Today I Learned

Look okay so I have the basic theory behind the film alright?

Eventually the crew of the Enterprise realizes that every planet with intelligent life they've ever visited has some kind of bean.

Every star system.

Every galaxy.

Background:

Long before the dawn of humanity (and every other civilization in the known universe), billions of seeding ships full of a variety of gene-modified ruggedized advanced beans were sent out through the cosmos.

Who sent the beans? The last civilization of a distant supercluster, who had known several millennia of intergalactic stability and connection (over thousands of galaxies, countless people). But in the last few centuries they had suffered a horrible war with something invading from the deep black. A majority of the galaxies were wiped out within the first few decades, but a distant arm of the supercluster fortified hard and held out. They desperately hoped to overcome it, but they had only succeeding in slowing it.

Witnessing so much annihilation, many knew this was the end of life here. There were attempts to salvage life, many generation ships were sent out but they always prematurely lost connection.

...

But they sent beans.

GOOD beans.

They established life in corners of the universe where life would have otherwise been impossible! They grew in the most fucked up conditions, there were beanstalks in methane oceans and spreading around supervolcanoes.

There were beans on Earth, before there were single-celled organisms. They established the foundation for life.

We're not here by divine decree.

We're here, because the aliens sent beans.

(Potential addition/twist: Fungus. Rarely found beyond Earth, almost always seen as a poisonous pest, humans being uniquely similar to fungi becomes an important plot point. Recently there has been a horrble fungal pest on Earth ruining beans in particular, but also attacking many other plants at an increasing and alarming rate. Human and animal fungal infections have gotten far more aggressive. Eventually; Mushroom zombies.)

(Spolier alert: The enemy from the deep black was fungal in nature. It feeds on worlds and builds mycelium networks through fibrils stretching through cold space off anything it can. Solid planets, asteroids, gas giants. Touching them, growing on them, eventually slowing them through a weak but persistent and increasing resistance. Growing like mold, but ever larger, always reaching for the network it moves through. (Only thing it can't touch are stars, but it can feed from them.) After consuming everything it can reach, it sends out spores and slowly dies as it has sapped all energy from its hosts.)

Thank you, that was fun 😵‍💫🥸