Star Trek / Tropes M to P

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

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M

• Made of Explodium: When a computer blows up in Star Trek, it 'BLOWS UP.' This extends to either independent computer equipment or even the consoles on the bridge. Sometimes characters even die from the exploding bridge consoles.
  • In some situations, the consoles are shown to still be operational even AFTER exploding and killing some unfortunate redshirt. That's a durable design. Usually when this happens, it's a main character that takes over the station and they are immune to death from exploding consoles (at most they'll have minor injuries).
• Magic by Any Other Name: Humans are absolutely militant about this. No matter how scientifically-inexplicable something is, or if that something can outright change the laws of physics at will, it is still not "magic". Referring to it as such will provoke an immediate negative response and denial. Technobabble, even if it is completely unsupported by evidence, will invariably be accepted as an explanation before "magic" will. Things which would be considered "supernatural" in real life such as Psychic Powers or Reality Warpers are still regarded as scientific in nature, even though Federation science cannot explain them. Which is why talking about the limitless power of "thought" is acceptable, but using the m-word will get you an earful of Flat Earth Atheism.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: How is it that Doctors in the future are able to radically change your appearance so you are a different species with a head twice the size? We see Kirk, Troi, Picard, and Data [!] as Romulans, Kira as a Cardassian, Dukat, Seska and Dax as Bajorans (actually that one isn’t much of a stretch), Sisko, O’Brien and Odo as Klingons, Neelix as a Ferengi…and Chakotay is a Vidiian with a big scabby bloated head. Quark is even made female and then turned male again, still capable of male reproduction afterward. It seems such a stretch that you can effortlessly change somebody’s face and body to such a degree and than put you all back together again afterwards with no perceivable differences. This all becomes something of a moot point when Janeway and Paris "evolve" into a pair of copulating lizards in a later episode and the Doctor simply manages to devolve them back into human beings .... "Go big or go home" is Brannon Braga's motto.
• Magical Security Cam: Happens so often and so early in the setting that it can be considered a technological standard. At this point, anything else would be a deviation from canon.
  • Taken to its logical extreme in Voyager, where the ship recorded all of the crew's brainwaves.
• Magnetic Plot Device: The various starships. The Holodeck. The Bajoran wormhole in Deep Space Nine. The Temporal Cold War in Enterprise.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Trek seems to have a problem with keeping crew members at their designated stations, probably because it would become monotonous to the actors. It's a running gag that during a ship-wide emergency, the last place you'll find the Chief Engineer is in Engineering. (In TNG, Geordi could simply "transfer Engineering control" to the bridge, whatever that means, and thus justify his presence there). Picard S2 really cranks this up to 11 as the main cast are the only ones Q happens to transfer to the altered timeline, and some of them weren't even on the same ship (or hadn't seen each other in years). Lower Decks usually averts this by nature of its premise: most of the main characters are low-ranking ensigns often relegated to tedious, menial tasks and/or kept out of the loop. On Prodigy this is actually justified since the main characters are the only crew on the ship and thus have to do everything.
• Master Computer: Ironically, TOS presents the Master Computer as a dangerous, dehumanizing thing that will inevitably threaten human lives. In particular, the episode "The Ultimate Computer" makes an automated starship Enterprise into an uncontrolled killing machine. However, by TNG, the ship computer on the Enterprise-D is shown to be fully capable of running the entire ship without a crew as early the first season episode "11001001" and this is generally treated as a good thing. But one of the most common Failsafe Failure scenarios recurring across the later series is for some problem with the main computers to cause malfunctions, including potentially lethal ones, to happen throughout the starship or space station over which they control every last mechanical system, with the crew struggling to regain control without being killed. Discovery gives us a straighter example with “Control”, Section 31’s threat analysis computer that goes off the rails and exterminates all organic life in the galaxy in one future timeline. Lower Decks lampshades TOS's succession of evil A.I.s by revealing Starfleet has a “Self-Aware Megalomaniacal Computer Storage” facility.
• Matter Replicator: The matter replicators (called material synthesizers in the Original Series) function much like extremely advanced 3D printers: they can recycle matter to synthesize almost anything, including toys, clothing, money, food and drinks. Several episodes have seen the crew replicate food and other provisions for people in need. They have some limitations. It's implied, for example, that replicators can't be built much larger than a small room, which is why ships still need to be constructed piece-by-piece. There are also some special materials, such as latinum and biomimetic gel, that cannot be replicated. Opinions differ wildly about the quality of replicated food compared to "real" food. Some think it's grossly inferior (e.g. Michael Eddington), some think it's not always perfect but still fine (e.g. Captain Picard), and some consider the idea of cooking non-replicated food unusual (e.g. Keiko O'Brien).
• Meat-Sack Robot: The Borg assimilates various species (via injecting Nanomachines into their victims) into its AI's unifying conscious called "the Collective" whether their victims consent or not.
  • In Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg queen grafts living skin tissue onto Data's arm (Data being a purely artificial android), allowing him to feel human sensations, something he has longed to do but was not capable of. This was an attempt to lure him over to her side. (A more limited example than most others, in that we're talking about a small patch of skin, and Data was fully functional without it, but it still fits the "reverse cyborg" definition)
• Mechanistic Alien Culture: Several aliens, primarily from the original series:
  • The drone-like Lawgivers in "Return of the Archons". In that case, the drone-like humanoids were controlled by an intelligent supercomputer.
  • The original builders of the Androids on Exo III were also stated to have been a society of biological creatures who ruined their homeworld and retreated underground where they became a more mechanized, machine-like society.
  • The Kelvans from the Andromeda Galaxy are implied to have a culture like this; they are completely organic beings, but in their true form they experience none of the sensory distractions of humanoids, and consider themselves much more efficient. They go about trying to take over the Milky Way with very straightforward methods (transforming Kirk's crew into vulnerable dust-cubes that only their technology can restore to human form, for example) but without any of the typical Trek villains' hamminess. The Federation is saved from them by the fact that, when in artificial humanoid form, the Kelvans become Sense Freaks and can be incapacitated in a variety of ways, such as by the effects of alcohol or unfamiliar emotions like pleasure or jealousy.
  • The Eyemorg (humanoid female) society in the infamous episode "Spock's Brain" were totally reliant on a mechanized underground industrial complex run by advanced computers (for which purpose they tried to steal "Spock's Brain," because they lacked the knowledge to maintain this infrastructure themselves unless); this was in contrast to the primitive, Ice Age-like culture of males that lived on the surface.
  • The Fabrini who lived aboard a generational asteroid ship, which they all believed was actually a planet, were similarly run by an advanced, tyrannical computer called The Oracle. The Fabrini were less "rigidly mechanical" and more "rigidly traditional" though, the rigid traditions being enforced by The Oracle.
  • The Borg are a Hive Mind of Hollywood Cyborg aliens that otherwise follow this trope, using cybernetically augmented humanoid bodies only as cannon fodder and servitor units.
  • Vulcans sometimes have elements of this, but their culture is much more complex. Their education system, however, as briefly shown in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and more extensively in Star Trek (2009), is very much in line with this trope and plays like a callback to the uber-intellectual, emotionless aliens of older science fiction.
  • The Iyaarans, a species from a Season 7 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, play this trope absolutely straight, and also like a callback to aliens from older Sci-Fi: They are Ditto Aliens with rubber foreheads and jumpsuits; they lack cultural concepts like antagonism, love, joy, pleasure, crime, etc; they all appear male and reproduce asexually by something called post-cellular compounding, the exact mechanics of which are, fortunately, never detailed. Their diet is extremely bland, consisting of nutrient wafers, because they consider their need to eat as matter of sustenance only, not pleasure or enjoyment, like many other humanoids consider meals. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, they are very curious about other cultures, though they struggle to understand diverse cultures like the Federation.
  • Similarly, the cauliflower-headed humanoids that abducted Picard for study in an earlier episode were all identical with no concept of individual identity or leadership. What little was revealed about their society hinted at something like this trope.
  • The Bynars from the first season episode "11001001" are closely dependent on their computers for survival. They have implants that connect them to their planet's central computer, have "digital" names like One Zero and Zero One, live and work in binary pairs, have a language based on binary, and when their planet's central planetary computer is fried by a nearby supernova it almost wipes out the entire species.
  • The Hierarchy from Star Trek: Voyager are a callback/parody/possible deconstruction of this, with their heavily regimented, computerized society, costume design, and snotty behavior.
• Mildly Military: Starfleet is both a military and an exploration and research organization, also acting as top-level law enforcement and the advance scouts and bodyguards of The Federation's diplomatic corps and intelligence network. It is a conglomeration of the US Navy and Coast Guard, the USMC, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of State, the United Nations, NASA and a few research universities; at any given time a captain may need to think like Sun Tzu, Colin Powell or Jacques Cousteau — or all three. Gene Roddenberry suggested something like the civilian space program (if it were operated by the military.) Since he was in the Army Air Forces during World War II, it's very likely that some part of his experience had a part in shaping Star Trek. Nicholas Meyer was proudly made military sci-fi, while the Kelvin timeline films have explicitly said Starfleet is a “peace-keeping armada” and “not a military organization”. Sometimes characters within the story will comment on Starfleet's ambiguous position. However, all in all, Captain Kirk says it best:
  CHRISTOPHER: "Must have taken quite a lot to build a ship like this".
  KIRK: "There are only twelve like it in the fleet".
  CHRISTOPHER: "I see. Did the Navy—"
  KIRK: "We're a combined service, Captain".
  • Star Trek: Enterprise takes place before Starfleet became combined with the military. As a result, Starfleet resembles a military service less than it does in any other incarnation of the franchise. The MACOs (Military Assault Command Operations), however, are essentially the 22nd century answer to the Marine Corps. While taking a few minor liberties, the MACOs observe military protocol, wear camouflage uniforms, and use real-world small unit combat tactics. In their debut episode, the MACO commander even points out why having The Main Characters Do Everything is a bad idea; insisting that his team handle a combat situation on a planet surface so that Starfleet security personnel are available if Enterprise gets boarded.
• Military Maverick: Almost expected of Starfleet captains, it would seem. Picard, for all his careful, deliberate, and knowledge of the the regulations (backwards, forwards, and sideways), has many moments of this, and 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 Star Trek: Voyager once made a comment about how strongly she had to hold onto Starfleet regulations so far from home, but also admired the gung-ho attitude of earlier Starfleet captains ("I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that!").
• Mimic Species: Romulans, being related to Vulcans, look a lot like them, except for the fact that most of them have a V-shaped ridge on their foreheads. Because of this, they often pretend to be Vulcans for ulterior reasons.
• Minovsky Physics: Star Trek has a very long list of fictional substances and their properties. Very rarely is any material given new abilities to fill a plot need: instead, the writers invent entirely new materials. Whenever a material is reused in a later story, it retains its specific properties.
  • Star Trek's technical manuals all try to provide consistent explanations for the science and technology of the series.
• Mind-Reformat Death:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series, "Dagger of the Mind": By the end of the episode, the malevolent Dr. Adams is killed by accident when an experimental electronic hypnosis device, the neural neutralizer, is turned on with no one at the controls, and he looks into it. With no one to provide a mental suggestion, his mind is emptied of everything, and he subsequently dies from the loneliness.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Part of the effect of the Borg assimilation process. If progressed far-enough and long-enough, the victim's previous personality might as well be dead, as the computerized Borg nanoprobes and subsequent implants take over almost every mental and essential body function, save for the physical existence of the individual itself. However, if done properly, the individual's personality and memories can either be brought back, or can be retrained for a new life if they are freed from the collective.
    • "The Schizoid Man": Deliberately done by Dr. Ira Graves, the guest character in the episode. Graves successfully implants his consciousness and knowledge into Data's positronic matrix (though we don't see how), before his physical body dies. However, realizing that he's becoming increasingly corrupt and overbearing in Data's body, Graves subsequently implants his knowledge into the Enterprise computer system to atone (again, we don't see how, since Data is only lying on the floor when found), but does so in a way that the human-consciousness element is lost forever.
    • "Contagion": Played straight, then subverted. An alien computer virus destroys The Enterprise's sister Galaxy-class vessel, and then subsequently infects the Enterprise's computer systems themselves. Upon traveling to the planet the virus originated from, Picard, Worf, and Data beam down to the control center that launches the probes containing the virus. When Data attempts to activate its systems further than just turning it on, he's struck by a data energy discharge that contains the virus, subsequently re-writing Data's systems algorithms one-by-one. When brought back to the Enterprise by Worf, by using the control center's gateway, Data seemingly dies, but then comes back to life a few seconds later, but without his memories and experiences on the planet. This is the key to stopping the virus: a shut down of all ship systems to purge the virus from memory, then restarting from separate protected archives and memory.
    • "The Measure of a Man": How Data likens the transfer of his positronic matrix into a data container for study, when Commander Bruce Maddox suggests the development of creating hundreds or even thousands of versions of Dr. Noonien Soong's androids:

      Data [to Maddox]: There is an ineffable quality to memory which I do not believe can survive your procedure.

  • Star Trek: Voyager: Implied to be what happens to a sapient hologram if it's "decompiled" (in-turn implied by-definition to be returned/reverse-engineered to human-readable source code), if we are to trust the EMH Doctor's idea of it.
  • Star Trek: Picard: It turns out that Data's consciousness survived in some form after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. When Picard succumbs to the unknown condition (Implied to be Irumodic Syndrome, from TNG's finale, "All Good Things.."). that has been slowly deteriorating his mind throughout season 1, his consciousness is uploaded into a computer bank, where he meets with Data's consciousness, who asks him to terminate it. When Picard's essence is uploaded into a new "golem" android body, he does so, slowly taking out the isolinear chips containing Data, with a eulogy speech. Inside of the computer bank, each chip removal abstractly ages Data's consciousness, until he dies peacefully and it finally dissolves into oblivion.
• Monster of the Week:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:In SF author David Gerrold's book about writing the episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", he recounts seeing the first episode broadcast, which featured a creature that sucked all of the salt out of people's bodies, thereby killing them. He hoped Star Trek wasn't going to turn out to be a Monster of the Week show, which ironically for him, it did.
  • While later series rarely had weekly monsters, Star Trek: The Next Generation and especially Star Trek: Voyager had stellar anomalies of the week that were always solved by a healthy amount of Technobabble.
  • The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation started to become a ''god-like alien'' of the week show, but fortunately found sturdier footing in subsequent seasons.
• Monumental View: Every iteration puts Starfleet academy on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco (and directly across from Starfleet headquarters). There's a bit of a problem with that as the land there is almost exclusively deep, steep, hills.
  • On the other hand, the chronologically earliest series takes place a century and a half in the future. Plenty of time for the hills to get bulldozed.
    • Those same hills where the academy would be placed if it were a real place are actually home to a large network of abandoned US Naval fortifications, which presumably could be used by Starfleet, with additions for things like hangers or storage making it a fairly logical placement for the purpose of a base/training station.
• More Hero than Thou: Any time one Starfleet officer says I Will Only Slow You Down.
• Most Common Superpower: In recent years, various actresses have let slip that most, if not all, of Star Trek's females have had to wear padded bras. Notable exceptions are Nana Visitor (DS9) and Kate Mulgrew who, according to legend, took her stuffed bra, stomped straight into the writer's room, and slammed it on their desk saying, "I'm not wearing that".
  • Notably glaring with T'Pol, who lose that particular superpower with her change of outfit between season 2 and 3.
• Multi-Directional Barrage: Though they prefer to fire single, precise shots, most large starships in the franchise have weapons on all sides and fast-working targeting computers, granting them the ability to do this when surrounded.
  • Some demonstrations: NX Class starship, Enterprise-D, Enterprise-E, and the Voyager. Additionally, this trope is maintained in the videogame media.
• The Multiverse:
  • Kirk, McCoy, and several others were transported to a Mirror Universe in the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of the original Star Trek, in which an evil Earth-based empire ruled the galaxy. This was very much an In Spite of a Nail universe, since everything was much the same except the moral/ethical bent of the Federation's counterpart and its citizens. Years later, the cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine returned to this universe to discover that the revolution Kirk had encouraged its native Spock to foment had happened; unfortunately, its effects were not necessarily for the better. Star Trek: Enterprise also spent a couple episodes here, just to hammer it home that Humans Are Bastards. And finally Star Trek: Discovery spent half a season there and even hinted at the Point of Divergence that might have caused the split between the universes ("Terrans" have a higher sensitivity to light than humans in the prime universe). In season four, Ruon Tarka points out there are other universes besides the evil mirror one, including a (possibly mythical) paradise one called Kayalise, and even constructs an interdimensional transporter to try to get there. (Though we never learn if he succeeds).
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation had an episode with Worf bouncing between various In Spite of a Nail alternate universes. According to Word of God, this is distinct from the usual Mirror Universe though.
  • The "Kelvin Timeline", where Star Trek (2009) and the sequels take place, is an Alternate Universe branching off the prime one that was accidentally created by 2009 movie's Big Bad Time Traveling from the TNG-era to before the TOS-era and altering the timeline.
  • Star Trek: Coda establishes the Star Trek Novel 'Verse occupies at least two alternate timelines from the canon ones (since the inception of Picard and other spinoffs made them no longer compatible): the "main" universe where Romulus never got blown up, the Borg are history, and so on; and a Mirror Universe where Memory Omega has overthrown the Alliance and established a peaceful Galactic Commonwealth. Tragically, these timelines are forced to deliberately unmake themselves in order to prevent the Devidians eating every single universe.
  • Star Trek: Picard Season 2 invents a second Mirror Universe: the human race is just as fascist and racist as the original, but substantially more successful in their goals of conquering the Milky Way; basically, it's the Mirror Universe Gone Horribly Right. The plot of the season involves Time Travel back to the Butterfly of Doom moment that split the timelines, allowing Picard to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

N

• Named After First Installment: Its first work, Star Trek: The Original Series, originally named simply Star Trek, which is now the name that all the different series are grouped under.
• Narrating the Present: The Captains Logs.
• National Weapon: The Klingon bat'leth.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Trope Namer is a well-known parody.
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer: Occasionally, when something particularly strange was in the transporter room or something, the officer present just asks the captain to come look. Sometimes justified, as with Scotty in Wrath of Khan.
• Nonindicative Title: As discussed in Community, the crew never went to a star hence the show should have better be called 'Planet Trek'.
• Non-Standard Kiss: The Vulcans have a finger-touching gesture that seems to be used as a kissing analogue. The basic motion is simply extending the first two fingers of the right hand and touching fingertips, but finger-stroking motions can be added for greater intimacy.
• No OSHA Compliance: Mostly averted. Various areas in the ships have handrails, but considering the various space battles they find themselves in, it's odd that there are virtually no seat belts at workstations, and the chairs are easily toppled over. This is corrected for the first time in the films: Starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, every seat has restraints. The seats are now firmly fixed to the floor, and the armrests on the seats can be pulled inward to secure the crewmembers in place. Unfortunately, this development went completely ignored in the later Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• No Such Agency: Sometimes applies to Section 31, Depending on the Writer. This trope fits better with its earlier depictions (based on production date) in DS9 and Enterprise, where it is a shadow organization whose existence is largely unknown even among Starfleet officers with high security clearance. It may not even be an organization in the traditional sense, with no indication that Section 31 has any kind of headquarters or material presence beyond a few covert puppeteers. Its presence in Discovery is more of an Open Secret, with Section 31 having its own warships and identifying symbols that run counter to its prior role as a plausibly deniable splinter faction.
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture: Most cases avert this. The pop culture largely depends on the alien in question. Vulcans love music, Klingons have various popular war operas, and Cardassians literature includes the "Repetitive Epic" and "Enigma Tales". The Borg, however, have no pop culture.
• No Such Thing as H.R.: A common point of confusion in the otherwise enlightened future of Star Trek is Spock's humorously treated Fantastic Racism towards Humanity, along with the number of physical altercations the crew get into without really getting into trouble. However, it's justifiable in the original series since the ship is on the edge of known space. The franchise moved closer to Earth with Star Trek: The Next Generation, a more established bureaucracy is in place.
• No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Due to the incredible number of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that Starfleet comes across just within the immediate vicinity of the Federation, skepticism levels are off the charts. Even in cases such as the Q, where the aliens in question actually are omnipotent. This was averted in DS9, where the Bajoran Prophets were increasingly accepted as having a religious mystique even by some Starfleet personnel, despite the fact that they are actually pretty mediocre by the standards of godlike beings in the Trek universe.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: To an almost militant degree.
  • A recurring theme across series is that trying to augment existing species or individuals beyond their natural capabilities is morally wrong. Even treatment of genetic defects is questioned in some circumstances, with genetic engineering overall being greatly feared due to the so-called "Eugenics Wars" of Earth's 1990's which were the result of the creation of human Augments. Enterprise explains this somewhat with a human proponent of the Augments asking Phlox (whose species has used genetic engineering beneficially for centuries) what the difference is; Phlox answers, “You tried to reinvent your entire species.”
  • The Borg seek to achieve perfection by augmenting themselves with unique biological features and technological advancements, and are one of the franchise's greatest villains. Somewhat ironically, actual Eugenics however would be legally possible within the Federation, as Interspecies Romance, often involving species possessing superhuman abilities, is very commonplace.
  • Cybernetics provides something of a loophole, as androids (with mega-strength and superior computer brains) are gradually introduced into the setting and eventually accepted, though it's a rocky road getting there. Ironically, the most well-known of these androids actually seeks to become more human (and less "perfect" by extension).
• Now Do It Again, Backwards: A standard way of handling various Phlebotinum.
• Nuclear Torch Rocket: The Impulse Drive is presented as a Reactionless Drive on-screen, but is canonically a fusion rocket. It's just that the reaction plume is invisible, and makes it look like the ships are being pushed around by their tail-lights.

O

• Obfuscated Interface: The franchise features this trope in some scenes. The most notable instance usually consists of the The Spock, such as Data, opening doors, or overriding computer controls by switching around randomly placed and colored crystals. Sometimes the normally Viewer-Friendly Interface computer systems will become decidedly obfuscated whenever something needs to be done quickly, or simply plot necessity.
• Obligatory Earpiece Touch: Uhura would often touch her earpiece when concentrating on an incoming communication.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine focuses on a space station instead of a starship.
  • Star Trek: Voyager is the only series that is primarily set in the Delta Quadrant.
  • Star Trek: Picard is the sole series that mostly takes place in the Beta Quadrant, and all the main heroic characters are civilians (i.e. none of them are active Starfleet officers).
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks is unique because it's predominantly comedic and its main protagonists are Starfleet ensigns who aren't senior officers.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy is uniquely the only CGI animated series and the only one with a cast of almost entirely minors, none of whom are human or have ever served in Starfleet (aside from a hologram patterned after a certain captain).
• 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.
• Ominous Cube: The Borg Cubes, they're the definition of The Dreaded Dreadnought when compared to the Federation's much smaller, lighter-colored, and more rounded vessels; they're color-coded with evil's Sickly Green Glow; the music often shifts to a battle theme or the Drone of Dread when they appear; and they tend to silently ignore anything they don't deem to be a threat or interesting enough to assimilate.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: The chief science officer of any starship or space station needs to be knowledgeable in multiple scientific fields, from physics to biology.
• One World Order: Are there any planets in that future that don't have a solitary, planet-wide government?
  • It's stated in the TNG episode “Attached” that being a united world is generally a requirement for Federation membership. The Federation feels odds are a world that hasn't even resolved the differences among their own people and brought them together isn't ready to join an interstellar community. This feeling is proven correct in the episode.
• Our Dark Elves Are Different: The Romulans count as this, considering Vulcans are Space Elves and Romulans are their more aggressive counterparts. They're the same species: the Romulans are the descendants of a group of rebel Vulcans who disagreed with the Vulcan creed of stoicism and left their home planet to settle in a distant system and built up a massive space empire from there. Interestingly, they turned another species of Dark Elves, the Remans, into their slaves as the Romulans colonized the twin planets of Romulus and Remus. While the Vulcans and Romulans look mostly human with the exception of their Pointy Ears, the Remans Look Like Orlok and are allergic to light. All these Space Elves and Dark Space Elves also have low-key psychic abilities, in addition to being more Long-Lived than humans.
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: Used frequently from The Next Generation to Enterprise as part of technobabble, most frequently in the form of dark matter nebulae. See the pages for individual series for specifics.
• Our Doors Are Different: Sliding doors everywhere. Everywhere. The foley effect for Trek doors is the sound paper makes when removed from an envelope. Then there are the heavier, Whirrr Ka-CHUNK sliding doors.
• Outranking Your Job: Seemingly every crewmember aboard both Enterprises is an officer.
  • Away teams (known as landing parties in TOS), the futuristic equivalent of a boarding party, are typically composed of several senior officers, plus one or two Red Shirt characters as cannon fodder. In TOS, Kirk himself frequently led the landing party.
  • Inverted by Miles O'Brien. He's essentially the chief engineer, but he's just a petty officer. Granted, there don't seem to be that many Starfleet officers under him, so he technically does still outrank his staff. Most of them seem to be Bajoran civilians (and Rom).

P

• Palette-Swapped Alien Food: Romulan and Andorian Ale is blue.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Starting with the films, the Klingons are normally dressed in leathers and furs, as befitting their status as the archetypal Proud Warrior Race.
• Perfection Is Static:
  • Oh, the Borg. The Borg seek to achieve their own version of perfection through forced assimilation of diverse races, cultures, and technology into their Hive Mind. This means turning them into cyborgs that fly in perfectly shaped ships that use their collective knowledge to overpower other races to add them into their Collective. This is also what does them in as a neurolytic pathogen is introduced by an alternate timeline Admiral Janeway, collapsing the Collective and then collectively wiped out by the aged, but no less capable crew of the Enterprise-D.
  • The Q Continuum is described as evolutionary stagnation in episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and the audio drama Spock vs. Q, having obtained great power but no imagination to do anything meaningful with it, which is why their most notorious member is frequently causing chaos around the universe, and why, as Spock notes, Q takes such an interest in humanity, who have imagination in abundance.
• Photoprotoneutron Torpedo: Photon torpedoes are the Trope Maker. There are also quantum, plasma, and polaron torpedoes, just to name a few.
• The Plague: Earth may be free from disease, but step out into space and these are everywhere. Starfleet crew are constantly catching them so the ship's doctor can race against time to find a cure.
  • The disease that killed all the adults in "Miri". (TOS)
  • Rigelian Fever in "Requiem for Methuselah".
  • The disease from "The Naked Time" (and its sequel "The Naked Now") is apparently non-fatal, but is highly contagious and, in both episodes, turns the entire crew into oversexed, drunken boobs who threaten to destroy the ship.
  • The macrovirus in the Voyager episode "Macrocosm". Especially nightmarish because of the monsters that exist solely as vectors, and are produced by the welts on its victims' skin.
  • The Vidiians had this as their hat, if you can belive it: an entire race infected with a deadly phage, forcing them to steal organs and skin grafts from other species.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Dominion punished an entire planet for rebellion by infecting them with a plague called "The Quickening". Everyone is born with it, most die in childhood, but enough people survive to adulthood to keep their population stable, turning what was once a space-faring civilization into something resembling the Dung Ages. Dr. Bashir beats his head against the wall trying to find a cure, but can only come up with a vaccine. The upshot is that future generations may yet stand a chance.
  • The Federation's "Section 31" also created a plague to kill the Changelings and win the war. It was ultimately successful, as the Changelings ended up bartering peace in exchange for a cure.
  • The plague that nearly depopulated one of the Dramians' two planets in the Animated Series episode "Albatross".
• Plain Palate:
  • Vulcan culture favours food and drink with little to no seasonings and which is generally plain. This is likely because Vulcans value stoicism and don't see the point in eating and drinking for fun. Additionally, they're vegetarians so there's no need to use spices as a preservative as that's generally done with meat.
  • Emergency rations are not meant to be tasty, but O'Brien likes a particular type.
• Planet Baron:
  • In "The Conscience of the King", Kodos the Executioner, while initially a legitimate governor, was temporarily dictator of the world Kirk grew up on after declaring Martial law due to a famine and executing a large chunk of its population to save the others.
  • In "The Squire of Gothos", the titular Squire of Gothos is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with his own planet, though he only uses a portion of it.
  • In "Space Seed", Khan becomes this after he is defeated but given a planet to colonize and rule, though we learn in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that the planet later died, prompting Khan to seek revenge on Kirk for marooning him there.
  • In "I, Mudd", Mudd has become ruler of a planet of androids, though by the end of the episode the robots are more his captors than his subjects.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quark's cousin Gaila owns his own moon. This is one of Quark's desires as well. Every time Gaila is mentioned, his moon inevitably comes up.
  • In the TNG episode "Devil's Due", a con artist was claiming to be a planet's ancient deity and using advanced technology to work apparent miracles to back up her claim to ownership of the entire planet, the crew of the Enterprise wondered if she might actually be Q in disguise. Picard shot that down, saying that if Q wanted a planet, he'd just create one.
• Planet of Hats: Trek is legendary for this, and has applied the trope throughout the various series. A common feature of many episodes is for whichever character is providing exposition to summarize an entire civilization's culture in a few sentences.
  • TOS had, among other things, a planet of Space Nazis, a Mafia-run planet and a planet inhabited solely by transplanted Native Americans.
  • TNG had things such as a planet with gender-flipped mid-20th Century social values and a planet where everybody's role was defined by a Eugenic master plan. Also, Dr. Crusher's grandmother lived on a colony that was deliberately wearing a Scotireland hat.
  • Vulcans are all-logic, all-the-time. Their siblings, the Romulans, are all-treachery, all-the-time. Klingons are all about warfare and glory. Ferengi are all about capitalism. Cardassians are obsessive nationalists. Bajorans are spiritual, etc.
  • A popular theory is that the pervasiveness of this trope is to highlight the Humans Are Special theme of the series. Each of the other races in the galaxy showcases a facet of human nature (our materialism, our warlike nature, our lack of feeling or indifference), and their rocky relations with humanity symbolize us coming to terms with those facets.
  • Lower Decks pokes fun at this by introducing a colony of “Ren faire types” who follow a Standard Fantasy Setting aesthetic despite flying around in starships (they describe all their technology in mythical terms, i.e. referring to warp plasma as “dragon’s blood”), governed by a hereditary monarchy with some…eccentric rules of succession.
• Planetary Nation: Most planets visited have exactly one government, one language, and one culture.
• Planetville: Often paired with Planet of Hats. A planetary population smaller than that of an urban apartment building is commonly considered to constitute a "civilization", to the extent of being subject to the Prime Directive. Perhaps the most glaring example was presented in the ENT episode "Terra Nova", where the roughly 200 settlers of Earth's first interstellar colony decided to declare independent sovereignty, and Earth let it go!
• Plot Pants: Very rarely, officers will get out of their uniforms when off duty. Especially when on shore leave, or if we have occasion to catch them going to bed.
• Post-Scarcity Economy: In TNG and chronologically later media the Federation is portrayed as such whenever Roddenberry could get away with it.
• Post-Soviet Reunion: Reference materials made after Star Trek: The Original Series debuted stated that communism couldn't prove viable and ultimately lead to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R, but the invention of Replicator technology allowed them to reform and actually thrive under their communist ideologies since the world itself now lived in a post-scarcity society. The new Soviet Union would actually become a major contributing factor to the creation of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.
• Power of Friendship:
  • The franchise features a lot of this; especially in The Original Series and in The Next Generation. Many episodes revolve around one of the crew being kidnapped, threatened, or otherwise in danger, and having the rest of the crew band together to save them. Has resulted in plenty of Big Damn Heroes.
  • On a larger scale, the Federation is this to the rest of the galaxy. They’re the only major power we see in the setting that doesn’t expand via conquest or assimilation, but through making new friends. More imperialistically-inclined species might scoff, but this approach has allowed them to stand up to the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and even the Borg… for 200 years and counting.
• Powered by a Black Hole: The Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual states that the Romulan D'Deridex-class warbird is believed to be powered by x-ray emissions from a captured microsingularity, rather than fusion and matter/antimatter reactors like most other ships. The canon has usually adhered to this since then, Depending on the Writer. Exploited in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Visionary" when the crew are able to locate a cloaked warbird by hunting for the mass signature of its drive singularity.
• Pregnant Reptile:
  • Cardassians resemble reptiles more than mammals. They like lying on hot rocks, in heat too intense for most other races, and they have patches of scales on their skin and have flared necks akin to snakes. While we've never seen a pregnant Cardassian, they are known to have reproduced with Bajorans, and one woman thought breeding with a human was possible.
  • Gorn are a straighter example of Lizard Folk, but in Star Trek Into Darkness Bones reveals they can get pregnant, and he once did a c-section on one.
• Primary-Color Champion: applies to Starfleet as a whole in TOS and the Kelvin Timeline (see Color-Coded for Your Convenience, above) with brightly coloured uniform shirts of yellow, red and blue. Downplayed in the rest of the franchise, with the colours being restricted to ever-smaller portions of the uniform, teal gradually supplanting blue and red getting swapped for a more subdued shade of purplish maroon.
• Prime Timeline: As the Trope Codifier for the Mirror Universe, Star Trek is also the de facto trope codifier for this one. The franchise's Prime Timeline includes ENT, DSC, SNW, TOS (and TAS), the TOS movies, TNG, the TNG movies, DS9, VOY, LWD, Prodigy and Picard. It has the Mirror Universe which has been visited by DSC, TOS, DS9 and ENT; the "Kelvin" rebooted timeline by J. J. Abrams, a second Mirror Universe invented for Picard's second season, and quite a number of other one-shot alternates. When naming this trope, "Prime Timeline," used by Abrams to refer to the continuity founded by Gene Roddenberry in The '60s, was the natural choice.
• Psychic Powers: Many species have them, ranging from minor extrasensory perception to godlike powers.

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