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Ruon Tarka was a villainous scientist featured on the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery. Initially appearing on the episode The Examples, he was portrayed by Shawn Doyle.
A Risan male Tarka began exhibiting a genius level intellect at a very early age. He also displayed the beginnings of anti-social behavior at an early age by atomizing a Risan feline at the age of five, saying that all anyone could do afterwards was complain about the mess he made. Tarka also looked down on his homeworld, saying that he had been "surrounded by idiots" growing up on Risa.
Tarka's personality issues were not helped when he was enslaved by the Emerald Chain and implanted with a control device on the back of his head. Paired with another scientist named Oros they eventually became good friends. Exploring alternate realities they found one where the Burn had not taken place, nor had the Chain ever arisen and the two began plotting on how they could escape to that reality. The two men managed to discover the amount of power needed to cross dimensions. The two were discovered working on their interdimensional transporter by their overseers. Tarka managed to overpower the overseers and rip out his control device. He ripped out Oros's control device and tried to get the other man to come with him but Oros refused to leave. Tarka kept the scar from the control device as a reminder of his slavery. Before leaving he and his friend promised they would meet in this other universe. Tarka never found out what happened to his friend, if he had made it to the other universe or was even still alive.
After gaining his freedom Tarka was giving a lecture on power sources and new FTL propulsion methods, a lecture seen by Federation Starfleet Admiral Charles Vance. Vance brought Tarka to Federation headquarters and allowed him free reign to develop new technologies, and largely stayed out of the man's way. Over the next decade Tarka became one of the foremost scientific minds both in and outside Federation space.
When the time displaced USS Discovery arrived in the 32nd century with its unique FTL spore drive, Tarka began working on a next generation spore drive to lessen the dependence of the Federation on dilithium in case another Burn ever happened or dilithium dried up completely. Refusing to meet with Discovery's spore drive creator Paul Staments, he had fellow ex Chain scientist Aurellio act as a middleman between him and Staments.
After a Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA) began to threaten the galaxy Tarka began working with Staments on understanding the DMA and how to keep it from destroying any other planets. They learned that the DMA had been created by some unknown species. Tarka realized that the energy powering the DMA was equivalent to a hypergiant star and that its energy source would likey allow him to jump across to the reality he wanted to travel to, he began working on devising a means to destroy the DMA, despite the risk that the DMA's creators would see it as an act of war, and that these creators hopelessly outclassed all the races of the galaxy technology wise. Tarka argued forcefully that the space faring races of the galaxy destroy the DMA, but these races largely decided to attempt a peaceful first contact with the creators.
In the meantime Tarka secretly completed his work on the next generation spore drive, creating a device that could easily be integrated into existing ships. Manipulating Cleveland Booker - whose homeworld of Kwejian was destroyed by the DMA - into leaving headquarters and set out to destroy the DMA. As part of this Tarka and Booker obtained isolynium so that Tarka could build an isolytic weapon - an extremely devastating type of weapon banned several hundred years earlier in a series of treaties between the Federation and its neighbors.
Booker soon began to get cold feet as Discovery pursued him and Tarka to prevent them from destroying the DMA. Tarka went behind Booker's back and upgraded the security systems on Booker's ship, nearly costing the lives of several Discovery crew members in the process. Tarka also fired quantum torpedoes at Discovery heavily damaging the ship in the process. Realizing that his lover Captain Michael Burnham would take any measures necessary to stop him from destroying the DMA, Booker agreed to stand down as the DMA was still mining the boronite it had been created to mine and would remain in position for a while. However Tarka decided to act and launched the isolytic weapon, destroying the DMA in the process.
To his horror Tarka found that the DMA had been powered remotely from a power source outside the galaxy via a wormhole. Also a Federation starship had reported that a new DMA had appeared where the old one had vanished. Captain Burnham realized they had a big problem on their hands, as they made a hostile first contact with the DMA creators.
The new DMA was much more powerful and able to mine bornite at a much faster rate. It then moved into the alpha quadrant, threatening both Earth and Ni'Var in the process. Captain Burnham took the Discovery across the galactic barrier in order to contact species the creators while Tarka worked to find programmable anti-matter which would allow him and Book to cross the barrier as well. Going to the work camp where he and Oros had been held they found a stash of programmable anti-matter that would allow them to cross the barrier.
Tarka and Booker took Booker's ship across the barrier. Beaming on board Discovery to create a blind spot in her sensors, Tarka came across engineeer Jett Reno and took her hostage, bringing her back on board Booker's ship. They were then able to attack Booker's ship to Discovery intending to travel with Discovery to species 10-C's homeworld and shut down the primary power source for 10-C.
Determined to destroy the hyperfield around 10-C at all costs and harvest the energy Tarka turned against Booker and took him prisoner on his own ship. Reno and Booker got a message to Discovery telling them to destroy Booker's ship if they had to but Tarka had to be stopped.
Booker and Reno were able to escape and incapacitate Tarka. Reno was beamed back aboard Discovery. General Ndoye of United Earth rammed Booker's ship with a shuttlecraft before it could reach the hyperfield generator. With Booker's ship careening out of control and about to collide with the hyperfield, Tarka beamed Booker back to Discovery, telling Booker that he was going to try to use what energy he had to beam to the alternate reality he wanted to escape to. He picked up the transporter device and began to activate it as the ship hit the hyperfield and disintegrated. It was unknown if Tarka escaped in time or not but the people of the prime reality considered him to have died.
