thumb|250px|A Vidiian character featured on [[Star Trek: Voyager suffering from The Phage.|alt=A humanoid with decaying skins looks toward the camera.]]
The Vidiians are a fictional alien race in the Star Trek franchise. Developed by Star Trek: Voyager series' co-creators Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor, they serve as recurring antagonists during the show's first two seasons. They are represented as a nomadic species suffering from a pandemic known as the Phage, which destroys their tissue. A society with highly developed medical technology, the Vidiians harvest organs from corpses and living beings to stall the progression of the Phage, and experiment on other alien species in an attempt to develop a cure. Vidiian storylines frequently revolve around the aliens' attempts to take Voyager crew members' organs, though a Vidiian scientist named Danara Pel serves as a love interest for The Doctor. The alien species have made minor appearances in the show's subsequent seasons, and have been included in novels set in the Star Trek universe.
Inspired by the Maya civilization, the bubonic plague, and Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, the Vidiians were seen by the show's co-creators as a way to honor Gene Roddenberry's approach to portraying well-developed antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. The Vidiians were presented as one of three new alien species that could be expanded as recurring antagonists; the other two were the Kazon and the Sikarians. The concept for the Phage as a bacteriophage was decided through a collaboration between science consultant André Bormanis and the show's producers. Michael Westmore was the primary make-up supervisor involved in the creation of the Vidiians' appearance. The make-up and prosthetics for the Vidiians were extensive, requiring actors to wear head masks, contacts, and dentures. The Vidiians received a generally positive response from critics who praised them as successfully bringing horror themes to the series.
Appearances
Star Trek: Voyager
The Vidiians appear as recurring antagonists during Star Trek: Voyager first two seasons. The crew of the USS Voyager first encounters the alien species in the season one episode "Phage", in which the Talaxian Neelix (Ethan Phillips) has his lungs stolen by two Vidiians, Dereth (Cully Fredricksen) and Motura (Stephen Rappaport). After Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) pursues the Vidiians to recover Neelix's organs, the Vidiians explain that their entire species has been infected by a pandemic known as the Phage. They have developed advanced medical technology to remotely harvest organs directly from living humanoids in order to stop the progression of the Phage, which causes tissue to disintegrate on a cellular level. Motura informs Janeway that he has already implanted Neelix's lungs into his own body, but these cannot be removed without killing him, to which he agrees. Faced with a moral dilemma, Janeway refuses his offer and allows both Dereth and Motura to leave. She instructs them to tell the other Vidiians that any attempt to take another organ from Voyagers crew will be met with deadly force. Dereth and Motura perform an operation and adapt a lung from Kes (Jennifer Lien), an Ocampa and Neelix's romantic partner, to make for a compatible donation aligned with Neelix's physiology. They are able to successfully implant the lung into Neelix's body.
In "Faces", Lieutenants Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), and Peter Durst (Brian Markinson) are kidnapped by the Vidiians. Paris and Durst are forced to work in mines while waiting to have their organs harvested. Vidiian Chief Surgeon Sulan (also played by Markinson) experiments on Torres to find a cure for the Phage, since her Klingon genetic structure has an immunity to the disease. The procedure splits Torres into two bodies (a full-blooded Klingon and a full-blooded human); Sulan conducts further experiments on the Klingon Torres while the Human Torres is forced to work in the mines. Sulan kills Durst and grafts his face on top of his own. Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Lieutenant Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ), and Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), who had formed a search party to locate the missing crew members, but upon encountering armed guards are forced to turn back. Chakotay, however returns, now disguised as a Vidiian guard with the help of Tuvok and The Doctor (Robert Picardo), helps to rescue Torres; the Doctor combines both versions of Torres back together.
During "Lifesigns", the crew responds to a distress call and attempts to help a Vidiian scientist Danara Pel (Susan Diol). The Doctor creates a holographic body for Pel in order to work with her to develop a cure for the Phage. Despite the Vidiians' mistreatment of Torres in "Faces", she eventually agrees to provide a sample of her Klingon DNA for their experiments. During their collaboration, the Doctor develops romantic feelings for Pel, and the pair go on a date in the holodeck. When Pel's condition deteriorates rapidly, she decides to stay in her new holographic body so that she can remain alive for several days with the Doctor, rather than return to her own Phage-ravaged body. The Doctor convinces Pel to transfer her consciousness back into her body and the couple dance before Pel departs Voyager.
Vidiians make minor appearances in "Deadlock" and "Resolutions". In "Deadlock", Janeway orders Tom Paris to direct Voyager into a nebula to prevent detection from two nearby Vidiian planets. The starship and its crew are duplicated due to a space-time rift. Several Vidiians attack one of the copies of Voyager and harvest vital organs from members of its crew. The Janeway captaining the invaded ship stops the invasion by self-destructing the Voyager in question. This kills the Vidiians and the crew of that Voyager, excepting Harry Kim and the newborn Naomi Wildman; their counterparts having died, they change ships before the self-destruct completes. In "Think Tank", Janeway learns that a cure for the Phage has been developed by a committee of alien intellectuals. The Vidiians make their final appearance during an alternative timeline in "Fury". During this episode, Kes returns to Voyager (she had left at the beginning of the fourth season when the development of her psionic powers threatened the starship and its crew). Kes has forgotten the reason for her earlier departure, blaming the crew for abandoning her. After traveling to the past, she contacts the Vidiians and tells them that she will help them commandeer Voyager if they escort her past self back to her home planet. The future version of Kes is killed by Janeway during the Vidiians' attack, and her past version makes a holographic message to prevent the events from occurring. The final mention of the Vidiians occurs in the season six episode "Good Shepherd" as one of the various alien species that have threatened Voyager in the past.
Other appearances
The Vidiians have appeared in original fiction based on the Star Trek franchise. For example, in Shadow of Heaven, Danara Pel is captured by an alien species, who desire vengeance against the Vidiians for their past organ-harvesting operations. Kes rescues Pel by using her psionic powers. In the alternative universe presented in the short story "Places of Exile", the Doctor and Pel are the ones who have created the cure for the Phage. In this interpretation, the Vidiians form a more diplomatic bond with Voyager crew and promise to help expedite their return to the Alpha Quadrant.
Several pieces of merchandise related to the Vidiians were also released following their debut. In 1996, an action figure of a Vidiian was released as part of a second wave of Playmates Toys' Star Trek merchandise. A figure of a Vidiian starship was also released by WizKids. The Vidiians have not been featured in Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), but a writer from Cryptic Studios presented in a 2013 article that they may be one potential alien species to be included in future updates.
History and culture
In the Star Trek universe, roughly 2,000 years prior to the arrival of Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, the Vidiian Sodality was a culture driven by "educators, artists, and explorers". The book Star Trek: Star Charts identifies the Vidiians' homeworld as Vidiia Prime, the central planet of the Vidiia system and a Class M planet. The spread of the Phage, resulting in thousands of Vidiians dying every day, pushed the alien race to harvest organs and tissue from corpses as well as living beings. They also experimented on other alien species in an attempt to find a cure for the Phage. Taylor, Piller, and producer Brannon Braga developed the premise behind the Phage and the Vidiians' motives for harvesting organs from discussing ideas that fulfilled the following questions: "Who's interesting? What's interesting? What's an agenda we find interesting?" According to Taylor, the Vidiians were first imagined from an "idea of a culture that was dying of an incurable virus that would go to any lengths to make themselves and their species stay alive".
Taylor originally envisioned the Vidiians as reminiscent of the Maya civilization, especially relative to practices of human sacrifice and cannibalism. Braga, however, has connected the alien species to European history, questioning if Europeans would have pursued similar methods if the bubonic plague had persisted as a pandemic. Braga stated that the Vidiians were partially inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, emphasizing that he wanted to portray them as sympathetic. In his book Star Trek: Parallel Narratives, Chris Gregory attributes the development of the Vidiians to Braga's affinity for the horror genre.
During the writing and development of the episode "Faces", executive story editor Kenneth Biller had difficulty writing the primary Vidiian character as a sympathetic villain. He looked to Gene Roddenberry's approach to portraying antagonists in the Star Trek franchise: "[A]liens should never be patently evil. They may have a set of values that differ from our own, but be careful of making them mustache-twirling villains." Taylor used the following description to summarize the show's approach to the alien species: