Line #95 Literature/StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/have_tech_will_travel_5585.jpg]]
2	''Starfleet Corps of Engineers'' is a series of novellas in the so-called Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse. Originally published as e-books, they are reprinted in paperback editions periodically. The series focuses on the crew of the starship ''da Vinci'', a ship attached to, would you believe it, the Corps of Engineers. The series was originally entitled "Star Trek: SCE" (standing in for Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers), before being rebooted as, simply, Corps of Engineers.
3
4	Despite the potential for the dreaded technobabble, the series, like much of the Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse, is focused on character and worldbuilding, so it isn't anywhere near as inaccessible as it might sound...
5
6	The paperback collections are as follows:
7
8	* 1. ''Have Tech, Will Travel'' -- collects eBooks 1-4
9	* 2. ''Miracle Workers'' -- collects eBooks 5-8
10	* 3. ''Some Assembly Required'' -- collects eBooks 9-12
11	* 4. ''No Surrender'' -- collects eBooks 13-16
12	* 5. ''Foundations'' -- collects eBooks 17-19
13	* 6. ''Wildfire'' -- collects eBooks 20-24
14	* 7. ''Breakdowns'' -- collects eBooks 25-28
15	* 8. ''Aftermath'' -- collects eBooks 29-36
16	* 9. ''Grand Designs'' -- collects eBooks 37-42
17	* 10. ''Creative Couplings'' -- collects eBooks 43-49
18	* 11. ''Wounds'' -- collects eBooks 50-56
19	* 12. ''Out of the Cocoon'' -- collects eBooks 57-60
20	* 13. ''What's Past'' -- collects eBooks 61-66
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22	The characters of this series also have cameos in other ''Star Trek'' works, such as the novel ''Literature/ASingularDestiny'' and (briefly) ''Literature/StarTrekArticlesOfTheFederation''.
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24	Several stories in this series are crossovers with the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch''. One of the ''What's Past'' prequel stories is also a part of the ''Literature/StarTrekVanguard'' arc.
25
26	----
27	!!''Starfleet Corps of Engineers'' provides examples of the following tropes:
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29	* AbnormalAmmo: The Nachri rebels in the story ''Aftermath'' have armed their ships not with the usual energy weapons or torpedoes, but with the equivalent of cannon balls.
30	* AcquiredSituationalNarcissism: Tev in ''Creative Couplings''. Its SerialEscalation seeing how puffed-up and full of himself he is in the first place. To the horror of Fabian Stevens, he ends up even worse after getting a short taste of command. On reflection, having Tev serve as "captain" for the cadet's holographic "voyage" wasn't a good idea.
31	* ActualPacifist: One of the races in ''Honor''.
32	* AdventurerArchaeologist: Bart Faulwell's family were essentially this. So was Lense's mother.
33	* AdventureTowns: The ''da Vinci'' usually ends up at a different planet (or other notable location) in each successive story. The character arcs (of which there are plenty) take place over a backdrop of largely unrelated missions. They fix the MasterComputer on Eerlik in one story, clear up the mess with the Starsearcher crash on Intar in the next, and get the ''Defiant'' out of interspace in the following. On to Empok Nor!
34	* AfterTheEnd: The ''da Vinci'' has to pick up the pieces after a planetary disaster more than once.
35	* AIIsACrapshoot: Learning Mech, particularly when it tries to bring fifteen asteroids to the surface of Keorga for study purposes, threatening an extinction-level event.
36	-->“The rules of learning were manually overridden. Automatic safety feature no longer engaged. Discipline must be maintained. A lesson must be learned. Thank you for using Learning Mech.”
37	* AlienArtsAreAppreciated
38	** Sinnravian drad music, though not appreciated by all. A RunningGag consists of Carol Abramowitz (and Nog during the crossovers with the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch'') enjoying this particular brand of alien music. The other characters can't stand it. Abramowitz's roommate, P8 Blue, asks a superior officer for permission to feed Abramowitz to her larvae, in order to put a stop to it.
39	** Everyone holds planet Keorga in high regard for its arts. And building on the Sinnravian drad, Abramowitz has branched out into Nausicaan tusk opera.
40	* AlienBlood: Nalori have blue blood, like previously-established canonical species Andorians and Bolians.
41	* AlienCatnip: Strawberries are a mild narcotic to Mizarians.
42	* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: The Nasats treat P8 Blue and other "Quiets" like this. P8 Blue was regularly dismissed by her fellows and viewed as freakish or deformed. In fact, her differently-wired brain is a trait that lets her play a vital role in establishing relations with another race living on the Nasat homeworld. Naturally, P8 saves the day.
43	* AlternateUniverse: In ''Lost Time''.
44	* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: The Nasat, who are red, blue, green, yellow or brown.
45	* {{Ambadassador}}: Lantar, though that's to be expected for a Klingon diplomat.
46	* AncientArtifact: The "Zapper", clearly the same device as the Mirror Universe Tantalus Field, from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Rod Portlyn]] unearths it in one of the later stories.
47	* AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: Implied in Captain Gold's ''Tales from the Captain's Table'' story, "An Easy Fast": The protagonist of the tale that he tells is named Abraham Silver, a pseudonym that humans familiar with Jewish lore would recognize, but the alien captains hearing the story would likely not.
48	* AngstySurvivingTwin: Em-Lin in ''The Cleanup''. She's a Miradorn. AngstySurvivingTwin is practically their [[PlanetOfHats hat]] at times.
49	* AssInAmbassador: Gabriel Marshall, a recurring character who plays the classic role of "pushy Federation diplomat", as established in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
50	* AstralProjection: One story involves the planet Vrinda inventing a form of technology that allows this.
51	* AwesomeButImpractical: The ''Dancing Star'', really. See CoolShip, below.
52	* BarBrawl: Mor glasch Tev, the Tellarite second officer, accidentally starts one on Rhaax, due to mistaking hostility for Tellarite-esque argumentative politeness. Under his people's BlueAndOrangeMorality, insults and blustering argument are a form of polite discourse. He misjudged in this case, though.
53	* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: Nasats can survive for an hour or so in hard vacuum.
54	* BilingualBonus: An in-universe example with Tev’s paper describing the Kharzh’ullan Ring. There are Romulan swear words cunningly disguised among the Tellarite phrases he’s using.
55	* BindingAncientTreaty: The [[{{Precursors}} Preservers]] agreed to protect the Koas, and indeed fulfilled their "ancient promise" to save the Koa homeworld.
56	* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Due to the natives' love of symmetry, houses on Bundinal have faux front doors at the back - not a back door, but a door identical to the one in front, and looking equally important, even though it isn't.
57	* BlessedWithSuck: Nasat Quiets, whose special cross-species communication abilities render them outcasts among their own kind. They can communicate with PlantAliens the Citoac, but the unique brain activity allowing this renders them unable to communicate normally with other Nasats.
58	* BoobyTrap: There were quite a few in the city of Stratos on Ardana. Also, Bart Faulwell's sister was killed by one when he was a teenager. It was in a tomb; the family were essentially {{Adventurer Archaeologist}}s.
59	* BrainFood: The creators of the monster shii on Sarindar. A race which colonized the planet centuries ago, they fed on brain matter. The artificial constructs in the shape of shii beasts were built to collect the heads, decapitating victims in order to gather the brains.
60	* BreakTheCutie: Corsi was a lot more easy-going and fun as a junior officer. But after she was forced to kill her insane lover (who had Christine Vale as a hostage), she became the stoic, very by-the-book "Core-Breach" Corsi that serves on the ''da Vinci''.
61	* BreatherEpisode: The four stories following on from WhamEpisode ''Wildfire''. These are quieter tales focusing on various characters' off-duty activities as they come to terms with what's happened.
62	* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler:Possibly Lense's brother Jonathan]].
63	* CargoCult: The tribe from ''The Light'', with a downed Borg cube serving as the centre of their religion.
64	* ChasedByAngryNatives: Several times.
65	* ComplainingAboutRescuesTheyDontLike: The beleaguered ''Da Vinci'' makes it in time to rescue a party of equally beleaguered miners only by cannibalizing the mining equipment they were delivering to the station. One of the miners whose life was literally saved moments before complains about this. Captain Gold shouts him down and forces him to apologize.
66	* ContinuitySnarl: The fate of the ''Constitution''-class ''Defiant'' as depicted in this series was different from what was later shown on ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. Reconciling the accounts is not unworkable, but it ''is'' going to require a lot of thought. The writers of the installment featuring the ''Defiant'' are reportedly working on a suitable reconciliation idea that will tie it all together.
67	* ConvenientlyClosePlanet: In ''Collective Hindsight'', a runaway ship is on a collision course with a planet, despite how unlikely that would be in reality. The ship even passes through several star systems ''en route'', apparently threading the needle several times.
68	* CoolShip: Several, notably the Strata ringship (which is a giant spinning wheel in space), the ''Dancing Star'' (powered by actual flares of stellar matter and capable of diving into a sun), and the ''Minstrel's Whisper'' (an ancient vessel with, essentially, an [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy improbability drive]]). Then there's the arc-ship on which the People are carried to their new home. They've been locked into a medieval culture in an internal artificial world they don't even realize is aboard a ship.
69	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Rod Portlyn. How corrupt is he? He deliberately poisoned an entire colony world to induce crop failures, then came in to buy the increasingly useless land. He kept the farmers on as workers and thus earned their gratitude by "saving them" from bankruptcy. He turned another world in the same star system into a dumping ground for garbage, and he later tries to murder its population. All in the name of profit, obviously.
70	* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Elysian Council in ''Where Time Stands Still''.
71	* CreativeSterility: Played with in the case of Keorga. Its inhabitants seem to lack the capacity for imagination or innovation as humans understand it, yet channel much of their culture into creating beautiful displays of art, for which they’re renowned. The humans struggle to comprehend the contradiction.
72	* DamnedByFaintPraise: [[InsufferableGenius Tev]]'s "compliments" to the rest of the team. Sonya Gomez accuses him of acting as though the rest of them are simply holding him back. Tev denies this:
73	-->'''Tev''' You're all exceptionally competent.\
74	'''Sonya Gomez:''' Well, thank you so much for your stamp of approval. "Exceptionally competent." That ranks right up there with "superbly adequate" and "remarkably acceptable" in the backhanded compliment hall of fame.
75	* TheDeadHaveNames: Near the end of the WhamEpisode ''Wildfire'', there's an extract from the Captain's Log that lists the 23 (out of a crew of 40) crewmembers who were killed in that mission. The most "important" character in the list, [[spoiler: Second Officer Duffy]] is just tossed into the list with no significant importance.
76	* DefrostingIceQueen: Corsi. Stevens does his damndest to get her to drop her shields and act like a person. [[spoiler:It eventually works, and they end up married.]]
77	* DerelictGraveyard: The Sargasso Sector, named for the Sargasso Sea on Earth. It's a junkyard of abandoned ships floating around a collection of black holes and quasars. The ''da Vinci'' crew are assigned to clear a path through it to allow a convoy access -- one of the series' more notable cases of SpaceIsAnOcean.
78	* DescriptivelyNamedSpecies: Would you believe that the Syclarians write their language in a circular fashion?
79	* DepopulationBomb: The Miradorn nearly fell victim to one of these that would have killed all twinned Miradorn (that's 98% of them) had it not been stopped. It wasn't actually intended to be a depopulation bomb, though.
80	* DrJerk: Lense is a rare female example.
81	* DuringTheWar: The "War Stories" installments, as well as a couple of the "What's Past" stories.
82	* EarWorm: Discussed; Gomez uses an ear worm lyric from a Lurian folk song as part of her personal access code.
83	* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Overseer Biron, a recurring villain, doesn't understand the Federation or its Starfleet heroes, in particular their compassion. Why Starfleet officers and captains expend valuable resources helping "expendable" crewmen or those of lesser station is beyond his comprehension. Biron is a highly intelligent being, but a product of a brutal and calculating culture that assigns worth to people based only on how productive and useful they are.
84	* ExposedExtraterrestrials: The Nasat (who are InsectoidAliens and thus protected by their exoskeletons).
85	* FailsafeFailure: A Federation space probe in one story (which is actually entitled ''Failsafe'') suffers a FailsafeFailure, requiring the crew undergo a mission to retrieve it from a pre-warp planet. Sonya Gomez even seems to lampshade the improbability.
86	* FantasticArousal: Bynars and the smell of strawberries, apparently.
87	* FantasticCasteSystem: The Androssi, who have a vertically stratified example. Worker caste Androssi can be killed on a whim by the Officer class. Recurring villain Overseer Biron is an Officer class Androssi, and indeed treats the lives of his subordinates very casually indeed.
88	* FantasticReligiousWeirdness / InterspeciesRomance: Klingon-Jewish wedding FTW!
89	* FantasticSlurs: "Singleton" is a terrible slur on Bynaus, signifying one who is unfit for bonding with another; a rejected person. To the Bynars, who (almost) always operate in pairs, this is the ultimate insult. Solomon is on the receiving end of such abuse due to his [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch decision not to take another mate upon the death of his partner]].
90	* FictionalPoliticalParty: The two major parties of the Kropaslin government are named "Agreement" and "Consensus".
91	* ForgottenPhlebotinum: Often averted. In the story ''The Cleanup'', a character resolves a problem using advanced technology picked up in a previous tale.
92	* FurAndLoathing: This doesn't come up, but possibly we'd expect it to. It is mentioned in an off-hand line in one story that Klingon characters are wearing al'Hmatti fur. Seeing as the al'Hmatti are a sapient subject species of the Klingon Empire, we can only hope it's harvested from those whose die naturally (which might well be bad enough)...
93	* GiantSpider: The Koas resemble very large spiders, only with a head like an octopus. Don't worry; they're friendly.
94	* AGodAmI: The crazy Vorta in ''Fables of the Prime Directive''.
95	* GuiltByCoincidence: Part of Lense's "issues" stem from the fact that [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Julian Bashir]] confessed to being genetically enhanced. Since Lense did better than Bashir in medical school (Bashir deliberately screwed up a question on the final), Starfleet assumed she must be genetically enhanced as well and threw her in the brig for a month.
96	* GutFeeling: Discussed in one story as something P8 "Pattie" Blue has learnt to respect, due to influence from the other races she works with:
97	-->''Though she knew she'd be checking out other facilities, Pattie had a good feeling about this one. One thing she'd learned from softs was to trust intuition. More times than she cared to recall, one of her crewmates had said something along the lines of "I have a bad feeling about this," and the feeling had proved to be an accurate barometer of the situation. As she walked down the corridor, she fingered the pouch containing the datachip. Yes, I definitely have a good feeling about this.''
98	* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: Overseer Biron's sponsor.
99	* HumanOutsideAlienInside: The Ardanans, who were established in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' as looking just like humans (as did many of the series' aliens). The SCE stories describe the Ardanan brain and demonstrate that its structure and chemistry is very different from that of humans.
100	* HumanityIsInfectious: Some of P8 Blue's belief systems are influenced by the humans she works with; she begins to find an interest in history, and even feels slightly maternal towards her larvae, being a little sad when she drops them off at the childcare centre, never to see them again.
101	* HungryJungle: The Nasat homeworld.
102	* HurlItIntoTheSun: A solution to the ''Dancing Star'' problem, or so the characters initially thought. The ''Dancing Star'' is a very advanced ship, though, and was designed to survive in there. In fact, it dives into stars to refuel.
103	* ImAHumanitarian: The crazy Vorta in ''Fables of the Prime Directive''.
104	* InSeriesNickname: P8 Blue is known by the nickname "Pattie". In fact, most members of her race have a nickname - B6 Blue, for instance, is "Bishop" and Z4 Blue is "Ziff".
105	* InformedJudaism: Averted. Captain Gold and his family are Jewish (his wife is a rabbi, no less), and it’s most definitely not InformedJudaism. As a result, Jewish customs and traditions are frequently mentioned or observed.
106	* InsectoidAliens: The Nasat, who resemble pillbugs. They therefore look like crustaceans, and are actually arachnid (eight limbs). Major character P8 Blue is a Nasat, and they're allies of humans, being part of [[TheFederation the United Federation of Planets]].
107	* InsufferableGenius: Mor glasch Tev
108	* JustFollowingOrders: "Grand Designs" involves Gomez being given orders from Captain Scott and Ambassador Marshall that include keeping Captain Gold in the dark about their true mission. Needless to say, Gold is furious when this decision to lock him out of the loop nearly causes an interstellar incident.
109	* KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler: Kieran Duffy]]
110	* LampshadeHanging: In "War Stories", Sonya Gomez, looking for every bit of extra power, curses the "fool of an engineer who designed the holodeck with an incompatible power system." This was a reference to the much maligned HandWave from Voyager to explain why the crew could use the holodeck under their desperate circumstances.
111	* LandfillBeyondTheStars: Rod Portlyn, the CorruptCorporateExecutive, turns the planet Phantas 61 into this.
112	* LuckBasedMission: The ''Minstrel's Whisper'', being a ship powered by what is more or less an [[Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy improbability drive]], essentially turns any mission into this. Beware the peanut butter... it can be ''quite'' unlucky at times. Tev later turns this to his advantage, though; he uses technology from the ''Minstrel's Whisper'' to help bring a crisis on New Mirada under control.
113	* [[ManEatingPlant Nasat-Eating Plant]]: The Citoac are a sapient variety... though they only eat their Nasat neighbours when they can't get their usual nourishment through photosynthetic means.
114	* MartialPacifist: Rennan Konya, the Betazoid security guard.
115	* MeaningfulName: The planet Eerlik and its Pevvni minority. Eerlik is a TerminallyDependentSociety controlled by computer; several episodes of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' had similar plots, and the writer and director of one of these, ''The Apple'', were named Max Ehrlic and Joseph Pevney respectively.
116	* MedievalStasis: Deliberately induced in the culture known only as the People, so as to disguise the fact that their world is merely a giant colony ship slowly transporting them to a new star system.
117	* MrViceGuy: Tev is one of the most prideful heroes around. Of course, he's a Tellarite, so to his culture it isn't actually a vice.
118	* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Two of the alien characters.
119	** The first is P8 Blue, who likes to "shake things up" and have adventures, in contrast to the rest of the Nasats, who are super-cautious, conservative, and hate taking risks.
120	** There's also Soloman the Bynar (formally known as 110), who received his name after his mate died, and he refused to return home and take a new partner as expected.
121	** But the trope is averted with the third alien character, Tev, who is very much the stereotypical Tellarite. This is noted by a human character, who in fact thinks Tev is ''the'' most stereotypical Tellarite he's ever encountered.
122	* NamedAfterTheirPlanet: Sometimes played straight (Resaurians from Resaurus, Rhaaxans from Rhaax), sometimes averted. Most notably, the Shmoam-ag aren’t from “Shmoam” or “Shmoamia” but from “Earth”. Apparently, it isn’t the first time the translator has done that -- many cultures call their planet of origin “earth”, “dirt” or “ground”.
123	* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Security chief Lt. Commander/Commander Domenica Corsi is nicknamed Core-Breach for her temper. We don't see if often, but that's mainly because the crew are extremely careful about setting her off.
124	* NamingYourColonyWorld
125	** The Tellarites don't ''seem'' to follow any of the "rules"; then again, we don't know what the names of their colonies, e.g. Maeglin and Kharzh'ulla, mean in Tellarite.
126	** The Rhaaxans don't seem to follow the rules, either.
127	** On the other hand, the Andorians seem to have named a colony after a figure from Earth mythology... unless the word means something different in Andorii.
128	** Humans are very fond of the "New Wherever" variant.
129	* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: P8 Blue, who is a perfect ambassador for the Nasat people (friendly, intelligent, kind, brave, humorous) is actually an outcast on the Nasat homeworld.
130	* NoodleIncident: The Tellarite Story (though we do get a reasonable number of details, much remains nebulous).
131	* NonMaliciousMonster: The monster shii in ''Invincible'' are simply following their programming.
132	* NotQuiteDead: The Strata, silicon-based aliens in the story ''Spin''. They are successfully "rebooted" by the ''da Vinci'' crew.
133	* OhMyGods
134	** Ho'nig, among others.
135	** The Koas worship the Architect of Time.
136	* OneSteveLimit: Subverted with Winn Mara, a minor supporting character and a Bajoran. She shares one of her names with Kai Winn Adami from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', but there's no evidence they're related. WordOfGod has more or less confirmed the name "Winn" was chosen to deliberately subvert the OneSteveLimit rule.
137	* ParentExMachina: The creatures in the story set on [[PleasurePlanet Risa]].
138	* PenalColony: The Resaurians in the two-part story ''The Demon'' have a penal colony inside a black hole, of all places.
139	* PigMan: The Tellarites, of course. Fabian Stevens insists he finds racist jokes about the Tellarite-pig resemblance tasteless, yet he seems to have an awfully large collection of them stored away in his mind. He would never accuse Tellarite team-member Tev of [[{{Pun}} "hogging]] the glory", oh no...
140	* PlaceBeyondTime: The Delta Triangle.
141	* PlanetOfCopyhats: The character M3 Green, from ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'', was an overly cautious coward. His race features in the Corps of Engineers (having been named the Nasat), and their hat is indeed "being overly cautious". However, the lead Nasat character, P8 Blue, is a straight-forward case of MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch, as she loves shaking things up and taking risks.
142	* PlantAliens: The Citoac. They share a planet with InsectoidAliens the Nasat.
143	* POWCamp: In ''Failsafe''; some of the crew spend a short time in one while undercover on a pre-warp planet.
144	* {{Precursors}}: The Preservers.
145	* {{Prequel}}: The ''What's Past'' mini-series, which is also a case of ADayInTheLimelight for several characters, including a couple of less prominent ones.
146	* {{Pride}}: Tev points out that Tellarites value this trait most highly.
147	* TheQuest: Among the race known only as the People, young males frequently undertake a quest as a coming-of-age ritual.
148	* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Captain Gold has this instinctive reaction, but he tries not to let it affect him in dealings with snake-aliens the Resaurians (who are on the whole reasonably friendly).
149	* RevengeByProxy: [[spoiler:Rod Portlyn]]
150	* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: Usually averted. Rebel movements are often very ambiguous and/or complex. The Silgov, though clearly victimized, are presented as questionable in some regards themselves, willing to victimize Koa in turn in order to get what they want. Likewise, the X'Mari Resistance are sympathetic, but clearly no saints. The Nachri rebels are questionable in conduct, too, although their grievances may well be legitimate.
151	* RidiculousFutureSequelisation: We're not too far from it already, but two stories make mention of ''Rocky VIII: The Clone Factor!''
152	* TheRival: Eevraith to Tev.
153	* RuleOfCool: Frequent with some of the more fanciful alien ships or technologies.
154	* RunawayTrain: The ''Dancing Star''. Lampshaded as such.
155	* RunningGag
156	** Abramowitz' love (and everyone else's hatred) of Sinnravian drad music.
157	** Vance Hawkins is always the one who gets roughed up, shot or otherwise harmed. This despite Rennan Konya pointing out he has particularly low pain tolerance.
158	* SacrificialLamb: 111.
159	* ServantRace
160	** The Bynars were originally this to a race of now-departed [=AIs=], though they now have their own civilization.
161	** The unnamed race who once colonized Sarindar created artificial creatures to gather food for them; two of these remained intact up until 2376 and took the form of crystal creatures known as shii, contributing to the legend of the monster shii.
162	* ShoutOut: The story ''Out of the Cocoon'' features a colony of clones. One of the clone family lines is named [=DiCamino=], suggesting the cloning planet Kamino from ''Franchise/StarWars''. Another line is named Hammond, after the fictional creator of Franchise/JurassicPark.
163	** The series as a whole has more than a few to MAS*H. Captain Gold is directly based on Colonel Potter, and in several stories it really shows. The basic concept for Tev, meanwhile, was "Charles Emerson Winchester the Tellarite."
164	* ShutUpGunshot: Gold, trapped between his wife, granddaughter, Klingon ambassador and ambassador's son, all arguing over a wedding, calmly fires a phaser into the ceiling.
165	* SiliconBasedLife: The Strata. Also the entire biosphere of Sarindar.
166	* SkewedPriorities: Played with in ''Age of Unreason''; a character trying to violate his world's laws and contact the Federation for help is chased down, and the police plead with him to surrender so they don't have to shoot -- which might damage the building he's in. The character actually feels pride and hope that they consider the building's health more important than his, reflecting that "perhaps there's hope for my people after all".
167	* SnakePeople: The Resaurians. Unusually, most of them are friendly.
168	* SpaceBattle: A couple.
169	* SpaceMines: The Gorn Hegemony makes use of these, and fields specialized mine-launcher ships. One such vessel causes trouble for the Corps of Engineers in the story “Where Time Stands Still”.
170	* SpinoffSendoff: Captain Picard and the crew of ''Enterprise'' feature heavily in the first novella; Geordi La Forge hangs around for a few stories more, until the new characters are established enough to carry the series.
171	* StarfishLanguage: The Citoac communicate by using sounds of a pitch that stimulates the brain of another being, directly influencing their neurology.
172	* StayInTheKitchen: The Nalori have a similar ideology, and resent having a female performing administrative work at their facility on Sarindar.
173	* StopBeingStereotypical: P8 Blue to many of her fellow Nasats; she hangs a lampshade on it in a discussion with a non-Nasat friend.
174	* SupremeChef: Rabbi Rachel Gilman
175	* SurvivorsGuilt: Domenica Corsi experiences this after the Galvan VI incident, in which many of the crew died while she, the security chief, was unconscious and helpless.
176	** Lense has some from the Dominion War, which leads to Gold hauling her in for informal therapy since the ''da Vinci'' [[ThereAreNoTherapists does not have a counselor aboard]].
177	* TerminallyDependentSociety: Eerlik, which is run by MasterComputer, and nearly falls apart when it breaks.
178	* {{Terraform}}: A two-part installment features the ''da Vinci'' called to Venus, to participate in the terraforming project there. The Bynars are providing the humans with assistance.
179	* TimeTravelForFunAndProfit: One story involves a Ferengi finding a time machine and using it to manipulate the stock market in his favour. He becomes a success story "overnight", but his meddling is soon dealt with by the Corps of Engineers, who stumble across his base. After a short chase through planet Ferenginar's recent past, he's apprehended and his time machine destroyed.
180	* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Scotty and Admiral Ross have a lengthy conversation about this in the story ''The Future Begins'', following Scotty's temporary retirement (having lost faith in Starfleet after being roped into one of Admiral Nechayev's more underhanded operations). The exchange involves Ross revealing the incident that led to his awareness of Section 31 (as revealed in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'').
181	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Tev does like his apple ranchers.
182	* TreeTopTown: The Nasat homeworld. The Nasat civilization originated on the forest floor, but now resides in the trees.
183	* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: The Bynars reverse the usual situation; they're a race of organic beings bio-engineered by machine intelligences, and who later rebelled against their robotic masters.
184	* TwinTelepathy: The Miradorn. An important plot point during the story set on their homeworld (''The Cleanup''). And, see AngstySurvivingTwin.
185	* TyphoidMary: Dobrah
186	* UnwantedFalseFaith: The Nalori go from resenting Sonya Gomez to near-worship of her after she kills a monster shii. They call her the ''sanuul'', the "Curse-lifter".
187	* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Rod Portlyn
188	* WarIsHell: "Failsafe", and the brutal war on Teneb.
189	* WeaponOfMassDestruction: Several times. The Rhaaxan homeworld and its colonies were both secretly developing them, for potential use against the other. In the WhamEpisode ''Wildfire'', it was feared the title Wildfire device could be used for this purpose, though it wasn't intended as a weapon. Finally, recurring villain Overseer Biron and his crew were attempting to reconfigure the abandoned Empok Nor station into a superweapon. The ''da Vinci'' crew team up with characters from the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch'' to stop them.
190	* WeDoTheImpossible: Basically the Corps of Engineers in a nutshell.
191	* WeirdnessMagnet: The ''da Vinci'', as lampshaded in unusually specific terms by Fabian Stevens following their second crazy Vorta adventure in as many weeks.
192	* WhamEpisode: ''Wildfire'', in which a major character is killed off, along with several supporting characters, and the ship is crippled and nearly destroyed. For the entirety of the rest of the series, the events of ''Wildfire'' will be haunting the surviving characters.
193	* WhatAPieceOfJunk: The ''Lovell''. It's an old ''Daedalus''-class starship that had been decommissioned for half a century before the Starfleet Corps of Engineers claimed it for their own. It has mismatched hull plates, welds and patches all over, and rattles like it's about to explode when it first accelerates to warp speed. But because it's a ship full of engineers who have nothing better to do than tinker, repair, or rebuild things it can keep up with (or outrun) any ship in the fleet.
194	* WholeEpisodeFlashback: ''10 Is Better Than 01''. Most of the other "What's Past" stories, too, though they usually have a prologue and epilogue set in the "present".
195	* YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord: Sonya Gomez is ''Sanuul!''
196	* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Tev in ''Ring Around the Sky''.
197	* YouDidntAsk: This is the Keorgans' response when Carol Abramowitz and Bart Faulwell demand to know why the danger facing the Keorgan capital wasn't explained in the report they were sent before arriving.
198	* YouHaveFailedMe: Averted with Overseer Biron's Sponsor, who is quite understanding on those occasions where Biron fails in his task. Biron himself, on the other hand, is happy to kill crewmen who disappoint him, as is his right as an Officer class Androssi.
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Context Literature / StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers