Ezri Dax returns to Star Trek Online to face a Lovecraftian threat

Senior narrative designer Flo McQuibban discusses the game’s ‘soft canon’

Over the past 16 years, Star Trek Online has been building what senior narrative designer Flo McQuibban calls “soft canon” for the iconic science-fiction franchise, bringing TV stars into the game while creating new threats for them to face. The next big event, Corruption, which launches on March 10 to celebrate the free-to-play MMORPG’s 16th anniversary, will see Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer) of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine leading the charge against the Chimerans, a new species of invaders from another universe. McQuibban spoke with Polygon on a video call to give us an exclusive peek at what’s in store.

The Chimerans have been teased in the past few Star Trek Online releases as part of the ongoing multiversal Borg saga, which introduced new versions of the Borg Collective like the Aetherians, who prefer to woo new cultures with gifts of technology rather than immediately attacking them. This will be the first time players get to see Chimerans in action.

“They’re quite Lovecraftian,” McQuibban said. “They’re kind of creepy and skeletal, with a fast zombie vibe. We’re really playing up the sense of dread for this release.”

Chimerans infest ships with eggs and veiny nests, and their forces include hulking monsters that can easily knock out players. They’re targeting the MIDAS Array, which was used to contact the U.S.S. Voyager when it got lost in the Delta Quadrant. McQuibban was coy about what the Chimerans want, but whoever they’re trying to send a message to is probably very dangerous.

Luckily, the players will get help from Starfleet researcher and counselor Ezri Dax. Ezri is a Trill who was bound to the symbiont carried by Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) after Jadzia died in DS9’s season 6 finale. The process of binding a symbiont would normally involve a lot more preparation, but Ezri has to do it before she feels ready. McQuibban rewatched the seventh and final season of DS9 before writing de Boer’s lines, though she is also drawing inspiration from the Star Trek: Destiny novels, where Ezri is captain of the U.S.S. Aventine.

“She’s placed in such an important role of inheriting Jadzia’s whole journey and storyline,” McQuibban said. “She’s coming aboard a station where she sees her friends, but they don’t really see her, because she’s not the person they saw her as. I think, in a way, a lot of us have been there. You arrive somewhere new and you think it’s going to be fine, but then you end up feeling quite lonely.”

Ezri Dax previously appeared in Star Trek Online using her ship’s anti-Borg technology and helping people who had been assimilated. This time, Captain Dax is accompanied by a second version of herself from another universe – though not the Mirror Universe Ezri featured in DS9. Both have personal reasons for joining the fight against the Chimerans.

“Ezri Dax is poised, confident, and quite mature,” McQuibban said. “In Deep Space Nine, she’s getting her footing a little bit as a younger, recently emergency-joined Trill, but because we’ve got our Ezri based on the [Destiny] trilogy, she’s really grown since then. On the flipside, you’ve got alternate Ezri, who’s kind of edgy. It’s going to be cool to see them playing off each other.”

Balancing the character-driven, often philosophical nature of Star Trek and the combat-driven mechanics of an MMORPG is tricky, involving close collaboration between McQuibban and the systems and content design teams.

“We’re not making an episode of Star Trek, even though we try to get as close to that feeling as we can,” McQuibban said. “If we tried to replicate that, I think it would just be a bunch of lengthy cutscenes and it would be hard to play.”

The Borg multiverse plotline has been running since 2023, and McQuibban said the developers are relying on player feedback to determine how much longer it will be the focus of the game.

“Some people really would love to see a longer continuation of the Borg multiverse storyline, and other community members are ready for some lower-stakes, exploratory content. We’re quite epic level right now,” McQuibban said. “Often in Star Trek, you think you can’t get any more epic, and then you have moments like The Burn in Discovery.”

Star Trek Online has its own timeline outside of theTV shows, but the two canons got a little closer in January in the Starfleet Academy episode “Vox in Excelso,” where ships designed for the video game appeared among the Klingon fleet. A far-future version of Dax also appeared on Starfleet Academy, though McQuibban said she had no idea that was happening when she was working on Corruption.

“It’s such a surreal feeling to be canonized,” McQuibban said. “I just create for the love of Trek, without an idea of where it’s heading next.”