Idea for a race/species

[C5]

There was also an alien enemy in one Star Trek book, "Dreams of the Raven," which could gain a person's abilities, memories, and even voice, by breaking open their skull and swallowing their brain whole! The devoured brain would then act as a second brain to the creature, to which it had full access. Creepy.

There is something quite similar in the Sluggy Freelance webcomic (a cyborg who had to swallow brains to access all their memories), the Heroes series (Sylar...) and even a bit of Doctor Who (the Absorbaloff in the dreadful Love and Monster episode). Apparently some ideas come to a lot of people at once

And the downloading abilities thing is uncomfortably close to what our Collective friends like to do actually. Mmmh... there might be some ideas of evolution for the Borg here.

Which leads me by the way to another interesting idea to ponder : what would happen if the Darwins were to be assimilated by the Borg ? Would the Collective gain any benefit from them ?

[Tricky]

I always thought the Aratis bug was accidently 'uplifted' by the Lantians when they were seeding the Pegasas Galaxay with humans, not that the bugs absorbed the DNA of the human-types. Although that would explain how they quickly became a threat to the Lantians.

[Alex]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's not a good idea or that it couldn't be used in Star Trek. Just that the idea has been out there a while in a high profile show. I think it's a nifty idea and would fit right into Star Trek (only not as evolving into Wraith, but already some advanced being that can gain new forms and powers through absorption). I get a lot of ideas from different SciFi shows and adapt them to other settings. I find Babylon 5 and Stargate SG1 to be the two best sources of ideas that are easily adapted to Star Trek.