Characters / Star Trek: The Next Generation - Main Characters

Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Character Index
Main Characters (Jean-Luc Picard) | Recurring Crew | Other Recurring Characters

The crew of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D.^note Top, from left to right: William Riker, Data, Guinan, Geordi La Forge, Worf. Bottom, left to right: Deanna Troi, Picard, Dr. Beverly Crusher. Wesley's holding the camera. Better than anyone else could, no doubt. Especially Tasha.

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Captain Jean-Luc Picard

See Jean-Luc Picard

Commander William Riker

Commander William T. Riker

Played By: Jonathan Frakes

Dubbed in French by: Bernard Bollet (TNG), Sylvain Lemarié (Movies)

Dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese by: Alfredo Martins (TNG, Season 1), José Augusto Sendim (TNG, Season 2 on)

Riker: (after Q gives him two attractive women) I don't need your fantasy women!
Q: Oh, you're so stolid! You weren't like that before the beard!

The quintessential Number Two (or One). Started life as an expy of Kirk: a womanizing, cocksure space ace. With the beard, however, came a newfound gravitas and sense of responsibility. Fiercely loyal, he is probably the one officer whom Picard is most open with. Riker is very charming and affable with his peers, though a few Lower Deck Episodes show that his subordinates are intimidated by him as he demands a performance up to the standards of the fleet's flagship.

Although an excellent officer, Riker was notorious for refusing promotions so that he could stay on board the Enterprise. Several alternate timelines or illusionary realities put him in the Captain's chair.

For tropes related to his appearances on some of the other shows, see his entries on:

• Lower Decks
• Picard

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• The Ace: Riker is good at everything. He's an inspiring leader, an Ace Pilot, a badass fighter, a nice guy, a ladies' man, a skilled poker player, and a talented trombonist. Picard says that Riker's the best officer he's ever worked with.
• Ace Pilot: Riker is famed among Starfleet for his piloting prowess. He establishes his credentials in "Encounter at Farpoint" with a manual spaceport docking. In "Chains of Command," Geordi says that the only way to have 100% certainty on a dangerous mission's success is to have Riker take the driver's seat.
• Ambiguously Bi: Riker is only shown onscreen in relationships with females, human or otherwise, except in an episode where he falls in love with an alien from a species without sexual differentiation. While the alien self-identifies as female (and is persecuted for this by her species), the given description of her species' method of procreation suggests that she has some sort of insertive sex organ. This implies that Riker is either attracted to that or capable of disregarding it. Frakes went on record saying Riker is "try-sexual" as in "he'll try anything once."
• Anchored Ship: Though he dumped Troi a few years before the pilot, Riker is still pining after his imzadi, grilling her potential boyfriends like a jealous lover. This relationship was alluded to over seven long years but the actual mechanics never came to light. Unfortunately, Riker and Troi only got together properly during a B-plot in the movies, when nobody watching was really interested.
• Archnemesis Dad: Kyle Riker hasn’t been in touch with Riker for fifteen years and he came to the Enterprise to make his apologies and try and build a relationship with him. Good luck with that; he is extremely jealous of his son’s accomplishments and he has always been competitive with him. Will has been on his own since he was fifteen years old and everything he has achieved he did on his own. Naturally Riker and his dad decide to solve their differences with an Ambu-Jitsu contest (which Kyle wins via an illegal maneuver); Pulaski does try to point what babies they're being, but they go ahead and beat the crap out of each other regardless. Regardless of his parenting, it did encouage Riker to fight for what's his and get where he is today, so there's that.
• Bold Explorer: Sharing this role with Picard, Riker was closer to the classic model as seen in the original series.
• Boldly Coming:
  • He has a habit of quickly falling for women from different planets, which occasionally gets the Enterprise in trouble.
  • When two Klingon women make a pass at him, he gets asked if he could "endure" a Klingon woman, and he replies ‘one or both?’ That's the correct response.
  • The outrageous "flirting" scene between Riker and Guinan ("The Dauphin"), intended to school Wesley on the finer points of love. Guinan barks "shut up kid" to Wes as she luxuriates in Riker’s pickup lines.
  • When Riker hears that Betazoid women's sex drive quadruples in middle age, he looks delighted. He picked the right species to later marry!
• Captain Morgan Pose: Just look at his picture. Used for practical reasons, since he is significantly taller than his castmates. The former trope namer.
  • Frakes worked as a furniture mover before becoming an actor, and sustained a back injury that made certain actions painful for him (note his very unusual way of sitting in seats - that is, stepping over them!); the Captain Morgan Pose was Frakes' way of making standing around easier for him.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Part and parcel of being the ship's XO. Ensign Ro takes an instant dislike to Riker's directives (i.e. barking at her to adopt proper Starfleet dress code) even though they're probably coming from upstairs.
• Carpet of Virility: As shown in the first-season episode "Angel One."
• Character Tics: He has a very peculiar way of getting in and out of chairs. According to Frakes, the affectation was a pure character bit, driven by his desire to have a physical mannerism that stood out among the crew. With his extra height and leg length, it was just as easy to swing his leg over a chair as it was to pull it out and sit in it. Likely, the truth is a bit of both.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In his first scene, Riker makes Geordi snap to attention when delivering a message. He never does anything like this again over the course of the series, and it comes across rather out of character.
  • In early episodes he's portrayed as something of a ruthless careerist and it's stated that he and Troi broke up because he was too dedicated to his dream of commanding a starship. Later on, as listed below in Limited Advancement Opportunities, Riker became notorious for turning down multiple offers to command a starship of his own, preferring to be the XO of the flagship rather than the captain of a lesser vessel.
• Characterizing Sitting Pose: He likes to sit on a chair leaning to a side in a way that looks like a slouch and he sits down by walking to the back of the chair and stepping over it, reflecting his occasional Cowboy Cop tactics. Also a case of Real Life Writes the Plot because Jonathan Frakes has spinal problems and this was the most comfortable way he could sit on the chairs designed for the "Enterprise" sets.
• Character Overlap: William Thomas Riker is tied (with Spock) for most crossover appearances within the franchise, having appeared in five more shows beyond this one: DS9: "Defiant"^note This one requires a bit of Loophole Abuse as Frakes is technically playing Riker's clone, Thomas, from "Second Chances," who himself is impersonating Will, VOY: "Death Wish", ENT: "These Are The Voyages..." (whose Framing Device is of Riker trying to figure out what to do during the events of TNG: "The Pegasus"), a couple episodes of LWD and several more of PIC. Unlike Spock, who has been played by three different actors over the course of 65 years, Riker is always portrayed by Jonathan Frakes.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Although he does seem to sleep around a lot, Riker is quite respectful of women and even goes into actual romance now and again.
• Commander Contrarian: Sometimes, and that's because it's his job to point out when his captain may be wrong. The fact that he did just that on the Hood is why Picard chose him to be Number One.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of the best in the Galaxy.
• Determinator: Data's analysis of his personality and record in "Peak Performance" that he will not give up, and that the weaker his position, the more aggressive will be his posture.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Shields up, Red Alert! What they keep forgetting to tell Riker is that going to Red Alert raises the shields automatically.
• Dirty Business: To have Riker act as the prosecutor against Data in "Measure of a Man" is a dilemma because he has never lost a fight. He agrees not to deliberately throw the case, or else Data will be handed straight to Commander Maddox to be taken apart. Riker gives a reasoned argument in proving that Data is a device rather than a man but is deeply ashamed of the things he says in the courtroom. Fortunately Data readily forgives him.
• Disappeared Dad: "The Icarus Factor" reveals that Riker feels bitter resentment to his father for not being around after the death of Riker's mother. Until that episode, they'd neither seen nor spoken to each other in nearly 15 years.
• Deuteragonist: Initially. Later eclipsed by Data.
• Drunk with Power: Could Riker possibly puff his chest out any further once he's been awarded with Q's powers? At the start of "Hide & Q," he considers being compared to the more modest Picard a compliment. Suddenly he starts behaving like a conceited jerk, calling Picard by his first name, demanding a meeting of the Bridge crew and walking away from the Captain whilst he is talking to him. Even the wishes Riker grants are in-character – he steals ten years of Wesley’s life and turns him into a beefcake, has a sexually rampant Klingon woman ravaging Worf (in the workplace), fixes Geordi’s eyesight and threatens to turn Data into a human. But Data's response sobers him up, and he acknowledges that he's been acting like a fool - though he does bristle just a bit when Picard bluntly affirms it.
• Duplicate Divergence: Has a transporter accident clone who was left abandoned on an alien planet for years before anyone realized he existed. After he was rescued he started going by his middle name "Thomas" and joined the Maquis.
• Ethical Slut: Riker has a lot of romantic relationships, including frequent flings with women on Risa, and tends to respond quite openly to invitations by women, and seems to remain on good terms with them afterwards, as long as no one is getting hurt or it's inappropriate (e.g. he refuses invitations by married women, but when the crew lost their memories, he jumped into bed with Ro Laren almost immediately when she offered). He's quite gallant and charming about it and on the rare chance that the relationship develops into something serious, he takes it very seriously. He also stops one sexual interlude with a woman who acts as though she were a Sex Slave instead of an equal partner.
• Expy: To Captain Kirk, with his way with (alien) women and his reputation as The Ace.
• Famous for Being First: Riker volunteers to be part of an Officer Exchange Program, becoming the First Officer of a Klingon battlecruiser, mostly because nobody's ever done it before. ("It" being OEP-ing on a Klingon ship, not OEP-ing in general.)
• The Gambler: He relies on traditional tactics "only 21% of the time." In poker games, he's usually the one cleaning house.
  Crusher: (throws in her cards) Take it.
  Riker: Any time, Doctor.
  Worf: Four hands in a row. How does he do it?
  Riker: I cheat. (Beat as everyone looks at each other) I'm kidding.
  • As Frakes himself pointed out, this is all the more impressive considering Riker's usual opponents include an android who can remember every card in the deck, his empathic ex-girlfriend and a guy who can possibly see through the cards.
• Guile Hero:
  • Data notes that Riker is skilled at using "unusual cunning" and knowledge of his opponent to fool them. The Captain has to be aware of this talent for thinking outside-the-box.
  • "A Matter of Honor" ended with Riker on the bridge of a Klingon Bird of Prey ordering the Enterprise to surrender. Not impressive enough? Okay, in a war games exercise in "Peak Performance," he helmed a nearly 80-year-old Constellation class ship (minimum power, skeleton crew, no warp drive) and still managed to survive a run-in with some Ferengi—ironically by making it look as if the derelict ship had blown itself up.
  • His crowning moment of this came when he had to fight Picard/Locutus, who knew everything about Riker and all the plans the crew had cooked up to fight the Borg. He played poker for the Alpha Quadrant and won; you can see that he smugly knows it, when his plan to capture Locutus succeeds.
  • Exaggerated in the movies: Riker exploits a fault in a cloaking device to lower a Klingon ship's shields in Generations, and later in Insurrection performs three practically insane tactical maneuvers when up against three ships, each of which is a match for the Enterprise: Destroying his own warp core to stop a Wave-Motion Gun's attack, sucking up explosive gas and spitting it out in front of two enemy ships to make them blow themselves up, and flying at the third on a collision course and juking at the last second to land some point-blank shots to disable it.
• Honor Before Reason: While serving aboard the Hood, Riker refused to allow his captain to beam down into hostile conditions even when threatened with a court martial for disobeying orders. Picard made him his first officer based on that incident.
  Picard: I wanted someone who would stand up to me; someone who was more concerned with the safety of the ship and the mission than with how it would look on his record.
• I'll Be in My Bunk: Or more specifically, "I'll be in holodeck four!"
• It Runs in the Family: Dr. Pulaski would have married Kyle Riker in a heartbeat, but it seems he had other priorities. Something to do with his career.
• Jerkass: Occasionally invoked. He's capable of putting up an exceptionally cruel front if required. However, it's part of Riker's job as executive officer to be the 'mean' member of the bridge crew when it comes to dealing with delinquents or perceived substandards such as Ro Laren or Reg Barclay. Off duty, he drops the facade as quick as he can so he can remain friends with the crew. He's basically a really nice guy.
• The Kirk: Riker is a very interesting example of this trope. In short, Data will usually present a strictly rational solution to an ethical dilemma, while Crusher or Troi will present a more emotional one. Remember, usually they're people, not abstracts. At this point, Riker will weigh them internally and give his opinion to Picard, who then re-Kirks it and makes a decision. For a guy who hates bureaucratic admirals, he sure does like oversight.
• Large and in Charge: Riker is just a shade under two meters tall (6'4" or 193 cm), and as First Officer is responsible for most of the day-to-day operations of the Enterprise.
• Lethal Chef: Only Worf likes his cooking, which is pretty bad. He's no Ben Sisko, that's for sure (although, in fairness, the problem could have been the weird alien eggs he was cooking the one time we see him do it).
• Limited Advancement Opportunities:
  • By his own choice, no less. He was offered command several times during the series, but always turned them down because he would rather serve as first officer on the flagship than captain of an insignificant vessel ^*and because Status Quo Is God.
  • In "The Icarus Factor," he turned down a Captain's chair on the Aries because he saw it as another volley in the ongoing war with his father, Kyle. By turning down the job he allowed Kyle's legacy to supercede his and ended their rivalry.
  • He explains his reasoning behind this to Captain Picard in Part I of "The Best of Both Worlds": "With all due respect, sir, you need me." In Part II of that episode, he's given a field promotion to Captain after Picard's capture and has four pips on his uniform signifying his new rank, but after Picard's return, he has three pips again for some reason. (No reason he couldn't have continued to serve as first officer while keeping his new rank, especially since there's already precedence for it. And after saving the Federation, he really deserved to keep that extra pip.) He finally accepts a promotion in Nemesis.
  • The novels leading up to Nemesis make his decision more clear. He was ready to turn down his promotion to captain the USS Titan the same as he turned down many other ships, until he realizes what that decision would mean for Data. As an android, Data is supremely competent and not the least bit ambitious to move up the Starfleet ranks. And because Riker has always been there as Picard's right hand, he's never had a chance to move into a real leadership position. Riker realizes that in a way, he's taken advantage of Data's android nature, by using his talents but never feeling threatened with being overshadowed the way he would with a competent and ambitious humanoid officer looking to make their mark. So by limiting his own advancement, he is giving Limited Advancement Opportunities to Data and other officers beneath him ^note  This is true in real life militaries; it's known as the "up or out" system. It is a process designed to promote a steady stream of officers to ever-higher ranks as merited, while filtering out those who don't match up, in order to ensure that the top officers reach the top ranks and that those same officers don't linger to impede the upward mobility of those coming up behind them. In a real life system, if Riker hadn't been promoted to captain after X number of years, he'd have been retired to free up his billet for someone who can. For that reason, he takes the captain's job so that Data can have his chance to take over as the new Number One and develop his own leadership qualities in a way he'd never had the chance to.
  • He also hints that part of the reason for turning down offered commands is that he hopes one day to command the Enterprise-D and believes that it would be easier to become captain of that ship by moving from XO to Captain than to pray for his name to get chosen for a transfer back to the Enterprise.
• Manly Facial Hair: He has a Seadog Beard, a commanding presence on The Bridge, and a lot of appeal to the females.
• Married to the Job: This commander isn't ready to settle down with Troi... yet. It took him seven seasons and a handful of films to bed Deanna – what he wants most is to Captain a Starship!
• Meaningful Name: Switch the consonants in "Kirk" and add an E for pronunciation. What does it spell? Bonus points for his first name coming from Kirk's actor.
• Military Maverick: Riker can be relaxed to the point of indolence sometimes, so it comes as a rude awakening when Jellico assesses him as arrogant, willful, insubordinate and not particularly good! He always assumed that he would be in command of the Enterprise if Picard was ever re-assigned. The look on his face when he realizes he is going to be supplanted by Jellico is priceless. Riker doesn't take kindly to this approach and can barely keep up with the demands of his new Captain.
• Missing Mom: He never knew his mother as she died when he was very young. With Betty gone, Will and Kyle grew apart; Kyle kept trying to challenge Riker to keep him strong but his son just saw it as bullying.
• My Greatest Failure: Standing up for then-Captain Pressman during a mutiny on the Pegasus. He was fresh out of the academy and only concerned with basic loyalty to a captain, so he thought the mutineers were selfish traitors and turned a phaser on them. It wasn't until later that he realized he made the wrong choice. It's implied his mistake on the Pegasus is why he was more willing to stand up to his superior officers in later assignments.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Riker is known for being a strong, commanding presence. He may be quietly grim in bad situations, but he does his best to keep it together for the crew. If he's ranting like a madman ("Frame of Mind", one alternate Riker in "Parallels"), you know things have really gone to hell.
• Phrase Catcher: "He's the best!" Said first by Tasha Yar and later echoed by Picard himself when his exceptional talents are doubted. Geordie too, to Jellico no less, about the perfection he exudes. Not entirely accurate, he can't play "Night Bird".
• Raging Stiffie: "The Naked Now". While everybody else is flirting, shagging and generally having a good time, poor Riker is struggling to control his urges and save the ship.
• Really Gets Around: No one is immune to his charms.
• Running Gag: One wonders if it was intentional on the part of the writers, because otherwise it's remarkable that every time he's offered the Captain's chair, the ship in question ends up being destroyed in a later episode?!
• Secret Test of Character:
  • You feel really sorry for the guy as he is trying to impress his new Captain, but gets a right dressing down in return. Of course, this is just a test by Picard to see if Riker sticks to his guns and defends his record (which borders on insubordinate) or kiss up to the boss. Happily, Riker passes with flying colors. A year later, Picard acknowledges what a jerk he was when Riker first boarded the Enterprise and gives him some long overdue praise. In "Peak Performance," Picard suggests that only a fool would shrug off Riker’s advice and he is the finest officer with whom he has ever served.
  • Q suggests that in the future there might come a time when humanity progresses beyond even them, which gives him a solid reason for wanting to study how Riker handles real power.
• Signature Instrument: His favorite instrument is the trombone, which goes nicely with his love of jazz. He once uses it to "talk" to Deanna, who then jokes that it's less confusing than how he normally talks.
• Theatrics of Pain: Bravo to Jonathan Frakes who demonstrates how a true action hero should fall when he is struck by a Ferengi whip. Theatrical doesn’t cover it.
• The Watson: Riker is the least scientifically knowledgeable of the command staff, so it usually falls to him to ask for clarifications and layman's translations of Techno Babble.
• What a Piece of Junk: Riker’s delighted face at the activation of the decrepit Bridge of the Hathaway (‘It's ours!’). If Riker had a choice of which ship to command, he would definitely take the old TOS ship which is short-handed, under-equipped, and required him to improvise.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He has a bad habit of making snap judgements about people without investigating, or basing his opinions on someone's Starfleet record rather than getting to know them personally and making a fair assessment - which is quite ironic considering the number of times he's been Wrongly Accused by people doing the same to him. He gets called out on it more than once.

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge

Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge

Played By: LeVar Burton

Dubbed in French by: Gérard Malabat (TNG), Marc Bretonnière (Generations and Nemesis), Thierry Desroses (First Contact and Insurrection)

Dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese by: Marco Ribeiro (TNG, Season 1), Jorge Jr (TNG, Season 2 to 6), Marcos Souza (TNG, Season 7)

"[...] We are gonna see something that people will talk about for years! I mean, think about it: no more bulky warp engines, or nacelles. A ship just generates a soliton wave and then rides it through space, like a surfboard. This is going to be like being there to watch Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier, or Zefram Cochrane engage the first warp drive!"

Engineering whiz and all-around Nice Guy. Born blind, he wears a spiffy VISOR which allows for some degree of sight, but he also is in constant pain with his eyes. He starts out as one of the ship's helmsmen alongside Data, but in Season 2 he was made Chief Engineer and stayed in that role for the rest of the series, making it his job to tell the captain that [insert engineering feat here] was impossible and then do it within an absurdly short timeframe.

One of Geordi's more prominent aspects was his friendship with Data. He often described himself as Data's best friend and was an eager assistant in the android's attempts to become more human.

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• All Love Is Unrequited: He can never seem to get the girl. Creator interviews suggest that this is partly because Geordi is in love with the Enterprise, similar to the way that Kirk was (although it is much less of a Masochism Tango). His relationship with the holographic Leah Brahms, the ship's designer, evokes this.
• Aura Vision: Occasionally the crew (and audience) gets to see what Geordi sees, which appears as a confusing mass of light and color. Geordi explains that he can choose what to focus on the same way he can focus on one conversation in a crowded room. In the book Metamorphosis, Geordi describes organic beings as having a shifting aura around them. Data's more machine nature has his aura look like a halo. When Data becomes human, Geordi observes that he's "lost his halo".
• Beware the Nice Ones: One of the nicest characters on the show, but in "The Next Phase" he still shoved an armed Romulan agent into the vacuum of space to save Ro.
• Black and Nerdy: Just like LeVar Burton.
• Blind Black Guy: This is the most immediately noticeable part of his character.
• Blind Without 'Em: Literally. There are a few episodes in which his VISOR is lost or stolen.
• Butt-Monkey: Geordi 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 Star Trek: 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 "The Mind's Eye", 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.
• Deadpan Snarker: More deadpan than snark.
• Disability Superpower: The VISOR doesn't mimic normal human eyesight, but its ability to see infrared and EM spectrums comes in handy, and it can be jury-rigged to do some odd tasks.
• Electronic Eyes: In the movies, as of First Contact.
  • An example of Real Life Writes the Plot, as the VISOR prop was literally clamped onto Burton's temples. The appliance led to Burton having horrific headaches at the end of a day of shooting.
• The Engineer: Chief Engineer, after his promotion early in the series.
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: His VISOR allows him to "see" a lot of things that normal eyes can't. There are several times where the Enterprise comes up against something weird, and Picard orders LaForge to go look out the nearest window and report what he sees.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "Elementary, Dear Data", Geordi makes a very good point that a Sherlock Holmes mystery with no mystery is no fun at all and encourages Data to approach the scenario without all the answers so he can truly prove his worth as a master detective. Oops.
• Handicapped Badass: When he loses his VISOR he's almost helpless, but if he's got it, he's just as badass as the rest of them.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Data.
• Klingon Promotion: Come Season 2, Geordi is now in charge of Engineering. Finally, somebody who will last more than five minutes in the job, since it became something of a death sentence in the first season.
• Living Lie Detector: In one episode, he states that he can detect subtle shifts in people's bio-signs (at least, with humans) that let him tell if they're lying. This doesn't really come up again.
• Loving a Shadow: Geordi gravitates towards this. In "Booby Trap," he fell in love with a holographic recreation of Dr. Leah Brahms, the architect of the Enterprise-D, a romance which collided with reality once the real Leah turned up in "Galaxy's Child". In a later episode, "Aquiel," he becomes smitten with the eponymous (supposedly) dead science officer after examining her personal logs. Flesh-and-blood women are not, to put it delicately, his strong suit; Geordi is simply too clingy and too tactless.
• Military Brat: Both parents were in Starfleet.
• Mr. Fixit: As Chief Engineer, it's his job to fix whatever thing's taken the warp core offline. He and Dr. Crusher are usually the ones who sift through Data's head when he has malfunctions as well (Geordi on account of technical know-how and Crusher on account of surgeon's hands)
• Nice Guy: Quite probably the nicest and most easy-going guy in the whole future. An android who is literally incapable of feeling affection for anyone or anything considers this guy his best friend. A Borg drone was turned away from the collective after a day of conversation with him, and when re-encountered, his first instinct was to ask if his old friend Geordi was alright. That's how likable Geordi is.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Geordi was canonically born in Somalia, but LeVar Burton never made any attempt to disguise his American accent.
  • This is likely because Geordi's a military (Starfleet) 'brat'. And like many military 'brats', he could've been born where his parents were stationed, but not lived there for any significant amount of time. Also, the fact that neither of Geordi's Starfleet parents showed any trace of Somali accent, culture, or background, strengthens the argument that his birthplace had little bearing on his upbringing.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He’s the first one to get infected in “The Naked Now”, and shows it off by a bad-tempered joke. Riker mentions that he’s too nice for that to be in character for him.
• Technobabble: Far from the only source of it in the show, but he could well be the poster boy for this trope.
• The Professor
• Rank Up: Twice; Geordi starts out as a junior lieutenant in Season 1, gets promoted to full lieutenant and made Chief Engineer by Season 2, and by Season 3, he's become a lieutenant commander.
• The Smart Guy: The most likely cast member to Technobabble a solution to the problem of the week.
• Throwing Off the Disability: His eyes and vision were completely regenerated in Insurrection because of the rejuvenating effects of the Ba'ku homeworld. This eliminated his disability.
  • In "Hide and Q," the Q-empowered Riker grants Geordi eyesight. Though he briefly sees without his VISOR, he soon declines. ("I don't like where it came from.")
  • Reportedly, it was suggested that this trope be invoked early into the series' run, with the justification being 24th century technology could simply cure his blindness. Both Burton and Roddenberry were against it - considering it a disservice to blind people.
• Translator Buddy: For Data.
• Twofer Token Minority: African and blind.

Lieutenant Natasha "Tasha" Yar

Lieutenant Natasha "Tasha" Yar

Played By: Denise Crosby

Dubbed in French by: Laurence Dourlens

Dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese by: Marly Ribeiro (TNG, Season 1), Andrea Murucci (TNG, Season 7)

Trent: Mistress Beata invites you to witness this morning's reaffirmation of Angel One's moral imperative.
Tasha: Is that the civilized word for 'murder' on this world?

The Enterprise-D's first Chief of Security, preceding Worf. Although conceived as a tough-as-nails Action Girl with a dark past, the show still lacked its beard of quality, meaning she would regularly get hamstrung by the Monster of the Week. As a result, Denise Crosby left the show before the first season was over, and Tasha was unceremoniously killed by an evil slime monster.

The character was brought back in the S3 episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," where she was given a chance to be as well-written as the rest of the cast and given a more meaningful death.

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• Ambiguously Bi: In “The Naked Now”, she talks like she’s always had a crush on Deanna, and touches her hand for long enough that Deanna looks questioning.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: She suggests the (impractical and provocative) plan of blasting their way free of any situation.
• Back for the Dead: The episode "Yesterday's Enterprise." Tasha's meaningless death in the original timeline was discussed by her and Guinan, and Tasha decided that, if she was going to be "killed" by the restoration of the timeline, she would rather make a Heroic Sacrifice with the crew of the Enterprise-C.
• Back for the Finale: When Picard flashes back to the Farpoint mission.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Tasha is actually a sweet person to her comrades. But she is all business when it comes to doing her job. Her hotheadedness actually didn't last long beyond the first few episodes; this possibly being a vestige of when her character was originally written as a Vasquez expy. After this, she was typically affable and soft spoken. All of the hotheadedness was probably transferred to Worf in order to avoid character trait redundancy.
• Boyish Short Hair: She always keeps her hair short, and she's the most tomboyish woman on the Enterprise.
• Bridge Bunny: To Denise Crosby's displeasure.
• Characterization Marches On: In "Encounter at Farpoint", Tasha Yar loses her temper and essentially goes into a tirade against the illusionary postapocalyptic courtroom. This may be a carryover from The Series Bible where her character was originally called Macha Hernandez and was essentially meant to be an expy of Vasquez from Aliens (whom the series bible specifically refers to), in that she was fiery and feisty. This was evidently forgotten immediately when the producers realized that a characterization based on a Space Marine was not exactly compatible with the non-violent, Mildly Military vision of Gene Roddenberry's future. After this, Tasha was regularly shown to be somewhat mild mannered but still capable and independent.
• Chickification: Just what the new Security Chief needed to put her stamp on this ship: a virus that makes you permanently blitzed! Hopefully this was the only instance when Tasha’s sexual throes were blasted across the Bridge intercom.
• Cosmic Plaything: Even an alternate-universe version of Tasha can't seem to avoid dying tragically and pointlessly.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She came from a planet that had descended into anarchy. This is incredibly dark material, so much so that DS9 would later be criticized for straying too far from the Federation and into lawlessness.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Tasha Yar from the reality where the Enterprise-C fell into a wormhole learns that in the soon-to-be-restored reality she was killed, but she still volunteers to go back through to help the C crew.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: It gets her frozen for her troubles, but she still tells Q and his Kangaroo Court to go to hell in a seriously ballsy Patrick Stewart Speech.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: Infamously so, killed off by a random one-shot Monster of the Week in as abrupt a manner as would usually fit a Red Shirt. Unlike most red shirts, however, Tasha is never forgotten.
• Failed a Spot Check: This woman is a liability. In "Justice", she mentions that she has catalogued all of the Edo's laws and customs and yet she fails to mention that if you fall into some plants, you will be executed. "It’s a kind of syringe..." Tasha informs Riker, a little too late.
• Following in Their Rescuer's Footsteps: It was Starfleet officers who rescued Tasha from the Crapsack World on which she grew up, and she went on to serve in the organization herself, even singing it's praises to Q's face.
• Hot-Blooded: Q turns her into a yellow popsicle after she starts ranting on about how fabulous Earth is; the implication being someone needs to cool her down. ("She’s frozen!" — Good catch, Troi.)
• Informed Attractiveness: Tasha is described as very attractive on several occasions. Geordi comments on her beauty, and multiple humanoid aliens - like the Ligonian ruler and a Romulan general - try to make her their concubine.
• In-Series Nickname: Tasha.
• Killed Off for Real: In the first season episode "Skin of Evil". Denise Crosby left the show because she felt her character didn't have enough to do in the episodes. The producers probably felt that there were too many characters anyway and needed to trim the cast a bit. So they apparently took it pretty well. In fact, they worked with Crosby to make her departing episode special in terms of Star Trek, the show that was responsible for the Redshirt trope. Also, driven home is the fact that Yar's death was somewhat pointless and understated and not the type of dramatic heroic death usually reserved for main characters. But then, there was the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," which resurrects her in an alternate timeline, to give her a more heroic and meaningful death... only for the Redemption two-parter to undermine that too.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Tasha needs to calm down a bit: one of Lutan’s guards tries to hand a vaccine to Picard and she beats the crap out of him!
• The Lad-ette: Often participated in competitive/athletic activities. She wears her hair in a shorter, lower maintenance style (at least when compared to Deanna or Beverly). Subverted in the sense that she eschews the stereotypical affected crudity of many contemporary Ladettes and likes to relax into her femininity when off duty.
• Ms. Fanservice: Drunk Tasha wandering the ship with a Supermodel Strut; her "blitzed" voice is very seductive. She later seduces Data, after changing into a revealing Bedlah Babe outfit.
• The One Who Made It Out: Unlike her sister, who appears later to manipulate the crew when they visit her homeworld.
• Rape as Backstory: Possibly implied. She mentions that she spent most of her childhood dodging Rape-Gangs, but doesn't explicitly say if they ever caught her. The fact that she first mentions this while hitting on Data before having sex with him, brings up another trope.
• Robosexual: While under the influence in "The Naked Now", Tasha hits on and has sex with Data. The fact that it's vaguely suggested that had she lived, and in other timelines where she did, it would have become at the very least a regular thing suggests that she is attracted to him. Given her own Dark and Troubled Past, it makes a kind of sense that she might find comfort in the stability a relationship with a Tin Man like Data could provide.
• Sex Slave: Tragically, her alternate timeline self wound up being forced into this position by a Romulan general in order to save the lives of her fellow prisoners of war.
• Ship Tease: Besides Data, Tasha seemed to share feelings with Geordi and Worf, as well.
• That Didn't Happen: The night with Data. He agrees to keep it quiet, but we see that it's one of his most precious memories. (In an extended version of Yar's goodbye message, she says, "Data? It did happen.")
• Timey-Wimey Ball: As of "Yesterday's Enterprise".
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Troi's girly girl. “The Naked Now” has her stealing Deanna’s clothes because she’s always loved how she dresses and does her hair.
• Undignified Death:
  • One of the worse examples in Star Trek, casually murdered by Armus like a Red Shirt.
  • Her fate in the altered timeline of "Yesterday's Enterprise" is ultimately little better; after her attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice, she was taken as a concubine by a Romulan general, having a daughter, and ultimately being unceremoniously shot when said daughter ruined Tasha's eventual escape attempt.
• Vasquez Always Dies: This trope was not intended when the character was created, but Denise Crosby's desire to leave to show had this trope being played depressingly straight. Interestingly, she was originally modeled directly after Vasquez, originally being called "Macha Hernandez" before being renamed Tasha Yar. Even more interestingly, the role was read by dark-haired, olive-skinned Marina Sirtis, while Crosby read for the role of the ship's counselor. They swapped parts.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: It would have been interesting to see how the character was handled once the show runners got their act together.
• The Worf Effect: How Tasha died. This was one of the earlier examples of the trope on the series, even before Worf himself replaced Tasha as the chief security officer.

Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Commander) Worf

Lieutenant Worf (later Lieutenant Commander) aboard Enterprise-D

Played By: Michael Dorn

Dubbed in French by: Michel Blin (TNG), Benoit Allemane (Movies)

Dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese by: Guilherme Briggs (TNG-Season One), José Santa Cruz (TNG-Season 2 on, First Contact, Insurrection), Antônio Moreno (Nemesis)

"I am not a merry man!"

The genesis for Worf was Gene Roddenberry's suggestion that there be a "Klingon marine" on the Enterprise bridge, thus symbolizing that the human-Klingon feud was a thing of the past. Didn't quite work since it turned out he was actually raised by humans and was the only Klingon in all of Starfleet, and the Klingons—while no longer enemies—still had a pretty tense relationship with the Federation. But it did set up some very good and long-running storylines.

Of all the TNG regulars, Worf underwent the most Character Development, partially because his early characterization was minuscule, and partially because the character has made more appearances across the Star Trek franchise than any other. Over the years, he thwarted a civil war on his homeworld (and got exiled for his trouble), became a father, got beat up (a lot), broke his spine (luckily he had a spare), got married to Troi (in an alternate dimension), crossed over to Deep Space Nine and became a series regular there, was promoted to Commander, got married again, and eventually cleared his name (finally) and became an ambassador to the Klingons, which was quietly ignored when the TNG films needed him back in uniform.

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• Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Worf is exceptionally rigid and uptight, rarely allowing himself to relax around others. It's eventually revealed that as a child he was much less self-controlled, until a collision with another boy during a soccer game. Klingons are physically much tougher than humans, and the other boy died, which made Worf realize he had to maintain strict control of himself to avoid hurting the humans around him.
• Affectionate Nickname: Q calls him "Micro-brain."
• Ascended Extra: Worf’s around to add a little color in the pilot, but doesn’t really contribute a great deal besides grunts... yet.
• Bad Liar: Worf is terrible at poker playing because he can't conceal his frustration at being unable to play a winning hand (and thanks to his insistence that "Klingons never bluff"). He wears his heart on his sleeve.
  Picard: Lieutenant, I order you to relax.
  Worf: I AM RELAXED!! ...Yes, sir.
• The Big Guy: A big, badass Klingon security chief who mans the phasers. Unfortunately, this means that the Monster of the Week usually proves how dangerous it is by beating him up. If it can kick Worf's ass, then it must be serious!
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: With the exception of his adoptive human parents, who are embarrassingly proud of him. Worf's Klingon parents are dead, with his father posthumously branded a traitor. His wives have died, and he has a complicated relationship with his son Alexander. He's also at odds with both his brothers: his long-lost brother Kurn tries to bait Worf into killing him so he can die with honor after Worf's discommendation, and the Rozhenkos' biological son Nikolai is a Starfleet dropout who, during his one visit to the Enterprise, deliberately breaches the Prime Directive.
• Birds of a Feather: He and Data bond over the fact they are both "outsiders" among their human co-workers.
• Birthday Hater: Worf doesn't look forward to his birthday as he doesn't like to be surprised, and knows that his shipmates always want to throw him a surprise party.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Klingons, as we discover in the episode "Ethics" (Season 5, Episode 16), have 23 ribs, 2 livers, an 8-chambered heart, and so on. This is Handwaved as backup in case anything goes wrong.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Crossed with Foreign Queasine, Worf has a very strange palate probably owed to Klingons not actually cooking their meals. A recurring gag is Worf's eating habits bringing about total bafflement to his friends. His own mother learned to cook Klingon blood pie but admitted she "never learned how to eat it." When he asks her to cook some when she comes to visit, she can barely hide her horror. The trope is also given a twist when Worf discovers that he loves prune juice and sees it as "a warrior's drink." He was also the only one to enjoy the botched omelettes that Riker made in one episode, though whether that speaks more to his taste buds or Riker's cooking skills is up for debate.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Because they made love, Worf considers he and K’Ehleyr bonded for life (he makes the same mistake with Jadzia and Ezri on DS9 almost 10 years later, so he never learns), whereas she thinks the notion of marrying everyone you sleep with is absurd.
• Brutal Honesty: He refuses to sugar coat anything, even being willing to tell a mortally wounded crewman that he's going to die rather than try to give him false hope.
• Butt-Monkey: There's a reason why there's a trope called The Worf Effect.
• Catchphrase: He often says "Klingons do not [insert activity here].". It's practically TNG's version of Dr. McCoy's "I'm a doctor, not a...".
• The Comically Serious: The series' go-to for this type of humor. If he weren't such a humorless stick in the mud, then lines like "Sir, I protest! I am NOT a merry man!" wouldn't be so hilarious.
• Culture Blind: Worf occasionally expresses bafflement at human culture in the first few episodes, but then it's established that he was raised on Earth by human parents, so his culture blindness gets dropped thereafter.
• Culture Clash: Worf's very conservative Klingon beliefs occasionally put him at odds with Starfleet values and the rest of the crew. Ironically, they also occasionally put him at odds with other Klingons, who grew up with a much less idealized impression of Klingon culture.
• Cultured Badass: He loves his Klingon Opera and love poetry.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's not overt, but Worf gets a bunch of really great snarks out over the course of the series (they acquired the nickname "Worfisms"). Michael Dorn's incredibly dry delivery is a big part of it.
  Q: I have no powers![...] What must I do to convince you people?
  Worf: [matter-of-factly] Die.
• Decomposite Character: Data, Worf, and Troi share Spock's persona from TOS. Worf takes Spock's token alien who's sometimes torn between his loyalties to his Federation comrades and his own people aspect.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Whenever his Klingon culture shows up, it's often at odds with standard human morality. Moreover, Worf's own idealized version of Klingon culture often clashes with the realities of life in the Empire, with most other Klingons regarding him as a hidebound traditionalist at best and a foolish naif at worst.
• Delivery Guy: Delivered Keiko O'Brien's daughter Molly during a crisis that prevented her from getting to sickbay.
  Worf: The computer simulation was not like this. The delivery was very orderly.
  Keiko: (in labor pain) Sorry to disappoint!
  • Several years later, when he learns that the very same woman was "having a baby" again, his immediate response is an alarmed "Now?!", followed by informing Bashir and O'Brien that he'll be on shore leave around the delivery date, which is still several months away.
• Determinator: Say what you will about Worf, but the man does not give up. Best exemplified on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  Jem'hadar First Ikat'ika: I yield. I cannot defeat this Klingon. All I can do is kill him, and that no longer holds my interest.
• Disappeared Dad: Both his dad and his mom were killed in the massacre at Khitomer when Worf was six.
• Disappointing Heritage Reveal: Worf grew up with an idealized image of the Klingon Empire and its culture due to being a Klingon raised by humans. He eventually has to confront the reality that the Klingon Empire is mired in realpolitik, corruption, and schemes concocted by Klingons who lack honor.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Despite the Klingons' preference for bloodwine, firewine, and other badass beverages, Worf's favorite drink is the very human prune juice. It shows just how much humans and the Federation have rubbed off on him.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Worf isn't actually a bad guy, but he is an example of Good is Not Nice. He is, however, softer around his adoptive parents.
• The Eeyore: To other Klingons; he doesn't even think Klingons laugh. Worf doesn't realize this until he's in the company of other Klingons, and they treat him as a stuffy stick-in-the-mud. Guinan sets him straight, telling him that Klingons aren't honor-bound automotons.
  Guinan: You know, I had a bet with the Captain that I could make you laugh before you became lieutenant commander.
  Worf: Not a good bet today.
  Guinan: I've seen you laugh. I like it.
  Worf: Klingons do not laugh.
  Guinan: Oh, yes, they do! Absolutely they do. You don't, but I've heard Klingon belly laughs that'd curl your hair!... Your son laughs. He's Klingon.
  Worf: He is a child and part Human!
  Guinan: That's right. And you're not; you're a full Klingon, except... you don't laugh.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Worf completely loathes the Romulans, chiefly because his parents died in the Khitomer Incident and his family was later discommendated thanks to their machinations with a Klingon traitor. He flatly refuses to give a dying Romulan a blood transfusion to save his life (in fairness to Worf, the Romulan in question said he'd rather die than take blood from a Klingon) and also shuns a Klingon woman he was initially attracted to after learning she is actually half-Romulan. However, numerous characters routinely call him out on this attitude. He manages to cooperate with two Romulans to escape a Dominion prison camp and by the last movie, he (begrudgingly) praised the Romulans who helped them for their honor.
  • He's also frequently on the receiving end as a result of being a Klingon.
• Fish out of Water: Upon leaving the Federation to fight in his people's civil war, Worf comes to learn that the Klingon culture he has idealized all his life isn't quite what he wants or expects.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: More comedy as Worf fails to summon the ‘turbolift’ or answer the telephone in "The Royale" (his gruff "HELLO!" is precious).
• Following in Their Rescuer's Footsteps: After the Khitomer massacre, Worf was rescued and adopted by then-Chief Petty Officer Sergei Rozhenko. Like his adopted father, Worf went on to join Starfleet; according to his adoptive mother Helena, Worf getting his commission was the proudest day of Sergei's life, and Sergei never misses a chance to express pride in his son becoming an officer.
• Freudian Excuse: Worf's Fantastic Racism towards Romulans is born of them having murdered his parents when they attacked the Khitomer Outpost.
• Good Old Ways: Worf is something of a romantic in the way he adheres to Klingon rituals that even his own people aren't naive enough to follow.
• Happily Adopted: He and his parents are as close as if he was their own Human child.
• Has a Type: His son's mother was a Klingon/Human hybrid with a smart mouth and was the Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire. His later wife Jadzia was a Trill whose previous host was also the Federation ambassador to the Klingons (possibly K'Ehleyr's immediate predecessor?). She adopted Klingon ways of living so much she might as well be a reverse hybrid - with a smart mouth.
• Hates Small Talk:
  • So much that he successfully gets himself excused from a reception that will be full of it.
  • 'Nice planet' is his impression of the Edo homeworld. When invited to tea, he hazards, 'Good tea. Nice house.' He always was a succinct one.
• Henpecked Husband: The ladies in Worf's life exist to torment him. For his own good, it seems. K'Ehleyr was a proud iconoclast who refused to run her life on Worf's terms. Busybody Deanna is always on hand to embarrass and cajole Worf into admitting his anxieties. Jadzia Dax flat-out admitted that she likes to troll Worf and didn't require encouragement from O'Brien in that department.
• Honor Before Reason: Nothing is more important to him than his honor. Every time he's forced to sacrifice something to preserve it he considers it to be Worth It, no matter how high the cost. Unfortunately, his brother Kurn suffers for this even more than Worf does.
• I Am X, Son of Y: "I am Worf, son of Mogh!" (In Klingon, "Son of Mogh" translates as "mogh puqloD".)
• Identical Grandson: Michael Dorn was already a regular as Lieutenant Worf for four seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation when he made a minor appearance in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where he played a Klingon defense attorney who makes an earnest but futile attempt to argue on Captain Kirk's behalf during his mock trial in Klingon captivity. The defense attorney's name? Colonel Worf. Naturally, the Star Trek Expanded Universe confirms that Worf is Colonel Worf's grandson (that's right, the father of Worf, son of Mogh, is named Mogh, son of Worf) and was named after him.
• Ignored Expert: He's the head of security, but when he raises reasonable objections he tends to be ignored or shot down with little more reasoning than 'Nah, don't feel like it,' which frequently puts the crew or ship itself in grave danger on a regular basis. For example in "Samaritan Snare" he objects to sending their chief engineer instead of a lesser officer or just sending the needed technical information, but his caution is ignored, getting Geordi captured. In that particular case, they were trying to assist a spacecraft run by a species that appeared to be rather... special, and didn't appear to be capable of hostility. Worf's warning was still valid, of course, but Riker (who was in command at the time, long story) thought he was overreacting...
• Interracial Adoption Struggles: Worf, a Klingon, was adopted and raised by the Rozhenko family, humans with Russian ethnicity. The Rozhenkos wanted Worf to have a loving family, but they didn't want him to be ignorant of his Klingon heritage, either, so they tried to accommodate him by learning to make traditional Klingon dishes like rokeg blood pie. It's often noted that Worf is more serious and stern than most other Klingons, and this comes from a combination of him having actually studied the texts and history and taking them seriously, as well as an unfortunate incident in his past where he accidentally killed a young man during a sporting event, because his Klingon physiology meant he was far too strong to be careless around human beings. When he starts meeting other Klingons as an adult, he experiences some culture clash as the idealized version of Klingon culture he formed in his mind does not reflect reality.
• Interspecies Romance: Earth females are too fragile for Worf and he has to restrain himself. Grrr! This doesn't stop him from pursuing relationships with Betazoids, Trills, and Klingon-Human hybrids.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's not one for small talk, is Brutally Honest to the point of rudeness, and loathes Romulans, but he's also unshakably loyal to his friends and won't hesitate to lay down his life for anyone under his care and is capable of being very kind and gentle when he's in a good mood.
• Large and in Charge: Commander of the Enterprise's security department, and at 6'3", is only surpassed by Commander Riker in height.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • His Catchphrase is "It is a good day to die". Succinct and to the point.
  • His classic rant in "Where Silence Has Lease". Clearly Worf took a dose of Tasha Yar pills that morning and he recommends going to Red Alert when nothing of consequence has happened. When things get a bit surreal he goes bonkers again, declaring that ship has ‘ONE Riker, ONE Bridge! This is impossible! IMPOSSIBLE! ARGGGHHHHH’ which did his character no favors. Then again, he nearly blow a hole in the viewscreen when Q first appeared. "Explains something of why you defeated them." says Q of the Federation’s decisive victory over the Klingons.
  • FOR BATTLE COME TO ME!! cries Worf.
  • Worf has a refreshingly spotty record as a leader. In "Rules of Engagement", Sisko chews him out for firing on a Klingon vessel without verifying if there were civilians in the crossfire. During the inquisition which follows, Qu'nos sends an attorney to prosecute Worf for war crimes; he infers that Worf is ruled by his Klingon bloodlust and shouldn't have even been allowed in a Captain's chair.
  • In "The Bonding", Worf shows himself to be a man of integrity by telling Jeremy what happened to his mother because he was in charge of the away team. He wants to honour Lt. Aster by performing the Bonding ritual with Jeremy and taking the child under his wing.
• Like Father, Like Son: Manages to take after both his fathers:
  • Like Mogh, he took a very active hand in Klingon politics, to the point that he puts himself in the position to appoint a Chancellor. He was also disgraced due to an injustice.
  • Like Sergei Rozhenko, he has a career in Starfleet wherein he discovers a son he never expected to have.
• Missing Mom: We hear loads about his biological father, the famed Mogh. But his biological mother barely even gets a mention, not even receiving a name.
• Momma's Boy: Worf absolutely loves his adoptive mother Helena Rozhenko. He insists that she makes the best rokeg blood pie in the entire galaxy, beat up five teenage boys he deemed "disrespectful" to her (with the implication that they had insulted her rather than him) at the age of 7, and one of his favorite places is her home of Minsk.
• Mother Russia Makes You Strong: While being a Klingon already makes him strong, Worf mentioned that his adoptive father (who raised him in Minsk) took him camping in the Urals when he was a boy.
• My Greatest Failure: It's later revealed in Deep Space Nine that part of the reason for his stoicism is because as a boy he accidentally killed another child whilst playing football. Since then, Worf vowed never again to lose control.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: And inverse of this. Most of the human characters only have Worf's view of Klingon culture to go on, so when other Klingons who have been living in that culture pop up, they're quick to point out (or show off) that he's been compensating. Notably, Worf's principled, disciplined, honorable nature clashes unpleasantly with the rest of the Empire when he serves in their military during the Klingon Civil War.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Calling this proud Klingon a coward is a good way to commit suicide. It's a sign of just how nuts Picard is getting in First Contact when he does it, prompting a very calm yet very angry response from Worf.
  Worf: If you were any other man I would kill you where you stand.
• Odd Friendship:
  • He's fairly close friends with Riker ^note  in "Ethics," after Worf is paralyzed, Riker is who he asks for help in performing the Hegh'bat (a Klingon suicide ritual), and in one of the alternate realities shown in "Parallels" where Riker is captain of the Enterprise, Worf is his First Officer, despite Will's amiable personality contrasting with Worf's stoic one. As a result, Riker enjoys taking the piss out of Worf at times.
  • You'd think his friendship with Data would be odd, but both are socially awkward (due to Worf keeping his emotions in check and Data...well, having none) and have a hard time relating to humans, so why wouldn't they be friends?
    Data: Did I say something wrong?
    Worf: I don't understand their humor either.
  • They started off fairly prickly towards each other, but eventually the stoic badass warrior develops a strong friendship, and later on a brief romance with the gentle empath Deanna.
• Offered the Crown: Played with. The Duras sisters attempt to convince him to change his loyalty to them, offering the older sister as his wife and him the Regency for their nephew, but don't directly offer to make him Chancellor of the Empire. Later, he actually becomes Chancellor for a brief moment through Klingon Promotion, but immediately abdicates for Martok, whom Worf believes is the most competent leader the Klingon Empire could have.
• Only One Name: Worf names himself in the Klingon style, "Worf, son of Mogh," even though he was raised by human parents, the Rozhenkos.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Worf considers a fight lost, you know the situation is bad; in First Contact, with the Borg having overrun most of the Enterprise, it's Worf of all people who tries to drive home to Picard that the ship is lost and they should cut their losses and run, even arguing back when Picard tries to insist that they keep fighting.
• Parenthetical Swearing: He does this every few episodes, usually when speaking about something that offends his Klingon sensibilities, like diplomacy.
• Patriot in Exile: Rather than bring down the Empire by revealing that Duras was the son of a traitor who colluded with Romulans to cause the Khitomer Massacre, Worf accepts discommendation, basically being declared an exile from Klingon society. He is later reinstated during a Klingon Civil War. He is then kicked out again by Gowron for siding with the Federation during the events of Deep Space Nine, before being re-reinvited by being adopted by Martok. Worf has a complicated history with his Klingon heritage.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Worf's Fantastic Racism towards Romulans stands out in a supposedly much more open and understanding future. In his defense, his Freudian Excuse gives him a good reason to dislike the Romulans, and most of the Romulans he encounters don't give Worf many reasons to change his attitude.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: In his own words, "I am a warrior! I must show you my heart!"
• Raised by Orcs: Inversion — a Klingon raised by humans. In a fairly effective Deconstruction of the trope, Worf was often more true to Klingon principles and culture than most Klingons, due to having had more of an incentive to stand up for his identity in an alien environment. Also because he didn't grow up in a Klingon environment, Worf is only aware of how Klingons are supposed to conduct themselves — other Klingons have learnt (as we all do) that there's honor and then there's the subtle compromises you make to get along in life. This leads to several Honor Before Reason decisions by Worf, as well as a lot of Culture Clash with more "modern" Klingons in the "Redemption" two-parter. It also leads to a Reconstruction, as his devotion to true honor leads to him defeating the corrupt Chancellor Gowron and installing the far more competent and honorable Martok in his place.
• Rank Up: The first Next Generation era scene in Generations has the crew holding an elaborate ceremony to celebrate Worf's promotion to lieutenant commander.
• Real Men Can Cook: He bakes Wesley a Tarvokian pound cake to celebrate his visit to back to the ship in "The Game."
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • When Duras killed his beloved K'Ehleyr, Worf boarded his ship and killed him in the Rite of Vengeance.
  • When his second wife was murdered, he destroyed an entire Dominion shipyard in her honor. By causing a star to go nova.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: Worf, whose suffering put name to the Worf Effect, was raised by Russians. Well, Belarusians,^note Most likely; they're from Minsk (the capital of Belarus), and while that doesn't prove anything on its own (plenty of ethnic Russians in Minsk), the family surname is characteristically Belarusian (or Ukrainian, but probably Belarusian). but Belarusians are the most Russian-like non-Russians out there, to the point where a majority of ethnic Belarusians have Russian as a native language and Belarus was still part of the USSR when the episode introducing his parents was written and aired.
• Sailor's Ponytail: After years of wearing a bob cut, Worf would start wearing his hair this way in season six's "Face of the Enemy", and would stay this way for the rest of the franchise. When undone, it turns into a Slipknot Ponytail.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Worf engages Duras in a duel to the death after he murders K'Ehleyr, Duras tries to talk him out of it by promising to clear Worf's name. Worf isn't having any of it.
  Duras: I'm the only one, Worf - the only one who can prove your innocence! Kill me and you're a traitor forever.
  Worf: Than that is how it shall be!
• Sore Loser: You gotta love his way of dealing with the toy model he is making in "Peak Performance": he smashes it and tosses it in the trash, then tells Riker he will be irritated if he doesn’t get to a certain stage in the game with Kolrami because he has wagered on him.
• The Stoic: Most of the time — that is, unlike most Klingons. This was explained in Deep Space Nine as being the result of constant self-control after he accidentally killed a human friend whilst playing football as a child. The only time this image cracks is when he slips into Unstoppable Rage. This was showcased quite heavily in "Heart of Glory", TNG's first Klingon-centric episode.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guy:
  • Frequently falls into this. He usually comes off more as a humorless stiff than a badass Klingon warrior.
  • That super dramatic music when Worf heads off to stop Okona’s unending line of sexual conquests throughout the ship.
• Straw Character:
  • Odds are that if somebody amongst the main characters was needed to take an unsympathetic position about a culture, species or anything else, that character would be Worf. His generally disapproving personality helps make it credible.
  • Worf is all in favor of aborting an baby with no regard for Troi’s feelings whatsoever. Yes, she was violated by an alien lifeform, but that's still pretty harsh. He also agrees with O'Brien (and Quark!) that his rights as a father take precedence over Major Kira's as a mother.
• Token Heroic Orc: At the very start. This was the first time a Klingon was seen in an outright heroic role; in TOS they were Enemy Mine at best.
• Token Minority: Similar to Spock's role in the Original Series, Worf is an alien crewmember of partial human upbringing (in Worf's case, he is Klingon by birth, but was adopted and raised by humans after his parents were killed). He isn't the only alien/non-human onboard, mind you, since we also have Troi and Data among the crew. But the fact that Deanna is a Half-Human Hybrid, and Data is an android designed to resemble and mimic humans makes Worf stand out like a sore thumb.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Klingon bloodwine. He later develops a taste for prune juice once Guinan introduces him to it, declaring it to be a "warrior's drink." Apparently the two beverages taste somewhat similar, and the Federation eventually starts exporting prune juice to the Klingon Empire in large amounts. According to his mother, he is also very fond of her rokeg blood pie.
• Tranquil Fury: Worf being angry and bellowing is just standard for him. It's when he gets angry and goes calm that you need to be afraid as seen when Picard calls him a coward in "First Contact" and Worf quietly tells him that were Picard any other man, Worf would kill him on the spot.
• Underestimating Badassery: A Bar Brawl ensues when some Klingon warriors visiting Star Trek: Deep Space Nine decide to pick on Worf for his unlikely order of prune juice.^note A warrior's drink! Worf manages to use the Conservation of Ninjutsu to invoke The Worf Effect for a change by handily mopping the floor with them.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He's apparently allergic to cats.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Wait a minute, are there any proud fathers in the Trek universe? Ironically, his adoptive father, Sergei, is extremely proud of Worf's accomplishments.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Fighting Borg? No problem. Going for a space walk? Suddenly Worf looks like he's rather be anywhere else.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Worf is the second physically strongest character after Data, able to hold a fight against multiple members of a species bred for war, proficient at hand-to-hand combat and pretty much an overall badass. While he gets beat up a lot, he gets compensation with the some of the hotter girls of the franchise (Deanna Troi, Jadzia Dax...) falling for him.
• The Worf Effect: The Trope Namer. Any time the writers needed to show how much of a threat the new enemy was, they would have Worf rush it and immediately be thrown across the room. It's a wonder how Worf got any work after he left the Enterprise. Whenever anybody wants to beam the Captain away from the ship they seem to have no trouble whatsoever. There is a very amusing moment in DS9 where Odo lists a number of security breaches that occurred on the Enterprise under his watch. Worf protests that they were the exception rather than the rule. Re-watching the series would suggest that it's the other way around! He's often the first one to learn that the Borg have adapted to the available phaser frequencies.
• Worf Had the Flu: The other Trope Namer, though oddly, Worf himself seldom encounters this trope, because otherwise it wouldn't be The Worf Effect if he was at half-speed.
• You Can't Go Home Again: For a while, Worf was disgraced and exiled from Klingon space. Twice.
• Younger Than They Look: As a race of warriors, Klingons age more rapidly than humans, to become battle ready more easily. Michael Dorn was thirty-five-years-old when he first started playing Worf, but the character was only twenty-four in the pilot episode. It's possible some mature-looking Klingons seen in the past were actually in the early prime of life, at least for their species.

Doctor (Commander) Beverly Crusher

Played By: Gates McFadden

Dubbed in French by: Valérie Jeannet (TNG), Anne Rochant (Movies)

Dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese by: Selma Lopes (TNG, Season 1), Juraciara Diácovo (TNG, Season 2 to 6), Rita Lopes (TNG, Season 7)

"When I look at my patient, I don't see a collective consciousness, I don't see a hive. I see a living, breathing boy who has been hurt and who needs our help."

The redheaded Doctor in charge of Sickbay. Has a long and complicated relationship with Picard, who served over her late husband, Jack Crusher, as Captain of the ill-fated Stargazer. Picard, still troubled with guilt over Jack's death, often expresses romantic feelings toward Beverly, but will not act on them. Jack and Beverly had a son, Wesley, who lives aboard the Enterprise.

After being dropped from the show in Season 2 for a failed attempt at a McCoy expy, Beverly is given much more screentime that isn't focused on her relationships with Picard and Wesley, instead exploring her career in medicine and outside interests. Sadly, she remains largely in the background in the movies.

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• Action Mom: She's pretty good whenever she has to use combat skills and not medical ones. She also has the best aiming skills of the entire main cast. In "Descent Part II," she's left in charge of Enterprise with a fraction of the normal crew, all no-names, while all the main cast is off hunting for Data. She takes on the Borg and wins.
• The Bus Came Back: After spending Season 2 away at Starfleet Medical, Crusher returns to the Enterprise in Season 3 and remains there for the rest of the series and the movies.
• The Cast Show Off: Gates McFadden made her name as a choreographer and, in "Data's Day," Crusher gets a scene where she teaches Data to dance, opening with a fairly impressive bit of tap-dancing from the doctor. Crusher, ironically, isn't too keen on word of her talents getting around the ship, not wanting to be known as "the dancing doctor" again.
• Combat Medic: One of the more prominent examples among Trek doctors, she's quite able and willing to shoot a phaser or throw a punch, and does surprisingly well when she's forced by circumstance to command the ship in a fight. In fact, she likes command and regularly commands the night shift "just to keep in practice." And when Picard visits the future in "All Good Things...." she's captain of a medical ship. There's a reason she is selected for the commando operation in "Chain of Command" alongside Picard and Worf.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Unlike the often grouchy Dr. McCoy, Dr. Crusher is warm, friendly, and maternal.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Suspicions", "Sub Rosa" and "Remember Me".
• Deadpan Snarker: According to the episode "Attached", she often has a snarky remark at the tip of her tongue, though she rarely vocalizes them. She is more prone to snarking in episodes that focus on her.
• Determined Doctor: Even when she’s infected with what is essentially horniness and is hot for Picard, she tries to push through to find the antidote in “The Naked Now”.
• Doctor's Orders: Comes with the territory.
• Dull Surprise: The major difference between Gates and the other regulars is that the former is a born dancer. Gates had a couple of stellar episodes, but she also took a few episodes off. Her inflections are all over the place.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "The Dancing Doctor" (due to having won several awards for tap and jazz dance before being posted to the Enterprise-D).
• Fiery Redhead: Although she has yet to approach the levels of this seen in, say, Kira Nerys, this trope comes into full effect when anyone tries to stop her from doing what she sees as her job.
  Riker: (as Picard contemplates beaming Crusher back aboard despite her insistence on staying behind to treat wounded civilians) I don't wanna be in the Transporter Room to greet her.
  • Gates McFadden later said on her Twitter that much of Beverly's hair was a wig, though the bangs were hers.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: In the series finale, "All Good Things..." Picard returns from the future and reports on a terminal disease he will one day contract. What does Beverly do? Plants a passionate kiss on him.
• Hidden Depths: She's an accomplished dancer, and also shows an impressive aptitude for command when the situation calls for it.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: She complains in “Code Of Honor” that doctors are meant to grow calluses over their feelings, and it hasn’t happened yet for her.
• Mama Bear: Her reaction when Lore threatens to kill Wesley in "Datalore".
• The McCoy: Slips into this on occasion. She will always put her medical ethics first regardless of personal risk and refuses to not treat injured people, even if it's in the midst of a terrorist attack or if that person is a Borg.
• The Medic: She's the ship's head doctor and is almost always the one shown delivering medical aid.
• My Beloved Smother: Wesley suggests his mother is stunting his emotional growth.
• No Badass to His Valet: The only person onboard the ship who can give the Captain orders. She's also known Picard for long enough to give him honest advice.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever happened on Arvada III when she lived there with her Nana.
• Put on a Bus: Dr. Crusher goes back to Earth to teach medicine at Starfleet Academy for a season, but she returns in Season 3.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: When Gates McFadden left the show for the second season (conflicting reports can't agree if she was fired or quit due to personal issues with people on the set), Crusher was said to have been assigned to Starfleet Medical. When McFadden returned for the third season, Crusher transferred back to the ship. They even made her absence a b-plot in her first episode back, the season 3 premiere "Evolution."
• Satellite Character: Her initial description in the cast bible is a one line description of how she is Wesley's mother. Her other major character usage is UST with Picard. This contributed to her bus trip in season two, but after her return (and Wesley's departure) she gets a number of episodes and plots dedicated to her.
• Soapbox Sadie: Aboard the Enterprise, she's the loudest proponent for social justice. Just listen to her on "Symbiosis"
  Crusher: This isn't a symbiotic relationship. This is exploitation!.
• Stepford Smiler: She hasn’t actually gotten over feelings of her husband’s death, but pushes them down, claiming he died a long time ago.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Picard. Ironically, even though it's Picard who has hang-ups about a romantic relationship, she shoots him down when he asks. They are ex-lovers with a grown son (Jack), as of Star Trek: Picard, and are married with a son (Rene) in the non-cannonical novel timeline.
• Women Are Wiser: Crusher is the one person on the ship who can give Picard an order, and she loves it.

Hologram Crusher

Played by: Gates McFadden

A holographic representation of Crusher appears as part of the Kobayashi Maru simulation on the holodeck of the U.S.S. Protostar.

For tropes relating to his appearance there, along with the other holograms, see, Star Trek: Prodigy.

Counselor (Lieutenant Commander, later Commander) Deanna Troi

Counselor (Lieutenant Commander, later Commander) Deanna Troi

Played By: Marina Sirtis

Dubbed in French by: Anne Plumet (TNG), Deborah Perret (Movies)

"Confidence is faith in oneself. It can't easily be given by another."

Half-Betazoid counselor who gets to sit right up front on The Bridge — a remnant of the touchy-feely 80s. Somewhat justified by her empathic abilities, which allowed her to detect lies and therefore give an edge to Picard in negotiations (though she mostly just stated the obvious). In lieu of the standard Starfleet uniform, Troi was known for wearing a multitude of feminized (read: cleavage-baring) versions. When Captain Jellico took temporary command of the Enterprise in the sixth season, he promptly barked at her to change into a proper uniform; this change was welcomed by the actress and viewers, who felt she was no less beautiful.

From that point forward, Troi gained a less-revealing outfit, a phaser, and moved into the Counselors' office to assist the crew in more concrete ways (including passing the bridge officer's test and becoming a commander). Troi is also notable for her very, very meddlesome mother (Lwaxana) and her on-again, off-again relationship with Riker. By the final TNG movie, the pair reconciled and got married.

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• '80s Hair: Troi looks like a hard rock singer with her massive frizzy hair and miniskirt in "Farpoint". They didn't start to get her hair under control until First Contact.
• An Alien Named "Bob": Downplayed. Deanna is only half alien.
• Boomerang Bigot: Despite being half-human, Deanna will sometimes voice her low opinion of humans. Deanna (unlike Spock) doesn't really face an identity crisis as a result of her two races not getting along (Betazoids and humans are friendly Federation allies). She simply likes the cool powers that her non-human side gives her, so her need to feel superiority in her alien heritage comes across as arrogant. It's not until "The Loss" that someone (Riker, no less) calls her out on it. And it seems to have worked.
• Break the Cutie: She gets broken to pieces psychologically more than any character except Picard. The writers seemed to be fond of having her be psychically violated more than once, and she's usually the first to trust someone and get her fingers burned badly due to her compassionate and empathic nature.
• Brought Down to Normal: In "The Loss," a multitude of two-dimensional organisms cause her to temporarily lose her empathic abilities.
• Captain Crash: Troi takes the helm twice during the movies, and both times, the ship ends up crashing into something. Despite the ribbing she gets from fans, both cases are justified; in Generations, the saucer section is already crashing and Troi manages to keep it under control to minimize casualties, and in Nemesis, Picard actually ordered her to ram the Enterprise into the Scimitar to disable the enemy ship.
• Captain Obvious: In the earlier seasons, she's often just confirming via empathic ability or psychological assessment what The Bridge already suspects or what is plainly obvious to the audience. One of her very first lines on the show is looking at a guy covered head to toe in ice and declaring "He's frozen!"
• Character Overlap: After Riker, Troi is the second-most frequently seen Star Trek character, showing up in Voyager, Pathfinder, Life Line, Inside Man; Enterprise ("These Are The Voyages..."); Picard ("Nepenthe") and Lower Decks'' ("No Small Parts").
• The Confidant: Part of her job, even to Captain Picard.
• Comfort Food: Troi is well-established to enjoy eating chocolate when she's stressed. Presumably the stuff she gets from he replicator is healthier than the real thing.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Deanna Troi tends to wear bodysuits (until she was made to wear a uniform in "Chain of Command"), and she wears sparkly hair bands.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: Averted in the last two seasons, when she started wearing a standard blue science uniform after Captain Jellico ordered her to. Marina Sirtis had been pushing for that change for some time and fans wholeheartedly agreed that she looked great in one. (Sirtis noted that her character also seemed to start being portrayed as a great deal more competent after that, too.)
• Damsel in Distress:
  • She filled this role many times. She was always being possessed by aliens, 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 this show's Ms. Fanservice, that is.
  • And when Troi actually said something useful, she was often ignored. In the second season episode, "Samaritan Snare," Geordi is beamed over to a disabled ship to help the apparently dim-witted Pakleds. Troi walks onto the bridge, sees Geordi on the ship through the viewscreen, and tells Riker Geordi is in danger and needs to be beamed back immediately. Riker ignores her warning because Pakleds are just so stupid, and what harm can they do? Well, let's just say the main plot of the show is Riker's efforts to get Geordi back, which could have been avoided if he'd listened to the empath! (And to Worf, who advised against sending anyone over to the Pakled ship, correctly guessing that the Pakleds could be laying a trap for the crew.)
• Deadpan Snarker: Not to the same extent as Worf, but on the odd occasion Deanna shows some snarkery.
  Deanna: (on entering Worf's quarters, having heard him smash a table) Did the table do something wrong?
  • During "The Price", the episode begins with Deanna returning to her quarters and seeming slightly irritable and stressed, but her asking (and failing) to get any real chocolate from the computer is interrupted by Picard asking her to come to the gathering to view the wormhole up for sale. While she initially refuses, he insists and she agrees, leaving her quarters with this lovely line:
    Deanna: God forbid I miss my first look at the wormhole...!
• Decomposite Character: Data, Worf, and Troi share Spock's persona from TOS. Troi is the Half-Human Hybrid who often bickers with their same-sex/alien parent.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" during crew introductions, Troi is seen trying to communicate telepathically with Riker. In later episodes, it's all but stated that Deanna can only sense emotions as a result of only being half-Betazoid, and the only person she can telepathically talk to is her Betazoid mother. She's also much more emotionally affected by the emotions she senses in the pilot than in later episodes, where she has much more control over her reactions.
• The Empath: She is a very strong empath, and her empathic abilities do provide an edge and can confirm whether a life-form's intent is hostile or not, even in the earlier seasons. Apparently her empathic ability is like another sense to her, so much so that losing it for an episode is like being blind to her, and it breaks her pretty damn quick.
• Expy: Of Spock. They are both the token half-humans amongst the crew, but strongly identify with their alien half (likely due to having been raised on their respective alien home worlds), and frequently voice low opinions about humans (Spock moreso). However, Spock's issue with humans appear to stem from the blatant xenophobia he recieved from them, owing to being the product of two visibly different species. Troi, on the other hand, is of two species that are almost visibly indistinguishable from each other, and so can pass for either one of them at any time (she did not need to surgically alter her appearance when visiting 19th century Earth in one episode). Her neglect for her human side is likely due to their more irrational nature compared to the more peaceful Betazoids. And maybe their lack of psychic powers.
• The Fashionista: Deanna dresses fashionably (within Starfleet regulations as permitted), and is shown early in the series to have what others consider excellent taste in clothes. Unlike her mother Lwaxana, Deanna is more humble about it, unflamboyantly letting her outfits speak for themselves as she does her job.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Her aquamarine outfit.
• Future Spandex: There was a lot of Future Spandex casual wear on the show, but as a main cast member she was the most prominent example. It would be used for the characters subjected to Ms. Fanservice in later series. Deanna definitely needs a new uniform by Season Four, because the purple all-in-one brings all attention to her figure. (Not that this stopped VOY from giving the even curvier Jeri Ryan the exact same look.)
• Fleeting Passionate Hobby:
  • In "A Fistful of Datas," Alexander invites her because "she likes Westerns." She's even seen blowing smoke rings on a cigar. This is never mentioned again.
  • The Expanded Universe establishes that her late human father was a fan of Westerns, justifying it as one of the things she remembers enjoying with him when she was a child before he died.
• Good-Looking Privates: As noted above, when Troi was finally ordered to drop her Custom Uniform of Sexy and wear a standard uniform (as Marina Sirtis wanted for years), fans agreed she looked terrific in it.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Although not actually green-skinned; she was half-Betazoid. She does have the Betazoid black irises, though.
• Half-Breed Angst: Deanna Troi's father was a human but her mother is a Betazoid, a type of alien with Telepathy. She usually doesn't mind, but some episodes have her angsting, such as in "Haven" when she doesn't want an Arranged Marriage despite it being the Betazoid way and in "The Loss" when her powers go away and she wonders if this is what it's like being fully human.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother is fully Betazed and her father was human.
• The Heart: As the ship's counselor, it's her job to be sensitive and concerned about the crew's well-being. This also makes it hard for her to pass the Bridge officer's exam, since it required her to order a crewman to certain death in order to save the whole ship.
• Horrible Judge of Character: "The Cardassians are our allies now, Worf. We have to trust them." Yeeeah, no. You can see why she didn't follow her mom into the diplomatic corps.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Troi is quite short in stature even for a woman, yet gets paired with both Riker and Worf, who are both well over six feet tall.
• Human Aliens: Both she herself and full-blooded Betazoids like her mother Lwaxana are almost this. As noted under Green-Skinned Space Babe, Betazoids and Betazoid-human hybrids are actually visually distinguishable from humans (Betazoids don't have colored irises in their eyes, rendering their eyes completely black and white), but the difference is subtle enough that it can be easily be missed by the viewer unless you pay attention or have it pointed out to you, though it's easy to get a slight Uncanny Valley vibe. This makes Deanna perhaps the only alien crewmember to date who is able to visit Earth in the past (as seen in "Time's Arrow") without needing to be surgically-altered.
• Informed Attribute:
  • Although she allegedly has strong empathic powers due to being part-Betazoid, those powers almost never pick up on anything that isn't head-slappingly obvious, to the crew and audience alike. Likely because her being able to use those abilities to their fullest potential would cut short a lot of the show's plots.
    Troi: (notices smashed table) You're upset.
    K'Ehleyr: Your finely honed Betazoid sense tell you that?
    Troi: That, and the table.
  • Troi loves nothing more than to state the obvious but "Encounter at Fairpoint" is an example to all the doubters of her empathic powers: she realizes that the entities are feeling "great joy" to be reunited at the climax. (No shit, Sherlock.)
  • "I sense healthy sensuality, sir!" she says after she has been groped by one of the Edo. To be fair, this may have been a joke.
  • You've got to love how Okona (sorry, the Outrageous Okona) greets Picard not with a hello, but by mooning the viewscreen as he fumbles about his ship. "Mischievous, irreverent and somewhat brazen!" — no wonder they keep Troi so close at hand, you can't get insight like this just anyplace.
  • When asked if she can sense what "Doctor Rasmussen" isn't telling them, she responds "I don’t know." Troi is as valuable as ever. Her suspicions about Rasmussen are based on little more than gut feeling.
  • Fails to notice why the shy, socially awkward Barclay is so nervous around her (hint: he's got a massive crush on the good counselor), causing him to suffer a relapse into his holodeck addiction. Specifically, the one with a copy of her in.
• Informed Flaw: Her feelings for Riker might make her behave in a very unprofessional fashion! Not really, it's Riker who is barely holding himself together at the thought of Deanna marrying somebody else whilst Troi seems to have happily moved on.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Her informal blue outfit (shown here) comes close. But her grey, purple and red informal outfits had a more modest V-shaped neckline. Her standard Starfleet uniform (worn in the series pilot and in Season 7) did not show cleavage at all.
• Limited Wardrobe: Two different-colored catsuits of the same style and the turquoise dress.
• Living Lie Detector:
  • Her empathic abilities allow her to sense when someone's being deceptive or otherwise hiding something, but she notes herself that context is everything.
  • There is a nice moment with Riker and Jellico. Jellico's all bluster, waving off the Cardassians as no threat. Riker, visibly annoyed at this cavalier Captain, allows that he is a 'confident' man—but Troi knows better. 'He's not.'
• The Load: She frequently plays the victim role when a member of the crew needs to be imperiled, partly due to the fact that her psychic abilities provide an additional way to mess with her and sometimes require her to be out of the picture to avoid screwing over the plot. As a result, her contributions are often limited to making Captain Obvious statements about a character's mood. Even her role as the ship's counselor gets sabotaged. In the early seasons, Roddenberry insisted that future people were extremely well-adjusted and therefore rarely needed counseling. In later seasons, Guinan overlaps her role by providing mentoring and guidance to crew members in crisis.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: She typically wears her hair long, and is more overtly feminine than either Dr. Crusher or Tasha.
• Male Gaze: Her ample breasts and cleavage are more than often on screen.
• Military Brat: Troi's late father Andrew also served in Starfleet.
• Ms. Fanservice: She sported prominent cleavage and a raging cameltoe for most of the series, with some mixed feelings from Sirtis. ^note She's said she was pretty happy about it, having been something of an Ugly Duckling growing up, but she also said that she was very happy to "get her brains back" when the character was made to wear a uniform.
• Mundane Utility: Most of the time she uses her empathic skills to either confirm or deny what Picard already suspects - a useful but boring skill - or to help with her counseling, and even then she is just using her empathic skills to confirm what her psychological training already has her suspect. She hardly ever uses it for anything else.
• Nice Girl: Extremely nice, almost inhumanly so; fitting for a counselor.
• Non-Action Guy: While even Geordi and Crusher get to occasionally show some physical prowess, Troi is firmly this all the time.
• Not So Stoic: Troi tries very hard to be levelheaded and serene (as a counselor). When her facade is cracked, it's almost always a Funny Moment.
  Troi: (to her "Goddess" counterpart) Muzzle it!
• Power Loss Depression: In "The Loss", Troi suffers brain damage that cuses her to lose empath abilities. She becomes frightened, depressed, angry and even decides to resign as Ship's Counselor because she feels she can no longer perform her duties.
• Rank Up: In Season 7, Troi takes the Bridge Officer's Exam, and after passing, she receives a promotion to commander and is shown taking shifts in the Captain's chair afterward.
• Runaway Bride: Troi believed she would never be bonded to an arranged marriage because she joined the Enterprise to get as far away from Betazed as possible. Too bad her mother is an ambassador and can visit the ship whenever she likes.
• Sensor Character: When the writers remember that she's an empath, which can vary even within a single episode.
• Serious Business: "Chocolate is a serious thing."
• Story-Breaker Power: A character who is able to sense the emotions and intentions of others sounded like a good idea on paper, but in practice it meant that Deanna should logically be able to clear up any misunderstandings or call out almost any deceptions that make up the plot of every other episode, meaning there were many early episodes where she was functionally useless because other characters didn't listen to her, or because the writers just forgot or chose to ignore how her powers worked in the first place. In later stories, Troi was frequently either made part of the B-plot or just written out of the episode entirely, purely because of how useful the character should have been to the main story.
• Sweet Tooth: By her own admission, Troi never met a chocolate she didn't like.
• Team Mom: The crew should answer the annoying door chime with 'Yes, come in Counselor', since 9 times out of 10 it's just Troi. She takes an active interest in the emotional well-being of the crew, making lots of house calls.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • "Face of the Enemy" gave Troi some much-needed Character Development by thrusting her, completely unprepared, into the role of an authoritarian Romulan secret police agent. Though she flounders a bit at first, she ends up putting on quite a performance, and may have even enjoyed it a bit.
  • She later takes a more literal level in badass in Thine Own Self by taking a command exam and being promoted to full Commander. This was motivated by a previous episode, Disaster, where she was forced to take charge in a life-or-death situation and found herself severely underprepared.
• Took a Level in Kindness: You wouldn't think it given how she's seemingly one of the gentlest and sweetest of the main bridge crew...but "The Loss" reveals that she's somewhat arrogant and, as Riker himself puts it, aristocratic in her opinion of herself in comparison to regular people. Despite this, when her empathic senses return at the end of the episode, she begins mellowing out more.
• Trademark Favorite Food: The resident chocoholic.
• Vision Quest: Aside from getting mind raped, this was the running theme of Troi's episodes.
• The Watson: Sadly, she's often used to ask questions to which any Starfleet officer, even a directly-commissioned shrink, should know the answer, but the audience may not.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gets something of a mix of this and a VERY tame "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Riker during "The Loss", when the (temporary) loss of her empathic powers causes an episode-long panic attack where her arrogance and somewhat condescending view of humans and their more limited abilities in comparison to her comes to the forefront, leading to Riker calling her out as acting with an "aristocratic" snootiness and telling her that her real problem is she can't stand being an equal to everyone else. Thankfully, she starts easing out of this over time and regrets how horrible she had been.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Sirtis' real accent is north London; Troi's started out vaguely Eastern European before settling down into an approximation of American English, then reverting to her natural north London for the films. Marina Sirtis has said in interviews that she was told she had to do a "Betazed" accent, meaning she pretty much had to make one up. When Troi's mother, and eventually other Betazoids, showed up, it became increasingly clear that no one else was going to bother with the accent. Sirtis tried asking a producer about this, and was told that Troi got the accent from her father. We eventually meet her father, who doesn't have the accent^note he speaks with a General Amercian accent and his actor Amick Byram is from Central Texas either (much to Sirtis's exasperation). So her accent dialect continues to remain unexplained on-screen.
• You Are in Command Now: Troi's rank of lieutenant commander rarely comes up, but in "Disaster", she finds herself the ranking officer on the bridge during a crisis and is totally out of her element. The experience is part of why she later undergoes the Bridge Officer's Exam, wanting to be prepared should it ever happen again.

Lieutenant Commander Data

Lieutenant Commander Data

Played By: Brent Spiner

Dubbed in French by: Jean-Pol Brissart (TNG), Yves Beneyton (Movies)

"I have often wished to be human. I study people carefully, in order to more closely approximate human behavior."

Gold-skinned android who serves as Second Officer and Operations Officer aboard the Enterprise. Though his presence was fairly inexplicable in the beginning, he was soon revealed to have been built by an eccentric scientist, who perished and left Data alone on a space colony. Upon his retrieval by Starfleet, Data reasoned that his natural path was to enroll in Starfleet Academy.

Data's popularity and presence on the show eventually grew to rival Nimoy's, so much so that Brent Spiner (who gamely carried many episodes) began to feel the strain by year seven. In addition, he was prominently featured in three out of the four TNG films.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A cyberneticist in the know — such as Soong or a fellow android like Lore — can hack into Data's brain and make him wreak havoc. Such is the case in "Brothers," when Data uses his voice modulator and access codes to seal off the Enterprise and steal a shuttlecraft. With his robot strength, he can happy-slap goldshirts across the room and knock even a sturdy Klingon flat.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Pale goldish skin-tone.
• Become a Real Boy: Data wishes to become more human. Riker lampshades it in the very first episode, calling Data "Pinocchio".
• Beware the Nice Ones: For an emotionless machine, he can be quite brusque with people who question his sentience or abilities as a shipmate. One imagines that, after twenty years in Starfleet, Data's learned to put those pests in their place.
  • In "The Gambit," Data, as temporary Captain, verbally rips Worf (his temporary First Officer) a new one for questioning his orders in front of the crew.
  • In "The Most Toys," after the villain, Kivas Fajo mocks him for being unable to bring himself to kill him in cold blood, as Data's programming has instilled in him a fundamental respect for other all life. Data, however, after weighing his options and realizing that he had no non-lethal ways of subduing Fajo, raises the disruptor he is armed with and starts pulling the trigger, only to be beamed out just before the weapon fires. While Fajo was right that Data cannot kill in cold blood, he, in this case, reached the logical conclusion that the only way he could uphold his directive of protecting other lifeforms was to take Fajo's life. Essentially, Data can kill out of cold logic, if he believes he has no other options.
    Data: I cannot permit this to continue.
• Birds of a Feather: He and Worf have a surprising amount in common. Data's endlessly frank nature and Worf's sense of honor require them both to be honest and fair in whatever they do. They also don't have much of a sense of humor, or at least don't understand the humor of their crewmates.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The technological equivalent, in particular the location of his 'off switch' and the fact that his head can be removed and still function without his body.
• Book Smart: Being an android, he has encyclopedic knowledge and can learn extremely quickly.
• The Bore: Picard manages to wrangle out of being Mrs. Troi’s date with a desperate bid to get Commander Data to join the table and regale them both with his spellbinding anecdotes. Even Mr. Holm is yawning in the background.
• Breakout Character: Oh yeah. To this day, Data is on Spock's level as the most popular Star Trek character in the franchise. Not such a big surprise, since he is essentially an inversion of Spock's character - instead of having emotions that he tries to deny, he actively searches for emotions he does not (yet) have.
• Brutal Honesty: Manifests due to his lack of emotions and struggles comprehending human behavior, though this trait becomes downplayed as a result of his Character Development over the course of the series. He would often retort, "But it is simply an observation of fact." His daughter, Lal, inherited this catchphrase.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Lore's Cain.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: One of Data's many attempts to become more human involves him trying to understand the nature of humor. He enlists the help of a holodeck comedian program and memorizes all the jokes... then proceeds to completely botch the delivery of every one. Ironically, this made him one of the funniest characters.
  Picard: He made us all laugh... except when he was trying to make us laugh.
• Character Death: In Star Trek: Nemesis. It's later revealed that Maddox attempted to reverse it by reconstituting his neural net in B-4, but the prototype android's positronic brain was too primitive to support it. He and Altan Soong eventually find success by uploading him into a simulated environment, but Picard honors Data's wishes to terminate the simulacrum, allowing him to finally die for good and thus give his sacrifice and the life leading up to it meaning.
• Character Tics: Data's head-tilt when confused or perplexed about human behavior, or when encountering something particularly fascinating. It's In the Blood, so to speak, as well; his daughter Soji, inherited it.
• Characterization Marches On: He went through a period of uncertainty during the first (and to an extent, second) season. It's not clear at first whether he's supposed to have emotions or not, as he smirks occasionally and often speaks in an oddly musical tone. He also uses contractions. The show only cemented its characters and premise in the third season, and that's when Data's famously emotionless and inquisitive personality really took hold. Fortunately, a conversation he has with Riker in the first episode does help pave the way for his future characterization.
  • This anomaly is justified in a conversation in Star Trek: The Lost Era: The Buried Age, where Data notes that he is trying harder to imitate emotion to help people accept him, suggesting that he might adjust this approach once people are more comfortable with him.
• Chekhov's Gag: Whilst the scene itself is eye-opening to say the least, Data’s sexual encounter with Tasha does set up some touching development for the character when she dies later in the season.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Data pulls a lot of girls in this series, almost as many as Riker. Although only one of those relationships (Tasha) was "consummated" on-screen, with the rest implied (Jenna D'Sora, the Borg Queen) or remaining in the flirtation stage.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • This trope is a cornerstone of his character. Being an android, he often has trouble grasping human idioms.^note He could download a whole dictionary of idioms and look them up instantly, but there are two explainations why he doesn't. 1.) An Expanded Universe novel reveals that he does this deliberately in order to keep people from fearing him. 2.) ST:TNG states that Lore was TOO similar to a human and feared for that, and its creator thus "dumbed down" on Data a bit.
    Chief O'Brien: ...We'll all be burning the midnight oil on this one.
    (Data overhears this as he walks through the frame, but doesn't break stride)
    Data: That would be inadvisable.
    O'Brien: Excuse me?
    Data: (walks back into frame) If you attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at zero-hundred hours, you will activate the fire suppression system, which would seal off this entire compartment.
  • Ripping up the wrapping paper after his gift has already been opened. After carefully removing the wrapping paper without ripping it.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: To Spock. They're both logical, stoic, and polite, but both men are essentially what the other strives to be. Spock is an emotional and compassionate man who tries to bury his feelings and be completely rational, where Data is emotionless and cerebral yet desperately longs to feel human emotions. The two lampshade it when the meet in "Unification".
• Costumer: A Sherlock fanboy, Data is naturally a trained musician and can fiddle his way through a beautiful violin piece. He seems to be enjoying himself altogether to much as Holmes, kicking back with his dressing gown, puffing on a calabash pipe and pondering on the latest mysteries. In settings like these, the Pinocchio metaphor really comes to the fore: he is most human whenever he is playing dress-up.
• Custom Uniform: In several episodes, Data's uniform has a decidedly greener tint than the gold of the standard Operations.
• Deadpan Snarker: While he may not consciously understand humor (prior to finally installing his emotion chip in Generations), Data's penchant for Brutal Honesty and his deadpan delivery naturally lends itself to this. For example his conversation with Pulaski about the proper pronunciation of his name. After installing the chip, he begins doing this deliberately.
  Pulaski: What's the difference?
  Data: One is my name. The other is not.
• Decomposite Character: Data, Worf, and Troi share Spock's persona from TOS. Data takes Spock's emotionless logician aspect and conflict between logic and emotion.
• Deuteragonist: Replaced Riker in this role after he emerged as the Ensemble Dark Horse, and remained so for the rest of the series (and especially in the movies).invoked
• Do-Anything Robot: Culminating in Data acting as a flotation device ("In the event of a water landing...") in the movies. In "Descent," it was mentioned that he wasn't neutrally buoyant in an earlier incident, so he'd had to walk along the ocean floor to get out of the water. The floatation may have been added as a response to that. Indeed, prior to inflating, Data is seen walking along the floor of a lake.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Early episodes hinted that Data's body had more in common with organic life than was later established. He was infected with the Psi-2000 variant virus, though the crew remark that an android getting an infection should be impossible. He also mentions eating something unpalatable to humans to maintain certain elements within his body. This was dropped quickly from the series.
• Eating Machine: Needs to occasionally ingest chemical compounds to keep his internal machinery lubricated. He mentions it a few times in the early seasons.
• Eating Optional: Data can eat food even though he does not have to so that he can more closely emulate human behavior.
• Evil Twin: Has one named Lore.
• Exact Words: Known to use this technique when otherwise required to tell a lie. In one episode, he navigates a precipitous and increasingly ludicrous amount of half-truths in order to keep the amnesic crew from rediscovering a dangerous threat that he was sworn to keep secret (on Picard's orders, no less). In another episode he was beamed aboard the Enterprise while in the act of firing a weapon at his captor with the goal of killing him, to prevent the man from killing others in the future, When questioned by Riker about the discharging weapon, Data only says that "something must have happened during transport"; he neglects to mention that the "something" that happened was him deliberately pulling the trigger.
• Expy: The concept of Data - an android with a desire to be human and displaying very humanlike characteristics - was originally put forth by Roddenberry in an early 1970s TV movie/pilot titled The Questor Tapes that featured a similar character. (As he describes in an interview on the LP release Inside Star Trek, Roddenberry intended for the android to go to bed with a woman but the network wouldn't allow it; he finally got his wish with Data and Yar.) A few years after that, the TV series version of Logan's Run - script edited by Roddenberry collaborator and future TNG associate producer D.C. Fontana (who had also written the Novelization for The Questor Tapes) featured a humanlike, emotional android character named Rem. (Although there were other humanlike androids in TV prior to TNG, these two are relevant due to being direct antecedents to Star Trek.) He's also an obvious stand-in for Spock with his unemotional nature, Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Deadpan Snarker personality.
• Fantastic Racism: Data is often treated like a walking calculator, even by members of Starfleet. The most prominent examples are Maddox, who tried to classify Data as Federation property, and Dr. Pulaski, who eventually comes to accept him as a colleague.
• First Time Feeling: Downside of the emotion chip is all the feelings Data has no real preparation for; humor renders him a giggling idiot, because he's unable to stop laughing, fear stops him from doing anything to help Geordi, and the resulting guilt and anger distract him. By the time of First Contact, he's still not got the best handle on fear, but now has a solution: Turn the chip off.
• Foil:
  • Maddox evaluated Data when he applied for the Academy and was the sole member of the committee that objected to his entrance because he did not consider him a sentient being.
  • Also with Spock, as discussed in "Reunification": both are not quite human, but while Spock opted to eschew his human side to be the ideal Vulcan, Data strives to become more human.
• Following in Their Rescuer's Footsteps: Starfleet officers found Data after the Crystalline Entity destroyed the Omicron Theta colony, and once he was reactivated, Data chose to join Starfleet himself.
• The Gambler: Data starts off as being terrible at Poker. His experiences playing against Riker teaches him that the game is about strategy and personality as much as it is about rules. Pretty soon he's in a casino wearing a Stetson hat, cutting cards like a pro and flipping 21s in "The Royale". (He seems to be having great fun at the craps table, too.) By "Time's Arrow," he's able to beat the worst card shark the Wild West can serve up.
• Genius Bruiser: He can knock a Klingon on his ass without even flinching, but at the same time can single-handedly outwit an entire Romulan fleet.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Geordi.
• Hidden Depths: Data constantly ponders if he has any creativity, but the one medium seems to be a natural at is painting. In fact, he's something of a ruthless critic when it comes to art, able to critique and compare styles quite eloquently. He seems to favor Abstract Expressionism in his own work and keeps a modernist De Stijl-style painting hanging in his quarters.
• Hyper-Awareness
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Despite being third in command, Data is fully capable of operating most of the ship on his own when the situation requires it. Aside from Super-Strength and lightning-quick reflexes, he is also quite a skilled tactician, capable of analyzing patterns of attack and coming up with countermeasures on a level even the Borg would respect. Many an episode, up to and including Star Trek: First Contact, have to contrive reasons for Data not being present for the main plot to unfold instead of Data being a walking Deus ex Machina.
• Immune to Bullets: Taking rounds from a submachine gun doesn't bother him in the slightest. They don't even penetrate his super-tough skin.
• Informed Attribute: Even apart from the Early-Installment Weirdness, Data's frequently asserted emotionlessness is not born out by his behavior. We frequently see Data exhibiting desire, hesitation, confusion, awkwardness, fascination, regret, enthusiasm, and other states of mind that are generally considered emotional reactions. A genuinely emotionless character would be a lot less engaging. If you define an emotional state as considering one outcome preferrable to another, then Data certainly does have emotions, just relatively mild ones. What he truly lacks is a frame of reference to compare them to.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • He is an "artificial life form" or "android", not a "robot"
  • And his name is pronounced 'Dayta', not 'Datta'.
    Dr. Pulaski: What's the difference?
    Data: One is my name. The other is not.
• Innocently Insensitive: Combined with Brutal Honesty. Data at times has made comments that in most contexts would be hurtful, simply due to his lack of emotions and that he doesn't always grasp human social behavior. And to his credit, he does adjust once he understands the faux pas.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Data is, by any measure, physically, intellectually, and (barring outside influence) more often than not, morally superior to humans, yet he himself is deeply fascinated by humanity, seeing becoming human as the highest of aspirations.
• Irony: As pointed out by more than one character, Data is what a lot of people would consider the pinnacle of existence short of godhood; super-strong, super-smart, ageless, functionally immortal with proper care. And yet he would give it all up in a heartbeat to be human.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Data comes to adopt a pet cat, Spot, in an attempt to be more human. In "All Good Things," Data is shown in his Oxford quarters, which is full of cats. In the sequel series, Star Trek: Picard, he considers Spot his most cherished memory.
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: There is some element of racism involved in Data being an artificial life form, even after his rights as an individual are established. Neither Starfleet nor Picard to be in any hurry to promote him, despite the fact that every time he is placed in a command situation, he handles it superbly. Picard's advice to him on how to be an effective leader seems to suggest that, in Picard's mind at least, the opportunity is still available to him. At least some of this can be attributed to Data's lack of emotion leading to a lack of ambition; the novel "The Buried Age" observed that Picard had to encourage him to express an interest in certain roles rather than just doing the job he had been assigned.
• Locked into Strangeness: A flash-forward to the future ("All Good Things...") shows Data with a glaringly-obvious streak of grey hair, an attempt to make himself feel older and distinguished. His housekeeper disagrees, saying it makes him "look like a bloody skunk".
• Magnum Opus: Before Data, Dr. Soong created several androids, all of whom wound up non-functioning, flawed, or unstable (with one even turning out to be an unpredictable murderer). Despite some stumbling blocks, Character Development ultimately made Data everything his earlier models weren't. By the end of his life he possessed logic, intelligence, morality, self-awareness, and (eventually) feelings, fulfilling the dreams of his creator of making the perfect artificial human.
• Mayfly–December Friendship:
  • When the head of Commander Data (in the episode "Time's Arrow") is found among 20th-century relics on Earth, the crew attempt to comfort him about his destruction. Rather than being morose about this, Data is delighted that he will have a "death," as his expected longevity means that so many of his friends in Starfleet will have lived and died that he will be unable to remember them all properly; whereas having only a limited few close friends means that Data can cherish them much more dearly.
  • The novel Immortal Coil dealt with this again in connection with Data. Taking place not long after First Contact, the plotline includes Data's emotional realization of what he's always known intellectually — he will almost certainly outlive all of his friends on the Enterprise. And then another set, and another. The actual plot of the book assuaged these fears by introducing a league of artificially created organisms, to which Data could retire whenever he wants. And then Star Trek: Nemesis happened...^note Though it was implied Data could be resurrected via Brain Uploading afterward, Star Trek: Picard reveals it didn't take, as B4's neural pathways weren't advanced enough.
• Meaningful Name: Data's manner is dispassionate and matter-of-fact, contrasted with Lore's emotionality and spontaneity.
• Messianic Archetype: Played with in "Thine Own Self," where Data lands on a primitive planet and causes quite a stir. He is christened "Jayden" by the locals, is run through with a spear while attempting to save the village from radiation sickness (though it merely knocks him out), and is 'risen' when the Enterprise locks onto his grave and covertly beams him up.
• Minored In Ass Kicking:
  • He can sometimes play the role of The Big Guy—with no effort—just by virtue of being inhumanly strong and resistant. He is, hands-down, the strongest main character of any Star Trek series.
  • Captain Data was by far the best captain in any fleet. That guy was 10 steps ahead of whatever was going on. Not only that, but he showed an uppity lieutenant commander why an Android is the best choice for a captain.
• Moment Killer: Exploited, for once: Worf is unwilling to be left on his own with K’Ehleyr after their fight so drags in Data as a chaperone. Cunning man.
• Morality Chip: Has multiple "ethical subroutines" that prevent him from turning into a stereotypical Straw Vulcan or worse yet a sociopath. The one time this was shut off he wound up torturing and experimenting on his best friend at the behest of his homicidal brother (although it should be noted that he was also experiencing negative emotions due to said brother, who was preventing him experiencing anything positive).
• Motor Mouth: To his crewmates' chagrin. Although it occasionally works to their advantage, such as when Picard needs to brush him on off on, say, Lwaxana Troi.
• The Needless: He runs the night shift, and also commands the ship whenever the senior staff is away or otherwise out of action.
• Never Heard That One Before: Data's jokes are 5,000,000 years old. See him trying out his Henny Youngman routine on his co-workers. He heads to the holodeck to try and learn something about Earth humor, but before long Data and the 80s-era "Mister Comic" are gooning about on-stage with buck teeth and Jerry Lewis voices, proving that all jokes have a shelf life.
  "Take my Worf — please!"
• Nice Guy: For a supposedly emotionless android, Data is tremendously likable, polite, earnest, and well-meaning, making a lot of friends who deeply value him, and whom Data, although he technically shouldn't be able to return the sentiment, values equally deeply. Even when he has to lay into Worf for questioning him in front of the crew while they are acting as Captain and First Officer, Data takes a moment to note that he's sorry if the rebuke has damaged their friendship (it hasn't; Worf apologizes and says that if anyone risked their friendship, it was him for being insubordinate).
• No Sense of Humor: Not for lack of trying, though. The guy named his striped cat "Spot", for crying out loud. This lasts until the installation of his emotion chip in Generations, at which point he instead develops a ridiculously goofy sense of humour in which he uses a tricorder as a hand puppet and sings while programming in a life-form scan. He more or less settles down from there.
• Not Himself: His relationship with his "grandpa" Dr. Graves is an imperfect one to say the least. A dying man with no scruples about taking credit for a student's later success, he decides that Dr. Soong's android is the perfect home for his digital consciousness. Even when he is trapped inside Data, he cannot resist blowing his own trumpet and eulogizes himself as ‘a man for all seasons!’.
• Oblivious to Love: Kind of. He has a conceptual understanding of it and experimented with a "romantic subroutine" to date a crewman in one episode.
• Odd Friendship: With Troi. Data doesn't understand human emotion, which is Troi's entire profession as Ship's Counselor. Troi's empathic abilities also don't work on Data since he's an android, and he doesn't have any emotions for her to sense even if that weren't the case. He calls her, "The friend I understand the least."
  "I am sure she finds me as much a mystery as I do her."
• Oppose What You Suffered: In the second season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man", Data's rights are contested, as a scientist argues he should be treated as a machine, rather than a person, and this fact is even demonstrated by Data being taken apart and switched off without his consent. In the season 6 episode "The Quality of Life", Data then goes to extreme lengths to protect an emerging machine life-form from being treated in the same manner before they can fully achieve sentience, even going so far as to risk the life of his own best friend, Geordi La Forge.
• Papa Wolf: He was only a father to Lal for a single episode, but when a Starfleet admiral insisted that she be removed from Data's care, Data, in his own fashion, was ready to fight tooth and nail to keep his daughter safe. As Lal's neural net began to fail, Data's all but moved heaven and Earth to try (in vain) to save her, leaving that same admiral in absolute awe.
• Passing the Torch: The piano score when Data strolls down the corridors with McCoy conjures up many memories of the original Star Trek in a nostalgic way. Later, Spock will debate Data on the merits of emotion and compliment his application of the Vulcan nerve pinch.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Being an android, he's immune to many things that would be dangerous for the rest of the crew, and is occasionally required to handle such situations.
• Phrase Catcher: "Thank you, Mr. Data" after Data's explanations get gratuitous.
• Precision F-Strike: Two.
  • In Generations, as the Enterprise is crashing, Data says what everyone's thinking:
    Data: Ohhhhh, shit!
  • In First Contact:
    Data: I believe I speak for everyone on the ship when I say: "To hell with our orders."
• Quizzical Tilt: Often everybody looks at Data as though he's lost his mind, but he simply blinks back at them with that dispassionate android look of his. Data also did this frequently himself.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: invoked Justified. His creator was far more interested in the puzzle of creating fully-sentient mechanical life than any commercial applications. As a result, Dr. Soong equipped him with a slew of traits that imitates those of biological lifeforms. Many of these serve both a practical purpose in maintaining his body, but also make him appear more life-like in an aesthetic sense, very likely in an attempt to steer him away from the Uncanny Valley. Data has to occasionally eat a semi-organic nutrient to lubricate his biofunctions, and he breathes (as a way of regulating the temperature of his inner systems) and has a pulse (as a way of transporting biochemical lubricants around his body). He also has a built-in system dedicated to make him blink and make it appear somewhat random, as well as an aging program designed to simulate the external effects of aging in his physical appearance.
• Robot Kid: Soong often spoke of Data and Lore as his sons. When his options are reduced to survival or "death", Data's reaction is simple and unemotional: He objects to the idea of being taken apart but he has no emotional investment in trying to stay 'alive.' It's not ego or vanity that makes him sue Commander Maddox from Starfleet in "The Measure of a Man," but his wish to keep Dr. Soong's dream alive. Of course, Soong later points out that this is a very filial behavior.
• Robosexual: It's stated early on in the show that he's "fully functional" in that regard, and has had a number of relationships with organic beings.
• Robots Think Faster: Can process sixty trillion linear operations per second. On a number of occasions, he uses this speed to make decisions and calculations far faster than the average human.
  • In the film Star Trek: First Contact, Data says that he was considering accepting the Borg Queen's offer for a mere 0.68 seconds. Picard smiles because that's just the span of a fleeting thought for a human, but Data says that "for an android, that is nearly an eternity".
  • In "In Theory," Data dates a human woman. Near the end of the episode, she kisses him passionately, then asks what he was thinking of in that moment.
    Data: In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot...

  She breaks up with him, among other reasons because she realizes that she will never truly have his full attention.

• Running Gag: When hearing a saying, metaphor or other non-obvious expression, he will usually consult his databases and then start listing several synonyms for it, always being interrupted by someone listening. In one episode this was somewhat parodied by Data doing this to the ship's computer, and the computer interrupting him in a similar manner. Cue Data's puzzled expression.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: "Pen Pals". Whilst Geordi, Riker and Picard get into a back-and-forth debate about the virtues of the Prime Directive, Data cuts right through all the red tape and says that this civilization is not a theoretical problem, but real people in big trouble.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He often speaks using very technical terms to describe basic idioms or slang. For instance, in "Best of Both Worlds," when Commander Shelby says "early bird gets the worm," he remarks to Geordi that there are no "avifaunal or crawling vermicular lifeforms" on the planet.
• Ship Tease: With Tasha. Curiously, most of it came after she died.
• Sibling Yin-Yang:
  • Data is kind, innocent, and stoic in direct contrast to his manipulative, hyper-emotional and psychopathic twin brother Lore.
  • He is also very smart in contrast to the simple-minded B-4.
• The Smart Guy: Given that he's an android, with a supercomputer in his head, he can usually come up with solutions that would be at best impractical if they didn't have an android on the crew.
• The Spock:
  • His pedantry and lack of understanding of human nature pegs him as TNG's Spock. And almost to drive the point home, Admiral McCoy (still kicking at 137!) tells him he sounds like a Vulcan.
    Data: No, sir. I am an android.
    Admiral McCoy: (scoffs, walks away) Almost as bad.
  • Once again, Pulaski busts Data's balls in the holodeck, particularly when she suggests that Holmes understood the human soul and used it to match wits with the likes of Moriarty (claiming Data is all memorization and resuscitation). The weekly Poker game further proves Pulaski’s point about Data having no real instinct.
  • And then in "Unification," he actually out-Spocks Spock.
• Super-Strength: Literally has The Strength of Ten Men and is well known for it, even in Klingon society. Observe.
• Thinking Tic: His tendency to tilt his head to one side or the other when he is confused or doing some deep calculation. It's apparently the body language equivalent of a hard drive clicking.
• Tin Man: He regularly claims that he has no emotions and would like to learn to understand how they work, but it is evident that there is a whole lot more going on in his mind that he himself thinks.
  "If I was not a consummate professional and an android, I would find this entire procedure insulting."
  • He was actually called this a few times during the series, the most memorable of which was in that ridiculous episode with the sentient, evil sludge. But there were many occasions where Data seemed to approach something like anger. Fajo learned that.
  • Graves singing ‘If I only had a heart’ after seizing control of Data's body as a ghost!
  • When asked if Pulaski will be "normal" after Picard’s plan to de-age the crew, Data replies "as normal as ever" which is very droll.
  • Over the course of the show, Data the gambler loses his daughter, his father, his brother, his lover, and is tricked and betrayed more times than you can count. He’s learning that trusting somebody can lead to betrayal, another human failing for the mechanical man. He considers himself fortunate to be spared the emotional consequences but the way he stares into the middle distance proves that he is putting on his own poker face.
  • He approaches it as a question of logic, but it feels like a matter of bruised ego when Data is passed over for a promotion! This is remedied when Jellico makes him an intermediary First Officer.
  • By the time of "Redemption," Data has learned that raising his voice gets better results than giving out cold and dispassionate orders, and threatens to sack his First Officer for obstinacy.
  • In "Time's Arrow," when Riker repeats his fancy way of saying "I've gotten used to your behavior", Data responds that he is fond of the rest of the crew as well.
  • While handing Spot over to Worf's temporary care, Data briefly starts saying that Spot needs to be told that he is "a pretty cat, and a good cat", showing a definite emotional attachment to his pet.
  • In the non-canon novel Strike Zone, he adds a new string to his bow for dealing with Pulaski: telling her where she could stick the entire conversation they'd just had. When Wesley tells him this was an insult, all Data can say is "Good."
• Token Robot: The only android on the Enterprise, and one of the very few sentient artificial lifeforms in The Federation.
• Truly Single Parent: To Lal.
• Unable to Cry: As in, physically unable to, despite losing his daughter.
  • Though of note: while she is dying Data stops engaging in his human-emulations (especially blinking and subtle body motion) showing that while he cannot cry for her loss, he can focus entirely on her in her death throes.
  • Averted in Generations after he gets his emotion chip.
  • Brought up in "Brothers."
    Data: You know that I cannot grieve for you, sir.
    Dr. Soong: You will, in your own way.
  • Also seen in "Skin of Evil," but like seen in the previous example, he does grieve, in his own way.
    Data: I find my thoughts are not for Tasha, but for myself. I keep thinking how empty it will be without her presence. Did I miss the point?
    Picard: No... no, you didn't, Data. You got it.
• Verbal Tic: Does not use contractions. This becomes key to telling him apart from Lore. There are a few slips in this early on thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness. After all, it's hard for a human to stop using them when it is a habit.
• What Have We Ear?: Data is much funnier under the effects of the "Naked Now" virus, as seen with his isolinear chip trick.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Frequently explored and the focus of the season two episode "The Measure of A Man." A Starfleet scientist wants to dismantle and study Data, to replicate Soong's work.
  • Even after android rights are recognized by the Federation, Data has a tough time of it in Starfleet. Data sounds so angry when he threatens to relieve Hobson of duty in "Redemption Pt. II". Hobson, perhaps rightly, suggesting that Data is more concerned with the functions of the ship than the people on board. Then after he begrudgingly complies with Data's order, Data then orders exactly what Hobson was suggesting in the first place.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Data puffs on a pipe while deliberating over a murder in "Lonely Among Us". Riker lets him get away with his Sherlock Holmes pastiche ('My dear Riker, sir...'), but the unamused Picard slaps his wrist. This is not really the time or the place to be arsing about.
• You Talk Too Much!: Even the Borg Queen tires of his yapping before long. Hell, even the computer tells him to shut up once.

Ensign Wesley Crusher

Ensign Wesley Crusher

Played By: Wil Wheaton

Dubbed in French by: Nicolas Grossetête

A much-maligned, much-hated character in his prime, Wesley was inserted into the series by Gene Roddenberry as a wunderkind who single-handedly saves the ship (or, more commonly, imperils it) from week to week. Unfortunately, his bloated screentime and infallible genius did not ingratiate him with many viewers.

As he grew older, Wesley became a more likable Audience Surrogate. He enrolled in Starfleet Academy, becoming a sort of surrogate son to Picard. Despite this, Wesley began to question the dogmas of the Federation, which he saw as hypocritical. Like Ro Laren, he left Starfleet after finding himself on the opposing side of the Maquis issue.

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• Always Second Best: He was beaten into the Academy by his Benzite colleague Mordock, though the episode never actually shows why Mordock was judged superior.
• 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.
  • Even in real life. When Wesley aced his second entrance exam for the Academy, Roddenberry commemorated it by presenting Wil with the second lieutenant bars Gene earned in the Air Corps. Present at the ceremony was General Colin Powell!
• Book Smart: He is exceptionally smart even by the higher standards of the 24th century, but by the third season it's pretty clear he also feels a lot of pressure to always be an overachiever.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • He'd quit Starfleet Academy in "Journey's End," but returned at some point between this episode and Star Trek: Nemesis, in which he's a Lieutenant. In a deleted scene, he tells Picard that he'll be part of Riker's engineering crew aboard the USS Titan.
  • And he turns up briefly in a second season episode of Star Trek: Picard, as a Traveller.
• Disappeared Dad: His father died while on a mission with Picard while serving on the Stargazer. Wesley was mad at Picard initially but eventually admitted to Picard that he did everything to please him.
• Evil Genius: Seems to be at times, when he doesn't bother to explain himself. Although in his case, it was more like Accidental Evil Genius thanks to his science experiments. In one episode, his nanotech experiment almost destroyed the ship and, in another, he managed to get his mom trapped in a space/time bubble after a test on the warp drive, which nearly killed her as it collapsed in on itself.
• Hidden Depths: It takes the Traveler to convince Picard that Wesley might amount to something worthwhile in the future, which is why the Captain decides to take an active interest in "the boy's" development.
• Impossible Genius: Wesley accomplishes things in his teens that surprises the best engineers in Starfleet didn't think of.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Dr. Stubbs sizes Wesley up in about two seconds and questions what he does beyond fly the ship, ditch his friends and read all day. It's a wake-up call for Wesley, meeting a man who could well be a future version of himself—married to his work, lonely, and anti-social—and he sounds almost angry when he tells Guinan that he always gets an "A" in his coursework. All study and no play makes Wes a dull boy, and "Evolution" is a step toward Wes living out a more unorthodox life.
• Like a Son to Me: By episode 1x06, Picard is already developing a protective instinct toward the boy.
• Military Brat: He's the son of a Starfleet doctor and command officer.
• Plucky Middie: IN SPACE!. He's a teenage officer in Starfleet who often saves the day.
• Put on a Bus: He eventually leaves to join Starfleet Academy, something the show had been putting off for several seasons.
• Teen Genius: In spades. The prevalence of this trope in TV series during the 1980's may have contributed to Wesley's scrappydom, as by the time TNG came to air near the end of the decade the trope had begun to cross over into being a cliché and Wesley's manifestation of it was not even remotely novel.

The Enterprise-D

The Enterprise-D

NCC-1701-D

Played By: Majel Barrett (computer voice)

"Well this is a new ship. But she's got the right name. Now you remember that, you hear?[...]You treat her like a lady. And she'll always bring you home."

— Admiral McCoy, "Encounter at Farpoint"

The new flagship of the Federation and the primary setting of the show. Just like the original, the Enterprise-D is just as much of a character as her crew.

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• The Artifact: The Galaxy-class was designed the way it was because it was thought that its saucer separation abilities would arise frequently, but it took too long, and it was used only three times on the show: the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint", "The Arsenal of Freedom" (also from season 1), and "The Best of Both Worlds: Part II" from season 4, before being used for the last time in Star Trek: Generations.
  • For a ship designated the "Flagship" of the Federation she rarely acted in that manner as we would understand it in relation to Earth navies. Never having the staff of an Admiral on board and rarely leading any squadrons of Federation ships. Instead she was treated more like a patrol & long range exploration vessel. The only time the Enterprise served as the command ship of a fleet was during the Klingon Civil War, and even then, the Fleet Admiral which approved Picard's plan of blockading the Romulan border to keep them from interfering gave Picard broad discretion to command the fleet as he saw fit (which included transferring Riker, Data, and Geordi to other understaffed ships), rather than travel with the fleet.
  • There was also an alternate universe where the Enterprise was leading a war against the Klingons, in which the ship was much more military than the original one.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Galaxy-class ships were pretty cool when introduced, but later series, and especially the Expanded Universe books, pointed out they weren't great in practice. Having family, and especially kids, aboard made going into combat much more hazardous than necessary. Notably, after the loss of the Enterprise, later Starfleet designs would be purpose built for either combat or exploration, but rarely both, while Galaxy-class ships that served in the Dominion War were refitted to be used as The Heavy of the Federation fleets, transporting ground troops and supplies instead of families, similar to how the alternate timeline Enterprise appeared in Yesterday's Enterprise.
• Back from the Dead: Thirty years after the destruction of the stardrive section and the crash of the saucer on Veridian III, the Enterprise-D is eventually rebuilt to spec by Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: Picard, originally to serve out the rest of its days as the centerpiece of the Starfleet Fleet Museum at Athan Prime. However, a crisis of unfathomable scale forces the old crew to Break Out the Museum Piece as their last best hope against the renewed Borg threat to the Federation.
  • For tropes pertaining to the Enterprise-D as it appears in Picard, see the "PIC" character page.
• The Battlestar: She's an exploratory version of this, given that she's well-armed and carries a large wing of shuttles for various mission types.
• The Comically Serious: Not programmed for humor, but her answers to some questions posed by the crew could be unintentionally hilarious at times.
• Dropped a Bridge on Her: She is destroyed very suddenly and unexpectedly in Star Trek: Generations (the Trope Namer, incidentally), after being outfought by a century-old Bird of Prey. This is despite the fact that previous episodes showed her to be capable of wiping the floor with multiple Bird of Preys at once, and she was only seven years into what was expected to be an operational lifespan of 100 years or more. ^note  This was apparently a case of Real Life Writes the Plot; the show's Enterprise model didn't look particularly good on film (due to being designed for television), so the writers wrote the ship's destruction into Generations as an excuse to destroy the model and build a more detailed one that looked better.
• Due to the Dead: In the DS9 episode "The Way of the Warrior", Captain Sisko respectfully gives his condolences to Worf about her destruction, while Worf and Miles O'Brien later eulogize her.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Unlike the TOS Enterprise, this ship is brand spanking new in the pilot and is the most advanced ship in the fleet upon her commissioning. She's also explicitly said to be the flagship of the Federation and is always given the hardest tasks by Starfleet Command.
• Heroic RRoD: Top of the line, she may be, but she can't go past Warp 9 for too long, or the engines start to give out.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Not as dramatic as the original, but her destruction helps prevent the deaths of an entire civilization on Veridian IV.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: She's the fifth Federation starship to bear the name Enteprise, as evidenced by the "D" in her NCC designation. There's even wall models of some of her predecessors in the briefing room.
• Lightning Bruiser: Very fast, as in almost able to breach the Warp 10 barrier all on her own, and she went toe-to-toe with a Borg Cube on more than one occasion.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: "Yesterday's Enterprise" would identify her as a battleship and Star Trek video games tend to give other Galaxy-class ships a similar role.
• Starship Luxurious: The Enterprise-D is the most prominent example in the franchise, what with having family aboard, numerous holodecks, and a bridge that was criticized as looking more like the lobby of the Hilton than an actual navy-style bridge. Captain DeSoto almost says this trope by name when needling Commander Riker in "Tin Man". Apparently the smallest quarters aboard ship are better than what an admiral would have rated a century prior, according to Scotty.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the alternate future of "All Good Things", the Enterprise gets some major upgrades that include an Invisibility Cloak, a third warp nacelle, and a bigass phaser cannon that demolishes a Klingon warship.
• The Worf Effect: She tended to get hit with this a lot to demonstrate other races' abilities. Star Trek: Generations took this to its logical conclusion.

Hologram Enterprise-D

A holographic representation of the Enterprise-D appears as part of the Kobayashi Maru simulation on the holodeck of the U.S.S. Protostar.

For tropes relating to her appearance there, along with the other holograms, see, Star Trek: Prodigy.