35 years later, One Wild Star Trek technology has just made a surprising comeback

What could be scarier in the future than dangerous swarms of robots? The answer is: small swarms of robots. In the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decksa minor AI threat has been brought back into the fold, although these particular little robots may not be at the top of every Trek fan’s mind. Continuing the tradition of five seasons super deep cuts from the Trek universe, “The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel” brings back the nanites in a big (little?) way. But this return of the nanites is actually a bigger throwback to a moment when Star Trek: The Next Generation forever switched.

This is why the nanite easter egg is in there Lower decks is significant, and why the episode they come from is wilder than you might remember.

Tiny, microscopic, spoilers ahead.

In her captain’s log, Captain Freeman says the following USS Cerritos has been sent to help a massive cruise ship into space known as ‘The Duchess’. This cruise ship has apparently been overrun by a “nanite cluster” that has “contaminated the resort and consumed metal in order to reproduce itself.” While Tendi jokingly calls this “pest control” a few moments later, Freeman notes, “Starfleet has assigned us here to humanely capture and study the microscopic robots.”

While microscopic robots are a medical possibility in the actual, real world, in Star Trek canon, these specific types of nanites have their origins in the 1989 episode “Evolution.” While that episode begins as an everyday occurrenceEnterpriseis-broken story, we learn that halfway through Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) accidentally caused a colony of microscopic nanites to be released onto the ship and to develop, hence the name of the episode. This causes the nanites to consume mechanical resources to reproduce and survive. This basic setup is identical in the new episode of Lower deckswhich is the first time that the TNGEra nanites have appeared since ‘Evolution’. (Although, Discovery Season 2 had some slightly different nanites in Season 2 in 2017).

In Lower decksit seems pretty clear that Starfleet knows what to do if a nanite plague breaks out, but it also seems to suggest that the nanites of “Evolution” have migrated from their new home planet Kavis Alpha IV, where the Enterprise moved them in 2366. Lower decks Season 5 takes place in approximately 2382, meaning Wesley’s nanites have had 16 years to migrate to strange new worlds and seek out various other sources of metal to consume.

Interestingly enough, while the Borg had been introduced TNG Season 2, the nanites in ‘Evolution’ seem to predict the Borg’s behavior later on TNG Season 3. In 1989, “Evolution” season 3 of TNG September 1989 – a season that would famously end in June 1990, with a cliffhanger involving Jean-Luc Picard being absorbed into a hive mind. But strangely enough, the nanites in “Evolution” also have a combined, hive-like intelligence, albeit less overtly threatening. So with the introduction of nanites, TNG Season 3 strangely revealed its own endgame.

At the time, “Evolution” was also a subtle reboot episode – it was the first TNG episode featuring the redesigned uniforms for the crew with the higher collars, Dr. Crusher returned after a year-long absence, and the overall atmosphere of the series began to resemble what we now think of when the show got good. Even though ‘Evolution’ aired in 1989, it is one of the most famous TNG episodes from the 1990s because it seems more polished and sure of itself than the two previous seasons. It’s also, interestingly, an episode doubly focused on characters who are underappreciated or misunderstood. Not technically a Starfleet officer, Wesley Crusher struggles in his mother’s shadow. Meanwhile, the nanites are, in retrospect, a small version of other AI hiveminds in the Trek canon, but taken a little less seriously due to their size.

And yet, true to Trek’s tendency towards open-mindedness, Data and Wesley devise a way to communicate with the nanites, allowing them to become a fully recognized alien species within the galaxy, even if they were artificially created. The legacy of nanites after the 24th century is currently unknown, but what Lower decks What was just suggested is that perhaps the evolution we saw in “Evolution” was just the beginning.

Star Trek: Lower Decks And Star Trek: The Next Generation streaming on Paramount+.