Star Trek: Legacy - Television Tropes & Idioms

A game developed by Mad Doc Software and published by Bethesda Softworks, intended as the Spiritual Successor to the excellent Star Trek: Starfleet Command and Star Trek: Bridge Commander games, with even some RTS elements a la Star Trek: Armada.

The original concept for the game was that of a World Building Generational Saga Space Opera, uniting the cast leads from all of the extant Star Trek series in one story unfolding over hundreds of years of Trek history. Originally, the various captains were going to face a crisis dealing with the Iconian gateways as seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Contagion". Eventually the writers settled instead on a tale about the possible origins of the Borg. It didn't turn out well.

The game was released on both the X-Box 360 and the PC. The 360 version recieved somewhat positive reviews, while the PC version was...well, terrible.

This Game Provides Examples Of

Ascended Fanboy: Rick Knox, who beforehand made community models for Star Trek: Starfleet Command, Star Trek: Bridge Commander, and Star Trek: Armada, was tapped by Mad Doc Software to work on Legacy.
Badass Boast: A few over the different eras, but one in particular stands out when T'Uerell advises the Starfleet armada to surrender. Picard's response: "Sorry; that word is not in Starfleet's vocabulary."
- Both the Romulan and Klingon commanders in the final two missions give some of these, all of them unintentionally hilarious. Klingons will send those soulless Borg to Gre'thor anyway! And the Romulans acting like they have everything under control, they certainly didn't need Captain Picard's help!
Big Bad: T'Uerell.
The Captain: All five of them!
Card-Carrying Villain: Played With. The later on in the story it is, the more T'Uerell is one of these. She starts out saying that she's a good guy, then acting like she's a Knight Templar, and finally, in the second-to-last mission, she calls herself a villain.
Critical Existence Failure: Subverted....kinda. Ships look more and more damaged as they are...uh...damaged. Unfortunately, one of the Game Breaking Bugs the PC version suffered.
Cool Starship: Somewhat hard to mess up, this being a Space Combat Simulator and all. Ships from all across Trek canon appear, as well as a few made for the game. Of course, many community made ships have been modded into the game as well.
Continuity Porn: Want to see Captain Picard take the reins as Captain of the Stargazer? Want to see how the Omega protocol came into being? Want to see the Enterprise-E and Voyager team up to stomp some Borg? Done, done and done.
Complete Monster: T'Uerell, massively.
Executive Meddling
Faster-than-Light Travel: The player can warp around at will. Better Than It Sounds.
Game Mod: Inevitable, it's a Star Trek Simulation Game. This has increased the game's life-span significantly.
Generational Saga: None of the main characters are directly related to one another, but the games storyline takes place over several hundred years, beginning with Archer's Enterprise being sent after a rogue vulcan scientist named T'Uerell, and ending with Picard popping a Quantum cap in her ass courtesy of the Enterprise-E, post Star Trek: Nemesis.
Hey, It's That Voice!: William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, and Scott Bakula, all return to voice their respective characters.
Insane Troll Logic: Meet T'Uerell, the Galaxy's least logical proponent of Vulcan logic.
Joker Immunity: T'Uerell lives through hundreds of years of Trek history, doing god knows what, to who the hell knows how many.
Karmic Death
Karma Houdini: T'Uerell, for hundreds of years, until she messes with Picard, anyway.
Kirk Summation: Naturally Kirk gives one, near the end of his turn in the spotlight.
Moral Event Horizon: T'Uerell doesn't merely cross the line so much as cheerfully moonwalk across it.
Obvious Beta: The PC version.
Porting Disaster
The Problem with Licensed Games: The fact that this game is licensed is the least of its problems.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Multiple mods, such as the somewhat popular Ultimate Universe Mod, are devoted to cleaning up the PC version's code and simply making it playable, as well as also adding more content.
Running the Asylum: Mr. Knox.
Ship Tease: The banter between Janeway and Picard. It's enough to make one think that they're already in a relationship.
Simulation Game: Space combat.
Sorting Algorithmof Evil: Averted, or at least not how you'd think it'd be. Apparently, Klingon ships are much tougher than Borg ships, at least for the (fan patched to be playable) PC version.
Space Compression: A-la Star Trek: Starfleet Command.
Space Is A Pizza Box: Ships fly like aircraft and fight like naval warships, which this being Star Trek and all, is actually somewhat fitting.
Space Opera: Minus the "Opera" part.
Spiritual Successor: Intended as this for both Star Trek: Starfleet Command and Star Trek: Bridge Commander.
- Intended being the key word there. Bridge Commander was much, much more sophisticated than this game ended up being, and that game had an actual Space Opera plot.
Start of Darkness: The plot revolves around the origins of the Borg.
Stuff Blowing Up: Much care and effort was taken by Mad Doc over making the explosions as awesome as possible. They arguably succeeded.
Subsystem Damage: This game gives Scotty plenty of reasons to throw a fit.
The Gump: T'Uerell is an evil version of this, see Continuity Porn above.
The Man Behind the Man: T'Uerell, for the frinxing BORG.
Nice Job Breakingit Hero: Captain Archer gives himself a hard time over this. He even says that he should have listened to Shran about the Vulcans.
They Just Didn't Care: The PC version. As many who have modded the game, occasionally having to stop for days and fix unfinished spaghetti code, will attest.
2-D Space: Averted, kind of. There's full 3D movement...somewhat, but it's less like actual space and more like a level from Star Fox 64.
Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Legions of mods. It's a Star Trek Simulation Game. This is to be expected.
Units Not To Scale: Planets. Again, just like Star Trek: Starfleet Command, or Star Trek: Armada.
Utopia Justifies the Means: T'Uerell's motivation. Kirk calls out her Insane Troll Logic for achieving it. Discussed in the second to last mission, with Picard almost saying the trope name.
What Could Have Been: The story was being written by D.C. Fontana, and the prescence of all five series leads, should give one an idea of how good this game could have been.
World Building: The story spans hundreds of years across the Trek timeline, and T'Uerell is like a villainous version of The Gump.
Zeerust: Throughout the entire game. First happens in the transition from the more advanced looking and sounding Enterprise era to the one of The Original Series. And was that an Excelsior-Class with the 1960's style phasers on it?!
Zombie Apocalypse: It involves the origins of the Borg.
They're everywhere!