Star Trek Species: A to D / Characters

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Andorians

"It's never been all that hard to figure out what I'm thinking."

Debut: TOS, "Journey to Babel"

Homeworld: Andoria (or Andor)

Andorians are swashbuckling romantics, exhibiting intense dislike for and mistrust of logic. They can often be found harassing their ideological opposites, the Vulcans. Andorians first appeared in the TOS episode "Journey to Babel", and have been seen or mentioned in episodes of subsequent series. They did not rise to prominence until Star Trek: Enterprise, which takes place before the Andorians become one of the founding four races who establish the Federation.

Alien Blood: Their blood is blue.
Alien Sky: Their homeworld orbits a blue, ringed gas giant.
Amazing Technicolor Population: Deep blue skin, usually of the same color, though the Aenar are a little paler.
Beneath the Earth: Most of their cities are built underground, both to get away from the frigid temperatures on the surface and to take advantage of geothermal power.
Bizarre Alien Senses: The antennae on the head of an Andorian helps maintain their sense of balance.
Blue Blood: Andorians are true bluebloods, both in the sociological and literal sense. Their society values reputation and familial honor, to the point of carrying on vendettas over ancestral disputes. Though they aren't known for charity, they are compelled to repay any debts they owe.
Break the Haughty: The Andorians tried their hand at being an imperial power, but are mostly humiliated by Archer's crew and sent packing. By TOS, the Andorians are depicted as conniving diplomats.
Color Motif: Damn near everything about Andorians has blue in it to some degree, from their skin and blood to the planet Andoria orbits to their phaser beams.
Demoted to Extra: After the original series, on the grounds of "we don't do antenna on this show". It wasn't until Enterprise when the Andorians came back into the limelight.
The Empire: Had one in the past, before they joined the Federation, as seen in their primary exploration / defense fleet, the Andorian Imperial Guard.
Exotic Extended Marriage: Andorian marriages are groups of four individuals. This fact is mentioned in passing in The Next Generation and it's left ambiguous as to why they do so; the Expanded Universe of the novels interpreted it as being based on Andorians having Bizarre Alien Sexes — two male-approximate and two female-approximate.
Extra Parent Conception: According to the (possibly non-canon) novels, this is why Andorians have not only four genders, but a need to form spousal units comprising of one member from each gender; all four genders are required to produce offsprng. The gametes of each "male" sex contain one third of the number of chromosomes necessary to produce offspring. During the conception of an Andorian child, the thaan fertilizes a shen's egg with his gamete. The chan then also fertilizes the egg. This produces a fertilized egg that develops into a zygote. The shen then transfers the zygote to the zhen's pouch, where it develops into an embryo. The Andorian fetus is incubated and nourished to term in the zhen's pouch. The zhen does not contribute genetically to offspring. Add in they have a variety of other fertility issues, and this is why Andorians don't appear often; the race is too busy focusing on breeding away from extinction to make much impact on the world stage.
Face–Heel Turn: Following the Burn in roughly 3069, the Andorians left the reeling Federation and teamed up with the Orions to form the Emerald Chain, a huge crime syndicate. By the late 32nd century, the Chain is powerful enough to directly challenge the Federation (which is on the decline) and serves as the Big Bad of Star Trek: Discovery's third season.
Fantastic Racism: Andorians are (yet another) xenophobic race, using the pejorative "pink-skin" to refer to humans and not being too keen on Vulcans either. In the 23rd century onward, they seem to have warmed up to humans, but they're not really seen interacting with Vulcans.
Fire-Forged Friendship: First Contact between Starfleet and the Andorian Imperial Guard is not going to go down in the history books as one of the all time greats for either side. The Enterprise crew blunder into an Andorian raid on a Vulcan monastery / listening post (and the Vulcans should probably be given some suspicious looks for not mentioning their neighbours sooner), which resulted in a ship's captain being taken prisoner and beaten extensively. It took several more run-ins between Archer and Shran based largely around resolving debts to break the proverbial ice, and then preventing a war between Vulcan and Andoria (masterminded by Romulans, natch) to get them to think maybe the humans were worth listening to.
Green-Skinned Space Babe: As you can see in the image, a lot of the women are played suggestively.
Hidden Elf Village: For centuries, the blind and telepathic Aenar were thought to be a myth. An Aenar city was discovered in a remote region that was too cold for even normal Andorians. At first, the Aenar wanted nothing to do with outsiders, not even regular Andorians.
Hot-Blooded: Though their natural environment is almost entirely covered in ice, Andorians are easily agitated and very passionate. This provides something of an interesting contrast to the Vulcans, who come from a desert planet and are known for their cautious demeanor and restraint.
Healing Factor: A detached antenna will grow back after a period of nine months, which can be reduced by applying electrodes and massages to the affected area.
Hyperactive Metabolism: Their heightened metabolism allows them to thrive in extreme climates as cold as minus 28 degrees Celsius, or survive for at least two days under boiling hot conditions. However, it renders them highly susceptible to infection: simply being grazed by a phase pistol beam can lead to a fatal injury. It also makes them fearsome combatants, though sustained physical activity will exhaust an Andorian more quickly than it would a human.
Improbable Weapon User: Andorians settle matters of honor through duels using an ice mining tool called the ushaan-tor, which looks like a cross between a knuckleduster and a fleshing knife.
Named After Their Planet: Played straight — their homeworld is the moon Andoria (or Andor, Depending on the Writer).
The Napoleon: Andorians are short and irritable. They overcompensate for their stature with loud threats and gunfire. Jeffrey Combs modeled his performance as Shran on James Cagney.
Prophet Eyes: The Aenar, a sub-species of the Andorians, are albinos and are Blind Seers and telepathic.
Proud Warrior Race: Service in the Andorian Imperial Guard can strongly influence one's social standing.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: With the Vulcans; ironically ^note the Andorians are the red oni.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised: The Vulcans have trade partnerships with many Andorian colonies, but the fabulous wealth has not been shared. The Vulcans have no interest in Andorian society beyond which palms need to be greased to keep the dilithium flowing. This causes a kerfuffle on Coridan, where a rebel faction attempts an overthrow of the puppet government.
Single-Biome Planet: Andoria is an ice world with no visible seas or plant life.
Telepathy: A subspecies, the Aenar, can communicate telepathically.
Uncertain Doom: In a possible Bad Future glimpsed in ENT "Azati Prime", 50,000 light-years of space have been destroyed by the Sphere-Builders, including at least part of Procyon, the Andorians' home system. Whether their homeworld survived is not stated.
Weaksauce Weakness: Loss of an antenna will badly disorient them, to the point of temporary incapacitation.

Argelians

"The law of Argelius is love."

Debut: TOS, "Wolf in the Fold"

Homeworld: Argelius II

The Argelian race started out as violent and barbaric, but after a Great Awakening which occurred at some point in the 21st century, the culture as a whole embraced both pacifism and hedonism. This has led to Argelius II becoming a very popular port of call within the Federation.

Actual Pacifist: Modern Argelians deplore violence to the point where they seem unable to conceive a punishment for murder without looking back to the pre-Awakening days.
"Arabian Nights" Days: Their culture is clearly meant to evoke this with somewhat stereotypical attire, belly dancers, and of all things their automatic doors are shaped like towers with onion domes on them.
Blue-and-Orange Morality:
- Emotions which might potentially lead to violence are considered highly disgraceful among Argelians.
- Morla's jealousy toward his fiancee's man-izing is considered disgusting by the lady's father and disquieting by Prefect Jaris.
- Jaris is shocked and dismayed that his wife is murdered, but he doesn't get angry.
Cold-Blooded Torture: The pre-Awakening punishment for murder was death by slow torture. That has never been changed, most likely due to a complete lack of violent crime on Argelius until Redjac showed up.
Expert Consultant: A planet of hedonists doesn't lend itself well to organized administration, so they hire outsiders to run the boring stuff.
Human Aliens: Identical to humans. According to Tania Lemani, who played Kara in "Wolf in the Fold", this was enforced by the episode's director:
"They sent me to the makeup department because they wanted to do something extravagant with my look. The first day, they put feathers of different colors all over my face –- on my eyelashes, my eyelids, my nose. Then they took me to the director, Joe Pevney, and he said, 'No. No. Less!' The makeup people kept trying to match his vision for four days, with less and less feathers and fewer colors each time, but Joe kept saying, 'No.' Finally, on the fifth day, I came in with no makeup and he said, 'That's it. That's what I want to see – her face.'"
Numbered Homeworld: Argelius II.
Perfect Pacifist People: Deconstructed. The Argelians have eschewed violence, but at the cost of stigmatizing negative emotions. They have a pleasure-based society, at the cost of not being able to run themselves properly. They are a completely peaceful people, and so are ill-equipped to defend themselves from or even suspect monsters like Redjac. Spock aptly compares them to sheep.
Planet of Hats: Everyone's The Hedonist.
Psychic Powers: Pre-Awakening, the priestesses (and priests?) of the Argelian religion were psychic. Their descendants, at least, retain psychic abilities such as divination, empathy, and psychometry.

Ba'ul

"Those who offer their lives do so so that the Ba'ul can be sustained! So that the rest of us may live in peace and comfort."

Debut: DSC, "The Sound of Thunder"

Homeworld: Kaminar

A xenophobic race of Fish People who became warp-capable in the 2230s, and are fairly new to the galactic stage. They share their homeworld with the the pre-warp Kelpiens, though "share" is perhaps not the right word — they force the Kelpiens, a "prey species", to ritualistically sacrifice themselves to the Ba'ul to preserve the "Great Balance" of their shared homeworld.

Aliens Are Bastards: In "The Sound of Thunder", the Ba'ul did nothing to try and alleviate the tension with Discovery. In fact, every change in the situation, the Ba'ul reacted aggressively. When Discovery tried diplomacy, they reacted with aggression. When the Ba'ul learned that Saru was aboard Discovery, they demanded that Saru be turned over to them. When Pike refused, the Ba'ul sent ten ships to take him back. When Pike still refused, the Ba'ul threatened to detonate the Watchful Eye in Siranna's village, which would kill Saru's sister. After Saru finally turns himself over, the Ba'ul take his sister to prevent others of learning of Vahar'ai's effects. After Discovery forced the Kelpiens to undergo Vahar'ai to show that they weren't a threat anymore, the Ba'ul decide to detonate every Watchful Eye on Kaminar, which would wipe out the Kelpiens. At this point, Pike gave up on diplomacy and decided to play the Ba'ul's game, ordering Discovery to shoot the eyes. Fortunately, the Red Angel was also tired of the Ba'ul's shit, and chose this time to intervene and shut down the Eyes. It should be stressed however that in the centuries following the Battle near Xahea, the Ba'ul, along with Kelpiens, reorganized their council into the Kaminar High Council and became part of the Kelpien and Ba'ul Alliance. This shows that they eventually evolve past this trope.
Alien Sky: Kaminar is pretty Earth-like, but has a thin ring system and two moons.
Attack Drones: They prefer to use small flying drones to do their dirty work rather than interact with the Kelpiens directly.
Cthulhumanoid: They have long tendrils drooping from their face.
Fantastic Racism: They are prejudiced against Kelpiens, because in the past, the Kelpiens would hunt them.
Fish People: They appear to be an aquatic species; one of their strongholds on Kaminar is submerged beneath a large lake and one of their leadership arrives to taunt Saru through what looks like a portal leading to the outside.
Freudian Excuse: Considering how their numbers once dipped down to the low hundreds when the Kelpiens' were on top, perhaps it's not surprising that they are so deeply paranoid and hateful towards them.
From Nobody to Nightmare: They were originally a prey species to the post-vahar'ai Kelpiens, and were nearly rendered extinct before they developed technology that let them take over Kaminar. Now they're a warp-capable species with starships that dwarf those of Starfleet.
Heel–Face Turn: At some point, they do make peace with the Kelpiens, allowing Kaminar to join The Federation.
Humanoid Abomination: Picture Armus, with long fingers and invokedmodern production values... yeah.
Never Be Hurt Again: They were nearly hunted to extinction by the Kelpiens before they managed to use their technological superiority to turn the tide. To that end, the Ba'ul elected to never allow the Kelpiens to develop beyond a certain point where they would be a threat to them, and would cull those that got close.
Paper Tiger: Implied to be this compared to Starfleet as of 2257. Their sentry ships are gargantuan and they're quick to threaten violence against Discovery, but Pike's nonplussed reaction — combined with the fact that the Ba'ul had only discovered warp drive twenty years prior, meaning they must be seriously technologically inferior — suggests that his lone science vessel just might have been a match for them. After Saru emancipates the Kelpiens, the Ba'ul disappear from the narrative entirely, to the point where they don't even bother trying to force Discovery out of their system.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their eyes are red and very creepy looking, though not often visible.

Bajorans

"Such a deeply spiritual culture. But they make a dreadful ale. Don't ever trust an ale from a god-fearing people."

Debut: TNG, "Ensign Ro"

Homeworld: Bajor

The IRA in space!, the Bajorans suffered under the heel of the Cardassians for fifty years. A resistance movement drove off their oppressors, and now the planet is struggling between freedom, religious dogma, and order. The Federation could not intervene in the Cardassion occupation, due to Prime Directive considerations; as such, the Bajorans are in no hurry to become a Federation member. Similar to the Trills, the Bajorans' makeup was the result of a injunction by Rick Berman against marring the beauty of Michelle Forbes. It also simplified the task of filming an entire crowd of Bajorans at once.

Alien Sea: According to Kira, Bajor's oceans have a greenish tint compared to those of Earth.
All There in the Manual: Interestingly, Bajor is literally the only alien planet in the Star Trek franchise to have an official, canon world map. When DS9 began the staff writers realized they'd be sticking with this one planet, not moving from one to the next like in prior shows, so they'd better keep an official map to make sure that they didn't contradict themselves with each new geographical reference. They drew the map on a white board and periodically updated it as the show progressed. Check down a breakdown of the full map at this link.
Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome:
- In the Mirror Universe, these guys are actually handing out assignments to the Klingons and the Cardassians, and have the Terran Empire on the run. They more or less function as The Dominion of that reality.
- In an alternate timeline glimpsed in "Parallels", the Bajorans swapped places with the Cardassians (complete with a Cardassian at Ro Laren's bridge station) and had powerful warships.
Art Shift:
- A rare Live-Action example. In their first appearances, the Bajorans' trademark ridged nose was augmented by a triangular almost-Rubber Forehead (Note Ro Laren above). This was present throughout TNG and the first season of DS9 before being eliminated.
- The exact shape of their nose ridges changes, as well. Both from person to person and for individual Bajorans (ESPECIALLY Kira).
Beware the Nice Ones: A peaceful and deeply spiritual race of scholars, artists, and philosophers, they were brutally conquered by the Cardassians, like dozens of other minor race-of-the-week Rubber Forehead aliens who get crushed under the heel of the major galactic powers. But the Cardassians couldn't break them, and these pathetic monks and farmers tenaciously resisted the Cardassian occupation with guerrilla warfare for 50 years.
Bizarre Alien Biology:
- During pregnancy, Bajoran women suffer from uncontrollable bouts of sneezing (rather than morning sickness). The delivery itself is a tantric experience, with relaxing incense and chimes.
- The Bajoran heart features a horizontal cardiac axis, unlike the Human heart, which has a vertical axis.
Boomerang Bigot: During the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, some Bajorans provided aid to their oppressors, many as a means of survival, although some took a perverse pleasure in grinding their fellow Bajorans underfoot. After the occupation ended, the Bajoran government and people repaid this betrayal by deeming these "collaborators" persona non grata and banishing them.
Crystal Spires and Togas: Bajorans had civilisation when humans were still figuring "pointy end goes into mammoth". They reached a Renaissance-level of social development something like 20,000 years ago, but then pretty much stayed there, focusing on developments in the arts and philosophy rather than aggressively trying to colonize other star systems. This would later come back to bite them badly as it left them unable to defend themselves from their enemies, with much of that rich and vibrant history being wiped away forever.
Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Bajor was first introduced on TNG, where it was always referred to as "Bajora" with the extra letter at the end.
- Initially, Bajoran women were portrayed as all being snappy like Ro and Kira. However, later in the series, Winn, Opaka, Leeta and others were portrayed as genial (even though Winn is evil) despite being Bajoran ladies.
Express Delivery: Vascularization between a Bajoran fetus and the mother is extremely high. Bajoran women carry their babies for only five months.
Fanservice with a Smile:
- Quark's Dabo girls are meant to, well, "distract" customers his bar. Not all Bajoran women are nuns, after all. Interestingly, even these stacked bombshells are quite religious in private.
- The Bajoran religion doesn't practice clerical celibacy, so they don't seem to be puritanical about sex — though it does generally urge modest living and spiritual contemplation.
Fantastic Caste System:
- Bajoran society used to have a strictly divided caste system (called a "D'jarra") which dictated one's profession. The castes were inherited through families and it was impossible to switch out of the caste you were born in. During the Cardassian occupation, the caste system was abandoned so that everyone could devote themselves to the task of fighting off the Cardassians, and the Bajorans did not return to the system after the occupation ended (at the beginning of Deep Space Nine). The Occupation lasted over 50 years, so the caste system hasn't been in place for half a century - this extends to the point that virtually all Bajorans (most of whom grew up after the caste system was abandoned) just consider it a historical artifact with absolutely no bearing on their lives (sort of like how someone with the last name "Smith" doesn't even frequently think that one of their ancestors was probably a blacksmith). Even the religious clergy of the Bajorans make no attempt to re-institute the caste system. It has so little bearing on the lives of modern Bajorans that only one episode even mentioned the former caste system, though it featured as the main plot...
- One episode has a time-traveling Bajoran, claiming to be the Emissary, try to restore the caste system, which would have cost Bajor its chance at Federation membership. Sisko, despite his reluctance to fulfill the Messianic Archetype he had been previously bestowed, eventually challenged the time-traveller for the Emissary title after caste-based discrimination led to violence on the station. We learn that Kira is actually a member of the artisan-caste, forbidden to serve as military officers, so she (temporarily) has to leave her post and take up sculpting (and she's really bad at it).
Hufflepuff House:
- There is still some resentment toward the Federation over their handling of the occupation (or lack therof). In 2369, when Benjamin Sisko was assigned command of DS9, one of his main tasks was to groom Bajor for official membership with the Federation. However, Sisko, acting as Emissary of the Prophets, realized that if Bajor were to join at that time, it would be destroyed by the Federation's many enemies; heeding his warning, Bajor chose to remain neutral.
- According to the Star Trek Novel 'Verse, Bajor finally formally joined the Federation in 2376, the year after the Dominion War ended. The Bajoran Militia was absorbed into Starfleet.
Iconic Item: Their earrings, which serve as a coat of arms for their families (a leftover from the old Bajoran caste system?). It is also a symbol of their faith: a Bajoran cleric could gain information about a person's "pagh," or aura, by holding onto their left ear.
La Résistance: Most major Bajoran characters were part of a protest group against the Cardassians. The others were members of the clergy.
Lady Land:
- Bajor has some shades of this. Their only-functioning military arm, the Bajoran militia, is still predominantly male. However, it's a female Kai who calls the shots. Men are free to run in the papal election, but we never see one win.
- Bajoran woman are also noted for being tough cookies; O'Brien's first question to Sisko when he stepped onboard the station was if he'd ever served with one, cautiously referring to the furious Kira in the upstairs office. In addition, Ro Laren is pretty snappish in a similar way to Kira. Then again, there are lots of polite Bajoran ladies too, including Leeta.
Last-Name Basis: Bajoran tradition places the family name before the given name, in the Asian style.
Morning Sickness: Notable aversion. Bajoran woman are explicitly stated to not get nauseous when they're pregnant. Instead, they suffer from back pain, swelling of the feet, and, most famously, sneezing.
Named After Their Planet: The planet Bajor.
Occupiers Out of Our Country: They fought like wolves to get the Cardassians off Bajor. It took sixty years, but they did it.
Religious Bruiser:
- At times. Though their lack of power means they spend more time getting bruised then bruising. Their faith does give them an extreme tenacity in adverse conditions which other races can find surprising, given that they don't like war and would prefer philosophical/religious contemplation and the arts. The Cardassians found this out the hard way in the forty year long military occupation of Bajor: the resistance had little more than rocks at some points, but they just plain refused to give up. During Dukat's breakdown in "Waltz", he angrily expresses his frustration that no matter what they did, the Bajorans still prayed in their temples for deliverance, and Bajorans - from the prisoner being worked to death in a slave labor camp to the servant girl who cleaned his quarters - still looked at him with defiance in their eyes. Their faith gave them to the strength to keep the Cardassians from breaking them.
- Heck, even the Jem'Hadar compliment the Bajorans: after they slaughtered the New Bajor colony in the Gamma Quadrant, their envoy remarks that they actually fought quite well, "for a religious people" - he was surprised and impressed by how they fought to the bitter end.
- It's insinuated that under different circumstances, the Bajorans could be just as intimidating and barbaric as the Cardassians. See also the Voyager episode "Flesh and Blood", in which the Hirogen developed holographic targets based on images of Alpha Quadrant races that they downloaded. The resident Cardassian, a female programmer, ends up being rehabilitated, while the token Bajoran turns malevolent and nearly initiates a war versus all "organics".
The Revolution Will Not Be Bureaucratized: The Bajorans have endured decades of empty promises; they aren't going to duped by more of the same from the Federation. Once the Cardassians finally packed up and left, the survivors began to show every indication of sliding back into superstition, caste lines, and tribal warfare. Starfleet deploys Ben Sisko and a small platoon to keep the peace, but adding more bureaucracy is hardly what the Bajorans want.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: When they get worked up, they really don't care who pays for another's crime.
Share Phrase: All of them have these catchphrases, particularly the clergy: "Walk with the prophets" and "May the prophets guide you". Both of them are used in a sort of religious way of wishing someone luck, although the former is also used to describe someone who's dead or dying (e.g. "We can't save her, she's walking with the prophets.")
Skeleton Government:
- The Provisional Government was set up after the occupation ended - run by a Council of Ministers, led by a First Minister. Most people expect it to implode right away, leading to firing squads and civil war. Luckily, that didn't happen, but the Kai (a cross between the Pope and, well, planet-wide regent) is still the de facto ruler of the planet. Let's hope a total megalomaniac doesn't get herself elected... wait.
- A three-part DS9 episode, 'Homecoming', 'The Circle', and 'The Siege', featured a story arc about the Provisional Government and its inability to defuse an explosive political revolution.
- The last time it's referred to as the "Provisional" Government was late in Season 3. After that they consistently just call it the "Bajoran government" - by that time it apparently became a more stable, standing government. Season 7 established that its formal name is the "Bajoran Republic". It was helped by Shakaar Edon, a former resistance leader who retired to the Call to Agriculture was called back again to thwart the aforementioned megalomaniac Kai's power play to also be the First Minister by running and winning the office for himself, in a vein somewhat similar to George Washington.
Space Elves: Subverted. While they are mystically minded they don't have a superior air to them. However, the Bajorans are a very religious people, and can get pretty haughty about anything that doesn't quite gel with their beliefs (this is very individual though; characters like Kai Winn get haughty all the time, while others such as Kira don't so much).
Space Jews:
- Although the writers for DS9 stated that the Bajorans were modeled after any number of oppressed cultures throughout the ages, they do have a lot of parallels with Jewish history. For one, they have one of the oldest civilizations in the Alpha Quadrant; there's also that bit about managing to reclaim their spiritual homeland after centuries of languishing under foreign domination.
- The writers in TNG said that at the time of their introduction, one of their stronger influences was actually the Palestinians - the idea that there were refugee camps of Bajorans who had fled their occupied territories. This idea faded by DS9. Even then, though, the TNG writers cited that they could just as equally be Poland under the Nazis, Colonial Africa under the Europeans, or Korea occupied by Japan.
The Theocracy: Bajor isn't technically supposed to be a theocracy, as it has a secular government run by an elected First Minister. However, the Kai (essentially the Pope) has considerable influence over the people, and Kai Winn took it to its peak by becoming interim First Minister after the previous one's death and tried to make it permanent. Fortunately, it didn't stick.
Touch Telepathy: Bajoran spiritualists can sense the nature of a person's pagh by grasping their ear. This seems to be about the limit of their power, and it's not clear if other Bajorans can do it.
We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: The Cardassians forced the Bajorans to strip their planet down at gunpoint. Perversely, the multitude of deaths within the mines are well documented because the Cardassians are too anal-retentive not to keep meticulous records.
Written by the Winners: There's a very effective voiceover where Picard talks about the achievements of the ancient Bajorans which plays over a pan across the ruins of a settlement where they are now barely reaching subsistence level. On Cardassia, they teach that Bajor was a backwards planet that never accomplished anything of note until the Occupation taught them to straighten up and fly right.

Barzans

Debut: TNG, "The Price"

Homeworld: Barzan II (or Barzan)

An Alpha Quadrant race that's largely been dependent on others for survival. The discovery of a wormhole in their system almost gave them something to contribute to galactic affairs until the wormhole proved to be unstable and useless.

Achilles' Heel: Barzans require breathing devices to survive in M-class environments. Damaging the breathing device will incapacitate a Barzan.
Alien Blood: Black in color.
Metal-Poor Planet: Their homeworld is very resource-poor, and they are largely dependent on outsiders for their survival. Poverty is woven into their culture, and it is expected that individuals make sacrifices for their families.
Named After Their Planet: The Barzans, from Barzan II.
Numbered Homeworld: Barzan II.
Rubber-Forehead Aliens: They have some V-shaped ridges on their foreheads, and some smaller ones above their eyebrows, but otherwise they look like humans.

Benzites

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/benzite_trek_1012.jpg

Debut: TNG, "Coming of Age"

Homeworld: Benzar

The spear carriers of the galaxy, Benzites are usually seen pottering around in the background in each iteration of Trek. Two of them had speaking roles in TNG, and a Benzite redshirt did what they do best in DS9. They soon lost the breathing apparatus, and even their skin color has been subject to change, ranging from amphibian green to purple.

Cannon Fodder: Benzar was one of the Federation planets to fall to the Dominion, along with Betazed. However, the Benzites had the misfortune of being 'liberated' by the Romulans, who had joined the war effort. Constable Odo expressed doubt that the Romulans would give it back, considering their extreme reluctance to surrender any territory they acquire. Fortunately, the Treaty of Bajor gave them back to the Federation.
Control Freak: Benzites are highly meticulous, a characteristic reflected in their regulations, which states that no officer on a Benzite ship is to report on anything without providing a full detailed analysis and solution. This got under the Enterprise crew's skin when an exchange student kept overstepping his bounds. (TNG: "A Matter Of Honor")
Depending on the Writer: Each script or novel seems to have its own take on Benzite physiognomy. The Sky's the Limit short story "Acts of Compassion" states that Benzites breathe in a gas heavy in chlorine, while the Pocket DS9 novel Devil in the Sky claims their blood is both orange and rich in mercury and platinum.
Fish People: The Creature From the Black Lagoon, if he enlisted in the Navy.
Named After Their Planet: Their homeworld is called Benzar.
A Wizard Did It: Mike Okuda said in the Deep Space Nine Companion that "there's been some advances in Benzite technology!" meaning they don't use breathers in later episodes.

Betazoids

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lwaxana_majel_8331.jpg

"Humans constantly think one thing and say another."

Debut: TNG, "Encounter at Farpoint"^note

Homeworld: Betazed

Betazoids are mostly indistinguishable from humans, the only visible difference being their jet-black irises. Betazoids are willfully empathic and telepathic, able to sense the thoughts and emotions of many intelligent beings (including some non-organic ones).

All Women Are Lustful: Or rather, all of their women become lustful at one point in their lives— When Betazoid women reach a certain age, their libidos increase temporarily (usually the libido quadruples, but occasionally it increases by more).
Beware the Silly Ones:
- Betazoids are a bit comedic (such as their weddings involving nudity), but they quickly become unstable if their empathic abilities are hampered in any way, as it is their primary mode of communication. Tam Elbrun was born without the ability to filter out unwanted thoughts, which ended up botching a sensitive First Contact and getting 47 Starfleet officers killed. Even Counselor Troi unraveled when her empathic powers temporarily switched off. (TNG, "Tin Man", "The Loss")
- The only Betazoid member of Voyager's crew, Lon Suder, had no empathic or telepathic abilities, perhaps explaining his innate desire to kill things. He joined up with Chakotay's Maquis unit, but was ostracized when he proved too violent even for them.
Bourgeois Bohemians: They don't keep pets and prefer shuttle travel to mounted animals because they empathize too much with them.
The Empath: Children who are only part-Betazed, like Deanna, still have the ability to sense emotions.
Emotion Control: Mature Betazoids (i.e. those who are elderly or on the old side of middle age) sometimes suffer from Zanthi fever, which causes them to lose control over their empathy and project their own emotions onto everyone around them. Lwaxana Troi, who was infatuated by Odo, unwittingly unleashed amorous mayhem on Deep Space Nine as she caused the people she interacted with to develop random romantic obsessions with each other. Whether or not Betazoids can do this on purpose is unclear.
Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Downplayed. All Betazoids shown onscreen have dark hair and slightly-paler-than-average skin. Most of them aren't eerie, though, although a few use their telepathy in creepy ways or are otherwise creepy (like the murderer Suder).
Expy: Betazoids are stand-ins for the Deltan race who were a race of empathic, sexually promiscuous Federation members. Beta/Delta being just a sign of how the naming went. They were a little much for a family friendly franchise like Star Trek at the time, though, so they had the sexuality element ramped down while Troi was the empathic one because she was a Half-Human Hybrid.
Exotic Eye Designs: Betazoids have black irises.
Matriarchy: Stated in "Angel One" to be one, although by all evidence they seem to be a very mild example.
Mauve Shirt: The entire planet was seized by Jem'Hadar during the Dominion War (offsceen, mind you). The writers batted around the idea of Vulcan being occupied, but decided against it. Ironically, J.J. Abrams would later blow Vulcan to pieces.
Mind over Manners: Due to their telepathy, Betazoid culture embraces honesty to a point considered rude by other cultures, namely humans. Lwaxana Troi, a particularly strong-willed Betazoid, commented on her befuddlement at the Human practice of fibbing to spare others' feelings or for politeness' sake.
Mrs. Robinson: A Betazoid woman's sex-drive quadruples (or occasionally increases even more) when they reach a certain age, meaning that half of the population of Betazed consists of cougars.
Naked People Are Funny: In Betazoid wedding ceremonies, all participants (bride, groom, and guests) are traditionally nude. This is played for laughs, and is embarrassing for Picard.
(grumpily) "I'll be in the gym."
Named After Their Planet: The planet Betazed.
New-Age Retro Hippie: Their culture greatly resembles the New Age movement on Earth, to obnoxious degrees.
Poke in the Third Eye: Tam Elbrun had this going on almost all of the time, as he could not shut out the thoughts of others. Especially because of the range of their telepathy, Betazoids can get overwhelmed by strong thoughts or emotions.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Betazoids were inspired by the Deltans from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Their similarities include the Betazoid species having been named after a letter of the Greek alphabet, the Betazoids' relatively very open attitude toward sexual activities, and the species' ESP.
Telepathy: Notably, Betazoid telepathy (and empathic sense) works across very long distances. For example, they can sense the thoughts of beings on a planetary surface while they are on a starship in orbit. This often became a Story-Breaker Power and the main reason full-blooded Betazoid characters appeared irregularly at best.
Will Not Tell a Lie: Betazoids are generally honest (although Mrs. Troi does say untrue things for joke purposes, but she doesn't see the point of telling lies.)

Bolians

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bolian_3923.jpg

Debut: TNG, "Conspiracy"

Homeworld: Bolarus (or Bolias)

Bolians evolved from porpoise-like mammals. Some of them have hair, though this is rare, and probably has to do with continuity goofs. Bolians of both sexes (bald or not) are generally cheerful and noted for their Headbutt of Love. Oddly, they appear in Trek mostly as cooks and as servants; a running gag is the Enterprise-D employing a bald Bolian as its hairdresser. They're not all small-timers though; the Bank of Bolias is huge and a serious competitor for the Ferengi.

Alien Blood:
- Like Vulcans, their blood is blue because it uses hemocyanin to carry oxygen. However, attempting to give a transfusion between the two is not possible without extensive genetic modification of the blood sample.
- Furthermore, Bolian body chemistry is hinted to be somewhat reactive, to say the least. Apparently, intimacy with a Bolian can result in some adverse side-effects for humans, and then there's that whole thing about their eating habits that would necessitate strong stomach acids and saliva. There's also a Running Gag about how important it is for Bolians to have access to good plumbing. Ick.
Big Fun:
- The Klingons have Honor, the Changelings have Order, the Ferengi have Profit. The Bolians' Hat? Frivolity. Nearly every Bolian we meet represents some highly elastic enterprise. Accordingly they're generally depicted as jolly, and tend to be a bit pudgy.
- They are not, however, without avarice: one Bolian publishing agent exploited the legal non-status of holograms as sentient beings to commit intellectual property theft.
Bizarre Alien Biology: They have a cartilaginous lining on their tongue (Which mean they have protection against even the most corrosive of acids.
Divergent Character Evolution: They were concieved as cost-saving replacements for the Andorians, but most of their culture (from what little we see, and most drawn from expanded universe works) embraced their identity as, essentially - humanoid dolphins.
Early-Installment Weirdness: The first female Bolian seen in TNG (pictured above) had greenish hair. All subsequent appearances of the species, female or otherwise, are completely bald.
Extreme Omnivore: Some of the meat in their traditional cuisine includes rotten meat.
Foreign Queasine: Bolian cuisine is regarded as being quite tasty, but the preparation of some dishes involve the use of rotten meat and they're capable of eating foods that may be regarded as toxic to some species.
Hidden Depths: Despite their prominent portrayal as service industry workers, the Bolians are apparently a major economic force in the Alpha Quadrant.
Hufflepuff House: They're ubiquitous during the '90s Trek era, implied to manage most of the Federation's trade wealth, allied with the Romulans, and are friendly rivals to Ferengi economically but never have any real focus or major recurring characters to call their own - something that even René Auberjonois once noted as unusual. They're generally used as token aliens in crowd shots.
Intelligent Gerbil: Though originally simply "Andorians without antennae", later appearances in books and comics went hard with the idea that their society is basically that of bipedal terrestrial dolphins - they are somewhat greedy, extreme extroverts, extremely sexual and polyamorous and they live in cities under the sea.
Named After Their Planet: Bolarus, or Bolias.
Proud Merchant Race: To the point where they can go toe to toe with the Ferengi, the race whose entire thing is being merchants. That said, their hat seems to be more focused on the provision of services: finance, hospitality, and the like.
Sapient Cetaceans: What they evolved from and still act like.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- Apparently Tracey Tormé had wanted to include an Andorian in the first season of TNG, but was informed by Rick Berman that, “We don't do antennae on this show.” As such, the Bolians seem like a compromise: blue, antennae-less aliens.
- To a lesser degree, their eventual role in expanded canon is to replace the Terran Cetaceans Crewmembers that were supposed to be a large part of the Federation in Next Generation and beyond - a concept that was scrapped due to budgetary and animal welfare constraints and only ever eventually made canon by Lower Decks.

Borg

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Debut: TNG, "Q Who?"

The Greater-Scope Villain of the Star Trek universe, the Borg are a collection of species that have been robotocized into mindless drones by the Collective. A pseudo-race, dwelling in the blackness of the Delta Quadrant, the Borg use nanoprobes and cybernetics to "assimilate" beings into their collective and wire them to the hive mind. The Borg have no ultimate goal other than to achieve "perfection", assimilating the unique traits of other species and discarding what they don't need. They represent a dark side of the Federation's collectivism.

The Borg are considered the "most lethal enemy" of the Federation and they are by far the most dangerous recurring adversary in the franchise. They are the dominant power of the Delta Quadrant and totally outstrip all other major powers in terms of technological sophistication and military might, to the point that entire fleets of starships are required to stand a chance against even a single Borg Cube. That they do not consider the other races to be important or threatening enough to put serious effort into subjugating is likely the only reason the rest of the galaxy is not completely under their heel.

Above Good and Evil: The Borg sincerely think they're doing you a favor. After all, once they reach perfection, so will you... once they've "improved" you.
Adaptive Ability: The Borg are usually able to adapt to any weapon or defense used against them, given enough time. However, as First Contact showed, sheer volume of fire and attrition can and will overcome their adaptations.
Always a Bigger Fish: Revealed in Picard that even the Changelings—and thus the Dominion as a whole—are genuinely afraid of the Borg as Vadic and her renegade cohorts prove with their sheer hesitancy in working with them despite their shared goal... given how even the Q show restraint when around the Borg, the Changelings have every reason to be fearful.
Always Chaotic Evil: Possibly the straightest example in the series; all Borg are single-minded assimilators who are only concerned with achieving "perfection". Justified, as they are all subject to a singular will that's only interested in advancing itself.
And I Must Scream: Going by dialogue from across the series, a person's individual identity is subsumed not only by the implants, but the sheer force of the entire collective, making it pretty impossible to fight the process. A trio of rogue drones compared it to a crowd screaming in their ear.
Anthropomorphic Personification: The Borg Queen is designed both in and out of universe to serve this purpose, outright claiming "I am the Collective." Confusingly she claims to not really lead the collective while still clearly serving as its leader and at least one of them has a backstory and remembers being assimilated as a child, so it's a bit muddy.
Arch-Enemy: To the Federation in the 24th century, on an especially personal level to Jean-Luc Picard. They're also even more antagonistic towards Kathryn Janeway.
Arm Cannon: A rare departure for Trek, as most species use handheld weapons. However, the drones are almost never seen using them; there are very few situations where drones could not overwhelm their targets through brute force or sheer numbers. Non-canon licensed works do depict Borg using these if those two strengths are countered.
Art Evolution: Up until First Contact, Borg deflector shields looked like actual shields, and were transparent. After, they seem like an energy field surrounding the body, and became a pale green. The drones themselves take on a more sinister appearence. Their implanted components look more invasive and less like bolted-on additions, and their dry pallor in TNG changes to a mottled, almost slimy-looking grey-green skin tone.
The Assimilator: They move from world to world, taking "technological and biological distinctiveness" and adding it to themselves.
Assimilation Backfire:
- Their interconnected nature makes them susceptible to synthetic pathogens, which have been used against them more than once. They swiftly remove infected drones or vessels from the Collective, either by self-destructing them or simply disconnecting them and leaving them behind — they can always make more, after all.
- According to Seven of Nine, the Borg also refuse to assimilate pre-warp or Insufficiently Advanced Aliens (like the Kazon) as doing so would detract from their own perfection. They'll only make an exception if said species has an unusual biological or cultural quirk which makes up for it.
- Their attempts to assimilate Species 8472, who are immune to their assimilation, backfired when they started attacking the rest of them.
Attack Its Weak Point: Some drones can be disabled simply by yanking the sparking cables from their necks. One tug and they're down for the count. The Borg's defense against this cunning strategy varies, though it's generally unwise to pick a melee fight with cyborgs several times stronger than humans.
Bald of Evil: Borg typically do not have hair, and they all want to assimilate you.
Batman Can Breathe in Space: Their implants can sustain them in a vacuum for at least a short while.
Bee People: Low-level mooks are "drones", and their commander is euphemistically called the Queen.
Beyond Redemption: A constant question throughout the franchise is — in spite of the Borg's repeated atrocities and the actions — whether or not the Borg as a whole were irredeemable and deserved to be eradicated. Any time the option to hurt them utterly was presented as the sheer nature of their beliefs makes it hard to question if they are in earnest evil or simply incapable of understanding the magnititude of the horror they unleash on other species and thus the option to eliminate them as an earnest threat was stayed every time. It wasn't until the alternate Janeway's neurolytic pathogen was introduced that the true nature of the Borg is made abundantly clear to the universe at large, as shown in the final season of Star Trek: Picard where the Borg, when faced with the possibility of not achieving their perfect unified utopia through their tried and true method, rather than adapt and seek assistance^note, seek to become an Omnicidal Maniac instead and purge any redeemable notion from themselves and thus, when the option to end the Borg once and for all is again presented, no one is crying over the decision to end them for good.
Big Bad: They are among the most popular villains in Star Trek.
- In The Next Generation, they are the main threat as of The Best of Both Worlds.
- Among the movies, the Borg became the direct villains fo Star Trek: First Contact.
- In Voyager, they take over the role from the Kazon half-way through.
- In the final season of Picard, they serve as the true villain behind the renegade Changelings and thus are the Final Boss of the entire TNG era of Star Trek.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Morality is a completely moot issue for the Borg. The only thing the Collective is interested in is achieving what it considers "perfection". Assimilation is merely a means to an end in that regard. When outright told that other races don't want to be assimilated, they either don't care, or can't comprehend why.
Locutus: Why do you resist? We only wish to raise the quality of life for all species.
Worf: I like my species the way it is.
Locutus: A narrow vision. You will become one with the Borg. You will all become one with the Borg.
Body Horror: Apart from everything else about assimilation (loss of identity, body parts, hair), Borg implants can also cause severe skin irritation. So not only is your free will crushed out of you, you'll spend the rest of your life with a nasty itch.
Breakout Villain: With how iconic they become to franchise and how much of an impact they had, it's easy to forget that in TNG they only appeared in four episodes, and two of those dealt with a rogue drone and a splinter faction.
Bystander Syndrome: Individual drones won't engage intruders unless the intruders prove themselves hostile in some fashion.
Catchphrase: "We are the Borg", "You will be assimilated", "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own", "Lower your shields and surrender your ships", and, of course, "Resistance is futile."
Characterization Marches On:
- When the Enterprise first encountered the Borg, Q didn't say anything about the assimilation of the crew, just their technology. It wasn't until "Best of Both Worlds" when the Borg express a desire to bring others into their collective, whether they liked it or not. By the time Seven of Nine showed up, it appeared the writers had abandoned the idea of the Borg as a biological species unto themselves; they seemed to be wholly composed of other species they had assimilated.
- Their earliest appearances had the Borg not just take people and technology, but also entire cities, which they scooped wholesale out of the ground. After "Best of Both Worlds", the concept was just quietly dropped, with the previous "excavations" retconned to include assimilation of the city's inhabitants. Likewise, the "nursery" mentioned in "Q Who?" was retconned into a "maturation chamber" which is essentially a Rapid Aging device to bring assimilated children to full productivity in a greatly reduced amount of time.
- Their signature color in The Next Generation was pale blue; First Contact changed it to a Sickly Green Glow which was upheld in Voyager and Picard.
Clingy Costume: Hope you like black, nailed and bolted to your skin and skeleton.
Creative Sterility: The Borg have become so reliant on assimilation that their capacity to improvise and innovate has atrophied to the point of complete absence. Against Species 8472, they couldn't adapt because they couldn't scan or assimilate any aspect of their technology, and so the Borg simply couldn't conceive of a way to defeat their foe without Voyager's help. This is averted with a vengeance by the time of the final season of Picard when they make their re-emergence in over a decade—having evolved their thinking to come up with a truly devious scheme through a creative use of their own technology—to take over the entire Federation that works before their enemies realized what they were even doing, going as far as to not assimilate their reluctant allies in the renegade Changelings to fully exploit their ability for personal agency to do the maximum possible damage to Starfleet before making their move. Then again, they were using technology that they had previously deployed in Best of Both Worlds to enact a slightly modified version of the plan from Dark Frontier.
Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Especially when said cybernetics are optimized for the job. Once someone is a Borg, they don't have individuality or morality.
Cyborg: The Borg are humanoids with cybernetic parts.
Deflector Shields: The built-in, personal variety. Made even nastier in that they can adapt to threats just like the rest of their technology.
The Determinator: When the Borg want to assimilate something, whether it's an individual, a ship, or an entire species, they will stop at nothing and pay any price in drones or ships to do it. Best summed up by Q in their introductory episode:
Q: You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains; they regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken, your reserves will be gone... they are relentless.
Digital Abomination: The Collective itself. On paper it's a Hive Mind composed of the collective knowledge of its assimilated population, but on-screen evidence seems to suggest that it has a will of its own beyond the drones, with a desire to endlessly conquer and assimilate new worlds and species Horde of Alien Locusts-style. The existence of the Borg Queen muddles things further; which she usually acts as an Anthropomorphic Personification of the Collective, she has been seen contradicting its instructions on occasion, and at one point admits to Seven of Nine that she was herself assimilated from another species long ago. Whatever its true nature, what is known is that the Collective is ancient, highly adaptive, and possesses the knowledge and experience of thousands of assimilated species, making it by far the most dangerous entity in the known galaxy.
The Dreaded: Starfleet considers them the most dangerous potential threat to the Federation due to their advanced technology, relentless tactics, and no-negotiations mentality. The only other faction that approaches this level of threat is the Dominion.
Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Borg are the most powerful and feared faction in the galaxy, without really being a true race at all. The Borg assimilate anything which they believe will aid in their goals, sapient beings included. Snippets of dialog indicate that some species are more suited to certain roles than others, however; it is unlikely that they would let a frail species, such as an Elaysian, waltz into combat as an attack drone. Thus far, the only species the Borg have been shown to outright shun are the Kazon, deeming them so inferior that assimilating them would degrade the Borg.
Even Evil Has Standards: The Kazon are the only species the Borg refuse to assimilate. As Seven of Nine explained to Neelix; the Kazon's biological and technological distinctiveness lacked anything of value and would actually detract from the Collective's pursuit of perfection.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Despite the races they encounter attempting to resist assimilation, the Borg are so Obliviously Evil that they cannot grasp why.
Evil Counterpart: To the Federation. In some ways, they make for a better comparison than the Dominion, as they aspire to being a uniform society under one banner, rather than an empire of subjects. Unlike the Dominion or Federation however, the Borg do not operate under any code of conduct; what morality they possess considers the assimilation of a starship's crew as equal to the assimilation of an entire race. Moreover, any race that is subject to assimilation loses all semblance of identity and becomes no more than part of a single, homogeneous whole.
Evil Is Burning Hot: The Borg like to operate with a constant temperature of 39.1 °C (102.38 °F), with 92% humidity. No in-universe explanation of this is given, but there are theories; it may represent a working average of body temperatures of the various assimilated species on board. This would allow a drone to shut down any self-regulation of body temperature except when outside this environment, thus conserving energy, playing right into the Borg Collective's hat of ruthless efficiency. Furthermore, Borg-assimilated Earth had high concentrations of methane and carbon monoxide, the two strongest greenhouse gases. If those are byproducts of their normal planetary operations, it stands to reason that they would optimize themselves for the ecological conditions they produce.
The Evils of Free Will: They genuinely believe that they are bettering the lot of other species by trying to absorb them.
Evil Wears Black: All Borg wear black body armor.
Expy: They have notorious similarities to the 1960s-created Doctor Who antagonist species the Cybermen (creepy hive-minded cyborg humanoids who assimilate other cultures by force and are sometimes treated like techno-zombies). This was highlighted in the IDW spin-off mini-series Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation², which crossed over the two franchises with a Villain Team-Up between the Cybermen and the Borg, and reversed in the 2010s Doctor Who episode "Nightmare in Silver", in which the Cybermen were given abilities much closer to the Borg's, such as rapid cyber-conversion via nanotech infection, and adaptation to weapons.
Eye Scream: Common to the assimilation process is scoping out (at least) one of the victim's eyes and replacing it with a Borg implant. Picard's assimilation into Locutus provides the page image.
Fate Worse than Death: Assimilation. Between the Body Horror and Loss of Identity, it's no surprise that many would rather die in agony than be taken alive by the Borg.
Flanderization: Assimilation wasn't as huge a part of their character in TNG as it is now. Turning Picard into a drone required personally abducting him and implanting him with Borg cybernetics. After Star Trek: First Contact, assimilating lifeforms become their main form of attack, where Borg drones would inject other beings with nanoprobes that would turn them into more Borg drones.
The Fog of Ages: According to Seven of Nine, the Borg suffer from this, as their memory from over 700 years ago is beginning to fragment. This explains how the entire race suffers from a severe case of Multiple-Choice Past.
From Nobody to Nightmare: According to the Vaadwaur, the Borg only had a handful of systems to their name in the 15th century. By the 24th, they control a huge swathe of the Delta Quadrant and are widely considered the galaxy's Greater-Scope Villain.
God Save Us from the Queen!: The Borg Queen is the leader of all Borg, and, like you'd expect from the leader of a group of people who take away your individuality, she's bad news.
Greater-Scope Villain: In TNG and subsequent shows, they are shown to be the greatest threat to the Federation, and to the Galaxy at large. Note that the majority of Captains (excluding Kirk and Archer) have had personal vendettas against the Borg Collective: Picard was raped physically and mentally; Sisko lost his wife in the infamous defeat at Wolf 359; and Janeway is noted for her numerous Devil's bargains with the Queen. Additionally, the Borg also served as this during Star Trek: Generations, as they were responsible for the Start of Darkness of the film's Big Bad, Dr. Tolian Soran, by destroying his homeworld and killing his family. Soran would ultimately be the person who killed James T. Kirk, making the Borg responsible for Kirk's death in a roundabout way.
Hell Is That Noise: Borg cubes give off a constant low mechanical groaning sound when in transit, unlike the more gentle "woosh" of a Federation ship.
Hive Drone: The fate of assimilated victims, although a drone's individuality is merely suppressed, rather than being destroyed or absent, something most explicitly demonstrated in the Voyager episode "Unimatrix Zero". Drones such as Hugh and Seven of Nine, who are separated from the Collective, are capable of regaining individuality with varying degrees of success.
Hive Mind: Each drone makes up part of a collective whole.
Hive Queen: The Borg Queen, who claims to personify the Collective rather than lead it... but also claims to lead it at the same time. The characters aren't quite sure how this works either. There may be more than one, or else multiple bodies for the same mind; being killed in her first appearance doesn't seem to have slowed her down much (especially since it implies she already died once before).
Horde of Alien Locusts: Frequently characterized as this. They assimilate any technology or life forms they deem worthy of being added to the Collective, which typically includes entire civilizations and biospheres.
Horrifying the Horror: They seem to be the one mortal race that Q takes seriously. When his son Junior antagonizes the Borg for his own entertainment (just as he did to the Enterprise-D crew), Q chews him out, even yelling at him, "Don't provoke the Borg!"
Hostile Terraforming: Unlike the eco-conscious Federation, Borg tech isn't terribly dolphin-safe. We see a brief glimpse of a post-Borg Earth in Star Trek: First Contact, which provides the page image.
Implacable Man: Part of what makes them so scary is that once they've adapted to your weapons, even the lowliest drone is virtually unstoppable.
The Juggernaut: They are far and removed the most powerful (corporeal) faction in the galaxy. You may be able to pick a few off, but the collective as a whole will eventually adapt and keep relentlessly coming until they overwhelm you.
Keystone Army:
- Killing a Borg Queen will also kill any drones directly linked to her, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact, but it's downplayed in that the Collective as a whole endures and will simply create a new one to replace her. In the Voyager finale, Admiral Janeway manages to get around this by inflicting an Assimilation Backfire on the Queen directly, the effects of which propogates across the entire Collective, destroying virtually all of it overnight. The Borg do manage to activate one more Queen before the collapse, but she's effectively the Last of Her Kind and her death in Picard appears to mark the end of the Borg threat forever.
Killed Off for Real: The ending of Star Trek: Picard renders the original Borg Collective effectively extinct^note, through a combination of Janeway's virus deteriorating them down to a single cube on the brink of death and its destruction at the hands of the Enterprise-D seals the deal.
Knight of Cerebus:
- A case could be made for the discovery of the Borg changing the tenor of the entire franchise. Before they were discovered, the Federation was in a state of peace not unlike the Pax Romana. Local threats like the Romulans and Cardassians were matched by Starfleet, and there was a general sense that they were ready for anything. After the devastating and devastatingly short conflict in "The Best of Both Worlds," the Federation came to realize how complacent they'd become, and the repercussions would echo throughout TNG, DS9 and VOY.
- Here's one species whom Captain Picard absolutely cannot negotiate or reason with. He might as well be lecturing at a brick wall.
  Borg Cube, speaking as one: We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
  Picard: Impossible! My culture is based on freedom and self-determination!
  Borg: Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.
  Picard: We would rather die.
  Borg: Death is irrelevant.
- The Borg are perhaps the only mortal race that the Q are wary of provoking.
- It bears mentioning that despite the massive Villain Decay they went through in Voyager, they still presented a great threat and garnered plenty of Oh, Crap! moments in all their appearances.
- The Enterprise episode "Regeneration," which is about Borg drones from First Contact waking up in the 22nd century, plays out very much like a horror movie as the Borg steamroll everything in their path and the heroes struggle to find a way to stop them.
- During the third season of Picard, the Changeling conspiracy — while undoubtedly horrific — is treated with occasional levity and a sureness that they can overcome the renegade Dominion faction... but the moment the true Borg Collective are revealed to be their Man Behind the Man and the true villain of the final season of the series, almost all of the levity immediately evaporates for the remainder of the series as the single greatest adversary that the Federation ever faced immediately takes charge with their most calamitous plan yet that goes to show, even midst all the Villain Decay they've suffered over the decades, the Borg are undisputedly The Dreaded of the entire franchise with no contest.
Lightning Bruiser: Borg ships are bigger, tougher and faster than those of the Alpha Quadrant races. In their debut episode, a Cube that's had a huge chunk blown out of it by the Enterprise-D later outruns that starship with ease... while continuing to regenerate at its normal pace. On two occasions Earth has only narrowly avoided assimilation at the hands of a single Cube.
Logic Bomb: In The Next Generation, a proposed weapon against the Borg was to send them a geometric figure, the analysis of which could never be completed, and which would, therefore, eat more and more processing power until the entire Borg hive mind crashed. Obviously the Borg don't use floating point numbers.
Logical Weakness: Averted and played straight.
- Averted when it comes to their ships. Cubes have no visible weak points: no engines, gun turrets, sensors, shield projectors, or any components at all that are identifiable out of the morass of ductwork and pipes. There are some unique components such as nodes that connect the ship and its crew to the greater Collective, but they're invisible from the outside and resistant to scanners. Cubes are also optimized to engage in combat from any direction, as any side can act as a weapons battery.
  - Played straight with their Adaptive Ability. They can adapt weapons but they don't become immune to them. In First Contact a Borg cube being faced with a massive volume of fire from a large fleet of Federation ships, using weapons it had already adapted to, started to take damage thanks to the sheer volume of fire and length of time it spent in battle. Species 8472's genocide of the Borg indicated that some weapons are too powerful to adapt to.
- Played very straight when it comes to how their species conducts itself in combat. When the Borg encounter alien society, their only instinct is to assimilate it (either by way of its technologies, its cities, or its lifeforms). Through doing so they acquire everything they need to know about the race, including information on their weapons, defenses, and strategies. Works fine for most enemies, but falls apart when they attack Species 8472, whose life-forms and bio-organic ships are entirely immune to all forms of assimilation. Since the Borg have only the most basic methods of studying alien races without assimilating them, this means they're stuck with zero information on their enemy once the inevitable counter-attack happens. By the time Voyager gets involved, Species 8472 are curb-stomping the Borg so hard they're in danger of mass extinction.
- Their drones are immune to energy based attacks once they've adapted, and can survive in vacuum, but their fleshy parts are as vulnerable to normal maladies as anything, so provided someone's strong and quick enough, they can be done in with a Neck Snap or any sufficiently-strong blow from a physical weapon like a blade or club. Although they're lightly armored, this even extends to (long-obsolete) projectile weapons. Kill the flesh parts, the Borg dies.
Mad Libs Catchphrase "I am X of Borg. Y is irrelevant. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
Meat-Sack Robot: All of the Borg are these being that they are reverse cyborgs. They have assimilated various species (via injecting Nanomachines into their victims) into its AI's unifying conscious in order to turn their victims into Meat Sack Robots.
Mechanical Abomination: Borg cubes are a maze of redundant systems with no individual piece standing out from than the whole; if a Borg ship is 78% damaged it can continue to function effectively. They're also HUGE (roughly the mass of Manhattan and twelve times bigger than a Galaxy-class starship), and able to overtake the Enterprise-D at Warp 9. Borg spheres are smaller, at around 600m long, but still pose a serious threat to ships like Voyager.
Mega-Maw Maneuver: Most Borg cubes and spheres have a large hanger that can be used for this purpose, storing captured vessels for assimilation. They usually work in combination with a tractor beam. Voyager can fit comfortably within the hangar of a Sphere.
Mordor: The Borg have their own version of Utopia Planitia, dubbed the "Unimatrix", where hundreds of Borg cubes link up to form a massive, geometric city. The Collective has several of these installations all over the Delta Quadrant, but the most sizable one is Unimatrix 01, where the Queen hangs out (along with trillions of drones).
Multiple-Choice Past: Information on how the Borg came to be is vague at best, contradictory at worst. This is even Justified in-universe; according to Seven Of Nine, the Borg's knowledge of events nine hundred years ago is fragmented. Meaning even the Borg themselves might not know their origin.
- First Contact has the Borg Queen stating that the Borg used to be organic (also, "flawed" and "weak"), but that they eventually "evolved to include the synthetic". Data casts shade on this one, but the Queen just changes the subject.
- Voyager hinted that the Borg were originally a benign "Cooperative", using nanotech and brain interfacing to improve the lives of its people. Eventually, they lost sight of their principles and devolved into an all-consuming Collective (a la the Soviet Union).
- Early fanon speculated that V'ger was masterminding the Borg. The extra section of the game Star Trek: Legacy contains the "Origin of the Borg", which tells the story of V'ger declaring all carbon-based life an infestation of its creator's universe (unaware of the existence of non-mechanical intelligent life, including the humans who built it). William Shatner picked up on this idea and included it in his line of books.
- In the graphic novel Star Trek: The Manga, the Borg resulted from experimental medicine gone wrong. An alien species facing extinction created Walking Transplants and then stored them in space. Over time, the medical facility deteriorates and so too does the programming of the nanomachines. The nanomachines begins infusing themselves into the patients, interpreting them as parts of the satellite in need of repair. Among the patients is the daughter of the head medical researcher of the satellite, later to become the Queen.
- In the novel Lost Souls (the third book in the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy) the Borg aren't evil because of their cybernetic nature or Hive Mind, but because the first assimilation process went horribly wrong, and subordinated the will of its drones to an Elder God-like alien whose mind had entirely faded away, save for an all-consuming hunger.
The Needless: Borg don't eat and they don't require sleep, although they do need to 'regenerate' in alcoves to refill on energy. Alcoves are packed together and stand vertically to save on space.
Noodle Implements: Since "The Best of Both Worlds", it's become a staple for Borg drones to menacingly point an arm while flexing various hooks, pincers, and can openers.
Obliviously Evil: That the Borg are doing anything immoral does not seem to cross their Collective mind, except that other species think of them as such. They truly believe that they are doing people a favour by assimilating them into the Collective, and are not violent or even interested in anyone they do not consider either a target or a threat, to the point that you could freely walk around a Borg ship and be completely ignored (although, granted, that's Tempting Fate quite a bit). The fact that they do not consider themselves to be doing anything wrong is probably one of the scariest things about them.
Oh, Crap!: The standard (and fitting) response whenever someone crosses paths with the Borg.
Our Vampires Are Different: Early Borg designs were more like vampires than anything else, given that they produce "bite marks" on the necks of their victims (from the assimilation tubules) and all short out if the "head vampire" (the Queen) is killed. This was before the Borg's appearance was changed from chalk-white (like a vampire) to looking discolored and gross (like a rotting zombie)
Our Zombies Are Different: Lily in First Contact referred to the borg as "bionic zombies", and B'Elanna Torres in Voyager equated the collective as a whole to an insect colony.
Portal Network: Their network of transwarp conduits (distributed from six main hubs) allow them to deploy vessels almost anywhere in the galaxy at a moment's notice.
Real Life Writes the Plot: The Borg were originally conceived as being more insectoid than anything else. When budgetary restraints dictated that they be played by humans in costume, a different way to make them scary and "inhuman" was needed, so the writers settled on cybernetics and zombie-like behavior, though the Collective as a whole still captures an insectoid vibe.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: The iconic Borg eyepieces almost always contain laser sights.
Reversible Roboticizing: Zigzagged. The less time a person spends as a Borg, the easier it is to get most of the implants out (Status Quo Is God working in Picard, Janeway, Tuvok and B'Elanna's favor), assuming the Borg haven't taken an eye or an arm in the assimilation process. However, if someone's been a Borg for longer, then it becomes much more difficult, as their body becomes dependant on some of those implants to live.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Borg Queens have an awareness of alternate timelines and realities, and can trace changes in the timeline with remarkable accuracy.
Robotic Undead: They're slow, pale creatures who also want to convert people to their kind.
Rock Beats Laser: Borg drones will adapt to energy weapons over time, forming Deflector Shields over their bodies that block energy blasts. However, Star Trek: First Contact showed that melee weapons like Worf's Mek'leth and bullets fired from a holographic Tommy Gun (with the safety protocols disabled, naturally) are able to bypass their shields and kill them (though it isn't made clear if the Tommy Gun inherently bypassed the Borg's defenses or if the Borg hadn't adapted yet as it takes the death of two or three drone before they start adapting).
Rogue Drone:
- Hugh (rendered from "You") the Borg from TNG. Although he initially follows standard drone behavior, his separation from the Collective causes him to take a liking to Picard's crew and develop a sense of individuality.
- Seven of Nine from Voyager is the most famous example. Her full designation is 'Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One'. She came forward as an emissary when Voyager was obliged to form an alliance with the Borg, only to backstab them at the earliest opportunity. Once her link to the collective is severed, she struggles with her rediscovered humanity.
- "Unimatrix Zero" is a subcollective of drones who retain their individuality and can interface while in stasis. They are eventually freed from collective control and start a civil war within the Borg.
Rogues' Gallery Transplant: The Borg firstly appeared as the archenemies to the Enterprise-D crew in TNG, being responsible for Picard's assimilation to Locutus, as well as the Battle of Wolf 359. Until they are relocated to Voyager's corner, serving as the primary enemies of Janeway especially in the season finale "Endgame"; the Borg have made more appearances in this show, a total of 23, than in TNG.
Scary Dogmatic Aliens: At one point in TNG, Picard's crew debates whether or not they're in a state of war with the Borg. War was never formally declared, but Troi points out that it's only because the Borg don't bother with diplomatic niceties like that.
Self-Healing Phlebotinum: Borg nanotechnology constantly maintains and repairs both organic and technological elements, at least to the extent such repairs are possible. In their introduction, the Enterprise-D blows several huge holes in a Cube only to be horrified when they magnify the hull and see the vessel stitching itself together while still chasing them. Borg drones left frozen on Earth for nine decades were up and about within a day once some hapless scientists ignorantly defrosted them.
Sequel Adaptation Iconic Villain: The first The Next Generation film, Star Trek: Generations, featured the new character Dr. Tolian Soran as the villain (though he got some help from the returning Duras sisters). The second film, Star Trek: First Contact, brought in the Borg to step things up a bit.
Shut Up, Kirk!: The Borg's usual MO when communicating with other races is simply to demand compliance. Their response to any attempts at argumentation, if they even give one, is to declare it "irrelevant" and get down to the business of assimilation.
Sickly Green Glow: Their signature color from Star Trek: First Contact onward^note.
Sinister Geometry:
- The vast majority of Borg ships are either cube-shaped or sphere-shaped (3,000m and 600m long, respectively). There's also the rarely-seen Borg probe (an elongated polygon around 200m long) and the Queen's "flagship", a massive octohedron. The only true exception is Lore's rogue freighter seen in "Descent", which is assymetrical and may have been a recently-assimilated alien vessel.
- invokedWord of God states that the "indifference" of Borg ships is what makes them so scary:
  Doux Drexler: Personally, I felt adding anything to the cube that gave it personality was a mistake. I happened to love the idea that the design said absolutely nothing about them, while at the same time, everything.
- Gene Roddenberry originally intended for the Borg to only use spheres, since it can be mathematically proven that spheres have the highest volume-to-surface area ratio of any shape. However, spheres were too hard for the special effects people to produce so he was forced to use cubes instead. Even then, cubes are still a highly efficient shape in and of themselves, and are still the most efficient shape that can tessellate (stack together), something spheres cannot do.
Space-Filling Empire: The Borg have a huge tract of the Delta Quadrant under their direct control. Even after bypassing their core territory in "The Gift", Voyager was still dodging Borg vessels years later. They also have holdings in the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma quadrants thanks to their transwarp conduits.
Stable Time Loop: "Regeneration" implies that the Collective's conflict with humanity is this. A wrecked Borg ship is found in the Arctic Circle in 2153, along with two frozen drones that regenerate, assimilate the scientists studying them, and escape into space. They are eventually destroyed, but not before transmitting Earth's coordinates to their kin in the Delta Quadrant, a message that will take two hundred years to arrive. 211 years later, the Borg begin attacking Federation ships and colonies, culminating in a Borg sphere traveling back in time from 2373 to 2063, which is then destroyed by the Enterprise-E and crashes in the Arctic Circle...
Story-Breaker Power: If it weren't for Villain Decay, the Borg would be in here easily. Before Star Trek: Voyager, they could basically copy and negate the technology of any species they came across, and design nanites that integrated the physiology of any species they encountered into their collective. One of their ships could bring the Alpha Quadrant and any races less powerful than Organians or Douwds to their knees (case in point, a single Borg Cube requires an entire fleet of Federation ships to combat, and in terms of pure firepower the Cubes still have the edge). Indeed the Borg were so powerful that no concrete reason was ever given why the Borg hadn't conquered the entire galaxy: the writers could only combat this by handing the Borg multiple Idiot Balls.
Tautological Templar: As far as the Borg are concerned, their goal of assimilation is unquestionably and axiomatically right. One would have more luck attempting to debate a brick wall than them. (At least as a collective. Those with more individuality, such as the Queen or drones that are isolated from the collective, are more open to discussion.)
Technicolor Fire: In Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg cube attacking Earth goes up in a giant green explosion when destroyed. In all other cases the explosions are yellow as is the norm.
Technologically Advanced Foe: From their first appearance, it's made clear that they're one of, if not the most advanced faction in the galaxy. This is most exemplified in "Q Who", where it took the Enterprise crew the entire episode to realize just how hilariously outgunned they were compared to a single Borg Cube.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Zig-zagged. The Borg typically apply their resources pragmatically, but this doesn't mean they aren't willing to employ overwhelming force. When dealing with Species 8472, Seven suggesting designing a weapon that would deliver Voyager's nanoprobes over several star systems at once. Janeway talked her down to a more practical torpedo modification that would scare 8472 into backing off. Arturis also recounts "hundreds of Cubes" attacking his people in "Hope and Fear", after boasting that they had managed to evade the Borg for quite some time. However, the Collective has never sent more than one Cube after Earth, and the failure of both instances led the Queen to turn to subterfuge rather than simply using additional ships, since one ship should have been more than a match for them.
The Unfettered: They will do anything to pursue perfection.
Utopia Justifies the Means: Their ultimate goal is the attainment of 'perfection' through the forced assimilation of diverse sentient species, technologies, and knowledge.
Locutus: Why do you resist? We only wish to raise quality of life for all species.
Vestigial Empire:
- The events of Star Trek: Voyager hit them hard — first, Species 8472 gave them a brutal beatdown in their own turf, destroying hundreds of ships and planets, and then a few years later USS Voyager compounded this damage by taking out their transwarp network and primary unicomplex in one fell blow. By Star Trek: Picard's second season, Seven of Nine considers the Collective a shadow of their former glory, though still dangerous and expansionist.
- Taken even further by the final episode of Picard where it is revealed that the enntire collective has been reduced to one cube operating at 38% capacity. By the end of the series, even that is destroyed.
Villain Cred: "Don't! Provoke! The BORG!" ...Said the member of the Q Continuum.
Villain Decay: Get hit hard by this in Star Trek: Voyager. The Borg go from one ship being able to destroy an entire fleet of 39 Federation ships in TNG, to repeatedly failing to take out a single ship roaming around the Delta Quadrant in Voyager. Making things worse is that it turns out that the Borg control hundreds of planets and have thousands of ships, yet they still somehow can't defeat Voyager. Averted temporarily in Picard's third season episode "Vox" where they reclaim their status as one of the most dangerous enemies of the Federation once again, who hijacked the entire Federation fleet and its young officers assimilated with Picard's Borg DNA in an attempt to destroy Earth and the Federation.
Villain Forgot to Level Grind: In a weird way. While the Borg are powerful, it is established that their reliance on assimilation means that their ability to develop without assimilation is extremely limited compared to other races. Their primary method of becoming stronger is assimilating technology from other races that have developed it. By the time of Voyager, the Borg have already hijacked any technology worth having in the Delta Quadrant, and any species that would further enhance them is strong enough to repel them. As a result, it's less that the Borg have forgotten to level grind and more that they've effectively hit their cap until they get lucky.
Villain World:
- The Borg managed to conquer Earth in a possible Bad Future. It is teeming with nine billion Borg, with copper-colored waters, metallic soil, and bridges stretching over the sea like cobwebs. (Star Trek: First Contact)
- In the series proper there is also briefly referenced a parallel universe where Picard was never saved from being Locutus and the Borg went on to conquer Earth and spread throughout the Alpha Quadrant. The alternate version of the Enterprise is barely functional from battle damage and blows up trying to escape their universe rather than go back.
The Virus: Upon assimilation, the subject loses all of their hair, sprouts Tainted Veins (from the nanomachines clogging up their arteries), and develops an ashen, moldy skin coloration.
Voice of the Legion: They actually do tend to talk in unison - an individual drone only has a slight 'electronic' edge to their voice.
Was Once a Man: We see former humans, Romulans, Klingons, and even Bolians amongst their ranks.
Weaksauce Weakness: When in situations where they no longer have reserves, or facing species or technology that they cannot assimilate, the Borg are far weaker than otherwise advertised. Borg ships facing a Critical Staffing Shortage also end up suffering from Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, small groups of drones disconnected from the main Collective will have their original individualities quickly resurface, and species resistant to the assimilation process itself are able to curbstomp the Borg with ease.
We Have Reserves:
- To the Borg, individual Borg are like antibodies in a human body — freely sacrificed to protect the whole. Borg will march towards threats heedless of their own safety, as each Borg sacrificed makes adapting to their enemy's weapons that much easier. For the price of a relatively small number of Borg, they're usually guaranteed to get a far greater return. However, the Collective will dispatch ships to rescue stranded but otherwise active Borg, so long as said Borg have sent out a distress signal.
- This also applies to individual ships. Borg rarely bother to recover their damaged vessels, usually just leaving them adrift or self-destructing them. The Cube controlled by the Borg children in Voyager was cut off despite being mostly functional because the Borg deemed trying to counteract the technorganic virus that had infected it not worth the effort. Most of the major systems, like the transwarp coils, are designed to brick themselves if not properly removed, so there is little of value that can be salvaged by themselves or others.
Wetware Body: By the time the nanites reach your brain, you are, for all intents and purposes, controlled by the Collective's CPU. Eventually some drones will retrieve you and prepare your body for Borg enhancements. However, you can still do a lot of damage without them.
You Are Number 6:
- The Borg do not have individual names, merely designations illustrating their location, sub-group, and function. For example, "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01".
- They also refer to other species by a designation. Humans, for example, are Species 5618.
You Have No Chance to Survive: The Borg standard hail isn't a threat. It's a verbal equivalent of a wrecking ball. Your species has been selected for assimilation, and that's the end of it. Might as well make it easy on yourself and not try to resist.
You're Nothing Without Your Phlebotinum: While the Borg have acquired vast stores of knowledge from civilizations they have assimilated, they seem to have lost the ability to innovate. They now learn solely by assimilating knowledge from other races, doing almost no research or inventing of their own. This proved to be a devastating disadvantage when they faced Species 8472, a species that resisted their assimilation technology and defies elimination through more conventional means.
- Ex-drones have a hideously difficult time adapting to life outside of the Collective, as Seven of Nine demonstrated. Hugh was released back into the wild after being unplugged, with the hope being that he would enlighten them. Instead they formed a brand new Collective (under guidance of the manipulative Lore), even forcibly recruiting others into it.
- The level of difficulty seems to stem mostly from the age and development of the individual prior to assimilation. Most individuals that were assimilated as adults generally regain their individuality fairly quickly, aside from a severe case of PTSD. Picard regained his original personality almost immediately, being fit for duty within a couple of weeks (although Starfleet relegated Picard to duties away from fighting the Borg the next time the Collective invaded), and several other examples exist in Voyager. The reason that Seven has such an issue is because she was assimilated as a child and essentially never had a childhood, as the Borg artificially accelerate assimilated children to maturity. The group formed by Lore could have been a Cult Colony that had nothing to do with the Borg, that was only done so they could include Hugh back into the story.
Zombie Gait:
- While not zombies as such, the Borg play by many of the rules of zombies, including continuing to plod slowly no matter how many of them get shot, and never using weapons other than their Assimilation Tubes of Doom.
- Averted in the Star Trek: Elite Force games, in which the Borg attack without provocation, move much more quickly, and actually fire their arm cannons. Granted the Borg only fire weapons in this scenario because they are trapped in the same situation Voyager is in, lost a good chunk of their cube to harvesters, and are up against the harvesters as well as Species 8472, two species that cannot be assimilated. The Borg are actually playing their characterization straight, as they adapt to the situation.

Breen

"My people have a saying: Never turn your back on a Breen."

Debut: DS9, "Indiscretion"

Homeworld: Breen

An enigmatic, war-like species that wears full body-concealing suits and speaks in unintelligible electronic gibberish. Though the Breen are considered a reclusive minor power, they have proven themselves to be extraordinarily dangerous.

Bilingual Dialogue: The one permanent exception to Star Trek's normal Translation Convention. Their language is always the same Black Speech, even when everyone else in the scene can understand them perfectly via Translator Microbes.
Bizarre Alien Biology:
- The only species never seen in the flesh, for starters. Common knowledge says the Breen hail from a very cold, non-Earthlike climate. However, Weyoun confides that this is a carefully-constructed lie: the Breen homeworld is quite temperate. So what's with the refrigeration suits?
- Dr. Bashir mentioned that a fellow Dominion Internment Camp prisoner, a Breen, was never blood-screened to check if he was a Changeling. Not that they didn't try; there just wasn't any blood to draw from him...
- The Breen are so weird, in fact, that the head Changeling feels way more comfortable around them than with ordinary 'solids'.
- It was finally revealed that Breen were green humanoids capable of surviving in multiple environments. They also had two faces: a solid state and a fluid state.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: What little is known about their culture suggests a greater emphasis on pragmatism than the whole good versus evil thing.
The Bus Came Back: The Breen return as antagonists in Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Discovery.
Combat Pragmatist: The only true example in the Star Trek universe. Every other race has lines they won't cross, even the Changelings, but not these folks. Shooting escape pods, torturing prisoners or using them for convenient slave labor, and attacking planets without so much as a declaration of war is all fair game to them.
The Dreaded: The Romulans fear the Breen. The Cardassians fear the Breen. The Klingons fear the Breen. And all that fear is 100% justified. 800 years later, The Federation still considers them a threat.
Early-Installment Weirdness: In "Indiscretion", we hear human grunts and screams as Kira plugs some Breen with her rifle. Oops. Also, Worf's claim that no one who has ever seen what is underneath a Breen's helmet and "has lived to speak of it!" seems to contradict this episode, since Kira and Dukat knocked out two Breens and stole their uniforms, including the helmets.
Eminently Enigmatic Race: The Breen are notoriously enigmatic, to the point that even the Q Continuum is better-understood so far. Though the Breen have been met in person many times, they are never seen out of their all-concealing refrigeration suits, their language cannot be translated, and nobody knows anything about their culture other than a few vague snippets of information. Even by the 32nd century, no one appeared to have seen a Breen outside of their suits, at least not without realizing it.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Breen are generally considered by other races in the Alpha Quadrant to have evolved in an icy environment. Regardless of whether or not that is true (Weyoun mentions their homeworld is actually pretty warm), they are recognized as experts at refrigeration. As Sisko put it, "If anybody knows how to keep things cold, it's the Breen".
The Ghost: "The Breen" were name-dropped continuously on TNG, as well as Star Trek: Generations, even an episode of VOY, before they finally appeared in DS9. And even then, we learn next-to-nothing about them, greatly emphasizing Nothing Is Scarier.
The Guards Must Be Crazy: Nope. As Worf and Ezri quickly learn, the Breen do not screw about with prisoners. Try to bust the door open? Won't work. Fake an illness? Won't work, and even then Breen never just send one guard in at a time. On occasion, they'll even go as far as to hang prisoners from the ceiling by their feet.
Hired Guns: Some Breen go out into the galaxy to make a living as mercenaries. They're good enough that they're in the same league as Klingons and Naussicans when you want something done.
Hufflepuff House: They're implied to be in the league of the four great powers of the quadrant (United Federation, Klingon Empire, Cardassian Union, Romulan Star Empire), as they spanked the Klingons in a limited war and their entrance into the Dominion War was treated as a game changer that would ensure the Dominion's victory. However they have very little screentime and, aside from the last third of DS9's final season, almost no plot relevance in the franchise's media.
Lawman Baton: Breen prison guards make generous use of a weapon called a "neural truncheon" to keep their prisoners in line. Subverted somewhat in that it's not used like a club but rather like a cattle prod to deliver painful neuro-electric shocks that can cause temporary brain damage with repeated uses, hence the "neural" part of its name.
Leave No Survivors: Breen attacks rarely tend to leave survivors, except in instances where they want captives. Trying to negotiate with them is a total waste of time.
Named After Their Planet: Their homeworld is simply known as "Breen".
No-Nonsense Nemesis: The Breen make their entrance into the Dominion War known by bombing Starfleet headquarters on Earth (which was a suicide run), and end that same episode by blowing up the Defiant. The Breen do not fuck around.
Nothing Is Scarier:
- We learn so little about them — and what we DO learn about them is so disturbing — that the Breen more or less embody this trope.
- A Klingon fleet was sent to conquer the Breen homeworld and was never heard from again. Breen privateers will raid ships in the night, steal their cargo and leave no survivors or trace they've been there. A Breen prisoner will not utter a word until the instant you turn your back, whereupon you're toast. Nobody, but nobody, messes with the Breen.
Organic Technology: Tuvok mentions that the Breen use Organic Technology much like Species 8472. We don't seem to get confirmation of this on DS9, but it does seem radically different from most other technologies in the Alpha Quadrant.
Proud Warrior Race: Subverted. They're very warlike, only they value winning, not honor.
Psychic Block Defense: Like the Ferengi, the Breen are said to be immune to The Empath.
Shout-Out: Their outfits look very similar to a certain Star Wars disguise. This is lampshaded by Col. Kira, a Bajoran, swiping a Breen's armor and leading her two "prisoners" (two Cardassians, in place of Chewie) at gunpoint — straight into the Dominion stronghold.
The Unintelligible: Gargle gargle bleep. One of the few recurring races who aren't heard speaking English (at least, until the 32nd century).
Villain Cred:
- That quote up there? Spoken by a Romulan...
- Dukat was surprised to find the Breen setting up shop so far outside their territory, even moreso on a desert planet. He said the adaptability of the Breen rivals even that of his own species.
- The female Changeling seemed to actually respect Thot Pran almost as an equal (or at least as close as she was capable of respecting a solid), whereas Weyoun was clearly more of a pet and Broca more of a tool. Due to the Founder's and the Vorta's lack of actual strategic or tactical experience, Pran ended up being essentially the Dominion's Dragon-in-Chief towards the end of the war.
We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: About the only reason Breen spare people is to torture them or to put them in a mine to work until they drop.

Caitians

"The least claw may be the sharpest, should it be joined with others."

Debut: TAS, "The Survivor"

Homeworld: Cait

Humanoid cats, as the name would suggest. Caitians can vary in color from brown to black, and the females often speak with a purring quality.

Absurdly Sharp Claws: Strong enough to decapitate a Killer Robot with one swipe.
Barefoot Cartoon Animal: They don't typically wear shoes, and they resemble cats.
Canon Immigrant:
- Caitians were among prominent new species of the animated series. Caitian admirals appear in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
- According to Expanded Universe materials released at the time of the Animated Series, the Caitians are cousins of the Kzinti. The Kzinti were created in the novels and short stories of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, but became Canon Immigrants in the Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon," based on Niven's short story "The Soft Weapon." Notably, the live action cat person pictured here next to M'Ress looks much more like the Animated Series's version of a Kzin than he does like M'Ress.
Cat Folk: They resemble cats with their pointy ears, paws, purr-like noises, and slit pupils.
Custom Uniform: If they wear a Starfleet uniform, they'll generally not wear the boots.
Furry Reminder: A cat is a cat, no matter what planet they come from or how advanced they are. If a Caitian has to choose between a libido post or the box it came in, they will pick the box.
Mate or Die: Not as bad as Vulcans, but apparantly Caitians need to be intimate once a year, or else their hormones would drive them crazy.
My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Some extended universe sources establish the original Caitians were an offshoot of the more aggressive and warlike Kzinti who developed into a less combative, more amiable population.
Named After Their Planet: The planet Cait.
Running on All Fours: As shown in the Lower Decks episode "Mugato, Gumato", when they needed to move quickly, Caitians can switch to quadrupedal locomotion.
Verbal Tic: They tend to put purr-like sounds between their sentences.

Capellans

"They're offering you a chance for combat. They consider it more pleasurable than love."

Debut: TOS, "Friday's Child"

Homeworld: Capella IV

The Ten Tribes of Capella are a race of very large people with a culture based around honor and combat, who happen to be living on one of the richest sources of topaline in the galaxy.

Alien Hair: Males wear their hair long, with a topknot coming out of the top of their hoods/headgear. What's unusual is that every member of the race is blond.
The Big Guy: It's not uncommon for Capellans to hit seven feet or more. They also possess superhuman strength and endurance.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: They value combat to the point that even friendly gestures may also be invitations to battle.
Brutal Honesty: As a race, they disdain liars.
Clean, Pretty Childbirth: This could be a biological trait of the Capellans...or 60's broadcast standards.
Face Death with Dignity: As might be expected of a proud warrior race, they respect courage in the face of death, and find it honorable for someone to die in the service of their leader.
Fur and Loathing: Male Capellans tend to wear a fur vest over their shirts, and they're a harsh people.
Human Aliens: Apart from their unusual height and some internal differences, they're nearly identical to humans.
Klingon Promotion: The Teer of the Ten Tribes's position is usually hereditary, but may be stolen via trial by combat...oh, and killing any of the Teer's erstwhile heirs.
Lightning Bruiser: Dr. McCoy notes they they're extremely fast and strong.
My Sister Is Off-Limits: Zig-zagged. Accepting a gift from a female means that their closest male relative will attempt to fight you to the death. By their standards, this is an honor.
Proud Warrior Race Guy: A race of honorable warriors who would get along with Klingons as depicted in later Trek media.
Real Men Wear Pink: Many Capellan males wear bright purple, either as a shirt or a furred accent.
Rings of Death: A traditional weapon among the Capellans is the kleegat, a tri-bladed throwing ring which at a hundred yards, in their hands is nearly as effective as a phaser.
Sacred Hospitality: They believe in this to the point that they will immediately kill whomever threatens one of their guests.
The Social Darwinist: Dr. McCoy was posted on Capella for a few months and found them uninterested in medical aid or hospitals, believing that only the strong survive.
Strange-Syntax Speaker: All Capellan names and titles have double vowels, both of which are stressed. (Ex. Akaar = Aka-ar, Teer = Te-er).
Super-Toughness: A Capellan female can be up, walking around, and climbing mountains a few hours after giving birth.
Would Hurt a Child: As mentioned, if a Teer is usurped in combat, his successor will kill any potential heirs to prevent challenges to his rule.

Cardassians

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/spoonheads_4685.jpg

"Cardassians are like… timber wolves – predators… bold in large numbers… cautious by themselves… and with an instinctive need to establish a dominant position in any social gathering."

Debut: TNG, "The Wounded"

Homeworld: Cardassia Prime

The Cardassians embody the lizard brain: merciless, conniving, and xenophobic. Their society is depicted as being Kafkaesque, with criminal trials where the defendant is presumed guilty and the sentence is already decided before the trial begins. In Cardassian mystery novels, everyone is always guilty, the puzzle to work out being who is guilty of what. They claim to abhor violence and talk in five-dollar words, but they are dangerously smart and underestimating them is foolish.

Affably Evil: The Cardassians aren't thugs like the Klingons, or ice-blooded professionals like the Romulans, or even brutal logicians like the Borg. These are people who can carry on an intelligent conversation and are deeply interested in charming you... so they can insert a knife later. Even if they genuinely consider you a friend, it doesn't make them any less dangerous. A Romulan will stab you in the back, and if you ask why, will smirk haughtily and say "For the Glory of Romulus" or something to that effect. A Cardassian will stab you in the back... then apologize profusely. If you ask them why they did it, they'll look at you funny and earnestly reply, "...Because it needed stabbing, obviously?"
Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Averted. Due to a strong Blue-and-Orange Morality, it's mentioned that Cardassians are bored with Shakespearean tragedies because they can figure out who's going to kill who in the first five pages, and Cardassian Enigmas aren't liked by humans because everyone's guilty.
Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted. The Cardassians were not always a race of cunning, ruthless expansionists. Indeed, the main reason why they resorted to interstellar conquest in the first place was to overcome resource scarcity on their homeworld. Many Cardassians feel remorse for what their empire did and some are instrumental in preventing a similar takeover from the Dominion. It's not surprising that Bajorans and their other victims see them this way, though.
Always Need What You Gave Up: The Cardassians are naturally chagrined at the discovery of a stable wormhole in Bajoran space after they have already pulled out from Bajor. They're constantly waiting to swoop back in and take it. All under the guise of helping the new Commander find his sea legs, of course.
Always Someone Better: The Obsidian Order prided itself on being the best damn spy service in the Alpha Quadrant, knowing everything about a person right down to their favourite food. The Dominion still has them beat, as Garak painfully learns. Within a day of contacting some old friends on Dominion-run Cardassia, Garak finds they've all caught a bad case of dead.
Armies Are Evil: The military, led by Gul Dukat, extended an olive branch to the Dominion in exchange for their share of the Alpha Quadrant once it was conquered. This didn't work out so well.
Art Evolution: The weird headgear that the Cardassians wear in their first scene. It looks like Gul Macet goes to work in bondage gear which doesn't exactly convey terror. The body armor is much blockier than normal, and a Cardassian with mutton chops is just wrong. In their first appearance the Cardassians are also far more flesh-tone in color, than the more grey-ish skin they'd have in DS9.
Authority in Name Only: Cardassia operates under a tripartite system of the civilian government (Detapa Council) the ruling junta (Central Command) and the intelligence service (Obsidian Order); in practice however, the Council was completely toothless and allowed the other two to operate in complete autonomy.
Became Their Own Antithesis: In the end, the Cardassians were forced to become this: guerrilla fighters struggling to take back their planet from a brutal occupation.
Belligerent Sexual Tension: The females of their species are turned on by argumentative males. O'Brien learns this the hard way after getting into a spat with a Cardassian engineer. ("I'm very fertile.")
Big Brother Is Watching: It was said that the average Cardassian could not sit down to dinner without the contents of the meal being noted and logged by the Order.
Dr. Bashir: And if people eat something that doesn't meet with their approval?
Odo: People have been known to disappear for less.
Bizarre Alien Biology: The Cardassians evolved on a hot planet and prefer temperatures that humans find sweltering. When the Federation takes control of Deep Space Nine, they discover that the Cardassians set the station's temperature around 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit). Several Cardassian and half-Cardassian characters complain that the station is too cold.
Blue-and-Orange Morality:
- The Cardassian justice system is radically different than those of Federation civilizations; whereas the Federation operates under the assumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, the accused in Cardassian courts is assumed to be guilty by default, since the alternative is the suggestion that the all-powerful, all-knowing benevolent state might potentially have made some sort of mistake while investigating the alleged crime, with the trial simply being a formality to explain why the accused is guilty, publically, before they are sentenced. The defense council for the accused is not supposed to actually get their client acquitted; to succeed in getting their client free is practically career suicide, or worse, actual suicide.
- Cardassian popular culture has different standards than those of Federation civilizations. A popular genre of novel for Cardassians is "Enigma", mystery novels detailing the trials of the accused who are always declared guilty, with the appeal being in determining who is guilty of what crime. Federation citizens don't see the appeal, just as how Cardassians fail to see the appeal of Shakespeare's tragedies, since they can guess who is going to die by whose hand and don't see how, for instance, there is tragedy in Julius Caesar when Caesar is killed by his best friend.
Boisterous Weakling: While the Cardassian Union is considered a major power in the Alpha Quadrant, alongside the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire, it is also by far the weakest of the four. This is highlighted with the Klingon-Cardassian War in DS9. While the war degenerated into a stalemate, it took just about everything the Cardassians had to keep the Klingons at bay; by contrast, the Klingon invasion force consisted of little more than one third of their total strength. Similarly, the Great Offscreen War between the Federation and Cardassia is implied to have been a rout given the technology disparity between the two powers, Federation pacifism being the only reason their empire even survived the conflict. Nevertheless, this didn't stop the Cardassians from attempting to provoke open war with the Federation again, albeit not before using subterfuge to gain an advantage first.
Boring, but Practical:
- Cardassian technology is not as flashy or as sophisticated as that of the Federation, but it tends to be reliable for the purpose that it was designed for. Cardassian phase-disruptor rifles, for example, are well-regarded for their simplicity and ruggedness. In a clear analogy to the M16 vs AK-47 debate, Kira favourably compares them to the Starfleet Type-3, noting that they were more powerful and far less complex, only possessing two settings compared to the latter's sixteen, and can still fire after being dragged through the mud. The Federation rifle may have a whole host of features, but you don't need all those to kill someone.
- That said, there is something of a subversion in that it is not nearly as advanced either. Unless in numbers, Cardassian warships were rarely a threat to newer Starfleet vessels in TNG and DS9. Similarly, a number of throwaway remarks reinforce the idea that Federation technology is generally well ahead of its Cardassian counterpart. In "The Wounded", a rogue captain flying around their space on a vendetta required them to ask the Federation for help, because they simply couldn't stop him themselves.
- The Cardassian fleet in general seems to be this trope. No Superweapon Surprise like the Breen, no gigantic uber-ships like the Borg Cubes or the Dominion battleships, no cloaking devices like the Klingons or Romulans. Just lots and lots (and lots) of medium-sized Galor-class cruisers. However, the fact that they lack anything like a Federation Galaxy-class starship or Romulan D'Deridex warbird implies that they are simply incapable of creating larger, more sophisticated vessels. The Keldon-class cruiser, which represents their most advanced warship, is built on little more than a modified Galor spaceframe.
Bread and Circuses:
- Cardassia Prime is run by an authoritarian military junta which lets the civilians have their say (the Detapa Council) and then does whatever it wants to anyway, with the Council serving as a sort of steam valve for popular discontent and opinion but not exercising any actual governance over the country. This changes rapidly, and later forms the basis for a resistance movement against the Founders.
- Televised treason trials are constant and serve as the planet's most-watched form of entertainment. The proceedings are crafted to maximize drama and Schadenfreude, such as prodding the weeping families of the accused to renounce their husbands/fathers/sons and testify against them, to discouraging private conferences between consul (which the viewing audience can't overhear). Odo exploited this flaw in the system by staging continual Courtroom Antics to drag O'Brien's trial out until he could be exonerated by evidence.
Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: Exterior shots of Cardassia Prime always include a giant Jumbotron barking out slogans to the populace.
Cannon Fodder: Weyoun barely stifles a yawn as Damar (the Dominion figurehead) protests the sacrifices that Cardassia has made and how not one family hasn't lost somebody in the war. As far as the Dominion is concerned, the Cardassians are meat shields — the first wave of troops sent into every battle to cushion the blow for the Dominion ships behind.
Can't Catch Up: Up until TNG, the Cardassians could achieve local parity in the Federation's backyard, though the best they could manage was a stalemate. However, over the course of DS9, it becomes apparent that they simply cannot compete with other Alpha Quadrant powers on a material level, which leads them (or at least Gul Dukat) to seek out an alliance with the Dominion that doesn't work out for them so well in the end.
Complexity Addiction: Something of a species hat: they have a liking for contrived drama. Their mystery genre has all of the suspects known from the beginning, with only the exact nature of their crimes being unknown to the reader. A popular Cardassian board game is Kotra, which, as Garak describes it, favors bold tactical maneuvers over defensive play; hence his annoyance at a Ferengi's attempts to stockpile his 'assets' during their match. Trials are all televised for popular consumption, even though the verdict is always guilty, because it leaves the population reassured that justice always prevails. This is also evident in battle, as seen in "Soldiers of the Empire" where a Klingon speaks admiringly of Cardassian adversaries who always had "a plan within a plan within a plan leading to a trap".
Daycare Nightmare: The Cardassians pride themselves on having the best education system in the Alpha Quadrant. At the age of three, Cardassian children were placed under such intense mental training that by the time they reached high school age they had perfect recall and could resist a Vulcan mind meld. Exactly what kind of hell the poor buggers are put through to achieve this has not been disclosed, but it can be inferred from Dukat's statement that "Education is power; joy is vulnerability."
Deadly Graduation: Within the Obsidian Order, at any rate, having to torture a loved one or close acquaintance is used as a test of loyalty for New Meat recruits.
Deal with the Devil: Dukat makes a deal with the Dominion, supposedly to restore his people to glory, but really just for his own sake, where Cardassia and the Dominion become best buds. And then the war starts dragging on, and Cardassian casualties just keep mounting. The Cardassians reach their breaking point when the Founders stop treating them even as second-class citizens: now they're third-class citizens behind the Breen. Unbelievably a secret itemized treaty is drafted offering territorial concession from Cardassia to the Breen but it doesn't list what they are. The Dominion is literally giving chunks of the Empire away. Damar realizes he has to act soon to preserve his peoples' dignity.
Dumb Is Good: They are meticulous record keepers, even training other worlds on the art of bookkeeping. Like most imperial powers, their art and sciences are second to none. Finally, the Cardassians trained themselves to have photographic memories, which means you can't even trust them glancing at a document or piece of technology for a second.
Early-Installment Weirdness:
- They were originally called the Cardassian Empire, but this was changed to the Cardassion "Union" (a name which drips with blancmage) much later on, presumably to differentiate them from the Klingon and Romulan Empires.
- On a related note, the Obsidian Order were caught building a fleet of next-generation ships in the barren Orias System in "Defiant". Dukat mentioned that the Order never approved of the peace treaty with the Federation, and were planning to re-invade the Badlands with those ships, going entirely over the heads of the Central Command in the process (presumably to set up a kind of "CIA Evil, FBI Good" scenario). Later on in the season, Enabran Tain explains the fleet is part of a joint-operation with the Tal Shiar to launch a first strike on the Changeling's homeworld. This is slightly more in line with the Obsidian Order's organizational functions of maintaining security and carrying out espionage.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Cardassian literature often confounds humans, and vice versa. Garak complains that any fool can figure out during the first act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that Brutus is going to betray him, and cannot understand why Caesar doesn't figure this out (or is willfully blind to an impending coup d'état) until the knives are literally coming at him from all directions. Likewise, most Agatha Christie novels cause Cardassians great difficulty; whilst the idea of a VIP being killed under mysterious circumstances appeals, they can't grasp how one person carried out the deed without any help.
Evil Colonialist:
- Despite the frequent Nazi allusions made throughout the series, the Cardassians' actual crimes as a whole are far more reminiscent of nineteenth century European imperialism. This is, perhaps, most obvious in Gul Dukat's attitude towards the Bajorans: as a 'lesser culture' that the Cardassians were 'helping' by imposing Cardassian customs and exploiting them to the benefit of Cardassia itself, similar to opinions expressed by British civil servants about the British Raj. The goal of the Occupation does not seem to have been the wholesale extinction of the Bajoran people, but rather the complete subjugation of the planet to Cardassian rule and the exploitation of its resources — in short, exactly what colonial powers did to Africa and much of Asia throughout the nineteenth century.
- Similar to the above, one could see the Cardassian Union as an analogue for Imperial Japan, with both being imperialist polities whose expansionism and militarism — compelled by resource scarcity — brings them into conflict with larger and more powerful liberal democracies, in this case the Federation. Bajor can be seen as a stand-in for Korea, subjected to systematic exploitation of its population and resources. Furthermore, comparisons to atrocities often credited to Imperial Japan — forced labour camps, comfort women, medical experimentation and so forth — are also evident. Allusions to Japanese torture of prisoners during the Second World War, as depicted in "Chain of Command", are barely disguised.
Evil Is Burning Hot: Cardassia is a dry planet and the cold-blooded denizens prefer warm climates and dimmed lighting. What humans consider to be room temperature is frigid to a Cardassian.
Evil Is Not Well-Lit: What humans or Bajorans consider to be suitable lighting is far too much for sensitive Cardassian eyes. This means whenever we see Terok Nor in flashbacks, dimmer lighting helps add to the oppressive feel of the place, compared to the much more cheerful-looking DS9.
Evil Virtues: Cardassian culture is fervently patriotic, and while the ugly facist side of that all-consuming fixation on dutiful obedience is frequently noted, their willingness to endure misery and misfortune in the name of duty is often admired.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Not so much in culture as in role, but the Cardassian empire as of DS9 actually slides very well into the slot of Benito Mussolini's Italy:
- It's a repressive fascist state which claims to be restoring imperial glory after a period of ossification among its people, that engages in very aggressive foreign policy against much weaker neighbors, partly as a result of an inferiority complex due to being "the least of the great powers", clearly inferior to the more advanced economies it derides as weak and decadent.
- Their policy in Bajor, while it draws many Nazi or Soviet comparisons out of universe, is actually more similar to the Italian methods of colonization in the Balkans and Africa (especially Ethiopia), with a less overtly-genocidal aim that nonetheless involves mass repression, reprisal executions, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps. Also, the occupation of Bajor seemingly had no economic utility for Cardassia compared to its cost; in a similar way, Italy never profited from its empire and impoverished itself with unsustainable military spending that caused economic and political isolation, with the the conquests being more about prestige than anything.
- Cardassia/Italy ends up allying with a bordering expansionistic military superpower (after initial hostility) in the Dominion/Nazi Germany, hoping to get back lands it felt itself owed but denied by Federation/Allied intervention, and tempted with the idea of ruling their own lesser empire in the Alpha Quadrant/Mediterranean while their bigger ally takes the rest. They end up jumping head first into defeat after defeat as a result.
- The finale of the Dominion War is even rather similar to the end of the Italian Campaign of World War II - Cardassia/Italy gets forcibly subsumed into a puppet state by its senior partner after too many failures, leading to a split between the puppet government and rebels largely made up of Former Regime Personnel; the rebels then proceed to ally with the anti-Dominion alliance/Allies against the puppet government and the occupiers, causing the occupiers to institute mass destruction and executions in reprisals for the rebels' "disloyalty."
- This all culminates in a final allied offensive against the withered and depleted occupiers at the end of a long war, which also corresponds with a mass uprising by the resurgent rebels which drives the occupiers out and leaves the country/planet devastated but on the road to a new non-fascist path. They eventually integrate into the system of the Federation/Allies.
Family Values Villains: In theory. Cardassian culture is for the most part a deeply nurturing and family-oriented culture, but there are many ugly exceptions to the rule.
Picard: When children are taught to devalue others, they learn to devalue everything else. Including their parents.
Fantastic Racism: Dubbed "Cardies" and "Spoonheads" by veterans of the Occupation of Bajor and the Cardassian-Federation war. The Cardassian government clearly had a much worse racism against Bajorans, tormenting them in huge numbers in Holocaust-type death camps.
False Reassurance: Cardassian jurists are more like father confessors. The Judge presiding over the Miles O'Brien case assured his Captain that the Chief was enjoying "the most efficient criminal investigation system in the quadrant" and "the best counsel in all Cardassia." Sounds great, but run it through the Newspeak translator and you soon discover what Cardassian "efficiency" really means.
O'Brien: Have you ever won a case?
Public Conservator: Winning isn't everything!
Fascist, but Inefficient:
- Zigzagged. On one hand, Cardassians exemplify a certain orderly efficiency: the Obsidian Order is truly one of the most efficient intelligence services in the Alpha Quadrant, their schooling system is second to none, they suffer from considerably less infighting than either the Romulans or the Klingons, and their record-keeping is impeccable. On the other hand, they also demonstrate a number of inefficiencies that are characteristic of fascist regimes. For one, Cardassians regularly suffer resource shortages that are virtually unheard of in most other warp-capable civilizations. Their government exists in a similarly precarious state: while the Central Command holds the most power in Cardassian society, it is ultimately illegitimate and is dependent on the Obsidian Order to maintain control over the general population. When the Obsidian Order is Lured into a Trap and decimated, it doesn't take long for the civilian Detapa Council to supplant the Central Command. Then of course, there's their species' hat of Complexity Addiction. Throughout TNG and DS9, the Cardassians repeatedly indulge in convoluted plots intended to discredit the Federation... which generally tend to blow up in their faces.
- Cardassians make extensive use of slave labor that is primitive by the standards of today, to say nothing of the 24th century. The workers are basically equipped with pick axes and buckets to mine with like they're in ancient Egypt. Keep in mind that Cardassians are a warp-capable civilization. There's basically no real reason they should rely on this as much as they do other than the fact they enjoy oppressing species perceived as "lesser". Even Terok Nor, a space station, was super reliant on slaves doing back-breaking labor for its ore processing when the Cardassians could've easily automated much of the process. It's made worse because it is mentioned several times that yields and productivity were a concern, but at no point did the Cardassians ever consider moving to more efficient methods. Another effect of this is that Cardassians have to waste resources keeping their slaves in line. In the first episode of Season 2 of DS9, they have an entire labor camp for 12 prisoners (and that camp has two Galor class ships as reinforcements). Terok Nor itself had to be programmed with layers upon layers of security systems in the case of a slave uprising - the last level of which served basically to keep the station commander from retreating if the slaves were not put down so he'd die at his post.
Foreign Queasine:
- According to a human that spent a while on Cardassia:
  Barry Waddle: You know what Cardassians drink in the morning? Fish juice. Hot fish juice. After six months, I was HOPING the Klingons would invade.
- Any scene with Cardassians will likely include kanar, an alcoholic beverage served in distinctive, spiral-shaped bottles. What's strange about kanar is that it's thick as pudding and dribbles out of the bottleneck like maple syrup. The main ingredient in real life is, in fact, corn syrup, and poor Casey Biggs (DS9's resident lush) got sick from downing so many glasses of it. Kanar can be enjoyed by humans, unlike Vulcan spirits — though O'Brien warned that it seriously takes some getting used to.
Generational Saga: One of their most revered forms of literature is the repetitive epic, the most celebrated of which is The Never-Ending Sacrifice, which traces a family throughout history, focusing on each generation's virtually identical allegiance to the state. Dr. Bashir finds it dull as dishwater.
Good Hair, Evil Hair: A good Cardassian never has a single hair out of place.
Head-in-the-Sand Management:
- The Central Command would not move on the issue of Dominion encroachment or the wild attacks of the Klingon Empire. The reasons for this are numerous. For one thing, the Federation's peace treaty, while skewed in Cardassia's favor, discredited the military and loosened their grip on the homeworld; the Central Command were rapidly losing authority to the Detapa Council, who wanted to move toward peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. To paraphrase Spock, the Council had the right idea, but at the wrong time. The Central Command were also afraid of losing even more territories in a war. Thirdly, opportunists like Dukat were secretly brokering an alliance with the Dominion, leaving them in an advantageous position when the Jem'Hadar finally invaded. Gowron and Garak also suggested that there might have been Changeling infiltrators on Cardassia Prime to promote a policy of non-aggression.
- Subverted with their actual joining of the Dominion, however. The government was only willing to join in the first place because it was in a fragile position to begin with, it was dealing with constant terrorist attacks from the Maquis, and had to deal with uprisings, resistance movements, and defectors among its own people. Even then, it still took the decimation of their Obsidian Order, and the influence of Gul Dukat to push them into it. Whether they knew just how bad it would be for them, they had little reason to care, at least at the point of joining.
Heel–Face Turn: It's not confirmed in canon if Cardassia officially joined The Federation. However, the late-32nd-century President Laira Rillak is a mix of human, Cardassian, and Bajoran, and it's noted that these races were (past tense) enemies, but no longer. In addition, a Cardassian captain is seen at HQ during one of Admiral Vance's briefings.
Hobbes Was Right:
- Cardassia was originally a peaceful, spiritual planet not unlike Bajor. A mass famine resulted in the junta we see today.
- The most maddening thing about Cardassia is the unflagging pride in their culture and the attempts to 'educate' the Bajoran people. The arrogance of this race knows no bounds: they excuse the raping of a planet and its people in the name of progress.
Hollywood Atheist: Most of Cardassia's finest religious artifacts were sold in order to beef up the military. Symbolically, this represented the Cardassians (then-known as "Hebitians") exchanging their old faith for a quasi-fanatical nationalism.
Interservice Rivalry: There has always been friction between Central Command and the Obsidian Order as their mission statements didn't gel; the former worked to expand Cardassia's borders, and the latter fought to insulate them. This power-sharing agreement finally came to an end when the Order launched a botched attack on the Changelings' homeworld in the Omarion Nebula without permission from the military. This failure allowed the Central Command to disband the Order, but at the cost of crippling Cardassian security. This resulted in the dissident movement gaining significant ground and restoring the authority of the Detapa Council. For a time the government was concerned mostly with putting down riots all over the planet.
Intertwined Fingers: Touching palms is the equivalent of a kiss on the cheek.
Intimidating Revenue Service: Assuming Garak is telling the truth (big "if" there), Cardassian taxmen are not above a little murder when it comes to collecting back payments.
Kangaroo Court:
- Court proceedings work in reverse on Cardassia. Sentencing is determined from the start, and then a sham trial is conducted on live TV for the purposes of celebrating "the wisdom of the state". The most illustrious defense attorney on Cardassia has a win/loss record like Glass Joe's.
Chief Arkon Makbar: The offender, Miles O'Brien, human, officer of the Federation's Starfleet, has been found guilty of aiding and abetting seditious acts against the state. The sentence is death. Let the trial begin.
- A defense lawyer who actually wins a case, even by accident, is executed for not doing their job poorly enough.
Karma Houdini Warranty: Ever since their introduction in TNG, the Cardassians generally slipped past karma's sight. However, when they were finally hit by it in the end of DS9, they were hit far harder than anybody expected.
Laser-Guided Karma:
- Lured by the promise of becoming the dominant power of the Alpha Quadrant, the Cardassians sided with the far more powerful Dominion against the Federation and its allies. Over the course of the conflict however, the Dominion forced them to bear most of the war effort, consumed their resources, and even gave away their existing territories, effectively turning the Cardassian Union into little more than a client state of the Dominion.
- When Damar led a resistance group against their "allies", the Dominion retaliated by implementing a scorched earth policy on Cardassia Prime. Luckily, the Founder in charge was taken into custody before she could kill them all. However, the ruination of their home planet set Cardassian culture back a hundred years — just as the Cardassian occupation had set back the Bajorans — with close to a tenth of its population dead and almost all of its major cities reduced to ashes. Also, the Cardassian Union is completely smashed and Garak no longer recognizes his homeworld. It's interesting the words he uses: He declares that Cardassia is "guilty as charged." For a species obsessed with law and order (or, more accurately, guilt and puishment), turning such a loaded term on his own government is a huge paradigm shift.
- When the Dominion decides to execute the families of Cardassian resistance, Damar (whose family was executed), asks who'd order something like that. Kira bitterly replies "Yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?" as the Cardassians (and Damar himself) were fan of the tactic during the occupation of Bajor and re-taking of DS9 (Damar himself having shot Ziyal over her betrayal of Cardassia). This does ultimately serve as a wake up call for Damar that if Cardassia's to survive it can't go back to the way it was.
Lizard Folk: Self-explanatory. We've come a long way from the Gorn. In "The Way of the Warrior", when some Klingons beat up Garak, Bashir mentions they fractured "seven of his tranverse ribs", also known as gastralia, which protect a lizard's soft underbelly. Probably a throwaway line, but it checks out.
Meet the New Boss:
- They could be also considered a refinement of the Romulan menace on TNG, as they were introduced just as Sela and her cohorts were phased out. Funnily enough, the Cardassian Elim Garak, no stranger to magnificent bastardry himelf, threw shade on the entire Romulan race in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges".
- The Cardassians really are to the nineties what the Klingons and Romulans were to the sixties: While Gene's generation were scared of a monolithic 'other' threatening atomic annihilation, the nineties brought the fear of government surveillance, false flag operations and political upheaval.
- They were also finally a believable villain for the later seasons of TNG. The Ferengi were ultimately too comical to be villains and proved to be better as comic relief characters. Meanwhile, the Borg went too far into Eldritch Abomination territory for the TNG writers to come up with a believable plot with Collective as the antagonist after Best of Both Worlds, with only a rogue group of drones under Lore's command making any further appearance during the series (Later retcons in Star Trek: First Contact at least allowed Voyager writers to feature them). Thus the Cardassians were created to serve the antagonist role.
Men Are Uncultured: Similar to the Romulans, the Cardassians don't discriminate based on gender. However, there is some shoehorning regarding their vocation: men are expected to enlist in the military, leaving the sciences and engineering fields to the women. While we see no evidence of Cardassian men being inferior in these areas, it has given rise to a bias that men can't even replace a spark plug without help.
My Species Doth Protest Too Much: As Cardassians are the first and longest-running antagonists in DS9, they frequently come off as Always Chaotic Evil. That said, DS9 was also a major deconstructor of Star Trek tropes, and as such there are many characters who rebel against their societal stereotypes. Examples include self-flagellating Death Seeker Aamin Marritza, Four-Star Badass Defector from Decadence Tekeny Ghemor, and Bajoran-Cardassian Child of Two Worlds Tora Ziyal, among others.
Named After Their Planet: Technically named after their solar system, with their homeworld is called Cardassia Prime and the planets of Cardassia 2 through 4 existing in the system.
A Nazi by Any Other Name:
- While the Cardassians as a whole are not necessarily identical to Nazis (see the Evil Colonialist entry above), their occupation of Bajor and persecution of its highly spiritual population is strongly evocative of the Holocaust.
- If the Occupation of Bajor is compared with the Holocaust (with Gallitep standing in for Auschwitz), the Cardassians never really faced their Nuremberg. They escaped justice and resumed their policy of colonial expansion. That is, until the end of DS9 when they end up a lower member of the Dominion and treated as such, some members of the military turned into rebels like their formally occupied Bajorans and their planet utterly scorched in retaliation. All in all, the Cardassians were set back a hundred years in development and even Garak, a Cardassian himself, says that they pretty much deserved it.
- The ethics of using Nazi science are discussed in "Nothing Human" (VOY), in which the Doctor revives a Mengele-type from the Bajoran Occupation as a hologram. Naturally, the Cardassian scientist is all honey when chatting about his work. Eventually the Doctor deletes the hologram when the subject's horrors come to light.
  Doctor: Are we also going to tell them where you honed your surgical techniques? A footnote, perhaps. "For further details, see: Cardassian death camps."
Paper Tiger: The implication throughout TNG and DS9 is that the Cardassians are a bit of this. They see themselves as a militaristic powerhouse, but clearly lag behind the big three major powers of the Alpha Quadrant: The Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire. "The Wounded" shows their military hopelessly outmatched by a single Federation Nebula-class starship. The Klingons invaded and make short work of the military (though their leadership had just been ousted which helped the Klingons, but at the same time the Klingons had suffered a massive civil war but a few years ago). Even when they join the Dominion it's clear the Jem'Hadar and the Breen are the real muscle in the alliance, and when Dukat's influence vanishes the Cardassians are relegated to a junior partner.
Planet Looters: The Occupation of Bajor has them build a giant mining station to strip-mine the planet from orbit. Or more accurately, have Bajorans build a giant mining station to strip-mine their own planet from orbit.
Police State: It was boasted that even the poorest Cardassian citizen could walk the streets without fear... of the civilian population, that is.
Psychic Block Defense: The Obsidian Order's agent training program is so advanced that they are made immune to most forms of interrogation, including Vulcan mind melds.
The Quisling: Cardassia was the first Alpha Quadrant power to sign on with the Dominion, in direct opposition to the Federation. When Dukat says that everything he is doing is to make Cardassia strong again you can see a semblance of logic (there's that word again) behind selling his people out.
Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Played with in that they seem to combine reptilian characteristics (scaly skin, possible cold-bloodedness) with mammalian ones (e.g. hair). They are reputed to display pack-like behavior, desiring to establish — or at least determine — dominance in any social situation. They're also self-confessed xenophobes.
Retired Monster: For the most part, the head honchos who ran the Bajoran occupation went on holiday and were never punished. Crell Moset, a virologist who performed illegal experiments on Bajoran slaves, was rewarded with a chair at a top university. Gul Darhe'el, who ran the brutal Auschwitz-like work camp where countless Bajorans perished not only escaped the Kalla-Nohra disease through a lucky break that saw him being out of the camp during the accident that caused the outbreak, but lived to a ripe old age and was buried as a hero with full military honors in a respected memorial. Garak is running a clothier's, though he was actually forced into retirement. Some of the collaborators fled to Cardassia Prime. Kubus Oak, a Bajoran official who worked closely with the occupiers, rubber-stamped extradition orders sending his countrymen to their deaths in the mines. After going into hiding on Cardassia, he decided to retire to Bajor, confident he would never be tried. Indeed, the government was forced to grant him amnesty out of embarrassment for other untold crimes.
Rule of Symbolism: Prominent in their architecture, especially with Terok Nor. The bridge is designed so that everyone in the work pit looks up to the prefect's office with respect. Especially unsettling in their cities, which feature many curved towers that bear a disturbing resemblance to the fence posts at Auschwitz.
Sadist: While not all Cardassians are sadists, some of their culture is sadistic. For example, when they tortured Bajorans, they'd occasionally kill or rape them for no apparent reason and seemed to enjoy it. Another example is how Cardassians invite the accused's family to court because they like to watch them cry.
Salt the Earth: On their way out of Bajor, they trashed the station and the planet itself was ecologically devastated, almost certainly intentionally rather than general disregard. Dukat said that some in the Central Command would have preferred that Dukat wipe out every last Bajoran on the planet when they left just to spite both the Bajorans and Federation. Karma caught up with them when the Dominion tried to glass Cardassia in retaliation for the Cardassians turning on them in the final hours of the Dominion War.
Sigil Spam: The Cardassian Union plasters its logo everywhere, and their main ship of the line, the Galor-class light cruiser, is even shaped like said logo when viewed from above.
Slipknot Ponytail: The standard Cardassian hairstyle is severely slicked back and shiny, to compliment their reptilian features and metallic uniforms. Whenever a Cardassian gets their hair out of order, it's a sign that shit just got serious.
The Social Darwinist: In the relaunch novels, Cardassia is a world defined by its hunger. It's a survival-at-any-price mentality and a determination to endure no matter the cost which fuels the Union.
The Spartan Way: Cardassians favor tough-minded pragmatism over the kinder emotions. Dukat once declared, "Education is power, joy is vulnerability", the Cardassian credo for raising one's children. Gul Ghemor was a dissenter, expressing regret over his daughter abandoning her sculptures to join an intelligence outfit. "Cardassia could use more artists."
Secret Police: Cardassia Prime has its own flavor of the Tal Shiar, the "Obsidian Order."
Take Up My Sword: Another heartwarming Cardassian family tradition. On his deathbed, the father uses his dying breaths to read a list of names. It falls to the eldest son to ensure daddy's enemies don't go unpunished.
- The Shri-tal is normally read to family members, but there are exceptions: Legate Ghemor told his secrets to Kira Nerys, whom he considered a surrogate daughter, even though she was Bajoran. Garak also allowed a human, Dr. Bashir, to be present during his father's dying breaths, although his father had gone blind and assumed that they were alone (plus all his enemies were already dead).
Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The females have telltale blue marks on their foreheads and neck ridges. Their lips are also a darker hue.
This Means War!: The Dominion destroys a major population center, Lakarian City, to set an example for any other would-be heroes who might support the revolution. This atrocity finally causes the Cardassian ships to break from the rest of the Dominion fleet and turn their guns on their former allies.
Threw My Bike on the Roof: Bajor was a victim of this for decades during the Cardassian occupation.
- Many cultural artifacts were looted by the Cardassian government.
- Horrible war crimes (including rape) were committed by the Cardassian military.
- When the occupation ended, the Cardassian government decided to Salt the Earth, leaving even basic utilities in disrepair.
Torture First, Ask Questions Later:
- Torture is so ubiquitous in the C.U. that it's practically a cultural custom. If a prisoner is said to be "well-treated", you can bet that unfortunate person is getting the full treatment, all right.
- Cardassians are known to enjoy torturing their prisoners whether there is information to be extracted or not. For instance, the Orwellian "Bureau of Identification" has the bland task of keeping dental records of all Cardassians, usually by Age 10. Non-Cardassians who commit crimes in their space are also required to hand over a molar. This is akin to being tortured by the DMV. (The supervisor's bored "would you care to make a confession?" is a nice, customer service-orientated approach to police brutality.)
- In a nice Terry Gilliam touch, we see a Torture Technician inviting his young daughter into the chamber in a parody of Take Your Child To Work Day. The fact that he doesn't hide his work from his children is creepy but it drives home their survivalist attitude, showing humans to be squeamish and weak.
Tsundere: Cardassian romance involves bickering at each other, as the naturally-irritable O'Brien finds out to the mutual embarrassment of both himself and the Cardassian who didn't realize he was Happily Married and just generally cranky. This revelation also heavily fuels the fandom interpretation of Garak and Bashir's relationship.
Vestigial Empire: Dukat's assessment of the Cardassians after the Federation-Cardassian War is that they were once a race whose very name bred fear and now they are just bit players, too frightened to fight back in case they lose what little is left. Unknowingly, Dukat has put his finger on why the Cardassians are so quick to submit to the Dominion. Developments next year would see them regain some of their once mighty reputation only to watch them fall farther than ever before. By the end of the Dominion War, the Cardassian Union was effectively defunct: while the treaty ending the war effectively re-established a status quo ante bellum, the devastation of their homeworld along with the near complete collapse of their military forces and government puts their future as an interstellar empire into question.
We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: Initially, the peace-loving Bajorans welcomed their Cardassian visitors. The Cardassians repaid their hospitality by occupying Bajor for fifty years, during which time they forced many Bajorans into slave labor, using them in their various mining operations.
We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Cardassians are fond of labor camps and slave labors for their prisoners, and basically used Bajor's population as a slave workforce to mine the planet. Their workers often equipped with very primitive equipment like pick axes and baskets to carry their ore.
What the Romans Have Done for Us: After a catastrophic plague, Cardassia's religious leaders were overthrown by the military, who restructured their entire civilization and created an expansive empire, giving many a newfound sense of purpose. However, after Cardassia is nearly obliterated by the Dominion, Garak privately admits that it was their militarism that brought them to this point.
Wicked Cultured:
- The Cardassian education system is top-of-the-line, even by Federation standards. They seem to produce Magnificent Bastards at an unusually high rate.
- Boasting about one's education and intellectual prowess is considered a form of flirting among Cardassians.
- invokedWord of God says they were designed to be this trope crossed with Worthy Opponent.
  We introduced a new enemy that's finally able to speak on the level of Picard. They're not grunting, they're not giggling, they're not mutes or all-knowing entities. Here are the Cardassians who also graduated first in their class and they're able to carry on highly intelligent conversations with Picard, but they're sinister as hell.
Witch Hunt: When Picard spoke of the "drumhead trials" in Earth's past, he might well have been describing Cardassia's legal system. Fake charges have also been known to happen. But that doesn't matter because there is only one verdict on Cardassia, and that verdict is always the same.
"Whatever you've done, whatever the charges against you, none of that really matters in the long run... This trial is to demonstrate the futility of behavior contrary to good order."
Women Are Wiser: Cardassian women don't seem to be as prominent in the military and government as men, but most of the ones we see through TNG and DS9 seem to be more level-headed and less belligerent and posturing than the men... though there are exceptions, such as the archon in charge of Miles O'Brien's court case.
Wrench Wench:
- The females of the species have a high aptitude for engineering, coding, and (according the novels) medicine. Whether this is by nature or nurture is up for debate.
- The EMH on Voyager encountered a holographic Cardassian who could repair her own software and was entirely self-taught.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In addition to invading weaker worlds to 'civilize' them, Cardassians regularly pick each other off, too, seeing no need to waste resources on that which is no longer useful.
You Talk Too Much!: Conversation might just be the best tool in their arsenal, as even the planet's head spymaster agreed. Most Cardassians love the sound of their own voice. As a downside, they find silence most unsettling. Garak once broke a man by mutely staring at him for hours.

Cardassian voles

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/download_7342.jpg

Debut: DS9, "Playing God"

Homeworld: Cardassia

A pest species indigenous to Cardassia.

Big Eater: They're said to have "ravenous appetites".
Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Despite being called "voles", they don't look anything like the Earth creature known as a vole.
Explosive Breeder: Quark once mentions that they "breed like Tribbles".
Running Gag: The Deep Space Nine crew's attempts to kill them is played for laughs.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: They have six legs.

Chalnoth

"The Chalnoth have no use for laws or governments! We are strong — we obey no one!"

Debut: TNG, "Allegiance"

Homeworld: Chalna

A race of obligate carnivores who violently reject authority in any form.

A Real Man Is a Killer: The one Chalnoth we meet is shown to be contemptuous toward a member of an Actual Pacifist species.
The Big Guy: Very big, very strong, very mean.
Genius Bruiser: Brutish but intelligent enough to cooperate with others and be reasoned with. Consider that somehow this anarchic culture which chafes at organization and discipline managed to develop warp drive and starship technology.
I'm a Humanitarian: They have no qualms about eating sapient prey if they have to.
Might Makes Right: The closest thing to a morality the Chalnoth have.
Planet of Hats: A race of Chaotic Neutral Social Darwinists.
Properly Paranoid: Chalnoth (at least the one we meet) tend to be suspicious by nature, but considering their (lack of) society, it makes sense.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their eyes are a startling green with a red ring around the iris, and they're dangerous.
Scary Teeth: Jagged, upward-jutting fangs.
Wizard Needs Food Badly: Unlike other races they can only last three or four days at most without food.

Changelings

"We're smarter than solids. We're better than you. And most importantly: we do not fear you the way you fear us. In the end, it's your fear that will destroy you."

Debut: DS9, "Emissary"

Homeworld: A Rogue Planet in the Omarion Nebula

Shapeshifting aliens whose default form is a gelatinous liquid. They run the Dominion and are revered as gods by their slave races, the Vorta and Jem'Hadar, who are genetically programmed to revere them. (With gods like these, who needs devils?). They spend most of their time in the "Great Link," a huge puddle of liquefied Changeling that covers the surface of their planet, but many years ago they sent out 100 individuals of their race to make contact with the "Solids" of the galaxy. And Now You Know how Odo got to the Alpha Quadrant.

Abusive Alien Parents: The Great Link launched 100 infant Changelings (including Odo and Laas) into the Alpha Quadrant to make contact with alien races. The idea was to gauge the treatment of helpless foundlings by each planet; if the Changeling was cared for, then the planet was ripe for infiltration. If the natives reacted poorly to shapeshifters in their midst, then they're bad news and should be wiped out. (Hang on...) The Great Link seemed unconcerned about the safety and psychological adjustment of the infants during this exercise.
The Ageless:
- Odo lived over two hundred years in a possible timeline, and looked no worse for wear. Laas far outlived his wife. It's possible that Changelings age much slower than humanoids do — we see a Changeling infant, after all — but the change is so imperceptible that it may as well be this trope.
- There's also the Female Changeling's comment that the Founders hadn't been expecting any of the infants they sent out coming back any time soon, along with an implication they'd sent them out a long time before (Odo was several decades old, but her implication was he'd been away far longer).
Alien Sea: The Great Link resembles a reddish ocean.
Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Their highest law is that no Changeling shall ever harm another.
- They don't always follow this law faithfully. After Odo killed a fellow Changeling, the Founders afflicted him with an infection that would have killed him unless he returned to the Great Link for judgment. Also, in "The Die is Cast," the Changeling posing as Lovok did not intervene when Garak tortured Odo. (And he also forgot to tell the Jem'Hadar not to attack the shuttle that he gave Odo to escape in.)
Appropriated Appellation: According to one Founder, "Changeling" was originally a slur used by Solids. This species adopted the name and persevered to make it evoke awe as well as fear.
Art Evolution: Changelings on DS9 look like masses of dark honey when in their gelatinous form. In Star Trek: Picard, VFX improvements give the "evolved" subspecies a more fleshy, opaque texture to represent their distorted physiology. They also show hints of Glamour Failure when they are struck.
Asshole Victim: Considering their bigotry and history of genocide, every changeling that died pretty much qualifies.
Badass Long Robe: Founders all wear the same flowing pink garment, which is ankle-length and slightly resembles an Arabic thawb robe. They were changed to orange by Season Four. It's not very intimidating, but it does get across that the Dominion has been kicking around for 2,000 years and hasn't changed much in that time.
Batman Can Breathe in Space: Odo has proven resistant to vacuum, while Laas was able to travel long distances through space by shapeshifting into a Space Whale. Odo has expressed concern he can die from lack of air or heat, but given his inexperience he might simply be mistaken.
Blob Monster: Their true form is a shifting, translucent reddish ooze.
Combat Tentacles: Shapeshifters are able to fire tendrils across a room. Picard has a scene where a Changeling impales an unsuspecting scientist.
Control Freak: Their hat. Even Odo, Deep Space Nine's Token Heroic Orc, has heavy tendencies towards this, bordering on obsessive compulsive at times. Their obsessive need for order and control is implied (and sometimes outright stated) to be a reaction to their own malleable, ever-changing physiology.
Crapsaccharine World: In "The Search", the Changeling homeworld first appears to be a pleasant planet of gardens and monoliths. Covering the planet is the Great Link, a sea of liquid Changelings living in blissful physical union with each other. Later, viewers learn that the Changeling Founders are conformist, hostile to "solids", and the tyrannical leaders of the Dominion.
Crippling Overspecialization:
- The Changelings are masters at spying and infiltration, which they use to undermine their rivals and soften them up for an eventual military conflict with the Dominion. However, it's clear from their war with the Federation that the Dominion doesn't have much experience fighting a war with a military equal to their own. As military leaders and commanders, they absolutely suck and only rely on the massive brute force of the Jem'Hadar to dominate and intimidate anyone who dares to oppose them. Downplayed in that the Vorta are meant to cover this weakness, even if the Changelings can overrule them on a whim.
- The third season of Picard shows a major weakness is their lack of familiarity with a subject—they can replicate their appearance, but not their memories, meaning they can be easily exposed due to a simple line of questioning. How well this works tends to vary, usually based on how much time they've had to prepare.
Designer Babies: The Vorta were once a minor biped race. The Founders fast-tracked their evolution: sharpening certain characteristics (intelligence, loyalty), and restricting others to keep them helpless & dependent on the Jem'Hadar. The Jem'Hadar were programmed to be the perfect soldiers, with only one flaw: they are born with an addiction to Ketracel-white, an insurance policy against insurrection. Most importantly, if the Dominion were to collapse tomorrow, the troops would pay the price in dead. The Jem'Hadar would go mad without their drug supply, killing all the Vorta before topping themselves.
Disproportionate Retribution: It's practically their bread and butter. Violating their territory, even without knowing it, is grounds for them to send the Jem'hadar to kill you. Attacking them, even in self-defense, is grounds for them to declare war and try to wipe your entire species out. It's even the basis for the existence of the Dominion: once upon a time they were persecuted by solids, so they decided to conquer and dominate as many solids as they could to keep themselves safe.
Divide and Conquer: The Founders didn't anticipate making contact with our side of the galaxy for another 300 years. Since they rely on the Bajoran wormhole for reinforcements and supplies, they wisely decided against a direct strike on Bajor and instead sent a cadre of spies/ambassadors to soften up the Alpha Quadrant powers: Earth, Romulus, Qo'nos, and Cardassia Prime. The Cardassians and Romulans were infiltrated first, suckering them into an ambush inside a nebula where the more hawkish elements of the Quadrant — the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar — were severely weakened or destroyed. The Klingons came next, with the Chancellor's top advisor replaced by a Changeling who goaded him into attacking some outlying Cardassian colonies. Initially, all three species regarded the Dominion as a looming threat; the Romulans even loaned Starfleet one of their cloaking devices to do some snooping around in the Gamma Quadrant. But once war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire flared up, Romulus decided to sit back and watch how this played out.
Sisko: The Founders see it as their sacred duty to bring "order" to the galaxy—their order! Do you think they'll sit idly by while you keep your chaotic empire right next to their perfect order? NO! If you watch us go under, then what you're really doing is signing your own death warrant!
The Dividual: The Founders don't see any real need for names or identities of their own. When asked about the relationship between the Founders as a whole and the Great Link, Odo was only told "the ocean becomes the drop".
Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Section 31 virus which afflicts the Changeling race is reminiscent of the HIV epidemic. First, the virus is spread by the physically intimate act of linking, the closest Changeling analog to sex. Like HIV, the virus is lethal, at least until a cure is discovered in season 7. The lesions that appear on the infected Female Changeling resemble Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer that sometimes co-occurs with AIDS. Finally, the virus is deliberately developed by Section 31, a shadow organization under the Federation government, as a means of bringing about a Changeling genocide. This strategy is reminiscent of early conspiracy theories surrounding the origins of HIV.
Driven to Villainy: It's been suggested by Weyoun and others that humanoids have an intrinsic fear of shapeshiters. The maladaption of the Changelings to a hostile universe is understandable.
Dying Race: The Changeling race is dying from a virus engineered by Section 31. In the series finale, Odo returns to the Great Link to cure his people of the virus.
Eminently Enigmatic Race: In their guise as the Founders, they're a complete mystery at first; though worshipped as gods by the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar, they're never seen in the field, their true nature is unknown, and the location of their home planet is a best-kept secret. However, once they're finally unmasked as Odo's people in "The Search Part 2", they become more prone to appearing in public - until by the end of the show, one Founder is openly commanding Dominion troops in full view of their Cardassian allies.
Eviler than Thou: The downfall of the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar is beautifully timed as 150 Jem H'adar ships make themselves apparent. Suddenly, the big boys of the Alpha Quadrant don't cut the mustard anymore. The Founders have vacated their planet, an armada is waiting and they have a Changeling spy in their midst who orchestrated the whole "operation" to mop up the two biggest intelligence agencies in the Quadrant so the invasion could start in earnest.
Evil Counterpart: The Dominion emblem is a black diamond with single white star, possibly representing the Changeling homeworld. It's a stark contrast from the patriotic Federation banner with its many stars.
Evil Counterpart Race: Rather than representing humanity's barbaric past like the Klingons or Cardassians, the Founders represent evil versions of 24th century humanity. The Dominion is the Federation if it really was a "Homo Sapiens only club" with no ideals other than the survival of humanity at any cost, and only cared about other species for the strategic value of their territory or their usefulness as cannon fodder.
Evil Evolves: By the time of Picard, Changelings have through unidentified means vastly improved their shapeshifting abilities. They can mimic the entire internal structure of the beings they copy down to the organs, can unconsciously maintain their shape (even in death), and pieces of them don't revert when detached. This means every method the Federation developed to root out Changelings is completely useless. It's eventually revealed that Section 31 is responsible for this, having captured and experimented on Changelings to improve their abilities and mold them into spies. They got the first half right, unfortunately.
Evilutionary Biologist: They either created or heavily modified the Vorta and Jem'Hadar to do the heavy lifting for them.
Fantastic Racism: They don't trust "Solids", or "monoforms". In part, it's because centuries ago, Solids didn't trust them, and they were on the receiving end of a lot of Fantastic Racism. It left them embittered and paranoid.
Fatal Flaw: Homogeneity. They spend almost all of their time in the Great Link, sharing their thoughts and emotions, which hindered them psychologically and biologically. All of them existing as a single body made the entire species vulnerable to the Section 31 virus, which nearly destroyed them. Their contempt of "solids" and unified mentality made them incapable of seeing other species as anything except a monolith, not distinguishing between the actions of any group from their entire society. They also don't recognize the significance of individuals, with the Female Changeling missing a chance to kill Sisko, who had been hindering the Dominion at every turn, because he's just another solid.
Foil:
- They can be compared and contrasted with the Wormhole Aliens / Prophets in a few different ways:
  - Both species are literally worshipped by other species. The Prophets' status as non-corporeal beings existing outside of linear time with some level of Reality Warper powers would seem to give them a a lot more credit in this department than the Changelings, whose powers and tech seem much more mundane and comprehensible. However, the Changelings bioengineered the Vorta and Jem'Hadar to revere Changelings no matter what.
  - Both species are long lived, not aging or needing to worry about diseases, rouge agents, etc. except when it comes from outside their group.
  - Both species have homes that are hidden from the rest of the galaxy, except for those that are invited. Where as the Prophets do so by merely existing outside regular space-time, the Changelings do so by holding tight control over information about their home planet.
  - Both species hold some control over others, with the Prophets influencing the Bajorans and Sisko, and the Changelings influencing the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar. The main difference, are that the Prophets only influence through culture, rather than directly interfering or forcing them to give up their autonomy, which is why they don't interfere when the Cardassians occupy Bajor. While the Changelings control a vast empire, ruling through technology and fear, with the ability to genetically modify species into worshiping them and doing the heavy lifting.
- They also draw similarities with the Federation in that they can invoke Clarke's Third Law on less developed species, which can be misinterpreted as godliness. Difference being that the Federation instated the Prime Directive to minimize the risk of colonialism and exploitation on such races. The Changelings, meanwhile, don't just conquer and exploit, but will use their technology to outright uplift other species and custom-mold them into Changeling-worshipping Slave Races.
Foreshadowing: The idea that some sort of major totalitarian power was a big player in the Gamma Quadrant was hinted at fairly early on in the show, quite a while before the Dominion was introduced.
Freudian Excuse: The Female Changeling claims that her race was abused and persecuted by solids in the past, thus they try to control solids to prevent it from happening again.
A God Am I: Their slave-races believe them to be such, and they're certainly in no hurry to disabuse them.
God Guise: Their natural abilities are impressive, and their technology is also top tier, but ultimately their technological level is still roughly on par with what the Federation is capable of, just without the ethical restraints. They've certain got nothing on beings like the Prophets or the galaxy's many other non-corporeal entities.
God King: In the eyes of the Vorta and Jem'Hadar.
G-Rated Sex: Linking to other Changelings is a mental, physical and spiritual experience that's actually better than "solid" sex, as Odo and the Female Changeling find out when they experiment. Yes, in a manner of speaking the Great Link is one huge orgy.
Guilt-Free Extermination War: Played with. Many in the series see them this way, but there are still some who try to argue that genocide, even against the Changelings, is wrong. Not that the Changelings themselves have ever had any problem with genocide.
He Who Fights Monsters: More ironic still, it's hinted that the changelings were only persecuted by solids after they started the whole Dominion thing.
Hive Mind: The Great Link. While individual Changelings have separate personalities, if two or more Changelings are linked, they share a mind.
Homage: The blood test is ripped squarely from The Thing (1982) but given the inimitable Trek twist of morphing into alien slime.
Hypocrite:
- The Female Changeling preaches that "to become a thing is to understand a thing". They show a consistent lack of desire to understand or care about them dumb Solids.
- A Changeling impersonating O'Brien boasts to Sisko that the Changelings will win because they don't fear the solids. Quite the opposite is true, and it drives every action they take.
- In Picard, Vadic takes the attempted genocide of the Changelings by Section 31 as proof that the Changelings were right to attempt to destroy them. The Changelings are just as guilty of such behavior, rationalizing it as striking against those who would do the same to them given the chance. They just never expected their enemies could actually pull it off.
I Gave My Word:
- One of the few better things to be said about them. When they sign a treaty of non-aggression, they keep it, with no weaselling around trying to get casus belli. They also make sure their allies do the same. As Dukat and Damar look forward to eagerly taking back Bajor after taking DS9, Weyoun icily informs them the Dominion signed a treaty with the Bajorans, and they will follow it. Part of this is Pragmatic Villainy: if you're seen to flagrantly violate treaties, no one would sign them in the first place.
- Of course this is later subverted as they start losing their war against the Alpha Quadrant races. They betray the Cardassians, which you might be able to blame on Weyoun, if not for the Female Changeling herself all but directly admitting that her promises to Thot Gor and the Breen were pretty much empty.
Immune to Bullets: While energy weapons kill them dead just like any other living being^note, they pretty much can't be damaged by physical attacks short of something extreme like being slammed into a planet at high speed. After all, you're essentially trying to stab or punch a cohesive mass of liquid.
Just the First Citizen: The "Founders" is a purposely misleading title. Which species? Male or female? How many? Nobody in the Gamma Quadrant is even certain if they exist.
Laser-Guided Karma: After untold years of Blighting any planet which dared to resist them, the Changelings were laid low by a Federation bioweapon.
Make an Example of Them:
- The nuking of Lakarian City wasn't one of their brighter moves, but it's understandable given the sick Changeling's desperation. Truth be told, she never cared for Cardassians and had pledged to eradicate them after the Omarion attack, but relented once they agreed to put a Dominion garrison on their soil.
- When Teplan was still powerful, they thought that nothing was beyond them and they could even defeat the Dominion. It's the same fate that could so easily happen to Earth if they defy them: the Jem'Hadar obliterated this world and left behind the Blight as a parting gift, condemning them all to a painful death.
The Man Behind the Man: Starfleet initially mistook the Dominion emissaries, known as the Vorta, to be the Founders themselves. The Vorta were happy to nod along and further the confusion, until Odo stumbled upon a rogue planet the Changelings were hiding on.
Moral Myopia: The Changeling homeworld rivals Equestria in terms of peace and love. Yet they are ruthless in enforcing rules and boundaries on other cultures.
Muscles Are Meaningless: All Changelings share the same medium height and build while in human form, but they're a lot stronger than they look. Odo stopped a free-falling lift with his bare hands. The Female Changeling was able to lift a Cardassian man by the neck while terminally ill. You can imagine what a Changeling at full strength might do.
A Nazi by Any Other Name:
- Like the Nazis, the Founders consider themselves intrinsically superior to "solids" and justify their constant border wars as a need for protection. Even, say... breathing room?
- It is fitting that a Vorta is the one who puts forward a Final Solution for dealing with the Cardassian rebels. He is taken aback when the Founder not only embraces this idea but commits the rest of their forces to a planet-wide extermination of the species.
  Weyoun: That...might take some time...
  Founder: Then I suggest that you begin at once.
The Needless:
- They do not require food, water, or oxygen to survive. They rejuvenate naturally by reverting back to ooze for an hour or two.
- In fact, this is a key component of their servant races, too. Undoubtedly, the Founders lack an understanding of or even respect for basic humanoid desires. This was played for laughs by Ziyal (albeit unknowingly) when she gets fed up with Quark complaining about his business suffering under the Dominion.
  Quark: The Jem'Hadar don't eat, don't drink, and they don't have sex. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Founders don't eat, don't drink, and they don't have sex either. Which, between you and me, makes my financial future less than promising.
  Ziyal: It might not be so bad. For all we know, the Vorta could be gluttonous, alcoholic sex-maniacs.
Never Be Hurt Again: The Changelings were persecuted by solids in the distant past, so now they ruthlessly subjugate all solids to make sure they are never threatened again.
No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. The Section 31 virus is deadly to Changelings but harmless to humanoids. Likewise, diseases that afflict humanoids aboard Deep Space Nine do not affect Odo.
No Body Left Behind: A dead Changeling simply reverts to his liquid state or, in the case of one Founder ("The Ship"), crumble into black ash. Mirror Odo exploded into gibs when shot with a phaser.
No Delays for the Wicked: One thing no one can deny about the Dominion is how ruthlessly efficient they are. They are able to turn out ships with record speed, and any time the Federation makes a dent in their infrastructure they get it back up in no time flat. Being able to grow new soldiers certainly helps.
One-Gender Race: In their natural state, Changelings are sexless. However, some seem to prefer a masculine or feminine gender presentation while in humanoid form.
Paranoia Gambit: A favored tactic, often seeking to provoke Divided We Fall among the Alpha Quadrant.
Planet of Hats: Above all else each and every blob that makes up the Changeling race loves law and order and seeks to impose them wherever they see lawlessness and chaos. For the Founders it means creating a fascist interstellar empire and controlling their subjects right down to the genetic level while for the much less morally bankrupt Odo it simply means protecting the peace of his community as a policeman (and making sure that everything in his apartment is always in exactly the right place). Either way, the natural instincts that drive them are the same.
Primal Polymorphs: Played with. They're a Higher-Tech Species, but they don't seem to actually like using technology themselves, preferring to leave that to their allies while they spend their time on their wild homeworld as the "Great Link", an Alien Sea consisting of billions of shapeshifters in their natural liquid state, united as collective Hive Mind and living in a state of constant euphoria.
The Proud Elite: They believe themselves to be "better" than "solids" due to their ability to assume any form imaginable. An attitude reinforced by the fact that they manufactured several races to view them as Gods.
Psychic Block Defense: Most non-Changeling psychic phenomena doesn't affect them, due to their lack of a traditional humanoid brain. Lwaxana Troi found Odo fascinating partially due to her inability to read him.
Rogue Planet: Their adopted homeworld in the Omarion Nebula is supposedly one of these, although there is a star-like object visible in the distance.
Royals Who Actually Do Something: They usually keep to themselves and delegate the running of the Dominion to the Vorta, but occasionally they act as spies and infiltrators.
Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Their obsessive need to impose order on everyone and the fact that they view solids the way we view rats.
Seriously Scruffy: This is used as shorthand to show that there's something physically wrong with a changeling. If Odo has gone too long without a regeneration cycle (or under a huge amount of stress) his usually immaculate uniform starts to darken and flake and his slicked-back hair gets crazy. Also seen with the female Founder in the last season, albeit at a much slower pace.
Shadow Dictator: The Dominion has spent 2,000 years hiding behind a massive surveillance and military apparatus. In "Vortex", when Quark unwittingly foreshadows the Founders' paranoia of "solids" and tendency to remain hidden (either by remaining on their homeworld or secretly impersonating solids).
Quark: Paranoia must run in your species, Odo. Maybe that's why no one has ever seen another shapeshifter. They're all hiding!
Shapeshifter Longevity: On top of being one of the most powerful shapeshifting species in the franchise, it's also indicated that they are exceptionally long-lived, perhaps even immortal: in "Chimera," Laas was living among the Varalans for over two hundred years with no ill effects; Odo, who was part of the same group of Changelings sent out into the galaxy, is implied to be the same age... and in "Children Of Time," he's found to be the only original crewmember of the Defiant still alive two centuries into a possible future - all others having died and been replaced by their descendants (or in Dax's case, later hosts). Not only is Odo showing no signs of decay after all this time, but he's actually an even better shapeshifter.
Shapeshifting Trickster: The reason they are so feared. After season 3, they would sow discord by impersonating people in the Alpha Quadrant.
The Sleepless: Downplayed. They don't sleep per se, but they do need to go into liquid form every few hours.
Sneaky Spy Species: Since the Vorta actually manage the Dominion in their name and the Jem'Hadar serve as their warriors, the typically shy Founders ultimately fill the espionage niche when diplomacy fails and conventional warfare cannot suffice. With their powers, they are well-suited to operating as spies, saboteurs, and infiltrators, most notably by replacing key dignitaries in order to sabotage their enemies from within. Even the heroic Constable Odo isn't above covertly monitoring potential criminals and disguising himself in order to get the drop on suspects.
Soft-Spoken Sadist: Come to think of it, the same can be said of their children (the Jem'Hadar and Vorta), too.
Spanner in the Works: Word of God (Robert Hewitt Wolfe) clarified that the Founders did foresee having to acquire a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant at some point, they just didn't estimate it to be so soon. The bottleneck between the Gamma Quadrant and Bajor causes them quite a few problems, enough to disrupt their usual strategy of bullying, buying off, or eradicating their neighbors ad nauseum.
Starfish Aliens: Their default form is gelatinous liquid. Furthermore, they collectively form a giant living ocean called the Great Link.
STD Immunity: Averted with the Section 31 virus, which is spread by linking, the closest Changeling analog to sex. By season 7, the virus has spread like wildfire through the Great Link.
Stupid Evil:
- Killing off Jem Hadar and Vorta over small things, infecting entire species with plagues^notethe quickening and ruling the Gamma Quadrant through fear in general might have been effective in an area where they were indisputably the top dog, but it ensured that the Federation and other major Alpha Quadrant powers would never surrender to them, knowing what the Founders would do on a whim. It's also likely the reason Section 31 felt wholesale genocide of their species was the preferable option.
- This is also the sort of thing that led Damar to lead a Cardassian rebellion against them, since the Female Changeling treated his people with the same carelessness as her own disposable Jem'Hadar. In response to his rebellion, they try massacring 2 million Cardassians in Lakarian City to quell the unrest, which just gets a lot more of the population on Damar's side.
Sweeping Ashes: What happens when you kill a Changeling. Unable to hold form, they collapse back into their gelatinous state, which in turn crumbles to coal.
Synthetic Plague: The Section 31 virus, which quickly spreads through the Changeling population.
Technically Naked Shapeshifter: They appear to be wearing clothes, but it's just part of their bodies.
This Was His True Form: Changelings revert to their gelatinous state when killed, and pieces of them detached will similarly revert, which is the basis for Federation blood testing to expose Changelings (a practice that, at best, rarely worked because the Changelings anticipated such methods). The Changelings in Picard don't have this weakness, able to maintain their form even in death and requiring extreme damage to revert.
Touch Telepathy: By linking, Changelings can speak to each other mentally.
Transformation Exhilaration: Changelings consider their shapeshifting powers so natural that they will think nothing of changing for amusement alone, taking joy in the act of becoming something different and in being something different. Furthermore, they particularly enjoy merging themselves into a single shapeshifted entity in a process they call "linking", which they treat as sex in all but name - to the point that the Female Changeling uses it to seduce Odo.
Unreliable Narrator: They tend to justify their attrocities by claiming it was due to the mistreatment of "solids," yet all Changelings save Odo have no issue lying at the drop of a hat to get what they want. It becomes evident no one aside from their genetically engineered slave races take what they say at face value.
Utopia Justifies the Means They do pretty horrible things to people that don't dance to the Dominion's tune, yet claim their victimization in the past justifies this. In a painfully ironic example, they infected a planet with a disease designed to kill the population over generations just to make an example of them to the rest of the Gamma Quadrant. They don't see anything wrong with this.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Their hat. The foundlings are pretty poor at it, since they require hands-on training from others Changelings to morph. The Founders themselves can imitate pretty well anything, from wild-haired Klingons, to crystal pillars, to girderwork on a Jem'Hadar ship. Laas was able to turn into a Space Whale and even travel long distances at seemingly superluminal speed, as well as turn into fire or fog, but since no other Changeling has performed similar feats (even in situations where it would have been really useful to them) it's unclear if he's unusually skilled.
We Are Everywhere: It goes without saying that the Founders' main talent is gathering intel. They rule through whispers and fear, letting their adversaries know that they're aware of everything goes on in their world (or Quadrant).
We Have Reserves:
- The high breeding rate of Jem'Hadar leaves little room for valuing their lives and they are treated as tools by both Changeling and Vorta alike, to be called upon or sacrificed as needed. In "Rocks and Shoals", Keevan knowingly sends his unit on a suicide run rather than admit to them that he's run out of white. Sisko having to mow down Jem'Hadar from a safe perch leaves a bad taste in the mouth; there is no sense of honor in slaughtering an enemy that is deliberately throwing away their lives because they've been ordered to.
- "We had a rich and ancient culture. Our literature, music, art was second to none. Now so much of it is lost. So many of our best people..." S.6 explores some of the Vorta's inadequacies, namely poor eyesight and a lack of aesthetics. A Vorta really wouldn't know whether to frame an exquisite painting or use it as a table mat. What starts as a joke takes on a sinister overtone when you realize Weyoun thinks nothing of bombing Cardassia back into the iron age.
- Not that Vorta are safe from disciplinary measures. When they fail to rustle up a vaccine for the Changeling virus, one of the Founders proves how ruthless she is by ordering all of the Vorta doctors eliminated and their replacement clones activated because fresh eyes might yield better results! No one in the Dominion is irreplaceable and that's just how the Founders like it.

Denobulans

"I thought human reproduction was complicated. You Denobulans make us look like single-cell organisms."

Debut: ENT, "Broken Bow"

Homeworld: Denobula

On their homeworld, the twelve billion Denobulans all share one continent. Consequently, living space is at a premium and Denobulan culture had come to embrace polyandry and communal lifestyles. All in all, Denobulans are pretty weird. They can inflate their heads (similar to a pufferfish) when threatened, have Overly Long Tongues, mood-ring eye colors, and a ridiculously creepy grin.

All Women Are Prudes: Gender-inverted, Denobulan men are incredibly modest and uncomfortable with nudity, their own especially.
Bio-Augmentation: Subverted. Phlox states that the Denobulans have been using genetic engineering since the twentieth century - but only under strict regulation, to repair what would otherwise be debilitating genetic conditions (blindness, late-onset insanity, etc.) But he adamantly points out that they only use such technologies responsibly: to repair and never in an attempt to "improve" on their basic biological template to create a race of supermen. They never went through an analogue of the Eugenics Wars like humans did, with genetic "supermen" like Khan.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Oh where to begin... for one, they have a unique ability to enlarge their faces when they felt threatened. Their toenails were also dark brown and yellow striped and that's just scratching the surface.
Bourgeois Bohemian: The Denobulans are perfectly happy in their mixed marriages, as it meant relatives could leave for extended periods and not inconvenience the family. Truthfully, Phlox admitted, he'd begun to miss the company of some of the other husbands. (Ahem.)
Go Mad from the Isolation: The Denobulan homeworld only has one relatively small continent, and a population of 12 billion. As Phlox directly explains, they could have kept the number smaller with population controls or spreading to space colonies once they developed light-speed travel, they simply chose not to. Their society evolved to be very communal, with multiple polygamous marriages for both men and women at the same time. Denobulans prefer crowded habitats to socialize with large numbers of other people, and they actually can't stand being completely alone. In one episode the rest of the crew has to be sedated for a week to pass through a dangerous patch of space, except for Phlox whose physiology is not adversely affected (and so he can monitor the crew). He has to spend the entire journey alone by himself. By the end he becomes increasingly paranoid and starts suffering from hallucinations.
Polyamory: Denobulans are both polygynous and polyandrous. Dr. Phlox has three current wives, each of whom have three husbands (him and two other men). One of his wives appears in one episode, and he has no problem that she is sexually interested in Trip. From what little we have seen of the Denobulans they are not sexually outgoing or adventurous (they're not Deltans), they just have a casual and relaxed attitude towards sexual relationships. Their social structure is simply very complex and well, "alien".
What Happened to the Mouse?: Subverted. For a long time, despite having ties to Earth, they're not heard from past the 22nd century (outside of the Star Trek Expanded Universe) then Lower Decks revealed two Denobulans in one of their episodes, so they're clearly still around but whether they're a part of the Federation is anyone's guess.
- Star Trek: Prodigy episode "Asylum" featured the first Denobulan Starfleet officer, Lieutenant junior grade Barniss Frex, something previously only seen in the Expanded Universe.

Characters / Star Trek Species: A to D

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