Teaching engineering at Earth. Happily retired from heroics. But when the new threat interferes with subspace, he’s the only one who understands the physics. His return to DS9 forces him to confront the PTSD he has spent two decades ignoring.
After his augmentation was exposed during a political scandal, Bashir fled to a lawless sector on the edge of Breen space. He runs an underground clinic for war orphans, using his enhanced intellect to evade Section 31, who still want to “recruit” him. He is called back when the new enemy turns out to be biologically... familiar.
Now a confident, decisive Starfleet captain. She commands a Vesta -class starship, tasked with patrolling the new, chaotic Demilitarized Zone. She struggles with the multiple lifetimes of Dax urging her toward caution (Curzon), diplomacy (Emony), or outright violence (Joran).
No longer a boy. After his father’s disappearance into the wormhole, Jake wrote the definitive war memoir ( The Never-Ending Sacrifice ). Now he’s a hard-bitten, morally compromised war correspondent who drinks too much and has a secret Jem’Hadar contact.
Yes, Quark briefly became Grand Nagus—and hated it. He staged a fake assassination attempt to step down. Now he runs a smaller, weirder bar on Ferenginar, but a chance encounter with a lost Orb of the Prophets forces him to return to the station.