and STO, where we seem to overcome almost everything rather instantaneously) suffers from a severe lack of impossibilities. I mean, we even have magic tools that only require one's imagination to carry out repairs now.
I doubt there's much of a challenge left that can't be overcome already. But maybe that's just my limited imagination.
But I feel that they should have been made less powerful for this to work. Things could have been true and not require a plot twist, had they not been so good.
And there is the benefit of them being a convenient way of connecting STO with SNW and other eras as live connections without the writing hassles of single-timeline paradox.