Ugh, the Kazon – okay, you asked for it – let’s talk about their status as a lost cause of Star Trek. The thing that gets me about the Kazon is how they were supposed to be one of the top five adversarial alien races in Star Trek history, yet they couldn’t even come close to living up to that title. It’s like trying to make a knock-off designer purse and passing it off as the real thing – it’s just not going to cut it.

One thing you should know is that the Kazon were inspired by LA street gangs, which is already a red flag. But instead of trying to make them unique and formidable, the creators just slapped some forehead ridges on them and called it a day. No wait, forehead ridges are too kind, let’s be honest. The Kazon looked like somebody freeze-dried some cauliflower and glued it to an actor’s scalp.

Because when you want your main villains to inspire fear and awe, what better way than to base them off of real-life gangs? Talk about setting low standards. An interesting thing about this is how the Kazon were supposed to have depth and culture, but it all fell flat with their “kill someone” rituals. Wow, groundbreaking stuff. Because nothing says “complex alien society” like a ritualistic murder.

But what really irks me is how they managed to single-handedly ruin Voyager’s attempt at serialization. The Kazon arc was messier than Tom Paris’ lizard transformation episode, and that’s saying something. It’s like the writers were trying to make the show as uninteresting and forgettable as possible.

We deserved better science and technology focus in our sci-fi shows – instead we got the Kazon and Star Trek was rightfully roasted for it. This is what you get when you say ‘Good enough is good enough.’  The Kazon are a prime example of this – they were a lazy attempt at creating a new alien race and it showed. Let’s strive for more originality and creativity in our storytelling, instead of settling for cheap knock-offs. Quit dumbing things down to make everyone happy.