Star Trek / Tropes U to Z

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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U

• Ultimate Universe: With the amount of Continuity Nods and Broad Strokes picking and choosing certain elements from every show and movie, the movies following on from the Star Trek (2009) Alternate Timeline could possibly be one.
• Uniqueness Decay: The Borg start out in Next Generation as a mysterious, frighteningly advanced and implacable species from beyond known space. Then Enterprise has them show up about 300 years before that, while their Villain Decay on Voyager makes them seem distinctly nonthreatening.
• Unusual User Interface: Data was regularly plugging himself into various bits of the ship. Once they even attached just his head to a console after his body was misplaced.
  • In some cases (particularly in TNG), computers were reprogrammed by rearranging "isolinear chips" (green, plastic spark plugs). Back in the 1940s and before, this was a legitimate way to program computers. Why they return to it in the 2360s is anyone's guess.
    • At least for robotics, the technique is quite valid and is experiencing a rebirth. And military electronic hardware has long consisted of interchangeable modules (the theory being that replacing an entire module is easier—particularly under combat conditions—than restoring the code).
    • Think about this the next time you use one of those tiny 64-gig storage cards in your communicator, er, phone.
  • Speaking of Star Trek: TNG, you kids today may be all jaded and stuff, but those touch screen Okudagrams on the Enterprise were freaking awesome in 1987.
  • An episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has older versions of the crew having trouble adapting to the Defiant's antiquated interface, being used to a three-dimensional projection. ("The Visitor")
  • In the VOY finale, Janeway returns from decades in the future to change the present, and she is implanted with a standard issue neural computer interface from the future.
  • There's another episode where Tom Paris gets too close to an alien shuttle with a neural interface.
  • One episode of DS9 featured a guest character with a data port behind her ear, which she could use to bypass security systems. The dialogue made it sound as though they were relatively freely available... which only raises questions about why we never saw one again.
  • The Hirogen ships' interface works looks like sticking metal toothpicks into a gigantic sphere.
  • The Borg can also do this with their assimilation tubes. Said tubes inject nanites into anything. Those nanites then infect and reprogram the target system to resemble that of a Borg ship.
• Unwinnable Joke Game: Ironically subverted in Starfleet Academy on the Super Nintendo. You are given The Kobayashi Maru scenario as a graduation requirement. It's supposed to be unwinnable. However, due to the way the video game is designed, it's entirely possible to engage the Klingons 'and beat them.'
  • You can also do what Kirk did -- cheat. There's a cheat code that lets you name your character "James T. Kirk". Play the game using this name, then hail the Klingons once they attack.
• Utility Weapon: Phasers have many more uses than just as weapons (which ranges from a stun gun to escalating degrees of Death Ray, and includes a grenade mode for when shit has truly hit the fan). They can also be used (indirectly) as space-heaters, cutting torches, emergency batteries, and pressure washers.

V

• Values Dissonance: There is some of this between the Star Trek shows, spanning decades, and the audiences of various generations, but this trope really comes into its own in universe, with the majority of plots being about or involving inter-species and inter-cultural values dissonance.
• Vehicle-Based Characterization: The various starships Enterprise tend to be cutting-edge science vessels, naturally reflecting the ideals and personality of both The Federation and their respective captains (Kirk, Picard, Archer, etc). who are Bold Explorers.
• [Verb] This!: In First Contact:
  Worf: Assimilate this. *cue Borgsplosion*
• The 'Verse: Widely recognized as quite possibly the most coherent, internally consistent fictional universe ever created.
• Villain Decay: In addition to the Borg (mentioned under Uniqueness Decay above), the Ferengi were originally intended to be major villains in Next Generation. Although their first on-screen appearance (Picard speaking to a close-up headshot of a Ferengi on a viewscreen) was extremely intimidating, the diminutive Ferengi were not taken very seriously as bad guys by most fans. The Ferengi were subsequently rescued by being retooled into comedy relief and often sympathetic characters with the Romulans and eventually the Borg becoming the heavies after the first two seasons. And don't get us started on the Kazon...
• A Villain Named Khan: The iconic Khan Noonien Singh is an Evil Overlord from Earth's distant history, put in suspended animation and revived during the series to become one of Captain Kirk's greatest enemies.
• A Villain Named "Z__rg":
  • Klingons, Kazon, and Borg.
  • Klingons love the letter K. The Original Series gave us the iconic triumvirate of Kang, Kor, Koloth, as well as their culture's founder Kahless; and the movies have Kruge, Klaa, Koord, and Gorkon. In the Expanded Universe, their home planet used to be called Klinzhai, but the official canon later renamed it Qonos (pronounced "Kronos", with a K sound).

W

• We Will All Be History Buffs in the Future:
  • Star Trek: Voyager: It's oddly the most convincing of the various series. Rather than The Spock, who knows Earth's history better than all the human crewmen, it has Tom Paris, who is interested in 20th-century history and culture. They portray it realistically — he accidentally reveals himself to a 20th-century human by referring to the Soviet Union in the present tense in 1996 (because he was only five years out..).. Also, he's more interested in the 1950s than (as you might expect) the 1990s, the decade the show aired.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the episode "The Royale" the away team finds an old astronaut's spacesuit that has the United States flag on it with 52 stars. It is Riker who instantly tells the years when that number of stars was in use, even though Data is accompanying him. The reason is that Riker was born and raised in the United States, so he probably got US history classes at school.
  • In order to be a Starfleet cadet you already have to be the best and brightest the Federation has to offer. Study of various historical periods seems to be something of a hobby amongst Starfleet officers. Picard and Janeway both loved Earth's history and were trained terrestrial and xenoarchaeologists.
  • Each character seems to know a lot about the history and customs of their race/country of origin. Sisko knew a lot about Africa, Picard was well-versed in French history, Chakotay was from a Native American tribe that was keeping many of their traditions and rituals going, etc.
  • Given how easy it is to accidentally time travel in this setting, the Starfleet Academy goes so far as to make Temporal Mechanics a standard class. One would assume some basic knowledge about historical flashpoints is included.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Notably, Wide-Eyed Idealist Dr. Bashir of isn't a history buff, finding most of it (the twenty-first century especially) "too depressing". This conveniently allowed Sisko to play Mr. Exposition when they time-traveled to 2024.
• We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future: Subverted in ENT, which overcompensated with more zippers than is necessary.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Okay, fine, phasers. Ubiquitous lasers variety, as far as the Federation is concerned.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Romulans and Cardassians are heavy into dilithium mining, and employ untouchables (such as the Reman caste) or subjugated aliens to dig it up for them. Enterprise revealed the Vulcans are operating like a modern-day hegemony: the Andorian colonies are operated by tinpot dictators who funnel dilithium to Vulcan and leave the workers, who work for a pittance in company-owned shantytowns, with nothing.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: This is Star Trek, and proud fathers are not welcome here. Just ask Sarek.
  • In particular, Sarek said upon Spock's birth, "So human". Disapproved of Spock's entry into Starfleet Academy (TOS, "Journey to Babel") and the two are only fully reconciled in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (keep in mind that Spock had died two movies earlier—perhaps this was a jolt to the old man's conscience?). Spock expresses only partly-veiled annoyance that Sarek had engaged in a mind-meld with Picard when he had never done so with his own son. Sarek is played far more sympathetically in the 2009 reboot and has a much better relationship with Spock.
    • However, Sarek strikes again in Star Trek: Discovery as we find out he let his adopted daughter Michael spend her life thinking she wasn't good enough to make it into Vulcan NASA when actually Vulcan racists forced him to choose between her and Spock. He chose Spock—which sheds new light on his disapproval of Spock's decision to enter Starfleet.
  • Picard's father, Maurice, was a wine-maker who insisted on living his life as though it were the 1800s. Fittingly, he abhorred technology and disapproved of his son joining Starfleet. In fact, when Picard briefly died in "Tapestry", he saw a vision of his father berating him for yet another "disappointment". Some of this may be due to an incident from Jean-Luc’s childhood when he let his severely mentally ill mother out of her room and she committed suicide, as revealed on Star Trek: Picard. Obviously this wasn't Jean-Luc's fault, as he was only 10, and ultimately Maurice should have contacted mental health professionals on his wife's behalf rather than locking her in her bedroom, but he seems to resent his younger son for it to some extent.
  • Riker is the chip off the old block: his old man is a glory hound who must compete with his son at every opportunity. This is evidenced by Riker's childhood memory of a fishing trip, in which Kyle Riker took credit for Will's big catch.
  • Data's brother Lore has daddy issues out the wazoo, since he was basically a Flawed Prototype that their creator-dad Noonian Soong mothballed in favour of building Data. Soong claimed he meant to go back and "fix" Lore but never got around to it, and Lore ends up straight-up murdering him. Though considering Lore deliberately fed all their neighbours to a giant snowflake monster, maybe Soong had a point…
  • Odo has a bristled relationship with his surrogate 'father', Dr. Mora. He mentions that when Mora tried to get an infant Odo to take the shape of a cube, Odo resisted the first two times out of defiance. Mora was very proud with himself for helping Odo mature as a humanoid, but Odo resented being paraded around Cardassian officials to impress them (always being asked to perform the 'Cadassian neck trick', which Odo hated). Odo even felt jealousy when Mora took over the education and training of another baby Changeling.
  • Elim Garak and his father Enabran Tain had an icy cold relationship, even by the standards of other characters appearing on this list. He's the reason why Garak became an agent of the Obsidian Order, had claustrophobia as an adult (from being locked in closets as a child), and was also partially responsible for his exile to Deep Space Nine. On his deathbed in a Dominion internment camp however, Enabran Tain then revealed to Garak that his uncompromising attitude was mainly due to his position as the head of the Obsidian Order, and admitted that he was actually proud of him.
  • Ezri's mother manages to take this further by not only thoroughly disapproving of her only daughter, but also by her domineering attitude towards her other two children. She forced Ezri's brothers into helping run her failing mining business, which subsequently led to the entire family's involvement with the Orion Syndicate, and then to Ezri's brother committing murder on the family's behalf.
  • Averted with Benjamin Sisko, whose father is nothing but supportive and very proud of his son. Benjamin in turn is a firm but loving father to Jake, although he's far from perfect, but given the circumstances even before the Dominion War this is understandable.
  • Tom Paris' instructor at Starfleet, Admiral Owen Paris: By no means a pleasant or easy tutor to have so keenly on hand. Owen gave his son a "B-Minus".
  • Even gods are not immune to this. Q ended up having a kid; the boy's parents saw him as the salvation of the Q Continuum, but inadvertently raised a troublesome, spoiled brat. Q ends up fobbing him off on Janeway for awhile and threatens to turn him into an amoeba, only taking responsibility when the Continuum forces him to.
  • Malcolm Reed's father basically disowned him for not joining the Royal Navy.
  • Without the approving father his prime timeline counterpart had, the Kelvin Timeline version of Kirk grows up to be kind of an asshole. Pike becomes the father figure whose approval Kirk craves, and Jim is devastated when Pike dresses him down for violating the Prime Directive, and even more so when Pike is assassinated.
  • Despite Beckett Mariner's claims to the contrary, her mother's constant disapproval of her actions (at least in season one anyway) is part of what drives her deep-seated issues with authority. Interestingly enough, Ransom seems to also need Freeman's approval in this way, and gets jealous when she and Mariner start working more closely together.
  • Gwyn strives her whole life to be the perfect “progeny” to her emotionally distant father, but despite her skills with languages and a blade she never seems to be quite good enough.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Every Captain. In every series. And not infrequently either. Either them at the crew for their crap, or the crew to themselves for their own crap.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: From the Horta in TOS to Data in TNG to Odo and the Founders in Deep Space Nine to holograms in VOY, every series has at least one story struggling with this topic. In fact, there are so many that the series itself has its own page under that namespace.
• What Other Galaxies?: In general, most of the important activity in the universe appears to take place in the Milky Way Galaxy, even when dealing with the most ancient civilizations.
• White-and-Grey Morality: Most of the five series heavily favored this trope. The show tended not to have very many truly evil people and the ones that seemed to be would get fleshed out or retconned later to be more sympathetic. Typically most people could be reasoned with and almost everybody was just looking out for their own if they weren't motivated by nobler intentions. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine skews furthest from this trope with the Federation becoming a bit greyer and the Dominion being darker than is typical of the other series.
  
  The one exception would be the Next Generation-era Ferengi. They were universally motivated by greed, embodying the worst of capitalism on a show that tended to favor socialist utopias. Ironically, while Deep Space Nine was overall darker, they pulled the Ferengi into the gray range by allowing Quark to express his worldview. He noted that the Ferengi never had a world war or genocides even close to Earth's history because it only reduces their customer base. He was even at the forefront of a number of social reforms and the Alpha Quadrant was saved by a Ferengi.
• World of Ham: Star Trek: Go big or go home.
  • Large Ham has a Star Trek subpage for some reason... it started with the incomparable William Shatner as The Captain, and hardly looked back ever since (with usually villains chewing the most scenery),
• World of Snark: Everybody loves to argue. And it's usually a delight.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: The reigning currency in the Alpha Quadrant is gold-pressed latinum. Denominations of gold-pressed latinum, in order of increasing value, include the slip, the strip, the bar and the brick. The imprinted gold is merely a casing for the latinum, which carries real value.
  Quark: Someone's extracted all the latinum! There's nothing here but worthless gold!
  Odo: And it's all yours.
  Quark: NOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo--
• Worthy Opponent : The Romulan captain in Balance of Terror most notably. Used on other occasions.

Y

• You Don't Want to Catch This: Occasionally used by the ship's doctors to buy time or get in somewhere they shouldn't be.
• Your Size May Vary: The franchise has made efforts to convey their ships in the appropriate size, but have made some size errors due partly to no two models being made at the same scale and also some deviances to make the best looking image. In particular smaller ships like the Defiant, Voyager or a Klingon Bird of Prey are hard to compare with massive ships like the Enterprise D and E. This became a point of controversy with the Kelvin Timeline, as the Enterprise was designed at one size close to the original but arbitrarily doubled in size in official reports, making every other FX shot disproportioned.

Z

• Zeerust: Each entry grapples with this in its own way; TOS is most infamous for it (and was showing its age even by the time TNG went to air, but while the TNG-era and later works have been better about it, they still have problems with it as time passes. For more information for each show, consult their respective pages.
• Zeerust Canon: All through the Next Generation era of shows whenever the Original Series is visited in some form it retained the same look and function as it did in the 60's, from the simplistic sets to the miniskirts to the crudely painted props. ENT had plenty of grief from fans for updating their ships, sets and costumes to look functional as a 2000's era sci-fi show rather than adhere to a presumed style of what a TOS prequel would look like. The Abrams films set themselves in an Alternate Timeline to justify a modernized redesign, while DSC and SNW took the step to affirm an updating of what that era of Starfleet looks like in the main timeline. More curious, though, is that PIC would retain the 60's design when showing a Constitution-class vessel if only because it stayed in continuity of how the TNG treated those designs.

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