History Characters / StarTrek

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Or at least the West. All the names are surname-last, alien cultures that were inspired by other Earth cultures are seen as mind-blowing, and the French all sound like grumpy Englishmen. [[note]]The official explanation for this is TranslationConvention, which renders characters as speaking the listeners native tongue with their closest approximate accent. Thus, since Picard learned English in England, the Universal Translator renders his speech with an English accent. The fact that his seems to apply '''only''' to Picard is still glossed over.[[/note]]

** Played straight in the TOS episode ''The Trouble With Tribbles'', as Uhura casually makes an offer to purchase a tribble from a Federation citizen on a Federation station.

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* DirtyCoward: Ferengi are cowardly by nature. Their official hand gesture looks suspiciously like a animal in submission.

* RetiredMonster: For the most part, the head honchos who ran the Bajoran occupation went on holiday and were never punished. Crell Moset, a virologist who performed illegal experiments on Bajoran slaves, was rewarded with a chair at a top university. Garak is running a clothier's, though he was actually forced into retirement. Some of the collaborators fled to Cardassia Prime. Kubus Oak, a Bajoran official who worked closely with the occupiers, rubber-stamped extradition orders sending his countrymen to their deaths in the mines. After going into hiding on Cardassia, he decided to retire to Bajor, confident he would never be tried. (Indeed, the government was forced to grant him amnesty out of embarrassment for other untold crimes.)

* TokenEvilTeammate: The Reptilians are the most outright aggressive of all the Xindi species, and are typically the ones leading the charge when it comes to attacking humanity. Following them are the Insectoids, who are responsible for the destruction of their homeworld, and tend to work with the Reptilians.
* TheUnintelligible: The Insectoids and the Aquatics don't speak the same language as everyone else, the Insectoids in clicks and hisses, the Aquatics in whale-song like noises (though the Aquatics do learn to speak English).

* GoodIsImpotent: Averted. The Romulans, having embraced war and avarice, also lost the ability to pull off mind melds or nerve pinches. Meanwhile, the Vulcans continue to try to reconcile with their Romulan kin.

* LongLived: There are instances of them living over two hundred and twenty years. Spock is over one hundred and fifty when he goes back in time and ends up trapped in an [[Film/StarTrek Alternate Reality]] TOS-Era.

* AdaptiveAbility: The Borg are usually able to adapt to any weapon or defense used against them, given enough time.

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Or at least the West. All the names are surname-last, alien cultures that were inspired by other Earth cultures are seen as mind-blowing, and the French all sound like grumpy Englishmen.

* FantasticRacism: Despite their devotion to logic and being one of the founding members of the Federation, this is very common among them.

* MeatSackRobots: All of the Borg are these being that they are reverse cyborgs. They have [[TheAssimilator assimilated]] various species (via injecting {{Nanomachines}} into their victims) into its [[HiveMind AI's unifying conscious]] in order [[UnwillingRoboticization to turn their victims into]] Meat Sack Robots.

* BadassDecay: They seem rather easily disposed for such a lethal warrior race, which is explained by Elias Vaughn the result of those mostly fought being only a few weeks or months old at best with no training and only relying on instinct, where as the older ones are much bigger threats.

* FantasticRacism: Vulcans are actually some of the most (if not ''the'' most) extreme xenophobes in ''Trek'' canon. "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" seems to imply that even in Starfleet Vulcans still largely serve on their own ships because a) they're all giant racists, and b) nobody else could put up with their arrogance.

** To be fair, though, the only FCA representative we meet is Brunt, who is confirmed to be particularly rabid in his duties, and despised by the Grand Negus. The dude brought two '''Nausicaans''' with him to serve as strike-breakers! Workers of the world unite; [[Website/SFDebris you have nothing to lose but your bladder control.]]

* BizarreAlienBiology: Vulcans possess an inner eyelid, or membrane, which protects their vision from bright lights. Spock dismissed it as a redundant organ, like our appendix.

* MrsRobinson: A Betazoid women's sex-drive quadruples when they reach a certain age, meaning that half of the population of Betazed literally consists entirely of cougars.

* DamnedByFaintPraise: Probably the nicest thing anyone's said about the Q is Guinan's comment that ''some'' of the Q are ''almost'' respectable.

* BigBadWannabe: A RealLife example. The Ferengi were built up as the over-arching BigBad of TNG, a reflection of humans when they [[EvilCounterpart were still avaricious and violent]] -- but they never came across as anything more than buffoons. The writers eventually wised up and stopped taking them seriously.

[[folder:Triexian]]

* BiggerBad: Of ''TNG'' and subsequent shows. Note that the majority of Captains (excluding Kirk and Archer) have had personal vendettas against the Borg Collective: Picard was raped physically and mentally; Sisko lost his wife in the infamous defeat at Wolf 359; and Janeway is noted for her numerous [[DealWithTheDevil Devil's bargains]] with the Queen.

* {{Expy}}: They have notorious similarities to the 1960s-created ''Series/DoctorWho'' antagonist species the Cybermen (creepy hive-mined cyborg humanoids who assimilate other cultures by force and are sometimes treated like techno-zombies). This was highlighted in the IDW spin-off mini-series ''ComicBook/StarTrekTheNextGenerationDoctorWhoAssimilation2'', which crossed over the two franchises with a VillainTeamUp between the Cybermen and the Borg, and reversed in the 2010s ''Doctor Who'' episode "Nightmare in Silver", in which the Cybermen were given abilities much closer to the Borg's, such as rapid cyber-conversation via nanotech infection and adaptation to weapons.

* PintSizedPowerHouse: Ferengi are shorter than the average human, but there are subtle hints that they Vulcan-level SuperStrength -- in one DS9 episode, Quark is shown snapping a bar of gold in half with his bare hands, whilst in another, a startled Sisko finds himself picked up and thrown several meters by a ticked off Ferengi, who did so effortlesslu.

* StupidCrooks: The Ferengi {{space pirate}}s in TNG frequently prove to be no better at crime than DS9 would imply that they were at mercantile pursuits.

** Any scene with Cardassians will likely include kanar, an alcoholic beverage served in distinctive, spiral-shaped bottles. What's strange about kanar is that it's thick as pudding and dribbles out of the bottleneck like maple syrup. The main ingredient in real life is, in fact, corn syrup, and poor Casey Biggs ([=DS9's=] resident lush) got sick from downing so many glasses of it. Kanar can be enjoyed by humans, unlike Vulcan spirits -- though O'Brien warned that it seriously takes some getting used to.

** If the Occupation of Bajor is compared with the Holocaust (with Gallitep standing in for Auschwitz), the Cardassians never really faced their Nuremberg. They escaped justice and resumed their policy of colonial expansion. That is, until the end of DS9 when they end up a lower member of the Dominion and treated as such, some members of the military turned into rebels like their formally occupied Bajorans and their planet utterly scorched in retaliation. All in all, the Cardassians were set back a hundred years in development and even Garak, a Cardassian himself, says that they pretty much deserved it.

** The writers in TNG said that at the time of their introduction, one of their stronger influences was actually the Palestinians - the idea that there were refugee camps of Bajorans who had fled their occupied territories. This idea influenced faded by DS9. Even then, though, the TNG writers cited that they could just as equally be Poland under the Nazis, Colonial Africa under the Europeans, or Korea occupied by Japan.

* WeaksauseWeakness: The cold. Since they operate at extremely high temperatures, lowering it causes them pain. Lower it far enough, and they shatter.

-->''"We don't know what to do about Humans. Of all the species we've made contact with, [[HumansAreSpecial yours is the only one we can't define]]. You have the arrogance of Andorians, the stubborn pride of Tellarites. One moment, you're as driven by your emotions as Klingons, and the next, you confound us by suddenly embracing logic."''

** Subverted by the Rules themselves turning out to be another scam -- at least in Quark's dream.
--->"Would you buy a book called ''Suggestions of Acquisition''?!"

Daimon Tog: Actually, his is a look of revulsion. But it is not a feeling that I share. (stares at them pervertedly)

-->'''Worf''': "They have no honor! They consider Klingons and humans to be a waste of skin!"