Star Trek / Tropes E to H

Main Page | Tropes A to D | Tropes E To H | Tropes I to L | Tropes M to P | Tropes Q to T | Tropes U to Z

These tropes are featured across the entire Star Trek franchise. Please add tropes for specific works to their individual pages.

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E

• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Earth is both the capital of the Federation and the headquarters of Starfleet. If an alien enemy wants to seriously conquer the Federation, taking Earth is invariably seen as key to doing so. Not only this, but Earth lies nearly exactly on the border of the Federation-dominated Alpha Quadrant and the Klingon- and Romulan-controlled Beta Quadrant, making it an extremely strategically important planet.
• Elite Agents Above the Law: Section 31 takes its name from a provision of the United Earth Starfleet Charter, with its entire purpose being to "bend the rules in times of extreme threat"—and as their agent Harris notes in Star Trek: Enterprise, "Earth's got a lot of enemies." They go back and forth in their portrayal: Star Trek: Discovery presents them as a theoretically legitimate service branch that has a tendency for things to Go Horribly Wrong. However, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where they originated, presents them as a virtually rogue agency that is not accountable to anyone at all, and which goes to increasing extremes to "safeguard the Federation", including using biological weapons to try to exterminate the Dominion's Founders, and framing a Federation-friendly Romulan senator for treason in order to put one of their moles into a higher position. They're even said to have an operative in the Federation President's Cabinet—in a series where there has already been one attempted coup by a Well-Intentioned Extremist Starfleet officer.
• Emotion Suppression: The Vulcan culture has Emotion Suppression at its core.
  • Roddenberry once decreed that humans don't grieve in the future. "Death is natural." This was loosened up a bit after Gene got Kicked Upstairs.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: Romulans vs. Vulcans.
• The Empire:
  • The Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire and the Cardassian "Union". The Andorians tried their hand at becoming an imperial power in ENT, but mostly just embarrassed themselves.
  • The Terran Empire rules with an iron fist in the Mirror Universe. The Alliance that overthrew them also counts.
  • Whereas the Klingons were usually confined to Space Cold War and Romulans largely kept to themselves after the Great Offscreen War, the Dominion was the first example of this trope to truly give future humanity a run for its nonexistent money. Much larger and older than the Federation, ruled by paranoid shapeshifters with a Clone Army that worships them as gods. It even took an alliance (of the Feds, Klingons and Romulans) plus La Résistance to defeat them.
• Enclosed Extraterrestrials: The Breen, who appear mostly in DS9, is a race that is entirely hidden behind a suit and long-snouted helmet. Worf mentions that no one has ever seen a Breen without the suit and lived to speak of it. The suit is known to be a refrigeration suit, regulating a cold environment for the wearer and the Breen are known to have no blood. The most common belief among the races of the Alpha Quadrant is that the Breen homeworld is a frozen wasteland, which is why they need to wear refrigeration suits. However, Weyoun once refers to the Breen homeland as being quite comfortable, maintaining the mystery of the Breen and their suits. An Expanded Universe novel Zero Sum Game claims that the Breen wear the suit to promote equality between the different species of their Confederacy by forcing them all to have the same external appearance.
• Epic Tracking Shot: It's an interesting thing to note as the next generation of shows progressed in special effects.
• Everything Sensor: Every scanner is like this.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: Of all the species, only the Borg and Cardassians have an excuse for this — the Borg's minimalism, and the latter's sensitivity to light. Incidentally, this is the excuse for the Deep Space 9 station being so dimly-lit, since it was built by the Cardassians.
• Evil Me Scares Me: The Trek Verse features a number of Evil Twins, what with transporter accidents and the Mirror Universe. There's the example of Kirk being a Literal Split Personality with an aggressive, hotheaded side and a passive, weak-willed, but logical side, with the passive side being afraid of the aggressive one. Major Kira Nerys of DS9 gets HIT ON by Mirror Kira. However, since the Mirror Universe normally involves plots of being swapped with the guy on the other side (presumably to avoid having to edit one actor into a single scene twice), mostly you get the counterparts never meeting and at most Evil You Scares (but sexually intrigues) Me. Or in DS9's version, their opposite is usually dead on one side of the mirror or the other.
• The Evils of Free Will: The Borg are amazed people aren't lining up to be assimilated. The Queen touts it as a blessing.
• Explosive Instrumentation: Star Trek is the Trope Codifier. Consoles tend to explode in a shower of sparks whenever a ship takes damage. A frequent cause of Red Shirt deaths.
• Exposition Beam: Vulcan mind melds are essentially this, along with a host of other Applied Phlebotinum uses.
• Expositron 9000: The ship/station computers. Also Data, if you think about it.
• Extra-Long Episode: Numerous series from the franchise have had two-hour long episodes (as opposed to the usual hour long) that are later re-aired as two-part episodes. This generally happens to series openers such as "Encounter At Farpoint" from TNG and series finales such as "What You Leave Behind" from DS9, but has also happened to episodes in the middle of seasons such as "Dark Frontier" from VOY.
  • The Season 4 premiere of DS9, "The Way Of The Warrior" can also count, as previously (at least on TNG), the first episode of a new season was the second-part resolution to a two-part episode. This was also the beginning of a "retool" of the show.

F

• Family-Values Villain: Many examples. Most notably, the Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans place great importance on family and honoring their elders. Of course, there are numerous ugly exceptions to those rules.
• Famous for Being First:
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: Lt. Valeris, the Enterprise's new helmsman and an old student of Spock's, was the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at Starfleet Academy.
  • Star Trek: First Contact: The Phoenix is the first Earth ship capable of faster-than-light travel. Just being in its presence prior to its history-making flight is awe-inspiring for Captain Picard, who takes the opportunity to touch it, something he was never able to do while it was displayed in the Smithsonian. Its creator, Zephram Cochrane, is similarly regarded for his accomplishment, something that starts to grate on him as the Enterprise crew keep showering him with hero-worship.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise:
    • The NX-01 is significant as it is the first Earth ship that can reach Warp 5, making true interstellar travel possible. The comment is made that they are making history with every light year they travel. She is also arguably the ship that marks the beginning of Starfleet as we would come to know it.
    • In "Unexpected", Trip Tucker gets (for lack of a better term) pregnant. He is not happy with this, but Phlox tries to cheer him up by saying he'll be not only the first Mister Seahorse but the first human to be knocked up by an alien. This doesn't console him.
    • In "First Flight," when Archer is passed up for the first Warp 2 flight and only kept on as a backup, he comments that nobody remembers what Buzz Aldrin said when he first stepped on the moon because Neil Armstrong did it first.^note It was "Beautiful view. Magnificent desolation".
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • In "The Trouble with Tribbles," this comes up as part of Chekov's usual Cultural Posturing:
      Chekov: The area was first mapped by the famous Russian astronomer Ivan Burkoff almost two hundred—
      Kirk: John Burke.
      Chekov: Burke, sir? I don't think so.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Riker volunteers to be part of an Officer Exchange Program, becoming the First Officer of a Klingon battlecruiser, mostly because nobody's ever done it before. ("It" being OEP-ing on a Klingon ship, not OEP-ing in general).
    • Worf was the first Klingon to graduate from Starfleet Academy and serve as a Starfleet officer.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Nog becomes the first Ferengi to graduate from Starfleet Academy and serve in Starfleet.
• Fan of the Past: Too many to name. You're far more likely to find a character enjoying a play, book, or movie that's a classic by our standards rather than a fictional future contemporary.
• Fanservice: For a franchise that aspires to the higher ideals of humanity, Trek isn't above playing to its audience's baser instincts. The famous miniskirt of TOS is just one example. Until the current era, every iteration of the show had at least one character who was primarily employed for her appearance: Janice Rand in TOS, Deanna Troi in TNG, Jadzia Dax in DS9, Seven of Nine in Voyager and T'Pol in Enterprise. To be fair, this was frequently subverted as many actresses hired for fanservice, particularly Terry Farrell and Jeri Ryan, actually turned out to be decent performers and aided in the development of popular and complex characters.
• Fantastic Fighting Style:
  • TNG introduces the Klingon martial arts Mok'bara, which includes unarmed combat and the use of traditional Klingon weapons such as the bat'leth. Several Mok'bara katas are mentioned to be very similar to Tai chi chuan.
  • The Vulcan martial arts Suus Mahna was first featured in ENT and is seen again in DIS.
  • Although the hand-to-hand combat practiced by the Qowat Milat sisterhood hasn't been named onscreen in PIC, it's nevertheless the first time in the franchise that a specific Romulan martial arts is showcased. It's more "fantastic" than that of the Klingons or the Vulcans because the Romulan warrior nuns develop Super-Reflexes during their training that are fast enough dodge multiple energy weapons fire ^note which is a very rare ability in the Trek Verse because it was only exhibited beforehand by Soong-type androids and Augments. This Amazon Brigade is remarkably adept at wielding a tan qalanq while also utilizing Combat Parkour, Hit-and-Run Tactics and stealth to single-handedly defeat several opponents.
    • This featurette focuses on a invokedDeleted Scene from PIC's "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" where Narek uses a Capoeira-like Romulan martial arts to take on five Soong-type androids.
• Fantastic Measurement System:
  • The Klingon distance unit "kellicam" is roughly equal to a kilometer.
  • The Bajoran measurement system includes hecapate, kellipate, kerripate, linnipate, tessijen and tessipate.
  • Computer capacity is measured in kiloquads, a unit that is very carefully never defined to avoid looking outdated when invokedTechnology Marches On.
  • Subspace distortion is measured in cochranes, an SI unit named for warp drive inventor Zefram Cochrane.
  • Stresses are often given units of "isodynes". The dyne is a legitimate unit of measure (albeit not SI), but is a measure of force (equal to 10 micronewtons). The correct usage would be "dynes per some unit of area". There is no mention of what the prefix iso- might represent. The prefix tera- is also used (e.g. "Hull stress at over 30 teradynes and rising!") and is more legitimate, but if that example was per square metre, the stress would be of the order of 10 megapascals — 100 times atmospheric pressure. Not a huge quantity in the grand scheme of things if you're a starship.
• Fantastic Naming Convention:
  • The Bajorans use their family name before their personal name.^note This isn't really fantastic; it's standard in China and other countries culturally tied to it.
  • The Klingons have one personal name, their father's name, and then their house name. The house name is usually omitted in introductions, but the crest is worn on their metal sashes.
    • "Worf, son of Mogh, of the House of Martok" is Worf's official name after he joins Martok's house late in DS9. Worf's son Alexander Rozhenko, who is 3/4 Klingon and 1/4 human due to his mother being half-human, decided to use the human naming convention, and took the surname of Worf's adoptive human parents.
  • Vulcans have several conventions followed:
    • They seem to only have one name, no family name.
    • This exchange in "This Side of Paradise" indicates at least some Vulcans have another name:
    Leila: "You never told me if you had another name, Mister Spock".
    Spock: "You couldn't pronounce it."
    • Female names usually begin with T and have an apostrophe, followed by a P. Notable exceptions include: Saavik from movies II, III, and IV.
    • Male names usually begin with S and do not have an apostrophe. Notable exceptions include: Tuvok from Voyager.
  • Romulans similarly tend to have only one name with no surname, but Picard Season One reveals they have additional secret names they only tell to certain people
  • Ferengi also tend to have only one name, generally one syllable, with no surname. Ferengi women are identified by the names of their fathers and husbands.
  • Trill symbionts get their names from the two beings that make them up. The first name is provided by the host, like Jadzia or Curzon, while the symbiote's name is second like a family name. Curzon Dax and Jadzia Dax are completely unrelated except for the fact that both were bonded to the Dax symbiote. Unjoined Trill apparently do have and use family names, as Ezri was Ezri Tigan before she became Ezri Dax.
• Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity:
  • Ferengi mainly use plasma whips.
  • Klingons are proficient with multiple kinds of bladed weapons, but they're mainly seen wielding the batl'eth, a kind of crescent-shaped, pronged blade held from a hilt placed in the middle of its outer curve.
  • Romulans use "disruptors", which are a kind of Ray Gun like the phaser, but unlike phasers they always kill and their blast is green.
  • Vulcans prefer the lirpa as a weapon during ceremonial combat. It's a staff with a fan-shaped blade on one end and a hefty counter-weight on the other, good for slashing or bludgeoning enemies.
• Fantastic Racism: There will always be at least a few members of each species that has issues with humans, other species, or vice versa.
• Fantastic Nuke:
  • The Genesis Device, a sophisticated torpedo used for rapid terraforming of dead worlds. Ironically, deploying this on an inhabited planet has the opposite effect, destroying all life to make way for the new matrix.
  • In "Chain of Command", Picard is sent to destroy a protoype metagenic weapon. Metagenic bombs wipe out all organic matter on a planet's surface, leaving only the manufactured materials intact (and the world ripe for conquest). The weapons were outlawed, in part because they were equally hazardous to the invading force; however, the Cardassians were rumored to be overcoming that problem. This turned out to be a false flag, though.
  • The Vulcans use "Red Matter" to create pocket black holes. Nero got the bright idea of using it to eat a planet (specifically Vulcan).
  • the Xindi superweapon from Enterprise, said to be capable of destroying Earth entirely (the prototype kills 7 million people as a test).
  • isolytic subspace weapons, which are banned by treaty since they tear open actual holes in the fabric of space
• Fantastic Rank System: Everyone except the Federation has a different one. See the trope page for more details.
• Fantastic Ship Prefix:
  • While Starfleet ships use an existing prefix, their registry numbers had various original designations which usually began with "N".
    • NCC: Starfleet active. Popular misconception is that it stands for "Naval Construction Contract" but the producers never assigned it any actual meaning. Production designer Matt Jeffries said he just combined the American aircraft registry (NC) with the Soviet one (CCCC).
    • NX: Starfleet experimental. Often used for the lead ships of a class, or ships that are the testbed of new technologies. The Excelsior first appears as NX-2000 while she is running trials and carrying an experimental warp drive. Later she is granted active status and her registry changes to NCC.
    • NAR: Federation non-Starfleet. Typically seen on civilian ships.
  • Klingon ships are IKS, Imperial Klingon Ship. Prior to its establishment in Star Trek: The Next Generation, various non-canon sources, including Michael Okuda's Star Trek Encyclopedia, proposed "IKC" (for "Imperial Klingon Cruiser", a term heard in Klingon radio chatter in Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
  • Romulan ships use IRW (Imperial Romulan Warbird).
  • When Kirk and company fell into the Mirror Universe, they found themselves aboard the ISS Enterprise (Imperial Star Ship).
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: While not fantasy, most of the major alien species have some connection to Real World counterparts. It should be considered that there is a difference between culture and politics.
  • The Federation — The United States. Although, it's sort of a mixture of the United States & the United Nations. The Federation flag & the Federation Council are reminiscent of the UN Flag & the Security Council. However, unlike the present-day UN, the Federation is a sovereign government with elements common to a federal republic. Persons on Federation worlds are citizens of the Federation. That citizenship is guaranteed rights by way of the Federation Charter & Constitution, and the rights enumerated in the Federation Charter & Constitution have supremacy across all member worlds.
  • Starfleet — The United States Navy. Both the Earth & Federation versions of Starfleet have individual ranks & systems of hierarchy that correspond with the USN's. The color of Starfleet personnel's uniforms are based on the specifics of their job, just as its done with the flight crews aboard USN aircraft carriers. Also, during the Dominion War, Deep Space Nine has Starfleet deployed in the numbered fleet configurations used by the USN, with the 3rd Fleet referenced as protecting Earth & the 7th Fleet all but destroyed in a failed offensive.
  • 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. Culturally, they also share a good deal with Japanese society; a reclusive nature, emotional reserve, deep spiritualism, and technical prowess.
  • Romulans — Communist China, made fairly obvious in the original series. A secretive government who you aren't quite sure what they're up to. The Next Generation expanded on that by showing the Romulans as emerging from decades of isolation from the rest of the galactic community. They also started to become a bit like Iran, for similar reasons. There are allusions to the Roman Empire too: their two main planets are Romulus and Remus, they are called an Empire, their ruling body is the Senate which is headed by a Praetor, and low-ranking officers are called "Centurions".
  • Klingons:
    • Soviet Russia, like the Romulans the analogue was obvious enough in the original series (although in their initial appearance they were described as Vietcong — "Oriental, hard-faced" and "the Ho Chi Minh type"). They were the passive/aggressive species with whom it felt like war was always just around the corner but never quite got there. They mirrored Post-Soviet Russia in The Next Generation in terms of politics, having gotten past the "cold war" era but still not fully trusting each other. But as part of Gene Roddenberry's plan to not make them evil and a race of "black hats," they turned into... vikings.
    • There are also a lot of parallels to Feudal Japan. As if Worf's passing reference to a "Klingon tea ceremony" in TNG, the whole racial obsession with honor, combat, and dying with honor, and their love of big, fancy curved swords wasn't blatant enough, in "The Sons of Mogh" Worf's dishonored brother comes to him for help with a Klingon ceremony that's essentially Seppuku In Space.
  • The Cardassians took a few stabs at being Nazi analogues (xenophobia is inherent in their genetic makeup). After various failed attempts at democratization and improving relations with the other galactic powers, they join the Dominion and become a Nazi client state like Vichy France. Eventually a "Free French" faction emerges, though they are led by Damar, a Defector from Decadence (whereas the exile Garak was more of a De Gaulle analogue).
    • Cardassian culture is very military-center and totalitarian — in Deep Space Nine, one of the characters comments that "Cardassians have a habit of looking to strong military leadership in hard times" (Bismarck, the Kaiser etc). Parallel was apparently noted in-series, as the anti-Cardassian resistance shares a name with the French resistance of WWII.
    • Cardassians as generic colonial powers works just as well as the obligatory Nazi comparison, since Bajor is always called a colony and is run along those lines: occupy and obtain resources (with local slave labor), rather than being a matter of living space or an ideology.
    • Cardassians as a version of Japan is a popular alternative, especially among those who look at details like what food they eat. Much like Imperial Japan in the 1930's and 40's, the Cardassian Union had a nominally civilian government but was actually ruled by the military; though it was considered to be a major power within its sphere of influence, the Cardassian Union was actually smaller and less powerful than its neighbour (which in this case, is the United Federation of Planets).
  • Bajorans as generic colonized people. (Would support the Cardassians as generic colonial powers interpretation). Rick Berman compared the Bajorans to "the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Jews in the 1940s, the boat people from Haiti — unfortunately, the homeless and terrorism are problems [of every age]". They're a mishmash of pretty much any victimized group throughout the 20th century.
  • Orions — The Mafia / Criminal Underground.
  • Nausicaans — Gang Leaders.
    • Same goes for Voyager's Kazon.
  • Ferengi — The East India Companies.
    • Their society and system of government both bear some resemblance to the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore, with a focus on business and commerce while having highly conservative and patriarchal cultures.
• Fantasy Counterpart Religion:
  • The Klingon religion: A warrior-based religion where honor and courage are quintessential and warriors are rewarded with an afterlife of glory fighting alongside their god Kahless in the halls of Sto-Vo-Kor. Obviously based on the [Hollywood version of] Norse religion, just change Kahless for Odin and Sto-Vo-Kor for Walhalla.
  • The Bajoran religion: Spiritual worship of the Prophets who are not gods, but (at least for the Bajoran) enlightened beings, with a well-organized religious hierarchy and a common leader. Probably a counterpart of Buddhism with some Catholicism in the mix.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Rather hard to imagine the series without it.
  1. The name "warp" was meant to imply it bends space and time. They started out calling it a "factor," which would be consistent with that.
  2. Then they got lazy and just used it as a unit of speed.
  3. Then TNG decided they needed more tech to tech with their tech, so instead of just bending real space, they're moving through "subspace," where the rules are different, and depending on the writing can be treated as pretty much an alternate universe.
  • The entire concept of subspace is to get around the apparent fact that FTL travel is impossible in regular space, so you submerge into a different dimension closely connected to it.
• Fast-Killing Radiation: Both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek Into Darkness feature climactic scenes in which Enterprise's damaged warp core is manually repaired, saving the ship at the cost of someone's life due to radiation exposure. In TWOK, it's Spock; the radiation is an intense light that blasts him as he's making the repairs, leaving him blinded and with severe burns on his face and neck. In ID, it's Kirk; the radiation is only visible as heat shimmer and he suffers burns on his face, but they're not nearly as severe as Spock's. In both scenes, Spock and Kirk die within a few minutes of the exposure.
• Feudal Future: Earth seems to be the only planet that ever got the hang of democracy. Non-Federation worlds are depicted as imperialist aggressors (the faux-Chinese Romulans and the Greco-Roman Klingons) or peasant societies with well-oiled guillotines.
  • Oddly, Cardassia-Prime of all places entered a new democratic age after the intelligence service folded. A brief civil war ensued, and in the wake of the Dominion War the civilian government took back its rightful place as head of the Union.
• Fictional Flag:
  • The flag of the United Federation of Planets is clearly based on the flag of the United Nations, with a blue circle flanked by laurel garlands (symbolizing peace) on a blue field. Unlike the UN flag, where the circle is a globe, the UFP flag depicts a starfield. In season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, many stars are missing since the chronologically last time the flag was seen, indicating the secession of a number of member states.
  • The flag of the Romulan Star Empire depicts a stylized bird of prey with two planets, the home planets of the Empire, Romulus and Remus, grasped in its talons.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: The Khitomer Accords, an historic peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. It's the prime focus of Star Trek VI, with both sides attempting to scuttle it.
• Fictional Sport: Parrises Squares, a highly-athletic game played on the Holodeck.
• Fiction Science: The series have produced a large number of Technical Manuals, many of them official. These fill in many details of life in the Trekkian future, especially the inner workings of the Enterprises and other starships.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: In every single series and the movies. There are an insane number of instances where at the end of an episode the protagonists have in their possession some fantastic new piece of technology, which will never be used or mentioned ever again. Often a case of the Status Quo Is God, because the Federation simply cannot be allowed to get too far ahead of rivals such as the Klingons, Romulans or Cardassians.
  • One of the most notable examples, if only because it was used so regularly for a while, is the Life Support Belt tech from the Animated Series. Of course, the Animated Series was considered officially non-canon for many years, but it's still surprising that the Expanded Universe materials don't use it more often, since they would frequently cite other elements from the Animated Series.
• Franken-vehicle:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In a meta-example, many episodes during the Dominion War featured background shots of ships whose physical models had obviously been kitbashed together, without any In-Universe explanation ever being given. One of the more absurd was the USS Yeager, which in real life took the saucer section of a model kit for the USS Voyager and put it atop the hull of a Maquis raider (the name and registry numbers were anagrams of Voyager's). This kind of kitbashing was common among Star Trek's modelmakers but was rarely so obvious.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Implied in "The Broken Circle". The ship used in the False Flag Operation against the Klingon battlecruiser has the saucer section of a Crossfield-class starship (e.g. USS Discovery), but a ventrally mounted bridge like a Walker-class (USS Shenzhou) and a twin-boom after section and nacelles resembling an inverted NX-class, suggesting that the conspirators built it from several different salvaged wrecks. An enforced example, as the ship originally was going to be an NX-class, but budget constraints forced the reuse of sets from Star Trek: Discovery.
• Free-Love Future: Obviously downplayed, due to television constraints. However, Roddenberry was very much a proponent of this trope. We don't see much of civilian life on Earth, but officers are allowed to cavort fairly freely aboard the Federation's flagship. Prostitution (real and simulated) has also been legalized.
  The Agony Booth: Kirk has been with a lot of women, and is presumably deeply grateful for whatever eliminated STDs in Gene Roddenberry’s universe
• Frequently-Broken Unbreakable Vow: Across the franchise Starfleet has the Prime Directive, a rule that states that the Federation should not interfere with the development of pre-warp civilizations. It was not originally an unbreakable vow as much as it was a general guideline, but over the years it has gone back and forth.
• The Future Is Noir:
  • The original designation for DS9 was Terok Nor, which is one letter removed. It shows in the station's habitat ring, which is marked by patchy lighting and catwalk ceilings.
  • Originally, going to Red Alert merely caused red lights to flash. By VOY, every single light on the ship is dimmed. Most likely a nod to the Real Life military practice of using red and/or dimmed lights in dark environments to preserve one's night vision, although this would be counterproductive on a ship that is operated entirely using brightly-lit touchscreens. But would help conserve energy that might be needed in a red alert situation.
  • "Yesterday's Enterpise" (TNG) and "Living Witness" showed alternate worlds in which the Enterprise and Voyager are fully-cocked warships, under the oppression of permanent Red Alert.
  • Generations was shot this way mostly to disguise the decade-old sets. However, First Contact was filmed much the same way, despite taking place on a brand new ship, perhaps to illustrate that the Federation is at war again.
• Futuristic Jet Injector: The hyposprays are likely the Trope Codifier. As early as the original series, they have been used by doctors to deliver various medicines (conveniently packaged in easy-to-insert capsules) to patients in adjustable doses. Regarding application through clothes, the franchise has been inconsistent: sometimes people would be injected right through their clothing, other times medical staff were shown removing it to expose skin before using the hypospray.
• Future Society, Present Values: Most prominent in TOS, which was limited by network standards and very heavy on Cold War allegory, with the Federation (the United States), Klingon Empire (the Soviet Union) and Romulans (China) being very obvious expies of real world nations. Real world social values from the time also crept into the show in a variety of ways, such as consistent gender roles, and fashions paralleling the real world. The pilot episode, however, had a powerful female second-in-command, who was reportedly disliked by invokedfemale viewers because she was "too domineering".

G

• Game of Nerds:
  • A recurring motif in some episodes. Wesley Crusher mentions his father once teaching him the game, and a physicist in "Evolution" bemoans the decline of the sport in the late 20th century (attributed to commercialism and sloth).
  • Ben Sisko is a serious baseball nut. In his debates with the Prophets, an abstract species who think in non-linear terms, baseball is used as a methaphor for each crisis.
• Gargle Blaster:
  • The Ferengi specialize in an alcoholic beverage called a black hole. Want to get hammered fast? Try a black hole.
  • Romulan ale was largely illegal in the Federation, but once the Romulans allied with the Federation and the Klingons against the Dominion, the Federation lifted the embargo against the Romulan Empire, allowing Romulan ale to be purchased legally. Federation citizens also discovered that the ale is quite potent, as Worf learned in "Nemesis".
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: We see the full effects of DNA hacking during the Eugenics and Dominion wars.
  • Bio-memetic gel, a key component of biogenic weapons. The actual effects of this gel are left up to the imagination; the Federation bans any and all weapons applications, so it must be pretty hairy.
  • "In the Pale Moonlight" suggests that it can be used to create bombs that pass for organic matter.
  • Some Expanded Universe sources imply that biogenic is the equivalent of weapon of mass destruction in current parlance. That is, this is a weapon you had DAMN well better not get caught actually using.
• Generican Empire: The United Federation of Planets, the Dominion.
• Generic Federation, Named Empire: The United Federation of Planets vs. the Klingon Empire, Romulon Empire, and Cardassian Union among others. The Dominion is also named generically as an "evil counterpart" to the Federation while the Mirror Universe Federation is the Terran Empire.
• George Lucas Altered Version: The remastered Original Series and The Next Generation got a lot of "nip and tuck" regarding for the Hi-Def release (CBS aired some episodes before the actual Blu-Ray release came out). For the Original Series they strove to attain a visual look virtually identical but simply cleaned-up◊. They also included a couple of brand new clips that were intended for the original episode but unable to film at the time, such as an establishing shot of Starfleet Command on Earth. TNG had a similar process done, largely for some effects that simply didn't age as well like the Crystalline Entity. The whole thing was well regarded, in large part because they were supervised by Trek production legend Michael Okuda.
• Ghost Extras: In the hundreds and thousands, given that The Main Characters Do Everything on every single Trek show. Occasionally one will be promoted to Ascended Extra, but more often they get "demoted" to Red Shirt.
• A God Am I: ironically, characters who have or obtain godlike powers usually do just the opposite, or merely posing as a god to fuck with people. But there are a few examples:
  • Gary Mitchell gets powered up by the Galactic Barrier, declares himself to be a god and even forces Kirk to pray to him.
  • Ransom does something similar in Star Trek: Lower Decks S2E01 "Strange Energies" after said energies empower him, and even tries to start his own religion based around pumping iron.
  • To be a Terraformer in the Trek universe is to be very lordly, indeed. See the imperious Kurk Mandl in "Home Soil" (TNG), later one-upped by nine-time author (all autobiographies) Gideon Seytik in DS9's "Second Sight". Something about creating planets gives scientists a god complex; Seytik's final words were even, "Let there be light!"
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: When heroes on Trek use transporters, the visual effect appears blue. Alternatively, Klingons use a red effect. The Borg are green.
  • Cardassians (and, by extension, the crew of DS9) have yellow transporter beams.
• Good Old Ways: Captain Kirk in particular strongly reminisces about the time of wooden ships and iron men.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Given its position on network TV, swearing is pretty much non-existent in early Trek; it even escaped the movies until Generations, in which a single four-letter word became the punchline to an entire subplot's worth of buildup. Subverted big time in current Trek, where the freedom of streaming has led to a (comparatively) massive rise in expletive use.
• Government Drug Enforcement: Used a couple of times in TNG and Deep Space Nine, also used in the movie Insurrection.
• Gratuitous Rape: TOS and TNG in particular have been called out for it, with Kirk being drugged somehow into kissing (or worse) at least four times, Uhura having to fight an attacker off, Tasha’s backstory involving rape gangs, and Deanna Troi getting far too many Mind Rape plots.
• Graying Morality: From series to series, at least for a while. TNG is grayer than the original series, and Deep Space Nine is even grayer than that.
  • The Prime Directive is often at the heart of this over the progression of the franchise, interestingly despite the fact that later series like ENT and the reboot movies chronologically predate TOS. As time has gone on, writers have increasingly treated the Prime Directive as an almost callous Social Darwinist policy, to the extent that extinction of sapient species is considered preferable to the hypothetical negative consequences of "interference" in their cultures.
  • As part of the Darker and Edgier nature of the reboot movies, Section 31, much earlier in its history than in the main timeline, is well past the Moral Event Horizon. They have gone from covert activities to defend the Federation to building super-warships and attempting to preemptively start interstellar wars to eradicate Federation enemies.
• Great Offscreen War:
  • The Eugenics Wars (augmented superhumans vs. everybody else) and, to a lesser extent, World War III, all taking place on Earth and concerning only humanity. Both are mentioned across multiple shows and films and have lasting effects (humans have banned genetic engineering, for one).
  • The Earth-Romulan War, which was first mentioned all the way back in TOS's first season. ENT was building up to it but sadly got cancelled first.
  • The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon" imports Larry Niven's Kzinti, and claims that Earth fought and won four separate wars with them a full two hundred years ago.
  • The Next Generation has the war between the Federation and the Cardassians, which was responsible for creating the Anti-Federation confederates known as the Maquis; and "brutal border wars" against the Talarians and the Tzenkethi, which happened at some point between TOS and TNG.
  • Discovery season three mentions the Temporal Wars, involving troops from multiple universes and “weaponizing time itself”. It's not clear who fought whom or why, only that it was terrible. So terrible, in fact, that all forms of time travel tech have been outlawed throughout the galaxy, and the Federation's black ops division won't risk even touching it over 100 years later.
• Group-Identifying Feature:
  • Betazoids look just like humans, only with black irises.
  • Bajorans look a lot like humans, but with ridges on their noses. The majority of them also wear an earring on their right ear.
  • Uniforms:
    • In Star Trek: The Original Series, red is the "generic" Starfleet uniform colour, while the command crew wear gold. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager, it's the other way round. In all of those series, science officers wear blue. Additionally, in The Original Series, women wear dresses while men wear black pants.
    • In Star Trek: Enterprise, Starfleet officers wear matching dark blue boiler suits. You can tell someone's division by a stripe pattern that goes around the shoulders. Like in The Original Series, gold stands for command, blue stands for science, and red is generic. Starfleet officers also wear an embroidered patch of their ship and its name on their upper sleeves.
    • In Star Trek: Discovery, most people wear matching dark blue outfits (in some cases jumpsuits similar to the Enterprise uniforms and in other cases shirts and pants). However, the doctors wear white jumpsuits instead of blue.
  • You can tell what rank someone is in Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager by the golden dots they have on their collars, which are known as "pips" or "rank insignia". Cadets don't have any, ensigns have one, junior-grade lieutenants have one, plus one hollowed-out one, regular lieutenants have two, lieutenant-commanders have two and one hollowed-out one, commanders have three, captains have four, and admirals have six (three on either side).
  • Romulans can be distinguished from Vulcans by the V-shaped ridge on their heads.
  • Trills look like humans, but with spots going all the way down their sides.
  • Aenar can be distinguished from Andorians by their white skin.
  • Orions look just like humans, except for their green skin, and seeing as they're a seductive race, a female Orion is a literal Green-Skinned Space Babe.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: The Federation definitely believes in "carrying a big ship" to negotiations. They don't usually push their self-interest too hard with this show of force, but it still makes three things clear. "We are strong". "We are rich". "You don't start fights when we're trying to negotiate".

H

• Half-Human Hybrid: Spock, Deanna Troi, B'Elanna Torres, Sisko.
• Ham and Deadpan Duo: Kick (definitive Ham) and Spock (contrasting Deadpan)
• Handmade Is Better: It's something of a Running Gag across the various series that "real" food (i.e. food that was grown rather than replicated) somehow tastes better, at least to those who aren't used to eating the replicated stuff.
• Have I Mentioned I Am a Dwarf Today?: Klingons tend to do this a lot; Worf is only the most prominent example.
• Hero of Another Story: It is implied through the various Star Trek shows that the sort of adventures the Enterprise and her crew get in is just the far side of typical. Lampshaded by Captain Janeway when she stated in Star Trek: Voyager that "Weird is part of the job".
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Worf once justified this by claiming Starfleet duds are suited for a wide variety of climates, due to the special material or somesuch. ("Let He Who is Without Sin"). It also spared the makeup department from showing us what Klingons look like in swim trunks, but that's just coincidental.
  • The Klingons are the lords of this trope. At least the Romulans can claim a degree of urban camo with their checkered outfits. The Klingons are all about plate metal, spikes, and gauntlets that would make Shredder envious. And don't forget the steel-toed, spiked boots for kicking your enemy's skull in.
  • The Cardassians favor big, bulky chestplates, along with a wide neckline for the snake-like hoods on their neck. It doesn't look very comfortable or maneuverable.
• Hollywood Evolution: The franchise is guilty of promulgating virtually every sub-trope of this into public consciousness, undoing the work of biology teachers everywhere. In particular, Goal-Oriented Evolution is extremely popular with the writers, who often incorporate the idea that the evolutionary future of any species can be predicted with comparative ease and surprising accuracy. This often forms the backbone of rationalizations of how the Prime Directive is interpreted in a given episode, with characters taking the stance that the evolution of a given species is "supposed" to go down a certain path (which may include extinction if the species is unfortunate enough to be pre-warp).
• Hollywood Tactics: Fairly common in most of the series, particularly in firefights, where humans and aliens alike frequently fail to use cover or take evasive action. Could be partly due to early special effects limitations, as it's hard to draw phaser beams when the actors are moving around. Later shows were better about this, particularly Enterprise, which introduced actual military personnel who fought more convincingly.
• Hologram: Starting in TNG, recreational holodecks were standard, with "hard light" holograms made of projections and forcefields. Later series also added the Emergency Medical Hologram.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: While most of the species that are encountered look fairly humanoid, many of them turn out to have truly bizarre biological differences.
• Humans Are Diplomats: Especially during TOS and early TNG. Gene Roddenberry opposed the idea of a military Starfleet.
• Humans Are Special: The Federation is a vast, multi-species, space nation — that is overwhelmingly run by humans and Human Aliens. Aliens are a definite minority in Starfleet. Many alien species use "The Federation" and "Starfleet" to explicitly refer to "humanity" and "Earth".
  • Particularly noteworthy in crew of the Federation Flagships. In TOS and TNG, the majority of the main cast was human. The remainders? Spock, a half-Human half-Vulcan. Troi, a half-Betazed half-Human. Data, an android designed by a human, with a personal goal of becoming more like a human (Not like humanoids or other biological lifeforms, but specifically human). And Worf, a full blooded Klingon, who was raised by Humans. Ironically, the one Enterprise which would have an excuse to have only humans on it, the Pre-Federation Earth vessel captained by Archer, had two alien main cast members with no particular tie to humanity.
  • Notably, only two species have been shown to put the lie to the Borg's claim that Resistance Is Futile: One borders on nearly Starfish Aliens physiology and hail from an alternate dimension so far outside the context the Borg are familiar with their technology simply doesn't work against them. The other is the human-dominated Federation which, despite the Borg Queen's observation about humanity's biological and technological inferiority bordering on Puny Earthlings, have stopped every attempt by the Borg to assimilate the Federation cold. Notably, it was humans who figured out how to make Borg nanoprobes work against the other species.
• Humans Are Warriors: As much as Starfleet may protest that their primary purpose is one of exploration, one of their most famous captains (Kirk) was legendary even among the Klingons for his prowess in battle. The Federation may prefer to speak softly, but they are more than willing to swing the stick if left with no other choice. They were the center of the resistance against the Dominion, and are the only species (other than near-Starfish Aliens from outside the universe) that have routinely managed to give the Borg a black eye.
  Quark: Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.
• Humorless Aliens: Vulcans allegedly have no sense of humor, but they all seem to be Deadpan Snarkers anyway.
  • This is a bit of Fridge Brilliance. Humor is usually about the incongruity between logic and reality. So, basically, Vulcans have spent hundreds of years watching every other race act like clowns, and they get the joke. They may not guffaw, but their sense of humor is finely honed.
  • Sulu tells a young Tuvok once, "Don't tell me Vulcans don't have a sense of humor, because I know better." True enough!

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