Ro Laren deserves better

Way back at the turn of the century, Sony Pictures bought the rights to the character Spider-Man (and his villains, family, and love interests) from a newly no-longer-bankrupt Marvel Comics. As part of the deal, Sony had start work on a Spider-Man-related movie every five and a half years or so or else they'd lose the rights. By 2012, Sony had put out five Spider-Man movies to, let's say ... diminishing returns. In 2014, Sony negotiated a deal with Marvel that would lease the character of Peter Parker to Marvel Studios for their movies. Sony got to share in the astronomical profits of the MCU without doing much, but to keep control of the rights, they still had to make a Spider-Man adjacent movie every five years.

And that's how we end up with movies like multiple Venom sequels, Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter. These movies serve no artistic purpose. They have nothing to do with storytelling, beloved characters, the human condition, or even the concept of art. They are, only by the most generous definition, movies. They exist for no reason other than to fulfill an assignment so that a company can keep making money.

Man. What a weird thing I felt like writing.

Anyway, on Saturday, the new Paramount Games Studio announced Star Trek: Shadow Frontier.

When Paramount Skydance announced the creation of Paramount Games Studio on Friday, Cass said, "if Paramount Games isn't making a Star Trek game then they're soooooo silly" in our company Slack.

And now the monkey's paw has curled.

Let me start here: I have loved Star Trek my entire life. I want Star Trek games — I don't have a problem, for example, with the other Star Trek game announced this weekend. I also have no problem with Bloober Team, who is developing this game — I haven't played any of their games, but I know they're generally respected. I do have a problem with the existence of Paramount Games Studio — I wrote a whole article about it already — but that's not why I have a problem with this game either.

My problem isn't even that this game doesn't feel like Star Trek and instead feels like a completely different sci-fi horror game that's had a Star Trek sticker slapped on it. Honestly, it looks like a perfectly competent sci-fi horror game without the Star Trek sticker. It doesn't look like anything groundbreaking, per se, but it looks creepy enough. Even with the Star Trek sticker on top, I still don't have a problem with the concept.

The problem I have with Shadow Frontier is that it stars Ro Laren.

The character Ro Laren was born on the planet Bajor in, basically, a concentration camp and grew up as part of the Bajoran diaspora. Almost 40 years before the start of The Next Generation, the Cardassians forcibly annexed Bajor and brutally occupied it. The 50 years of Cardassian rule on Bajor saw forced labor camps, sexual abuses, slavery, medical experimentation, resource theft on a planetary scale, and attempted genocide. When she was 7, Ro was forced to watch as a Cardassian tortured her father.

Ro Laren does not need shadow tentacles, a spooky hallway, or a "distant planet overtaken by a strange consciousness" to tell a horror story. Ro Laren's personal story is already a horror story. One that is extremely fucking pertinent here in 2026 and one that reflects the lived reality of far too many people. It is, frankly, insulting to the character, to Star Trek, and to the audience to have a story about Ro Laren that doesn't address that.

I'm fine with seeing other parts of the Star Trek universe. I don't need the too clean, ignore-the-implications utopia of Next Gen all the time. But ignoring the in-universe context for a character like Ro while slapping the Star Trek sticker on a seemingly unrelated game feels like a naked cash grab.

Greg Baldwin, who voiced Uncle Iroh in another Paramount property — the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender — had some thoughts about the new leadership:

"I can speak freely because I’m 65 years old and my pocketful of fucks is seriously depleted. Working as a paralegal at various studios in LA for thirty years…I had the opportunity to observe studio executives closely. They’re generally a slippery and clueless bunch who shouldn’t be allowed near anything remotely creative…but the new regime at Paramount is straight up evil. I assure you. These soulless bastards have nothing but contempt for a show about grace and redemption and the struggle against fascism."

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, as the Steam page says, "only by solving the mysteries of this strange world can Ro hope to make peace with the demons of her past." Maybe Shadow Frontier will draw from DS9 and unpack the lasting trauma of invasion with sympathy and respect.

But I sure doubt it.