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The Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Guide

Since 1967, when the first Star Trek comic was published, 2,635 Star Trek stories have been released in print, comic, and original audio form. In the first decades, the majority of these were standalone stories that only referenced the show. However, over most of the past twenty years the majority of Simon and Schuster novels took place in a shared continuity in which the events of one novel often had major repercussions on the novels following it. This modern continuity will be referred to here as the STAR TREK LIT-VERSE.

       Unlike the Star Wars Expanded Universe or various other media tie-in lines, no Star Trek novel, comic, or game is considered canon. Even those written in conjunction with the new, currently in-production series. However, that doesn't take anything away from the quality of the material or its ability to entertain. Even as Star Trek has returned to the small screen and the Simon and Schuster novel continuity has mostly drawn to a close, the inter-connectedness of the novels will likely continue in some form as it has for the majority of Trek history.

       The complete Lit-verse consists of a continuity web of more than 1100 stories. That is approaching half of all Star Trek fiction ever published. In addition to the majority of the novels which have been released over the past two decades, many older novels have been referenced in this continuity as well. Available to the left are reading lists for each of the series. Don't be overwhelmed by the length of some of the lists. All anthology short stories and many comic issues are listed individually, so it's not as much reading as it seems to a newcomer. Not all connections are noted, only the ones which form the branching out of the lists. Author annotations can be found for many stories to provide more extensive references.

       My placement of a story in the Lit-verse is not intended to imply that there are no continuity discrepancies included in the material. There are definite contradictions in the lists I've compiled. The fact is, not even the shows themselves are free of continuity errors, some quite large. The older novels do not always agree in every detail with the Lit-verse, or even with modern canon. Indeed, even the newer novels, written with the modern continuity in mind, sometimes contain a few mistakes. The majority of all this can be ignored, or explained away by a creative mind. My goal here was to include every link possible and leave the continuity problems up to the reader to resolve. If you don't want a book in your personal continuity, then just ignore it. Don't become so invested in continuity that you forget to enjoy the stories themselves.

A Note On the Format of This Website

       Each Star Trek series is given its own reading list page. The major Lit-only series, New Frontier, SCE, Gorkon, Titan, Vanguard/Seekers, Mirror Universe , and Myriad Universes also have their own pages. The easiest way to include Stargazer, The Lost Era, and certain other like-period pieces was to create an Early 24th Century reading list containing them all.

       I then have a simple list of Simon and Schuster stories that take place after Star Trek: Nemesis grouped into "chapters". A more detailed timeline of the stories following Star Trek: Nemesis is given on the Post-Nemesis: Month-By-Month page. Note that these stories were published in the years before Star Trek: Picard premiered, and the authors were given free rein to explore the late 24th century. Things do "eventually" lead back into the modern television continuity now shown in Star Trek: Picard and other series, but tell an alternate history of the intervening years that only makes sense in relation to the canonical storyline at its conclusion in the Coda trilogy.

       Also to the left is a month-by-month breakdown of the Five Year Mission. The Complete Pocket Books Novel List updates the novel list as given in the back of Pocket Books novels in years past, before the list became so long that it was considered impractical to include in every book. I also have a list of all the ebook exclusive Trek stories which have been published and never been released in print. Then there's a vast examination of the minutiae of Klingon date keeping systems. I've keep an exact count of every Star Trek story ever published, updated with each new month's releases, and a count of just how many stories have been told that take place in the Five Year Mission. And for the first two seasons of Discovery, I kept an examination of the dating of each episode. Don't miss pictures of my 1:5000 scale Star Trek ship model collection, and a page where I log all the updates to the site, for those interested in seeing what is new and what has changed.

       Forthcoming is the Complete Lit-verse reading list, which will include every story from the main reading lists in order. Also to come will be more specific reading lists (character specific lists, species specific lists, storyline specific lists). I also want to build a "Simple Pre-Nemesis Reading List." Someday I will develop an explanation of my own personal continuity and a list of what it includes.

       Each anthology is broken up into individual short stories, and each novella and comic issue is included separately. Special cases were The Lives of Dax and No Limits. These were both broken up into their individual stories (which spread them out over different series) and also placed in their respective series as a whole (for those only reading that series.) For example the short story 'Q'uandary from New Frontier: No Limits is essentially a TNG story and is included in that reading list, but for those only reading New Frontier , the entire No Limits anthology is listed there as well. In addition to being broken up across series lines, each story from Tales of the Dominion War is also included on the DS9 page, because of the centrality of the overall story to that series.

       New Frontier presented a specific challenge in that much back story had to be presented to get the series established, because of its Lit-only nature. Thus to experience many of its short stories in chronological order without breaking up some of the New Frontier flashbacks into separately listed sections would have been somewhat unintelligible to a new reader. This is not the case for the TV series based book lines, nor is it a circumstance shared by the other Lit-only series. So with New Frontier some of the flashbacks are presented as separate portions of the list. This is explained further on the New Frontier page.

       With comic series, miniseries were treated as whole unique stories, but only individual linked issues of anthology or ongoing series were included. I didn't consider the "Previously in Star Trek--" intros in Marvel comics to rise to the level of a story reference. Where possible, I have condensed miniseries or story arcs into single entries to trim the length of the reading lists. Above all the proceeding considerations, however, my overriding rule was that if multiple stories were published in the same work, such as a short story anthology or multistory comic book, all stories between those two covers would be included if anything from that volume was connected to the Lit-verse.

       The Strange New Worlds anthologies were forced to break this rule though. At least one story from almost all the volumes of SNW was referenced, and this would have necessitated putting almost every SNW story into the reading lists. Also specifically not included are references involving RPGs or video games.

       The timeline used for these lists was derived from the Timeliners chronology in Voyages of the Imagination by Jeff Ayers and lots of research done on my own, with the Memory-Beta timeline being a very important resource. Much of my process of figuring out the timeline of the various series was recorded on the TrekBBS. Starting here , with more to come in the future.

Note of Inspiration and Thanks

      Very special thanks goes to turtletrekker of the TrekBBS message boards. His work in compiling at least half of these continuity connections was both the inspiration of and basis for this website. This entire idea began from the dozens of message boards questions about what books had to be read before reading Keith R.A. DeCandido's Articles of the Federation. The specific thread that can be considered the grandfather of this website can be found here . Turtletrekker ran with this and compiled the vast Charting the Novel-verse project, the second version of which can be found here . My interest in the project began and was first manifested in a discussion here and continued here .

       More thanks to all the TrekBBS members who contributed to these discussions. Thanks also to Steve Roby, whose amazing Complete Starfleet Library is a great resource. And on the other side of the literary coin is Mark Martinez's Star Trek Comics Checklist , which is invaluable to me, and Curt Danhouser's Guide to the Star Trek Story Records

       None of this would be possible without the original Timeliners who created the Voyages of the Imagination timeline, and all of my colleagues who have kept it alive over the years. I thank them for their allowance to include small tidbits of information here and there. Keep in mind this is simply my interpretation of Star Trek continuity. Your mileage may vary. Enjoy, everyone!

      Questions? Comments? [email protected] Twitter: @ryan1234560 Or vist the Trek BBS Thread

The Star Trek Litverse Reading Guide is not affiliated with CBS Studios Inc.. Star Trek ® is a trademark of CBS Studios Inc.

• Schedules and Guides
• 2020 Schedule
• 2021 Schedule
• Reading Order
• Starships Index

Trek-Lit Reading Order Flow Chart

• Crossovers:
• To fully immerse yourself in the litverse, the big crossover event that really starting to bring things together was the Destiny trilogy - A  great place to jump in, leading to stories from several series set after it. One step back from Destiny is Articles of the Federation , which is the perfect introduction to the world of Federation politics which becomes prominent in Destiny and beyond.
• If you're looking to jump in further along, then  The Fall  is a good place to start; the five-part crossover brings together most of the 24th century series, and shakes up the status quo for the series as they continue independently after.
• A cohesive series of Mirror Universe stories builds to a grand finale that has knock-on effects in the prime timeline narrative. These stories begin in the anthology Glass Empire .
• DS9 was the first series to enjoy a post-TV relaunch; the main new DS9 adventures start from Avatar , which is also available in Twist of Faith , an omnibus of the first four books of the series.
• The ongoing TNG narrative really starts from the A Time to… series, but you could jump on from the first book set after Nemesis , Death in Winter . Later on in the run, other good jumping on points are the Cold Equations trilogy, or  Armageddon's Arrow , the first of a run of stories from the same mission for the Enterprise. 
• Another branch of TNG , Titan , featuring Captain Riker's ship, gets going from Taking Wing , or you can explore Picard's backstory in the run of Stargazer novels which begins with Reunion .
• Voyager 's first post- Endgame stories start from Homecoming , but the series got something of a second start later with the return to the Delta Quadrant in  Full Circle .
• Enterprise:
• Enterprise 's post finale adventures begin from The Good That Men Do . This series also has secondary relaunch with the post-Romulan War era in A Choice of Futures  beginning the Rise of the Federation series.
• TOS doesn't have quite the same sort of ongoing narrative as the other series, but there are a few books that form a loose continuity, and The Captain's Oath is a good place to start with those. 
• If you're looking for something more serialised in the 23rd century, then check out  Vanguard , which starts from Harbinger , and spawned a spin-off series Seekers , beginning with Second Nature .
• A side-step from regular TOS adventures gives us a linked series of books featuring the Star Trek universe of the 20th and 21st centuries. A good place to start exploring these is the Eugenics Wars duology.
• Other spin-offs
• New Frontier was the first major spin-off Star Trek book series, featuring the adventures of Captain Calhoun and the USS Excalibur. The series begins with House of Cards , but the first four books were all short, and are also available as a single omnibus .
• IKS Gorkon , retitled in its final book as Klingon Empire , is a Klingon series, which got it's first moment's in the TNG novel Diplomatic Implausibility . 
• Not listed in full on the chart is  Corps of Engineers , also known as SCE , this extensive series of novellas features the engineering specialists of the USS da Vinci and crosses over into other series every so often. Their stories begin with  The Belly of the Beast , or an omnibus of the first four books in the series,  Have Tech, Will Travel .
• Department of Temporal Investigations features the time traveling hijinks, and frustrated bureaucracy, of the Federation's time police. Their adventures start (depending on how you perceive time) with Watching the Clock .
• Prometheus is a unique series, the first tie-in to be originally written in German, but also available in English. A trilogy of books featuring the distinctive ship begins with Fire with Fire .

59 comments:

Thanks for the hard work !!! i do really appreciate it. Do you have plans on updating from time to time ??? regards

It's on version 2 at the moment, I'll probably do an update once The Fall is done and we know what effect that has on everything :)

Thank you so much for updating this. It is possible to find the info yourself on Memory Alpha etc but this is a much easier way to do it and a good way too not scare off new readers with them having to do too much own research.

Where is Spock Must Die in this? Also, you have a typo in the title of "Greater Than the Sum." But... wow, just wow. What a map.

Important question: where does "Planet X", the TNG/X-Men crossover, fit in?

Thanks for the note dwasifer, fixed that error now :) Rev, Planet X doesn't really much connect to the wider continuity as far as I know (I've not read it), but I believe it's a direct sequel to the TNG/X-Men comic Second Contact, which itself takes place immediately after First Contact.

This is an amazing reference. Thanks very much for putting it together. I've been using it to organise my Trek Books and for reading the 20 or so trek books that I've recently bought in the right order.

hi fantastic flow chart! ...what program did you use to create the chart?

I love you for making this. The Pocket Books Novel-verse is starting to become like it's own Star-Wars-Expanded-Universe-esque canon storyline.

This is really awesome! I love Star Trek and after watching everything 1000 times over I need new content so I figured I would dive into the book series for the first time. But where to start? This really helps answer that question and gives me a good reference! Thanks!

First, I absolutely love this thing. I've been trying to get caught up on Trek lit for a while now and this has been VERY HELPFUL. A couple constructive comments: #1 There's a dashed green line going to Serpents Among the Ruins/The Art of the Impossible/Alien Spotlight: Cardassians/Cardassia and Andor that doesn't have a beginning. It's all end arrows, so it's unclear which direction this is supposed to go. #2 Q Are Cordially Invited. I haven't read it yet so I don't know exactly where it goes but I'm thinking it needs to be included.

Hi Benjamin, apologies for the very slow reply, I hadn't spotted your comment! As you might see, we've just posted an updated version of the chart, which might help with your questions, but to expand on them: #1 We removed the multi-directional Cardassian story arrow because ti was a bit confusing indeed, but the idea was to show how all the Cardassian/Garak stories are generally a bit interconnected. But we can sort of communicate that with the series dots not, so we didn't need the confusing arrows to everywhere! #2 Q Are Cordially Invited... tells the story of the Picard/Crusher wedding, which took place some time before Greater Than the Sum. But there is a framing story on an unspecified wedding anniversary. As we couldn't spot a reference to which anniversary we've opted to put it down in almost publication order, with the other TNG ebook, just before The Fall.

Sadly the site that opens once I click on the flow chart stays blank.

Working fine for me. Anyone else having problems?

Thanks for this graphic, it really helps me and will from now on be my guide :) Do you have plans on updating it with the new novels that have been and will be released?

Of course, this is already version four, which includes most of the books coming out this year (that have connections to the wider continuity) and a few even further ahead already. As more books come we'll update accordingly, and also refine the chart once we know more connections in forthcoming books :)

@8of5 That's amazing to hear! Thanks again for your work it really helps!

Thank you for creating this. Watched all the shows, just now getting into the books! This helps a bunch!

I have watched the show, its better if you had created this flowchart with standard flowchart symbols

This is top-notch. Printed it off and have it laminated already! Been able to track all my reading and discover what else to read in some logical order. As a result, just bought 13 new books. Hunting down the older ones are a bit tricky - been using Abe Books but this can be a wee expensive when you live in Australia. Booktopia's great for the more popular and/or newer books. Just wanted to say thank-you

That should be Book Depository. Booktopia a place a hardly buy books from - but I do from time to time. Needless to say, I've never bought any Star Trek from Booktopia. Have a great day :)

I come back to this flow chart every couple of months. Just to find out which book(s) to read next. Thanks for the good work!

The DS9 upcoming book "The Empty Sack" is now titled "Rules of Accusation" and will be out in July, 2016

Thanks for the update Terry!

Hi, Any update incoming?

Working on an update right now in fact, I expect it will be up next week some time (complete with the final title for Terry's book!).

Excited to see it. thanks.

Thank you Baby Jesus I found this

This list is awesome. Unfortuantely, now that the color palette is up to 19, my mild color-blindness is making matching some of these difficult if not a lost cause. Guessing the circles are too teeny to use iconography, so probably not much to be done for it. Still, a minor issue with an awesome chart.

I did revise the colours this time around to try and make them distinct as possible, as someone made a similar remark at the last revision. But yes you're right, due to the rather large number of colours to mark all the different dots, and the dots being too small to do much else it would take a completely different design approach to make it easier to read. It's something we're aware of, but haven't found a solution yet.

A great effort / work! Kudos to you brave souls! :)

Where does the Genesis Wave fit in?

Ty for your hard work

Thanks for your work, I'm following this since version 2 and it's an amazing help for me. This is why I love Star Trek - the fans! (also: great that you included Prometheus!)

Been meaning to catch up with you - thanks for this updated and shared resource. Top-notch! Kimberley.

This has been a great resource for catching up on all of the books/series. I did find one error, though. Somehow, you've omitted A Time to Kill from the TNG:A Time To... saga in version 5. Thanks again for the hard work and maintenance!

This flowchart is really awesome. And thanks for adding "Star Trek Prometheus" But I found an error, too. "Star Trek: Prometheus: Into the Heart of Chaos" is volume III not II. "The Source of All Fury" is II. And: The connection to "Takedown" is the wrong way round. STP take place just before "Takedown" and while it was written later it references events, that take place at the beginning of "Takedown". Bernd

This chart is great, but do you have a merged list of everything in a single chronological order?

This chart is great and all, but... where's Corps of Engineers? Because I don't see it on there.

Im thinking of reading Section 31 Control. Do I need to read Disavowed first?

Absolutely. I think ~most (all) would agree. They are both great reads.

If I remember right, way back last year I had the following experience. I had Disavowed as being the next read on DS9 having been through all the others. But I had to stop reading it after a while - I felt I was missing something. So, I went a few steps back and read The Fall series (esp. A Ceremony of Losses - I think), and then went through Vanguard, Lovell and Seekers (in that order) - I'm now on Seekers #2. It's been really interesting getting familiar with all the backdrop as well as having some great reads. Anyway, whatever you do have a great read. I'm sure you'll be able to get any background info to fill in any detail behind both Disavowed & Control from the Internet (Memory Alpha or Beta) - and thanks for reminding me to order my copy of Control!

Any updates inbound?

Yeah, this list is a bit out of date right now. I'm currently reading "Available Light." (The latest TNG book as of April 2019)

Please could this list be updated, I used to rely on this as which book to read and in what sequence but its now outdated.

Also really looking forward to an update :) would be really appreciated.

Also looking for an update, I use this to find out when new stuff is out, I didn't even know about Collateral Damage

I only just found out about Collateral Damage as well. This graphic is quickly falling behind! I hope it gets updated, it has been a valuable resource.

Kudos to the flow chart. That is awesome and exactly what I was looking for.

Everyone that's been asking for an update, please check the page now :)

Thank you very much for taking the time to update and expand it. Been using it since version 1. I almost read all novels that are one the chart and feeling both sadness that the litverse as we know it will come to an end. But I'm looking forward to what's to come and if there will be one last novel to bring the novelverse in line with Picard.

Great chart!! Thanks for the update. Loving your work. #LLAP

This is fantastic! Thanks for all of the work you did putting this together!

Just a quick nitpick, the "Created By" section in the 2020 version has a typo (I'm assuming). It says "For the latest version, and additional notes, visit: TrekTrekCollective.com" Looks like there's an extra "Trek" in the url. That said, I love the chart. Thank you!

Is a new version planned for rhe chart? One that goes up to the upcoming Coda trilogy?

There are a couple references to the Enterprise-E’s recent experience with the Genesis Wave in A Time to Sow.

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Star Trek: Year Five

• View history

The series is scripted by a "writer's room" of Brandon Easton , Jody Houser , Jim McCann , Collin Kelly , and Jackson Lanzing . Kelly and Lanzing wrote the series' opening story, with interior art by Stephen Thompson and cover art by Greg Hildebrandt . [1]

• 3 Omnibuses
• 4 External links

Creators [ ]

• Jackson Lanzing (#1-9, #11-14, #17, #22-25)
• Collin Kelly (#1-9, #11-14, #17, #22-25)
• Brandon M. Easton (#3-4, #20-21, #25)
• Jody Houser (#5-6, #15-16, #25)
• Jim McCann (#9-10, #18-19, #25)
• Paul Cornell (#25)
• Stephen Thompson (#1-2, #7-8, #11-12, #22-23)
• Martin Coccolo (#3-4)
• Silvia Califano (#5-6, #9-10, #12, #15-16, #20-21, #24-25)
• Maria Keane (#11)
• Kieran McKeown (#12)
• Angel Hernández (#13-14, #18-19, #25)
• J.K. Woodward (#17)
• Elisabetta D'Amico (#22-24)
• Christopher Jones (#25)
• J.J. Lendl (#25)
• Megan Levens (#25)
• Carlos Nieto (#25)
• Charlie Kirchoff (#1-2, #7-8, #11-12, #15-16, #22-25)
• Fran Gamboa (#3-4, #13-14, #18)
• Thomas Deer (#5-6)
• Sebastian Cheng (#9-10)
• John-Paul Bove (#12)
• Thomas Drew (#12)
• DC Alonso (#20-21)
• Neil Uyetake (#1-25)
• Chase Marotz (#1-25)
• Anni Perheentupa (#1-9)
• Denton J. Tipton (#1-14)
• Megan Brown (#21-25)
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 1 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 2 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 3 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 4 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 5 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 6 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 7 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 8 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 9 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 10 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Valentine's Day Special "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 11 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 12 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 13 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 14 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 15 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 16 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 17 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 18 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 19 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 20 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 21 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 22 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 23 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 24 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 25 "

Omnibuses [ ]

• Star Trek: Year Five - Odyssey's End
• Star Trek: Year Five - The Wine-Dark Deep
• Star Trek: Year Five - Weaker Than Man
• Star Trek: Year Five - Experienced in Loss
• Star Trek: Year Five Deluxe Edition, Volume 1

External links [ ]

• Year Five at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 3 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• E01 Encounter at Farpoint
• E02 The Naked Now
• E03 Code of Honor
• E04 The Last Outpost
• E05 Where No One Has Gone Before
• E06 Lonely Among Us
• E07 Justice
• E08 The Battle
• E09 Hide and Q
• E11 The Big Goodbye
• E12 Datalore
• E13 Angel One
• E14 11001001
• E15 Too Short a Season
• E16 When the Bough Breaks
• E17 Home Soil
• E18 Coming of Age
• E19 Heart of Glory
• E20 The Arsenal of Freedom
• E21 Symbiosis
• E22 Skin of Evil
• E23 We'll Always Have Paris
• E24 Conspiracy
• E25 The Neutral Zone
• E09 The Measure of a Man
• E10 The Dauphin
• E11 Contagion
• E17 Samaritan Snare
• E02 The Ensigns of Command
• E07 The Enemy
• E15 Yesterday's Enterprise
• E16 The Offspring
• E17 Sins of the Father
• E25 Transfigurations
• E26 S4 E1 The Best of Both Worlds
• E06 The Game
• E12 Violations
• E13 The Masterpiece Society
• E18 Cause and Effect
• E20 Cost of Living
• E23 I, Borg
• E26 S6 E1 Time's Arrow
• E11 Ship in a Bottle
• E14 Tapestry
• E08 Force of Nature
• E10 Parallels
• Fanfic Recs
• Headscratchers
• Heartwarming
• Tear Jerker

Star Trek: The Next Generation is a science fiction show created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Set in the 24th century, about eighty years after the original series , the program features a new crew, new perspectives on established cultures (a Klingon Empire as a semi-friendly ally against a Romulan Empire emerging from decades of isolation), new antagonists and a new Enterprise ( Galaxy -class starship, registration NCC-1701- D ).

After struggling for a few seasons trying to establish itself apart from the Original Series , it exploded into one of the most well respected television shows ever made, partially because of a change in direction (its creator had health problems starting around season two of the show's run leading to co-producer Rick Berman taking over most of the show's daily production and his promotion to executive producer during season three) and an increased willingness to experiment with the format and scope of the show, and science fiction as a whole. At 176 episodes in length, it was the longest running Star Trek series at the time, and won many awards for everything from visual effects to writing. Additionally, the series has proved wildly popular in Syndication , despite having broadcast its final episode in 1994, well over fifteen years ago. To date, in the U.S. alone, it has been broadcast on no less than five different cable / satellite networks: G4, Spike TV , Syfy , WGN America and most recently BBC America. Three of these networks, SyFy, WGN America & BBC America still regularly air episodes of the program, sometimes against each other in prime-time.

Although much of the show shared the premise of the Original Series , there were also well-placed Story Arcs : the omnipotent Trickster character of Q would show up to put Humanity on Trial (becoming a Book End storyline epitomizing the series ) or to amuse himself at the expense of others; redefining the Klingons as being Proud Warrior Race Guys instead of the original "black hats"; various encounters with the hive-mind, cybernetic Borg (creating what is regarded as the pinnacle episode for the series and even the franchise , "The Best of Both Worlds"); several episodes with Wesley that developed his character ; and defining moments for several of the main cast and the odd minor character , in addition to plenty of development for the Romulans, the Vulcans, the Cardassians and the Ferengi .

The series formed the basis of the seventh through tenth Star Trek films: Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002). The success led to an expansion of the franchise and is single-handedly responsible for the creation of Deep Space Nine , Voyager and Enterprise . Though fans will usually agree that the quality of the episodes varies wildly, the best make for compelling and thought-provoking viewing.

See also the Star Trek: The Next Generation Relaunch , a series of novels that follow the characters after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis , as well as setting the direction for the Star Trek Expanded Universe in terms of the original continuity (as opposed to the latest film , which is an Alternate Timeline ).

Character tropes for the main characters can be found in this character page . Episode recaps can be found here .

• Growing the Beard

Trope-based episodes

• Adaptive Ability : The Borg, by any means necessary.
• Adventurer Outfit : Q.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg : "Q Who".
• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals : Downplayed in Genesis . Sometimes they were spiders!
• Then hundreds of the damn things in "Parallels."
• Amnesia Danger : " Conundrum ".
• Amnesia Loop : " Clues ".
• Apocalyptic Log : Col. Richey's diary in "The Royale".
• Art Evolution : A rare Live Action version, the ridge design on Worf's head changed as the show continued. This was explained as simply streamlining the make-up process.
• Authority Equals Asskicking : "Starship Mine". Absolutely.
• Badass in Distress : "The Best of Both Worlds Part II".
• Individually, Commanders Sela and Tomalak and the Sisters of Duras fill the role of recurring villains, though even they don't go out of their way to antagonize the Enterprise except when Starfleet interferes in their schemes. Though, it turns out that they too were just Romulan pawns.
• "Darmok", again Picard, while trapped in a transporter beam as his new friend is pummeled by the Monster of the Week .
• "Night Terrors", again Picard, when he experiences extreme claustrophobia on the turbolift and feels as if he's rushing up towards the ceiling.
• Big Secret : "The Drumhead". When it becomes clear Ensign Tarses is hiding something, he becomes the chief suspect in the trial with the investigative team going all out to prove he's the saboteur they're after. It's a waste of everyone's time as he's innocent, his Dark Secret being completely unrelated to the original crime.
• For the uninformed, Kamala (Famke Janssen, rowr!) is an empathic metamorph whose personality changes to suit those around her. When she bonds with another, she permanently changes to suit him. Despite being betrothed to another man, she chooses to bond with Picard... which may actually make her much more miserable, being with such a stuffy, uninterested (and uninteresting) bureaucrat .
• "The Inner Light" when Picard plays the flute.
• As pointed out by SF Debris , the metaphor for homosexual prejudice and coming out falls flat when you realize that the entire race of genderless aliens discovering sexuality has every member played by women . The alien in question even identifies herself as a female and falls in love with Riker, who's a man .
• Bury Your Disabled : Averted in "Ethics".
• Butt Monkey : Next to Worf and Geordi, Deanna Troi filled this role many times. She was always being possessed by aliens, abused by aliens in crashed shuttles, abducted by aliens for political gambits, being nearly forced to marry an alien, having her psychic powers robbed by aliens, suffering nightmares at the hands of aliens, forced to listen to a virtual music box in her head for days by an alien, the list goes on. Her only real use on the show was to counsel the random crew member of the week and to tell Picard when she sensed weird things happening while on the bridge.
• Call to Agriculture : Picard was managing his family vineyard as part of the alternate future in the Grand Finale .
• Can't Live Without You : The Bynars are a race of being that always work and live in pairs and can't function alone; also, in one episode, Picard and Dr.Crusher received implants that allowed them to share thoughts but would killed them if they went beyond a few meters from each other.
• Chained Heat : "Attached".
• Character Shilling : Multiple examples, but the most well known was that of the shilling done for Wesley, which grated at the fans and became the former trope namer for the more negative and YMMV version of the trope, Creator's Pet . Apart from shilling Wesley, the story also shills a few other characters, even those who are actually popular like Riker. We are frequently assured that Riker could be a captain on any other ship in the fleet, but without a great deal of backing for the idea.
• Child Marriage Veto : In "Haven", Deanna Troi has been arranged to be married to Wyatt Miller. It's not Deanna who breaks off the marriage, though; it's Wyatt, who has had dreams of a non-Deanna woman since he was a child...and then he finds her on a plague ship.
• Makes sense - people pull off some impressive tricks/scams today without godlike technology, stands to reason that the same will still be (relatively) possible in the 24th Century.
• Plus, while it's not significantly advanced than the Enterprise's technology, it is sufficiently advanced for the technology of the planet in question. And some of the tricks the scam artists set up ("beaming" a holographic image over the actor and maintaining it outside a holodeck) the Enterprise couldn't replicate. When the Enterprise crew performs this trick, it's only because they've boarded the scammer's ship and used their setup to do it.
• The first season episode "Justice" has an idyllic planet that worships an inter-dimensional spaceship thing as their god. How advanced it really is isn't firmly established, but it's strongly implied that it's at least a match for the Enterprise .
• The third season episode "Who Watches the Watchers?" again casts the Enterprise crew in the role of the ones with the sufficiently advanced technology, when a botched encounter with a pre-industrial civilization leaves some of them thinking that Picard is a god.
• In "The Next Phase", Ro and Geordi are invisible and intangible after an accident. Ro is at first convinced that they're ghosts now that need to make peace before moving on to the afterlife. Turns out they're just "out of phase" with normal matter, except for the plot-convenient floors (and oxygen).
• The alternate scenarios are also given a nod in later alternate-timeline episodes, most notably "Parallels".
• The official story is that Stewart was renegotiating his contract and they had to leave it open for the possibility of his leaving. The ending wasn't decided until after the first part was shot.
• Clip Show : "Shades of Grey".
• Clone Degeneration : "Up the Long Ladder".
• Comes Great Responsibility : The ostensible basis of Q's argument in "True Q" that Amanda Rogers should be returned to the Q Continuum, or else killed.
• Come to Gawk : "The Most Toys".
• Costumer : Several times; mostly holodeck adventures, although the most famous was "Q-Pid", which is decidedly not set on the holodeck.
• Though not strictly a courtroom episode, a 21st-century kangaroo court was conjured up by Q in both the series premiere and the series finale.
• Cowboy Episode : "A Fistful of Datas", involving a Holodeck Malfunction .
• The Creon : William Riker is one of the best examples of this trope, having turned down multiple chances over the years to get his own command, just so he could stay as Picard's first officer.
• Cuckoo Nest : "Frame of Mind".
• Custom Uniform of Sexy : Deanna Troi had three different ones.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique : Deconstructed in "The First Duty" when one of these turns out to be the direct cause of a crash that killed a friend of Wesley's at the Accademy while practicing for a commencement-ceremony flight demonstration .
• Data Crystal : Isolinear chips.
• Day in the Life : "Data's Day".
• Devil's Advocate : In "Measure of a Man", a scientist wants to disassemble Data for study, and Data refuses as a sentient being. A hearing is held to determine whether Data is sentient. Picard is Data's defense counsel, and Riker is appointed as the prosecution - so he has to argue that Data isn't sentient. He risks summary judgement against Data if he slacks off on the job. Riker feels guilty about doing it, but Data is grateful - or anyway as grateful as an android allegedly with no emotions can be - since if Riker had refused to do it they would have decided against Data (for if he isn't a sentient being, he lacks the right to bodily autonomy, such are the rules of procedure in the 24th century).
• Die Hard On The USS Enterprise-D : "Starship Mine".
• Do Borgs Dream : "I, Borg".
• The Dog Was the Mastermind : "Aquiel", where the crew finds out that a shape-shifting organism is behind the Mystery of the Week . Two people, a Klingon and the titular Aquiel, are suspected of being the monster, but it's really Aquiel's dog, which served as a minor comedic subplot during the episode.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me! : In "Skin of Evil", Armus tells Troi to take her pity and shove it. Picard later exploits Armus' extreme distaste toward being pitied.
• Driven to Suicide : Lieutenant Kwan in "Eye Of The Beholder". The first act of the episode also counts as A Very Special Episode about suicide.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him : Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil", Captain Kirk in The Movie .
• Dying Race : "Up the Long Ladder", "When the Bough Breaks".
• In "Darmok", the phrase "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" means this.
• Evil Twin : Lore, to Data.
• Evolutionary Levels / You Fail Biology Forever : "Genesis", which misinterprets evolution as a phenomenon that happens in individuals, as well as invoking the theory (discredited in the mid 20th century) that our DNA retains a record of our species' evolutionary tree. "The Chase" has some undertones of this as well, although it isn't Evolutionary Levels so much as Precursors with implausible sufficiently advanced skill at genetics. Plus any scene where someone mentions DNA breaking down into protein/amino acids, or vice versa.
• Exclusively Evil : Ferengi, Cardasians, and Borg. For the most part, the Romulans as well.
• Expospeak Gag : In "Time's Arrow":
• Face Palm : The one done by Picard is particularly well-known thanks to Memetic Mutation .
• Fat and Skinny : Ambassador Sarek's advisers in "Sarek".
• Father, I Don't Want to Fight
• Fire-Forged Friends : "Darmok".
• First Contact : First Contact (the episode and the movie. The first one reverses the polarity by having the aliens be the ones experiencing first contact with humans.)
• Fish Out of Water : "A Matter of Honor".
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon : The phaser lance from the alternate future version of the Enterprise-D in "All Good Things".
• Force Field Door
• Former Teen Rebel : Picard in "Tapestry".
• For Want of a Nail : "Parallels", "Tapestry".
• Fountain of Youth : "Rascals".
• Freak-Out : Had by Captain Picard in "Sarek", on behalf of the titular legendary diplomat. Sarek is suffering Vulcan Alzheimer's, and "borrows" Picard's emotional self-control to complete one last mission.
• Freud Was Right : Inverted in "Phantasms", when Data recreates Dr. Freud in the holodeck with the hope of interpreting the disturbing images generated by his dream program. Freud, of course, proceeds to assume it's all about Data's issues with his mother and his sexuality, neither of which he has, because he's an android.
• Future Imperfect : Episode of the same name. An interesting Alternate History arises and thanks to a fake Trauma-Induced Amnesia Riker (now Captain of the Enterprise) can't recall any of it.
• Future Me Scares Me : In "Time Squared", the present Jean-Luc Picard is disgusted, irritated and extremely angered by the Captain Picard of the future, who abandoned the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft shortly before its destruction.
• G-Rated Drug : The game, in "The Game".
• Ghost Ship : "The Battle", "The Naked Now", "Night Terrors", "Hero Worship", "Booby Trap".
• God for a Day : "Hide and Q"- Q gives such powers to Riker and makes, unknown to Riker, a bet with Picard: Picard thinks that Riker will reject Q's offer and bets the Enterprise herself on him against Q offering to never bother them again. A generally well done example of the trope with the resolution not coming out of some arbitrary limit or failure of the powers. Picard wins after Riker finds every gift he tries to give to his friends rings hollow.
• God Test : Inverted in "Who Watches the Watchers". When the primitive alien tribe believes that Picard is God, they try to prove it by shooting him with a bow to prove that he can't be killed. Fortunately for Picard the alien misses his heart, but does hit him in the shoulder, injuring him and thereby proving to the aliens that he isn't God.
• Government Drug Enforcement : "Symbiosis".
• And unlike the Groundhog Day movie (in which Bill Murray's character is fully aware of what's going on, and only once does anybody else mention a slight feeling of deja vu-- everyone on the Enterprise, except Data, starts to get that feeling.
• Harmful Healing : Accidentally caused everyone to "devolve" in "Genesis".
• Technically, the whole series, the movies, and everything else in the Star Trek universe . As Q points out, the trial that starts in "Encounter at Farpoint" continues through "All Good Things..." and beyond.
• Regarding spoiler: Not so much a threat from Q, but more of a reminder that human kind must never stop thinking outside of the box, and always work hard to better themselves.
• I suspect they recalibrated the scale because it was getting cumbersome. Voyager's top cruising speed was stated as warp 9.975. That's already a bit of a mouthful. What happens when you're routinely able to travel at 9.9999999? There was also a link explained in the Technical Manual that integer warp factors on the warp 10 scale are much more energy efficient. If the design of the engines changes and that link is no longer true, recalibrating the scale becomes even more practical. This troper may have over-thought this subject.
• "Warp 13" was such a nonsensical term (as if FTL travel is ever sensical), I thought the writers used it in the future-Picard scenes as an indicator of a made-up (by Q) future. Again, maybe over-thinking it.
• Word of God says that Warp 13 was used intentionally as a hint of new developments in warp technology in the alternate future.
• If You Can Read This... : Many examples; the set designers had a lot of fun adding in Easter eggs. See the trope page for details.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail : "Datalore".
• In Another Man's Shoes : "The Inner Light".
• Industrialized Evil : The Borg assimilation process.
• Interspecies Adoption : Not only was Worf himself raised with loving care by the Rozhenko family, but they also adopted and took care of Worf's son, Alexander, when he realized that raising a son on the Enterprise by himself would prove to be too difficult.
• Invisible Main Character : "The Next Phase".
• "Remember Me" is a subversion, in which Beverly finds people she knew vanishing, and no one remembering they ever existed .
• The future timeline of "All Good Things..." has shades of this. While Geordi and Data have fairly good lives overall, Picard is suffering a degenerative mental disease, he and Dr. Crusher are divorced, Troi is dead, and Riker and Worf had a bitter falling out. Most notably, the core characters have all drifted apart (at the end of the episode, Picard has told them what he experienced specifically to prevent that).
• However, it should be noted that the the judge's ruling is extremely specific: That Data is not the property of Starfleet . The ruling actually avoids addressing his sentience, innate freewill and status as a life form. Data, both before and after the trial, viewed Soong-type androids as unique life forms, as does most of the crew.
• In the episode "The Quality of Life", the crew discovers that a repair robot might be sophisticated enough to be considered alive.
• "Emergence": The Enterprise computer begins using the ship's replicators and transporters to change its own circuitry around, culminating in the creation of some sort of offspring. Unfortunately, this premise mostly took place in a broken holodeck simulation.
• Just Woke Up That Way : "Face of the Enemy".
• Also, Nora Satie from that episode is a Knight Templar .
• King in the Mountain
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect : "Suspicions".
• Lady Land : "Angel One".
• Laser-Guided Amnesia : "Conundrum", "Clues".
• Laser-Guided Karma : "Man of the People".
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again : " The Naked Now ".
• Low Culture, High Tech : The Pakleds.
• Lower Deck Episode : "Lower Decks".
• Also the Enemy Without of an entire species , and a largely motiveless Complete Monster to boot.
• Manchurian Agent : "The Mind's Eye".
• Matryoshka Object : In "The Chase", Picard's old archeology professor brings him a Kurlan naiskos as a gift. An ancient relic, the figure opens up to reveal several smaller versions of the figure inside.
• Mind Rape : "Violations". "Man of the People" involved an ambassador who was essentially a psychic vampire.
• Monster Is a Mommy : "Galaxy's Child".
• Moral Myopia : "Coming of Age" and "Chain of Command".
• Mortality Ensues : "Deja Q".
• My Greatest Failure : Subverted in "Tapestry".
• It helps that as a rule, Star Trek games (especially ones that would involve the show staff) tend to be on the cerebral side as far as their plot and gameplay are concerned. "The Game" centers around a mindless, addictive game that takes over people's lives .
• Also the episode where Barclay was discovered to have a holodeck addiction (having created an Eden for himself with a sexy Troi and a bumbling midget Riker) that begins to interfere with the performance of his basic duties. Troi herself explains that everybody enjoys the fantasy of the holodeck, but it's self destructive to rely on it to the exclusion of REAL experiences and friends .
• Nightmare Fuel : Quite literally, as the terrifying visions and paranoia in "Night Terrors" are caused by aliens who simply don't understand the effect their method of communication has on the human brain.
• No Poverty : Or money, either. Replicators and antimatter generators with a new social philosophy did away with poverty.
• No Sense of Humor : Data repeatedly attempts to understand humor as part of his quest to become more human.
• No Sense of Personal Space : Q. If he finds you interesting....you, uh, know.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend : Isabella in " Imaginary Friend ".
• Not Himself : Data in "Clues". Troi in "Man of the People" is Not Herself due to Mind Rape .
• In the episode "True Q", Q offers Amanda Rogers the choice to remain with humans if she can resist the temptation to use the powers of the Q. Amanda agrees, but almost the moment she and Picard leave the ready room, all hell breaks loose on the planet they're orbiting, endangering the lives of millions of people, as well as Riker and Geordi on the surface. Picard immediately suspects that Q had something to do with it, but he shrugs and says, "Not this time, Picard." Of course, Q's not only an inveterate liar, but he's also omnipotent. So even if he didn't have anything to do with it (which is dubious), he could easily have known that something was about to happen and waiting to offer the choice until that precise moment.
• Once a Season : The Q episodes and the Holodeck Malfunctions .
• Once For Yes, Twice For No : "Darmok" ends up working this way in practice if not in theory.
• Orient Express : In "Emergence", the train appears on the Enterprise's holodeck.
• Other Me Annoys Me : Barclay's holographic duplicates of the main crew.
• Please, I Will Do Anything! : "Encounter at Farpoint".
• Portal Door : "Contagion".
• Public Secret Message : The name of Data's creator ("Noonien Soongh") was Roddenberry's third (and last) Real Life attempt to attract the attention of his World War II buddy, Kim Noonien Singh.
• Puppeteer Parasite : "Conspiracy".
• The Rashomon : "A Matter of Perspective".
• Revival Loophole : Used to save Tasha's opponent in "Code of Honor".
• Rogue Drone : "I, Hugh".
• Second Coming : "Rightful Heir", with the return of Kahless through a clone.
• Sense Loss Sadness : "The Loss", where Counselor Troi loses her empathy .
• Sinking Ship Scenario : "Disaster".
• Space Mines : In "Booby Trap", the Enterprise is trapped in an asteroid belt seeded with "acceton assimilators".
• Stockholm Syndrome : Beverly shows signs of this towards Finn in "The High Ground". When Picard is captured by the separatists, he's quick to point this out to her.
• Strange Syntax Speaker : Used in "Darmok", as the alien race's language is entirely based around metaphors.
• Take a Third Option : In "Samaritan Snare", the Pakleds capture Geordi and demand access to the Enterprise' s computer. Their options, summarized by Data, are, "We can either respond to the Pakleds' demands, or not. We can either use force, or not." Riker ultimately comes up with a ruse, communicated to Geordi in code-- Geordi would seemingly arm the slow-witted Pakleds with sophisticated weaponry, and when the Enterprise released harmless plasma through the Bussard collectors, he would disarm the Pakleds' weapons, claiming that the Enterprise's "crimson force field" had done it.
• Take That : "Relics" chimes in on the iconic "Kirk vs. Picard" argument (specifically, which is the better captain) that tends to plague the fandom by the simple expedient of having Montgomery Scott brought back from the transporter pattern buffer to comment on Kirk's more active, aggressive, and decisive command style versus Picard's more measured, careful style. The verdict: Both styles have their places - but look! Picard can do both!
• Those Two Guys : Data and Worf.
• Timey-Wimey Ball : Sometimes it's best not to think too hard about it .
• Treacherous Spirit Chase : "Interface", "Eye of the Beholder".
• Two Plus Torture Makes Five : "Chain of Command", with lights instead of fingers (done well enough that memetic quote of the episode has been made an honorary redirect to the trope).
• The Virus : "The Best of Both Worlds", "Identity Crisis".
• What Measure Is a Non-Human? : "Measure of a Man".
• You Are in Command Now : "The Arsenal of Freedom", "Disaster", "Descent".
• You Were Trying Too Hard : "Booby Trap", "Hero Worship".
• The parasites would eventually show up in two divergent branches of the Expanded Universe , one being a (rather forced and painful) tie-in in the novels with the Trill, and the other being in Star Trek Online .
• Absentee Actor : Some episodes struggle to include all the actors, even with the Mandatory Line .
• After Show : One reason Paramount felt confident in the risk of pouring so much money into the first season episodes - they figured if the show bombed, they'd just add the 13 Next Gen episodes to TOS' s syndication package of 79 episodes and make the money back that way.
• Alike and Antithetical Adversaries : The Federation is a multi species organization, most of their enemies are at least a bit one dimensional . The Borg take the cake though, being a Hive Mind that removes individuality.
• Almighty Janitor : Boothby, grounds-keeper of Starfleet Academy and trusted mentor of almost every graduate of note.
• Alternate Universe
• Alternative Number System : The Binars use base 2.
• Anchored Ship : Picard and Crusher. In the post-Nemesis book series , They Do .
• Lore is burdened with this sort of fate after his first appearance. In order to get rid of him, Data beams his evil brother into outer space, where the Nigh Invulnerable android will be cursed to drift around aimlessly in the endless vacuum, completely helpless. It's downplayed , since he's rescued after a "mere" few years when the crew of an alien ship discover his body floating around in space at a thousand-to-one odds.
• The fate of Armus. He was created out of the darkest aspects of the psyches of an entire alien race and then abandoned. After he murdered Tasha Yar in a rage, the crew of the Enterprise decided that it was fitting punishment to leave him again and deploy a warning beacon that meant no-one ever venture near the planet again. Armus even ends the episode screaming .
• To say nothing of those that the Borg assimilate. As Picard implied shortly after being removed from the Collective in "The Best of Both Worlds", they're privy to everything the Borg-them is doing, but are helpless to do anything about it. That Picard was able to break through his "Locutus of Borg" personality and tell Data how to defeat the Borg was nothing short of a miracle.
• Moriarty — the self-aware hologram intended to outsmart Data — is still conscious when he is deactivated, and speaks of "Brief, terrifying periods of consciousness... disembodied, without substance."
• Apocalyptic Log : The Enterprise has received a few of these, including a couple from themselves .
• Applied Phlebotinum : Star Trek runs on this and all the subset variants, justified with heavy heaps of Techno Babble .
• Ascetic Aesthetic : The Enterprise .
• Ass in Ambassador : Lwaxana Troi.
• Author Avatar : Wesley for Gene Roddenberry
• Baby Factory : One episode ends with Doctor Pulaski telling two merged colonies they have to use this trope to insure "genetic diversity".
• Badass Boast : The Klingon ritual of roaring at the heavens is this on behalf of one who died in battle ... they are warning the afterlife that a warrior is coming.
• Bald of Awesome : Picard.
• Bedmate Reveal : In "Tapestry", Picard (who's reliving his days as a fresh young ensign) has sex with his good female friend Marta Batanides. In the morning, a hand reaches up to stroke his ear, and Picard turns around, opens his eyes-- and it's Q.
• In "Redemption II", after Worf is captured, B'Etor wakes him up with foreplay, and he briefly responds in kind-- and then wakes up, and immediately recoils.
• A later episode involved Picard getting stranded on the ship with a group of children and relating to them poorly. By the end of the episode, he had apparently gained some understanding and acceptance of children, as the kids give him a medal on the bridge at the end, and he seems genuinely embarrassed.
• Better to Die Than Be Killed : In "Where Silence Has Lease", Picard chooses to set the Enterprise to auto-destruct (thus killing the entire crew) rather than allow Nagilum to continue with his experiments, which would kill one-third to one-half of the crew.
• Bilingual Bonus : In "The Icarus Factor", the Japanese characters written on the side of the anbo-jyutsu ring are mostly martial-arts relevant elemental characters-- 火 (fire), 水 (water), etc. "ユリ" ("YURI") is a Shout-Out to Dirty Pair . There are a few of them scattered around the show. The top of the ring says 星 (star).
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma : Data, though his Character Development starts to negate this towards the end.
• Brain Critical Mass : In the episode "The Nth Degree", Barclay's brain is taken over by an ancient race from the center of the galaxy, greatly increasing his intellect. Under their influence, Barclay seizes command of the Enterprise , controlling the ship with his mind. This has the small drawback that he can't be removed from the ship's systems without destroying said mind... but the aliens who started all of this fix that too, in the end.
• Brainwash Residue : After losing his superintelligence, Barclay seems to retain some chess-playing ability.
• The Bus Came Back : Tasha in "Yesterday's Enterprise" by way of an Alternate Timeline .
• No, no, this is the Riker Maneuver .
• Also, Patrick Stewart reciting Shakespeare. Well, they had to get it in there somehow .
• Everyone in the cast sings, pretty well too. Brent Spiner cut an album of Jazz standards (and some new material) a few years back where his backup singers were Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton and Jonathan Frakes, It was spectacular.
• Catch Phrase : Many, including:
• To be fair, that time travel episode took place in San Francisco .
• This could also be a standard holodeck subroutine meant to remind participants that they haven't changed into costume yet. It's much more polite than an "access denied" message from the computer and it helps the users get into character.
• Gene Roddenberry, it turns out, wasn't so fond of character development. Some writers left after season 1 due to this and other strange restrictions he had.
• To clarify, Roddenberry apparently felt that not only would the races and nations have made peace in the future, but individuals would have evolved beyond petty arguments and emotional disruptions. A big part of why so many early episodes revolve around technical puzzles, and why it helps to have a completely flat, stoic character (or super-sensey empath) in the cast for contrast against the "normal" people.
• Characters introduced later in the show's run, Lt. Barkley and Ensign Ro Laren are significantly more complex and, importantly, flawed.
• Another example of this trope involving Klingons takes place in "Reunion". We're given our first look at the bat'leth in Worf's quarters and see him showing Alexander the right way to hold and swing it. Later on, a grieving and enraged Worf takes it off the wall again and uses it to exact lethal revenge on Duras for killing K'Ehleyr .
• Something about Klingon weapons just seems to make it impossible to resist using them. In "Suddenly Human", Jono examines a dagger in Picard's quarters, observing that it's Klingon. Later, he uses that dagger to try to stab Picard to death in his sleep.
• In "Genesis", La Forge and Barclay are accessing circuitry in the Jeffries tube. During dialog, Barclay, for no apparent reason other than to show the audience what he's about to work on, which tips the trope off, twirls a band of brightly-lit power cords like a lasso in his hand. Later, when Picard seeks escape from a frenzied Worf, he uses said cords to electrify the deck to electrocute Worf while Picard sits atop an insulated panel.
• Chivalrous Pervert : Will Riker (apparently, this is his way of interpreting the Officer and a Gentleman trope).
• Clarke's Third Law
• Combat Medic : Beverly Crusher is not only one of the best doctors in the Federation, she studies Klingon martial arts (and can drop you on your ass so fast you won't remember the trip down) and is fully capable of commanding a starship in combat. She also phasers a Starfleet Admiral in "Conspiracy".
• Communications Officer : This was the original duty for Worf, perhaps owing to his bicultural background.
• Complete Immortality : The evil liquid entity Armus in "Skin of Evil" is stated to be immortal and unkillable. He has already spent an immeasurable amount of time on a barren, uninhabited planet after his creators left him there. Picard ensures that he will be trapped there for as long as possible without any means of escape .
• The Confidant : Guinan and Counselor Troi.
• There are several instances during the third season that allude to the fact that Dr. Crusher wasn't on the Enterprise during the previous season-- and not all of them were directly related to Wesley. For example, in "Who Watches the Watchers?", Picard asks Crusher if the Mintakan's memory can be erased, mentioning it's been done before. Crusher replies that she's familiar with Dr. Pulaski's research (as seen in "Pen Pals" with Sarjenka). Then in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I", when about to join the away team onto the Borg ship, she asks Data what kind of resistance they can expect (the fact that she wasn't around for the first Borg encounter in "Q Who?" was even pointed out in the screenplay).
• Fan Favorite episode "Relics" was written by Promoted Fanboy Ronald Moore and featured Continuity Nods to TNG and TOS in nearly every scene, most especially the holodeck recreation of the original series bridge.
• One of the most interesting, yet little known ones is the opening Captain's Log of episode 80 where Picard mentions the ship having recently left the same planet in which the last episode of TOS (Which officially was episode 79) happened on.
• One of the most unexpected nods is that Picard in an early Season 2 episode "Samaritan Snare" privately told Wesley Crusher that when he got stabbed in the heart by a Naussican, he inexplicably started laughing. Cut four years later to "Tapestry", when we find out why young Picard started laughing.
• Converging Stream Weapon : The Federation develops a 'collimator beam' made of dozens of small phaser banks spread along the rim of a ship; the energy can be seen flowing along the surface of the Enterprise until it meets at one point, and then fires off from the point on the phaser bank row closest to the target.
• Cranial Processing Unit : On at least one occasion, Data's "brain" is shown to be entirely in his head, including an instance of his head being removed and still talking .
• Also, the sentient holograms in several series. Whether A.I. Is a Crapshoot results or not varies.
• Cultured Warrior : Picard is usually the example, but TNG basically made everyone in Starfleet this. Though it also made Starfleet less militaristic...
• Cyborg Helmsman : Geordi was the Helmsman in the first season.
• Dan Browned : In "I, Borg", Guinan and Picard are fencing. They are wearing epee costumes, using epee rules, however, the two are clearly using foils. Especially annoying because the writers did their research the last time Picard fenced in-show and had the correct weapons.
• Darker and Edgier : The episode "Conspiracy" was jarringly graphic.
• Dashed Plotline : Picard's alternate life in "The Inner Light" is portrayed with many large time-skips.
• Dead Guy, Junior : Troi's temporary baby, Ian Andrew, after her deceased father.
• Picard is one of these to some extent throughout the series, most notably in "The Survivors", after he beams Kevin and Rishaun Uxbridge to the bridge.
• Death Ray : The Varon-T Disruptor, capable of painfully killing rather than just disintegrating .
• Demoted to Extra / Spotlight-Stealing Squad : The TNG movies focused so much on Picard and Data that they might as well have been credited as them " and all the rest! "
• Deprogramming
• Deus Ex Machina
• Did Pulaski Just Have Tea With Moriarty?
• The trope is played straight earlier in the episode when Alkar refuses to return with Picard and Worf to the Enterprise and hides behind the security field put up by the parties he's negotiating a peace agreement for.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu : Picard learned the hard way that if you refuse a nigh-omnipotent being's offer to join your crew, don't be a arrogant jerk about it lest he throw you into the path of The Borg.
• Double Don't Know : "The Battle".
• The Dutiful Son : Robert Picard.
• The Enterprise has eighties art-deco wallpaper in some of the corridors, instead of the smooth walls that would become normal in later seasons. Various other dated design choices also continued for awhile.
• Starfleet Academy is treated as being ridiculously, extremely elite, accepting only a handful of supergenius cadets each year, rather than the fairly standard university/military academy it would be shown as in later years. (Someone probably realized that it would become rather difficult to staff a fleet of ships when each graduating class might have about a hundred cadets in it, no matter how amazing those cadets were.)
• A lot of things about Worf and the Klingons fly in the face of later characterization. Klingons in early TNG were basically portrayed as a small step up from cavemen... and yet, simultaneously, were portrayed as either full members of the Federation, or a co-ruling power considered to be one half of the whole. Later seasons and series would instead show them as merely (somewhat uneasy) allies joined by a handful of treaties and armistices, primarily the Khitomer Accords.
• Data emotes fairly heavily in the first episode, and continued to do so more subtly for at least a handful of episodes. It wasn't until after "Datalore" that Brent Spiner really developed Data's distinctive manner. (Leonard Nimoy similarly took awhile to get a handle on Spock in TOS.)
• The Chief Engineer wasn't a large part of the show, and in fact seemed to change at least once without remark. Geordi seemed to randomly spend time in Engineering later in season one until he was (just as seemingly randomly) promoted to the position of Chief Engineer he's so heavily associated with.
• Picard was extremely... well, "dickish" is really the best word to describe it, especially in the first season. This may have had something to do with the fact that Patrick Stewart himself had a bit of a stick up his butt during this time, even at one point gathering the cast and chiding them for their "unprofessional" behavior (read: camaraderie). As Stewart relaxed, Picard grew into the warm and compassionate patriarch most people remember when they think of the character.
• The supporting cast of "Angel One". And Haven .
• The Everyman : Reg Barclay. He's clearly not who you'd pick as the poster child for Starfleet, but in a crunch he's shows he's just as capable, if not more so, than the main characters. This is lampshaded by Picard:
• The Evils of Free Will
• Brent Spiner actually stated in an interview that he preferred playing Lore to playing Data. Why? Because "we have more in common."
• Exclusively Evil : The Borg Collective. They try to assimilate the entire rest of the universe into their structured society or kill them in trying. Resistance is futile .
• Expositron 9000 : The ship's computer.
• Exposition of Immortality : In "Time's Arrow", a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , the Enterprise crew runs into Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender on their ship, while on a Time Travel trip to the 19th century. She's shown talking with Mark Twain and Jack London; but when Data approaches her, believing that she too, has traveled through time, she doesn't know him or the rest of the crew.
• Eye Lights Out : The Soong androids.
• Face Framed in Shadow : For a surprise revelation about long lost Tasha Yar's fate.
• The face palm is even an emote in Star Trek Online .
• In another episode, Deanna, Warf, O'Brien and Data are mentally taken over by noncorporeal beings who claim to have crash landed on a world, but they're actually convicted prisoners.
• Faux Action Girl : Tasha Yar had a habit of switching from regular Action Girl to Faux Action Girl almost on a whim. The first time she meets Q, she spends much of her time scowling and hitting people. The second time she meets Q, she spends much of her time crying and apologising to the Captain for it.
• Fighting From the Inside
• Fish People : The Antedeans.
• Five-Man Band : The original bridge crew consisted of Picard , Riker , Worf and Yar , Data and Geordi , and Troi . Also, Dr. Crusher sometimes visited, and Wesley joined not long after .
• Fling a Light Into the Future
• For Want of a Nail :
• From a Single Cell
• The Future Is Noir : The first two seasons often had this; the Enterprise bridge was usually floodlit, but everywhere else tended to have very minimal lighting levels. Inverted starting with the third season, when the lighting became uniformly bright and vivid.
• Future Spandex : Early-season uniforms; later seasons replaced them with something looser.
• Another example of radar dodging is in "Masks". One scene involves Picard examining some artifacts, and when he grabs a rather phallic one, it is positioned suspiciously close to his crotch. Patrick Stewart also makes sure to put extra special focus on the word "enormous" in the speech he gives while holding the Fruedian artifact. Jonathan Frakes is doing his best not to smirk during this whole scene.
• Girl of the Week : This trope was in full force with Riker, especially in the first and second seasons. And then it got reversed, and Troi had a Guy Of The Week going on for several seasons.
• A God Am I : Q plays with this in "Tapestry". Picard dies and enters the "afterlife", where he finds Q awaiting him, who informs him that he's dead and that Q himself is God. Picard rejects this, because he doesn't think that "the Universe is so badly designed". Q just snarks that Picard is lucky Q doesn't smite him for his blasphemy.
• Gone Horribly Right : The EP-607 in "The Arsenal of Freedom".
• Good Guy Bar : Ten Forward.
• Good Is Not Nice : The Federation seem to take on this attitude after Wolf 359.
• The aftermath of Wolf 359. Star Trek Online reveals that 20 years on the entire system is still a starship graveyard, as the system is uninhabited so making it part of the memorial could be considered a fitting gesture.
• Government Drug Enforcement : The former plague cure that became a narcotic in "Symbiosis" plus the 21st-century drug-addled supersoldier Q conjures up in "Encounter at Farpoint".
• Great Gazoo : Q.
• Have You Tried Rebooting : In the end, the simple solution to the Iconian computer virus threatening to destroy the Enterprise in "Contagion" was to shut down the computer and reimage the system from protected memory.
• Through no fault of the writers or actors, however; they tried several times, and Whoopi Goldberg even changed some of her dialog. When explaining the concept of love to Lal, which was initially written from a purely heterosexual viewpoint, she pointed out that homosexuality would not be stigmatized in the 24th century of Star Trek , and so the lines were changed to be more gender-neutral and inclusive. However, a plan to have a same-sex couple in the background in that scene was nixed by someone on the set calling out the producers in secret, who stood around to make sure that nothing slipped by. The issue would have to wait for Deep Space Nine to get any real exposure at all.
• Hoist by His Own Petard : The kidnapping aliens in "Allegiance" are placed in a restraining field on the bridge to give them a taste of their own medicine. To put it mildly, they didn't like it; they were practically having a panic attack.
• Horde of Alien Locusts : The Borg.
• Hot Mom : Beverly Crusher.
• Humanity Ensues : The Continuum once meted out this punishment to Q. By the end of the episode, he was back to his all-powerful Reality Warping self again.
• Humanity Is Infectious
• Humans Are Ugly GIANT BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER.
• Hyper Awareness : Data, due to being an android would see more into events then was actually relevant.
• Hyperspeed Ambush : The Picard Maneuver.
• Hyperspeed Escape : Quite a few times, given the ubiquitousness of Warp Drive in this setting (as a general rule, if you don't have warp drive, nobody in Starfleet is terribly interested in dealing with you anyways). Occasionally Subverted , either because the pursuing ship is faster, or because the heroes are trapped inside some sort of Negative Space Wedgie and literally have nowhere they can go.
• I Am X, Son of Y : "I am Worf, Son of Mogh."
• Although given how Arik Soong was a brilliant geneticist , its entirely plausible the resemblance is the result of genetic manipulation or all-out cloning .
• Michael Dorn, who plays Worf, played Worf's grandfather in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You
• In "The Survivors", Troi is being driven to maddened despair by a constantly repeating music box tune, which is coming from the music box in Kevin Uxbridge's house. It turns out to have been "psychic chaff", designed to keep her (and presumably other telepaths/empaths) from learning the truth, though Uxbridge didn't know it would hurt her so.
• Worf is also likely hampered by the fact that he's usually under orders not to destroy whatever he's shooting at, which is a rather delicate request and somewhat unfair to ask of someone with an aggressive personality and the firepower to wipe out a planet at his fingertips. When he's asked to target something specific, at least it's not his fault if the other ship blows up.
• I, Noun : The episode "I Borg", despite lacking the comma.
• Instant Seduction : Okona again.
• Instrumental Theme Tune
• It Will Never Catch On : In a meta example, Patrick Stewart was so certain this series would fail that for the first six weeks of shooting he refused to unpack his suitcases.
• Jerkass : Q and most of the Cardassians that show up.
• Joker Jury : The onlookers in Q's 'courtroom'.
• Just Between You and Me : A lot of enemy plots are foiled when their plans are revealed, only to have the crew member in question escape and foil the whole thing.
• In more detail, it's a Vulcan superweapon from before they embraced logic and the planet was ruled by psionic warlords. Part of the success of Surak's movement for pure logic was that his followers were immune to such weapons.
• Armus, who killed Tasha Yar, was immune from any attempts at physical retaliation. Ultimately, the worst thing they could do to him was to leave him alone ( Your Mileage May Vary on whether this is A Fate Worse Than Death ).
• Vulcan Ambassador T'Pel who is really a Romulan spy called Sub-Commander Selok in "Data's Day".
• Taibak from "The Mind's Eye".
• Killed Off for Real : Aside from Tasha Yar, Spock's father Sarek, who'd first appeared in the original series nearly 25 years earlier, died in "Unification I".
• Lampshade Hanging : In "Ensigns of Command", while getting more and more frustrated in attempting to deal with the Sheliak-- or even communicate effectively with them at all-- Picard exclaims, "Ludicrous!" Troi calmly replies, "No, sir, the fact that any alien race communicates with another is quite remarkable."
• Riker has been up for promotion around seven times, He personally refuses because he feels it is more prestigious to be First Officer aboard the Enterprise than Captain of any other ship.
• Justified , however, as captain Picard have had more of a daily, repetive routine. Janeway, on the other hand, was stranded on the other side of the galaxy and had to find a way home while exploring seemingly stranger new worlds and new civilizations to make First Contact with hundreds of species and finding neccessary-to-survive-equipment that could be found at your local Starbase in the Alpha Quadrant.
• Literal Change of Heart : Picard has an artificial heart as a result of a fight in which he was stabbed in the chest. During a near-death experience in a later episode, he was asked by Q if he would like to change that part of his past that lead to that; however, by doing so, he wound up becoming a person who never developed any guts or took any risks.
• Living Memory
• Matron Chaperone : In "The Dauphin", Salia, the future queen of Daled IV, is accompanied by her governess Anya, who is very protective of her. When Wesley is attracted to Salia and they get together, Anya turns into a giant monster and breaks into Wesley's cabin to stop them.
• Meaningful Name : "Data" is named for a word that means "facts and statistics". His Evil Twin is named "Lore", which means "superstition and legend", thus marking him as Data's symbolic opposite.
• Mega Manning : The Borg have the ability to assimilate technology and knowledge from other species. It is at the very core of their philosophy. As a result most newly designed weapons or tactics will only be effective for a short period of time.
• Mexican Standoff : A staple of later seasons. There is plenty of exposition at gun/disruptor/phaser-point.
• Milky White Eyes : Geordi's blindness, later dropped in Star Trek: First Contact , where he gets cybernetic eye implants that instead gives his eyes a silverish color.
• Also occurs with the back-and-forth dialogue between Gul Madred and Picard in "Chain of Command (Part II)" too, along with some Mind Game Ship .
• A probably-unintentional example: In "Datalore", they make a big deal out of the fact that Data can't use contractions and Lore can. Lore renders Data unconscious, switches clothing with him and has everyone (aside from Wesley) believing that he's Data. At the conclusion of the episode, Lore (still wearing Data's uniform) is beamed into space, and a moment later the cavalry arrives. Picard asks Data if he's all right, and Data says, "I'm fine."
• As an aside point, when he says "Computer, end program", the computer apparently does not see fit to respond. It evidently realize that Barclay is just being a nervous yutz again and chooses to ignore him.
• Misblamed : The racist undertones of "Code of Honor" have been pinned on near everyone on the production staff, but it has been shown that the script only called for a few token Scary Black Man bodyguards. The director of the episode (who was fired mid-way) decided to cast every guest star as black and make the alien race an African Tribe In Space . Wil Wheaton mentioned in his blog that if it wasn't for that, the stereotypical accents and their human appearance it might have been a rather good, if derivative, episode.
• Misery Builds Character : Subverted in the episode "New Ground", when Worf tells his son Alexander that the rigors of Klingon schools are meant to build character -- but that their staying together will be an even greater challenge.
• Most Annoying Sound : In-Universe example in "Suddenly Human". The Talarians and Jono all make a wailing sound as their way of mourning their dead comrades while being treated in sick bay. Picard can't stand it and after asking them nicely a couple times finally shouts at them to be quiet. They do what he says that time, much to the relief of Dr. Crusher and her staff, who weren't enjoying it either.
• Motivational Kiss : In one away mission, Data gets such a kiss from a local girl. He is perplexed.
• Mr. Exposition
• Ms. Fanservice : Troi. Marina Sirtis said that she was thrilled with the role because "There's a little ugly girl inside of me going 'Yay! I'm a sex symbol!'"
• The terraformers in "Home Soil" are devastated to find out that there were lifeforms on Valera III after all.
• Picard in "Galaxy's Child" after accidentally killing a cosmozoan in self-defense. The Enterprise ends up playing mommy to it's baby .
• In "The Measure of a Man", Riker is forced to argue the case against Data's rights. Riker does his job very well, including a devastating moment where he turns Data off to prove his point. After sitting down, though, Riker silently laments what he's doing to one of his closest friends. Even after Picard wins the case, Riker is still hung up on his actions until Data reassures him that it's okay.
• Mysterious Past
• Near-Death Experience
• Negative Space Wedgie
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer . In one episode, Captain Picard calls up Riker and asks what's going on and all Riker can say is "Trouble."
• No Antagonist : After the first few seasons, most episodes were like this.
• Though this may be a "polite fiction"... such things may actually happen fairly regularly, but both for the sake of the family's pride and the tradition itself, everyone just acts like it never, ever happens.
• The Expanded Universe novel Stargazer: Oblivion explains that Picard helped her overcome her "serious trouble" (and she means "serious") from leaving the Nexus in his Stargazer days.
• However, the reason why Q is so wary of Guinan is never explained.
• Somewhat Truth in Television as many native speakers of other European languages speak English with a British accent.
• Patrick Stewart had tried speaking in a French accent but sounded so ridiculous that he gave up.
• When Picard visits his home village in France his entire family affects the same accent, which suggests that his family and perhaps the whole village or region consists of British transplants. If a sizable group fled Britain for some reason before the 24th century, they could have been established long enough for their accent to become a localized French dialect.
• This actually happened in reality. Due to the Norman Conquest, during the 13th to 14th Century the English had inherited so much land in France that they owned more of the country than the French did.
• Not Named in Opening Credits : Dr. Pulaski .
• Not So Different : The Romulans and the Klingons. Despite their intense loathing, the two races actually have a lot of cultural similarities, both run authoritarian Empires , frequently under military coups, and are the main two powers in the Alpha Quadrant to equip their vessels with cloaking devices (which is implied in some non-canon sources that their initial development was due to a previous technology-sharing agreement, also stated as the reason for Romulans having occasionally been seen in the 23rd century with ship designs resembling Klingon D7s).
• Not So Harmless : Q in some instances, but especially after the Enterprise's first encounter with the Borg (which he engineered).
• The Nudifier : One Ferengi transporter does this when transporting women.
• One-Scene Wonder : Sarek in "Unification I".
• One-Sided Arm Wrestling : Data vs a Klingon.
• One-Way Visor : Geordi's visor is an aversion; he's blind, and the visor enables him to see.
• The One Who Made It Out : Tasha Yar was originally from the planetary equivalent of Bosnia, but managed to get a job with Starfleet.
• Ontological Mystery
• Orphaned Punchline : The Bolian barber, Mr. Mot, has one of these in "Schisms".
• Sounds like gagh .
• Out-of-Character Moment
• He even helped God with making life on Earth, Q's contribution? The platypus .
• Also, Guinan's family either died or were assimilated when the Borg all but destroyed the El-Aurians. Alexander, the only semi-regular child other than Wesley, lost his mother as a toddler (and was raised by her alone up to that point). And whenever we had a one-off guest star whose parentage was some sort of plot point, be it a child (Jeremy Aster, Salia) or an adult (Amanda Rogers, Jason Vigo), they had an excellent chance of being Conveniently an Orphan .
• Phlegmings : Fek'lhr, the guardian of the Klingon hell, as seen in the episode "Devil's Due".
• Principles Zealot : Captain Picard (and thus his crew) in "Homeward" where he chose to let an entire civilization die, one that they could easily have saved. They commit this genocide-through-inaction for the simple reason that the rules say so . Of course, it doesn't take long before a sympathetic civilian The Professor character goes all What the Hell, Hero? on them.
• Psycho Prototype : Lore.
• Racial Remnant : The early episode "Haven" has a shipful of Tarellians, the last survivors of a deadly plague.
• After Lt. Barclay gained (and later lost) huge amounts of knowledge, as he's talking with Counselor Troi they pass by a chess game. He moves one piece and says "checkmate in nine moves."
• In the Grand Finale , Picard is in the past, on the first voyage of the Enterprise-D . He demands something of the engineering crew, and O'Brien says that they'll have to "burn the midnight oil." Data happens to be passing by and mentions that it would not be advisable to do so.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old : Guinan. In "Time's Arrow", Data notes that he knew that Guinan's species was long-lived, but he had no idea that she was actually on Earth during the 19th Century.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech : At the end of "Ethics", Beverly has a beautifully scathing one for Dr. Russell, and does it without even raising her voice:
• It may also be that the last few years of the war weren't that "hot", but mostly involved a lot of glaring across borders while the peace was negotiated. It's entirely possible they were even in a ceasefire, but still technically at war. (This would make sense from the way some characters act in Deep Space 9 during the Dominion war... they talk about the Cardassians pulling back behind their borders when on the verge of defeat to rebuild for future aggression like it might not be the first time it's happened.)
• Removing The Combadge
• Another of her boasts is "Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Riix", which her daughter quite bluntly points out is nothing more than:
• Also, there's an android copy of his "mother" out there as well, who believes she is the REAL woman and is designed to age and eventually die like a human being .
• And don't forget his 'father', who said he never liked living anywhere without an escape route, and was last seen, apparently mortally wounded, in his fully equipped lab and he already knows he can transfer a mind from an organic body to an android, having done it with the 'mother' above .
• Also Data and Jenna D'Sora in "In Theory", though not the sexual part.
• Everyone's robo for Data!
• Rubber Forehead Aliens : So much so that it is often difficult to tell alien species apart.
• The Diane Duane Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Dark Mirror involves an alien race that's essentially dolphins IN SPACE! They're not related to the whales IN SPACE from Star Trek IV ).
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual notes that the Cetacean tanks on board contain the dolphin and whale navigational specialists. This is pretty much shout out to Gunbuster , where cybernetically enhanced dolphins form the main navigational computer of the Eltreum.
• One Star Trek: The Next Generation novel had a dolphin as a supporting character, which held the rank of commander in Starfleet. At one point, Riker whistles a specific sequence of notes to get its attention, implying he can speak (or at least swear) in Dolphin.
• Screaming Birth : If your midwife was a Klingon, you'd be screaming too.
• Secret Test : When Wesley is taking the Starfleet entrance exam his final test is "facing his biggest fear." While he's waiting for the test to start, a fire breaks out in a nearby lab and he can only save one of the techs working there. It turns out that that was the test, his fear was having to make a decision like that, since his own father died in a similar situation when Picard chose the other guy.
• See the Whites of Their Eyes : This trope is most prominent with this show as most ship-to-ship conflicts were tense stand-offs rather than the more action oriented battles of later series.
• Noonien Soong, the scientist who created Data and Lore, is named after Khan Noonien Singh, the prominent villain from the original series.
• Episode 80 of Next Gen begins with Picard reporting in his log that they just left the same planet that TOS visited in their 79th and last episode.
• "The Mind's Eye" borrows heavily from The Manchurian Candidate , most notably with a scene where Geordi is instructed to kill a holographic version of Chief O'Brien.
• In "QPid", Q transforms the crew into characters from the Robin Hood stories. Geordi is Alan A'Dale, and as a result gets a lute to play with. After a few minutes of tuneless strumming, Worf can't take it anymore, and gets up and smashes the instrument, then hands it back to Geordi, muttering, "Sorry." Much like a certain seven-year pre-med student did once.
• In "Arsenal of Freedom", when asked by a computer-generated image of Captain Rice what ship he's come from, Riker responds that he's serving aboard the Lollipop . "It's just been commissioned; it's a good ship."
• The Nebula-class starship was the first new design of Federation ship seen in the series (besides the Galaxy -class Enterprise ), and is similar in configuration to the Miranda-class starship (the class that the U.S.S. Reliant is), which was the first new design of Federation ship seen in the first series and the first new Federation design of the franchise.
• In "The First Duty", the motto of Starfleet Academy is "Ex Astris Scientia" ("From the stars, knowledge"), which was derived from Apollo 13 's mission motto "Ex Luna Scientia" ("From the moon, knowledge"), which, in turn, was derived from the United States Naval Academy's motto "Ex Scientia Tridens" ("From knowledge, sea power").
• In "Phantasms", Data has a nightmare where Counselor Troi is a cake being eaten, which is an awful lot like the music video for Tom Petty 's "Don't Come Around Here No More".
• In "The Nth Degree", Barclay who has integrated his mind into the computer responds to an order from Picard with "I'm afraid I cant do that, sir", in a manner very reminiscent of HAL9000.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome : Alexander. He had several leaps in age to make him more suitable for the role he played to Worf each time, and by the time he was a surly, rebellious teenager over on Deep Space 9 , he was all of nine years old. The creators said Klingons mature faster.
• Solar CPR : "Half Life".
• Space Clothes : The uniforms worn by the engineering staff (a tunic-miniskirt one-piece and knee-high boots, to be specific - and yes, men and women wear the same uniform) and several other crew members during the first season are truly astonishing. And the clothes worn by the denizens of the utopian paradise in "Justice" make them look sensible.
• Space Friction
• Space Is Cold
• Space Is Noisy
• The Ferengi, oh so much. The Space Africans of "Code of Honor" are even worse, portrayed as barbaric, patriarchal, er... matriarchal, er... some kind of savages with complex but still demeaning gender roles.
• Space Mines : Appear in "Chain of Command Part II".
• Spinoff Sendoff : "Encounter at Farpoint", with a visit from The Original Series' Dr. Admiral McCoy, who inspects the Enterprise-D and gives it his blessing.
• Start X to Stop X : In one episode, a scientist intentionally causes a tear in space with a self-destructed warp drive, just to convince the Federation to stop using warp travel so she can prevent that very type of tear from occurring elsewhere.
• Picard did the same thing in the series during a training exercise.
• And in a Star Trek: New Frontier novel, we get " I've been wanting to say this for ages ...Fire at Will."
• That joke was done in Tale Spin too, but the order was followed by a volley of gunfire and the line, "Do not fire at Will, he is my second mate. Fire at the Sea Duck!"
• Ishara Yar's haircut also qualifies.
• Stock Subtitle : This was the Trope Maker for the subtitle "The Next Generation".
• Story Arc : Both the pilot "Encounter at Farpoint" and the finale "All Good Things" feature Q putting Humanity on Trial ;
• Strange Syntax Speaker : The Tamarians, who speak mostly in metaphor. The universal translator can easily deliver the literal meanings, but without knowledge of the myths upon which the sayings are based, it's still near-impossible to understand. [2]
• Stuffed Into the Fridge : K'Ehleyr. Worf avenges her almost immediately afterwards.
• Styrofoam Rocks : In "Ethics", Worf's spine is broken when a cargo container falls on him. The way it falls and bounces indicates that it's so light it wouldn't even hurt a human, let alone a big sturdy Klingon.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens : The entire race of Q, and the mysterious creature in "The Survivors".
• Tainted Veins : Borg infection.
• Tantrum Throwing : According to Worf, this is a stock feature of Klingon courtship.
• Take a Third Option : The show ran on this. If there were two options, both of them bad, you can bet that before the end of the episode the characters would make some shit up to avoid making an actual moral choice.
• Techno Babble : Teraquads of it.
• Teleporter Accident
• Teleporters and Transporters
• In the episode "Attached", the Enterprise' s transporters are redirected by an alien force, so Picard and Crusher end up on a strange planet instead of where they intended.
• In another episode, the Enterprise is in a confrontation with a Romulan warbird. There is a severely injured Romulan on board the Enterprise who can't be beamed to the Romulan ship unless the ship not doing the beaming lowers its shields.
• Terminally Dependent Society
• That Cloud Looks Like...
• Theme Tune Extended : Since the theme music is taken from Star Trek: The Motion Picture , which has a longer theme.
• Played with the time Worf was temporarily put in command of the Enterprise to deal with recently thawed Klingon Popsicles who were unaware that the war between the Empire and The Federation was over.
• They let Stephen Hawking sit in it when he came to film his cameo.
• This Is Sparta : Picard's "THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!!" from part 2 of "Chain of Command".
• Those Two Bad Guys : The Duras Sisters.
• Throw-Away Guns : While this happens with about as much frequency as any other TV show, one particuliarly notable case occurs in "Time's Arrow", where the crew is shown a revolver from the late 19th century at a site on Earth with evidence of Ancient Astronauts . After the crew winds up in the 1890s , it is revealed that Mark Twain , suspicious of the time travelers' motives, threatened them with it and left it behind .
• Time Is Dangerous : In "Timescape", Picard is injured when he sticks his hand across the edge of a "time bubble", which causes his fingernails to age faster than his arm. Later, he experiences symptoms of "temporal narcosis" due to a malfunction of the equipment protecting him from being frozen in time.
• Tinman Typist
• Touched by Vorlons
• Trickster Mentor : Q... usually. Sometimes he's just screwing with them.
• Try to Fit That on A Business Card : Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Riix, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.
• Data tests this out on Julianna Tanner when he realizes that Doctor Soong recreated his wife, and Data's mother as an Android.
• Two-Keyed Lock : Used for the auto-destruct.
• Data and Tasha Yar gave hints of this after they hooked up in "The Naked Now", but this was curtailed by his being an Android unable to express emotion, and her eventual death.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee : The solution Worf comes up with against the formerly-frozen Klingons in "The Emissary" is an example of this.
• Unwanted False Faith : In the episode "Who Watches the Watchers?", Picard inadvertently becomes a deity to a group of vaguely-ancient/medieval-tech-using Vulcanoids.
• Voice Changeling : Data has shown this ability a few times.
• Voice of the Legion : The Borg.
• Volcanic Veins : The aliens in "Identity Crisis".
• Warrior Poet
• Water Source Tampering : In one episode, Data -- who has amnesia and doesn't know about his own history or Starfleet -- is accused of poisoning a well in the village he's living in, but he's really trying to cure them of radiation poisoning by putting the cure in the drinking water.
• We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies : The mid-90s ad " We Didn't Start the Series ".
• Leading to an amusing fourth-wall break: Her parts in the episode where she died, Skin of Evil , were shot before those shot in the episode that aired just before it. If you watch closely, during the prior episode, Symbiosis , you can see her waving goodbye --that was the last scene that they shot with her.
• This all becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when you realize that Denise Crosby was pretty much the first Next Generation actor to return and do voice acting for Star Trek Online , where her character Sela is pivotal to the entire metaplot of the game. That's right... if she'd never asked to be let go for not feeling useful, it's unlikely that she ever would have become such an important part of the only part of the franchise currently in constant, active development.
• We Have Become Complacent : The Federation thought they were prepared for anything. Then Q introduces them to the Borg.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : We never do find out the final fate of Geordi's mother, who's vessel completely vanishes without a trace, in "Interface".
• Reg Barclay, who repeatedly demonstrates a firm belief that holograms are real living people , worthy of recieving the same respect given to any organic.
• Picard's refusal to commit genocide on the Borg gets him chewed out by his superiors. YMMV on who was right.
• When It All Began : Khitomer's effect.
• White Sheep : Worf.
• Will Not Tell a Lie : Betazoids.
• Working with the Ex : Will Riker & Deanna Troi are ex-lovers.
• Wrote the Book : In "The Best of Both Worlds Part II", Guinan and Riker have an extended discussion of their strategy centering around this metaphor.
• Yandere : A piece of Phlebotinum turns Troi into one in "Man Of The People".
• Year Inside, Hour Outside : "The Inner Light" has a variation that happens in a Mental World .
• You Keep Using That Word : The flagrant misuse of "sentient".
• For a species so obsessed with "honour", many Klingons depicted in the series seem to be perfectly comfortable with stabbing each other in the back to get ahead. Worf defies this trope , however, as he gives several epic verbal putdowns on just why this sort of behaviour is hypocritical and just what having true honour actually means .
• He also plays an unnamed human bridge crew member in the 23rd century in Generations .
• Marc Alaimo who would become, in Deep Space Nine , Gul Dukat, played 4 different characters in TNG , including the first Romulan seen in TNG in "The Neutral Zone". Most notably he played the first ever Cardassian seen in Star Trek (Gul Macet in "The Wounded").
• Robert Duncan McNeill, Voyager ' s Tom Paris, as Nicholas Locarno in "The First Duty". The character of Locarno was the inspiration for Paris. The Voyager creators say they didn't plan to hire the same actor; once they realized they had, they considered making McNeill Locarno on Voyager , but reformulated him into Paris, feeling that Locarno "couldn't be redeemed enough" (read: they didn't want to pay royalties) for what they planned with Paris.
• He also plays the holographic maître d' in First Contact .
• Most jarring of all is James Cromwell as the leader of a potential new Federation alliance world in "The Hunted", when he later played Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact .
• David Tristan Birke, who played Rene, Picard's nephew in "Family", later played the young Picard himself in "Rascals".
• Max Grodenchik as the very typical conniving, treacherous Ferengi Sovak in "Captain's Holiday"; better known for his later role as the very a typical (and somewhat dim) Rom from Deep Space Nine .
• Armin Shimerman played both Letek, one of the first Ferengi ever shown onscreen in "The Last Outpost", and the better known Quark -- also from Deep Space Nine .
• Majel Barrett (who played Nurse Chapel in Star Trek: The Original Series , as well as Number Two in the original pilot) as Lwaxana Troi, and also the voice of the ship's computer in both series.
• Diana Muldaur, who played Dr. Pulaski in Season 2, had two previous spots on the original series (as different characters, no less).
• Christopher Collins, AKA Chris Latta played a Klingon Captain in "A Matter of Honor" and later plays a Pakled in "The Samaritan Snare". Might be more of a case of You Sound Familiar.
• You Need to Get Laid : This is the real reason why Riker asked Picard to buy him a Horg'ahn on Risa in "Captain's Holiday".
• Your Head Asplode : Not for the faint of heart .
• Your Mom : Riker invokes this when speaking to a holographic representation of Captain Rice in "Arsenal of Freedom", which is trying to get as much tactical information about the Enterprise and its mission as possible. When the faux Drake asks who sent them there, Riker says, "Your mother. She was worried about you."
• Your Normal Is Our Taboo : Riker falls in love with an alien woman who gets really hated by her own people for their love. Not because he's a human, but because he's a man. Her culture require her and her partner to both be intergender. Essentially, it's inverted homophobia and inverted heterophobia, a fear of having a gender at all. Which is also a cisphobia, an inverted transphobia.
• You See, I'm Dying : Evil Twin android Lore is about to walk out on his creator Dr. Soong when the latter reveals that he is dying — as Lore, for all his faults, does have emotions, this makes him stop.
• The Original Series was, naturally, far worse. Not just aesthetically - searches of the computer database for particular terms also seem to be conducted manually- by hand - and can take hours (such as in "The Naked Now"), suggesting that the Enterprise's computer lacks the handy indexing of a modern search engine. In TNG , searches were generally instant or a few seconds, even for a species' entire recorded history or similar, unless they had to process a truly colossal amount of data.
• In-universe. After Wolf 359, everything changed. The Federation in early series was depicted as filled with eternal optimists . After Wolf 359, the Federation leaders are shown to be clearly more jaded and should they have to, will not hesistate to remind everyone just why they are one of the dominant powers of the Alpha Quadrant.
• ↑ From left to right: Geordi , Troi , Data , Picard , Worf , Dr. Crusher , Riker . Wesley 's holding the camera. Better than anyone else could, no doubt. Especially Yar.
• ↑ Tamar, when speaking of the lost and remembered. Harry , with speech beyond the Alley. Picard, his brow furrowed, his mind clouded.

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Star Trek The Original Series / Tropes A to L

Edit locked, star trek: the original series contains the following tropes:.

• Absurdly Dedicated Worker : In "The Return of the Archons" Landru guards his planet, long after its usefulness has ceased. Ditto the automated defense bot Losira in "That Which Survives".
• Act of True Love : "The Empath", McCoy sacrifices himself to save Kirk and Spock from death or insanity via Cold-Blooded Torture. Again, he lives, but he didn't know that.
• Adaptation Title Change : Two episodes' titles were changed when James Blish adapted them as short stories: "The Man Trap" became "The Unreal McCoy " (which may have been a working title from a draft script), and "Charlie X" became "Charlie's Law."
• Adaptational Alternate Ending : In the episode "Operation - Annihilate", Spock is temporarily blinded when they test a cure for a neural parasite on him before using it to free a planetary population. In the novelization of that episode, the planet is freed from the infection before Spock goes through the procedure, which does not blind him.
• Affectionate Parody : "A Piece of The Action" is an Affectionate Parody of gangster movies.
• Afrofuturism : Star Trek, while not afro-futurist in and of itself, did have an influence on the genre due to the presence of Uhura; the fact that a black person had a place on a futuristic space ship left a serious impact on young viewers. She was identified in the first episode as a Swahili (there are many Swahili peoples, James Blish described her as Bantu), had a few lines in Kiswahili in a couple of episodes, and the official Star Trek Writers' Guide established that she was from the United States of Africa.
• In "The Return of the Archons", a computer has effectively stagnated a planet's entire culture into an ongoing, meaningless cycle of merely existing.
• In "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky", a computer keeps the generational refugees under its watch ignorant of the fact that they're living in an asteroid, and punishes those who try to find the truth.
• In "The Changeling", one of Earth's probes - programmed to seek out life - collided with and damaged an alien probe that was programmed to sterilize soil samples from other planets. The alien probe used parts of Earth's probe to repair itself, resulting in their programs merging to " seek out life and sterilize it ".
• In "The Ultimate Computer" the M-5 unit, designed by Dr. Daystrom, goes rogue after it mistakes a wargame for the real thing.
• In "Dagger of the Mind", Dr. Helen Noel saves the day by using a passage to get to the power room and shut off the Tantalus Colony's force field.
• In "Miri", the children use an air vent to infiltrate the lab where the Enterprise crew is working and steal their communicators.
• In "The Trouble With Tribbles", Scotty speculates that the tribbles got into the food processors on the Enterprise via the actual air vents. Spock realizes that the grain the Enterprise is guarding on the nearby space station is in storage compartments with similar vents, prompting Kirk to beam over and leading to the episode's funniest moment.
• Alice Allusion : "Shore Leave": Both in the characters seen by the good doctor, and the fact that the planet turns out to be one big Wonderland.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause : The Prime Directive, which forbids any interference with the internal development of pre-warp civilizations. Story-wise, it's used as a plot device to keep the main characters from just using the easy way out of a problem.
• All Planets Are Earthlike : Considering the technical and budgetary constraints, ridiculously so. The show hand waves it sometimes by making planets specifically based on Earth. Or making the episode actually take place on Earth .
• The script for "The Omega Glory" has the main characters theorize right at the beginning that the Yangs and Kohms are lost colonists from Earth's early space race. Presumably it was removed to make the reveal at the end a surprise, but in doing so it just made the whole thing ridiculously contrived .
• The final draft of the “Dagger In The Mind” script clarified that Kirk thought Helen Noel was a passenger at the party, not a member of the crew, and he flirted with her to his embarrassment.
• All Women Are Lustful : Contrary to his reputation, Kirk doesn't initiate a lot of his kisses, and when he does it's nearly always used as a means to an end.
• The Horta is initially presented and believed to be (as the episode title states) a "Devil in the Dark", but turns out to be a mother protecting her eggs.
• Balance of Terror is the first episode to feature the Romulans, who are introduced by launching an unprovoked sneak attack. In the selfsame episode the two main Romulan characters are examples of My Country, Right or Wrong and What a Senseless Waste of Human Life , and it is made very clear that if it weren't for their being on opposite sides of battle, Kirk and the Romulan Commander could have easily been friends.
• The episode Errand of Mercy marks the first appearance of the Klingons, and in that very episode the Organians - a more enlightened species than Humans or Klingons - predict that at some future date , the Klingons and the Federation will become allies, working together. There's also "Day of the Dove", when after learning that they are being manipulated by an Energy Being into a senseless, endless war with Kirk's crew, the Klingons team up in an Enemy Mine . Kang: I do not need any urging to kill humans. A Klingon kills for his own reasons! Only a fool fights in a burning house!
• In the Pilot Episode , Captain Christopher Pike's character was subjected to an illusion of Hell when he refused to cooperate with his Talosian jailers. The illusion was stated to be made from information gotten from his own mind, implying that he was raised as a Christian.
• At the end of "This Side of Paradise" , when the Enterprise is leaving Omicron Ceti III, Dr. McCoy , reflecting on the euphoric effect the planet's spores had on the crew, states that "Well, that's the second time man's been thrown out of Paradise."
• Captain Kirk's famous line to the alien impersonating the Greek god Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" : Kirk: Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate.
• In "The Ultimate Computer" , both Dr. Richard Daystrom and, consequently, the sentient M-5 computer he built believe in God. Kirk makes the M-5 realize that in committing murder, it has sinned, and it shut itself down out of remorse.
• In "Bread and Circuses" , Kirk and Crew come upon a planet dominated by a Roman Empire but with 20th century technology, where a persecuted, pacifist new religion worships a sun god. At the end of the episode, Lieutenant Uhura discovers that this new religion does not worship the Sun but the Son, clearly referencing Jesus. Kirk even considers remaining at the planet for a number of years just so they can "watch it happen all over again."
• Near the end of "The Way to Eden" , Adam, one of Dr. Sevrin's followers, literally dies on the planet Eden after eating a poisoned apple ; Spock sardonically points this out.
• Amnesia Danger : In "The Paradise Syndrome", the danger was that the amnesiac character (Kirk) had forgotten that there was a danger.
• The unfortunate fate that Captain Pike is ultimately reduced to.
• The fate of Lazarus and Anti-Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor".
• Charlie's reaction to the ending of "Charlie X".
• And Your Little Dog, Too! : Villains often find that this trope is what forces Kirk to comply to them. Textbook case in "The Squire of Gothos", with Spock as the collateral.
• The episode "The Enemy Within" involves a transporter accident separating Kirk from his aggressive side. While the unchecked aggressive side causes nothing but trouble, Kirk realizes he needs that side of him to be an effective leader. Kirk asks this aggressive side "Can half a man live?"
• In "This Side of Paradise", anger frees Kirk and then Spock from the spores' influence. Later sonic frequencies irritate the rest of the crew and the colonists, freeeing them as well.
• Antagonistic Governor : Kodos the Executioner, who was governor of a human colony that was facing starvation because of an exotic fungus. He executed 4,000 citizens in order to see to it that the other 4,000 wouldn't starve . He later disappeared, presumed dead, but in reality, had changed his name and was living life as an actor.
• "Charlie X": Charlie Evans turns out to be a Reality Warper and starts abusing his powers when the crew of the Enterprise doesn't bow down to his every whim.
• "The Enemy Within": Kirk is split into a good and an evil version . Guess which one is the enemy.
• "The Devil in the Dark": Subverted. The silicon-based Horta was killing the miners to protect its eggs. The Enterprise crew heal it and communicate with it.
• "The Doomsday Machine": It is a planet-eating machine from another Galaxy.
• "The Ultimate Computer": A.I. Is a Crapshoot .
• "The Tholian Web": The energy web is being created by the Tholians to destroy the Enterprise .
• Apocalyptic Log : Losira's computer log in "That Which Survives", which explained how her colony died.
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Armor-Piercing Question : Surprisingly, one towards Kirk from the leader of the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" when they've stopped the Federation and the Klingon Empire from fighting. Kirk: Even if you have some power that we don't understand, you have no right to dictate to our Federation— Kor: Or our Empire! Kirk: —How to handle their interstellar relations! We have the right— Ayelborne: To wage war, Captain? To kill millions of innocent people? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is that what you're defending?
• Arc Words : When Gene Coon was involved, soldier vs diplomat. A lot of the time it’s Kirk’s Conflicting Loyalty and Character Development , but other characters have the conflict too, and it’s a continuing theme for other Trek series.
• Artistic License – Physics : In "The Naked Time", the Enterprise is observing a planet in the process of breaking up. The only explanation given for why the planet is breaking up is that its star has gone dark, which would make no difference. It's as if it's just spontaneously exploding. What's more, they talk about its mass changing, which absolutely cannot happen under the laws of physics. note  The closest thing in real life would be, A.) Change the effect of gravity in some way (and most of the numbers related to gravity are called 'constants' for a reason), or B.) remove some of the planet's matter, which would change the total mass and either its density or volume (or both).
• Ascended Extra : Most of the main crew members (with the exception of Kirk and Spock) are not credited with starring roles in the opening credits, even McCoy (for the first season). Many of them don't appear in certain episodes, and don't even receive any real focus or characterization until late season 1 and throughout season 2. Only the movies credit them with starring roles.
• Aside Comment : At the end of "Journey to Babel", Doctor McCoy looks directly into the camera and happily states, "I finally got the last word."
• As You Know : In "Wolf in the Fold" Spock explains to Captain Kirk how ordering the computer to compute the value of pi to the last digit will drive the Redjack creature out of it .
• "Ass" in Ambassador : How many times has the presence of Federation diplomatic personnel actually helped matters? More often than not Kirk and company have to smooth over problems created by overbearing Federation officials. Alien ambassadors aren't much of an improvement.
• Asteroid Thicket : In "Mudd's Women", Harry Mudd's ship flies through one.
• Attack Reflector : Played With in the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver". Kirk threatens to use the eponymous strategy with a device embedded in the Enterprise . If any destructive energy hits it, the corbomite creates a reverse reaction of equal strength that destroys the attacker. He was bluffing: there was actually no such device and no such maneuver.
• Author Appeal : Gene Roddenberry admitted in the book “Where No Man” that a lot of episodes were his sexual fantasies. He’s at least equal opportunity about it, giving Kirk gratuitous shirtless scenes and apparently letting Shatner stick his ass out as much as he wanted, saying fans liked to watch him leave a room.
• Auto-Kitchen : The Enterprise has slots in the wall which can produce any food desired by inserting the correct computer tape. In The Next Generation , these are replaced by replicators.
• Ax-Crazy : Captain, no, Lord Garth. Also most of his "court" of fellow asylum inmates, notably Green-Skinned Space Babe Marta, who is compelled to murder those she "loves." note  She is the only green space babe who kisses or is kissed by Kirk; and they certainly don't do it, as she reached for her dagger almost immediately.
• Badass Crew : The Original Series establishes a long and proud tradition of these in Starfleet.
• Batman Gambit : Kirk is very good at reading his opponents in battle, and thus can pull these off in ways that would make Batman himself proud. The Corbomite Maneuver is a distinct example, and the entirety of Balance of Terror has Kirk continuously doing this to the commander of a Romulan ship, estimating his every action and intention based on the maneuvers he makes: (Enterprise fires on the still cloaked Romulan ship, scoring a near-miss ) Romulan Sub-Commander: "How, commander? HOW?!" Romulan Commander: "He is a sorcerer that one, he reads the thoughts in my brain!"
• In the episode "Miri", at one point, the Long-Lived children get together and start chanting the word "Bonk" repeatedly (as in "Bonk on the head") as an indication of what they plan to do to the Enterprise crew who have beamed down to their planet.
• Similarly, the space battle music from the episode "The Doomsday Machine" became a standard used over and over again in later episodes.
• Beard of Evil : "Mirror Mirror" provides the Trope Codifier of Evil Twins with beards, thanks to the Mirror-universe Spock's natty goatee.
• Beeping Computers : Computers in the original series beeped because it was a futuristic interpretation of the rather noisy computers of The '60s (which really did have blinking lights too).
• In "Wolf in the Fold", it turns out that Jack the Ripper was just one of many creatures possessed by a Puppeteer Parasite over the centuries.
• "Requiem for Methuselah" concerns an immortal being who takes credit for the deeds of many historical figures .
• Inverted from perspective "Patterns of Force." We follow the crew of the Enterprise looking for John Gill, a Federation historian. It turns out he's created a replica of the Nazi movement on an alien world and made himself the Führer. Said aliens, and their planetary cousins, are shocked to learn of this.
• Don't insult the Enterprise within earshot of Scotty, much less to his face. The Klingons find this out the hard way in "The Trouble With Tribbles". Then again, they are Klingons, so they may have been looking for that fight.
• Don't imply to McCoy that logic is a good substitute for compassion in a crisis.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished : Very often, Kirk would be sweaty and his hair messed up in a fight, let alone be injured, but look perfect again the very next scene.
• Benevolent Dictator : Khan Noonien Singh held this reputation, despite his pro-eugenics beliefs and absolute power throughout his conquered empire, he was regarded as the best of the Eugenics wars Super men, with his ruling style being described as "firm but fair" and it being specifically stated that under his rule their was "no mass killings, no wars that weren't started by other parties". By the 23rd century his rule has even become somewhat romanticised, with him being compared to the likes of Leif Ericson, Richard the Lionheart and Napoleon Bonaparte. This reputation even leads to the crew of the Enterprise seriously underestimating just how ruthless and ambitious the still living Khan really was.
• In "Plato's Stepchildren", Alexander is first seen as a massive shadow against a wall. Said shadow shrinks as he approaches Kirk, Spock, and McCoy , revealing he's actually rather short compared to them. The actor playing Alexander was 3 feet, 11 inches tall.
• Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor".
• Charlie Evans does this in "Charlie X".
• Black-and-White Morality : Averted . The Federation may be a near- Utopia , but they only remain as one through military power. They get called out on this more than once .
• Black Comedy : "A Piece of the Action", and "The Trouble With Tribbles" both thrive on this trope. It can also be seen in dialogue moments in other episodes, such as this exchange in "This Side of Paradise" where Kirk and Spock ( the only crew remaining on the Enterprise ) are going to build a transmitter utilizing the communicators' emergency channel, but first Kirk has to fight Spock to free him of the spores: Spock: As you are probably aware , striking a fellow officer is a court-martial offence. Kirk: If we're both in the brig, who's going to build the transmitter? Spock: A logical point, Captain.
• Black Dude Dies First : Averted in "The Galileo Seven" and "By Any Other Name"; in both cases, the black male character survives to the end of the episode while one or more white characters die.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality : Eminiar and Vendikar, the two warring planets in "A Taste of Armageddon," have so sanitized their war with each other that they no longer send actual missiles—instead they just send computer signals signifying an attack and then have all civilians who happened to be within range of the theoretical attack disintegrate themselves in booths designed for that purpose. The leader of Eminiar considers Kirk a monster because he refuses to allow the same thing to happen to the crew of the Enterprise when the ship is calculated to have been "hit" by an "attack," and even more so when he destroys Eminiar's attack computers, immediately breaking the stalemate between the two planets.
• Bluffing the Authorities : The episode "City on the Edge of Forever". After Kirk and Spock go back in time to 1930's New York City, they're about to steal some clothing to replace their Enterprise uniforms but meet a police officer and have to explain Spock's pointed Vulcan ears. They come up with a story that Spock is Chinese and had a childhood accident involving a mechanical rice picker and plastic surgery, but the cop doesn't buy it .
• Bluff the Eavesdropper : In "The Deadly Years", due to having been rapidly aged by mysterious radiation and gone senile, Kirk has been forced to step down from command. His incompetent replacement has led the ship through the Romulan Neutral Zone, and the Romulans are about to destroy them. Suddenly a cure is found, a restored Kirk appears on the bridge and gives an order to relay a message to Starfleet—using a code previously established as having been broken by the Romulans, which briefly causes the crew to wonder if he's still senile. Nevertheless, they open the channels and Kirk sends a message that the Enterprise will self destruct via the Corbomite Device and destroy any ship in a huge radius. The Romulans intercept the message and leave in a hurry .
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma : Thanks to his incredibly rationalist thinking, Spock has notable difficulty with understanding human euphemisms and metaphors.
• Boldly Coming : Kirk is the Trope Codifier . That said, Kirk's reputation for sleeping his way across the galaxy has been greatly exaggerated in the public mind ; out of 79 aired episodes, he kisses another character in only 19 of them, and of those, thirteen are while he's under duress or doing it specifically to manipulate them . In fact, Kirk makes out with a woman purely for pleasure, with no other motive or emotional attachment, exactly once in the entire original series. Sex is likewise only implied in a few rare instances: once when he marries a native girl while amnesiac, and gets her pregnant; once when the show returns from commercial to find a woman brushing her hair in his room while he puts his boots back on; a Sexy Discretion Shot to an overhead lamp as Kirk kisses a Sex Slave girl who's been "ordered to please" him note  A line that was cut had Kirk drinking wine and saying "good," eating something and saying "excellent," and then — "And you?" and the woman says "Superb, I'm told." ; and Kirk sitting up in bed taking a call from the bridge, the woman (France Nuyen as the Dolmen Elaan) lying next to him, she rolls over and sits up to lean on his shoulder.
• Many episodes begin and end on a shot of the Enterprise flying through space as the dramatic fanfare plays her in (or out).
• A more meta example: Sulu and Rand share a scene in the first episode aired, "The Man Trap". They don't share another scene until the sixth and final movie , with Rand as a Bridge Officer under Sulu's command.
• Borrowed Without Permission : Incorrigible larcenist Harry Mudd recounts how he managed to escape from a Federation penal colony to Captain Kirk and Mister Spock. Harry Mudd: I... borrowed transportation... Captain Kirk: He stole a starship!
• Bottled Heroic Resolve
• Brainwashed and Crazy : This happens in numerous episodes.
• Brandishment Bluff : "The Corbomite Maneuver" Kirk: This is the Captain of the Enterprise . Our respect for other life forms requires that we give you this... warning. One critical item of information that has never been incorporated into the memory banks of any Earth ship. Since the early years of space exploration, Earth vessels have had incorporated into them a substance known as... corbomite. It is a material and a device which prevents attack on us. If any destructive energy touches our vessel, a reverse reaction of equal strength is created, destroying— Balok: [over intercom] You now have two minutes. Kirk: —destroying the attacker. It may interest you to know that since the initial use of corbomite more than two of our centuries ago, no attacking vessel has survived the attempt. Death has... little meaning to us. If it has none to you then attack us now. We grow annoyed at your foolishness.
• Episode "Arena". Captain Kirk and the Gorn captain are forced to fight each other with improvised weapons. During their battle, the Gorn captain picks up a boulder and throws it at Kirk, pinning Kirk's leg to the ground.
• One of the cavemen uses a boulder to pound on the shuttlecraft.
• During a funeral ceremony, one of the cavemen throws a boulder at Spock, pinning him to the ground.
• Bread and Circuses : The aptly named episode "Bread and Circuses" explores a planet in which the Roman Empire never fell. Gladiator sports are broadcast on TV and interrupted by commercial breaks.
• Chekov does more screaming-in-pain than the rest of the crew combined. He even has a torture scene in the episode "Mirror, Mirror". This was explained as a convenient way to show there was mortal peril. In a nice inversion, he's the only one who doesn't get hit with the aging disease in "The Deadly Years". He still ends up getting subjected to a thousand and one medical checks, though. Chekov: Blood sample, Chekov! Marrow sample, Chekov! Skin sample, Chekov! If—if I live long enough, I'm going to run out of samples! Sulu: You'll live. Chekov: Oh yes, I'll live. But I won't enjoy it!
• Butterfly of Doom : In "The City on the Edge of Forever", Edith Keeler's death must occur or else it will cause an alternate timeline where Germany wins World War II and Starfleet does not exist.
• The Saurians were later established in Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be lizard people; there were a couple of them on the Enterprise .
• Calvin Ball : Fizzbin, the imaginary card game Kirk and Spock make up to confuse the gangsters in "A Piece of the Action", is an Ur-Example .
• Captain's Log : The Trope Maker ; Kirk's famous voice-over logs were conceived as a way of quickly introducing or recapping plot points that may have otherwise been confusing. He seems to do them in his head even when he's nowhere near a recorder. In early episodes (e.g, "Mantrap"), he even adopts an "Ominiscient Narrator" stance when referring to future events. When he says "Captain's log, stardate.... unknown", it can be downright chilling.
• Cargo Concealment Caper : In the episode "Dagger of the Mind", a criminal from a penal colony sneaks aboard by hiding in a cargo container that's beamed up to the ship.
• Cartwright Curse : So frequent you could almost take bets on whether the Girl of the Week is going to buy the farm by the end of the episode (or if she doesn't, pull a High-Heel–Face Turn ).
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys : The show’s habit for putting the main men in obvious mascara and eyeshadow is well-documented and much appreciated. This observation began with the digitally remastered editions and wasn't noticed at the time. The relatively heavy television makeup was designed to create highlights and shadows since the cameras of that time saw flat. So to a 1960s viewer, even watching on a color set, the actors did not look heavily made up.
• Catchphrase : Dr. McCoy 's " I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder " and " He's Dead, Jim ." Spock's "Fascinating" and "Illogical."
• Catch the Conscience : "The Conscience of the King" plays with this trope; a man suspected of being the murderous tyrant Kodos the Executioner happens to be an actor currently starring in a production of Hamlet .
• Usually in the form of the Enterprise or a second landing party arriving to save the day.
• Lampshaded in "Friday's Child" when Kirk wonders why " the cavalry doesn't come over the hill in the nick of time anymore ." Then Scotty arrives with a Redshirt Army .
• While Kirk has a lot of trauma and is a Broken Hero in the show, the writers obviously didn’t know they were going to have a movie series and give him a son that he knew about but had to stay away from. The Autobiography of James T. Kirk can do some fancy Arc Welding with how much Kirk likes running away from his problems; having the kid from “A Piece Of The Action” remind him of David, the traumas of season three pushing him to think he wants to be an Admiral, and reasoning that the more trio-based episodes after the first season is because of what happened with Edith and Sam.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan took Kirk’s penchant for Just Ignore It and applied it to the nature of the show, forcing him to actually deal with his consistent loss and pain, and certain villains of the weeks coming back to prove he can’t just run away from everything. “Generations” and his 10-Minute Retirement after all he’s gone through, does it as well.
• Characterisation Click Moment : Originally, Spock didn't have the impassive, scientific characterization he is famous for. Leonard Nimoy said the character first began to click for him in "The Corbomite Maneuver", when the director suggested he "be the scientist, stay detached", and react to Balok's threatening ship with "Fascinating."
• Cheated Angle : The Enterprise is almost exclusively seen from the starboard side, even straight on angles are slightly turned away. The reason was a combination of budget and limitations of model-making technology, the electronics for the lights were fed in through the port side of the secondary hull and thus the starboard side was the only one fully detailed with painting, windows and decals (including the inside of the port nacelle, which would face the camera). Whenever there was a need to show the port side they would mirror flip the decals and then mirror the footage. The Remastered version of the show, with a CGI model, was able to do this more often.
• Chewing the Scenery : The Klingon executive officer Korax in "The Trouble With Tribbles" insults the Enterprise For the Evulz , underlining the last two words of this speech loud and clear with a wide-eyed stare: "I didn't mean to say that the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage! " note  Fans adore this line and loudly reciting the whole insult parade became a favorite gag at the conventions of the 1970s.
• City in a Bottle : "For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" featured this on a generation ship.
• " That Which Survives ". Thousands of years ago, a Human Alien civilization called the Kalandans made an artificial planet to live on. Unfortunately, the process created a microorganism that killed the personnel stationed on the planet. By the time they died, the disease had been transported back to the original civilization via supply ships, completely wiping it out.
• '' Operation: Annihilate! " Going back to ancient times, a number of civilizations on different planets have been destroyed by outbreaks of mass insanity. The cause of the insanity is alien creatures that attack people and inject material into their bodies that takes control of their nervous systems. The aliens make the victims travel to other planets using starships, thus spreading the infection.
• " What Are Little Girls Made Of? " The aliens who lived on the planet Exo 3 created android robots to serve them. When the androids developed Artificial Intelligence , the aliens became afraid of them and started to turn them off. In self defense, the androids Turned Against Their Masters and destroyed them.
• " The Changeling ". The interstellar probe Nomad uses its alien technology-enhanced weapons to completely wipe out the population of the Malurian system, killing more than 4 billion people.
• " I, Mudd ". The aliens who created the androids originally came from the Andromeda galaxy. Their home planet's star went nova and destroyed their civilization except for a few outposts, whose inhabitants died out over time.
• " The Immunity Syndrome ". The entire population of the Gamma Seven-A system, consisting of billions of inhabitants, is killed by having their Life Energy drained by a giant space amoeba.
• " Return to Tomorrow ". A half million years ago, a highly advanced Human Alien civilization fought an apocalyptic war that destroyed the surface of their planet, ripped away the atmosphere and killed all living creatures on it. Before the end, a few members stored their minds in advanced devices to wait rescue.
• " The Empath ". The star Minara is about to go nova, and all of its planets (several of which have populations) will be destroyed. The Humanoid Alien Vians can only save the population of one planet. They do so, but the other civilizations are doomed.
• " Let That Be Your Last Battlefied ". The Humanoid Aliens of the planet Cheron completely wipe themselves out in a genocidal war.
• " The Lights of Zetar ". Long ago, every living thing on the planet Zetar was killed. The minds and Life Energy of 100 of its Humanoid Aliens inhabitants traveled into space and search for new bodies to possess.
• " For the World Is Hollow, And I Have Touched The Sky ". Several thousand years ago, the Fabrini people's home sun went nova and destroyed their planets, but some of them were put on a ship resembling (or disguised as?) an asteroid and sent to another planet.
• " Plato's Stepchildren ". When the planet Sahndara is destroyed by its sun going nova, almost all of its civilization is annihilated. A small number escape to Earth, then later another planet.
• " Wink Of An Eye ". On the planet Scalos, radioactive water causes the entire race to live at hyper-accelerated speeds (which tremendously shortens their lifespans) and makes the male part of the population sterile. By the time the Enterprise arrives, there are only a few Scalosians left.
• " All Our Yesterdays ". When the star Beta Niobe goes nova, its only planet, Sarpeidon, will be destroyed. However, the entire population of the planet has used time travel to journey into the planet's past. They are mentally and physically conditioned to fit in, but their civilization in the future is effectively destroyed.
• Happens once in a while. In "Journey to Babel", Sarek is accused of murdering a Tellarite ambassador. The culprit is an Orion pretending to be a staff member of the Andorian ambassador. In "Court Martial", Kirk is accused of causing the death of one of his crew members. The crew member has faked his own death and is trying to sabotage Kirk's career, as he blames Kirk for ruining his.
• Scotty has to do this in "Wolf in the Fold" after being set up for several murders by none other than Jack the Ripper himself—actually an alien entity who took possession over the centuries of (among others) Jack the Ripper and the city administrator investigating Scotty's alleged murders (conveniently stonewalling the investigation in the process).
• Even Spock gets in on the fun in "The Menagerie", although the crime in Spock's case is mutiny, not murder, and the whole ordeal is arranged by an alien entity just like the other incidents, albeit out of compassion rather than any sinister motive. Then again, unlike in the other cases, Spock is actually guilty, and not mind controlled or framed - he just has a very justifiable motive.
• Clip Show : "The Menagerie" shows us most of the original pilot episode, "The Cage".
• Clothing Damage : Kirk must have a pretty steep uniform allowance to cover all of those shirts that get torn up (or completely torn off of him). An unintended case can be seen in "The Savage Curtain" when Kirk's pants split open in the back for a brief moment.
• Combat by Champion : "Arena" has Kirk vs. Gorn captain. "Amok Time" has Kirk vs. Spock. "The Gamesters of Triskelion" has Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura vs. an Amazing Technicolor Population .
• Comic-Book Adaptation : Gold Key Comics published its first Star Trek comic in 1967 and the series outlived the TV show by a full decade (ending only because Marvel Comics took over the rights so it could publish comics set post- Star Trek: The Motion Picture ). Early issues are noted for their bizarre artwork and extreme breaks with TV continuity, due in part to the artist being a freelancer living in Europe who had never seen the series and only had publicity photographs to work with. As a result, one issue features a cut-away drawing that suggests that the Enterprise isn't much bigger than a large yacht, while another issue has the Enterprise landing on a planet, decades before Star Trek: Voyager does it. Later, Marvel, DC Comics , and IDW Publishing all took turns publishing comics set in the TOS era.
• This is the main draw of the franchise for many. Professional people from a variety of fields act professionally and work together to solve problems by the end of the episode.
• Some newer Trek stuff is controversial with the old fans for the characters acting less professionally and competently and getting by more on luck and Indy Ploys .
• Constellations as Locations : Implied with the Orions (the original Green-Skinned Space Babes). Background information and later parts of the franchise established that the green-skinned aliens were from the planet Orion, which is located in the Orion Sector (which sector is presumably geocentrically named for the Earth constellation).
• Corrective Lecture : Attempted by Kirk in "Charlie X", when he attempts to explain to Charlie why slapping Yeoman Rand on the butt was not appropriate behavior, but also not trying to come down hard on Charlie, who had (as Kirk believed at the time) no supervision as a child, being the sole survivor of a crash when he was young. Kirk, trying to avoid having The Talk with Charlie, can only sum it up by saying, "There's no right way to hit a woman."
• Couldn't Find a Pen : In one episode, a Horta (essentially a lava monster) burns, " NO KILL I " on the ground. Spock wonders if this translates to "I don't kill" or "Don't kill me". Or both? She doesn't explain, so it's left up to the viewer, but she's in agony and more concerned about her kids.
• In "The Menagerie", Spock gets put on trial for commandeering the Enterprise and taking it to a forbidden planet.
• " Court Martial ": Kirk gets put on trial for (seemingly) causing the death of a crew member through negligence.
• Courtroom Episode : " Court Martial ", "Wolf In The Fold"
• Cowboy Episode : "Spectre of the Gun", in which the main characters are forced to re-enact the gunfight at the O.K. Corral on an alien world.
• Creator Cameo : Gene Roddenberry himself voiced the ship's cook in " Charlie X ".
• Credits Montage : Featuring not only stills from the episode in question, but random shots from various other episodes as well.
• In "Miri" they just do the familiar "nyah nyah-nyah nyah nyah" chant but it's made very sinister.
• Cunning People Play Poker : The Corbomite Maneuver " when faced with Balok's incomprehensible mothership threatening to destroy the Enterprise, Spock contextualises their situation as a game of chess and concludes Balok has declared checkmate. Captain Kirk changes the game to poker, and then bluffs that Enterprise has a defense feature that will ensure that if it's destroyed, Balok's ship will also get blown up.
• Spock is totally unaffected by Tribbles. He is only petting it because it is logical ... What's everybody looking at?
• And cats. He has no particular fondness for the creatures . note  Vulcans were often compared with cats in fan essays of the time, and someone wrote a half-serious essay on how they could have evolved from felidae.
• And dogs, too. See the space dog in "The Enemy Within".
• Used as foreshadowing in “The Enemy Within”, as good Kirk (who thinks he’s the original at this point) is weepier than normal and gets distracted by the animal he’s holding being soft while trying to give orders. It turns out to be just a side of him that he needs, along with the toxic aggressive part of himself.
• The Cloud Minders , which features the oppressive sky-city of Stratos and its subordinate, ground-dwelling Troglytes, some of whom have formed the rebellious Disrupters in an attempt to overthrow the city.
• Return Of The Archons in which a whole society is run by a mind-controlling computer, and an underground resistance has formed to overthrow it.
• Daddy's Little Villain : "The Conscience of the King" (a tragic Double Subversion ). The daughter of a former villain in hiding uses their cover as a performing theater troupe to kill off the remaining witnesses to her father's previous crimes as a way of "protecting" him from recrimination. Her father is extremely displeased with her when he finds out, having hoped to start a legitimate new life in their cover identities, and appalled that the blood on his hands had irreversibly stained her, as well.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster! : "A Piece of the Action". The inhabitants of Sigma Iotia II are so enamored of 1920s Chicago gang culture that they decided to base their entire civilization on it .
• Damsel out of Distress : Double subverted in “A Taste Of Armageddon”, as Kirk is held hostage and Spock comes in just as he’s got himself out of it. Kirk replies to “we thought you needed help” with admitting he still does.
• Dangerously Garish Environment : " The Way to Eden " shows a group of space hippies taking over the Enterprise to fly to a "paradise planet." The planet is beautiful enough, but everything on it is lethal , and the hippie leader dies when he refuses to believe it.
• "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" is this for McCoy .
• "A Wolf in the Fold" and "The Lights of Zetar" for Scotty.
• Days of Future Past : Primarily a Space Western , with Kirk frequently acting as the Army Scout who helps the struggling colonists. But there was also plenty of "Age Of Sail" IN SPACE and the American Cold War IN SPACE.
• Dead Man Writing : "That Which Survives". Losira's computer message to her fellow Kalandans about the death of the colony. Also the last surviving crewman of the USS Exeter recording a log warning anyone who finds it of the plague (while logging, the crewman succumbs).
• Averted in "Spectre of the Gun" when Spock surprises McCoy by giving him a genuine compliment. McCoy : "I doubt that this combination of things was ever used for any purpose quite like this." Spock : (Sincerely) "Perhaps they would've been if [these people] had your ingenuity, Doctor." McCoy : (Looks up and blinks in surprise)
• Death Ray : Phasers, at their highest setting, become Disintegrator Rays .
• Decadent Court : The Romulan government at several points is implied to be one. The Platonians in "Plato's Stepchildren" started out with a good idea—create a society based upon Plato's Republic —but ended up as this after centuries of isolation. In "The Gamesters of Triskelion," the three brains running the planet have resorted to pitting random aliens against each other in gladiatorial combat after losing their purpose in life.
• Deconstructed Trope : Kirk uses his sexuality a lot like a male version of a Heroic Seductress , but not only does he see it as Necessarily Evil , gets him a rep in-universe and he’s called out if he gets too cold, but Janice Lester is able to get away with Never My Fault (claiming he left her when it got serious when clearly she was the abusive one) and he’s drugged or coerced in some way no less than four times.
• Depending on the Writer : The actors themselves have admitted that the characters’ levels of feminism range from early women’s lib with messages like right to choose at best, slightly patronising or just outright sexist insults at worst, depending on who was writing the episode. The main show creators to be sincere feminists were Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana.
• A de-materializer, which breaks down the object in a controlled fashion.
• A buffer, which holds the disintegrated object until transmission.
• A transmitter, which transmits the disintegrated object as a beam of energy.
• A re-materializer, which reintegrates the object in a controlled fashion.
• invoked Contrary to popular opinion, the transported object is indeed the original object from the start, and the device does not kill living things that are being transported; it's the same matter, just transmuted into energy, beamed to a new location, and then transmuted back to matter. note  People transported are in fact conscious during transport. If there's unbroken continuity of consciousness, then there cannot have been a death. However, as you can probably imagine , transporters can be rather scarily dangerous if some part of the process were to be interrupted .
• Deus est Machina : Several episodes, notably "The Apple".
• Deus ex Machina : "Charlie X" (the Thasians), "Shore Leave" (the Keeper), "The Squire of Gothos" (Trelane's parents), "Errand of Mercy" (the Organians).
• In "Obsession," the vampire cloud, which has been freely munching on the crew, finally heads home to reproduce. Kirk beams down to the planet Where It All Began to deliver a chunk of antimatter. When it blows, it rips half the planet's atmosphere away .
• In "The Immunity Syndrome", the Enterprise must deliver an anti-matter bomb to the nucleus of the giant space amoeba . In a twist, Mr. Spock volunteers for a separate suicide mission , to deliver the probe that enables Kirk to target the nucleus.
• The planet Gamma Trianguli VI in "The Apple" includes plants that throw poisonous thorns, rocks that act like anti-personnel mines, and directed lightning strikes. The novelization explains that this is because the planet's 'god' identifies the Starfleet people as a danger and want to eliminate them before they can interfere.
• The planet Eden in the episode "The Way To Eden". Looks beautiful, but beware of differing chemistry; the fruit is poisonous and the even the grass is highly acidic.
• Death of the Old Gods : "Who Mourns For Adonais" has the Enterprise meeting Apollo, the last of the Greek gods (who were actually Sufficiently Advanced Aliens ). Kirk pretty much tells him to stuff it, and then gets schizophrenic about whether humanity has Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions as religion in general, or just moved on to Christianity.
• Depraved Bisexual : Dr Coleman from “Turnabout Intruder” is Janice’s lover, but is also fine with her spirit being in the body of Kirk, and responds to Janice-in-Kirk’s seduction.
• Devil's Advocate : Spock would occasionally perform the duty of the Devil's Advocate, typically countering McCoy 's or Kirk 's spontaneous, Gut Feeling -inspired actions.
• Various extra-series material (novels, for example), often refer in a disparaging way to the more "out there" episodes from The Original Series , usually in the form of Starfleet Officials claiming Kirk made up a large number of his reports, with his motive being contempt for his superiors. Invariably mentioned is the universally disbelieved incident in which aliens "stole the brain of Kirk's Science Officer," a reference to the episode in which Spock's brain is, indeed, stolen by alien babes, and which is considered to be the worst episode of the original series, if not of Star Trek as a whole.
• The foreword to the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture essentially says that the original series is a overwrought dramatization of actual events which should be regarded as unreliable. Fans debate its canonicity, since, while Trek literature is officially considered non-canonical, it's the only novel written by Gene Roddenberry himself.
• Disintegration Chamber : In "A Taste of Armageddon" the (virtually) warring planets Eminiar and Vendikar use "disintegration machines" to dispose of persons who have been deemed casualties.
• Disney Dog Fight : At the end of " Requiem for Methuselah ", Robot Girl Rayna Kapec must choose between Flint and Captain Kirk. The strain causes her to overload and die.
• Distress Call : 14 different episodes (including both pilots) start with the Enterprise receiving or already responding to a distress signal.
• Does This Remind You of Anything? : The platonians in “Plato’s Stepchildren” are played like domestic abusers. Parmen’s speech after he makes Kirk slap himself for speaking up to him is making excuses for himself and plying the three with gifts. When they force Kirk to act like a horse and Spock to laugh then cry, they blame Bones for what’s happening, and all three men are traumatised by it afterwards.
• Door Jam : Several episodes (notably "Arena" and "The Tholian Web") contrive ways for Kirk to end up alone facing the Monster of the Week without back-up, whether becaue of alien meddling, transporter malfunctions, or interdiminesional anomalies.
• Doomsday Device : "The Doomsday Machine" features a planet-eating device.
• Doppelmerger : In one episode, a Teleporter Accident results in both Captain Kirk and a doglike alien getting turned into two individuals, one of whom has all of their negative traits. They eventually get fused back together in the transporter, and while the alien dies (ostensibly from too much fear), Kirk survives.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male : Lampshaded in “Turnabout Intruder” when Lester in Kirk acts like it’s ludicrous to imagine a small woman like Lester overpowering a muscled man like Kirk. Ends up being an example anyway, as she’s Easily Forgiven to the point where even Shatner complained nothing was resolved, and Nimoy was disgusted she’s just treated as a stupidly Hysterical Woman , by design. His rant on this subject for the book Shatner: Where No Man is well known and often quoted online.
• Even discounting the times he uses his prettiness and charm to get himself or his crew out of trouble, Kirk has a pretty bad track record on the whole being able to consent, whether it’s the one Green-Skinned Space Babe of the series forcing a kiss on him in “Whom Gods Destroy”, the Bed Trick in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , Deela enjoying kissing him when he’s not aware of her in “Wink Of An Eye”, mind raped in “Dagger Of The Mind” to believe he had sex and was in love, or having sex with Elaan after her tears drug him. He’s not exactly happy about all of it, but it seems to be something he feels like he just has to deal with.
• Spock gets his own turn in “This Side Of Paradise”, Leila deciding that she wants him to stay, and giving him no choice in the matter by subjecting him to spores that affect his mind.
• Doves Mean Peace : The Elba II and Tantalus Penal Colonies (which are both colonies that dealt with trying to treat the insane and cure them of their insanity) use insignias with a dove in it.
• Downer Ending : "Who Mourns For Adonais", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", "The City On The Edge Of Forever", "Requiem for Methuselah", "Charlie X" and "A Private Little War".
• Dramatic Chase Opening : "The Return of the Archons" starts with Sulu and another crewman running from some pursuers in a city street. They're both caught.
• Dramatic Downstage Turn : Several instances, especially during dramatic scenes featuring female cast members. One simple example appears in a conversation between Leila and Spock near the end of the episode "This Side of Paradise".
• Dress-Up Episode : a lot . "A Piece of the Action", "Return of the Archons", "Assignment: Earth", "The City on the Edge of Forever", that one where they ended up dressed as Nazis ("Patterns of Force")... This trope was popular because it allowed them to use standard, pre-existing costumes, props and sets, rather than having to make expensive new ones. There had been very few science fiction television shows (as opposed to movies) up to that time, outside of children's series like Captain Video and Tom Corbett Space Cadet . Series like One Step Beyond (1959) and The Twilight Zone (1959) often had people in normal clothing facing unusual situations. There were very few props hanging around to be re-used, unlike today, when science fiction has been popular for a long time.
• Perhaps the most famous example, Captain Pike from the first pilot. More accurately, everyone but Spock was replaced.
• The 2nd pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", has Ship's Doctor Mark Piper, Communications Officer Alden, and Yeoman Smith. They were replaced by Leonard McCoy , Lieutenant Uhura, and Janice Rand, respectively, in the series.
• Drowning My Sorrows : Bones and Kirk have a tendency to drink together, especially when Bones thinks Kirk isn’t handling shit well.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma : Deela from “Wink Of An Eye” is upfront about liking to kiss Kirk when he’s not aware of her, teasing that he’s probably used to that happening to him, and coos over him being pretty while he’s unconscious.
• Spock's no slouch either. He's in the Vulcan Scientific Legion of Honor, and received two decorations for valor from Starfleet Command.
• Duel to the Death : "Arena", "Amok Time", "The Gamesters of Triskelion".
• Dutch Angle : Used in "Wink of an Eye" to denote the scenes taking place in hyper-accelerated time.
• Dysfunction Junction : Despite the Status Quo Is God (series-only, not the films), everyone except Chekov is a mess; Kirk bases his identity on serving the Enterprise and thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy, Spock is subject to Half-Breed Discrimination from everyone and has an estranged family , Bones has Chronic Hero Syndrome and killed his dying father only for there to be a cure months later, Chapel’s fiance goes insane and kills himself, and All There in the Manual has Uhura be a lonely Stepford Smiler , Scotty start drinking after his nephew dies at his post, and Sulu’s home be victim of a terrorist attack when he was young.
• Dying Race : The Talosians in "The Menagerie," the Calandans in "That Which Survives," and the Scalosians in "Wink of an Eye."
• The initially unaired original pilot, " The Cage " features a completely different crew, gooseneck viewers. In addition, the pilot uses "hyperdrive" instead of "warp" for the Faster-Than-Light Travel . The make-up used on Leonard Nimoy for Spock is substantially different in the two pilots; this is very obvious in the second pilot, " Where No Man Has Gone Before ", which for Executive Meddling reasons aired as the third episode.
• And speaking of warp, the original Enterprise uses warp all the time, even for combat maneuvers, unless circumstances force them to rely on her impulse drive. Later series have ships use warp drive when they need to get from one place to another very quickly while sticking to impulse for combat and in-system maneuvers.
• Though it's more subtle and less jarring than the transition from pilots to series, the first half of the first season (produced by Roddenberry) has a much stronger Wagon Train to the Stars emphasis, with the Enterprise functioning as a deep space exploration vessel whose missions often involved surveying uncharted space and re-supplying isolated frontier posts. When Gene Coon took over as showrunner, he introduced the United Federation of Planets, the Prime Directive, and the Klingon Empire, and the Enterprise took on many more diplomatic and strategic missions more consistent with a Cold War setting than The Wild West .
• In this series, the Klingons are generally duplicitous schemers while Romulans are honor-bound warriors . This is the exact inverse of how these two races would be portrayed in later series. The more primitive make-up also means both races lack their forehead ridges ; the Klingons are just copper-skinned humans while the Romulans are more explicitly identical to Vulcans.
• The Prime Directive functions quite differently in this series compared to any other — here it's effectively "don't make contact with primitive civilizations unless you absolutely have to, and never give advanced technology to primitives". The Prime Directive is waived in cases where said civilizations would be in danger from external forces (usually the Klingons) if the crew didn't act. By the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation , the Prime Directive has been redefined as "don't get involved in the affairs of any other civilization, regardless of their technology level, even if they ask you directly for help".
• Speeds of Warp 10 and higher are mentioned a few times. Later series would establish Warp 10 as infinite speed and the absolute maximum way that speed can be quantified.
• Most viewers are familiar with the red, blue, and green/gold uniforms used throughout most of the show, but in the first few episodes produced - including the pilot and " Where No Man Has Gone Before " - members of the Services department wear bronze uniforms. Notably, Spock, Gary Mitchell, and Lt. Kelso in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" all wear bronze uniforms that are quite distinct from Kirk's gold uniform.
• Kirk takes point on almost every landing party. Later series (especially Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager ) have The Captain stay on the ship more often while the Number Two leads the away teams. In addition, the later series give the captain an office next to The Bridge for filling out paperwork and meeting with people one-on-one, something Kirk didn't have.
• Easily Forgiven : The Kelvans in " By Any Other Name ". They hijack the ship, threaten the entire crew, and kill a female yeoman as a demonstration of their power (she wasn't acting as a danger to them in any way). And yet, at the end, Kirk forgives and agrees to help them.Then again, this could be sheer pragmatism given the Kelvan's power level and the fact that he has barely managed to convince them not to kill the rest of his crew (which they could do very easily).
• Eat Dirt, Cheap : The Horta. It's a silicon lifeform that eats rocks.
• Aside from the “you’ll be taught how to use your tongue” line, Kor in "Errand Of Mercy" circles Kirk and very obviously looks at his ass.
• In “Spock’s Brain”, a woman comes onto the Enterprise, makes everyone collapse and because Kirk fell in a way that shows off his ass, she checks it out.
• The Echoer : Played with. The episode "Assignment: Earth" has the mysterious Gary Seven conduct a covert operation on Earth during a 1968 orbital platform launch. While at his workstation, a secretary named Roberta walks in. Gary Seven needs to know what happened to two other agents on the same assignment, so he has Roberta sit at a dictation machine: an electric typewriter with a microphone and speech recognition software. When the machine starts typing every word Roberta says, she gets increasingly flustered, and Gary Seven is compelled to switch it off.
• Eldritch Starship : The ethereal Thasians' ship, an odd lighting effect; the Planet Killer, a conical machine miles long that eats planets; and Balok's enormous, odd spaceship, the Fesarius .
• Empathic Healer : Gem of " The Empath " heals injuries by taking the patient's pain into herself.
• Empire with a Dark Secret : In " The Mark of Gideon ", there is a germ-free "paradise" of a planet which is willing to join the Federation. However, the reason why they invite only Kirk to their planet is so they can decrease the planet's overpopulation by using Kirk, who had a rare disease in his blood, to infect people.
• The Klingons team up with the Enterprise crew in "Day of the Dove" to escape the emotion-eating entity that wants them to fight to death for its amusement.
• In "Errand of Mercy", ironically, Kirk and Kor seem to be united in their mutual loathing of the Organians, somewhat to Kirk's surprise and Kor's amusement.
• Enforced Cold War : Examples abound, since the show was written during the Cold War. Examples of this include the plots of "Balance of Terror", "Errand of Mercy", "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Friday's Child", and "Elaan of Troyius".
• Enlightened Self-Interest : In " Whom Gods Destroy ", the insane Garth tries to convince Kirk and Spock that they should be friends (with the implication that the other option would be "or I kill you"). Spock: On what, precisely, is our friendship to be based? Garth: Upon the firmest of foundations, Mister Spock. Enlightened self-interest.
• Escort Distraction : In "Mirror, Mirror", Lieutenant Uhura gets slinky-minky with Mirror!Sulu on the bridge so that Mirror!Sulu won't notice a warning light on his com panel. Engineer Scott is disabling the ship's phasers and bypassing transporter protocols in an effort to return the landing party to their correct universe. Once the tampering alert stops flashing, Uhura curtails the snugglies.
• Everyone Can See It : A growing trend in the series and movies would be for Kirk and Spock to be off in their own little world, and background characters look either curious or annoyed. Original Series fans often viewed this (and wrote fan fiction accordingly) as close comrades thinking alike or even incipient telepathy rather than sexual interest, especially after Kirk was shown in a few episodes picking up on things intuitively.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending : Well, everybody but Spock. "Shore Leave", "The Trouble With Tribbles", "The Galileo Seven", "Spock's Brain". An actual plot point in "Day of the Dove", when the laughter drives the Energy Being away.
• Every Episode Ending : The Enterprise flies off into parts unknown, as the dramatic fanfare plays her out. Very rarely averted. But when it is. . .
• Evil Is Hammy : "The Enemy Within" has Evil!Kirk Chewing the Scenery .
• Evil Twin : "The Enemy Within", which featured Kirk's evil self separated from his good self via transporter malfunction, and "Mirror, Mirror", which featured an entire universe of evil twins.
• Explosive Breeder : The Tribbles are hermaphroditic and born pregnant. McCoy : The nearest thing I can figure out is they're born pregnant... which seems to be quite a time saver!
• Explosive Overclocking : Thanks to Kirk's tendency to be an overachiever, the Enterprise's antimatter-powered warp engines - which are tied to all of the ship's main power - were frequently overclocked to get the job done, with varying results . note  (This is probably the source of all the "she cannae hauld no muir!" parodies of Scotty) Additionally, hand phasers have an "overload" setting which allows them to be used as time bombs .
• Expositron 9000 : The ship's computer.
• A key example can be found in the episode "Requiem for Methuselah". In Flint's home, Mr. Spock finds a waltz by Johannes Brahms written in original manuscript in Brahms' own hand, but which is unknown. Likewise, Flint has a collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces that have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials. Flint later admits that he was Brahms and da Vinci , among others.
• "Who Mourns for Adonais?" reveals that the Greek gods were actually nearly-immortal aliens who helped inspire and build classical Greek culture in exchange for being worshipped .
• The Face : Uhura is the Communications Officer , though Kirk handles important parleys, negotiations, and First Contacts himself.
• Fade Around the Eyes : In the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", in one scene with Gary Mitchell after he has undergone his transformation, the rest of the screen fades out, leaving only his silver eyes visible.
• Failed Future Forecast : The fact that it was a show set in the future but made while the Soviet Union was still around means that a lot of things said by the Russian Chekov got outdated. There's his My Grandma Can Do Better Than You exchange with Scotty where Scotty tells Chekov that Scotch whisky is a man's drink, and Chekov replies that it was invented by a little old lady from "Leningrad" . Chekov also attributes one of the "Russian inwentions" to somebody in Minsk, which was part of the Soviet Union but is now in modern-day Belarus.
• Fallen Hero : Gary Mitchell, John Gill, Garth of Izar.
• In "The Immunity Syndrome" Spock is in a shuttlecraft, adrift, and losing power. Kirk gives the order to bring the shuttle aboard, but Spock, fearing such a delay would endanger the ship, tries to warn them off. McCoy is having none of it. McCoy : Shut up, Spock! We're rescuing you! (nods at Jim, who nods back) Spock: ( Fascinating Eyebrow ) Why thank you, Captain McCoy .
• Fan of the Past : Sulu and his Fleeting Passionate Hobbies , which the rest of the crew regard as unusual for the time period.
• Almost any outfit worn by the girl-of-the-week, and those famous Starfleet miniskirts. Most were designed by William Ware Theiss, Trope Codifier and Trope Namer for the Theiss Titillation Theory . You could show an AMAZING amount of skin as long as it did not include belly buttons or the underside of the wearer's breasts. Legend has it that when Sherry Jackson walked into the NBC commissary wearing her Andrea costume from "What Little Girls Are Made Of"—bell-bottoms and two straps crossed over her chest—forks stopped halfway between plate and mouth. And dear god, "Mirror, Mirror" shows that Uhura has nice abs (actress Nichelle Nichols was, after all, a trained dancer).
• For people more into the men, the original uniforms, even untouched, were particularly flattering. The tendency for Kirk to get his shirt off or torn certainly counts, too. "Charlie X" features Kirk shirtless and in tights. It's very distracting. Also, Sulu goes topless in "The Naked Time".
• And then for the fetish crowd, there's "Patterns of Force" with its whips, chains, and shirtlessness.
• " The Devil in the Dark " has a mining colony be terrorized by an unknown creature. Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock explore the mine, and find the creature - a Horta. When it advances, they fire their phasers at it, creating a wound and causing it to retreat. However, once Spock conducts a psychic rapport with the creature, he and Kirk realize it's a brood mother defending her egg clutch. Doctor McCoy is brought in to heal the creature, which he does with silicon-based spackling compound. This ad hoc bandage works well, to the doctor's surprise.
• In " Journey To Babel ", Bones performs surgery on Spock's father Sarek. As a Vulcan, Sarek's organs are arranged a bit differently than a human (his heart is where a human's liver is, for example), and Spock is the only crew member who can donate blood to him.
• The episode " Spock's Brain " has a humanoid alien incapacitate the crew of the Enterprise . Upon recovery, they discover that she has absconded Spock's brain, leaving his body alive but mindless. It becomes the episode's mission to track down the brain thief and recover Spock's brain before his body fails from lack of purpose. Bones is ultimately able to operate on Spock and get his brain back in.
• Dr. McCoy seems full of it, insulting Spock's "green blood," "computer" mind, and other Vulcan traits. Kirk and Spock often comment on the differences between Vulcans and Humans, but in a Gentleman Snarker way without any malice.
• Spock gives back as good as he gets with his snarking about "human emotion." However, the context makes it clear that this is nothing more than banter amongst good friends and colleagues. Anyone but Kirk, Spock, McCoy , or (occasionally) Scotty trying to invoke this trope gets smacked down hard (usually—and appropriately—by Kirk, but Scotty does it to a junior officer in at least one episode).
• Several episodes also revolve around two alien species' hatred of each other for no good reason.
• Fascinating Eyebrow : When Spock raises his eyebrow, he says "fascinating" very nearly every time.
• Feigning Healthiness : Whilst transporting numerous dignitaries in " Journey To Babel ", Captain Kirk is hospitalised by an assassin and Spock takes over command of the Enterprise. Meanwhile, Spock's father Sarek (one of the diplomats) needs a blood transfusion, with Spock as the only viable donor. However, as the quantity needed would also put him out of action for several days, Spock's sense of duty won't allow him to relinquish command whilst the ship is still in danger. To avoid him being responsible for his father's death, Kirk fakes an early recovery to retake command. He initially plans to simply hand over control to Scotty and return to his own treatment once the operation has started, but at that moment the Enterprise is attacked, forcing Kirk to stay on the bridge during the battle in spite of his wounds.
• Female Gaze : The show had a loving relationship with Kirk’s ass, including a lingering shot of it as he walks out of his quarters in “The Corbomite Maneuver”. Nichelle Nichols in “Where No Man…” discussed the trope, summing up why female fans responded so well with both Kirk and Spock; Spock was emotionally unavailable, leaving women to want to get through to him, and Kirk was emotionally open as a man, when not many male characters were like that.
• The Final Temptation : In "This Side of Paradise", the spores caused the target to be content with living a simple comfortable life, abandoning any greater ambitions.
• Food and Animal Attraction : In "The Cage", during one of the illusions the Talosians create for Captain Pike, a horse starts nuzzling his jacket pocket in search of the sugar therein.
• Forbidden Fruit : In "Requiem for Methuselah", the only part of Flint's mansion that Rayna Kapec is forbidden to enter is one specific room. Guess where she wants to go more than anywhere else? Flint doesn't want her to go in there for a good reason. It's the laboratory where she was created: she's a humanoid robot . The clue is when she tells Kirk that the area just outside that is the place she goes when she's troubled and wants to think things over.
• Forceful Kiss : Deela plants one twice on Kirk in “Wink Of An Eye”, who struggles against her both times and is more concerned that all of his crew are in slow motion. Any other kisses between them are him trying to get her guard down. He gets a few of these in general, as well as can aggressively kiss women himself if he’s desperate or doing a particularly cold con.
• Force-Field Door : The ship's brig has one of these.
• In “Court Martial”, much is made of how Kirk has devoted his life to the service, and he could finally have had a breakdown, causing a lapse in judgement. Later episodes will have him genuinely messing up, and more on how his Married to the Job life is unhealthy, getting taunted in “Shore Leave” about how he can sleep forever if he wants to.
• “Miri” is Close to Home for Kirk, Bones and Spock. For Spock it’s being between two worlds (a carrier, but still can’t go back to the ship), for Kirk we’ll see in “Conscience Of The King” why he assumes kids would just want comfort after a massacre, and for Bones, who had to let his father die, he has to race to find a cure before the last one of them goes mad and kills himself.
• In “What Little Girls Are Made Of”, Kirk and his robot clone have a discussion about food, which ends by Robot Kirk (who knows Kirk’s backstory) smugly telling the real one he’ll never starve. A few episodes later, we find out that as a child, Kirk was a survivor of a famine-induced massacre.
• In " Amok Time ", McCoy uses the fact that Spock hasn't eaten for three days in an attempt to convince Kirk that something is wrong, and Kirk dismisses it as simply being Spock in one of his contemplative phases.
• Another example is " The Paradise Syndrome ", where Spock hardly eats for weeks while studying the obelisk.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend : Everyone who got killed on the show. Deconstructed in the movies, movie novels and the All There in the Manual bios, as Kirk intentionally tries to forget about losses, because otherwise he can't deal. There's a tinch of evidence for this in the show too, as some characters like Dr. Korby or Sam Kirk are alluded to in episodes before they get axed, but never after.
• Forgot the Call : In "The Paradise Syndrome", Kirk loses his memory and becomes a simple farmer, living on a planet with a bunch of displaced Native Americans.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With : Trelane (" The Squire of Gothos "), the Organians (" Errand of Mercy "), the Thasians (" Charlie X "), the Metrons (" Arena "), and the Kelvans (who get stuck in that form in " By Any Other Name .")
• Frequently-Broken Unbreakable Vow : Captain Kirk's willingness to break the Prime Directive whenever he needs to save the Enterprise and/or a "stagnant" culture is well known. He's also a hypocrite on the issue, condemning Captain Tracy in "The Omega Glory" for doing something he has done before and will do again.
• Freudian Trio : Kirk (Ego), Spock (Superego) and McCoy (Id) form the page image for this trope.
• Spock risks his career, and possibly his life, for his former captain (Pike) in "The Menagerie". Kirk does the same for Spock in "Amok Time", and again in the third movie.
• Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't : Spock has a very good relationship with his crewmates (particularly Kirk and McCoy ) considering he's culturally required to be The Stoic , but he has severe issues with his father, to the point where they didn't speak to one another as family for almost two decades. Stories involving his family show a different and troubled side to Spock.
• FTL Test Blunder : "The Naked Time" has Spock and Scotty performing a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to restart the Enterprise's warp engines after they'd been shut down. It was an untried technique, with the possible consequence of blowing up the ship, but not doing it would guarantee crashing on a collapsing planet. Fortunately, the only consequence of the forced restart was that the Enterprise was flung three days back in time, introducing the idea of using the warp drive for time travel to the series, which would feature in other episodes and the franchise as a whole.
• The Gadfly : Chekov and his constant, deliberately erroneous references to Glorious Mother Russia . It's made very clear that he only does it to mess with people's heads.
• The paradise planet in "That Side of Paradise" is a lush world where no one can die and fills everyone with an innocent joy, even Spock. Spock outright calls it "a true Eden" and the episode ends with Kirk and McCoy concluding that the trouble they had on the planet means man was meant to leave the Garden of Eden.
• The name "Eden" pops up in the episode "The Way to Eden", which is about a group of space hippies searching for the mythical paradise Eden. It turns out to be a False Utopia . Although Spock strongly encourages the hippies to continue to look for the real Eden, or make it themselves.
• The Garden is also referenced in the episode "The Apple", where a race of innocent humanoids serve a "god", Vaal, a computer shaped like a serpent head. According to Chekov, the original Garden was located just outside Moscow. After Kirk and company save the day and destroy the false god, the knowledge of good and evil is then known by the inhabitants. Spock makes a reference and Kirk asks if there is anyone onboard who remotely resembles Satan. Spock: No-one to my knowledge.
• Genocide Survivor : In "The Conscience of the King", Kirk is stated to be a survivor of a genocide on the planet Tarsus IV, where the Governor ordered thousands of citizens killed to ensure the rest could survive, using eugenics to decide who lived and died. Oddly, Kirk's status as a survivor of a genocide is rarely touched on elsewhere in the series.
• George Lucas Altered Version : The late 2000's saw the series get a high-definition transfer for the series, but created special edition versions to show in syndication with remaking the existing visual effects shot for shot, some enhanced visuals to expand the environment and some newly created shots to help flesh out the story (largely establishing shots to help capture the look of other planets and cultures, including one of Starfleet Command). By and large the effort was made to capture the look and feel of the original FX with updated CGI renders rather than trying to play catch up on later parts of the franchise, though established Trek production legend Mike Okuda was the one to oversee it.
• In the episode " The Naked Time ", Kirk does this to Spock. After several slaps, Spock finally retaliates and sends Kirk flying across the room. It does seem to work though.
• Kirk attempts it on McCoy , who is under the influence of the Lotus-Eater Machine in " The Return of the Archons ". This one isn't so successful.
• Get Back to the Future : "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", "All Our Yesterdays".
• Glowing Eyes of Doom : Gary Mitchell gains these when he gains godlike powers.
• In " The Paradise Syndrome ", an amnesiac Kirk is mistaken for a deity by transplanted American Indians on a distant planet.
• " Who Mourns for Adonais? " has an actual surviving Greek God who reveals he's just a powerful alien who had become too used to being worshiped by mortals.
• In " The Omega Glory ", Spock is mistaken for the devil. (This was actually a real-life objection the producers had to his appearance.)
• Godwin's Law of Time Travel : " The City on the Edge of Forever " has a plot where McCoy saving the life of Kirk's Girl of the Week causes a peace movement that leads to the US losing WWII and the Federation never existing. The episode ends with Kirk letting her die to preserve history.
• Godzilla Threshold : In " A Taste of Armageddon " where Kirk and the landing party are being held captive by a civilization whose leaders' simply will not listen to reason and Kirk see that things are going to go from bad to worse to apocalyptic, he interrupts their leader speaking to Scotty through a communicator. Speaking quickly before he's restrained, he gives Scotty an encrypted order the aliens don't understand (General Order 24). Scotty calls them back to inform them that if they don't play ball, he'll use the Enterprise's weapons to destroy the entire surface area of their planet. His quiet, grim tone when he's telling them this leaves no doubt that he'll go through with it.
• Gold-Colored Superiority : The captains wear gold uniforms. Anyone wearing a Red Shirt is not so lucky. This all changes starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation , however. The command uniforms were originally a greenish shade close to chartreuse, but the color came out on many people's TV sets as yellowish, so eventually the producers threw in the towel and changed them to gold.
• In " The Alternative Factor ", Matter!Lazarus goes stark raving mad upon learning of the existence of his Anti-Matter double and becomes bent on destroying him, even if it means the destruction of both universes.
• " Is There In Truth No Beauty? " revolves around Kollos, an ambassador of the Medusan race , whose physical appearance is so hideous: or maybe so beautiful: that any humanoid who looks at them directly goes insane. This is a subversion, as Kollos, in contrast with Shoggoths and Eldritch horrors, is clearly a good guy.
• In "Patterns of Force," John Gill, a Human historian, broke the Prime Directive and encouraged the inhabitants of Ekos to institute fascism in order to combat its disorganized anarchy. It worked.
• In "That Which Survives," a people rendered extinct by disease tried to prevent others from their planet from joining them by setting up a self-defense mechanism. It worked.
• The adults in "Miri" tried to prolong their lives through bioengineering. They ended up creating a disease that did preserve life, but only in children. Adults are killed within a week.
• "The Ultimate Computer" is meant to replace starship captains, but ends up killing Red Shirts because it is the most efficient way of doing things.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil : In "The Savage Curtain", Surak, Spock, and President Lincoln have a hard time understanding the motives and actions of the opposing "evil" side. Only Kirk seems to have a grasp of their potential for deceptiveness and duplicity.
• In "Return of the Archons" Spock decks somebody with an ordinary punch and Kirk says "Isn't that a little old-fashioned?"
• Good Republic, Evil Empire : Why the Federation is unlike the Klingons, according to Kirk.
• Got the Whole World in My Hand : The Terran Empire's sigil from "Mirror, Mirror" shows a dagger stabbed through the Earth.
• Grand Theft Me : In " Turnabout Intruder ", the Girl of the Week and Mad Scientist Dr. Janice Lester uses an alien device to swap her mind into Kirk's body (poor, desperate girl) in order to fulfill her dream of being a starship Captain, because, y'know, chicks can't do that stuff in The Future (although it's made fairly clear that her mental instablity and not her gender is what prevented her from achieving success, for which she irrationally blames Kirk)... Anyhoo, Hilarity Ensues , and we get to watch William Shatner act like an Large Ham with a side of girl, instead of the usual Large Ham .
• Grand Theft Prototype : In "The Enterprise Incident", the Starfleet Command sent the Enterprise on a mission to steal a cloaking device so they could learn how to neutralize it.
• The Great Repair : In " The Galileo Seven ", an Enterprise shuttlecraft is pulled off course and crashes on an unknown planet. The crew is repeatedly attacked by primitive humanoids, and there's dissent over Commander Spock's decisions while Scotty attempts to repair the shuttle.
• In the episode "Bread and Circuses" Bones gives Spock a Grudging "Thank You" and receives a Think Nothing of It in return. McCoy : Spock, er, I know we've, er, had our disagreements. Er, maybe they're jokes, I don't know. As Jim says, we're not often sure ourselves sometimes. But, er... what I'm trying to say is... Spock: Doctor, I am seeking a means of escape. Will you please be brief? McCoy : What I'm trying to say is, you saved my life in the arena. Spock: Yes, that's quite true. McCoy : [indignant] I'm trying to thank you, you pointed-eared hobgoblin! Spock: Oh yes, you humans have that emotional need to express gratitude. "You're welcome," I believe is the correct response.
• There's another one in "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield". One of the aliens of the week is set up as someone who's hotheaded and difficult, but ultimately at least somewhat sympathetic. Viewers get a hint of that second half coming when in his first exchange with Kirk and McCoy , after reacting very angrily to their (perfectly accurate) accusation that he had stolen a Federation ship, the alien visibly pulls himself together enough to thank them quite sincerely for rescuing him.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy : In "A Taste of Armageddon", "Space Seed", "All Our Yesterdays", "A Piece of the Action" and "Whom Gods Destroy".
• "A Piece of the Action" is the funniest example. Captain Kirk positively revels in giving all the mob chiefs offers they can't refuse.
• The series was partially inspired by the Horatio Hornblower books.
• Parodied in a line given to Kirk in one of the classic fan songs, "Star Trekkin'" — " We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill ," which was in turn inspired by a scene in one episode where Kirk declares, "We come in peace!" while pointing his phaser at the alien. He never actually said those words .
• Guy on Guy Is Hot : Practically a fandom nod in “Wink Of An Eye”, as Deela notes Kirk “feels great affection for the Vulcan”, and wonders if she can make him demonstrate that, the actress’s tone of voice knowing full well what she’s insinuating.
• Halloween Episode : " Catspaw ", which was first broadcast on October 27, 1967.
• Hands-On Approach : In “Requiem For Methuselah”, and as he still has no clue how to play from “Piece Of The Action”, Reyna teaches Kirk to play pool.
• Hate Plague : In "Day of the Dove", an Energy Being that feeds on hate brings the Federation and the Klingons, who are trying to abide by the peace treaty, into conflict. It goes as far as implanting False Memories so that the manipulated will have an extra source of conflict. Those who are killed are somehow brought back to life with their fatal wounds healed to fight again. Once they all figure it out, the creature is repelled from the ship by laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.
• He Who Fights Monsters : This trope is why Alexander, the court jester of the Platonians in "Plato's Stepchildren", refuses to take McCoy 's concoction that will give him psychic powers. As much as he loathes Parmen for his abuse, the idea that he could turn out as cruel and manipulative as his master, along with even greater psychic abilities to boot, sickens him even more.
• "This Side of Paradise" After Kirk deliberately provokes Spock to anger to kill alien spores manipulating him. Spock says that striking a fellow officer is a court martial offense. It's clear Spock is embarrassed by his emotional behavior, no matter how involuntary. Kirk reasons, logically as Spock notes, that if they're both in the brig no one can build the device needed to free the rest of the crew.
• "Amok Time" has Spock in the grip of blood fever during a bout of pon farr . Spock explains the situation to Kirk and McCoy , who both tell him that they'll never tell another soul about the private information he's divulged to them. This is especially poingnant for the Doctor, as he and Spock are Vitriolic Best Buds , and it would be easy for him to mock Spock over it, but he never does.
• The Hero : Captain Kirk
• And Spock in Amok Time when he believes he has killed Kirk.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners : Kirk and Spock (though considering how often the series dips into Ho Yay territory it could possibly be described as Bisexual Life-Partners).
• High-Heel–Face Turn : Frequently with women Kirk seduced.
• Historical Domain Superperson : In the episode "Requiem for Methuselah" the Enterprise crew meets an old human named Flint who is both immortal and possessed of superhuman strength. Flint was originally born around 3800 BC and lived as many notable historical figures during his long lifetime including King Solomon, Alexander the Great , Johannes Brahms , Leonardo da Vinci , and Lazarus. He kept his immortality secret by letting each persona eventually "die" and establishing a new identity elsewhere.
• Hollow World : "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky" has a variation, a shell covering an artificial planetoid to hold the atmosphere in.
• Hollywood Torches : In "Errand of Mercy" and "Catspaw".
• Holodeck Malfunction : Subverted in the episode " Shore Leave ". The planet's safety protocols are working just fine, but the landing party doesn't know that and thinks they are actually in danger. The protocols do break down when the Enterprise returns to the planet in the animated series because the guy in charge died in the meantime and the AI chose to go rogue through sheer boredom.
• Honor Before Reason : In "Spectre of the Gun", Kirk refuses to ambush the Earps, in spite of the severe danger they present. Even after one of them kills Chekhov, he doesn't kill the defeated party.
• Hotter and Sexier : Look at “The Corbomite Maneuver” in comparison to “The Cage”. The women’s uniforms go from turtlenecks and pants to mini-dresses, and stern Chaste Hero Pike gets replaced with Captain “tits out in the hallway” Kirk.
• Human Aliens : Most alien races encountered are indistinguishable from humans, even the Klingons; they weren't given rubber foreheads until the films. This is mostly due to budget reasons, though it's odd that only Spock requires a disguise whenever the crew infiltrates an alien world.
• Humans Are Interesting : Or fascinating , even.
• Humans Need Aliens : The Aegis (Gary Seven's alien overlords) routinely protect civilizations from destroying themselves. Fridge Logic issues arises, as they are only ever seen in one episode, in which they operate in the past (20th century).
• Spock as well, in "Operation Annihilate" where he is in unbearable pain as a result of being infected by an alien parasite and nearly driven insane. He still insists on returning to duty, claiming (truthfully) that he can control the pain with Vulcan techniques.
• I, Noun : " I, Mudd ".
• I Have Your Wife : Plenty of villains seem to know that threatening Spock will get Kirk to cooperate (at least for a while), and vice versa. Sometimes it’s “I have your crew”/”I have your captain” but mostly it’s just those two.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight : Kirk and Spock in "This Side of Paradise"; Kirk has to get Spock angry enough so he can overcome the influence of the mind-altering spores. It worked a bit better than Kirk was counting on.
• Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture : "Journey to Babel" reveals that Vulcan couples extend their pointer and middle fingers from their hand and touch the tips as a sign of being in a relationship.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder : Trope Maker ; Dr. McCoy 's Catchphrase whenever called upon to perform a task or give advice outside of his expertise.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy : In " Friday's Child ", a usurper named Ma'ab kills Aka'ar, the Teer (tribal king), in an attempted coup. He then demands Aka'ar's pregnant wife Eleen and her unborn son killed, as the unborn son is the true heir of succession. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have to go on the run with Eleen to keep her safe.
• The Gorn in Arena shrugs off injuries that would kill a human and is very strong, but isn't very agile. Kirk finally manages to stop it using an improvised cannon.
• The two aliens in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" are the last members of their respective races and still continue to fight it out.
• Impostor-Exposing Test : In "The Trouble with Tribbles", the Tribble dislike for Klingons is used to identify the Klingon spy disguised as a human.
• Improvised Bandage : A mysterious alien creature has been menacing some Federation miners, and Captain Kirk and First Officer Spock investigate. When they encounter the creature, it ignores warnings to stay back, so they fire phasers at it. The creature is wounded, and retreats. Later, the pair discover the creature is intelligent, and menaced the miners to protect its eggs. A silicone-based spackling compound is used to patch the creature's wound, and its hatchlings start digging tunnels faster than the miners ever could.
• Improvised Weapon : The rough-and-tumble fights often involve these. Kirk in particular is a master: ropes, pillows, and that stick thing resembling a reactor control rod he uses to beat Khan.
• In-Camera Effects : The series would achieve the shaking of the bridge when under attack by simply shaking the camera and getting the crew to wobble about . Later SF productions with a bigger budget, such as the Trek films, replaced the cheesy effect with Practical Effects : sets would be placed on top of a large platform and the camera would be still while the entire set was shaken. That would be counted as Practical Effects .
• Industrialized Evil : In "A Taste of Armageddon", the Enterprise discovers two planets are involved in a bizarre war in which computers simulate the conflict, and civilians deemed "killed" in the simulation are required to report to disintegration chambers. The people willingly go to their deaths, believing that in doing so, they are preventing an actual war from breaking out.
• Inertial Impalement : In "The Menagerie", during the illusionary battle between Captain Pike and a Rigelian warrior, Pike is kneeling in a courtyard holding up a broken spearhead braced against the ground. The warrior jumps down on him and impales himself on the spearhead.
• Inexplicable Cultural Ties : A key element of Roddenberry's goal for the series, to tell stories applicable to Earth in The '60s . The alien-culture-of-the-week will therefore be similar enough to one from Earth to get the point across. "Bread and Circuses" acknowledges the prevalence of these and implies that the phenomenon is understood by Federation scientists, providing an alternate Trope Namer , the Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development.
• Innocuously Important Episode : “Shore Leave”, character-wise, as Finnegan calling Kirk old leads to Kirk actually getting an edge in their fighting, and upgrades his wish to just rest for a few days to a deeper need to “ sleep forever ”. “The Deadly Years" is similar, showing Kirk’s denial over his getting older and less competent, taking it the worst out of all of them, and learning the lesson that he needs to be young in order to be a good Captain. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan even does a Continuity Nod to it.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence : Kirk and Spock’s fight in “Amok Time” gets… grindy. Spock choking Kirk out cures him of Pon Farr, and while said choking is happening, Kirk starts to put his legs around Spock’s back.
• Involuntary Group Split : Happens to Kirk and Spock in "Devil in the Dark".
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time : Why Sarek married Amanda Grayson: "At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do."
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks! : invoked Used by Spock as a Logic Bomb in "I, Mudd": Spock: [to Alice 27] I love you. [to Alice 210] However, I hate you. Alice 210: But I'm identical in every way with Alice 27. Spock: Yes, of course. That is exactly why I hate you; because you are identical. [both Alices succumb to the logic bomb] Spock: Fascinating.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique : Garth uses this on Dr. Cory and Kirk in "Whom Gods Destroy" in an attempt to learn the transporter code word. Naturally, it doesn't work.
• Jack the Ripoff : Subverted : the killer actually is Jack the Ripper , who was really a noncorporeal alien possessing human bodies .
• Jekyll & Hyde : In " The Enemy Within ", a Teleporter Accident splits Kirk into Good and Evil halves. They both have to be convinced that they need each other before the split can be undone.
• Jerkass Has a Point : In “The Trouble With Tribbles”, with the exception of Chekov, nobody in the bar objects when the Klingon calls Kirk a swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood, which gets the betrayed Puppy-Dog Eyes look from Kirk later on.
• Jerk Jock : Though not a jock, Kirk was tormented endlessly by upperclassman Finnegan when he was younger. One of his fantasies is finally getting to punch him out.
• The titular device in " The Ultimate Computer " is designed to run a starship with a minimal crew; the Enterprise is chosen for its test run.
• In "A Taste of Armageddon" entire governments have been replaced this way.
• Judicial Wig : When Trelane puts Kirk on trial for defying him in " The Squire of Gothos ", he wears a white and long curly wig along with his judges' robes.
• Just Testing You : Kirk and Scotty set up a challenge/response password before Kirk beamed down to a planet in order to prevent imposters from getting beamed up. Naturally a shapeshifter takes Kirk's form and tries to get Scotty to beam him up. When he doesn't know the password, he tries to cover it up by saying that he was just testing Scotty. Scotty catches on immediately and concludes that Kirk must be in trouble, since the real Kirk would never "test" him like that.
• Kill the Cutie : Edith Keeler in "The City on the Edge of Forever". After all, You Can't Fight Fate .
• Kill the Poor : In the episode " The Cloud Minders ", on the planet Ardana, rather than being killed, the poor are enslaved and forced to live out their entire lives underground.
• Kirk Summation : The Trope Namer and Trope Maker . Kirk (or occasionally another character) would often either try to reason with the episode's antagonist or put them in their place before ending things.
• Knockout Gas : In the episode "Space Seed". After Khan takes over the Enterprise, Kirk orders that all decks be flooded with Neural Gas, which would render everyone aboard unconscious. That attempt fails, but later the attempt succeeds.
• Watching in production order, Spock is understating it when he says the crew has had a few rough months in "Shore Leave", with two court martials , Kirk being revealed to have survived a genocide and suffering Mind Rape helped on by the ship psychologist , Spock getting a load of racism , everyone going insane on a planet where all the adults die , and Chapel losing her fiance .
• Gene Coon in “A Piece Of The Action” did a gentle poke of how much a Lust Object Kirk was in the show, with Krako putting his hand on Kirk’s shoulder guiding him away, and both Shatner and Nimoy’s faces have Here We Go Again! expressions.
• The “alternate earth” of “Miri” has Kirk saying in voiceover, just on the edge of sighing, “it seems impossible, but there it is”.
• WEEEEE ...THE PEEE -PLE!
• The actual reason was revealed recently: Control freak Roddenberry often rewrote, and re-rewrote, and re-re-wrote the scripts up to the last nanosecond, such that it became very difficult to memorize lines. Instead of asking "Line?" and ruining the take, Shatner would laboriously strive to remember what he was supposed to say, creating the effect.
• Last of His Kind : "Who Mourns for Adonais?", "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". "Devil in the Dark" plays with this one; the Horta is merely the last of her generation , trying to guard over a massive hoard of eggs until they hatch.
• "The Trouble With Tribbles": Kirk asks Scotty what it was that the Klingons said that made him disobey orders and start a fist fight with them. Scotty passionately replies, "They called the Enterprise a garbage scow! Sir."
• "Friday's Child": Upon learning that the new baby destined to one day rule a tribe is named Leonard James Akaar, Spock cannot help but be flabbergasted by the smugness of Kirk and McCoy . Spock: [genuinely exasperated] I think you're both going to be insufferably pleased with yourselves for at least a month. Sir.
• Later-Installment Weirdness : Star Trek began as a semi-hard science fiction series note  Hard enough for people to make much of the technology real about a Human run elite paramilitary organization that sent out their best Starship to explore outer space . Many plots revolved around how the humans handled encountering the strangeness of the universe, while occasionally segueing into Space Opera . Since then, newer writers have incorporated many elements of contemporary and post-contemporary science-fiction, with the following installments sometimes resembling Star Wars outings.
• Scotty also has his own leitmotif, typically used in lighter moments. It is prominently heard in both "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "By Any Other Name".
• Let's You and Him Fight : In "Amok Time" Spock's "fiancée" has chosen another, and elects to invoke a ritual in which the two fight for her hand. He's perfectly willing to fight Spock for her, but she elects Kirk as her champion instead - for reasons that Spock later describes as "logical." Unfortunately, since Vulcans have a really bad case of mating fever, Spock is not in his right mind at the time and fully capable of killing his much weaker captain and Kirk (who agreed to be the champion because he thought he could simply throw the fight and walk away) doesn't know it's a Duel to the Death till it's too late to back out.
• Liberty Over Prosperity : In "Space Seed", after Khan's attempt to take over the Enterprise fails, Kirk says that he and his followers can either be punished under Starfleet regulations (which would presumably involve a long prison sentence) or accept exile on an uninhabited planet. Khan: Have you ever read Milton , Captain? Kirk: I understand. [later] Scott: It's a shame for a good Scotsman to admit it, but I'm not up on Milton. Kirk: The statement Lucifer made when he fell into the pit. "It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."
• Bally's Star Trek , originally featured the crew in their television designs. Soon after production, however, it was redecorated to bring it closer to Star Trek: The Motion Picture instead.
• Data East's Star Trek was released as part of the 25th Anniversary of the television series. Features oodles of character cameos on the playfield and a great transporter effect on the backglass.
• Lima Syndrome : Deela kidnaps Kirk to be a Sex Slave in “Wink Of An Eye”, and demands the right to like him. Of course she wants him to be docile, and then decides she likes him better as a Defiant Captive , so her assertions to the trope are nebulous.
• Literal Maneater : The salt vampire from the episode " The Man Trap " mostly operates this way, though there is one exception where it takes on a hunky male form to attract Lt. Uhura.
• Literal Split Personality : In "The Enemy Within", Kirk gets split into his good half and his evil half.
• Literary Allusion Title : Rather famous for the grandiloquent episode titles. There's "The Conscience of the King", "Bread and Circuses", and "Is There In Truth No Beauty" among others.
• Lobotomy : The episode " Spock's Brain ", in which aliens, to put it simply, steal Spock's brain, and the episode revolves around the Enterprise crew getting it back and reattaching it.
• Logic Bomb : One of Kirk's favorite tactics for dealing with rogue computers ; it invariably causes a shutdown, and occasionally a self-destruct. Examples include "The Changeling", "I, Mudd", "Return of the Archons", "The Ultimate Computer", and "Wolf In The Fold".
• Long-Lived : The children in "Miri" (hundreds of years) and Mr. Flint in "Requiem for Methuselah" (six thousand years). The tie-in novel Cry of the Onlies has Flint coming to the children's planet to be a mentor for them, especially those who chose to have treatments so they would age at a normal rate.
• Loss of Inhibitions : In "The Naked Time," the crew experiences strange feelings and behaviors after a landing party investigating a mysterious disaster beams back to the ship, gradually infecting almost everyone. Dr. McCoy ultimately realizes the water on the planet had mutated, causing it to affect the brain like alcohol. While some effects more resemble delusions (e.g., Sulu calling Kirk "Richelieu" , unless he's playacting), a lot of them (Sulu leaving his station early to fence at the gym, Christine Chapel making an Anguished Declaration of Love to Spock, Spock breaking down in tears over his inability to accept either part of his heritage completely and Kirk confessing how stressed he feels because of his position) fall under the lack of inhibitions that alcohol typically causes.
• Lotus-Eater Machine : This was the plot of the original pilot, " The Cage ," though Pike sees through the ruse easily. However, another character trapped there doesn't want to leave the setup—and knows that it's all an illusion—as after having been horrifically mangled in a crash the aliens were able to restore the illusion of her original beautiful appearance. They give her a illusory Captain Pike to live with until the real Pike returns to the planet in a later episode made up of the original pilot.
• In "A Private Little War", Kirk and McCoy discover that the Klingons gave flintlock weapons to village-dwelling native people who didn't have guns before. Instead of their tradition of peaceful trade with the nearby hunter-gatherer people, the Klingons encourage the villagers to attack them. To restore the balance of power, Kirk provides the hunter-gatherers with similar weapons. McCoy compares their situation to the "Brush Wars" of the mid-20th Century .
• "Bread and Circuses" features a world with 1960s-level tech (television, firearms) but a society that mirrors the Roman Empire , complete with the slow rise of Christianity (albeit 2000 years late).
• Ludicrous Precision : Spock's figures, constantly. Discussed in "Errand of Mercy".
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10 Best Sci-Fi Tropes Star Trek Popularized

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction, and opened up previously obscure genre tropes to a wider audience. Here are ten of the most memorable.

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction forever. Even before its popularity took off during the reruns and conventions of the 1970s, Star Trek: The Original Series endeavored to talk about more than just rocket ships and ray guns. It posited something extraordinary -- a viable vision of human utopia -- and slowly built it into a pop-culture bedrock.

In the process, it embraced a number of sci-fi tropes that other movies and TV shows came to emulate. Star Trek’s popularity elevated the profile of such notions, which had previously been limited to a few novels and short stories. Below is a list of ten classic sci-fi tropes that Star Trek helped make popular, presented in subjective order.

10 Controversial Star Trek: TOS Episodes That Wouldn't Fly Today

Ray guns were certainly nothing new when Star Trek came along, having served as a sci-fi staple since the days of H.G. Wells. The Original Series draws on the likes of Fantastic Planet and the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials for inspiration, which invariably made copious use of the weapons. It's only natural that Star Trek would deliver its own version, with the slightly more innovative title of phasers.

What really sets the weapon apart from other ray guns, however, is the stun setting, allowing targets to be neutralized without permanent harm. The phrase “set phasers to stun” has become one of Star Trek’s signature lines . More importantly, the weapon’s nonlethal qualities speaks to the franchise’s values: envisioning a future in which violence has been tempered.

9 The Alien Non-Interference Clause

Better known as The Prime Directive, the alien non-interference clause states that no member of Starfleet can interfere with a planet’s natural development. That includes anything from providing advanced technology to revealing the existence of off-world life. It makes for a strong moral dilemma, as figures like Jean Luc-Picard must stand by while terrible things happen to innocent people.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Directive is noted more in its breach than its keeping. James T. Kirk, in particular, is quite cavalier about it, but it remains an easy fulcrum for good storytelling. The Prime Directive is also a way to talk about more down-to-earth issues like colonialism and environmental devastation.

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8 human/alien hybrids.

The existence of humanoid aliens precludes the ability to cross-breed, producing children with the genetics of both parents. With Star Trek , the notion goes all the way back to Mr. Spock: the product of a human mother and a Vulcan father. The other prominent canon examples include Star Trek: Voyager’s B’Elanna Torres, the child of a Klingon mother and a human father, and Worf’s son Alexander on Star Trek: The Next Generation , who also has human blood.

Such characters help science fiction explore the exchanges between different societies, as well as the unique challenges faced by the children of two or more cultures. That can lead to simplification or dismissal of complex issues. The trope is only as strong as the TV show using it, but it also gives creators a safe space to discuss those issues before a wider audience.

7 Fantastic Racism

Racism is a weighty issue and addressing it head-on won’t always fly on a series intended primarily as entertainment. Instead, Star Trek talks about racism in a more general way, using alien cultures as a stand-in for various kinds of prejudicial oppression. In the simplest terms, it helps point out the fundamental absurdity of racist beliefs, most notably in The Original Series Season 3, Episode 15, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” which features Frank Gorshin’s black-and-white alien at war with this white-and-black cohort.

Fantastic racism isn’t a perfect trope, and can often whitewash real problems by casting them in the realm of fiction. But it also allows shows like Star Trek to address those issues while still retaining a vision of a more mature humanity who has set such petty hatefulness aside. For good or ill, it certainly allowed other science fiction projects to follow its example.

6 Alien Empires

Humanoid aliens necessitate an essentially human political process, which Star Trek uses as one of its narrative bedrocks. Other entities such as the Klingons and the Romulans don’t necessarily embrace democracy, and have their own agendas that often conflict with the Federation’s. This leads to various schemes, conflicts and outright wars: generating easy storylines and culminating in epic clashes like Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War.

Alien empires predate science fiction movies, going back at least to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and the John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Original Series uses them as thinly veiled stand-ins for contemporary geopolitical foes like the Soviet Union or China under Chairman Mao. Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series have developed their aliens more fully, while providing new narrative material in concepts like the Klingons’ Great Houses and The Romulans’ Qowat Milat.

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5 alternate history.

Star Trek originally used the Stardate notion to get around the question of exactly when the story was taking place. It took 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to pinpoint its 23rd century setting. Even before then, however, it built its own future history without the slightest inkling of the franchise it was helping to create in the process.

Star Trek's alternate history comes complete with developments like the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s (swapped around to account for the passing of real time) and Zephram Cochrane breaking the warp barrier. The timeline allows new projects to develop their own stories at different points on the timeline. Subsequent franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have done much the same thing.

Star Trek's 10 Greatest One-off Characters

4 parallel realities.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the notion of a Multiverse widespread, and written works such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle form the foundation of the idea. But Star Trek brought parallel realities to popular attention long before more modern projects, most notably with Season 2, Episode 4, "Mirror, Mirror." That episode introduced the notion of the sinister Mirror Universe, which the franchise has used in other projects as well.

Star Trek continues to play with parallel realities, and indeed the concept has created some of its finest moments such as Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, Episode 15, "Yesterday's Enterprise." The Kelvinverse series of movies similarly exist in a parallel reality, allowing them to tell their own stories without risking undue continuity errors.

3 Rogue AI/Robots

Rogue AIs go back to the foundation of science fiction, as Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein creates a being he can’t control. Star Trek’s utopian setting makes fertile ground for stories of science to run amuck, with each new era adding its own distinctive touch. The Original Series has the berserk robot Nomad and the M-5 "ultimate computer." Star Trek: Discovery uses the AI Control as its primary antagonist during Season 2, while The Next Generation may have topped them all with the Borg Collective. Even Star Trek: Lower Decks has gotten into the act with the likes of Badgey and Peanut Hamper.

The trend certainly didn't begin with Star Trek , but it made the public increasingly familiar with the notion, while removing it from the more literal image of a Boris Karloff-style monster. As technology has advanced, it's allowed the franchise to continue using it: making pointed comments on contemporary issues behind the veneer of science fiction.

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2 cool starships.

Before The Original Series , sci-fi spaceships tended to come in two types: rockets and flying saucers. The original USS Enterprise manages to look like both at the same time, while giving Star Trek a singular visual image that sums up its entire zeitgeist. It becomes a character in and of itself during the first crew’s adventures, to the point where its destruction in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock initially elicited cries of grief among the faithful.

Subsequent series have made distinctive ship design a priority: giving them a brand identity distinctive from the rest of the franchise while still being resolutely Star Trek . Other creators took note, as 2001: A Space Odyssey's Discovery and Star Wars's Millennium Falcon emphasize visual distinctiveness to sell their worlds. The flying saucer is well and truly dead, and The Original Series' Enterprise may have killed it.

Star Trek’s best known piece of future technology arose out of a logistical necessity. Having created an iconic spaceship in the USS Enterprise , series creator Gene Roddenberry realized he had no way of landing it on the surface of the different planets the show was supposed to visit. Teleporting down via the ship’s transporters made an elegant solution, avoiding the clumsy logistics of a shuttle and providing a nifty effects shot to boot. It also allowed for easy drama, as Scotty invariably pulled the away team up from the planet's surface in the nick of time.

While it never caught on with other science fiction projects, that kept it a singular part of the franchise itself: never duplicated lest the presented be accused of imitating Star Trek . The rest of the public need not act with such care, of course, and "beam me up" has become a short-hand term for the desire to escape any unpleasant situation.

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Boldly go: Every 'Star Trek' series, ranked

The Final Frontier is full of some amazing television.

With over 800 episodes of space-based adventure logged, Star Trek is the sci-fi TV franchise to beat.

For more than 50 years, whether fans have followed the voyages of the Starship Enterprise or the animated antics of the Lower Decks  and Prodigy  crews, Star Trek has proven that it is endlessly imaginative and consistently inspiring. The franchise takes its Vulcan mantra of “Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations” to heart, offering series led by an ensemble of complex and supportive characters that act as guides and companions on trips to the strange new worlds that Star Trek helps audiences escape to on a weekly basis. From Captain Kirk’s original five-year mission (which unfortunately was curtailed after just three), to Patrick Stewart's return in  Picard , there’s something for everyone in the Final Frontier.

In honor of Star Trek: Discovery return to Paramount+ to finish off its fourth season this week, we have beamed down our definitive ranking of every Trek series. So replicate yourself a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, and see if your favorite made (ahem) Number One. 

11. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1975)

Credit: CBS via Getty Images

Unbound by live-action TV budget limitations, Star Trek: The Animated Series makes up for its low-fi animation and sometimes stiff pacing issues with an impressive execution of big sci-fi premises. From giant Spocks to flying plant dragons, TAS features truly out-there storylines that push the boundaries of what one would expect to find in Trek’s take on outer space. In the '60s. The Animated Series may not have the same respect or importance as other Trek shows, both animated and live-action, but TAS at least deserves some praise for its ambition and for trying to keep the franchise alive during its fallow period. 

Featuring most of the original cast returning to voice their iconic characters, along with several key writers from The Original Series , the Enterprise's brief run of animated adventures delivers a nostalgic, kid-friendly continuation of the voyages fans fell in love with in the '60s.

10. Star Trek: Short Treks (2018-2020)

Credit: Michael Gibson/CBS

An inventive and (mostly) satisfying mix of live-action and animated tales, Star Trek: Short Trek s acted as a bridge between releases of full seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, with side stories centered on key characters and aspects of the then-CBS All Access era of the franchise. The shorts, with run times between ten to 20 minutes, feature storylines that cater largely to Discovery fans, with appearances from fan-favorites Ensign Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) providing audiences with a peek at what happens in the periphery of the flagship series. These side missions allow the franchise to take one of its most unique and creative swings in its entire history; think Star Trek ’s version of Marvel’s “One-Shot” shorts. 

While not every installment feels necessary or particularly engaging — the Saru-centric “The Brightest Star” struggles to find a compelling pace that works well with its heartfelt glimpse into the alien’s homeworld — Short Treks does provide impressive visuals and interesting bits of connective tissue to make the experience of watching future Discovery episodes more whole. The highlights of this brief run of shorts include the distant future-set “Calypso,” with a teleplay by Picard Season 1 showrunner and author Michael Chabon, and the zany animated tale “Ephraim and Dot,” which director Michael Giacchino injects with a strong dose of Tom and Jerry -esque antics as his film pinballs between certain iconic events from Trek ’s extensive history on both the big and small screens. 

9. Star Trek: Picard (2020-Present)

Credit: Trae Patton/CBS

After a 26-year absence, Patrick Stewart and his iconic character of Jean-Luc Picard returned to the small screen in Star Trek: Picard . The highly anticipated, big-budget nostalgia play was a mixed bag of creative choices that fell somewhere between thrilling fan service and noble misfire. 

Picard finds the former Enterprise-E captain struggling to enjoy life on his family vineyard after a mission to save Romulan refugees forced him into early retirement. But, when an android-human hybrid shows up at his home, hunted by ninja-like Romulan assassins, Picard must boldly go once again into space to find out who this woman is, what she has to do with the late Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), and how all of this ties together with the Federation’s work in helping former Borg drones re-enter civilian life. The elevator pitch for the first season is basically Star Trek: Blade Runner , starring one of the most beloved Trek characters in the Rick Deckard role. However,  Picard doesn’t bring much new to this premise, which sci-fi has more than adequately covered by now — and that’s unfortunate, because the last thing a Star Trek show should make one feel is a near-constant sense of “been there, done that.”

As fun as it is to see Picard, Data, and Jeri Ryan’s badass Seven of Nine back in action, it comes at the cost of some baffling and frustrating character choices, namely with Picard. For the first third of the series, we see a Picard who behaves in emotionally dishonest and unlikable ways. (For example, after the former Captain has a falling out with a dear friend and fellow officer, he never once checks in with her until years later — when he needs something.) To present a formerly selfless hero as someone who is now more selfish than ever before results in a profound narrative flaw at the core of this series, which progresses to a confounding finale where Star Trek cures death and no one bothers to even think about pointing that fact out. The limited success Picard does find, outside of impressive visual spectacles, are in the brief but rewarding scenes where our hero reunites with past Next Generation crew members or revisits certain dark areas of his traumatic past with the Borg. Here’s hoping Picard Season 2 packs more resonance with fans by affording the character more to do than just travel through other sci-fi’s great story ideas in search of his own. 

8. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005)

Credit: CBS

UPN's attempts in 2001 to use Star Trek: Enterprise as a way to revitalize the franchise and make it more appealing to non- Trek audiences was, at the time, a risk that made creative sense. One that even occasionally paid off episodically. But the arrival of this prequel series arguably did more harm than good. (Remember those ads featuring The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go?" Woof.) 

By the time Enterprise premiered, executive producer Rick Berman had already created three other shows during his time as the franchise’s overseer, and his tenure with Star Trek at this point had a very “assembly line” feel to it. On paper, the idea of exploring the early days of Starfleet from the bridge of a pre-Kirk Enterprise seemed like the shot in the arm that Trek needed, one ripe with possibility. But in execution, the series struggled to find its identity or connect with audiences in the way previous shows or their significantly more compelling and likable ensemble casts did. Enterprise ’s first two seasons never quite lived up to the marketing’s promise of a more rough-around-the-edges, action-packed Trek . Most of their episodes could have existed on any other Trek series, which didn’t help Enterprise stand out among its trailblazing predecessors. 

The voyages of Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) and his intrepid crew really hit their stride in Seasons 3 and 4, however, especially in the latter. The show’s final season finally let Enterprise embrace its Trek- ness with callbacks to Original Series canon. (Mirror Universe FTW!) But, by then, it was too late. And that’s too bad, as Bakula brought a ‘90s-esque, Harrison Ford action hero vibe to the franchise as a Captain struggling to do what’s right and best for the galaxy’s future at a time when he is a vital figure in shaping it.

While we're here, let's give a special mention to the show's most underrated asset, Chief Engineer Trip Tucker (Conner Trinneer). He's basically McCoy and Scotty rolled into one.

7. Star Trek: Discovery (2017-Present)

Literally going where no Trek TV series has gone before, in both scale and tone, Discovery is the most diverse and progressive Trek  so far, which is why it has, in part,  such a passionate fanbase. The series is a thematically-driven, character-first, action-packed depiction of a Starfleet charged with test driving their Utopian ideals in the middle of a war with the Klingons — all on the bleeding edge of the Final Frontier. 

While hardcore fans initially bumped against the show's darker elements, crying, "This isn't Star Trek, " after four seasons, those naysayers have seemingly come around to embracing Discovery ’s big-budget attempt to mix the current trend of “grounded and gritty” television with what makes Trek , well, Trek . After a bumpy first season launch, Discovery eventually found how to make that mixture work with its effortlessly entertaining Season 2, which brought the U.S.S. Enterprise from Captain Pike’s day into Discovery ’s prequel storyline. Combining the two crews and their histories allowed for a very entertaining season of fan-service highs, one that afforded Discovery to showcase one of Trek ’s strongest suits: Great characters. 

The dynamic established by Discovery’ s diverse and endearing ensemble allows the series to tell stories that do what all great sci-fi does — use a future setting to hold up a mirror to our very present reality. In doing so, Discovery delivered one of the franchise’s most fully-formed and likable heroes ever, starting with Sonequa Martin-Green's conflicted Michael Burnham. (We are also big fans of Season 1’s duplicitous, and fortune cookie-loving, Captain Lorca, played by Jason Issacs.) And while the first season’s Klingon War arc comes off half-baked and under-serviced, in favor of a season-arc involving the Mirror Universe, that detour is totally worth it for a late-Season 1 phaser battle that is among the best action scenes Trek has ever produced.

6. Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-Present)

This first animated Trek show since the ’70s, Lower Decks is also the first outright sitcom in Trek history. 

Centered on the very junior, and very funny, crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos, Lower Decks premiered in 2020 on Paramount+ to quickly become one of the most talked-about and entertaining Trek series ever. From creator and showrunner Mike McMahan ( Rick and Morty ), Lower Decks is often a perfect mix of funny and Trek -level pathos. The show finds a unique and comical way to spin the mundane tasks of day-to-day life as a member of this plucky and endearing crew that embraces the best of Trek . This is a show featuring characters we laugh with but never at as they deal with the rewarding dirty work that Kirk and Picard’s crews never had time for. In doing so, Lower Decks manages to add a much-needed sense of levity by using memorable tropes and moments from Trek’s past to push the franchise and the overall story forward. 

5. Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

Star Trek: Voyager made TV history by being the first Trek series with a female captain when it premiered 26 years ago. That long-overdue and inspired choice was one of the few things that held Voyager together as it, like most Trek series post- TNG , got off to a rocky start during its early seasons. Voyager arguably had one of the bumpiest of beginnings in Trek history, as the UPN series struggled from the jump to fully deliver on its great premise: Federation officers and their freedom fighter counterparts are lost in space, 70,000 light-years from Earth, struggling to get back home. What was intended to be a showcase for what happens when you have no starbases to repair battle damage or replenish supplies turned into Next Gen Lite ; only a handful of episodes in the back half of the series’ run truly achieved best-of status or came close to fulfilling the series’ core concept. Most of Voyager ’s run feels like each new ep is almost re-piloting the series, which makes Voyager feel like a show ironically searching for its own path just as its characters try to find theirs back to Earth. 

But what makes Voyager so consistently compelling to this day, aside from some of the series’ show-stopping space battles and a very likable cast, is Kate Mulgrew’s iconic Captain Janeway. Mulgrew invested Janeway with a fierce intelligence and endearing charm as she was both captain and “mother” to this crew, someone determined to get all of them home despite how many of the Delta Quadrant’s vast network of alien threats stood in her way. (Why she would sometimes prolong this mandate with exploratory detours that would risk depleting the ship’s already-low resources is debatable.) The introduction of former Borg Seven of Nine gave Voyager the shot in the arm it sorely needed. 

Seven’s addition to the cast inspired a Kirk-Spock dynamic between her and Janeway, giving the show a strong dose of conflict and humanity as the two characters butted heads just as often as they worked together to save this family from castaway status. It is too bad Voyager all but flatlined with a big, lackluster series finale that shows Voyager returning to Earth after seven seasons without giving its crew — or the fans — a dramatically satisfying homecoming. The series finale concludes with the baffling choice to relegate Voyager's arrival at Earth to the episode’s final scene, and stopping the show there. This momentous occasion plays like it were just another planet that the starship visited. Both the characters and the fans deserved a better final episode.

4. Star Trek: Prodigy (2021-Present)

It’s fitting that Star Trek: Prodigy is a pseudo-sequel series to Star Trek: Voyager . Not just because the former features the latter’s iconic Captain Janeway in hologram form, but because Prodigy is another series about untested but likable heroes forging a found family in one of the most distant corners of the galaxy, the Delta Quadrant. And, in doing so, they give fans some of the most thematically well-told, character-driven stories in recent Trek history.

All the popular and expected Trek tropes are there — along with the appearance of legacy Trek characters. But Prodigy is the first show to tackle them through the welcomed POV of non-Starfleet characters. Our young heroes, led by the cocky-but-capable Dal, aren’t even trained or really know what a starship like theirs, the experimental Protostar, is. By having the characters serve as a surrogate for the audience, to put us at ground level with them as they have some very intense on-the-job training in the world of Star Trek , makes it so that every panicked breath they take or victory they earn feel like one of our own. That creative choice yields some truly resonate storylines (and feature film-worthy dramatic and comedic beats) that elevate Prodigy to being not just an excellent animated show for kids, but also just overall a great television series.

3. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969)

Featuring the best first two seasons of any Star Trek series, the original adventures of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are classic television for a reason. 

Aside from the uneven third season, plagued by budget cuts and behind-the-scenes creative issues, Star Trek ’s original voyages succeed largely by grounding their fantastic sci-fi concepts on the backs of characters you couldn’t help but root for. The show was one of the first series to have something to say, as creator Gene Roddenberry and producer/writer Gene Coon used the Enterprise and her crew to service themes and subject matter that were especially relevant to 1960s culture. In doing so, Star Trek created icons out of Kirk and the rest of his intrepid crew. It also set the standard for telling sci-fi stories on television in relatable and resonant ways that would inspire and fuel every subsequent Trek series. The first two seasons’ worth of storylines warp out of the gate with episodes centered on eugenics, the moral fog (and ethical cost) of war, what it means to be a captain when your best friend becomes your enemy, and, of course, the Mirror Universe. Never before or since has a Trek series premiered as close to fully-formed as this one does, with the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate headlining one of the most memorable and engaging casts in television history. Star Trek broke racial barriers with Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, and it used science fiction — and the way the Enterprise crew explored the vastness of space — as a way to give its very human audiences an opportunity to look inward and find what makes such exploration still worth taking. 

2. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

Credit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Pound for pound, you won't find a more consistent or entertaining run of Star Trek episodes than The Next Generation ’s third and fourth seasons. That's when this classic syndicated series found its narrative footing, after two very uneven seasons burdened with epic behind-the-scenes clashes among creatives. The show that emerged from all of that turmoil gave us Sir Patrick Stewart, the Borg, Star Trek ’s first cliffhanger ("The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1"), and several stone-cold sci-fi classics such as "Yesterday's Enterprise," "The Inner Light," "Cause and Effect," and the all-timer series finale "All Good Things". 

While TNG petered out creatively during its last two seasons, it managed to change the genre and the franchise in a way that still resonates today. The core characters (especially the meme-friendly likes of Jonathan Frakes’ Riker and LeVar Burton’s Geordi LaForge) are arguably more popular now than they were when the series premiered in 1987. We can credit that continuing popularity to the new (pun intended) generations of fans finding the show via streaming and helping ensure the legacy of this iconic Enterprise crew. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is perfect TV comfort food at a time when we really could use it. Unlike The Original Series, TNG had the time and budget to flex its full potential and find unique opportunities for sci-fi drama that only the Final Frontier affords. In doing so, Next Gen made nothing short of TV history. 

01. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)

Credit: Paramount Television /Courtesy Everett Collection

One of the first pre-Peak TV series to embrace long-form, serialized storytelling, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was and still is the bastard, rule-breaking stepchild of the Trek universe. And it is all the better for it. 

DS9 never found the ratings that its predecessor The Next Generation did, but it did find a deeper and more complex vein of sci-fi storytelling to tap into — one that has allowed the series to prove even more rewarding on subsequent rewatches. Released at a time when serialized television was often frowned upon, DS9 was more concerned with telling stories worth audiences’ time than complying with the times. The epic Seasons 3 through 7 embrace the diversity and heady themes that Trek is known for, by finding inventive — and, at times, harrowing — ways to bring intergalactic action and big emotional stakes to an anchored space station instead of to a flying starship. 

Prejudice, racism, PTSD, and humanity’s often tenuous grip on morality are the rich thematic tent poles that the series frequently thread its gripping characters and their addictive story arcs through — to much success. And while adding Michael Dorn’s Worf from TNG was an attempt to boost ratings in the space battle-heavy fourth season, it also brought a surprisingly effective jolt of tension and character growth to the core ensemble’s dynamic, as they faced a growing, casualty-heavy battle with The Dominion. The riveting dramatic possibilities provided by DS9 ’s unique mix of aliens and humans, friends and foes, helped elevate this underrated Trek installment to become the franchise's crowning achievement.

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• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
• Star Trek: Picard
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Original Series
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In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 276 User reviews
• 99 Critic reviews
• 16 wins & 31 nominations total

Episodes 80

Photos 1999

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• Mister Spock …

• Lieutenant Leslie …

• Nurse Chapel …

• Ensign Freeman …

• Yeoman Rand …

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• Trivia In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN." These initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing."
• Goofs The deck locations for Kirk's Quarters, Sickbay and Transporter Room vary (usually between decks 4-7) throughout the series.

Dr. McCoy : "He's dead, Jim."

• Crazy credits On some episodes, the closing credits show a still that is actually from the Star Trek blooper reel. It is a close-up of stunt man Bill Blackburn who played an android in Return to Tomorrow (1968) , removing his latex make up. In the reel, He is shown taking it off, while an off-screen voice says "You wanted show business, you got it!"
• Alternate versions In 2006, CBS went back to the archives and created HD prints of every episode of the show. In addition to the new video transfer, they re-did all of the model shots and some matte paintings using CGI effects, and re-recorded the original theme song to clean it up. These "Enhanced" versions of the episodes aired on syndication and have been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
• Connections Edited into Ben 10: Secrets (2006)
• Soundtracks Star Trek Music by Alexander Courage

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• Apr 28, 2005

Lovable Creatures: Our Favorite Screen Pals

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• September 8, 1966 (United States)
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Star Trek: Discovery Just Brought Back Two Classic TV Tropes

This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of "Star Trek: Discovery."

For many Trekkies, "Star Trek: Discovery" has always felt a little like the younger brother clinging onto the franchise's back. The sky-high stakes that always seem to threaten the universe, the heavily serialized nature from episode to episode, and even the way these heart-on-their-sleeve characters carry themselves throughout their duties ("...like best buds at a slumber party," as /Film's Jacob Hall put it succinctly in his review for the season 5 premiere ) has all but screamed the fact that this show was meant for younger, more modern audiences.

So imagine our surprise when episode 4 of this final season suddenly dipped into its bag of tricks to unleash not one, but two classic examples of TV tropes that hearken back to the days of "The Original Series." The "time bug" kicks everything off, catching Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) in the most quintessential of Trekkian problems: a time loop. Although not unfamiliar territory for our heroes — this isn't even the first time "Discovery" has gone back to this well, as season 1's "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" deals with similar temporal shenanigans — what does  make this episode stand apart is the fact that this plot serves two important purposes.

For one thing, it allows the writers to reuse a handful of the exact same interior sets of the USS Discovery for practically the entire hour, making this  a bottle episode . Secondly, when Burnham travels back in time and re-experiences previous events in the show's history all over again, it's kind of like a Trekkian twist on the idea of a clip show . Together, "Face the Strange" becomes one of the show's quirkiest episodes yet.

Starship in a bottle

Is that a bottle in your episode, or are you just happy to see me? Okay, that wasn't the smoothest segue I've ever written but, much like the lesson learned by Burnham and Rayner by the end of this week's episode of "Discovery," a rough start doesn't necessarily have to be the final word. The pair discovers this the hard way in what essentially turns out to be an homage to a tried-and-true television trope.

Originally conceived as a measure to cut corners and save money when a season ran the risk of going over budget, bottle episodes have always been a win-win situation for everyone involved. The producers and studio bean counters, naturally, will be happy with anything that saves them a tough conversation with the bosses. And although fans these days typically look at constraints as an unequivocal disadvantage for artists, there's actually something freeing about the process where writers are forced to come up with unique scenarios and creative storylines by thinking outside the box — simply to justify using only the same few sets, a handful of actors, and a less extravagant vision.

For instance, a typical episode of "Discovery" tends to involve away missions to far-flung locales, space battles with enemy ships firing lasers, and all sorts of VFX-dominated mayhem. This time around, however, all of the action (outside of the opening few minutes, that is) takes place entirely within the confines of the USS Discovery ... and constantly in the exact same rooms and hallways, too. The Captain's ready room gets a steady workout, as does Paul Stamets' (Anthony Rapp) place in Engineering. Otherwise, we really only ever return to generic hallways, the elevator, and the bridge. Yet despite the small scale, "Discovery" embarks on its most high-concept adventure yet.

Highlight reel

Oh, we're taking things all the way back to the beginning. With the news that the fifth season of "Discovery" would also be its last , it stood to reason that showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Michelle Paradise would take a victory lap of sorts while also treating longtime viewers to a bit of a nostalgia tour. Episode 4 killed both birds with one stone by incorporating the other trick up its sleeve: putting its own sci-fi stamp on the clip-show episode.

Although a rarity in recent years, those of us who grew up on sitcoms know all too well the joys ( and, to be frank, the cringe ) of the clip show — an even more extreme example of cutting costs by literally just re-airing old footage. Thankfully, "Discovery" adds a fresh wrinkle to this trope. Rather than hit pause on the ongoing plot and bring things to a screeching halt for a hackneyed trip down memory lane, the writing team instead makes this the entire point of Burnham's arc in the episode. First, the time loop forces her to relive several major events from seasons past, along with certain ones that she wasn't actually present to witness firsthand. She experiences the Discovery crew's perspective of traveling through the wormhole in the season 3 premiere and ending up far in the future, their desperate battle against the artificial intelligence Control in season 2, and even a fight against her own younger version from season 1.

"Discovery" could've easily settled for channeling its inner "Groundhog Day" or, more relevantly, the time-travel hijinks of "The Constant" episode from "Lost," but instead we receive a mini-highlight reel reminding us of everything this crew has survived together. It doesn't get much more "Trek" than that.

New episodes of "Discovery" stream on Paramount+ every Thursday.

Screen Rant

8 things that happen in every stranger things episode.

While Stranger Things is well-known for its incredible plot twists, certain stories and character actions can be found in many episodes.

• Steve & Dustin's unexpected friendship is a standout, offering both support and comic relief in schemes.
• Joyce's worry about Will ties back to the series' beginning, hinting at potential tragedy in season 5.
• Eleven's journey with her powers evolves, leading to a deeper exploration in season 5 and a bigger villain.

Stranger Things has been a huge part of Netflix's success with its original content since its premiere in 2016, but in the four seasons since then, there are certain similarities in things that happen in episodes across the series. At the beginning of the TV show, Stranger Things was about the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), and the search that unearthed the mysterious circumstances behind the scenes in the seemingly normal town of Hawkins, Indiana. One of the most enduring parts of the series has been watching the child actors grow up onscreen, as they evolve into adults.

No matter what happens, certain enduring stories and events will no doubt appear in the upcoming conclusion to the iconic series.

Stranger Things season 5 is still in production, and fans might have to wait longer than expected because of the upheaval in the film industry in the past several years. However, this means it's the perfect time to revisit the earlier seasons to prepare for the coming story and get as up-to-date as possible. Many theories are swirling about what the story of Stranger Things season 5 could hold. No matter what happens, certain enduring stories and events will no doubt appear in the upcoming conclusion to the iconic series.

8 Steve & Dustin Team Up

The friendship audiences didn't know they needed.

In season 1, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) was a significant antagonist in the show, as the typical popular high school bully it's easy to root against. However, as the show has progressed, his character has grown and developed significantly to the point that he's become a fan-favorite. One of the more unlikely events was his becoming friends with Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), a much younger character who unexpectedly provided Steve with the support and childlike joy he needed. Simultaneously, Steve gives Dustin advice and helps him face his fears.

Additionally, when Steve and Dustin team up, it's usually for a scheme that Robin wouldn't approve of and has to help salvage in the end.

It was a stroke of genius on the part of the showrunners to recognize the chemistry between the two actors and make sure that their storylines intersected moving forward. Robin (Maya Hawke) is also an important part of this friendship dynamic, but she's much closer to Steve than Dustin. Additionally, when Steve and Dustin team up, it's usually for a scheme that Robin wouldn't approve of and has to help salvage in the end. These team-ups and schemes offer the much-needed comic relief that an episode needs.

7 Joyce Worries About Will

The original thrust of the series was their mother-son relationship.

Winona Ryder recently had a major surge in popularity after her role as Joyce in Stranger Things , as she perfectly embodies the nervous energy and determination of the character. Though her primary plots are more closely focused on her relationship with Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and their romantic relationship, when Will went missing in season 1, all Joyce did was worry. At this point, Will is a little too old for her to micromanage and look after all the time, but she's still incredibly driven by a deep love for both her sons.

Will is still connected to the Upside Down, and his character arc is a source of concern heading into season 5. Joyce will have plenty of opportunity to worry about Will as Stranger Things season 5 images hint that Will might die before the series' conclusion. This would be a devastating end for all the characters, as Will is a beloved son, brother, and friend. However, Stranger Things has a pattern of only killing off characters introduced in the current season, and the show might have to end with a main character's death for the sake of the narrative.

8 Stranger Things Characters We Hope Season 5 Doesn’t Forget About

6 eleven uses her powers, except for the season she was locked out from them.

She's introduced in season 1 after she runs away from a secret lab where children with telekinetic powers are being experimented on.

Eleven is arguably the biggest character on Stranger Things , and certainly the one with the most trauma and healing to do. She's introduced in season 1 after she runs away from a secret lab where children with telekinetic powers are being experimented on. Luckily for the residents of Hawkins, Eleven's powers have saved the day in almost every season of Stranger Things . However, at the end of season 3, it seemed that she might have lost her connection to these abilities forever.

This subversion was important, as Eleven continuously saving the day without any real consequences would've been a boring way for the story to continue. A key part of Eleven's development is learning to be a normal child and healing from the hurt inflicted on her in her youth. There's little doubt that season 5 will involve a deeper exploration of how her powers can exist within the world. The final villain the team faces must be the biggest yet and push Eleven to her limits.

5 A Monster Appears From The Upside Down

Each villain has been more terrifying than the last.

What made Stranger Things stand apart from the other supernatural thrillers on TV was the fact that it was genuinely scary. As the seasons progressed it became more common for VFX teams to weave chilling monsters into the fabric of a series, but Stranger Things was one of the scariest shows on Netflix when it premiered. The monsters inside and outside the Upside Down have evolved just as much as the characters and stakes in Stranger Things . While the singular Demogorgon was enough to shake the characters to their core in season 1, a lot has changed.

The most recent villain, Vecna, was unique because he was the most anthropomorphic of all the creatures to emerge from the Upside Down so far. In some ways, this is more terrifying because Vecna is closer to a human, making his intentions more sinister. It seems certain that audiences haven't seen the last of Vecna. Most likely, he will be back to continue terrorizing the characters in season 5. It would be interesting to see each of the monsters across the seasons before the show ends.

4 There’s A Larger Conspiracy Pulling The Strings

Whether it's papa or the soviet government.

Stranger Things makes full use of its period piece genre, chronicling the transition from the early 1980s through the most iconic parts of the decade. In the '80s the Cold War was in full swing and there were enormous tensions between the American government and the Soviet Union. While season 1 kept the story and conflict close to home, the following seasons explored the expansion of the world, which included numerous plotlines involving Soviet spies and the organization that held Eleven in her youth.

Occasionally, this can get tedious, as it takes the pressure off the show to think of clever antagonists when they can blame things on a faceless group.

Papa (Matthew Modine) is the face of this organization and serves as the monster Eleven has been most scared of over the years. As the audience learns more about Eleven's past and how both that organization and the Soviets have been trying to access the Upside Down, it's clear that larger forces are at work than the characters realize. Occasionally, this can get tedious, as it takes the pressure off the show to think of clever antagonists when they can blame things on a faceless group. However, it does add to the atmosphere of mystery and tension in the show.

3 A Classic ‘80s Music Needle Drop

Made internet famous by season 4.

The '80s were a great decade for music, and as the budget of Stranger Things increased, so did the amount of fantastic songs they included. In Stranger Things season 4, the featured song, "Running Up That Hill," by Kate Bush exploded in popularity and became a chart-topper years after its release. Part of this is due to how excellent the song is, but it was made even more transcendent and emotional by what was happening on screen while it played.

In the scene, Max (Sadie Sink) was almost taken by Vecna, but listening to "Running Up That Hill" helped bring her back to Earth and return to her body. Needle drops in TV and movies can easily be overused, and serve as a crutch to create poignant moments where none exist. The mark of a good needle drop is using it in a scene where there is already a clear motivator or emotional drive occurring. The music should add to the atmosphere and uplift the feelings that have already been created.

Stranger Things: 10 Best Songs Featured On The Show, Ranked By Spotify Streams

2 d&d is used as a metaphor, dungeons & dragons is a recurring theme threaded through the story.

The role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, reached a new height of popularity in the '80s. Based on the years Stranger Things is set in, it makes perfect sense that Will, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Dustin are all obsessed with the game. In the first episode of the series, the audience is introduced to these characters while they play D&D, and they get a feel for the boys’ dynamic through how they play. It’s a safe lens through which they view the cruelty of the world.

Every D&D monster referenced in Stranger Things has served a clear purpose in the narrative and tied into the overarching themes. Season 4 returned to the original interest in D&D, allowing the characters to reminisce about their childhoods and reflect on how much they've grown since the show began. Some of the characters are ready to leave this game behind as a part of their childhood they've grown out of. However, it's still an important part of the show because they still have lots of growing up to do.

1 Nancy & Jonathan Yearn For Each Other

One of the major romantic pairings of the show.

Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) provide the classic will-they-won't-they dynamic for the first two seasons of Stranger Things . However, once they finally act on their feelings, it seems as though they'll be together forever. Unfortunately, fate has other plans and it seems the universe is conspiring to keep the lovers apart. This means they get to experience plenty of longing, singing, and yearning for each other, as they consider the rest of their lives while fighting monsters.

There's some question over whether Nancy and Jonathan will end up together at the end of the series. While it would be disappointing for them to go their separate ways, they've started making adult steps and choices in the years since they began dating, and things are different now. Each of them needs to start prioritizing their futures, and if this means they won't be together, they'll still do plenty of yearning over the years.

Stranger Things

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Inspired by 80s pop-culture and elements of Stephen King's works, Stranger Things is a supernatural action-drama TV series set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. When a young boy goes missing, his group of friends stumbles upon a young girl with telekinetic powers who recently escaped from a mysterious facility. They soon realize that she may be their only chance at stopping an impending doom that threatens to engulf Hawkins whole.

• April 26, 2024 | Michael Dorn Wanted Armin Shimerman To Play The Ferengi That Worf Killed In Star Trek Picard
• April 26, 2024 | Podcast: All Access Gets To Know The Breen In ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ 505, “Mirrors”
• April 25, 2024 | Prep Begins For ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 3 Finale; Cast And Directors Share BTS Images
• April 25, 2024 | Jonathan Frakes Sees Opportunities With Streaming Star Trek Movies, Weighs In On “Filler Episodes”
• April 25, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Reflects On Its Choices In “Mirrors”

Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Reflects On Its Choices In “Mirrors”

| April 25, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 102 comments so far

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5 – Debuted Thursday, April 25, 2024 Written by Johanna Lee & Carlos Cisco Directed by Jen McGowan

A solid episode with plenty of lore and character development gets weighed down with a bit too much exposition.

No, I didn’t kiss you in the past last week, what makes you say that?

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“Maybe we’re not so different.”

As the crew regroups following the time bug incident that lost them 6 hours, they try to trace the trail of their main rivals in the search for the Progenitor tech. Book takes this time to reflect on the choices he has made in life and how it isn’t too late for Moll; perhaps he can redeem the daughter of his mentor and namesake Cleveland Booker. Stamets and Tilly figure out the trail didn’t disappear into nowhere: Moll and L’ak went through a wormhole. The aperture isn’t big enough for the Disco, so the captain assigns herself to shuttle duty—over the objections of her new XO, who is still struggling a bit. After a little bonding over old Kellerun poetry, she leaves him with “I know you can lead this crew” and heads off with her ex. Returning to their old banter, including some teasing about what happened during her time tour last episode, Book and Michael head through the wormhole. Things get really choppy as they fly through exotic matter “deaf and blind,” losing comms with the Disco, and dodging debris. Skilled piloting and good ol’ Starfleet engineering saves them, but things aren’t so hot for Moll and L’ak, whose ship is spotted cut in half. Their only hope for survival is another relatively intact ship that looks familiar. A 24 th -century scientist hiding a clue in this pocket dimension on a shipwreck from another universe makes as much sense as anything.  It’s the ISS Enterprise—and that’s no typo. If the “Mirrors” title wasn’t clue enough, the ISS does it: Things are about to get Terran, again.

After docking, Michael and Book make their way through the mess of a ship to the bridge with more playful banter. The warp drive has been bricked and all shuttles and escape pods are gone, very out of character for ruthless Terrans. They track three quantum signatures in sickbay, but start with a trace in the transporter room, which looks more like a makeshift refugee camp. A chronicle reveals the crew mutinied after the Terran High Chancellor (aka Mirror Spock) was killed for making reforms. A certain Kelpien rebel leader (aka Mirror Action Saru) led refugees to the Prime Universe, where they abandoned ship. While Book expositions, Michael puts a piece of her badge (and its important Prime Universe quantum signature) in a locket she finds. Pay attention BTW, or you will be confused later. In sickbay, they find Moll and L’ak, Moll and L’ak, and Moll and L’ak—until they take out the holo-emitters so the four former couriers can face off for real. Book tries the “I knew your father” gambit and is immediately rebuffed by Moll’s serious daddy issues. The baddies figure they have the clue so they have all the leverage, but Michael uses that locket as a bluff, claiming she has the real clue. Still, no deal with the Federation is good enough because they need the Progenitor tech to get rid of an Erigah… a Breen blood bounty. That’s right, L’ak is Breen. Holy refrigeration helmet , Batman.

Mirror McCoy was a bit of an evil pack rat.

“You both still have choices .”

Cut to a series of Burn-era flashbacks when Moll was delivering dilithium to the Breen Imperium. The “bucket heads”  are not amused by the wisecracking courier who gets into a fight with one of them, but she turns the tables, revealing she knows he’s a disgraced member of the royal family—and she even knows his name. It’s L’ak, of course. He is intrigued by her plan to skim more latinum, getting payback for being humiliated for this cargo duty demotion. Soon enough, this unlikely pair is hooking up between cargo containers and he even takes off his helmet to show her his face, as well as his “other face.” It turns out the Breen have two: the one we have been seeing with L’ak and a glowing eyed translucent one.  Later, the star-crossed romance is threatened when Moll is drawn to the lure of even more latinum by delivering to the Emerald Chain. Before they can sort out if he should join her, Uncle A-hole shows up, not happy about his nephew’s little interspecies exchange program. He’s also not cool with L’ak using that old face and not the “evolved” glowy face. L’ak is given one chance at redemption: Kill Moll. He picks door number 2, killing some guards but sparing Primarch Ruhn, who declares the Erigah. L’ak knows this means they will never stop hunting him, but Moll is all-in on being a fugitive, so they escape together. Ah, true love.

Back on Mirror Enterprise, the standoff devolves into another quick firefight as the Breen/Human duo chooses not to take the offered off-ramp before going too far down the bad guy road. Moll and Book end up outside force fields that pop up around sickbay, so she reluctantly agrees to a ceasefire. The current Cleveland Booker tries again to connect, but Moll only has bad memories of a brutal childhood of abandonment after her Cleveland left her on her own at age 14. L’ak is all she has. L’ak feels the same about Moll, telling Michael that he would die before being separated, but seems open to the idea of them sharing a cell in the Federation pen. On the bridge, Book pivots to use his relationship with Michael to connect, but Moll’s need to get back to L’ak means no waiting for computer hacking, so she starts yanking out wires. The resulting short does lower the forcefield, but now the ship is out of control. Their shuttle is flung off with the jolt and there’s only eight minutes until the Big E is squished in the little wormhole. Book takes his final shot, handing over his phaser and telling Moll she is the only family he has left. She finally relents and they head to sickbay, where Michael and L’ak have resumed fighting. The captain gets the upper hand and ends up with the clue L’ak was holding and the Breen is left with a knife in his side, but impressed by the locket bluff. Moll arrives and is super pissed, so the Disco duo makes a quick exit before things escalate into yet another phaser fight. This former courier couple’s double date is over.

Uh, can you go back to the other face now?

“Maybe we can shape our own futures too.”

As Moll tries to patch up her boyfriend, Michael and Book work through the problem on the bridge, deciding that the tractor beam as their only hope. Over on the Disco, they detect an oscillating pattern, 3-4-1-4, which means something to Rayner. He now wants the nerds to figure out how to open the wormhole aperture big enough for a ship, offering kegs of Kellerun booze for the best idea. Adira sparks a team effort and Rayner rallies around the crowdsourced solution involving a hexagon of photon torpedoes. “We are only going to get one shot at this. I trust you will all make it count, red alert.” That’s the stuff. With what may be the last seconds of her life, Michael lets Book know she shared a “happy” moment with his past self during the whole time bug incident. Discovery fires the torpedoes and the crew is surprised to see the ISS Enterprise emerge at the last minute from the permanently collapsing wormhole. Everyone releases their tension as the captain informs her crew they saved her… but why is the Enterprise about to fire? A warp pod is launched! It’s Moll and L’ak. Before you can say “plot armor,” they escape to another episode. The captain returns to the Disco to tell Rayner she’s impressed with how he handled the crew during her time away, and he tells her how impressed he was with her subtle “3-4-1-4” message using the Kellerun “Ballad of Krull.” Alien poetry FTW!

In the background of the episode, Tilly has been noticing that Dr. Culber seems out of sorts. Everyone else leans on him, so she offers to be a friendly ear. As things wrap, Hugh takes her up on her offer over drinks at Red’s, admitting that ever since he was possessed by a Trill a few episodes back, he has been feeling a bit off, and he’s beening having some trouble coming to grips with the quest they are on with questions “so big and impossible to grasp.” He is not sure his matter-of-fact husband will understand what Tilly points out is a sort of spiritual awakening. This thread is left unresolved, unlike Adira’s mini-crisis of confidence: They were losing their science mojo due to guilt over the time bug, but got it back through Rayner’s tough love and being the one to come up with the hexagon of torpedoes solution. Things wrap up with Michael and Book looking over their prize, the latest piece of the map and a mysterious vial of liquid hidden inside, ready to set up the next episode once Stamets unlocks its secret. Burnham is starting to see a pattern with these clues and how the scientists who left them were trying to teach lessons along the way to the successful questers. The clue hidden in the ISS Enterprise came from Dr. Cho, a former Terran junior officer who later became a Starfleet Admiral. This happy ending for her and the others from Saru’s band of Mirror refugees fills them with hope as they can’t wait to find out what they will learn when they put the map together. There are just 2 more map pieces and 5 more episodes to go.

I think I have a thing for being possessed—no judgment.

Love stories

This halfway point episode is a bit of a mixed bag. Strong performances were a highlight, bringing extra life to welcome character development for both heroes and villains. But valiant attempts to expand upon franchise lore got weighed down in overly complicated exposition. And for an episode with a strong (and yes, often repeated) theme about choices, some of the directorial choices just didn’t work, potentially leaving some audience members confused or requiring a second viewing to follow the narrative. On the other hand, the episode carried on the season’s reflection on Discovery’s own lore and the evolution of its characters. David Ajala stands out as the episode MVP as he shows Book’s struggle to navigate the emotional complexities of his own choices and those of Moll while desperately trying to forge a new family connection. While some of the action scenes in this episode felt a bit perfunctory, the show is still getting better (for the most part) in finding moments for those character sidebars to talk about their emotional journeys and relationships. That was especially important in this episode, which took a closer look at how the events of the season are impacting some of the key romantic pairings of Book and Michael, Paul and Hugh, and Moll and L’ak.

Eve Harlow—and especially Elias Toufexis—stepped up to add layers and nuance to Moll and L’ak, with Discovery finally embracing how fleshing out adversaries and their motivations goes a long way towards making your plot hold together. The nicely drawn-out reflection of their love story with the rekindling one between Michael and Book adds another layer to the more obvious meaning behind the episode title “Mirrors.” Moll’s single-minded anger and L’ak’s desire for safety now all make sense, as does their unshakable bond. The episode also did a good job weaving in a handful of substories, including Rayner’s growing connection with the crew, with a nice sprinkling of Kellerun lore-building — adding some color to his character. Callum Keith Rennie continues to be a stand-out addition for the season, although Doug Jones is sorely missed, presumably not appearing in two episodes in a row for some scheduling reasons. Culber’s spiritual journey also gets just enough time, as it and these other substories all feel like they are heading somewhere without distracting or spinning their wheels, something that often weighed down mid-season Discovery episodes in past seasons.

Okay, let’s just agree we both have daddy issues.

Under the mask

The reveal that L’ak is a Breen was a surprise, but also nicely teased through the previous episodes. Fans of Deep Space Nine should relish finally getting some answers about this enigmatic race and finally having a first look under those helmets. “Mirrors” picked up on many elements from DS9, including the Breen language, refrigeration suits, neural truncheons, and the position of Thot , while adding lots to the lore, including some worldbuilding behind this new Breen Imperium and its “faction wars.”

Setting the Breen up as what appears to be the real big bads for the season involved a lot of data dump exposition here, surely keeping the editors of Memory Alpha busy for the next week. The notion that Breen have two forms with their signature suits and helmets allowing them to hold the more “evolved” form and face makes sense. If one were to get nitpicky, the Breen aren’t supposed to bleed, but perhaps that was a function of his suit; fill in your own headcanon. L’ak’s desire to hold the other, less evolved form making him a pariah in Breen society has echoes of allegorical episodes such as TNG’s “The Outcast.” That being said, the nuances are still not entirely clear, and fans who like the lore shouldn’t have to rewatch scenes to pick up the details. It feels like some details were cut, perhaps because this episode was already trying to cram in too much exposition with the Breen, Kelleruns (they boil cakes?), and the Mirror Universe.

Like the previous time travel adventure, this was a mid-season bottle show, this time using the conveniently located Strange New Worlds sets. Bringing back the ISS Enterprise was clever and fun, with the twist of how this time the Mirror Universe came to us. If you follow closely, “Mirrors” did a nice job of filling in some lore gaps and tying together the MU storylines from the first visit in “Mirror, Mirror” to follow-ups in Deep Space Nine , Enterprise , and Discovery . There is now a nice throughline from Emperor Georgiou saving Mirror Saru through to Mirror Spock, killed for the reforms he instituted after being inspired by Kirk. However, the redress of the Enterprise sets was not very inspired, with only a smattering of Terran wall sconces and some repainting, instead of demonstrating the brutality of the Empire with elements like agony booths. But what was even more missed was the promise of any character crossovers. There was a lot of talk about Mirror characters like Spock, Saru, Dr. Cho, and others, but we don’t get to see any, one of the many examples of how this episode broke the golden rule to show not tell. There were plenty of opportunities for a flashback or holo recording. Burnham longingly gazing at her brother’s science station is no substitute for Ethan Peck with a goatee.

We’re back!

Final thoughts

“Mirrors” is a decent episode, but it could have been much better with a few tweaks here and there. While not falling into the pointless plate-spinning trap of past mid-season Disco outings, it still dragged a bit for something so jam-packed with lore and revelations. Still, it provided a nice hour of entertainment, and possibly more with rewatches to catch up on the little details. The episode also continues the season’s welcome trend of weaving in the show’s own past, which makes it work better as a final season, even if they didn’t know that when they crafted it. Season 5 hits the halfway mark, and it’s still the best season yet, and hopefully the second half of the season will nail the landing.

Wait, we’re in this episode too? Anyone remember their lines?

• Like the previous episode, “Mirrors” began with a warning for flashing images.
• The episode is dedicated “to the loving memory of our friend Allan ‘Red’ Marceta ,” the lead set dresser who died in a motorcycle accident in 2022.  Presumably the USS Discovery bar “Red’s” was named in his honor.
• This is the first episode where Book’s personal log starts it off.
• Stardate: 866280.9
• Booker examined wanted notices for Moll from the Federation, Orion/Emerald Chain (who have a new logo), and the Andorian Empire.
• Tilly was able to reveal the wormhole by compensating for the “Lorentzian Coefficient,” referencing the real Lorentz Factor used in special relativity equations.
• A new ensign on the Discovery keeps a Cardassian vole as a pet.
• The ISS Enterprise was built at Tartarus Base, possibly referencing Tartarus Prime , from the TOS novel The Rings of Time .
• Moll refers to Breens as “bucketheads” (just as Reno did to Emerald Chain Regulators last episode). This could be a nod to the use of “ bucketheads ” in Star Wars as a derogatory term for stormtroopers.
• Moll’s mother died on Callor V in a mine for Rubindium , a substance first mentioned in TOS “Patterns of Force.”
• Linus can play the piano.
• Breen Primarchs may be a nod to the genetically engineered Primarchs from Warhammer 40,000 .
• How does Book know that Pike’s catchphrase is “Hit it”?
• This is the third (of five) season 5 episodes in which Oyin Oladejo and Emily Coutts do not appear, but their characters, Detmer and Owosekun, are mentioned when they get the honor of escorting the ISS Enterprise back to Starfleet HQ.
• Even though we didn’t see it warp away, presumably the missing intermix chamber was replaced, otherwise Owo and Detmer’s trip is going to take a very long time.
• Tilly says her long day makes her feel like she has been through a Gormangander’s digestive tract.

Remember when Mudd hid inside a Gormagander? Gross.

More to come

Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek Podcast  covers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Pocket Casts ,  Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

The fifth and final season of  Discovery debuted with two episodes on Thursday, April 4 exclusively on Paramount+  in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria.  Discovery  will also premiere on April 4 on Paramount+ in Canada and will be broadcast on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. The rest of the 10-episode final season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Season 5 debuts on SkyShowtime in select European countries on April 5.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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waste of ISS Enterprise

While I enjoyed the episode overall, the ISS Enterprise was a huge letdown and not even worth being an easter egg with what little they did with it. They should have just made it a generic constitution class ship from the mirror universe.

It felt like it was nothing more than a budget saver. Use existing sets from the other show. Which is weird because one of the arguments in favor of mini seasons is it allows more money to be spent.

That’s exactly what it felt like. Along with the missing, yet again, Detmer and Owosekun.

There must have been some deep budget cuts for the season.

Detmer and Owosekun were replaced by other characters so I don’t think they are missing for budget reasons. It’s more likely that the actresses were unavailable.

I get the budget issues considering what’s going on with the studio. But the end result was it showed that there isn’t much difference at all in the 900 years between the SNW Enterprise and the aesthetic of Star Trek Discovery. They both look as if they were set in the exact same era.

And there really shouldn’t be much. Discovery is from the same era, as the Enterprise. While the ship gets a technological upgrade, why would it get an interior design makeover?

Since it was deemed important (Stamets certainly makes since) that the crew stay on the Discovery, I would certainly think that psychologically having its design aesthetics stay similar to what it was would help give the crew a little bit of their past to hold on to, versus having all physical interactions be with a timeline that they aren’t native to.

Now where we should see it is in native places in this time. And we have seen some differences in design from standard Starfleet settings, versus Starfleet settings on this time (I actually wish we got more).

I did wish for a little more of self reflection from Burnham’s point of view as the ISS Enterprise should of course remind her of Spock (the Enterprise tie in), but also Georgiou (the ISS tie in). We get a small brief nod to Spock, but nothing to Georgiou (and while I still question the use of the character, there is no question that Burnham did have a connection with her, even if its primarily transference from her former Captain, not the mirror Universe Empress.

That’s always been my issue with Discovery.

Agreed. The last two episodes just felt very budgeted and basically bottle episodes. And this just felt like a twofer, a way to use an existing set and add a little fan service but that’s all it was. I thought the Enterprise itself was going to be a viral part of not just the episode but the story overall.

Instead it was just a backdrop. And yeah it’s obvious they cut the budget for this season but all the live action shows have felt this way starting with Picard season 3 and SNW season 2. That all felt pretty bare a lot of the times. I guess this was all during Paramount+ belt tightening and probably not a shock why the show was cancelled.

And maybe the I.S.S. Enterprise should have been the refit or maybe the Phase II Enterprise? That would have been a lot of fun but combine a lack of vision with a reduced budget and this is what you get.

Looking back on “In a Mirror: Darkly”, season 4 of Enterprise was dealing with a reduced budget but managed to recreate sets from TOS, introduced a few new set pieces and did a lot of great effects work.

This was a missed opportunity.

Which was added by stretching that story over two episodes, so that they had the budget to recreate the sets they used. Having half the episode count, doesn’t really help avail yourself to planning out a two parter for a way to save costs.

If Picard could pull off recreating the bridge of the Enterprise D for three days of shooting with barely half the budget of Discovery season 5, they could have done something equally as fun for Discovery on the cheap without actually having to building anything new and using the Enterprise as a crutch. They could have come across Deep Space Station K-7, where the exterior would have been immediately familiar and with interiors served by redressed sets from virtually anything available from Discovery or SNW.

I thought Discovery is basically the PII Enterprise?

The Phase II Enterprise looks like a slickly modified version of the Enterprise from TOS, falling squarely between the Enterprise from TOS and the refit. The “Star Trek: Phase II” fan series did a great job bringing it to screen.

No, Discovery resembles the Enterprise concept for the Planet of the Titans movie.

I don’t get that. I never assumed that the Enterprise (or its mIrror Universe history) was going to feature in significant manner (certainly the producers and promotional department didn’t make a significant deal about it). Perhaps it’s the time difference. But I literally assumed it would be as significant as the Defiant going in and out of phase like TOS “Tholian Web” the time difference. And that was primarily set dressing. That’s not a bad thing. I mean Tholian Web is considered one of the better third season episodes.

And the only reason I assumed it was the Enterprise versus another Connie, is simple to give Burnham a moment to reflect on Spock. Now I do freely admit that I wish this was a slightly larger moment. But I never expected it to be anything but a small moment. Roughly my preconceived notion would be something like Spock’s Mind Meld scene with La’an in SNW where she is able to get a peak into Spock thinking about his sister and the emotion that comes with it. It’s a very brief scene, but I thought SNW did a good job in conveying the emotional aspect, especially from a half Vulcan/ Half Human.

Ok fair enough. This is probably more my hang up and to be fair since they never really promoted the the Enterprise being back then clearly they weren’t trying to make it that big of a deal.

But same time a lot of people do feel there could’ve been more done. The main problem is it just feels like a ridiculous stretch this ship itself is even there. It’s a ship from 900 years ago from a DIFFERENT UNIVERSE that conveniently happens to be the ship that gives them their next clue. I know it’s Star Trek so whatever lol. But when you go through the effort to present it I think it would’ve nice to build a bigger story around it. It could’ve just been any ship.

When you feel like the Mirror Universe has been nothing but a let down after the initial TOS episode, It’s really not a surprise. There’s really nowhere to go with it, but I did find that the fulfilling of the promise that Prime Kirk spoke to Mirror Spock about from the original TOS episode quite satisfying. The ship’s inhabitants embraced the benevolence of the prime universe, and I thought that was great.

I felt the idea that the MU people just easily adapted was pretty ridiculous. But then, they admitted SNW was an alternate timeline. It’s not a stretch that alternate extends to all the Secret Hideout productions.

I’m not sure I would feel the same about Picard given it depicts the Prime events of ST:2009. The others tho yeah I think of it that way too. Although The Chase does make that harder to swallow about DISCO

I liked the MU in DS9. It was fun to revisit and a great reminder of the Prime Directive. But… after that it got tiresome.

It was pretty benign there, but the problem with it, is finding it plausible. It was a fun idea in the 1960’s, and it had a good message. After that, it an indulgence. The notion that that the same people would even exist in the same fundamental places, and that the same ships would exist with virtually the same crew just seems like too much of a stretch even for modern Star Trek.

That’s my only complaint about this episode. Seeing the tantalus field show up would have been really cool. When Michael talked about how she was sure that Mirror Spock was a savage just like the other Terrans, I was sure that we would see a recording or something of Ethan Peck in a goatee to prove her wrong. Or flashbacks with Ethan Peck and Paul Wesley as their mirror counterparts would have also been cool.

All the stuff with the Breen and Mol and Lak was really cool though.

“ waste of ISS Enterprise” should be the official episode description.

waste of series

They ate Mirror Saru in season one…

Was that Saru or another Kelpian? It’s been a while since I watched Season 1, but I recall Mirror Saru saving Burnham from Tyler just as Voq’s personality re-emerged. I know Mirror Georgiou served Burnham some Kelpian, I just didn’t remember it being Mirror Saru.

Mirror Saru saved Michael from Tyler in The Wolf Inside, which was the episode that preceded the one in which they ate the food made from a Kelpien (Vaulting Ambition).

Looking at Memory Alpha now, it says that the chosen Kelpien ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVQSipQlJR8 ) was played by someone other than Doug Jones, but they look so much alike that I thought for sure she had chosen Mirror Saru.

As per Memory Alpha, we never saw him again after The Wolf Inside until season three, but that was in the alternate timeline Carl sent Georgiu to, so it wasn’t the same Mirror Saru.

Nope, that was another Kelpien.

“They ate Mirror Saru in season one…”

They didn’t.

Wasn’t Mirror Saru established as having survived in Season 3 (can’t remember the episode name).

A s per Memory Alpha, we never saw Mirror Saru again after The Wolf Inside until season three, but that was in the alternate timeline Carl sent Georgiu to, so it wasn’t the same Mirror Saru.

Loved this episode. I liked seeing the I.S.S Enterprise though i would of loved to of seen maybe a video log of Mirror Spock.

As a big fan of DS9 I’m glad we finally get to see what a breen looks like and the 32nd century breen outfits look great.

I enjoyed seeing Book/Burnham trying to get through to Moll/L’ak and i hope they can eventually get through to them. With this season about connections and 2nd chances i can see Book and Burnham talking both of them down before they do something that they can’t come back from.

The shot of the I.S.S Enterprise coming out of the ‘wormhole’ is probably one of my favorite CGI scene in all of Trek.

I’m glad they didn’t. I think the conceit of using the I.S.S. Enterprise was not much more than a budgetary decision to be able to use the sets. Could have made it a different constitution class, but then they don’t get to tell the story of the crew’s transformation into our society. Just don’t think about it too much.. because that universe is just pushing out its own doppelgängers into our universe.. which seems problematic. lol.

As a big fan of DS9 I’m glad we finally get to see what a breen looks like and the 32nd century breen outfits look great.

Any kind of big reveal was bound to be disappointing, I suppose. Still, the idea that they were just another latex alien was a letdown. I had always hoped that the Breen were gaseous or plasma creatures.

Ethan Peck with a goatee would have been EPIC

“This is the way.” 😉

But seriously that was a pretty good episode. I’d like to see a 31st century restored Terran empire that never went through “the burn.”

“ The reveal that L’ak is a Breen was a surprise ”

It really wasn’t, though. That was many viewers’ guess since the beginning of the season, and it’s been a common discussion on many websites. The surprise would have been if he HADN’T been a Breen.

I am on a lot of other sites and I haven’t heard anyone thinking he was Breen. And I don’t believe anyone voiced that in Trekmovie either.

LOL. It’s been a common theory.

Obviously not THAT common. LOL

I’ve seen the theory mentioned in the comments here on TrekMovie.

Yes, quite common from what I’ve been reading. I just commented on this very site a couple weeks back that I liked the idea, when somebody else theorized it (forget who it was)!

I guess it’s just where you go for these discussions but yeah the first YouTube review of episode one I saw theorized Lak was a Breen in the first scene he was in when he took off his helmet. And this was obviously before the species was mentioned on the show.

So yeah some people caught on the first episode the way others theorized Tyler was Voq the first time he showed up. Others needed more convincing.

I never saw it but I certainly don’t read the majority of comments. And almost never watch video reviews. Now Voq, was something I remember seeing in many places. Though in fairness, the amount of conjecture done about any Trek series for its Pilot and early couple episodes has been in my experience far more than what you see for most regular episodes. So that shouldn’t;t surprise me.

It was a surprise to me.

The Breen being so ordinary looking was a bit of a surprise.

Well, one of their forms are. It explains the frozen wasteland/tropical paradise. Their “evovled” form needs cryo suits, their “normal form” doesn’t

Was a surprise to me. Then again, I don’t run around the internet and over analyze the show.

This season started out so well. What happened? It’s falling apart.

I hate to a agree. But its once again a long slow burn (pardon the bun) that I fear is going to lead to another whimper of a conclusion. I feel like the season could have been a movie instead. Where is Chapel?!

Wrong show. Chapel is on SNW. The ending was rewritten and new scenes were shot to make it a series finale. They had already started shooting when they got the word that it was ending after season 5.

presumably on Her show, SNW?

“pardon the bun” …🍔⁉️

What’d that poor bun do for it to be in need of a pardon? 😋

This is what happens in every single season of Discovery. Two lovers who want to destroy the galaxy so they can get to paradise was the plot of season four, and now they are recycling the exact same plot for this season.

Did you watch the show. In no seasons has two lovers wanted to destroy the galaxy….Period. L’ak and Moll want to pay off their bounty. Nothing about what they are doing is about wanting to destroy the galaxy.

Outside of the destruction caused by the aliens referred to as 10-C, did any character want to destroy the galaxy let alone a couple. The only couple we had, was one person wanting peaceful means of communication to prevent destruction, while the other wanted to use force to ensure the destruction doesn’t occur. In no case does that equal people wanting to destroy a galaxy.

I can understand not liking the show, but to have such a misconstrued concept of the plot of the seasons shows a shocking lack of basic understanding of what the plot and motivations of the characters are.

I mean the show has plenty that one can find legitimate issues with. Thats not one of them.

They want to pay their bounty by giving a weapon of potential mass destruction to the Breen, thus destroying the galaxy, as seen in the time jumps last episode. They want to do that so they can escape to the Gamma Quadrant while the Breen take apart the Alpha Quadrant.

Last season the scientist wanted to let the 10-C species bulldoze the Alpha Quadrant so he could get across the galactic barrier to meet his lover in paradise, without caring what happened to trillions of other lives.

It is the same basic plot point. Your analysis is incorrect, Wood.

I think you’re overreacting a little. As always.

This episode was disappointing and fell flat. The return of the ISS Enterprise from the mirror universe was of no interest. I had hoped to possibility see a video log from Kirk, Spock, or another familiar character. Why not explore other Constitution Class Starships like the ISS Lexington, Hood, or Potemkin? Enterprise, Enterprise, Enterprise. (Sigh)

Maybe cause the enterprise is the trek ship pretty much everyone knows even if they are a new trek fan or a casual trek fan or not even a trek fan it is so engrained and intertwined with the name Star Trek that is why they chose to make it the iss enterprise instead of one of the others you mentioned

Because exploring a random ship isn’t the plot of the episode. It’s basically set dressing. Having it be the Enterprise versus a different Connie, gives it a tie to the lead character and part of her family she left behind. That it sorry wise. Another ship wouldn’t have any emotion aspect to the characters. Now production wise its to save a ton of money, as creating a random ship with multiple settings to take use of takes money (if your trying to give it the same level of production that you see for the primary ship). Now of course they could have just created a redress of an existing set to be random alien ship of the week. Those usually aren’t done to the same level of using the existing bridge set of another show. So it serves a small story purpose (ie a setting), it serves a small character purpose *reflection for Burnham, and it serves a production purpose (having high quality set pieces without having to build or do a serious redress and thus saving some money).

Seems rather obvious, to me.

I’m annoyed by what they seem to be doing with Owosekun and Detmer this season. I assume that the actors are absent because Paramount wanted to pay them less, and that’s poor treatment for characters who have been around since practically the beginning of the series.

“ I’m annoyed by what they seem to be doing with Owosekun and Detmer this season. ”

…as opposed to the previous four seasons, when all they did was sit in chairs and look meaningfully at each other?

Which is all Sulu and Chekov do in the average TOS episode. So yes, it’s aggravating for them to be replaced by other actors who are doing the same thing.

I doubt they are paid exorbitantly as recurring guests. It could be similar to what happened in season 4 and Bryce Ronnie Rowe Jr’s absences – he had another gig.

I have a theory that before it was decided that Disco would be cancelled, they were going to replace some of the characters. I think Owosekun and Detmer were going to be replaced, and also that Rayner would become captain and Burnham would go away to do something else. But then that didn’t work out, and so to us it just makes no sense why those two main characters are suddenly missing.

You might be right — I hadn’t considered that revamps due to cancellation might be involved.

Well… It is what it is . This was easily the worst episode of the 5. Tropes galore and really bad plot contrivances.

It feels like the reshoots for when they got the cancelation news are getting dropped in throughout the season. A lot of scenes appear grossly out of place. It feels like they just aren’t even trying anymore to be honest. As flawed as the show has been one thing that never came across among the other problems was a lack of trying.

I am loving the addition of Rayner and the professional Starfleet officer energy he is bringing to the ship. I also liked when he told Burnham the mission was too dangerous for the captain to go on. He is turning out to be a nice counterbalance to the unusual way Discovery has been run as a Starfleet ship after season 2.

I hope he doesn’t get killed off.

Sorry but this was another big fat ‘meh’ for me. This was very very disappointing. Nothing of consequence happened. We learn Mol and Lak backstory basically and it is cool we learn that Lak is a Breen which has been the leading theory since he showed up but it just felt sooo bare overall. Like another Discovery infamous spinning wheel episode where they do the bare minimum to move the plot along but just through a lot of action scenes and inconsequential dialogue to feel like we were getting any real development.

And the biggest elephant in the room (or dimensional wormhole) was the ISS Enterprise. Such a let down. It almost felt like a gimmick or just shoehorned fan service. There was no real reason it needed to be there other than HEY THE ENTERPRISE IS BACK!

Again one of the problems with this show, no real development just there for another connection. Think about what they did with In a Mirror Darkly on Enterprise. They brought in the Defiant as obvious fan service from TOS but the ship had a very vital part to the story. It helped changed the dynamics of the MU. It wasn’t there just for show like this was. And Anthony made a great point the redress felt like a joke. It just felt like an excuse to use the set but little else.

Here it was nothing more than just a backdrop and a really forced one at that. And the whole Saru thing just felt very contrived.

I did like all the Breen stuff though and hopefully they will be the big bad the rest of the season. I still think they should’ve used the Breen as the main villain for SNW instead of the Gorn but I digress.

But yeah this is probably the weakest one for me which is disappointing since last week is my favorite so far. I’m getting a little nervous now. It’s usually the second half of the season this show begins to falls apart but still open minded. Still enjoying it overall but please don’t end up a tedious bore like last season felt once it got to its mid season.

You have one last chance Discovery, make it count!

I never considered the Breen in SNW before, but that’s a cool idea. Yeah, I would’ve liked that much more than the Gorn.

For me it was literally the first Gorn episode I thought the Breen would’ve been a better idea. You get the same type of stories and it doesn’t feel like it’s breaking any canon like the Gorn obviously does. I ranted enough about it but nothing about their appearance on SNW feels remotely canon anymore.

But the Breen could’ve been a great substitute if they wanted a known species not named Klingons and zero canon issues.

Agreed. I always enjoyed the mysterious quality of the Breen. Seems ripe for exploration.

This season is largely working for me. Not as good as last week, but the chase is enjoyable. I have a little trouble buying that Mol and L’ak fell in love so fast. I would have liked to have seen that handled better.. but the slow burn of the plot works because of what they do to sustain individual episodes. Only episode I thought was kind of wasteful was the one on Trill.

That is a big part of the problem, yes. The characters have little chemistry.

The flashbacks took [place over an extended period of time, it wasnt THAT fast

They both felt like outcasts in their family/society, fusing them together like lightning. I had no problem with that as it gave me a Bonnie & Clyde-vibe which is historical.

It’s fine, but the romance piece just isn’t clicking for me.

“ it’s still the best season yet ”

Well, it was for the first two episodes, but the three since then have been a downward spiral. Seasons one and two were much better than this week’s episode and last week’s.

I’ve enjoyed it all except for the Trill episode. I think it’s been fun with a faster pace.. which has helped with a lot of issues that haven’t gone away. Raynor has been a very welcome addition to the cast.

Overall, very entertaining!

For complaints: any other constitution ship would be cool – but I also feel like we don’t know what happens next – there could be some Prime Mirror Universe people out there. & the “hit it!” joke felt like Dad was in the writer’s room.

Otherwise, I the pairings felt very TOS. Rayner is a little bit Serious Scotty when performing a captain’s role. And he took pride in rescuing her – which is feels good.

For me, this season has been 5/5.

Personal Log. Stardate: Today.

Week 4 of not-watching Discovery continues without incident. Opinions gleaned from critics on the latest episode seem to confirm that ‘mid-season malaise’ has been reached right on schedule.

Based on the collective opinion of commentators, there have been a grand total of one episode out of five that qualifies as “actually good”.

In conclusion, it appears the decision to not-watch until the penultimate episode has been vindicated. The plot points I am privy to following the one episode I watched are:

– There is a chase (or ‘The Chase 2.0’) for the Holy Grail / the technological marvel Salmone Jens left behind.

– The Cylon is now the First Officer.

– The Trill and the Robot are no longer together.

All in all, I remain confident that the recap at the beginning of the penultimate episode should be sufficient to fill in all the key points required.

Again, my thanks go out to the resolute souls who manage to endure what I could not.

these threads are for people to talk about the episodes they have seen. CLOSED.

Am I wrong or did the DS9 episode Through the Looking Glass make a reference to the Mirror Spock being on Romulus? Also given all the DS9 cross overs with the Mirror Universe you would think Burnham would have known something more about her brother’s counterpart.

Spock was not mentioned in Through the Looking Glass. We know between Crossover and the new dedication plaque of the ISS Enterprise that he reformed the Terran Empire and was killed for it. Burnham has clearly boned up on a lot of info since coming to this century, but easy to assume the future history of the mirror universe wasn’t part of that. Also, that info could have been lost or been classified.

Wow! The Breen. From CGI to burn victim.

Does anybody think the Commander Rainer is gonna become the Commandant of Starfleet Academy?

Everything involving Book is incredibly tedious. They brought back the ISS Enterprise as a way to resurrect the OG Enterprise in continuity. Perhaps it ends up as the Enterprise Q or whatever, if Saru is in command then ok. Burnham insisting on going on the away mission is diametrically opposed to how TNG dealt with this – e.g., when Riker as captain insisted on boarding the Borg cube in Best of Both Worlds, and his senior officers reminded him his place was on the bridge. I guess everyone got much dumber in the 32nd century, but “dumber” is Discovery’s whole concept.

This post missed an important Easter egg towards the end: Morn was at the bar “Red’s” just like he did on Quark’s on DS9.

We don’t call out or find every little egg, but when the bar was introduced last season we noted the Lurian (Morn’s species), who has been there ever since. We don’t usually do repeated easter egg bits for each episode

Yay! Good seeing the Breen again and their evolved design in the 32nd Century is great.

Boo! Pretty much everything else except Rayner who is the best character in the show.

Imagine they used the Star Trek: Tour set in Trekonderoga for the ISS Enterprise? What a cool surprise that would have been. But nope, we got the generic canon-breaking Discoprise. Not surprised.

I swear if they make the new Enterprise in the 3190s a refitted Constitution, I will facepalm. Just a stupid idea, when you have far superior tech and designs in the future time period. Please don’t, Disco-writers. Bad enough they did it with the Ent-G (one of my few criticisms of the great PIC S3).

Would it have been too much if Dr. Cho was instead Marlena Moreau? Just saying. Kind of like Dax in Jinaal… I feel like they are making all of these deep cuts, why not make them count a bit more to the overall lore, instead of just throwing the ISS Enterprise in with no good reason. Making these deep cuts actually count towards the overall lore might make the obvious (potential) budget cuts, set reuses, etc. be a bit more forgiving. Giving loved characters some finality that affect the course of this in our face galactic scale quest… might make it hit harder? Maybe I’m wrong, I’m sure someone here will think so lol

Overall the episode was okay. I do understand using the ISS Enterprise since this is supposed to be the final season of Discovery it was a nostalgia play and kind of wrap up the history of that ship in regards to the series. But overall it just seems kind of mashed together. Have to see how it ties in with the rest of the season.

I would say this episode along with the one before it were definitely the weakest of the season. They started out with a bang on the first few, and while I know that they tend to slow down in the middle of the season before ramping up the action for the final few, this episode dragged. There were also a few things with the Breen and the Enterprise that seemed a bit confusing:

– The Breen have 2 faces…great! Awesome twist to the species and fantastic to finally be able to see them after all the mystery around them in DS9. If the second face is supposed to be the more evolved one though, why do they need the masks and the suits? Can the more evolved face not breathe in a standard atmosphere? When L’ak and his uncle opened up their masks, they seemed fine, so there’s still quite a bit we don’t know about why they use that whole setup, especially when they’re around their own people

– Does the more evolved form extend past the face?

ISS Enterprise

– The stardate on the commemorative plaque is 32336.6. Popping that number into a couple of online stardate calculators puts that around mid-2355, which would be a few years before the prime universe Enterprise-D was commissioned in 2363. They mentioned that Dr. Cho came back to the Enterprise to hide the clue, so the assumption is that she also placed the plaque there at the same time. The timing doesn’t quite add up though because The Chase took place in 2369. Nobody would have known about The Progenitors or their technology before that, so they were at least 14 years off with the plaque

– If this Enterprise has been caught in extradimensional space since at least 2355, that means it’s been there for over 800 years by the time it’s discovered. How does it still have power?

– It’s been discussed by the Disco production team that the Discovery-era Enterprise was designed so that it could eventually be refit into the TOS Enterprise. The ISS Enterprise was contemporary with Kirk’s version and was seen on screen in TOS in that configuration. Why is the version in this episode the Discovery one? I know the real-world explanation is that it was easier to just re-use that model to align with the sets, but we saw a TOS-era Constitution class USS New Jersey at the Fleet Museum in Picard, so they had that model available to use. Just a bit sloppy

– How did Stamets immediately know that the ship exiting the wormhole was the ISS Enterprise and not a different prime Constitution class ship?

Photon Torpedo

– The solution to hold the wormhole open for the Enterprise to escape was to remove the payload from the torpedoes and replace them with antimatter. Photon torpedoes are matter/antimatter weapons, so this is a little confusing. Are they taking out the matter and just loading them with more antimatter?

I don’t know that it’s been there for 855 years.. not sure if it’s kind of like the Nexus or the black hole in Trek 09, where time does things differently. My guess is, that’s how the people on board were able to integrate into society. Their doppelgängers were long deceased.

Here’s the other thing… if the idea of revolution started with Mirror Spock, and the crew of the Enterprise more or less went along with him.. this is a way of explaining how they didn’t spread the idea to teh rest of the Empire.. they were lost in space and didn’t have much, if any, influence off of their own ship.

Yeah I was wondering that also. It’s possible since it was extradimensional space that it didn’t put them in exactly the same time that they left. Also odd that they said Dr. Cho went BACK to the Enterprise to hide the clue. That’s a pretty risky trip unless the wormhole was more stable back in the 24th century.

I feel like I’m seeing the same episode over and over, what a waste this series is became.

Great episode! This season has really been fantastic so far. The writing has been consistent, the acting of the principals is fantastic, and the pacing has been great.

I really loved the scenes with Rayner in command. That worked so well!

Loved getting the backstory about Moll and L’ak – it really did add layers to their characters and their story. And the reveal that L’ak was a Breen! I never saw that coming! Was great to know more about the most underdeveloped and mysterious alien race in Trek history.

Seeing the ISS Entreprise was a treat! I am guessing it was lost quite some time after mirror Spock took over from mirror Kirk. Nice Easter Egg… better than having some unknown ship in there.

Looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Did anyone else see “Morn” (or one of his species) sitting at the bar in Red’s?

Yes, I did catch that. It was a fun detail.

Seriously, an episode doesn’t go by without at least one eye roll over the touchy feely huggy share my feeling vibe that is shoe-horned into worst places. I wonder what this series would be like if Bryan Fuller had stayed on…