Space — the final frontier...
A long-running franchise of science-fiction television series and eleven movies which is perhaps best known in the mainstream for its geeky "trekkie" fans, who are
stereotyped as
male Basement Dwellers who have
never had sex and speak
Klingon (this has
almost no basis in fact
). Either that or it's confused with
Star Wars.
The setting in every series is about an Earth-based intergalactic government called
The Federation and their fleet of starships, which form
Starfleet. Every series dealt with a particular crew, mostly of various ships named
Enterprise. As originally envisioned by
Gene Roddenberry, the science fiction nature of the series was just a method to address many social issues of the time that could not have been done in a normal drama. As such, it was not above being
Anvilicious or engaging in thinly-veiled social satire, but was also
way on the happy end of the
Sliding Scale Of Idealism Vs Cynicism.
Series in the franchise include:
- Star Trek The Original Series (1966 - 1969) Set from 2266-2269 — The one everyone has heard of. Originally just Star Trek, it suffered in the ratings, but gained a devoted fanbase. Un Cancelled after the second season, and then Cancelled again at the end of the third. It really picked up steam in syndication, which was about the time demographics came into play. Nowadays, it looks incredibly cheesy and dated, but the show's writing was (mostly) solid and the cast had great chemistry.
- Star Trek The Animated Series (1973 - 1975) The timeline was unidentified — Used most of the original cast (and a few additions) to provide voices for the animated versions of their characters. Only 22 half-hour-long episodes were produced, but the series got the franchise's first Emmy award.
- Star Trek The Next Generation (1987 - 1994) Set from 2364-2371 — The best known one after the original and the only Trek spin-off to make it onto the big screen. Takes place in the 24th century on the Enterprise-D, with the same mission of exploration as the original. Introduced the holodeck into the setting.
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999) Set from 2369-2376 — Takes place concurrently with the end of Next Generation and the lions share of Voyager. Set on a former Cardassian space station in a politically unstable part of space near the planet Bajor, with exclusive access to a rare stable wormhole that leads from the Alpha to the Gamma Quadrant. Babylon Five a la Star Trek, featuring (from Season 3 onwards) a massive interstellar war between the Federation, Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans and the Dominion.
- Star Trek Voyager (1995 - 2001) Set from 2371-2378 — The ship of the same name is flung across the galaxy to the Delta Quadrant, looking for a way home. Had the first major female captain in the franchise. Infamous for the Villain Decay of the Borg. Lost In Space a la Star Trek.
- Star Trek Enterprise (2001 - 2005) Set from 2151-2155 — Prequel to the original series. A hundred years or so before Kirk, humans are just getting their space legs and the Applied Phlebotinum's not so nigh-magical. Featured two retools, first with Season Three introducing an ambitious season-spanning Story Arc and the fourth and final season using several 2-3 episode story-arcs. Both were an attempt to add more interest to a very mild and relatively boring story "temporal cold war" arc of the first two seasons. Infamous for the asinine pop song in the opening credits and for not lasting the desired 7 seasons.
In addition to these,
Star Trek: Phase II was a series concept designed as the cornerstone of a Paramount Pictures-based network in 1976. A continuation of the original series and featuring a second five-year mission, it would have introduced a number of new characters in conjunction with the original crew. When the network project died and the insane success of
Star Wars making sci-fi films profitable again, Paramount elaborated the series pilot into
The Movie, which ultimately led to a whole series of movies:
Many of the concepts from
Phase II made their way into
Star Trek The Next Generation and the series itself is considered
deuterocanon - not "true" canon, because it never made it to the screen, but allowed in
Broad Strokes to fill a gap in Trek Chronology.
After the high ratings
of Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek began to decline in ratings through
Deep Space 9 and
Voyager before finally hitting bottom in
Enterprise. Many people have tried to figure out the reasons why, but a common phrase passed around was "Franchise Fatigue," a
Star Trek series had been on television for 18 years. New and fresh stories were harder to find and
Enterprise wasn't able to hold on to the viewers. The fact that rival science fiction shows like
Babylon 5 and
Stargate SG-1 were finally able to be successful on their own put Trek in serious competition for the first time as well.
As a
long-running and highly popular franchise,
Star Trek is one of largest
Trope Makers on television, especially the original series, and it remains one of the canonical examples of
Sci Fi in the minds of the general public. It was considered ground-breaking for its time, due to Roddenberry's bright and optimistic vision of the future; amongst other things, he fought hard for a diverse and racially-integrated cast, resulting in only two white American males amongst seven characters and a
black woman in a position of authority—not to mention what was widely (mis)reported as the first black-on-white on-screen kiss. Its influence is such that two pioneering
Real Life spacecraft (the prototype for the Space Shuttle and the first ship in Virgin Galactic's space-tourism fleet) have been named after the Starship
Enterprise. With all this notoriety,
Star Trek has also been the target of more satires than one can count, particularly
Galaxy Quest, which has occasionally been declared "the best
Star Trek movie ever made."
Also notable:
Star Trek: Phase II (formerly
Star Trek: New Voyages), a non-profit
Fan Film series with new, unknown actors playing Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the original crew.
Better Than It Sounds, due to the talent and enthusiasm of the cast and the involvement of actors and other personnel from the original series, including Walter Koenig (Chekov) and George Takei (Sulu) appearing as older versions of their characters.
Tropes common across all series:
- Trope Namer (See all the tropes with an asterisk below? Star Trek is the Trope Namer for all of them.)
- Arc Number (47, from the middle of Next Generation on)
- Badass Army: The Klingons wish they were these but they are more of a subversion.
- Beam Me Up Scotty*
- Boldly Coming*
- Blunt Metaphors Trauma (Data, Spock, and most Vulcans)
- Captains Log*
- The Chains Of Commanding
- Clothes Make The Legend (The black and primary color uniform scheme. Only the original series films and Enterprise didn't follow this)
- Cool But Inefficient
- Collectible Card Game
- Coming In Hot (In Star Trek V)
- Command Roster (Star Trek is likely the Trope Maker or at least set the standard of how this trope is used.)
- Cool Gate
- Deflector Shields*
- Destructo Nookie (Klingons)
- Dropped A Bridge On Him*
- Dying Alone
- Emotions Vs Stoicism (Vulcans vs. Romulans)
- Everything Sensor (EVERY scanner is like this)
- Exposition Beam - Vulcan Mind Melds are essentially this, along with a host of other Applied Phlebotinum uses.
- Fan Of The Past (Too many to name)
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture (While not fantasy, most of the major alien species have some connection to Real World counterparts)
- Earth Starfleet- United States of America
- The Federation- United Nations
- Vulcans- Great Britain (Not a perfect match-up, but Enterprise depicted them as a regional superpower who eventually lose much of their realm of control as Earth increases theirs.)
- Klingons- Soviet Russia (Agressive people who... hell, just watch Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country.)
- Klingons became good guys in time for The Next Generation after [[Anvilicious a moon of theirs named "Praxis" blew up]]. Instead of post-Soviet Russians, though, they turned into...vikings.
- Romulans- Communist China (Secretive group who you aren't quite sure what they're up to.)
- Cardassians- Nazi Germany (Mostly in regards to their Occupation of Bajor.)
- Bajorans- Jewish (Specifically the very religious people suffering through an oppressive military force.)
- Bajorans are actually both Jewish and Palestinian (though Cardassians are certainly never, ever Israeli).
- Orions- The Mafia/ Criminal Underground
- Nausicaans- Gang Leaders
- Faster Than Light Travel (Rather hard to imagine the series without it)
- The Federation*
- First Installment Wins - How most people remember Star Trek. "That's the one with *Vulcan handsignal*, right?"
- Forgot The Call
- Good Old Ways
- Government Drug Enforcement (used a couple of times in TNG and DS 9, also used in the movie Insurrection)
- Green Eggs - Romulan Ale is blue.
- Green Skinned Space Babe*
- Half Human Hybrid* (Spock, Deanna Troi, B'Elanna Torres)
- Hes Dead Jim*
- Hologram
- HoYay - In fact, Kirk/Spock (or Spirk) is the original Slash pairing.
- Wait, wouldn't it be Ko—oh.
- If You Taunt Him You Will Be Just Like Him
- Inertial Dampening*
- Jabba Table Manners (The Klingons of the Star Trek universe universally gulp and slurp down food like slobs. In their case, it is to show how tough and free of pretentious "good manners" and straightforward and honest their society is, not to show how "evil" they are.)
- Jeannie Cut
- The Khan*
- The Kirk*
- Kirks Rock*
- Kirk Summation*
- The Kobayashi Maru*
- Life Imitates Art (take the sliding doors, for one thing)
- Letter Motif
- Logic Bomb (though there were precedents in pulp SF)
- Love Is In The Air (Several episodes in the different series)
- Lower Deck Episode*
- Ludd Was Right, by means of Space Amish
- Made Of Phlebotinum
- Magnetic Plot Device (The various starships. The Holodeck. The Bajoran wormhole in DS 9. The Temporal Cold War in Enterprise.
- The Mc Coy*
- Military Maverick (almost expected of Starfleet captains, it would seem. Picard, for all he's careful, deliberate, and knows the regulations backwards, forwards, and sideways, has many moments of this, the others even more. One gets the impression that, away from central planets and main trade routes, the captain is the Federation, with all the discretion and responsibility that implies.)
- Considering that the original concept for the series was Hornblower in deep space, and that ship captains during the Wooden Ships And Iron Men era usually were their respective country's highest representative in any area where they were stationed...
- Janeway in Voyager once made a comment about how strongly she had to hold onto Starfleet regulations so far from home, but also admiring the gung-ho attitude of earlier starfleet captains.
- Mirror Universe*
- More Hero Than Thou
- Negative Space Wedgie (from a well-known parody)
- Never Give The Captain A Straight Answer
- Now Do It Again Backwards
- Officer And A Gentleman and/or Cultured Warrior (To some degree, almost all Starfleet personnel are one or the other of these. Even the Closer To Earth types have scientific and literary interests. Many enemies are Wicked Cultured as well.)
- Pardon My Klingon*
- Planet Of Hats
- Prime Directive*
- Proud Warrior Race Guy (The original series had the Klingons as being mostly warlike with little redeeming traits. Gene Roddenberry didn't like them being the "Black Hats" of the saga so in The Next Generation he made a Klingon regular cast member and quickly established the "honor" aspect to their society.)
- Ray Gun (phasers and disruptors)
- Red Shirt*
- The Roddenberry Line*
- Rubber Forehead Aliens*
- Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale
- Shout Out To Shakespeare
- Space Whale Aesop*
- The Spock*
- Spock Speak*
- Standard Sci Fi Setting (Star Trek is probably what made it "standard.")
- Standard Time Units (Stardates)
- Star Trek Shake*
- Stealth In Space
- Straw Vulcan*
- Subspace Ansible (except when the plot demands its absence)
- Talking Animal (Lt. M'Ress, the felinoid alien from the Animated Series)
- Theiss Titillation Theory* (named for the costume designer on The Original Series)
- Too Much Of A Good Thing
- Unpleasable Fanbase (stay away from discussion forums about what is or isn't canon if you fear Internet Backdraft)
- Wagon Train To The Stars*
- We Come In Peace Shoot To Kill (also from a famous parody)
- We Will Not Have Pockets In The Future
- Will Not Tell A Lie (Vulcans, allegedly—something of an Informed Attribute)
- The Worf Effect*
- X Meets Y (Hidden by the influence of Trek on later productions, but the original premise was then novel at least for television, and could easily be described as "Horatio Hornblower meets The Outer Limits".)
- You Look Familiar - numerous times. But in this case putting a different alien makeup helps a lot in distinguishing characters played by the same actor.
- Mark Lenard waves "Hello".
Out of respect to its greatness, not to mention the fact that this is sort of a catch-all page for a series too big for one page, I'll concede to putting the necessary link to the
Star Trek fetish fuel page in a
stinger. It's only until WikiTech gets us a button, anyway.
