Star Trek The Next Generation / Tropes A to I

Star Trek: The Next Generation Tropes A to I

A

• Aborted Arc:
  • The Puppeteer Parasite aliens seen in "Conspiracy". They were intended to be harbingers of the Borg, who were originally supposed to be insectoid. In the end this idea was scrapped as the special effects were impossible and the parasites were never seen again, despite the obvious Sequel Hook of them sending off a transmission at the end of "Conspiracy".
  • The two-part episode "Redemption" exists largely to introduce Sela, with the last shot of Part 1 (and the cliffhanger for the season) revealing that she is the spitting image of dead crew member Tasha Yar. But Sela (and her connection to Tasha) barely even factors into Part 2 of her introductory episode, let alone the rest of the series; she only appears once afterward, in a non-essential role.
• Absent Animal Companion: Chief O'Brien shows Reg Barclay his pet tarantula Christina in the episode "Realm of Fear", who he got after ditching his fear of spiders. The spider is never seen in other episodes.
• Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards: When Wesley Crusher took the Starfleet Academy entrance exam with four other prospective entrants, only one of them would get in that year; Wesley failed to get in despite having already been made an honorary ensign and the pilot of Starfleet's flagship for years.
• The Ace: Riker doesn't have any flaws. He's an Ace Pilot, a tough fighter, a wise commander, a capable leader and quite the lady's man.
• Acting Unnatural: In "Unification: Part I", Picard and Data travel to Romulus disguised as Romulans. The owner of a diner immediately pegs them as outsiders — however, she assumes that they're members of the State Sec (later named the Tal Shiar in "Face of the Enemy"), rather than foreign agents and says their soup is on the house, "courtesy of a loyal establishment."
• Action Figure File Card: The first two figure lines, from Galoob and Playmates Toys, both had them.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Similar to how Sisko does with baseball, Picard enjoys using Shakespeare as a metaphor for the human condition. Of course, everyone knows about Stewart's background in Shakespearean theater; he quotes Hamlet in "Hide and Q", and participates in Data's production of Henry V.
  • In "Devil's Due", Picard coaches Data in a performance of A Christmas Carol; Stewart himself performed readings of the story before playing Scrooge on film.
  • TNG had a minor in-show example: In "Descent (Part 2)" the Enterprise is forced to hide within a star's corona by using an experimental shield. The lieutenant at Tactical doesn't think that the shield will work, but is proven wrong. The actor played a different character in a previous episode who tried to make it appear that the shield didn't work.
  • In "Sarek", Wesley gets ticked at Geordi and taunts him by saying, "At least I'm not spending the night with a good book, like some people!" Geordi seems to take this remark rather personally.
  • In "Half a Life", David Ogden Stiers guest-stars as an alien scientist doing research work on the Enterprise. One of his report readouts is attempt number 4077.
  • Not the first time Dwight Schultz has played a man with mental problems.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Riker can barely keep a straight face when Worf delivers a simple but savage retort to Q's latest personal problem.
  Picard: Q, the liar; Q, the misanthrope!
  Q: Q, the needy; Q, the desperate! What must I do to convince you people?
  Worf: Die.
• Adaptive Ability: The Borg, by any means necessary.
• Adventurer Outfit: Turns up now and again, usually when Picard finds an opportunity to indulge his hobby of archaeology.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: "Q Who" sees eighteen crew members killed by the Borg when Q tries to teach Picard a lesson about human arrogance.
• After Show: One reason Paramount felt confident in the risk of pouring so much money into the first season episodes - they figured if the show bombed, they'd just add the Next Gen episodes to TOS's syndication package of 79 episodes and make the money back that way.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In "Q Who", when Q's object lesson finally pierces Picard's arrogant complacency far enough that he realizes he won't get his crew out of the situation they're in without an honest, humble appeal to the more or less omnipotent entity who got them into it.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle." After being accidentally made sentient, the Moriarty hologram never does anything overtly villainous, indeed acting polite and well-mannered at all times. The reasons he hijacks the Enterprise twice are due to his frustration that he simply cannot leave the holodeck and his belief that Picard failed to keep his word about researching a way to give him autonomy: the fact that he somehow managed to remain conscious during the 4-year gap between activations didn't really help his mood either. Picard even laments having to thwart him, as while he was programmed to act as an arch-villain, Moriarty is still a decent man.
• An Alien Named "Bob": Downplayed for Deanna Troi, who is only half alien, and Alexander Rozhenko, who is three-quarters alien.
• Aliens Steal Cable: "The Royale", also overlapping with The Caper and (chillingly, and hilariously) Suckiness Is Painful. The casino is based on a truly abominable novel found on an alien abductee's person.
• Alike and Antithetical Adversaries: The Federation is a multi-species organization, most of their enemies are at least a bit one-dimensional. The Borg take the cake though, being a Hive Mind that removes individuality.
• All Crimes Are Equal: "Justice". A planet of free love, and they execute you for falling in flowers. It may have been a case of Blue-and-Orange Morality, as the alien overseers in charge of the Edo can't differentiate between the letter of the law and the spirit.
• Alliterative Title: "The Naked Now".
• Almighty Janitor: Boothby, grounds-keeper of Starfleet Academy and trusted mentor of almost every graduate of note.
• Almost Holding Hands: William Riker and Deanna Troi (who used to be a couple) almost hold hands when it looks like their ship Enterprise is about to be fired upon.
• Aloof Leader, Affable Subordinate: This is downplayed for Captain Picard and Commander Riker (the first officer). Picard is by no means cold or distant, but he's very serious, private, and kind of stern. Riker, on the other hand, is very casual, easygoing, and humorous, and he shares a lot more than Picard.
• Alternate Catchphrase Inflection:
  • In "Unification", Sarek tries to say, "Live long and prosper" but because he's dying, he says it in a much more weak, emotional way than the usual Vulcan tone and he can't get the "prosper" part out.
  • Usually when Picard says, "Engage!" it's in a very definite voice. However, in "Angel One", he says it hoarsely due to still having a sore throat from a virus he'd gotten earlier.
• Alternate Universe
  • "All Good Things" depicted three universes in three different times where an anti-time disruption threatened to destroy the universe.
  • "Yesterday's Enterprise" depicted the TNG universe if the Enterprise-C had not been destroyed defending a Klingon outpost from the Romulans.
  • "Parallels" depicted multiple universes as Worf hops between them.
• Alternative Number System: The Bynars use base 2. So does the title of the episode in which they appear.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • The Borg Collective destroy or assimilate almost indiscriminately everyone they come across as long as their prey have a minimum of technological or biological advancement - i.e. as long as whoever they are killing or assimilating is worth the energy. They try to assimilate the entire rest of the universe into their structured collective or kill them trying, and you can't reason with them or plead for mercy. Resistance is futile. Averted with Hugh, when he is separated from the Collective and gains individuality.
  • The Crystalline Entity speaks in harmonics (like sound produced on crystal) that was never translated and roams the galaxy strip mining entire worlds of its organic material as a food source. A fully habitable and 'inhabited' planet might look like the Moon after a couple hours of its arrival.
• Always Late: Played for Drama in "Hollow Pursuits", in which a newbie engineer named Reg Barclay is always late for work due to a combination of his paralysing shyness and his habit of going onto the holodeck as a coping mechanism for said shyness.
• AM/FM Characterization:
  • Commander Will Riker's love of jazz shows a softer, easier-going side than his military bearing suggests.
  • At one point in "Suddenly Human", Picard walks past the guest quarters where the Talarian-raised human teenager Jono is staying, and hears this blasting in the room. Jono's enjoyment of "alba ra" seems to signify he's a typical teenager.
• Amicable Exes: Riker and Troi are this in the series, although they get back together and eventually marry in the films; Star Trek: Picard establishes that they went on to have two children together.
• Amnesiac Costume Identity: In the episode "Conundrum", after an alien ship scans the Enterprise, all of the crew members develop amnesia. Worf assumes that he's the captain because he's wearing his decorated Klingon sash.
• Amnesia Danger: In "Conundrum," the crew could avoid their situation simply by ignoring their false orders and leaving, if only they didn't have amnesia.
• Amnesia Loop: In "Clues", the Enterprise crew realize something is amiss, leading them to return to the source of their amnesia, a planet of xenophobes.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: And Then Picard Was A Borg: In "Best of Both Worlds". He got better.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Lore is burdened with this sort of fate after his first appearance. In order to get rid of him, Data beams his evil brother into outer space, where the Nigh-Invulnerable android will be cursed to drift around aimlessly in the endless vacuum, completely helpless. It's downplayed, since he's rescued after a "mere" few years when the crew of an alien ship discover his body floating around in space at a thousand-to-one odds, not to mention that as an android, he probably can't get bored.
    • Data states in one episode: "I do have a functional respiration system. However, its purpose is to maintain thermal control of my internal systems. I am, in fact, capable of functioning for extended periods in a vacuum". Lore may not have been able to remain fully aware for those two years without being able to "maintain thermal control", and even if he could have, he always had the option to switch himself off. It's also possible he ran out of power since he'd have no way of recharging himself.
  • The fate of Armus. He was created out of the darkest aspects of the psyches of an entire alien race and then abandoned. After he murdered Tasha Yar in a rage, the crew of the Enterprise decided that it was fitting punishment to leave him again and deploy a warning beacon that meant no-one would ever venture near the planet again. Armus even ends the episode screaming.
  • To say nothing of those that the Borg assimilate. As Picard implied shortly after being removed from the Collective in "The Best of Both Worlds", they're privy to everything the Borg-them is doing, but are helpless to do anything about it. That Picard was able to break through his "Locutus of Borg" personality and tell Data how to defeat the Borg was nothing short of a miracle.
  • Earlier when we see him being physically altered into a Borg - consisting of a lot of surgery while conscious, the most reaction Picard can manage is a single tear.
  • Moriarty — the self-aware hologram intended to outsmart Data — is still conscious when he is deactivated, and speaks of "brief, terrifying periods of consciousness... disembodied, without substance." Eventually, he is trapped in a small device running a permanent simulation in which he thinks he has escaped into the real world. Geordi couldn't get him into the real world, but this is still an ignominious and condescending end. Particularly since Star Trek: Voyager revealed that without regular maintenance, holodeck simulations eventually start to glitch, which can destabilise or even destroy the program. And if that happens to Moriarty, he has no way to signal for help...
  • The Ux-Mal criminals encountered in "Power Play" had their consciousness separated from their bodies, and left adrift as anionic energy to suffer in a moon's intense electromagnetic storms. They'd been trapped there for five hundred years when the Enterprise came along, so one can hardly blame them for trying to hijack the ship.
  • In the episode "Realm of Fear" Barclay gets attacked by creepy slug creatures floating inside the transporter beam. He eventually figures out that those creatures are actually crew members of the USS Yosemite trapped inside the transporter and manages to pull them out. Had Barclay not figured out what was going on, those people could have stayed trapped inside indefinitely.
• And the Adventure Continues: "All Good Things..." concludes on this note; though the series has ended, the adventures will continue.
  Picard: So, five-card stud, nothing wild. And the sky's the limit.^note The final line of dialogue in the series.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child: Exploited in "Rascals" — Picard, who'd been de-aged to about twelve, demands to see Riker. When the Ferengi won't let him, he says, "I need to see him now!". Then, he keeps repeating, "Now, now, now..." and stamping his foot until the Ferengi cave in.
• Antagonist Title: "Skin of Evil": The villain is a black liquid known as Armus.
• Anti-Villain: Moriarty. As ruthless as he is, all he wants is to leave the holodeck and experience the real world.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Star Trek runs on this and all the subset variants, justified with heavy heaps of Techno Babble.
• Archaeological Arms Race:
  • In The Chase, several factions are after a DNA code left by Precursors. The Klingons in particular think it's a weapon. To the disgust of some parties, it turns out to be a message that all the sapient races are descended from said Precursors.
  • In The Gambit 2-parter, Picard and Riker must prevent a crew of Space Pirates from assembling an ancient Vulcan telepathic weapon. It only works if the person it's used on is currently feeling violent, so it's basically useless if you know how it works; even Worf is able to calm himself sufficiently to be unaffected.
• Arc Number: the number 47 appears an inordinate number of times throughout the series. This is due to an in-joke amongst writer Joe Menosky and his alma mater, Pomona College, where it has been theorized that 47 is the ultimate random number. J. J. Abrams, who used 47 a lot in Alias and other works, has been known to say "47 is just 42 with inflation." Another mathematical proof written there claims all numbers ultimately equal 47. Other research has suggested the typical maximum attention span of humans on any one thing is 47 minutes, which is why high school and college course periods are typically 50 minutes in length.
• Arc Villain:
  • Because the Klingons had become allies of The Federation by this point, their previous role of recurring antagonists went unfilled. The Ferengi were the first attempt at creating a big bad, and were found to be too comical. Then the Borg came along, but were found to be Too Awesome to Use by the writers. They eventually settled late on in the run of the show on the Cardassians, who were indeed developed into a true Big Bad on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (only for their own Big Bad status to be subverted towards the end of that show's run, following in the footsteps of the Klingons.) Ultimately, the Romulans come closest to filling out this niche, and it's a bigger plot twist to find that they are not the masterminds behind the insidious scheme of the week.
  • Individually, Commanders Sela and Tomalak and the Sisters of Duras fill the role of recurring villains, though even they don't go out of their way to antagonize the Enterprise except when Starfleet interferes in their schemes. However, it turns out that they too were just Romulan pawns.
  • Q seems to be set up as Picard's Arch-Enemy in the pilot and his appearances in the first season see him portrayed as malevolent and even sadistic. In later seasons, his appearances were usually played for laughs, although he would occasionally resume the role of antagonist, notably in the finale "All Good Things" which revisits the scenario of the pilot. Q's personality, however, means you're not really sure whether he really means you harm or is faking it For the Lulz. Furthermore, Q's nature as a time-traveling Energy Being who lives outside of time and can not only take any form he likes but can create matter and illusions out of thin air means not only that different events could be happening out of sequence with his personal timeline, but that the nature of his interactions with the crew could in fact seem very different from what is really happening - and the audience knows all this uncertainty but never gets a firm answer out of anything.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • In "The Measure of a Man", Picard notes how the procedure, if successful, could benefit all of Starfleet. Data's response destroys Picard's line of thought.
  Data: Sir, Lieutenant La Forge's eyes are far superior to human biological eyes. True? Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants?
  • Later, Picard delivers one at the hearing to determine Data's legal status.
  Picard: "Are you prepared to condemn him, and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery?"
• Artificial Outdoors Display: The holodeck, a room with a series of holoprojectors and replicators that can create just about any environment or setting. The pilot episode shows Cmdr. Riker entering a holodeck simulation of a forest, crossing a stream, climbing a tree...
• Art Evolution: A Live Action version. The ridge design on Worf's head changed as the show continued. This was explained as simply streamlining the make-up process.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Switching on Barclay's T-cells in "Genesis" causes the Enterprise crew to "devolve" to a variety of different species... most of which have common ancestors diverging hundreds of millions of years ago. Spot the cat becomes an iguana. This would imply that everyone walks around with copies of not only the future evolutionary patterns of their own species but ALSO whole swathes of species that are completely unrelated to them from their home planet. The worst offender being Barclay's devolution (and presumably re-evolution) into a spider, which would only be possible if he devolved into a pre-Cambrian lifeform first.
  • "The Chase" attempts to cure at least three problems at once...by making all of the Alpha Quadrant's DNA part of a message by a progenitor race, also humanoid, that "seeded" planets with their genetic code in the hope of more sentient humanoids like themselves popping up.
  • "Rightful Heir" features a clone of the Klingon legendary warrior Kahless, made from a genetic sample taken from dried blood on a knife that was a couple of thousand years old. It is incredibly unlikely that any remnants of blood on a knife that old would have anything that resembled useful genetic material, let alone a complete and undamaged genetic strand especially considering it had been stored in a cave all that time.
• Artistic License – Medicine:
  • Props and sets throughout Sick Bay are covered with logos of the caduceus, a staff intertwined with two winged serpents. The caduceus is a symbol of messengers, but it's commonly confused with the symbol of medicine, a single serpent wrapped around a staff called the Rod of Asclepius.
  • Troi and Crusher freely disclose their patients' medical information, often without any real need to do so. In the real world, sharing medical information without cause is a serious breach of medical ethics. In many nations, it's a crime!
• Artistic License – Physics: "The Royale". -291 degrees Celsius (Absolute Zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible, is -273 degrees^note You can't go lower than this, as temperature is a measurement of molecular motion, and once you hit -273 degrees, all molecular motion completely ceases).
• Artistic License – Space: In the episode "Masks", Troi says the sun and the moon both revolve around the same planet, and "only one of them can be in ascendance at any given time".
• Ascended Extra: An odd case in Colm Meaney, who originally signed on to Star Trek: The Next Generation as a day player, and first appeared as a nameless Lieutenant in "Encounter at Farpoint." As the seasons progressed, Meaney got work more and more consistently with TNG, and positive fan response developed a single character out of Meaney's many appearances in the show. The character of O'Brien was created in Season 3, but it was not until the series finale "All Good Things..." (two seasons after Meaney left the TNG cast to become a lead character on sister show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) that it was firmly established that all of his appearances were, in fact, as Miles O'Brien.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: Lwaxana Troi, Betazoid ambassador to the Federation, rarely misses an opportunity to mortify the senior staff, especially Picard and her daughter Deanna. She is an ambassador in the same sense that countries have ambassadors to the United Nations.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Klingons, as usual, since they respect martial ability above all else. See Klingon Promotion.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: In-Universe and meta-example with the saucer separation. In-universe, it was designed so that the Enterprise could evacuate its civilian population so that it could fight whatever was coming for it, but it was rarely used in the series - twice in season 1, once during "The Best of Both Worlds Part II" and in Star Trek: Generations. Meta-wise, the model was made without the assistance of Industrial Light and Magic and when they came in, they discovered that they had a terribly imbalanced six-foot monstrosity that could only maintain balance while upside down (ever wonder why many ship shots are from the bottom?). It's partly because of this that the Enterprise was destroyed in Generations and replaced for Star Trek: First Contact (the other reason was to replace the Enterprise-D sets, built with old TV resolution in mind, with high-res film sets).
• Awesomeness-Induced Amnesia: When Barclay gets a brain upgrade by some aliens, after it wears off he tells Troi that he remembers doing everything he did, he just doesn't remember how.
• Awkward Poetry Reading: In "Schisms", Data tries to write emotional poetry, but due to having no emotions and a big vocabulary, his friends just find the poems funny at best and boring at worst.
• Author Appeal: Baseball was Michael Piller's favorite sport. Shocking, we know. One of his goals was to bring that sport back to the 24th century, which had replaced it with Parrises Squares, Racket Ball and the like, hence Dr. Stubs ('Evolution'). This also inspired the DS9 episode "Take Me Out to the Holosuite."
  Behr: Baseball is Michael Piller's favorite sport, but in the first episode he ever wrote for Star Trek, he killed baseball. Why, we still don't know, but we thought we owed it to him to bring baseball back, even though he had chosen to kill it.
• Author Avatar: Eugene Wesley Roddenberry openly admitted that Wesley Crusher was a younger, idealized version of himself. Oddly enough, though, the character was originally envisioned as a teenaged GIRL named Leslie...

B

• Baby Factory: One episode ends with Doctor Pulaski telling two merged colonies they have to use this trope to insure "genetic diversity".
• Back for the Finale: Denise Crosby and Colm Meaney (crossing over from the neighboring DS9 set) return for "All Good Things." However, this pales in importance to Troi's miniskirt, which is also back for the finale.
• Badass Boast: The Klingon ritual of roaring at the heavens is this on behalf of one who died in battle... they are warning the afterlife that a warrior is coming.
• Bad Future: Or perhaps "Mediocre Future", seeing as how the TNG crew has parted ways in the future of "All Good Things..." Troi's dead (cause unknown), with Worf and Riker's relationship poisoned with bitterness over it. Picard and Beverly got hitched; got divorced. At the end, Data comments that their foreknowledge of the future is already changing the timeline, and everybody resolves to maintain their camaraderie, suggesting things might not get so bad after all.
• Baffled by Own Biology: In "Deja Q", Q is turned from an omnipotent alien to a human. He's weirded out by "losing consciousness" (falling asleep) and later feeling pain for the first time, and when he becomes hungry for the first time, he initially worries there's something wrong with his stomach.
• Bedmate Reveal:
  • In "Tapestry", Picard (who's reliving his days as a fresh young ensign) has sex with his good female friend Marta Batanides. In the morning, a hand reaches up to stroke his ear, and Picard turns around, opens his eyes—and it's Q.
    Q: Morning, darling.
  • In "Redemption II", after Worf is captured, B'Etor wakes him up with foreplay, and he briefly responds in kind— and then wakes up, and immediately recoils.
• Beeping Computers: The LCARS interface chirps, beeps or bleeps every time it shows a new word, plots a planet in a star chart or changes a value in a number-filled spreadsheet. There is actually a point to this: Giving feedback to the user, since an absence of mechanical keys means you cannot "feel" anymore whether you actually pressed something.
• Berserk Button:
  • In the premiere, it was established that Picard did not allow children on the bridge, and he screamed Wesley off the bridge.
  • The Wesley pilot example also included another of Picard's Berserk Buttons...unauthorized people sitting in the captain's chair. At times Picard would yell at various people such as Q who would do so.....as it is said that Stewart would do to reporters on set who dared do the same thing.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In "Where Silence Has Lease", Picard chooses to set the Enterprise to auto-destruct (thus killing the entire crew) rather than allow Nagilum to continue with his experiments, which would kill one-third to one-half of the crew.
• Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean:
  • In "First Contact", Chancellor Durken is the leader of the One World Order on Malcor III and used to think he was as high up as one could get. Then his First Contact with the crew of the Enterprise showed him that there were actually many other more advanced civilizations than his out there in the cosmos. He's a lot more humble about it than usual.
    Durken: I go home each night to a loving wife and two beautiful daughters. We eat the evening meal together as a family. I think that's important, and they always ask me if I've had a good day.
    Picard: And how will you answer them tonight, Chancellor?
    Durken: I will have to say: This morning, I was the leader of the universe as I know it. This afternoon, I'm only a voice in a chorus — but I think it was a good day.
  • The Federation as a whole believe they are prepared to explore deep space after they emerged as the dominant power in the Alpha Quadrant following a series of wars with the Klingons, eventually integrating them. However, the Enterprise-D's first day on the job sees them encounter a Reality Warper known as Q who taunts them that they are not ready in the slightest, yet they proceed. A while later, Q comes back to warn them again, and this time, when Picard rebuffs this information, Q flings them deep into the Delta Quadrant, bringing them face-to-face with the Borg, who very quickly knock Picard off his high horse and force the Federation to reevaluate their position as pacifist explorers now knowing what's out there.
    Picard: Perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency to prepare us for what lies ahead.
• Big "NO!":
  • "Timescape", said by Picard while suffering from temporal narcosis.
  • "Darmok", again Picard, while trapped in a transporter beam as his new friend is pummeled by the Monster of the Week.
  • "Night Terrors", again Picard, when he experiences extreme claustrophobia on the turbolift and feels as if he's rushing up towards the ceiling.
  • "Sarek", yet again Picard, after he shares a mind-meld with Sarek, who is able to benefit from Picard's cool composure for some very important negotiations, while (in a simply awesome performance) Picard is exposed to the full brunt of Sarek's released emotions and regrets.
• Big Secret: "The Drumhead". When it becomes clear Ensign Tarses is hiding something, he becomes the chief suspect in the trial with the investigative team going all out to prove he's the saboteur they're after. It's a waste of everyone's time as he's innocent, his Dark Secret being mostly unrelated to the original crime — to the conspiracy-minded mind, it did have a connection. The original crime involved betraying the Federation to the Romulans. Tarses' secret turned out to be that rather than being a quarter Vulcan, he was a quarter Romulan. This is why the investigation against Tarses continues for a while after Tarses' secret is revealed.
• Bilingual Bonus: In "The Icarus Factor", the Japanese characters written on the side of the anbo-jyutsu ring are mostly martial-arts relevant elemental characters— 火 (fire), 水 (water), etc. "ユリ" ("YURI") is a Shout-Out to Dirty Pair. There are a few of them scattered around the show. The top of the ring says 星 (star).
• Bio Data: Klingons are NOT dumb. A Klingon scientist temporarily posted on the Enterprise-D modified a hyposyringe with an optical chip reader, and would use that to transform digital information from the ship's computers into amino acid sequences. Then he would inject someone without their knowledge, and the information would be carried in their bodies in their bloodstream as inert proteins, which could be extracted at any time by another spy.
  • It seems that by the 24th century, the Klingons have actually learned a few things. This is slightly more plausible than the Enterprise example.
  • The Ancient Humanoid Precursors in "The Chase" encoded a message to their descendants- us, as well as the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, Bolians, Yridians, Vulcans... you get the idea.
  • In "Transfigurations," Data and Geordi examine a Zalkonian memory storage device from mysterious "John Doe's" escape pod that is stated to use a chemical matrix for data storage. It's basically the escape pod's Black Box.
• Bite of Affection: Romance among Klingons is considered a lot more violent than human romance, with biting being a common element within it.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • "The Vengeance Factor". The last of the Acamarian Lornack clan is saved by Riker's intervention; that intervention consists of the vaporization of the woman who was Riker's love interest for that episode.
  • "The Perfect Mate" where a woman whom Picard has emotionally bonded with must marry another to seal a peace treaty. It's implied that the marriage isn't even necessary, as the person she's marrying is more concerned with the trade opportunities that peace will bring.
  • "The Inner Light" when Picard plays the flute.
  • After the Bynar's system is saved in "11001001", when Riker discovers that much of what made Minuet unique is no longer there.
• Bizarre Alien Psychology: The Borg as originally presented in this series are a Hive Mind. Individual thought is suppressed and all the minds are linked to think as one. This is retconned in Star Trek: First Contact, where the hive has a central queen controlling the thought, who thinks more or less like a human, but the initial concept was very alien.
• Bizarre Beverage Use: Romulans brainwash Geordi and try to will him to kill O'Brien. However, Geordi pours his drink onto O'Brien's lap instead.
• Blatant Lies: Worf in "Q-Pid", after smashing Geordi's lute against a tree.
  Worf: Sorry.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • In "Unnatural Selection", the youths who were genetically engineered would have to spend the rest of their lives in quarantine because their superior immune systems that protect them against all disease also attack anyone nearby at the cellular level, causing extreme premature aging.
  • In "The Hunted", men who were chemically and psychologically programmed to be the perfect soldier (including perfect memory) were unable to return to the society they volunteered to protect because of their programming, which essentially made them lethal attack machines against their will (which means they remember killing people they had no desire to kill).
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: During the first season: Tasha Yar (blonde), Deanna Troi (brunette) and Dr. Beverly Crusher (redhead).
• Bloodier and Gorier: The episode "Conspiracy" was jarringly graphic.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: A common theme, as reflected by the ever-present Prime Directive, which forbids the Federation from (among other things) imposing their beliefs on sovereign nations.
  • "Justice" examines the Edo, a society where All Crimes Are Equal and punishable by death. It seems to work for them, as they have a genuinely peaceful and idyllic world with only a token level of law enforcement. As small as the odds of being caught committing a crime may be, no one is willing to gamble their life on it. It becomes a problem for the Enterprise, however, when Wesley has the misfortune of breaking the tiniest rule, by complete accident, in view of the police.
  • The Borg are an example, being completely ruthless in their goal to assimilate the galaxy, but only because they believe doing so is the path to perfection.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Data, though his Character Development starts to negate this towards the end.
• The Body Parts That Must Not Be Named: Data has male parts, but those parts are never referred to by name; they always describe him as "fully-functional" and "anatomically correct". In "Datalore", Riker sounds awkward when he asks Data if Lore (another android) has all of Data's parts, which implies that he's wondering if Lore has genitals. In "The Naked Now", people are getting a virus that makes them lose their inhibitions and Data overhears an infected person say a limerick. He repeats part of it to Picard: "There was a young lady named Venus whose body was shaped like a..." but Picard interrupts him.
• Book Snap:
  • In the episode "Samaritan Snare", Picard and Wesley are taking a long shuttlecraft ride to a Starbase. At one point Picard does it in annoyance at all the questions Wesley is bothering him with.
  • In "Elementary, Dear Data", Data and Geordi are playing Holmes and Watson in the holodeck. Geordi records Data/Holmes in Watson's journal...and slams it shut in frustration as he realizes Data is just reciting an existing Holmes story instead of actually deducing clues.
  • In the episode "Captain's Holiday", Picard does this upon being harassed by a Ferengi while trying to relax on vacation.
• Born from a Dead Woman: In the episode "Galaxy's Child" our heroes are attacked by a Space Whale. They try to dissuade it with minimal powered phasers, but even this is enough to kill it. Then they discover that the creature was pregnant, so they have to cut it open to free the infant.
• Bothering by the Book: In the episode "The Ensigns of Command," Captain Picard prevents a rather bureaucratic race of aliens from wiping out a human colony before it can be evacuated by using a technicality in a treaty to deter them (specifically, naming another species as a mediator who're currently in the middle of a hibernation cycle that'll last for another 6 months).
• Brain Critical Mass: In the episode "The Nth Degree," Barclay's brain is taken over by an ancient race from the center of the galaxy, greatly increasing his intellect. Under their influence, Barclay seizes command of the Enterprise, controlling the ship with his mind. This has the small drawback that he can't be removed from the ship's systems without destroying said mind...but the aliens who started all of this fix that too, in the end.
• Brain Fever: In "Qpid," the crew of the Enterprise and Picard's flame, Vash, are placed in a Robin Hood simulation. Vash is Maid Marian and is being ministered by a nurse, who says that she must have a brain sickness for sure. She offers to get some nice fresh leeches to drain the fever, which horrifies Vash.
• Brainwash Residue: After losing his superintelligence, Barclay seems to retain some chess-playing ability.
• Broken Aesop:
  • More than a few episodes had members of the Enterprise's crew caught up in planetary rebellions. In at least two of them, crew members were specifically targeted for abduction because they were Federation citizens, and the Federation had access to plentiful weapons and supplies that they hoped would be traded for the hostages. In all cases, Picard refused to provide any significant aid to the party opposing the ones that took his personnel, citing the Prime Directive as his reason. The problem with that is that the abductors had committed an act of war against the Federation. One group came very close to stealing or destroying the Enterprise, the flagship of the fleet. So the moral of "You have to solve your own problems, rather than finding someone else to solve them for you", became "The strong and principled are good targets, because they won't fight someone so much weaker than them."
  • The episode "The Game" attempted to make an aesop that video games are EVIL. However, the game in question (a weird "put disc into bad CGI tubes" game) was actively programmed to brainwash who ever plays it. Also, holodecks are the final form of video games (can simulate ANY scenario imaginable, and stimulate all the senses while doing it), and nobody had a problem with them.
  • Picard's actions in "Hide And Q" where the moral is that with with great power Comes Great Responsibility, unless it can be used to save a little pink-clad dead girl.
  • "The Outcast" as a metaphor for homosexuality... except all the androgynous aliens are portrayed by women, the titular character identifies as a woman, and falls in love with a man. So the story ends up looking more like a heroic straight woman rebelling against lesbian tyranny. This might have been the point (reverse the discrimination to show people what it's like), but it didn't come across quite right. Jonathan Frakes objected to the casting of a woman in the part, arguing that it would be more effective with a man.
  • In "Symbiosis", Picard cites the Prime Directive as the reason he cannot interfere, even though the Brekkians are exploiting the Onarans' addiction to the Felicium, believing it to be a "cure" for a plague they have, when it's actually a narcotic. In the end, he decides to give them the drug, but refuse to help them fix their freighters, thus causing them to go cold turkey. Good ending, right? Except Picard seems to overlook the fact that once they go cold turkey and realise the Brekkians have been lying to them for centuries, this would probably result in them declaring War! Which is fine with the PD; what they do about their issues is their business^note So it's fine with the Prime Directive, as noted, and also, declaring war is rather useless when the two sides are on separate planets and have no SHIPS.
  • The Season 7 episode "Eye of the Beholder" is a bizarre and curiously awkward attempt at an Anti-Suicide PSA, but they botch it by trying to have it both ways. The first act treats the suicide of a Red Shirt completely seriously, exploring it from all angles, explaining how those that commit suicide often show no obvious signs of distress. It's fairly effective, sort of a forerunner of the subject's similar treatment on an episode of House, M.D.. And then they completely botch it by Hand-Waving the uncharacteristic suicide as being the result of Psychic Powers gone awry, using it as another pitstop in the Worf/Troi Ship Tease. One wonders if the writers held the opinion that no one would seriously want to commit suicide in the Utopia that is the 24th Century.
  • In "Homeward," the crew is ready to let the Boraalans die for the sake of the Prime Directive, stating that they "cannot interfere in a species' natural development" (never mind that this natural development is DEATH, and the crew essentially ends up using the Prime Directive as a shield from actually doing anything in this case). Nikolai Rozhenko is made out to be in the wrong by the characters and the episode never addresses that the main characters (our heroes) were basically ready to let a civilization die out for the sake of a legal document. Not only is this morally unpleasant, it flies in the face of both previous episodes ("Pen Pals") and a later movie ("Insurrection"). The central point of the Prime Directive is that interfering often does more harm than leaving things alone; death is kind of the ultimate harm^note If the Boraalans had brought about their own ruin somehow, then the show could at least cold-bloodedly argue that destroying themselves was part of their cultural development, and they couldn't be saved, they'd just do it all over again; unfortunately for the "aesop", the civilization is about to be destroyed by a natural disaster-type extinction event that they had nothing to do with.
• Bury Your Disabled: Subverted in "Ethics". Worf becomes paraplegic after an accident. By Klingon tradition, he must commit ritualistic suicide (and he comes close to it). However, he takes another presented option when a research doctor wants to test her theory that she can create a new spinal cord for him.
• Butterfly of Doom:
  • "Yesterday's Enterprise" shows how a previous Enterprise played a role so pivotal that its absence would cause the end of the Federation in a long, bloody and hopeless war.
  • "Tapestry" shows how Picard avoiding a fight in his youth would have changed his whole life.
  Picard: There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads... untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads... it had unraveled the tapestry of my life.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Geordi, who gets pwned nearly as much as Worf (suffering from The Worf Effect). He's even hopeless with women. One particularly cruel episode had an alien taunt his blindness by moving his visor around, just because. The series seems to never let us go on the fact that he's blind (until the movies, well actually he gets taunted again in Generations, which may or may not have led him to go get cybernetic replacements by Star Trek: First Contact.). And apparently his mom disappears as some plot of the week. Worst yet is that nobody gives a damn about his mom afterwards. And to add insult to injury, in Voyager's "Timeless" he tries to stop Harry Kim and fails. Ouch. In one episode, he's heading on his merry way to Risa for some rest, relaxation and poontang. He gets kidnapped by Romulans and gets a Mind Rape from them. See here for further proof of his incredibly poor luck.
  • Next to Worf and Geordi, Deanna Troi filled this role many times. She was always being possessed by aliens, once impregnated by an alien and giving birth to that same alien, abused by aliens in crashed shuttles, abducted by aliens for political gambits, being nearly forced to marry an alien, having her psychic powers robbed by aliens, suffering nightmares at the hands of aliens, forced to listen to a virtual music box in her head for days by an alien, the list goes on. Her only real use on the show was to counsel the random crew member of the week and to tell Picard when she sensed weird things happening while on the bridge; apart from being the show's Ms. Fanservice, that is.
• The Bus Came Back: Tasha in "Yesterday's Enterprise" by way of an Alternate Timeline.

C

• Cain and Abel: Data has a "brother" named Lore, which turned out to contact an alien mass-killer entity and tried to let it kill everyone aboard.
• Call-Back: In "Relics", Scotty finds the synthehol on the Enterprise unacceptable, so Data finds him some real alcohol behind the bar in Ten-forward. Scotty asks what it is, and Data replies, "It is..." (pause while he looks at it and opens and sniffs it), "...it is green." This is exactly what Scotty said to a Kelvin in the original Star Trek series, when bringing him a bottle of booze in the episode "By Any Other Name."
• Call to Agriculture: Picard was managing his family vineyard as part of the alternate future in the Grand Finale.
• Cannot Kill Their Loved Ones: Worf is paralyzed from the waist down and asks Commander Riker, as his friend, to do this for him in a sort of Klingon ritual assisted suicide. Riker refuses on the grounds that under the ritual, it's properly the duty of the eldest son. Unwilling to ask this of Alexander, Worf opts for a dangerous experimental surgery instead.
• Can't Live Without You: In "Attached" Picard and Dr.Crusher received implants that allowed them to share thoughts but would have killed them if they went beyond a few meters from each other.
• Captain Morgan Pose: A favorite pose for Riker, to the point where he's the former trope namer. Because Jonathan Frakes is freaking huge, at least in comparison to most of his costars, and if he didn't he wouldn't fit in the frame. Some fans, in homage to the behind-the-scenes use of the term Picard Maneuver, call this the Riker Maneuver.
• Capture and Replicate: A group of aliens capture Captain Picard and replace him with a double in the episode "Allegiance". This was part of an experiment to examine the nature of authority, as they were a Hive Mind with no concept of individuality or hierarchy. The real Picard was locked in a cell with three others to see if they could work together to escape; the fake Picard on the Enterprise gives his officers increasingly insane orders to test their loyalty.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: Q is a humanoid Reality Warper with a fixation on the Enterprise in general, and on Captain Jean-Luc Picard in particular. He is purposefully thorny, brash and difficult, yet he manages to teach important lessons to the Enterprise crew. In the pilot episode "Encounter at Fairpoint," Q put them on trial for the past murderous savagery of the human race, tested them by forcing them to decide whether to kill one of the creatures that was attacking Deneb 4, and later exposed them to the Borg collective. As Captain Picard notes, "[Q] gave us a kick in our collective complacency."
• Casino Episode: In The Royale, the crew discover a replica of a 20th-century Earth casino on an alien planet. Turns out the aliens modeled it after a badly-written novel.
• Catchphrase: Many, including:
  Picard: Make it so.
  Data: It is possible...
  Data (again): Intriguing...
  Worf: I an Worf! Son of Mogh!
  Troi: I sense that...
  The Borg: Resistance is futile.
• Cats Are Mean: Spot, Data's cat, has scratched several members of the crew, to the point where even Riker is afraid of her.
• Caught in the Ripple:
  • The episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" opens with the Enterprise-D coming upon a time rip with the Enterprise-C (lost decades earlier) emerging. Suddenly, reality is changed and the Federation is now involved in a war with the Klingons. On top of that, Tasha Yar (killed in season one) is still on the bridge crew. No one notices anything is different, although Guinan suspects something is wrong.
  • The episode "Conundrum" has an unknown alien ship cause a bit of Laser-Guided Amnesia on the crew and alter the computer records of the ship to make the crew think they are at war with another alien race called the Lysians, who are enemies of the race that screwed with their minds. For good measure, they also have a member of their race infiltrate the crew and pretend to be the Number Two. Everyone is initially caught in the ripple, but Picard eventually does some Spotting the Thread.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The second season episode "Q Who" introduces the iconic villain race the Borg, and puts the Enterprise in a desperate situation against this genocidal antagonist, one they have no chance of defeating, so they have to literally beg Q to save them. After this dark and serious episode, the next three episodes deal with, respectively, comically dim-witted aliens, comically rural Irish colonists, and the comical sex antics of Troi's mother.
• Chained Heat: "Attached" - See Can't Live Without You, above.
• Changed My Jumper: Any time the cast enters the holodeck in a period setting the artificial characters are the first to comment on their strange uniforms. In one of the few actual Time Travel episodes Data received fewer comments on his Starfleet uniform than he would if he were in an artificial setting. It seems holodeck characters are just rude.
• Characterization Marches On: During the early first season, Captain Picard used occasional Gratuitous French and made references to France. This aspect of the character was dropped, although he's still nominally French.
• Character Shilling:
  • The Federation as a “peaceful utopia” was also talked about a lot by the main characters, in contrast to Gene Coon writing about its imperialist aspects in the previous series, and the outright deconstruction in the next.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the episode "The Defector", one of the coded communications Picard receives is from a Klingon vessel. We don't see the communication and it seems to be a throwaway line in the middle of the episode. Turns out, he was enlisting the assistance of the Klingons. Three of their vessels joined the Enterprise under cloak through the Neutral Zone and defended them against two Romulan warbirds who attempted to ambush them.
  • Another example of this trope involving Klingons takes place in "Reunion". We're given our first look at the bat'leth in Worf's quarters and see him showing Alexander the right way to hold and swing it. Later on, a grieving and enraged Worf takes it off the wall again and uses it to exact lethal revenge on Duras for killing K'Ehleyr.
  • Something about Klingon weapons just seems to make it impossible to resist using them. In "Suddenly Human", Jono examines a dagger in Picard's quarters, observing that it's Klingon. Later, he uses that dagger to try to stab Picard to death in his sleep.
  • In "Genesis," La Forge and Barclay are accessing circuitry in the Jeffries tube. During dialog, Barclay, for no apparent reason other than to show the audience what he's about to work on, which tips the trope off, twirls a band of brightly-lit power cords like a lasso in his hand. Later, when Picard seeks escape from a frenzied Worf, he uses said cords to electrify the deck to electrocute Worf while Picard sits atop an insulated panel.
• Chemical Messiah: The episode "Symbiosis" features a medicine that supposedly cures the race of a planet from some sort of illness. Except that the medicine is really a drug curing them of nothing more than severe withdrawal symptoms! The people believed that it was their last saviour of mankind, but it wasn't. OK, so yes it did cure them at one point, but now the people of the planet had become drug addicts.
• Chewing the Scenery: Several aliens, but most notably the leaders of Akmarian Gatherer faction from season 3 episode 9, "The Vengeance Factor".
• Child Hater: One of Picard's most well-established character flaws is his discomfort around children. He doesn't hate children, but he has no idea how to relate to them or behave around them, so he avoids them whenever possible.
• Childish Villain, Mature Hero: This is the dynamic between Picard and Q. Under the guise of testing humanity's worthiness, Q puts the Enterprise crew through all manner of strange scenarios (such as making them reenact Robin Hood). Picard frequently calls him out on this and refuses to sink to Q's level.
• Child Marriage Veto: In "Haven", Deanna Troi has been arranged to be married to Wyatt Miller. It's not Deanna who breaks off the marriage, though; it's Wyatt, who has had dreams of a non-Deanna woman since he was a child...and then he finds her on a plague ship.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Will Riker. (Apparently, this is his way of interpreting the Officer and a Gentleman trope.)
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Quite a few lower-level characters introduced in one episode will simply vanish from the narrative after the episode is over. What happened to all of the previous chief engineers we see in season one is anyone's guess. Dr. Selar and Ensign Gomez were both intended to be recurring characters but were quickly dropped and never referenced again. Dr. Pulaski only barely avoids this fate by being referenced a few times after her unexplained departure.
• Civilization Destroyer: The Borg would not destroy any planet they conquer, but they would assimilate all the sentient life forms in such planet essentially eliminating any form of native culture and civilization.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: An early episode had a Sufficiently Advanced Alien known as The Traveler strengthened by the entire Enterprise crew concentrating on making him better. (Granted, they were in an area of the universe where thoughts become reality, but it still fits the trope).
• Clarke's Third Law:
  • The first season episode "Justice" has an idyllic planet that worships an inter dimensional spaceship thing as their god. How advanced it really is isn't firmly established, but it's strongly implied that it's at least a match for the Enterprise.
  • In "Devil's Due," the "devil" is simply using technology to simulate magic. Noteworthy in that the technology isn't even sufficiently advanced; it's just been dressed-up to look more impressive than it really is.
  • The third season episode "Who Watches the Watchers" again casts the Enterprise crew in the role of the ones with the sufficiently advanced technology, when a botched encounter with a pre-industrial civilization leaves some of them thinking that Picard is a god.
  • In "The Next Phase", Ro and Geordi are invisible and intangible after an accident. Ro is at first convinced that they're ghosts now that need to make peace before moving on to the afterlife. Turns out they're just "out of phase" with normal matter, except for the plot-convenient floors (and oxygen).
  • Subverted in Q's first appearance, where it is made very clear that Q has the power of a god essentially and is willing to use it to satisfy his own whims, leaving the Enterprise crew completely at his mercy and needing to satisfy the requirements of his game to survive.
• Cliffhanger: One at the end of every season from year 3 onward. The first of these is probably the second most famous TV cliffhanger ever (behind "Who Shot JR?")
  • The cliffhanger in question resulted in months of speculation in the media, as the episode ended on the possibility that Captain Picard would die and be replaced by Riker. This led to rumors that Patrick Stewart was leaving the show and the episode was intended as a way to write his character out of the series. The first part even sets up a new first officer for the ship. These rumors proved untrue, and at the end of part two everything returned to normal, but the story was told so well that few viewers minded.
  • At the time, fans seemed to be divided between four possible scenarios: Picard would die and Riker would become Captain, Picard would live but remain a Borg and thus become the show's recurring big bad, Riker would die saving Picard's life, or things would return to normal. Quite a few fanfics (and at least one official Star Trek comic) have been devoted to exploring the alternate scenarios. The alternate scenarios are also given a nod in later alternate-timeline episodes, most notably "Parallels".
  • The official story is that Stewart was renegotiating his contract and they had to leave it open for the possibility of his leaving. The ending wasn't decided until after the first part was shot.
  • Fandom reaction to all the cliffhangers was mixed, most often finding the setup episode wonderful and the resolution episode somewhat lame.
• Cliché Storm: Invoked in the episode "The Royale," where Riker, Worf, and Data get trapped in the simulation of a terribly-written crime novel set in the eponymous hotel-casino. Periodically, their attempts to escape are interrupted by scenes from the book, causing the NPCs of the simulation to start reciting the hammiest possible lines to each other (complete with a jazzy soundtrack spontaneously starting up to accompany them), all while the crew looks on in bewilderment. After these brief interactions, the music stops and the NPCs return to normal as if nothing had happened.
• Clip Show: "Shades of Grey" was made with a bare essentials plot and even fewer bare essentials actors due to a budget overrun earlier in the season.
• Clone Degeneration: In "Up the Long Ladder," the driving plot for the unification of the two colonies is that the clones cannot keep copying themselves any longer.
• Collateral Angst: Carmen Davila, the woman Riker had a flirtation with at the beginning of "Silicon Avatar", would qualify. She basically exists to get killed by the crystalline entity so Riker can brood over it and argue for destroying the entity.
• Combat Medic: Beverly Crusher is not only one of the best doctors in the Federation, she studies Klingon martial arts (and can drop you on your ass so fast you won't remember the trip down) and is fully capable of commanding a starship in combat. She also phasers a Starfleet Admiral in "Conspiracy".
• Comes Great Responsibility: The ostensible basis of Q's argument in "True Q" that Amanda Rogers should be returned to the Q Continuum, or else be killed.
  Q: If that child doesn't learn to control her power, she could destroy herself. Or all of you. Or your entire galaxy.
• Come to Gawk: Data being put on display is the plot of "The Most Toys."
• Comic-Book Adaptation: DC Comics published several series, including a crossover with Malibu Comics' Deep Space Nine title. Included in DC's run was an adaptation of the the TNG finale episode "All Good Things..." Later, Marvel Comics ran a series before DC took the licence back for its Wildstorm imprint, and later IDW Publishing got the rights.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Commonplace in the series. Many of the more relaxed episodes will have a brief but dramatic B Story to serve these.
• Complete Immortality: The evil liquid entity Armus in "Skin of Evil" is stated to be immortal and unkillable. He has already spent an immeasurable amount of time on a barren, uninhabited planet after his creators left him there. Picard ensures that he will be trapped there for as long as possible without any means of escape.
• Completely Off-Topic Report: Picard tells about a speaker at a conference who went on at length about some engineering topic "not realizing that the topic was supposed to be psychology."
  Picard: Dr. Vassbinder gave an hour long dissertation on the ionization of warp nacelles before he realized that the topic was supposed to be psychology.
  La Forge: Why didn't anybody tell him?
  Picard: There was no opportunity. There was no pause. [monotone] He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic.
• The Compliance Game: In "The Naked Now", Wesley wants to get Data (an android) to sort some pieces of technology. However, he doesn't want to do it as he's malfunctioning and essentially acting drunk, so Wesley says, "It's like a game", which entices Data to do it.
• The Confidant: Counselor Troi is the obvious choice, given that that's her job; Guinan the bartender serves the role more informally, but seems overall to succeed at it more often than Troi manages.
• Conforming OOC Moment: Implied in the episode "The Game", wherein an addictive video game-like device is being played by the bulk of the Enterprise crew, which includes Worf, who usually regards games as a waste of time, so it's unclear how he got hooked to begin with. It's possible someone physically forced him to play it, but the only one stronger than him is Data, who was unconscious.
• Continuity Nod: TNG is excellent at making references to previous events in a variety of contexts, including other Trek shows.
  • In Season 2's "Time Squared", when about to face the vortex that sent the other Picard back in time six hours, Picard draws comparisons to The Traveler from "Where No One Has Gone Before" and Manheim from "We'll Always Have Paris".
  • There are several instances during the third season that allude to the fact that Dr. Crusher wasn't on the Enterprise during the previous season— and not all of them were directly related to Wesley. For example, in "Who Watches the Watchers?", Picard asks Crusher if the Mintakan's memory can be erased, mentioning it's been done before. Crusher replies that she's familiar with Dr. Pulaski's research (as seen in "Pen Pals" with Sarjenka). Then in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I", when about to join the away team onto the Borg ship, she asks Data what kind of resistance they can expect. (The fact that she wasn't around for the first Borg encounter in "Q Who?" was even pointed out in the screenplay).
  • "Relics" was written by Promoted Fanboy Ronald Moore and featured Continuity Nods to TNG and TOS in nearly every scene, most especially the holodeck recreation of the original series bridge.
  • One of the most interesting, yet little-known ones is the opening Captain's Log of episode 80 ("Legacy"), where Picard mentions the ship having recently left the same planet in which the last episode of ToS (Which officially was episode 79) happened on.
  • One of the most unexpected nods is that Picard in an early Season 2 episode "Samaritan Snare" privately told Wesley Crusher that when he got stabbed in the heart by a Naussican, he inexplicably started laughing. Cut four years later to "Tapestry", when we find out why young Picard started laughing.
  • Another example is in Season 7, Episodes 11 and 18 ("Parallels" and "Eye of the Beholder"). In the latter episode, Worf awkwardly discusses the theoretical case of being interested in someone Riker was, had been, or might want to be involved with in a Suspiciously Specific Denial sort of way. In the former episode, where Worf got stuck constantly skipping through parallel universes, Troi was his wife, and it's stated that Worf discussed the issue with Riker before officially courting her—as it would have been dishonorable to do otherwise.
    Worf: Are...you involved with [the lieutenant]?
    Riker: I'm not sure yet...why, you interested in her?
    Worf: No, no, no-–but if I were, I would of course discuss the situation with you before proceeding further.
    Riker: [laughs] I appreciate it, but that really wouldn’t have been necessary.
    Worf: I mean, I would never want to come between you and someone you’re involved with...or had ever been involved with.
    Riker: Is there someone in particular that you’re talking about?
    Worf: No...[squints eyes] is there someone in particular you’d rather I not be involved with?
  • One of the episodes is titled "Genesis."
  • Season 1 episode "Coming of Age" has an inspector question the crew about several earlier episodes in the season.
• Converging-Stream Weapon: The Federation develops a 'collimator beam' made of dozens of small phaser banks spread along the rim of a ship; the energy can be seen flowing along the surface of the Enterprise until it meets at one point, and then fires off from the point on the phaser bank row closest to the target.
• Corrective Lecture: "Encounter At Farpoint". Being pursued by Q, Picard orders an emergency saucer separation, and puts Worf in charge of the saucer section. Worf protests "I am a Klingon. For me to seek escape when my captain goes into battle..." But Picard shuts him down with a simple correction and a Reminder of Duty, "You are a Starfleet Officer, Lieutenant."
• Costumer: Several times; mostly holodeck adventures, although the most famous was "Q-Pid", which is decidedly not set on the holodeck.
• Courtroom Episode:
  • "Measure of a Man" was based around a trial where Data's status as property or lifeform was determined.
  • "The Drumhead" was based around trials where a Starfleet admiral tries to prove there is a conspiracy on the Enterprise.
  • The more campy "Devil's Due" has Picard prove that a con artist is not the god that alien legend says made a deal with their race many generations ago, and is therefore not owed the terms of the contract she's trying to collect on. Data acts as judge.
• Court-martialed: As stated in "The Measure of a Man" Jean-Luc Picard faced a general court-martial for the loss of his previous command, the USS Stargazer, but was cleared. Truth in Television; in most modern navies, just as Louvois points out is the case for Starfleet, a court-martial is standard procedure following the loss of a ship regardless of cause. This is not so much because the captain is necessarily suspected of wrongdoing, as simply to provide a structured forum for the details of the loss to be made part of the official record^note Some RL Captains in past times actually did end up having problems due to not having a court-martial to be part of their record.
• Cowboy Episode: "A Fistful of Datas", involving a Holodeck Malfunction.
• Cranial Processing Unit: On at least one occasion, Data's "brain" is shown to be entirely in his head, including an instance of his head being removed and still talking.
• Creating Life Is Awesome: Data is an artificial person. He's a good guy, and his creator is presented as a benevolent, if rather eccentric, father figure.
• Creepy Child: The alien that takes the form of a little girl in "Imaginary Friend".
• Cruel Mercy:
  • In "Symbiosis", Picard agrees to let the Onarans have their shipment of Felicium, but refuses to let them have the coils required to fix their freighters. Because of this, they will eventually go cold turkey, thus breaking their addiction and dependence on the Brekkians for the drug.
  • This is one interpretation of Worf's decision to spare Toral at end of the Klingon civil war. He lets Toral live, but Toral receives discommendation instead, the same Fate Worse than Death that Worf had received from Toral's father. And unlike Worf, Toral A. is not in fact innocent, so he can't hope for the truth to eventually be known and B. he doesn't have Starfleet or the Enterprise to provide somewhere else to find respite from his dishonor.
• Continuity Overlap: Because it was the first of the post-TOS shows as well as the first 24th Century-era series, TNG (specifically Seasons 6-7) only overlapped with Seasons 1-2 of "DS9".
  • The biggest instance of this trope is during the close of Season 7. The episode "Journey's End" establishes the Federation-Cardassian Demilitarized Zone. This leads into "DS9"'s "The Maquis", which then leads back into TNG's penultimate episode and causes recurring Bajoran Ro Laren to defect.
  • Technically averted with Voyager, as the second 24th Century spinoff didn't premiere until after TNG ended its run (and was intended to be TNG's successor). That being said, TNG still specifically used the above-mentioned loose Maquis crossover with Deep Space Nine to help lay the groundwork for the spinoff.
• The Creon: William Riker is one of the best examples of this trope, having turned down multiple chances over the years to get his own command, just so he could stay as Picard's first officer.
• Cuckoo Nest: In "Frame of Mind," Riker is captured and forced to believe that he is in an asylum.
• Cultured Warrior: Picard is usually the example, but TNG basically made everyone in Starfleet this to some degree. (It's from DS9, but Worf's comment that "I am a graduate of Starfleet Academy. I know many things," seems pertinent, especially as he was commenting on Ferengi culture.) Though it also made Starfleet less militaristic...
  • Worf also shows off his education in "The Next Phase", when he points out that the Bajoran Death Chant is over two hours long.
• Cunning People Play Poker: It was not uncommon to see several of the characters engage in poker matches over the course of the series. Interesting opponents, too, as Data could, if he so desired, shuffle the cards in any order he wanted, and he had a Poker Face by default. Geordi's VISOR would allow him to actually see what anyone was holding (though he claimed he never peeked until after a hand). Counselor Troi could tell via her empathic abilities if someone was bluffing. And Worf, as The Stoic, was very skilled at a Poker Face. And despite it all, the consumate player was usually Will Riker. Riker's cunning was frequently put on display, such as when he was given command of the USS Hathaway during a war game, and was able to surprise the Enterprise crew with a clever sensor trick, and trick a group of Ferengi by making a split second warp jump.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Battle of Wolf 359, in which a fleet of forty Federation starships faced off against a single Borg cube; given such a wide disparity of forces, the outcome was never in doubt. Enterprise was too far away to join the fleet, but not too far for a pre-battle conversation between the senior staff and the admiral commanding. When Enterprise finally reaches the battle site, all that's left is the shattered remains of the fleet, and the exhaust trail of the Borg cube, which shows no sign of damage once it's finally caught up with, well within the Sol system.
• Cure Your Gays: "The Outcast" has a variation of this, in which a monogender race uses psychotherapy to cure those who identify with being male or female.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: Deanna Troi had three different ones.
• Cyborg Helmsman: Geordi was the helmsman in the first season.

D

• Dangerous Drowsiness:
  • In the episode "The Battle", Picard feels tired and he has a headache. It turns out that both symptoms are the result of mind control by some materialistic aliens called Ferengi.
  • "The Arsenal of Freedom": After attempting to evade an automated hovering weapons system, Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard both lose their balance over a subterranean opening, and fall into a cavern. Captain Picard only sustains moderate injuries, but Doctor Crusher breaks her leg and cannot move. Furthermore, she keeps drifting in and out of consciousness from the shock, where Picard attempts to keep her awake by keeping her talking.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Deconstructed in "The First Duty" when one of these turns out to be the direct cause of a crash that killed a friend of Wesley's at the Academy while practicing for a commencement-ceremony flight demonstration.
• Dangerously Garish Environment: Downplayed for the planet the crew visits in the episode "Justice". It's not that bright; it just has vibrant green grass and pink-clad citizens. Similarly, it's usually as happy as it looks, but the downside is that the punishment for all law-breaking is death.
• Dare to Be Badass: Q's entire trial, distilled to its essence. Echoed in the final line of the show:
  Picard: Five-card stud, nothing wild...and the sky's the limit.
  • A damn good one in "Redemption":
    Gowron: What are you, Worf? Do you tremble and quake with fear at the approach of combat, hoping to talk your way out of a fight like a human? Or do you hear the cry of the warrior, calling you to battle, calling you to glory [Slasher Smile] like a Klingon?
• Dashed Plotline: Picard's alternate life in "The Inner Light" is portrayed with many large time-skips.
• Data Crystal: Played fairly straight with isolinear chips, which are oblong, transparent, and decorated with circuitry squiggles on either flat side.
• Day in the Life: "Data's Day" is framed around this - the plot of the episode is laid out as a communique from Data to Commander Maddox.
• Death Faked for You:
  • In the second part of "Gambit", Troi declares Riker dead after being shot by an undercover Picard.
  • In "Data's Day", we see it from the other side as the crew investigates the death of T'Pol only to realize that she was taken by the Romulans.
• Death Ray: The Varon-T Disruptor, capable of painfully killing rather than just disintegrating.
• Dead Guy Junior - Troi's temporary baby, Ian Andrew, after her deceased father.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Picard is one of these to some extent throughout the series, most notably in "The Survivors", after he beams Kevin and Rishaun Uxbridge to the bridge.
    Jean-Luc Picard: My apologies if I interrupted a waltz.
  • If the trope hadn't already been established, John de Lancie would've done it all by himself in his role as Q, which is a big part of what makes his appearances so enjoyable. (His Large Ham tendencies are another, and they're played to the full in the Star Trek: Borg FMV game, which is essentially an interactive Lower-Deck Episode of TNG. Its producers seem to have pretty much given him free rein, and the result is marvelous; he turns it all the way up to Chewing the Scenery at times, more or less carries the whole thing on his shoulders, and still manages to give the character that touch of capricious menace which sometimes seems lacking in the show proper.)
• Debating Names:
  • In "Disaster", Keiko O'Brien is pregnant, and she and her husband Miles argue over whose father to name the baby after, while William Riker wants him to be named after himself. Eventually, the baby turns out to be a girl, so the O'Briens name her Molly.
  • In "Imaginary Friend", some men can't agree on what to name a nebula. Mr. Sutter wants to name it "Sutter's Cloud", Geordi La Forge wants to name it the "La Forge Nebula", while Data wants to name it a number.
• Declining Promotion:
  • William Riker, aka "Number One." He's offered his own command in the series, but doesn't accept it.
  • Picard is also offered promotion to admiral, TWICE, and turns it down.
• Demoted to Extra: The TNG movies focused so much on Picard and Data that they might as well have been credited as them "and all the rest!".
• Deprogramming: At the end of "The Mind's Eye", after Geordi gets turned into a Manchurian Agent, we get a brief look at Troi starting the deprogramming.
• Destroy the Abusive Home: Riker starred in a play directed by Dr. Crusher wherein he's a sane man trapped in a mental institution. During the course of his next assignment, he becomes a sane man trapped in a mental institution, and starts to go crazy. After he's rescued, he destroys the mental institution set.
• Destructive Teleportation: As could only be expected in the successor show to the Trope Codifier, and extremely useful from a production perspective in making it easy for characters to flit on and off the ship without needing to spend money and episode runtime on shuttle FX. As is often the case with TNG tech, despite the essential implausibility of the conceit, the show generally manages to keep its behavior internally consistent, keeping it from crossing the line from Plot Device to outright Deus ex Machina.
• Devil's Advocate: In "Measure of a Man", a scientist wants to disassemble Data for study, and Data refuses as a sentient being. A hearing is held to determine whether Data is sentient. Picard is Data's defense counsel, and Riker is appointed as the prosecution - so he has to argue that Data isn't sentient. He risks summary judgement against Data if he slacks off on the job. Riker feels guilty about doing it, but Data is grateful - or anyway as grateful as an android allegedly with no emotions can be - since if Riker had refused to do it they would have decided against Data (for if he isn't a sentient being, he lacks the right to bodily autonomy, such are the rules of procedure in the 24th century).
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Guinan is not amused in the developments with Hugh in I, Borg.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Normal operating procedure when dealing with Q seems to be to regard him as an annoying neighbor. Sometimes, this works out poorly.
• "Die Hard" on an X: "Power Play" and "Starship Mine". The latter moreso than the former: it takes precisely fifteen minutes for Picard to turn into Bruce Willis, and even the "Who said we were terrorists?" line is uttered.
• Diplomatic Impunity: In "Man of the People", Ambassador Alkar has been using young women as receptacles to store his unwanted negative emotions, turning them malevolent and unnaturally aging them. After Troi dies, Picard tells him that he intends to see that Alkar pays for what he's done. Alkar replies that the Federation Council has guaranteed his safe passage back to his homeworld, and he expects Picard to follow those orders. His diplomatic immunity is revoked when Troi is resuscitated while Alkar attempts to bond with someone else, and then they beam his intended victim out of his reach.
  • The trope is played straight earlier in the episode when Alkar refuses to return with Picard and Worf to the Enterprise and hides behind the security field put up by the parties he's negotiating a peace agreement for.
• Disappointed by the Motive: In the episode "Starship Mine", Picard battles a group of terrorists on the Enterprise after he's stranded on there when the ship is going through the middle of a decontamination sweep. When their leader Kelsey captures him near the end, he reveals his identity and offers himself as a hostage if she'll forget about the weapons-grade material she took. She admits that she doesn't have a political agenda, she's just a thief. This disgusts Picard even more.
  Picard: Profit. This is all about profit.
  Kelsey: I prefer to think of it as commerce.
• Disease by Any Other Name: In one episode, Data is damaged and loses his memories while recovering a piece of a Starfleet probe that had crashed on a medieval style Rubber-Forehead Alien World. Data, with no way of knowing the piece of the probe he had with him was radioactive, has no problem letting the local blacksmith start making trinkets and jewelry out of that odd new metal. Soon the entire village is sick (as radioactive particles have seeped into the water table from smithing) and, predictably, the villagers blame the strange newcomer for their problems.
• Disgusting Vegetarian Food: In the episode "The Wounded" much humor is made out of contrasting the culinary tastes of newlyweds Miles and Keiko O'Brien. First Keiko makes her idea of breakfast: kelp buds, plankton loaf, and sea berries. Miles isn't very enthusiastic about it (and shows an expression of shock and disbelief that this stuff is really food), but Keiko argues that it's healthy. Miles's suggestion of muffins, oatmeal, corned beef, and eggs is met with shock by Keiko. Attempts to introduce her to scalloped potatoes, mutton shanks, oxtails, and cabbage are met with equal disinterest. It's not stated whether or not Keiko is vegetarian, but perhaps she sticks to fish.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the episode "Justice", Wesley Crusher is nearly put to death by the locals for accidentally crushing some flowers. Worth pointing out that Death was the only form of retribution on that planet. This was made even worse by the trial, in which no one even bothered to point out that Wesley did not intentionally step over the marker (hence violating the law). He was trying to catch a ball, and tripped and fell.
• Do Androids Dream?: Turns out they do, in "Birthright".
• The Dog Is an Alien: In one episode, the crew of the Enterprise suspect a shapeshifting alien monster to have killed and impersonated a member of a remote science station. The two humanoid suspects (one of them Klingon) are eventually cleared by lab tests, but in a horrifying twist the dog from the station that nobody paid any mind to is revealed to be the alien, and it almost devours Geordi to take his form.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind:
  • "Aquiel," where the crew finds out that a shape-shifting organism is behind the Mystery of the Week. Two people, a Klingon and the titular Aquiel, are suspected of being the monster, but it's really Aquiel's dog, which served as a minor comedic subplot during the episode.
  • Riker finds himself flashing forward through time in "Future Imperfect", but when the details don't add up, the surroundings change to that of a Romulan holodeck, with Riker as their prisoner. Actually, the real person in charge is Ethan, Riker's "son" who appears throughout each illusion. "Ethan" turns out to be an alien orphan in disguise; he was lonely and just wanted a playmate.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Picard learned the hard way that if you refuse a nigh-omnipotent being's offer to join your crew, don't be an arrogant jerk about it lest he throw you into the path of the Borg.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In "Skin of Evil," Armus tells Troi to take her pity and shove it. Picard later exploits Armus' extreme distaste toward being pitied.
• Double Don't Know: In "The Battle".
  Beverly: You had no choice.
  Picard: Didn't I? I don't know anymore... I just don't know.
• Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi:
  • In the episode "The Child", Counselor Troi is impregnated by an alien, and she gives birth to him. Troi later insists on carrying it to term, and once he's born he reveals that he only did it to explore human existence, and he may not have realized the implications of what it was doing. Although the being did impregnate her without having sex with her, so it's not rape, it's more impregnation without consent (more like giving someone in vitro fertilization without their knowledge than anything else). Which is still a major violation, but the episode doesn't really treat it as one.
  • In episode "The Host", a Trill (at that time implied to have all personality in the "parasite" part rather than a shared consciousness) who was having a sexual relationship with Doctor Crusher temporarily takes possession of Riker's body (with consent) to continue diplomatic negotiations. Doctor Crusher has trouble reconciling her romantic feelings for the Trill-personality with Riker's body — but the issue of whether Riker would consent to her having sex with his body is never even mentioned (and it's the kind of thing that could easily have been handled with a quick line of dialogue, like "I can communicate with Riker's consciousness, he won't have any memory of us being together, and he says he is all right with it").
• Drama Panes:
  • Captain Picard would often stare out of the windows in the Ready Room when making decisions or reflecting on the outcomes of those decisions. Alternatively, the windows of Ten Forward could also serve this purpose, too.
  • "The Child" has Guinan and Wesley engage in a conversation about duty vs. desire while gazing out of the window in Ten Forward. The ship goes into warp just as Guinan makes her point, treating the audience to a beautiful view of the heavens at FTL speeds.
• Dramatic Downstage Turn: Occurs every few episodes, with different characters utilizing it. Most notable is Perrin, Sarek's new wife, who seems to do this at least once in each of the episodes she appears in.
• Dream Apocalypse: In the Season 1 episode "The Big Goodbye," Picard is on the holodeck when one of the characters asks him: "When you're gone, will this world still exist? Will my wife and kids still be waiting for me at home?"
• Dream Episode:
  • In "Night Terrors", Deanna Troi has dreams which turn out to be caused by an alien sending her telepathic messages. She needs to lucid dream in order to communicate with the alien and save her crew mates, who have lost their ability to dream.
  • In "Birthright", Data (an android) starts having dreams because he's uncovered a program in his brain.
  • In "Phantasms", Data starts experimenting with his dream program and begins having nightmares that turn out to be because alien parasites are attacking the ship.
• Dream Within a Dream: Taken to an extreme in "Frame of Mind". Riker shifts from the Enterprise before both his mission and role in a play to an insane asylum. This happens several times so no one, from Riker to the audience, knows what is real. At the end, it is shown that he is in a laboratory room as alien doctors are trying to get information from his brain. The shifts were due to a defense mechanism of his mind.
• Driven to Suicide: Lieutenant Kwan in "Eye Of The Beholder." The first act of the episode also counts as A Very Special Episode about suicide.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil" gets unceremoniously killed by Armus.
  • Captain Kirk literally gets a bridge dropped on him in The Movie.
• The Dutiful Son: Robert Picard preferred to stay home in France rather than go out to space.
• Dying Race:
  • "Up the Long Ladder" features two races who were in danger of dying out: Walking talking Irish stereotypes, and a group of five upper class people who were clones of clones of clones etc. etc. of the original survivors.
  • "When the Bough Breaks" features the Aldeans who kidnap the Enterprise crew's children in order to prevent their extinction.

E

• Ear Worm: In "The Survivors", Troi hears music box music that she can't get out of her head, no matter how hard she tries. It turns out that Kevin planted that music into her head to prevent her from finding out the truth, that he used his powers to wipe out an entire alien race.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In full effect; most noticeable in Season 1.
  • Shortly after hearing about a battle that the Enterprise is about to investigate, Riker asks if they should separate the saucer. This question was hardly ever asked after the first season, and indeed, the saucer was separated twice in the first season and only once in the rest of the series, and once more in Star Trek: Generations. The Word of God explanation is that separating the saucer section (with its attendant civilian families) was planned as a standard common-sense procedure when going into a potential combat situation. However, in practice they found out that it took too much time away from the story-telling to depict on screen on a regular basis. Hence its use was never actually written in much.
  • Season 1 featured a revolving door of chief engineers before Geordi took the job full-time in season 2. The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard (non-canon) explains this as the Galaxy-class being so complex that Starfleet thought it would need multiple chief engineers, but Picard got tired of dealing with different people all the time and put Geordi in charge of everything.
  • A great deal of it just in "Encounter at Farpoint", including:
    • Data says he graduated in the "Class of '78." Later episodes would establish the first season to take place in 2364, with Data serving in Starfleet for only twenty years.
    • Data uses a contraction, something he is specifically stated to be incapable of in a later episode.
    Data: At least we're acquainted with the judge.
    • Data in general is far more expressive than he was in the rest of the series, even smiling quite naturally in his appreciation of Riker's ability to whistle:
    Data: Marvelous! How easily humans do that.
    • We learn that Troi taught Riker to be able to hear her thoughts. Never ever brought up again despite the two dozen or so times it would have been useful.
    • The Ops and Conn stations are reversed from where they are in the rest of the series.
    • A lot of the functions of the Enterprise, including the interactive computer AI, are treated as if they're bleeding edge and something other Starfleet officers haven't encountered before being on the flagship. Riker seems altogether flummoxed by things such as it helping guide him where he's going. Later on these would be treated as standard for every ship. Justified in that many may have become standard after being tested aboard Enterprise.
  • In "Heart of Glory", the Enterprise notifies Starfleet that they're entering the Neutral Zone. Notification, not approval. Also, the Visual Acuity Transmitter seen here is never used again.
  • "The Samaritan Snare" in Season 2 also has a line of dialogue clearly implying that the Klingons have actually joined the Federation, rather than just becoming standoffish allies (though this was already inconsistent with several previous episodes at the time, and may perhaps have been a reference to an idea that had been rejected before the series began but slipped in by mistake).
  • The first appearance of the Trill featured hosts that looked nothing like they did in later series, as well as allowing humans the ability to serve as temporary hosts — another feature that was forgotten about later on. The episode also seemed to imply that the Trill had very little prior outside contact, although DS9 established they'd been interacting with the rest of the galaxy for some time (one was Sisko's mentor when he was young, and he certainly knew about the symbiont/host relationship). This episode also implies that the mind of the host is completely irrelevant, the mind and intellect almost entirely the symbiont's, and transferring the symbiont to a different host means transferring the same person to a different body.
    
    After that, it's established that implanting the symbiont into a host creates an inseparable melding of the symbiont and host's minds and that the death of the host is essentially the death of that person, whose mindset and memories continue to exist within the symbiont and then meld together with previous hosts to form the basis of the new mind with the new host. Their avoidance of transporters was also dropped after the first episode.
  • The early seasons suggested that the Federation/Klingon alliance was a relatively new development. However, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country would show that the alliance officially started 70 years before TNG. Though they did show the alliance was strained at times leading up to TNG.^note The film was about the final peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingons, not a formal alliance. It was essentially to allow an exchange of resources so that the Klingons could deal with the environmental devastation of their homeworld. The formal alliance came later, after the Enterprise-C attempted to save a Klingon colony from a Romulan attack. Of course, in one episode, Wesley's line suggested that the Klingons had actually joined the Federation.
  • Men and women wear short skirts in the first season. The male version, nicknaked the skant, was created on the reasoning that with complete gender equality, a skirt uniform would have to be unisex.
  • Worf, Geordi, and O'Brien are all redshirts. O'Brien has held more job titles than any of them: He begins the series as a helmsman, is promoted to Transporter Chief, and leaves the series a full-fledged Chief Engineer, with no prior mention of his training in either field. (Although he mentions once fixing a Jeffries tube in TNG's "Realm of Fear".) On DS9, O'Brien explains that he discovered a knack for repair work when he was jerry-rigging a transporter beacon during the war with the Cardassians, and the series finale "All Good Things..." retcons his engineering credentials way back during the events of the first season.
  • In the first few episodes, Worf acts half-feral. He is highly emotional, resorts to wordless growling when he gets upset, and occasionally reacts with confusion or contempt for aspects of human behavior and culture. Later episodes would establish him as a stoic, highly disciplined officer who was raised by human foster parents on Earth.
  • Data is more humanlike and his android body more akin to a biological body in early episodes. He behaves more emotionally and is not established to have no emotions for some time. He references needing to eat a certain chemical compound to keep his insides functioning properly. He also contracts the polywater virus, though the crew react in disbelief and state that this should be impossible.
  • Geordi the helmsman is much less staid than Geordi the engineer and behaves in an almost Jive Turkey manner.
  • The holographic table in the conference room is pretty nifty but one understands why they stuck to a viewscreen in future seasons. (DS9 ran into a similar problem with the one-episode wonder "holo-communicator", which looked good but took ages to shoot.) Another quibble from "The Last Outpost": Dr. Bev affectionately calls by his first name, "Jean", but leaves out the Luc.
  • The first two seasons on a whole have a more low-budget and campy feel to them than the later seasons.
  • The Bajorans and Cardassians.
    • The Cardassian makeup was changed after their first appearance in "The Wounded". Initially, their complexion looks more human, with flesh-tone coloring and brown hair, compared to their gray complexion and jet-black hair in later appearances. They also wear very different military uniforms with helmets. One sports facial hair, something that was never seen after that.
    • The Bajoran makeup is slightly altered between "Ensign Ro" and later Bajoran characters, and Ro wears her earring on her left ear rather than her right, a practice favored by members of the Pah-wraith cult in DS9.^{Expanded universe}The novels justified the latter as Ro not believing in the Prophets, and wearing her earring on the wrong ear to stop clergymen from trying to feel her pagh.
    • The Occupation is portrayed as much less severe than in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • TNG makes no mention of the Prophets or the Bajoran religion in general.
  • Season 2's "Unnatural Selection" takes place at a Starfleet facility in which genetic research is being done to create super humans. Season 5's "The Masterpiece Society" features a colony that's been genetically engineered to be perfect. It would be pointed out many times in the future, as well as on ''DS9'' and Enterprise that the Federation has a strict ban on any such research being done thanks to the Eugenics Wars.
  • In "The Battle", one Ferengi expresses amazement that the Federation would construct their communicator badges out of gold, considering using such a valuable metal for such a utilitarian purpose as wasteful. In Deep Space Nine, it's established that gold is actually considered worthless in a society where it can be easily replicated, and that Ferengi only use gold to encase latinum, a rare liquid metal that cannot be successfully replicated. They're also described as man-eaters, later Retconned to mean in a financial sense.
  • The sets had a much more "late seventies/early eighties" vibe in the first season, with the leather seats at conn and ops looking like something out of a custom van, and some corridor walls actually having patterned wallpaper on them. The set upgrades that came later made the Enterprise look a bit less like a move-in-ready suburban home from 1982.
  • Techno Babble appears far less often in the first two seasons, and when it does show up is usually either used to depict someone as a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, or is treated as a joke with Picard or Riker telling the characters who are coming out with the technobabble (usually some combination of Data, Geordi, and O'Brien) to just shut up and get on with whatever they're suggesting.
  • The first appearance of the Borg on Q-Who? features a few discrepancies from their later portrayals:
    • Q declares that the Borg "don't care about your life forms" and the Borg are presented more as a single self-perpetuating species heavily into cybernetics, rather than a hodgepodge of assimilated races. Guinan also describes them as a race that developed this way over time. No mention of assimilation is ever made, despite this being the hallmark of the Borg, just them being interested in other species' technology.
    • The Borg do not give their standard greeting upon first meeting the Enterprise, in fact remaining silent through all attempts to communicate. They only do something similar to it after boarding the Enterprise.
    • Guinan says individual Borg cubes don't just attack things in range, but instead come in force. Later depictions would have the Borg attacking basically anything that's around them.
    • Borg ship interiors are much more brightly lit and colored than in subsequent appearances, especially in Voyager and First Contact, with less emphasis on the black and green color palette.
• Eating the Eye Candy: In "Angel One", when Riker comes out dressed in ridiculously revealing native clothing, Troi and Yar's reactions are priceless.
• '80s Hair:
  • Troi in the first season or so.
  • The supporting cast of "Angel One". And "Haven".
  • Any number of women seen on screen, however briefly, in the early seasons.
• Eldritch Starship: The Edo God is dimensionally transcendent and the Farpoint lifeform is a massive shapeshifter that can take the form of a starship.
• Embarrassingly Dresslike Outfit: In "Liaisons", Worf complains about the long tunics he and his coworkers must wear on formal occasions, stating they look like dresses. Riker thinks that the belief men can't wear such garments is sexist, and besides, he looks good in a "dress".
• Embarrassing Ringtone: Worf's son Alexander joins his father aboard the Enterprise. Everybody was trying to reach Worf about his son through his communicator. Unfortunately, he was with Captain Picard who was explaining an assignment to him. It looked like the communicators couldn't be turned off, and both Picard and Worf got really annoyed (though Picard was at least gracious enough to say that he's seen this sort of thing before with new families, and excuses Woft to go take care of things).
• Enemy Mine: "Darmok", also (shockingly) "The Enemy".
• Episode Tagline: The episode "Darmok" is about several aliens who speak in metaphors (usually allusions to their myths). Three of the most repeated ones are "Darmok and Jilahd at Tenagra", "Temba, his arms wide", and "Shaka when the walls fell".^note Translating roughly to: 1) Two strangers coming together and aiding one another in a mutual conflict. 2) Presenting a gift. 3) A failure.
• Escort Distraction: Minuet in the episode "11001001" is a chanteuse created by the Binars to keep both Captain Picard and First Officer Riker captivated on the holodeck while the Binars hijack the Enterprise for their own purposes. She succeeds long enough for the starship to reach the Binar homeworld.
• Establishing Character Moment: "The Child" for Dr. Pulaski. Her highly irregular entry onto the ship and her treatment of Data establish her as the polar opposite of Dr. Crusher.
• "Everybody Helps Out" Denouement: The episode "Ensign Ro" concludes with the Enterprise crew helping support and rebuild the Bajoran refugee camp after Picard learned the horrors of their condition from Ro, who he offers a position on the ship.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Q Continuum, in spite of being a Reality Warper species, are not a malevolent force in the universe. They feel responsibility to not cause havoc in the universe with their powers. When Q gets out of line, they strip him of his powers. They're also prepared to kill a Q to prevent her from possibly running amok. And as bad as Q himself is, it's really quite amazing how harmless most of his pranks are, when you think about what he could do. Arguably the worst thing he does (getting a bunch of crewmen killed by the Borg) is part of a Hard Truth Aesop (and given the Borg were only a year away from Federation space, that experience led to the Federation at least having some idea of what was coming, rather than completely unprepared, so it's likely far fewer people died).
• Evil Learns of Outside Context:
  • The Borg began their mission of absorbing all sentient life in the universe long ago, but are largely limited to the further reaches of space. It isn't until the Reality Warper Q puts Picard through a Secret Test of Character that the Borg become aware of the existence of the Galactic Federation of Planets, and specifically Earth—and they immediately start gunning for it. Somewhat downplayed in that Picard realizes the Borg would have eventually learned about the Federation and humans regardless of Q's actions, although the sudden discovery does cause series-spanning problems for the heroes (presumably they'd have had more time to prepare if Q hadn't been such a jerk.)
  • In a more limited example, the episode "Elementary, Dear Data" sees Data, Geordi, and Dr. Pulaski using the holodeck to simulate immersive Sherlock Holmes mysteries for fun. Data plays the detective, but since he has literally encyclopedic knowledge of the Holmes stories, he easily solves all the cases, much to Geordi's chagrin. He decides to make things more challenging by specifically asking the computer to write a program "capable of defeating Data." Unfortunately, the computer interprets this literally and grants the simulation of Professor Moriarty sentience and sapience, as only someone aware of Data's true identity could defeat him. Moriarty thus realizes two things: that he's a hologram and that there is a "real world" that he cannot access. He sets out to take control of the holodeck—and later the entire Enterprise—to keep himself alive.
• Evil Me Scares Me: One of Data's earliest encounters with emotion was feeling hatred when fighting the Borg. The fact that this first emotion of his was a negative one and that he apparently enjoyed indulging in the furious killing of an enemy disturbed him. Then we get his Evil Twin Lore turning up who embraces his negative emotions and so personifies them to Data (and is in fact the cause of Data's sudden unleashing of emotion, editing them so he only gets the negative ones or feels what Lore wants him to - hence sadism). Data would probably have been scared of him, if fear hadn't been saved for a later episode.
• Evil Twin: Lore, which usually gave Brent Spiner a chance to show off more of his range as an actor outside of the stoic Data character. Brent Spiner actually stated in an interview that he preferred playing Lore to playing Data. Why? Because "we have more in common."
• The Evils of Free Will: There was an episode about a human colony that used Social and Genetic engineering to decide each person's profession before they were born (and tweak them to fit that role). It didn't seem that bad, as everyone loved their job and the rest of their freedoms were pretty well preserved. Until a number of them realized their society had stagnated, when the much more advanced Enterprise showed up. Then they wanted to leave, and the guardians of their colony tried to stop them.
• Evolutionary Levels: "Genesis", which misinterprets evolution as a phenomenon that happens in individuals, as well as invoking the theory (discredited in the mid 20th century) that our DNA retains a record of our species' evolutionary tree. "The Chase" has some undertones of this as well, although it isn't Evolutionary Levels so much as Precursors with implausible sufficiently advanced skill at genetics. Plus any scene where someone mentions DNA breaking down into protein/amino acids, or vice versa.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The name of the ship's bar, Ten-Forward, is simply its location aboard the ship: the forward-most part of Deck 10.
• Exact Words: In "Tapestry", Q promised Picard that if he was allowed to go back in time to change the outcome of his ill-fated bar brawl with Naussicaans that no one would have to die, and he alone would bear the consequences for his changes. Turns out, Q was right; by preventing the bar brawl, Picard never got stabbed, and no one died. Making this change, however, condemns him to life as a lowly junior lieutenant.
• Expositron 9000: The ship's computer.
• Exposition of Immortality: In "Time's Arrow", a two-part episode of The Next Generation, the Enterprise crew runs into Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender on their ship, while on a Time Travel trip to the 19th century. She's shown talking with Mark Twain and Jack London; but when Data approaches her, believing that she too, has traveled through time, she doesn't know him or the rest of the crew.
• Expospeak Gag: In "Time's Arrow":
  Data: You may retain the surplus for yourself.
  Jack: Keep the change?
  Data: Exactly.
• Eye Lights Out: Data and his identical brother Lore have amber irises. In Lore's final episode when Data deactivates him for good his pupils shrink until they disappear, leaving his eyes blank and sightless.

F

• Face Death with Dignity: Toral after he's captured at the end of the Klingon Civil War. He's clearly scared, but he doesn't beg for his life or attempt to flee. Oddly, this is actually a Pet the Dog moment for him since it signifies that, despite all his other flaws, his heart is Klingon.
• Face Framed in Shadow: For a surprise revelation about long lost Tasha Yar's fate.
• Face Your Fears: Part of the Starfleet Academy entrance exam is for the prospective cadet to face his or her greatest fear. One episode depicts Wesley Crusher put through this test, being forced to choose which of two men caught in an accident to rescue, his fear being that he would be paralyzed by indecision.
• Fake Guest Star: Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan was never a cast member but starting from season two she would show up in an episode when her schedule permitted and be included in cast photos. This was because she was a huge fan of the Original Series and accepted scale pay at a time when her career was at its peak, which others attributed to really helping the show in its formative years.invoked
• Fake-Out Make-Out: In "Preemptive Strike", Ensign Ro goes undercover to infiltrate a Maquis resistance group, and passes on her information by meeting Captain Picard in a bar, where she tells him to pretend he's buying her sexual services. The whole thing is presented as quite uncomfortable for both of them, as while Ro shares some Belligerent Sexual Tension with Commander Riker, she's never had any with Picard whom she regards more as a stern Parental Substitute.
• Family Extermination: The episode "The Vengeance Factor" features this twice over. A century earlier, the planet Acamar was caught up in an endless series of blood feuds between rival clans, one of which, the Tralesta, was nearly completely destroyed by another clan, the Lornak. The handful of survivors agreed to turn one of their own into a biologically immortal assassin so that she could hunt down every single Lornak no matter how long it took. By the time the episode takes place, the few other remaining Tralesta are all long dead, only the assassin, a mild-mannered "young" woman named Yuta, remains. While she's long since grown weary of the killing and death, the process that made her stop aging also seems to have locked in the state of grief and pain over losing her clan and she's very close to completing her mission. As she puts it to the penultimate Lornak, "I am the last of my line, but my clan will outlive yours!". Her chemistry with Riker is almost enough to convince her to give up on the vendetta, but not quite and he is forced to vaporize her before she can finish off the last survivor (an important political leader engaged in peace talks).
• Fanservice:
  • In the series 4 episode "Legacy" Tasha Yar's younger sister Ishara spends the first half of the episode wearing a thin white top and clearly no bra, several angles place her chest front & centre. She later changes into a Jumpsuit, however her aversion to underwear continues as she sports a very prominent cameltoe.
  • Troi wore her cleavage-baring outfits for this purpose, which is surprising considering that she's effectively a military officer as well as a therapist. She's finally told to wear a real uniform in season 6.
• False Innocence Trick:
  • Captain Picard is the subject of an Alien Abduction along with several others, who conspire to escape. It turns out that one of them is really a member of the alien race which captured them all.
  • In another episode Deanna, O'Brien and Data are mentally taken over by noncorporeal beings who claim to be Starfleet officers who have crash landed on a world, but they're actually convicted prisoners.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • There was an episode with an Aesop about homophobia delivered by a genderless species. Who were all played by women so that the audience wouldn't be subjected to Riker kissing someone played by a guy^note FWIW, Jonathan Frakes pushed for the love interest to be played by a guy.
  • Dr. Pulaski is bigoted and condescending towards Data purely because he is a mechanical life-form, and it's clear from the beginning that she believes he's nothing more than a very advanced computer, even calling him a "device." She continues to act in a manner that would be considered reprehensible from a Starfleet officer considering the social mores of the show.
• Fantasy Keepsake: In "Pen Pals" Data becomes friends with a little girl named Sarjenka and saves her planet from earthquakes that would render said planet uninhabitable. In the end our crew is forced to wipe her memory before returning her to her home, but Data still puts a "singer stone" in her hand that she was admiring earlier, despite knowing that she won't remember where it came from.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • For Klingons, this is what discommendation is. They are stripped of not only their personal honor, but also the honor of the next several generations of their entire family. Their House is forfeit and they are forbidden from interacting with most other Klingons.
• Father, I Don't Want to Fight: Worf's son Alexander is adamant on not embracing the Klingon culture, having grown up in the peaceful, functional Federation one. This causes Worf much consternation, because he knows that Alexander will be eaten alive by Klingon politics the minute he inevitably tries to initiate reform. A time-traveling future Alexander indicates that this is exactly what happens and Worf was killed by a rival house as a result. In the present, Worf consoles him that the time-traveler's presence has already begun to change their timeline.
  • In the actual future, this still becomes a problem as Alexander enlists in the Klingon military to fight the Dominion on Deep Space Nine and is in no way cut out for starship duty, much less combat in anybody's society, let alone the Klingon's.
• Fear Is Normal:
  • In "Night Terrors", the crew are suffering "dream deprivation", which makes them paranoid. Worf feels ashamed of this fear due to being from a Proud Warrior Race, and even tries to cut his own throat. However, Troi convinces him that he's still brave, since admitting one's fears takes courage.
  • In "Realm of Fear", Reg Barclay is afraid of transporters because they work by taking you apart and reassembling you. At first he's ashamed, but Troi assures him that this fear is normal and can be overcome.
• Fee Fi Faux Pas:
  • In "Loud as a Whisper", Picard accidentally insults Riva when he asks a question to one of his chorus, quickly apologizing that he'd never encountered this form of communication and inadvertently breached protocol.^note It's proper protocol that any time someone addresses a person through a translator—be it a foreign language or sign language—one is still supposed to speak to them directly and not to the translator, which Picard himself remarks on when later he tells a surprised Riker that they are translators and should be treated according to the protocol.
  • After admonishing his crew for calling Barclay "Broccoli" (behind his back), Picard accidentally uses the unfortunate nickname when addressing Barclay directly. Picard feels so badly that that the normally unflappable captain is quite flustered.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: The Treaty of Algeron, and the Federation-Cardassian Treaty are plot relevant political agreements.
  • The Solanis Convention is referenced specifically as a prisoner of war treatment document between the Federation and Cardassia.
• Fighting from the Inside: many incidents of this, usually when someone is under the imposed control of someone else (or even being turned into someone else) and is trying to fight for their self, identity and/or sanity. The archetypical example is Picard being turned into Locutus. In examples like Picard's this is also a form of Mind Rape, violating his mind, tearing away at the very fabric of his being, and turning it against him and the people he loves in the ultimate humiliation and pain. After Locutus, Picard tends to view such an experience as a Fate Worse than Death (certainly so with the Borg).
• Figure It Out Yourself:
  • A time traveler in an episode pulls this on Picard, saying how happy he is to be visiting the Enterprise. Picard, meanwhile, has a difficult decision to make and wants the time traveler to tell him how the decision turns out (the fate of a whole planet was at stake). The time traveler, naturally, refuses. Picard does make the right choice and saves everybody, but in an interesting subversion it turns out that the time traveler is bluffing about knowing how things come out: he was actually from the past and had stolen the time machine.
  • In the Series Finale "All Good Things...", Picard asks Q what he's really saying about humanity. Q begins to whisper something in his ear, then changes his mind, smiling broadly, bidding farewell, "In any case, I'll be watching. And if you're very lucky, I'll drop by to say hello from time to time. See you...out there!"
• Finale Production Upgrade:
  • Well-known to even the general public, and one of the Trope Codifiers in itself, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1", Season 3's finale, blew the entire series up to that point out of the water, shaking up the status quo of not only characters for years to come, but also the quality and general atmosphere of future installments and spinoffs. This included the Borg threatening the existence of the entire United Federation of Planets containing billions of individuals, showing their destructive power by obliterating 39 starships (the battle of which could not be shown because of its sheer horror, and the series' budget and technology at the time would not allow it), and putting into question whether the star of the show, Captain Picard, was going to survive. What fueled this was that Patrick Stewart at this time was in talks to leave the series, and his future involvement with TNG was just as questionable as his character's survival.
  • The final season and episode all gained a softer and more-even lighting scheme, more-vibrant color mix, a more-balanced sound mix, and higher-budget special effects. The series finale even ran a double-length episode, with a pre-and-during-show retrospective to match, and the stakes of the finale expanded to not just one group, community, city, or planet, but the ENTIRE GALAXY, with an anomaly threatening to twist our corner of the universe back to the primordial ages, preventing the origin of any life! The finale was even anticipated so much that Canada's Toronto Skydome (now Rogers Center) hosted a 54,000-seat-packed event to celebrate the occasion!
• Fire-Forged Friends: "Darmok". This is the entire point of beaming Picard and the alien captain to the planet, for them to bond through fighting an energy being together.
• First Contact: The episode "First Contact" shows the Enterprise crew making first contact from the aliens point of view. The movie of that name reverses the polarity by having the aliens be the ones experiencing first contact with humans. In a similar manner, the episode "Homebound" involves Worf's brother sneaking a handful of people from a pre-contact dying world on to the holodeck. One of the people accidentally gets out and we see from his point of view the sheer terror of not only the situation he was in but the very premise of aliens.
• Fish out of Water: In "A Matter of Honor" Riker gets to be the first officer on a Klingon ship.
• Fish People: "Manhunt" has the Antedeans.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: The phaser lance from the alternate future version of the Enterprise-D in "All Good Things".
• Fling a Light into the Future:
  • A variation occurs in the episode "Cause and Effect"—the Enterprise is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where she's destined to collide with another ship and explode. Data figures out how to avoid the collision too late, so he uses Techno Babble to send a message into the next loop, which helps the crew save themselves and the other ship.
  • "The Inner Light" tells the story of an alien race doomed by instability in their sun who send out a space probe that finds Picard and forces him to hallucinate living a lifetime among their final generations before the end, and thus ensures that their species will at least be remembered. It affected Picard and no other crew member. The life he lived involved being married, having a family, and other things he's never made time for - taking it from a disturbing experience to something he sees as a gift.
  • The episode "The Chase" reveals that all humanoid life is this—a Precursor species that inhabited the Milky Way eons before life anywhere else was more complex than bacteria seeded planets all over the galaxy with DNA so that evolution there would result in people who resembled them after their eventual extinction. They left a message coded in DNA to explain all this.
• Flowers of Romance:
  • In the episode "Haven", Deanna Troi wants to fulfill her arranged marriage promise to Wyatt Miller. He had given her a chameleon rose as a gift. It was blue when Miller held it and turned red, then white when Troi held it. It later turned purple while still in Troi's hands.
  • "In Theory" had Lieutenant Commander Data presenting a bunch of crystilia to Lieutenant Jenna D'Sora, when the two were "dating". Data's choice came from Commander William Riker's recommendation, since crystilia had "worked for him before".
  • In "Ménage à Troi", Dai Mon Tog presented a bouquet of pericules (aka zan periculi) to Lwaxana Troi while attempting to court her. Lwaxana tossed them in a nearby lake.
• Flying Cutlery Spaceship: The last two films, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis, had plenty of villainous ships like this. Insurrection featured a number of pointy horseshoe-crab style villain ships plus a giant, spiky weapon-ship that would strip life-supporting particles from the rings of an inhabited planet. Nemesis featured an oversized warbird with an insanely impractical (and very, very spiky) transformation sequence just to fire its main weapon.
• Former Teen Rebel: Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a delinquent and skirt-chaser at the Academy, culminating in a bar fight with a group of Proud Warrior Race Guys in which he got stabbed in the heart. After that, he apparently became rather more focused.
• Fountain of Youth: "Rascals", in which a transporter malfunction turns Picard, Keiko, Ro and Guinan into children, during which time the Enterprise is captured by hostile aliens. Despite the fact that they clearly keep their adult minds, they still have to save the day using childlike cleverness rather than their usual methods. As children, they would lack the strength and speed to do many of the physical actions an adult could perform. It's established that as far as Crusher can tell, the four would develop normally with no ill effects, but this is never explored as a means of extending people's lives.
• Freak Out:
  • Had by Captain Picard in "Sarek", on behalf of the titular legendary diplomat. Sarek is suffering Vulcan Alzheimer's, and "borrows" Picard's emotional self-control to complete one last mission.
  • Troi had a handful of these, most severely (for her and those around her that had to suffer her) after she lost her empathic powers due to the influence of two-dimensional creatures.
• French Accordion: The episode "Family" saw Capt. Picard go to France to see the titular family. And to let the viewer know it's France - cue the accordion.
• Freud Was Right: invoked Inverted in "Phantasms", when Data recreates Dr. Freud in the holodeck with the hope of interpreting the disturbing images generated by his dream program. Freud, of course, proceeds to assume it's all about Data's issues with his mother and his sexuality, neither of which he has, because he's an android.
• Friendly Enemy: Q drives Picard crazy, but there are indications as the series progresses that suggest the two are headed in this direction, with Q openly admitting to helping Picard in the series finale, and even early on Picard indicates he's in Q's debt for giving the Federation advance warning of the Borg.
• From a Single Cell: lots of instances of this too, where a single biological or mechanical cell (or unit) multiplies and creates an entire being, consciousness, species, or, in one case, civilization (although that started from 2 nanite cells not one).
• FTL Test Blunder:
  • "Remember Me" has Wesley testing new warp field equations to create a stable warp bubble. Unfortunately, he ends up trapping his mother in a collapsing parallel universe and spends the rest of the episode working to get her out before the warp bubble collapses completely.
  • "New Ground" has a scientist propose a new method of warp that would avoid the dangerous use of antimatter/matter warp reactors aboard ship. Using a series of field coils on a planet, a ship would be pushed into warp using a generated soliton wave, ride that wave to a target destination, and then be scattered by dispersion units at the destination planet, dropping the ship out of warp as it arrived. It would have been faster and more economical than standard warp drive, but a flaw in the experiment generated a wave far too powerful, destroying the test ship, damaging the Enterprise and would have destroyed the planet at the other end if the Enterprise crew hadn't intervened, using photon torpedoes to dissipate the wave before it could arrive.
• Future Imperfect: Episode of the same name. An interesting Alternate History arises and thanks to a fake Trauma-Induced Amnesia Riker (now Captain of the Enterprise) can't recall any of it.
• The Future Is Noir: The first two seasons often had this; the Enterprise bridge was usually floodlit, but everywhere else tended to have very minimal lighting levels. Inverted starting with the third season, when the lighting became uniformly bright and vivid. It then became really dark for the first movie, to hide the low-res TV sets until they could be destroyed and replaced with the film-quality Enterprise-E sets.
• Future Me Scares Me: In "Time Squared", the present Jean-Luc Picard is disgusted, irritated and extremely angered by the Captain Picard of the future, who abandoned the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft shortly before its destruction.
• Future Spandex: Early-season uniforms; later seasons replaced them with something looser. This was a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. The original jumpsuits were so tight and form-fitting that they were rather uncomfortable; Patrick Stewart once mentioned that, "they... hurt." Because of this, the jumpsuits were replaced with high-necked tops and pants (at least for the main cast; background characters still wore the one-piece jumpsuits, which were later modified slightly to better resemble the main cast's uniforms).

G-H

• Gaining the Will to Kill: In "The Most Toys," Kivas Fajo's taunts backfire when he convinces Data that the only logical way to stop him is to kill him.
  Data: I cannot permit this to continue.
• Gambler's Fallacy: In order to escape "The Royale", Data needs to bankrupt the house by winning at the craps tables; being an android, he can detect the loaded dice, fixes them in his hand, and can roll straight sevens. One of the other gamblers believes Data's luck has to run out sooner or later and bets against him. Of course, luck has nothing to do with it.
• Gaslighting:
  • A famous example in "Chain of Command," in which the Cardassians use psychological torture to try to persuade Picard to say there are five lights in the room when in fact there are four.
  • "Frame of Mind" is all about aliens attempting to convince Riker he's crazy.
• Gender Bender: In season 4 episode 23 "The Host", a symbiotic Trill diplomat named Odan and Dr. Crusher fall in love. The Trill symbiote's host dies, and the Enterprise must rendezvous with a Trill ship so that Odan can be implanted in a new host. On the Trill ship, it turns out the new host is female. The sex of the host is of no concern to the symbiote, but it makes the romance with Beverly Crusher untenable.
• Geeky Turn-On: In "The Perfect Mate," a metamorph (female who automatically becomes whatever the man she's speaking to most desires) gets Picard's interest by talking about archaeology. And Shakespeare.
• Gem Tissue: The Crystalline Entity, a massive snowflake-like creature that absorbed organic matter, converting it into energy in order to grow. Although the entity was shattered in its second appearance, it (or another) would later appear in the Star Trek: Titan novels and Star Trek Online.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Romulan Commander Sela, daughter of Tasha Yar and a Romulan. Both played by same actress.
  • Justified with Data and Lore as being the products of Noonian Soong. He apparently used himself as the physical model for his androids.
• Genocide Survivor:
  • The Borg (cyborgs with a Hive Mind who turn you into one of them by "assimilating" you) tried to assimilate Guinan's whole species, but there were a few who survived un-assimilated, such as Guinan herself, and her immediate family.
  • "The Vengeance Factor" features the last surviving member of an alien clan on a lifelong mission to wipe out every last member of the clan that wiped hers out.

• Ghost Ship: "The Battle", "The Naked Now", "Night Terrors", "Hero Worship", "Booby Trap".
• Gigantic Moon: Despite deserved praise for its attention to detail with modern science, they have taken artistic license with Earth's moon. From orbit, the moon is no different in size to human eyes than on land. Contrast this image◊ from Best of Both Worlds and this NASA image◊.
• Girl of the Week: No one manages to maintain a steady relationship for longer than an episode. Usually the relationship ends by the end of the episode, but sometimes the love interest just never gets brought up again, such as Christy Henshaw.
• Glitch Episode:
  • In "Thine Own Self", Data the android has been damaged and thus has amnesia. He spends most of the episode on an alien planet with people who think he's an "ice man".
  • Downplayed for "The Naked Now". While it's mostly a Plague Episode, focusing on a strange compound making people act drunk, seeing as the compound isn't technically a disease, it manages to get into Data's circuits and make him haywire too.
• A God Am I: Q plays with this in "Tapestry". Picard dies and enters the "afterlife", where he finds Q awaiting him, who informs him that he's dead and that Q himself is God. Picard rejects this, because he doesn't think that "the universe is so badly designed". Q snarks that Picard is lucky Q doesn't smite him for his blasphemy.
• God for a Day: "Hide and Q"- Q gives such powers to Riker and makes, unknown to Riker, a bet with Picard: Picard thinks that Riker will reject Q's offer and bets the Enterprise herself on him against Q offering to never bother them again. A generally well done example of the trope with the resolution not coming out of some arbitrary limit or failure of the powers. Picard wins after Riker finds every gift he tries to give to his friends rings hollow.
  "But it's what you've always wanted Data, to become human."
  "Yes, sir. That is true. But I never wanted to compound one... illusion with another. It might be real to Q,... perhaps even you, sir. But it would never be so to me. Was it not one of the Captain's favourite authors who wrote, "This above all: to thine own self be true?" Sorry, Commander, I must decline."
• God Test: Inverted in "Who Watches the Watchers." When the primitive alien tribe believes that Picard is God, they try to prove it by shooting him with a bow to prove that he can't be killed. Fortunately for Picard the alien misses his heart, but does hit him in the shoulder, injuring him and thereby proving to the aliens that he isn't God.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "The Arsenal of Freedom", the EP-607, an automated weapons system designed to operate with total autonomy. It's effective enough to have wiped out everyone on the planet of its invention.
• Good Powers, Bad People: In one episode, Deanna Troi meets a man who is a quarter Betazoid, and who, like her, has empathic powers. He uses his abilities to win in political and economic negotiations. Troi calls him out on it, but he fires back that where he's using his natural abilities to come out on top in property transactions, just like the people he makes deals with, Troi uses her abilities to increase the lethal capacity of a warship, often against beings with no way of resisting her.
• Gorn: The death and destruction of Cmdr. Dexter Remmick and the mother parasite inside him in the first season episode "Conspiracy" caused much controversy when it first aired.
• Government Drug Enforcement: The former plague cure that became a narcotic in "Symbiosis" plus the 21st-century drug-addled supersoldier Q conjures up in "Encounter at Farpoint".
• G-Rated Drug: The game, in "The Game". Mixed with a little bit of One More Level. Remember, the Game Boy first came out around this time.
• Great Gazoo: Q has a bad habit of using his powers to mess around with the Enterprise crew, much to Picard's annoyance.
• Green Aesop: "Force of Nature" focuses on how overuse of warp drive is causing permanent damage to the fabric of space and creating climate change on a planet exposed to the damaged areas.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "Cause and Effect" - Actually occurred two years in advance of the Groundhog Day movie. Unlike the Groundhog Day movie (in which Bill Murray's character is fully aware of what's going on, and only once does anybody else mention a slight feeling of deja vu) everyone on the Enterprise, except Data, starts to get that feeling.
• Grow Beyond Their Programming: Data, Moriarty and the nanomachines in "Evolution." There's also some indication (and certainly one that is reinforced in Voyager and DS9) that the more complex holograms are and/or the longer they are left on, the more they grow beyond their programming and start to attain self-aware states. The accumulation of experience eventually leads to consciousness and independent thought (of a kind), presumably as the programs become more and more complex over time until they reach a critical mass point of awareness.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: Phasers aren't designed or used like a real weapon would be. They have no sights on them and are fired one-handed, usually from the hip, which would make them very inaccurate at any kind of range. They are also fired by pressing your thumb down on the button on top of them, which would affect your aim every time you fire.
• Hairball Humor: When Geordi tries to look after Spot, he gets mad at him after Spot apparently broke his lamp and then coughed up a hairball under his bed.
• Hand Blast: Played with in a very unusual way: Geordi was interfaced with a remote-controlled probe in one episode, and to himself (and to the audience) it looked like he was walking around with his legs and picking up objects with his hands. In reality, that was an illusion, and it was just the probe using tractor beams. The probe was armed, and did fire a phaser blast at one point; when this happened, it looked to Geordi and to the audience like the beam came from Geordi's palm. But obviously the probe didn't have a hand to fire it from per se.
• Harmful Healing: Accidentally caused everyone to "devolve" in "Genesis".
• Harmless Villain: The Ferengi. Despite the original intention for them to be the Big Bad, it soon became clear that the audience found them so laughably incompetent, they doubted they could find water in an oasis, let alone possibly take over the Federation.
• Have You Tried Rebooting?: In the end, the simple solution to the Iconian computer virus threatening to destroy the Enterprise in "Contagion" was to shut down the computer and reboot the system from protected memory.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: In a species-wide example, the Klingons have gone from being the Federation's staunchest adversaries in The Original Series to being uneasy allies by the time Next Generation is set.
• Heart in the Wrong Place: An inversion combined with the same inversion of Bizarre Alien Biology can be found in the episode "First Contact." Riker is beaten pretty badly and is hospitalized on an alien planet that does not believe in aliens. He was on an away mission and altered to look like them, but in the hospital, they note that his "cardiac organ" is in the wrong place as well as many other anatomical abnormalities.
• Heinousness Retcon: The Ferengi go through several versions of this during the show's run, mostly due to initial plans for them to be the shows main antagonists falling through.
  • In "Encounter At Farpoint" its heavily implied they're notorious for eating other sapient species, something which is never mentioned again throughout the entire franchise (save one novel that reconnected it as part of a propaganda campaign to make them look fearsome in preparation for meeting what they believed was a truly insane faction).
  • In their first appearance "The Last Outpost" the Ferengi are effectively caricatures of the worst parts of humanity (to contrast with how advanced and enlightened the crew of Enterprise is) and presented as manic, vicious greedy warriors, who are openly hostile and hell-bent on attacking the crew then looting the corpses. Following it being realised they were nowhere near intimidating enough to work in this role, later episodes switched to presenting them as, whilst still potentially dangerous and obsessed with greed, an overall cowardly race who only attacked when they clearly had the upper hand, and whose tactics leaned towards deception, subterfuge, and illegal activities.
  • Come Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the Ferengi were completely reimagined as a Proud Merchant Race whose only focuses are on economic pursuit and profit (albeit with not many moral scruples), with Quark outright boasting that the Ferengi had never engaged in active warfare during their entire existence, instead using their economic skills to force any opponents into making a quick (and often highly profitable) deals. With not even Chief O'Brien (who was aboard the Enterprise and involved in several Ferengi attacks) ever calling him out the discrepancy.
• Helping Another Save Face: In one of her more generous gestures, after Worf passed out on duty from a childhood malady he considers embarrassing, Dr. Pulaski covers for Worf by telling Picard that it was due to ritual fasting.
• Hero Killer: The Borg are an entire species like this, according to Q and Guinan. They prove it in their debut episode and nearly conquer the Federation in their second appearance.
• Hidden Purpose Test:
  • Troi's engineering qualification test for her promotion is this. Rather than solve an engineering problem per se, the point is to see if she can send someone to certain death if necessary.
  • For a series-spanning example, The Q Continuum putting humanity on trial, and at least a few of the outlandish situations Q sends Picard and crew into, is the Q testing to see if the humans can be open-minded enough to truly appreciate and explore the unknown possibilities of existence.
• Hive Mind: The Borg, a race of cyborgs all linked together in a collective, where thoughts and information are shared.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The kidnapping aliens in "Allegiance" are placed in a restraining field on the bridge to give them a taste of their own medicine.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: In "Lower Decks", Sito (an alien, specifically a Bajoran) says, "I'd like to have been a ^{spider under}fly on that ^tablewall."
• Holodeck Malfunction: Multiple episodes center on the holodeck failing catastrophically.
  • The very first is "The Big Goodbye," seeing parts of the crew trapped in a simulation of noir detective Dixon Hill with the safeties disengaged.
  • "11001001" features a race of aliens who create a highly sophisticated simulation of a woman named Minuet to distract Riker while they steal Enterprise.
  • "Elementary, Dear Data" marked the first appearance of Moriarty, created by a poorly-phrased request by LaForge to create an opponent able to defeat Data.
  • In "A Matter Of Perspective," a holographic reconstruction of a science station used as part of a hearing as to whether Riker is to be extradited on murder charges unintentionally begins damaging Enterprise as it continues the experiments on its own.
  • "A Fistful of Datas" finds Worf, Alexander and Troi trapped in a holodeck simulation of the "Ancient West," where almost all of the characters are replaced by simulations of Data. Including his greatly enhanced strength, intelligence, speed, and reflexes.
  • Moriarty reappears in "Ship In A Bottle," and manages to take control of Enterprise to force Picard's hand in finding a way to allow him to leave the holodeck.
  • In "Emergence", the first problem came when the Orient Express travels through Data's production of the play The Tempest on the Holodeck. This led them to realize the ship was forming an intelligence with the holodeck acting as its imagination, and didn't take kindly to them trying to interfere.
• How We Got Here: In the episode "Suspicions", Beverly is telling Guinan how she got into professional trouble for most of the episode.
• Human Alien Discovery:
  • Inverted in one episode where boy was adopted by an alien as a toddler and assumes he's the same species, but he's actually a human.
  • The episode "True Q". A woman named Amanda Rogers comes aboard the Enterprise as a Starfleet intern to study with Doctor Crusher. During the course of the episode it's revealed that she's actually the offspring of two Q who assumed mortal forms to have a child together.
• Humanity Ensues: The Continuum once meted out this punishment to Q. By the end of the episode he was back to his all-powerful Reality Warping self again.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Hugh from "I, Borg" seems to fit this one to a degree. And after he's returned to The Collective, his acquired humanity spreads to every drone on his ship, which is quickly severed from the rest of the hive-mind lest it cause a Galactic BSOD.
• Humanity on Trial: This is the premise of "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things...," with Q putting humanity on trial. As Q asserts in "All Good Things...," "The trial never ends".
• Humans Are Ugly: Humans are called "ugly giant bags of mostly water" by a sentient race of crystal.
• Hunting the Rogue: "The Wounded" had the Enterprise forced into hunting one of their own ships, USS Phoenix, whose captain was attacking Cardassian ships without orders, on suspicion of weapons smuggling. The fact that, per Deep Space Nine, he was right, didn't change the fact he'd taken the law into his own hands.
• Hyper-Awareness: Data, due to being an android, would see more into events then was actually relevant.
• Hyperspace Lanes: There are shipping lanes which are the most frequently used ways of getting from point A to point B. At one point late in the series it's revealed that space is actually wearing down in those lanes; Starfleet sets a speed limit of warp five to minimize continued damage. This speed limit gradually fades out of the franchise, however.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: The "Picard Maneuver", where a ship (typically already engaged in battle) would use its warp drive to make a very short trip to another part of the battlefield. If done properly, this allowed a starship commander to allow his ship to appear in two places simultaneously, because the sensor return from the ship's previous location had not yet gotten back to the enemy ship. This tactic was notably of limited use, only being effective against enemies who did not possess subspace sensors.
• Hyperspeed Escape: Quite a few times, given the ubiquitousness of Warp Drive in this setting (as a general rule, if you don't have warp drive, nobody in Starfleet is terribly interested in dealing with you anyways). Occasionally subverted, either because the pursuing ship is faster, or because the heroes are trapped inside some sort of Negative Space Wedgie and literally have nowhere they can go.
• Hypocrisy Nod:
  • In "The Drumhead" when Picard proclaims that it's intrusive to use a Betazoid to discern if someone is lying, Admiral Satie throws it right back in his face that he uses Troi to do it all the time. He does point out there's a difference between taking Troi's empathic sense of someone's dishonesty into account with other evidence and using it as the sole basis for an accusation. To his credit, Picard concedes the point and replies that he might reconsider this policy in the future.
  • In "Ethics", Dr. Crusher turns on another doctor for trying unconventional techniques to save someone's life, accusing her of choosing which treatments to give based on her own bias. When she questions this doctor's judgement, she says "I made the choice that I thought gave him the best chance of surviving, isn't that what you would have done?" Meanwhile, Crusher is doing the exact same thing in Worf's case: picking and choosing which options to give him...except Worf isn't unconscious, and Crusher is ignoring his opinions and patient autonomy nonetheless. Picard also takes Worf's side in the debate, pointing out that he is a Klingon, and for him, his life ended when he was injured.
• Hypocrite:
  • In "Ensign Ro", when Riker chastises Ro Laren for wearing her Bajoran earring—which has religious significance—only to subsequently take her into a meeting where Troi was wearing her low-cut, non-regulation uniform and Worf is proudly wearing his Klingon baldric. This may be more out of personal and professional dislike than anything; in the end, when she makes being allowed to wear her earring a condition for staying on, Picard accepts with a grin.
  • In "Attached", the xenophobic Prytt abduct Picard and Crusher, who were attempting to visit the neighboring Kes. In the course of trying to get them back, Riker abducts the security minister who ordered the original abduction. She is outraged. She actually uses the word "outrage".

I

• I Am X, Son of Y: "I am Worf, Son of Mogh."
• I'm Your Worst Nightmare: Uttered verbatim by Riker while showing off his poker skills.
  Geordi: I do not BELIEVE it!
  Riker: I'm Your Worst Nightmare.
• I, Noun: The episode "I Borg", despite lacking the comma.
• I Lied: "Captain's Holiday" - Beverly is trying to convince Captain Picard to take a vacation. Picard is adamant, and she tells him that it's going on a vacation that he hates, but once he gets there, he has a great time. She reminds him of him telling her about how he had a great time during his four days on Zytchin III, to which he replies "I lied." Given that he's trying to wheedle desperately out of the vacation, this itself is likely a lie.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You
  • There's an episode where Lwaxana Troi is fascinated by someone she cannot read. He turns out to be a hologram, which quite embarrasses her.
  • Similarly, the telepath from the episode "Tin Man" spends a lot of time with Data, whose mind he cannot read. The difference here is that, unlike Lwaxana, he can't not read minds, while Lwaxana just has almost no sense of personal space in that regard. He loves having to discover who Data is as a person rather than having all that information thrust upon him at once.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In the episode "Menage a Troi", Lwaxana Troi wants to spend time with Picard. Picard, preferring to be light years away, explains that he needs to show the VIP with him the door mechanism on the aft turbolift.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That: In "Heart of Glory", when they use a device to transmit the view from Geordi's VISOR back to the Bridge, Picard expresses surprise that Data appears to be glowing with a subtle aura. Geordi expresses surprise that no one else can see it.
• I Would Say If I Could Say: Data uses this on occasion based on emotions he cannot actually experience. Once he comments upon visiting his "birth" planet that he would say "Home, sweet home" if only he knew what "sweet" really was. Another time he mentions that he would find a procedure insulting if he were not an android (and thus incapable of feeling insulted).
• Identical Grandson:
  • Also overlaps with literal Generation Xerox as Data and Lore were designed to resemble their creator, Dr. Noonien Soong. It's later revealed that he was also an Identical Grandson of Dr. Arik Soong from Enterprise.
  • Michael Dorn, who plays Worf, played Worf's grandfather in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
  • In 'The Neutral Zone', one of the revived 20th century humans tracks down one of her descendants, who is apparently identical to her deceased husband.
• If You Can Read This: Many examples; the set designers had a lot of fun adding in easter eggs. See the trope page for details.
• Ignorant About Fire: In Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E1 "The Child" the titular child is Counselor Troi's via an energy being. The child grows at a rapid rate and in one scene is curious about a candle and lets it burn his hand. The child recoils in pain. It turns out that the child was trying to learn how to be human.
• Imposed Handicap Training: Subverted in episode "Lower Decks." Worf, who teaches a Klingon martial arts class aboard Enterprise, blindfolds and spars with one of his students; telling her that this is what's happening. What he's actually doing is trying to teach her to be more assertive. After Worf knocks her on her butt a few times, she finally stands up to him and protests the blatantly unfair contest; which is exactly what Worf wanted her to do.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: ("Datalore") Lore accidentally uses contractions, which the episode establishes that Data doesn't use.
• In Another Man's Shoes: In "The Inner Light", a probe causes Picard to live the life of a man named Kamin, whose homeworld was destroyed centuries ago.
• Incessant Music Madness:
  • In "Q-Pid", Q turns the bridge crew into Robin Hood and his merry men. Geordi becomes the Alan a-Dale analog, and keeps plucking annoyingly at a lute. Finally Worf has had enough, walks up, snatches the lute, and smashes it against a tree.
  • In "The Survivors", Troi is being driven to maddened despair by a constantly repeating music box melody, which is coming from the music box in Kevin Uxbridge's house. The music was keeping her (and presumably other telepaths & empaths) from learning the truth.
• Incompatible Orientation: When Crusher falls in love with a Trill, she's ready to follow him into his next host body... until it turns out that that body is a woman. Crusher explicitly claims that the host's sex isn't the dealbreaker, but her stony reaction to seeing her for the first time gives the lie to that.
• Industrialized Evil: The Borg assimilation process.
• Indy Ploy: Exemplified in the 2nd season episode Peak Performance, Riker is a master of using these whenever he has to take command. It becomes a Chekhov's Skill when Riker is in charge of the Enterprise the second time they face the Borg.
• Informed Ability:
  • Due to the Character Shilling, many viewers don't find Okona to be as "outrageous" as advertised.
  • Worf is supposed to be the ship's resident bruiser and a skilled martial artist, but he seemed to get his ass kicked in virtually every fight due to The Worf Effect. His stint on DS9 does a lot to reverse this.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Only now does humanity merit some attention by Q Continuum and the Traveller’s people: prior to this we were too uninteresting.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • It is a cellular peptide cake... with mint frosting.
  • Mr. Data is an "artificial life form" or "android", not a "robot."
• Instant Seduction: Okona again. He very quickly ends up in bed with the transporter technician played by Teri Hatcher.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: Well, almost anyone would recognize the TNG theme when they heard it.
• Interspecies Adoption:
  • Klingon Worf was taken in and lovingly raised by Sergey and Helena Rozhenko, a human couple. Later on, the Rozhenkos also took in their primarily (3/4) Klingon grandson, Alexander, when Worf decided that being a single father aboard the Enterprise would be too difficult for him to handle.
  • In "Suddenly Human" the Enterprise away team finds a human teen boy serving on a training ship of another race, the Talarians. It was discovered he was taken as a baby after a raid by the Talarians, he was raised by a member of the military, who captained a starship. The question became whether to take him back to Earth to live with family (and threaten a war) or allow him to stay with the only family he had ever known.
• Intimate Artistry: In "The High Ground", when the Enterprise is visiting the planet Rutia IV Dr. Crusher is kidnapped by a terrorist group. While she is being held captive, the group's leader draws sketches of her, which indicates both that he has artistic sensibilities (and is therefore more complex than simply "evil") and that he is growing attracted to her.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Q appears to be very interested in humanity. Or maybe it's just Picard.
• Invisible Main Character: In "The Next Phase", Geordi and Ro end up invisible and intangible.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing:
  • In the season 1 episode "Datalore", Captain Picard at first feels inclined to refer to Data as "he", and to Data's newly-discovered twin brother Lore as "it". Data calls him out on this, and feels uncomfortable at the idea of them being referred to differently when they were both androids. Picard apologizes.
  • Dr. Pulaski is initially very distrustful of Data. When she first sees Data at the helm, she exclaims to the captain, "You're letting it pilot the ship?" Pulaski goes through Character Development through the course of her lone season and eventually comes to treat Data as a trusted colleague.
  • In "The Measure Of A Man", an episode discussing Data's legal status; Commander Maddox constantly refers to Data as a possession of Starfleet and therefore an "it", until he slips into "he" after a court hearing formally rules that Data has free will and the right to choose.
  • In "The Outcast", Riker rejects the pronoun "it" for referring to a member of the (genderless) J'naii species for this very reason.
  • In the episode "I Borg", a Borg crash survivor is discovered and brought aboard the Enterprise for recovery, albeit with great concern. Although the drone is male, most crewmembers refer to him as 'it' instead. Once they spend time with the drone (partly due to plans to use him as a plot to cripple the Borg Collective), some of the crew become uncomfortable with the plan. As the crew get to know the Borg drone better (by now given the name of Hugh) many of them refer to him of the proper gender. An important point to all this is Captain Picard: Due to his capture and psychological torture by the Borg, his hatred towards them is extreme to the point where he continues to refer to Hugh as 'it', well after the time where the rest of the crew have switched over. It's not until he's persuaded to talk to Hugh in person does he finally stop seeing the individual as merely a tool for destruction.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The novel used as the basis for the titular hotel in "The Royale" begins with this phrase.
• It Will Never Catch On: In a meta example, Patrick Stewart was so certain this series would fail that for the first six weeks of shooting he refused to unpack his suitcases. Indeed, he's said in subsequent interviews that he only took the job because he thought it would merely be a temporary adventure.
• It's a Wonderful Plot:
  • "Remember Me" is a subversion, in which Beverly finds people she knew vanishing, and no one remembering they ever existed.
  • "Tapestry" plays out this way, but is averted because it shows what life would be like if Picard had made different choices, rather than him not having existed.