Star Trek: Discovery Reaches Into Deep Space Nine To Make The Breen Scary Again

Shields up! This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of "Star Trek: Discovery."

Everything old will eventually become new again. Of all the various traditions and tropes upheld by "Star Trek" over the decades, perhaps none ring quite as true as that maxim. Don't believe me? Well, in just the last few weeks alone, this final season of "Discovery" has circled back to one of the most famous episodes of "The Original Series" ever made, gone out of its way to pick up a loose plot thread from "The Next Generation," and even drop the biggest reveal of them all: The Breen are back and as deadly as ever. For such a forward-looking enterprise (pun insufferably intended), there's no doubting the fact that the past has always played an integral role in the beloved sci-fi series.

This week's episode of "Discovery" does nothing to contradict that ongoing trend ... but, in this case, it'd be a mistake to confuse nostalgia with navel gazing. While episode 5 finally gave us a look beneath the helmets of the franchise's most mysterious villains, episode 7 (titled "Erigah") goes even further and makes established canon feel frighteningly relevant. For the first time since "Deep Space Nine" and its galaxy-spanning Dominion War, "Star Trek" finally gives us a reason to fear the Breen all over again.

"Never turn your back on a Breen," Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) ominously quotes early on in the episode. As it turns out, this isn't just a Romulan (and admittedly xenophobic) saying well known throughout the galaxy — it's the "Discovery" writers' cheeky way of quoting a line directly from an episode of "Deep Space Nine," which was the first "Trek" series to establish the fearsome alien species as a new threat arriving late in the game of the raging Dominion War. Hidden in the Alpha Quadrant, it was the Klingons who initially discovered to their peril that even their warmongering ways were no match for this then-unknown species. By the time the Breen Confederacy allied themselves with the Dominion (already made up of the Changelings, Cardassians, Jem'Hadar, and other powerful enemies), many considered this the final blow to the Federation's hopes for victory — and for good reason.

Only known to Starfleet as a formidable group of warriors, the secretive Breen proved to be even more dangerous than anyone could've imagined by packing a decisive one-two punch. As befitting their mysterious identities hidden underneath such imposing helmets, the aliens soon left their mark on the war by launching a shocking offensive against Earth and striking at the very heart of Starfleet Headquarters — an act that not even the Klingons had ever dared attempt. The implementation of a new Breen weapon capable of destroying starships with ease (including the fan-favorite USS Defiant) in a subsequent battle only further added to their mystique. Although their forces were ultimately repelled, the symbolism of their incursions affected morale throughout the quadrant and effectively set the stakes for this new wild card.

By the events of "Discovery," it's safe to say the Breen's reputation precedes them.

Don't let appearances deceive you. Despite their distracting similarities to the bumbling Boushh bounty hunters of "Star Wars," the Breen remain a force to be reckoned with — and our main characters on "Discovery" are painfully aware of that fact, as they repeatedly allude, in haunted whispers, to what happened "the last time" they encroached on Starfleet space. The impending Breen threat is complicated by their attempts to recover L'ak (Elias Toufexis) under the pretenses of fulfilling their blood oath against him. In actuality, the Breen primarch (who also happens to be L'ak's uncle) needs him in order to secure the order of succession and wield enough influence to stave off several other primarchs competing for the throne.

Yet all this pales in comparison to the possibility that they could recover the Progenitor technology that the Discovery crew have been so desperate to track down, thus fulfilling the disturbing vision of Starfleet's complete destruction at the hands of the Breen in the future glimpsed by Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Rayner in "Mirrors." Even for casual fans who may not have brushed up on their "Deep Space Nine" trivia, the haunted references to their actions during the Dominion War hundreds of years prior combined with their imposing visual design and that of their starship (which noticeably dwarfs any of Starfleet's counterparts) hints at what they're capable of achieving. But it's Commander Rayner's backstory as a Kellerun survivor of Breen oppression that adds a personal dimension to these antagonists.

The final season of "Discovery" always needed a worthy foe to end things with a bang, and it appears we've received exactly that by digging into "Trek" past to make the Breen scary again.

New episodes of "Discovery" stream on Paramount+ every Thursday.