Idea: A certain Science Fiction show is the result of a genetic memory of a grand empire that once stretched across the universe back in the days when the ancestors of the human race still had scales.
The idea that the barren planet that had been eaten when the star of the Hobus system had gone nova had been enough to cause the chain reaction that had in turn caused the destruction of Romulus and Remus and threatened to destroy the rest of the galaxy was patently ridiculous, even if the mineral necessary for the creation of Red Matter had been present in enough amounts to turn it into a ticking time bomb.
No, the reason the Hobus supernova which had destroyed a vast swathe of the Romulan Empire had threatened to destroy the galaxy had been because the expanding cloud of stellar material had hit and activated an ancient weapon that had been left behind by a long-gone race, a weapon that had amplified and expanded the destructive power of that supernova into something that could consume the universe if left unchecked. A weapon that had been created and set as a final act of revenge.
There once had been a habitable world in the Hobus system, a habitable world that had been the home of a race that had ruled a vast empire with an iron fist back when what were to become humans could still be classified as lizards. They were long gone from the universe at that point, their subjects having risen up and thrown off the yoke of their cruel overlords.
The empires their subjects had carved out of their territory were long gone as well, having had empires and Federations carved out of them by the younger races in turn.
The name of that world that had been the capitol of a vast empire had seeped into the popular consciousness of hundreds upon hundreds of races, spawning millions of legends of a race of beings who had ruled a vast and cruel empire that had stretched across the universe from their home planet. The Klingons had spoken of the place as if it were an unimaginable hell. The half-remembered legends of the Vulcans and Romulans spoke of a world of unimaginable horrors. The humans however had - as always - twisted the legend that had been passed on to them through unknown means into something more whimsical, something that could be palatable to children.
Amongst the inhabitants of the galaxy there was a name which almost all who heard it still feared, the name of a long lost and dead world from which the emperors of All of the Universe Including Time had ruled, and that name was Gallifrey.