Star Trek / Tropes A to D

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These tropes are featured across the entire Star Trek franchise. Please add tropes for specific works to their individual pages.

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A

• Action Figure File Card: The figures made by Galoob (for Next Gen) and Playmates Toys (for the entire franchise up to Voyager) had them.
• Age Insecurity: Vulcans, despite having no problem with growing old, consider revealing one's age to be "intimate" and thus only share it with a select few people, such as their lovers.
• Agony Beam: The Klingons have pain sticks, which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. They are used for enforcing discipline and in certain Klingon rituals.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Self-aware computers are always Obliviously Evil in TOS. Later series had more nuanced explorations of the concept.
• Alcubierre Drive: Arguable Ur-Example. The warp drive is described similarly in the technical manuals and was the inspiration for Miguel Alcubierre's theory.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Trope Codifier via General Order Number 1, the Prime Directive, that generator of so many plot devices.
• All Genes Are Codominant: See Spock (human-Vulcan hybrid), Lieutenant Torres (human-Klingon), Ziyal (Cardassian-Bajoran), and others.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Largely averted. Alien civilizations in Star Trek run the full spectrum, from benevolent to not-so-much. Societies are mostly guided by principles of self-preservation and/or self-improvement; they differ in means. The Federation is all about cooperation and community. Others (Cardassians, Romulans, TOS-era Klingons) are about military conquest. But even those are portrayed realistically, and sometimes sympathetically, as just groups of individuals doing what they believe to be correct. Very few (the Borg, the Pah-Wraiths) are presented as being genuinely Always Chaotic Evil.
  • Even the Borg aren't entirely evil; they believe they're bringing other species closer to perfection by assimilating them.
• Aliens Never Invented Democracy:
  • The human-led Federation is the only democratic power in the Galaxy, the others are:
  • The Klingon Empire: A feudal oligarchy with the heads of the noble houses conforming the High Council and choosing a Chancellor. They use to have fully empowered Emperors who were successors of Kahless (their culture's Jesus) but the figure was abandoned some 200 years before the first series starts. A clone of Kahless was later named Emperor but with only decorative and religious functions.
  • The Romulan Star Empire is technically a parliamentary republic, with the praetor seemingly equivalent to a prime minister. However, it's also very much a Police State where the major state security agency, the Tal Shiar, wields significant political power: they station political officers on naval vessels, and at two separate points in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the vice-chair and chairman of the Tal Shiar also sit in the Senate.
  • The Cardassian Union is a military dictatorship with a merely symbolic civil government. It has similarities with both Fascist and Soviet regimes. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Way of the Warrior", a popular uprising overthrows the military government and restores power to the Detapa Council. Later the Dominion invades Cardassia and overthrows this government to install Gul Dukat as their puppet dictator.
  • The Tzenkethi Coalition: Its leader is named the Autarch, you make the math.
  • The Dominion: Officially a Theocracy with the Founders (who are considered gods by their subjects) at the top, in reality an Ethnocracy with a species ruling collectively over the others in its Empire.
  • The Borg Collective: It's an absolute monarchy or a classless collective society depending on how you see it. The Borg Queen rules over billions of mindless collectivized drones.
  • The Ferengi Alliance: A Monarchy led by the Grand Negus as the figurehead, all the rest of the administration is basically Corporatocracy.
  • Bajor is technically a Republic with free elections to choose the First Minister once they got rid of the Cardassian occupation, yet its religious leader the Kai (equivalent to a Pope or Dalai Lama) has excessive amounts of power and at some point one of their Kais actually held both offices.
  • The Orion Syndicate is The Mafia at the Galactic level, dedicated to all sorts of organized crime including slave trade and prostitution.
  • Even before the existence of the Federation, Star Trek: Enterprise shows that the other founding members apart from humans were not that democratic; Vulcans were led by the Vulcan High Command, essentially a Military junta, the Andorians were pretty militaristic and their state was described as the Andorian Empire.
• All Gravity Is the Same: Played with. While planets are shown to have similar, if not the same gravity as each other, Artificial Gravity is also very common. One species, the Elaysians, is barely able to function in 'Earth-level gravity' environments without the aid of surgery or special technology due to the low gravity of their home planet.
• Almighty Janitor: Boothby, the groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy. Played by Ray Walston of My Favorite Martian fame.
• Alternate History: In Star Trek, the 1980s and late 1990s were a genetic renaissance. During this time, superhuman products of genetic manipulation turned against the rest of humanity in the genetic equivalent of a Robot War and threw mankind into a dark age. However, thanks to a genius human building the first Warp Drive out of an un-launched nuclear missile, the testing of that system got the attention of a passing Vulcan starship. The Vulcans assisted Humanity in recovering, and Humanity's technology began to advance extremely quickly. All the shows take place after this.
• Alternative Number System: According to The Klingon Dictionary, the Klingons used to count in a ternary (base-three) system, but have since switched over to decimal.
  • In DS9 the Cardassians apparently have different numbering systems for merchant and military castes, a factor which comes up in attempting to work with their technology.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Generally averted. All antagonistic races are given redeeming qualities, with the only common exceptions being creatures with little or no intelligence. Borg drones who are connected to the race's Hive Mind are examples of the Well-Intentioned Extremist, believing that they are doing everyone a favor by assimilating them. The original series portrays Klingons and Romulans as having extremely antagonistic governments, but as individuals they are generally just people living and working like anyone else. (The Romulan captain from the first story to feature the Romulan Empire was very much a Punch-Clock Villain who was openly tired of war and saw Kirk as a Worthy Opponent). The Next Generation plays this mostly straight with the Ferengi and Cardassians.
  • Both TNG (particularly the two-parter ("Unification") that featured the return of Spock) and DS9 show Romulans capable of acting reasonably. In the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone" Picard and his Romulan counterpart agree to cooperate in investigating an unknown entity threatening the settlements of both powers that would later be revealed as—or at least heavily implied to be—the Borg. In Star Trek: Nemesis the Romulans actually save the Enterprise from near-destruction and render aid to the crew. DS9 showed that individual Cardassians were capable of being good and honorable people even if their society doesn't encourage it.
• Always on Duty: Averted. There are several episodes in which the captain and some or most of the main characters are not on the bridge when something important happens, though they quickly assemble on the bridge anyway. An example of this is the very first episode of Star Trek, in which Captain Pike isn't on the bridge for several seconds while (then) Lieutenant Spock and lieutenant José Tyler discuss an incoming sensor anomaly.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The Bolians, the Benzite and the Andorians are bright blue; Bolians evolved from aquatic mammals, and Andorians hail from an icy moon. Then you have your green Orions / Gorn, orange Ferengi, the occasional bright yellow/purple background alien, and whatever the hell the Dosi were.
  • Alien Blood takes it even further, as aliens with grey or human-coloured skin are shown to have green (Vulcan/Romulan), yellow (Na'kuhl), brown (Cardassian) and even pink (Klingon) blood. Artistic License – Biology applies in most cases, but not all—makeup artists usually give Vulcan/Romulan characters a slight greenish tint to their skin.
• Ancestor Veneration: The Klingons hold great respect for their ancestors, especially those who died in battle and rose to Sto-vo-kor, and pray to Kahless on behalf of said ancestors.
• Angels, Devils and Squid: The Bajoran Prophets are the Angels, the Pah-Wraiths and Fek'lhr are the Devils, and the various Starfish Aliens (Species 8472, Devidians, etc.) and Eldritch Abominations are the Squid. Then, there are the Q, who have traits in common with all three, and can choose which one they are, depending on the day and their mood.
• Applied Phlebotinum: What would the franchise be without this? Really?
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Subverted. The Klingons love their Cool Swords like the bat'leth, but Deep Space Nine makes a point of mentioning that an old lady with a phaser is worth a dozen Klingons with melee weapons.
• Arc Number: 47, from the middle of Next Generation on.
• Artificial Gravity: Rarely mentioned, but (almost) always present whenever the action takes place aboard a starship or space station.
• Artistic License – Chess: suffers from this whenever chess comes up. While the rules of 3-D chess are more complex than the rules of regular chess, there is no reason that Counselor Troi should be able to win against Data by making irrational moves.
• Art Evolution: Due to the longevity of the franchise, increases in production value and rotating production staff the visual design has changed repeatedly and tremendously.
  • TOS was hampered by basic limitations of 1960's television budget. Sets and props looked like painted wood along with static science graphics, costumes very flat colors with simple construction and outdoor environments have Styrofoam Rocks. The visual design was ambitious but these elements were not especially convincing even at the time.
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture was when Star Trek had an actual budget and this set the standard for the remainder of the TOS cast. Higher fidelity in set construction and more intricate costumes, the look felt more functional with a naval theme to it.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a higher level of comfort with the ship and Starfleet technology in general, characters used touch screen interfaces with corridors, walls and tables making extensive use of plexiglass. The bridge had a wooden arch to evoke a naturalistic feel and carpet was liberally used for flooring. This evolved in its' own way but remains relatively consistent through DS9 and VOY.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise was a prequel and tried to maintain the canon look of the original series while crafting its' own identity, creating a hybrid of physical buttons with interactive displays. The intention was to reflect real life submarines with exposed framework and grates.
  • The Kelvin Timeline starting with Star Trek (2009) places emphasis on white fiberglass paneling to make the ship look extra modern and extra clean, the bridge viewscreen is more of a HUD on a window that shows the outside of the ship at all times and A LOT of Lens Flares. This created an extreme contrast to darker and more junky locations.
  • Star Trek: Discovery takes a lot of inspiration from the Kelvin Timeline movies but seeks to merge certain design philosophies across the franchise. It takes the hyper-visualization of the Kelvin Timeline movies with the transparent bridge viewscreen, railings on the bridge and functional workspaces from TOS along with a slightly darker color scheme and well-defined workstations from the TNG era. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would further evolve those ideas while pushing the more tan and maroon coloring from TOS.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: Along with the Insane Admiral, these are a common source of vexation for every Starfleet Captain and their crews. Even within the Federation, a typical ambassador is a Fantastic Racist with an It's All About Me attitude. For this reason, the Captain often ends up pulling diplomatic duty.
• Author Appeal: Gene Roddenberry made Star Trek as diverse and inclusive (and sexually liberated) as he could make it within the constraints of Sixties/Eighties broadcast standards, because he truly felt things should be that way. The sex stuff and the miniskirts, well, those came about because he was a notorious Dirty Old Man.^note The women, and some men, who worked with him did not remember this aspect of his personality with affection or tolerance. Gene Coon's secretary Ande Richardson revealed that the Great Bird was a sexist who "disregarded women" and used to "have women walking from Bill Theiss' fitting rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them". Leonard Nimoy said Gene saw women as toys, as "miniskirted, big-boobed sex objects".
  • Rick Berman has admitted that he is the one mostly responsible for so much Time Travel in the various shows. He just loves the time paradox of "this is the reason this happened but that is the origin of that event and here is where we have to make a choice as to whether this or that occurs..."
  • Ira Stephen Behr apparently missed the memo about Trekkies generally not being fans of swing music. He admitted responsibility for Vic Fontaine, having spent weeks vetting James Darren (no relation to Bobby) for the role. Behr sympathizes with the fans' displeasure at the Vic episodes... kind of. Vic still sang a total of fourteen songs in Seasons Six and Seven of DS9, including the Series Finale(!).
• Author Usurpation: Star Trek has overshadowed all of Gene Roddenberry's other works.

B

• Badass Army: Starfleet is one of these. Minus the occasional curb stomping by foes like the Borg or gigantic monster ships from 130 years in the future, Starfleet regularly goes toe to toe with the biggest and baddest and usually wins or forces a draw, even against foes with better tech. Starfleet even has certain ships that take whole fleets by themselves; these ships tend to be named Enterprise, though Defiant and Voyager certainly earned her way into the ranks. Despite showings of Hollywood Tactics, their land forces are nothing to shake a stick at either, as these scenes demonstrate. When all else fails, their engineers are unparalleled in the setting, and the Dominion considers them to warrant Worthy Opponent status by themselves, with one Vorta half-jokingly claiming that Starfleet Engineers could turn "rocks into replicators". If you must fight Starfleet, defeat them quickly, before they have the time to concoct some clever solution using whatever random objects they have at hand.
  • The Borg don't act like a traditional military and wouldn't consider themselves an "army" but they definitely qualify. Even a single drone is capable of infecting enemies with nanomachines, who can then infect others, producing more Borg and thus more soldiers. They all have Super-Strength and Swiss Army Appendages, they can survive in a vacuum and they don't feel fear. Even if you manage to kill a few of them, their Hive Mind will adapt to your weapons and suddenly bam, they're all protected by their own personal force fields. Most of the other examples on this list are scared shitless of them, and with good reason.
  • The Klingons (being a proud warrior race and all) have their moments of this, provided they don't let Honor Before Reason get in the way and nobody turns the gravity off. During the Dominion War their ships tore through enemy fleets like tissue paper and, due to some ship-disabling technobabble, briefly held the entire front line while the Federation and Romulans figured out a solution. It's been fairly firmly established they'd kick the Federation's ass in an all-out war, of which there have been four: in the first one they kicked our asses so bad Starfleet put a bomb in their planet to make them stop, the sequel caused godlike aliens to immediately intervene and make everyone play nice, #3 was in an alternate timeline where they were also kicking our asses and #4 was only ended by the presence of a much larger threat (see above re: the Dominion). Phew!
  • Speaking of the Dominion, one cannot mention Badass Armies without the Jem'Hadar. They're practically born fighting and their mantra proclaims "victory is life".
  • The Augments. 72 of them was enough to commandeer one of the Federation's finest starships. And they captured another one years later, even with their numbers significantly reduced. Nineteen of them managed to steal a Klingon warship and nearly wipe out a Klingon colony before they were old enough to drink. Khan took out dozens of Klingon troops and stole Starfleet's first warship (which he helped design) by himself. They can hear heartbeats, punch you across a room, tank the Vulcan nerve pinch or phasers set on stun, and catch up on centuries' worth of technical knowledge in weeks. In short: never turn your back on them, never let them read your technical manuals, and under no circumstances give them a starship.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Hunted", a race called the Angosians forced their troops to undergo genetic engineering to become an entire force of One Man Armys. When the troops were no longer needed, they were sent to an orbiting penal colony. They managed to escape their prison and overwhelm the entire planet's defenses in a matter of hours.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Starfleet Command sometimes give the impression of being between this and Obstructive Bureaucrat.
• Big Damn Movies: The movies feature far more action than you're likely to find in a typical season of the original series or Next Generation. While episodes of the series typically involve stories about exploration and dealing with touchy political issues, the movies are much more likely to involve clashes with full-on Card Carrying Villains.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: There's quite a lot of this going around amongst the races seen in the setting.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Some of the bizarreness pops up when it comes to procreation. One of the more infamous is a species seen in Star Trek: Enterprise that reproduces through mind-linking Green Rocks (and where the MEN fall pregnant).
• Bizarre Beverage Use: Klingons consider drinking a beverage offered by an adversary to be a dishonor, and when offered a drink by an adversary, will pour it on the floor in protest.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The norm, really. For Humans, the Prime Directive was a means of addressing this concept. It boils down thusly: 1) There are alien cultures out there with values and customs potentially very different than ours; 2) Said values and customs are no more or less valid than our own; and 3) we have no right to change or influence these cultures, only try to understand and respect them... Unless we deem their culture to be threatening to ours in some way.
• Blue Means Smart One: Science Officers wear blue uniforms across almost all incarnations.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Data, Spock, and most Vulcans.
• The Body Parts That Must Not Be Named: While the show is fine with talking about sexual stuff, and the words "sex" and "sexual organs" have been said aloud, words for specific private parts are still censored.
• Body Uploading: The Destructive Teleportation system has a buffer, which holds the disintegrated object until transmission to the place where it's reconstituted.
• Books vs. Screens: Owning physical books is often shown to be a niche hobby (people still read stories, though it's usually with words on a screen). However, most of them can balance the old and the new (Picard in particular only owns a handful of physical books, particularly his Shakespeare omnibus). Samuel T. Cogley (TOS episode "Court Martial") is the exception. He never uses his computer, relying on stacks and stacks of law books instead to do his job.
• Burial in Space:
  • Ship casualties are loaded into hollow photon torpedoes (which are conveniently shaped like tanning beds) and shot into space. This is what happened to Spock in Star Trek II, before his body landed on the Genesis Planet and was mistakenly revitalized.
  • Gene Roddenberry, the father of Star Trek is a real-life example, as is James Doohan, the original Scotty.
• Busman's Holiday: For a franchise founded on skimpily-clad babes, the so-called "pleasure planet" of Risa is uncannily like Dante's Hell. Every Trek character who has flown there for some cheap sex has been met with assassination attempts, robbery and assault, kidnapping, brainwashing (twice), natural disasters, terrorist takeovers, etc. Male characters in particular are met with swift punishment for trying to get laid.
• Butt-Monkey: Ships named USS Saratoga. Both times they've shown up onscreen, they've ended up getting a new one torn by the Threat of the Week. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home it was the whale probe. In Deep Space Nine: "Emissary" it was the Borg.

C

• Canon Marches On: Has its own page.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Chronologically, some alien species never appear again without explanation despite being prominent at one point.
  • Dr. Phlox is a main character in Enterprise and Denobulans are fairly prominent in the galaxy, but they never appear afterwards.
  • Eventually averted with the Andorians and Tellarites, who were introduced in The Original Series as founding members of the Federation but never appeared thereafter. Fortunately Enterprise came along to rectify this. As for events chronologically later, Lower Decks has Andorian Jennifer Sh'reyan as a recurring character, and Prodigy has Tellarite Jankom Pog as a main character.
• Clothes Make the Legend: The black and primary color uniform scheme. Only the first six films and Enterprise (though that did have the TOS colours on the shoulders of their all-blue NASA-style flight-suits) didn't follow this... though the uniforms with Wrath of Khan's emblematic red-vest-division-turtleneck-and-black-pants is also very popular.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • In The Original Series, the Starfleet uniform colors for the different divisions were Command Yellow, Science Blue, and Operations Red. In TNG, though, Command and Operations switched colors. Lampshaded in the TNG Blue-Rays.
    Patrick Stewart: [at cast mates] I remember when these guys were colourful. What happened?
    Marina Sirtis: We were wearing spacesuits, Patrick. We were wearing spandex.
  • By the time VOY rolled around, the cargo containers were denoted by red/blue/gold lettering depending on which department they're being shipped to. The episode "Shadows and Symbols" (DS9) debuted the one time only, Starfleet-issue Bedouin outfit! That is not a joke; everyone gets their colored stripe even if the rest of the robe is white.
  • On TNG, Cadets wore a variation on the standard uniform, but with the colors reversed: division-colored shoulderpads on black jumpsuits. This later became the attire of "lower deck" drones who labored within space stations and other departments; no glamorous Galaxy-class explorers, they! (Cadet uniforms are usually grey, although they too underwent changes.)
  • Also for many of the major races and nations, who are associated with particular colour schemes:
    • The Federation is a rich blue (on star charts, on their seal, in their warp plasma) supplemented by other light pastel shades and grey (for ship bulkheads).
    • The Klingons are red (on star charts, on their banner, their graphic displays and ship controls, their warp plasma, their transporter effect). They also prefer red lighting aboard their ships and in their buildings.
    • Romulans are deep green (on star charts, on banners and display graphics, their warp plasma, their transporter effect). Their ships also have a deep green hull colour. Interestingly Romulans have green blood (copper-based). This means the ships are blood colored.
    • Cardassians are usually yellow-ochre or pink (both colours were used for their weapons — pink in their first few appearances, later yellow, their transporter is yellow-ochre, on star charts they're either yellow or pink). Their ship hulls are ochre. Their graphics and display panels use orange/beige and green, colours that sometimes appear on their cultural emblem.
    • The Dominion is purple (their warp plasma, on star charts; their graphics are purple and green).
    • Ferengi warp plasma and ship hulls are orange.
    • Andorians, to no-one's surprise, like white and blue, along with a pale beige.
    • The Borg favours black and a sickly green.
    • Bajorans uses gold-tan and dark red.
    • The Tellarite insignia is purple and gold and looks a little like the atom symbol.
    • The Orions use purple and tan.
• Collectible Card Game: Multiple.
• Command Roster: Star Trek is likely the Trope Maker or at least set the standard of how this trope is used.
• Communications Officer: Every series has one except DS9 (though in TNG, Worf gets shuffled out of the position pretty quickly and nobody really replaces him).
• Conlang: The Klingon language created by Marc Okrand. It's so well-developed that it can be studied and learned in real life.
• Continuity Lockout: Increases the further along the franchise you go. By the time of Enterprise you pretty much need a strong working knowledge of Vulcans, Romulans, Borg, Andorians, Ferengi, etc to fully understand the episodes. Often cited as a contributing factor in the demise of both the 1987-2001 TV franchise and the 1979-2002 movie franchise, and a reason why J. J. Abrams decided to start over (almost) from scratch in 2009.
• Continuity Snarl: Several examples in canon. The most notorious:
  • smooth vs. ridged Klingons, which has been retconned like four times:
    • Klingons on The Original Series looked basically human^note due to budget limitations, but were given a makeover in the feature films with huge bumpy foreheads. No In-Universe explanation was offered (Gene Roddenberry said fans could imagine the old Klingons looked like the new ones, or vice versa). This design continued to be used on the sequel shows throughout the 80s & 90s. Three TOS Klingon characters even show up on Deep Space Nine looking just like the new Klingons, and the discrepancy is never remarked upon.
    • The DS9 time travel episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”: Worf (a ridged Klingon) is one of the main cast, appearing opposite reused footage from a Klingon-centric episode of TOS. Naturally someone points out the obvious, and Worf simply says “We do not discuss it with outsiders.”
    • Enterprise (set 100+ years before TOS) features ridged Klingons... until season 4, wherein the Klingons accidentally infect themselves with human DNA, altering their appearances for the next hundred years or so. (But subsequent productions ignored this completely.)
    • Star Trek Into Darkness (set in the TOS era and featuring the same characters) had a ridged Klingon, though this could be explained away as an alternate reality ^note  in a deleted scene from the preceding film, they dodged the issue by giving all the Klingons face-concealing helmets
    • Discovery S1-2 are set in the same era in the prime timeline — and did not use smooth or ridged Klingons, but rather a drastic redesign with the ridges cranked up to 11. The showrunners tried to say these were a group of Klingons never seen before, which doesn't hold up given these are representatives from across the Klingon Empire (and one is explicitly related to a TOS Klingon). A Strange New Worlds episode set only a couple years later In-Universe reverted to the classic ridged look, consigning smooth-faced Klingons to the retcon bin for good.
  • The Eugenics Wars, which supposedly devastated Earth in the 1990s — this plot point hasn't aged well, since Star Trek is supposed to take place in our future; yet the Wars can't simply be forgotten as they provide the origin for Khan, one of the franchise's most iconic villains.
    • They were first mentioned on TOS, where Spock says they ended in 1996 (since the real-life year was 1966 and no one suspected they'd still be making Star Trek over 50 years later)
    • A throwaway line from DS9 seemingly retconned the wars to the 22nd century, though the writer would later say this was an error.
    • Enterprise (which aired 2001-2005) did a story arc about the war's fallout but glossed over the timing (other than Archer saying his great-grandfather fought in it), and an Expanded Universe novel series released around the same time suggested that they were actually some kind of underground power struggle or conspiracy kept hidden from mainstream society.
    • Star Trek Into Darkness (set in the year 2256) states the Wars took place “three hundred years ago”, implying the original late 20th Century dates are correct.
    • Picard season 2 (set in 2024) dances around the issue, implying genetic engineering is banned or at least strictly regulated but never directly referencing the Wars (except an easter egg in the finale where Adam Soong pulls out a folder labelled Project K.H.A.N., dated 1992-1996. Terry Matalas said Spock had incorrect information, and the Wars had to be retconned so the present day could still look like the present day.
    • Strange New Worlds explicitly retcons the Wars into the first half of the 21st Century, though dialogue in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" implies time-travelling Romulans are to blame for the change
  • In the original series, the Romulans' development of a cloaking device was shocking because such technology was thought to be impossible. But on Enterprise, suddenly the Romulans, Suliban and half a dozen other powers have cloaking devices 100 years earlier and nobody bats an eye. Discovery made the same error and even made it a major plot point, with T'Kuvma's possession of cloaking technology giving his forces a significant advantage in the war, and an entire episode devoted to finding a way around it.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Each leading character in each series differs from their predecessors in notable ways:
  • Jean-Luc Picard to James Kirk: where Kirk is an adventurous young captain with something to prove, being more likely to dive headlong into any situation (especially when it comes to Boldly Coming), Picard is older and wiser. While he was very much reckless and headstrong in his youth, by the time Picard helms the Enterprise, he has learned the value of caution and forethought. Also unlike Kirk, Picard has a habit of keeping to himself when off-duty and busying himself in other ventures; his joining the crew for a game of poker in the series finale is a major breakthrough in his Character Development.
  • Data to Spock: Spock despite his half-human ancestry would often express disdain towards his human crewmates and unequivocally decided early in his youth to follow his Vulcan ancestry & culture, while Data often expressed his desire to become more human and often would partake of Terran culture (such as participating in poker games & Sherlock Holmes holodeck stories). TNG's producers were fully aware of the parallels between the characters and thus decided to not make Data the Enterprise D's Science Officer so as to make the contrast between the two characters clearer to the audience.
  • Benjamin Sisko to Picard: Picard is a quintessential space-faring Officer and a Gentleman who looks at the bigger picture and was already highly experienced as a Captain, and kept himself at arms length from those under his command. Sisko is drawn into becoming a front-line officer of war after starting the series as a lowly, newly promoted Commander who was thinking about quitting after being posted to the 'backwater' of Bajor. Unlike Picard or Kirk before him, Sisko is far more pragmatic and more willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. He is also a family man, being a widower whose son joins him on DS9. Sisko is also less stoic and more likely to act in the heat of the moment, especially where family is concerned. Finally, Sisko is a black man, and that cultural heritage is explored in a deeper way than Picard's French background.
  • Kathryn Janeway to Sisko: Janeway spent a lot of time as a science officer, making her more of a Science Hero than her predecessors. Also unlike Sisko's cold pragmatism, Janeway is dedicated to upholding Starfleet ideals, even when doing so in uncharted territory can prove detrimental. There is one aspect where Janeway does have some of her predecessor's pragmatism, however; she is also a cunning diplomat who is willing to work with adversarial factions, up to and including the Borg, if it means getting the job done.
  • Beckett Mariner to every main protagonist before her. She's a reckless, grunt-level ensign who disdains Starfleet and views the organization as being Lawful Stupid. However, unlike the more pragmatic Sisko she tends to stubbornly uphold Starfleet's values almost unconsciously even when it would benefit her more not too.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Klingon's stasis weapon. It's a trap that uses a massive power supply and succeeds in immobilizing a single starship in a stasis field... while also immobilizing the trapper due to power drain.
• Cool Starship: At least one for series and film from both heroes and villains. Star Trek as a whole has, quite possibly, the largest collection of these.
• Costume Evolution: Starfleet uniforms have changed a lot in the timespan covered by the franchise. We start with the primary color shirts and black pants of the original series, to the maroon jackets and black pants of the movies, to the jumpsuits with variations of black and primary colors.
• Covert Distress Code: "Condition Green" is a Starfleet standard duress code.
• Creator Provincialism: From TOS all the way to the reboot movies, Star Trek is strongly American, in spite of alleged multiculturalism. Even characters explicitly from other countries, such as Picard, speak English with only a mild accent. Interestingly, while Chekov was from Russia and Worf was raised by Russian parents, only Chekov had a distinct Russian accent.^note And even then, Chekov would say things like "Wessel" rather than "Vessel" despite the Russian alphabet not having the letter "W" or anything remotely sounding like a "W" — in fact, Russians learning English for the first time generally have the opposite tendency, saying things like "Vashington" rather than "Washington". Riker had trouble with the issue of Ensign Ro Laren using the Bajoran naming convention of family name preceding given name, even though an enormous chunk of the human population (mainly in Asia) does exactly the same thing. Kirk, Sisko, Janeway and Archer were all Americans, with Picard being the sole non-American captain. It is typically treated as quaint whenever a human character exhibits cultural behavior relating to any country except for the U.S. Virtually all popular cultural references (from the past) are American, with a smattering of English here and there. Even Deanna Troi, raised on Betazed but having a human father, claims a fondness for The Wild West genre.
• Crossover: Despite the overlapping continuity, there were only a handful of true crossover episodes (with characters from one show appearing on another). Still, major events in one production have had an effect on others, and there are recurring characters who have transcended their show of origin.
  • One of the biggest was Star Trek: Generations, intended as a major crossover event between the TOS and TNG casts, but unfortunately the rewrite process boiled it down to just Kirk briefly hanging out with Picard
  • One storyline to play a major role in multiple Star Trek series was the Maquis. The reason behind their existence (the creation of the DMZ) was established in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Seven but the Maquis were introduced in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season Two before turning up in "Preemptive Strike", the penultimate episode of The Next Generation, and forming a major part of the backstory of Chakotay and B'Elanna in Star Trek: Voyager. The destruction of the Maquis by the Dominion in Deep Space Nine Season Five comes back to haunt Chakotay and B'Elanna in Voyager Season Four when the ship finally makes contact with the Alpha Quadrant.
  • A major part of Sisko's backstory in Deep Space Nine was the death of his wife Jennifer during the Battle of Wolf 359, which occurred in TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds". The subsequent Borg attack on Section 001, which occurred in Star Trek: First Contact, is mentioned occasionally in Deep Space Nine while the Dominion War from Deep Space Nine is mentioned in Voyager's "Message in a Bottle", Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis.
  • In the 90s a lot of characters would make guest appearances on other shows, most notably Picard in the DS9 pilot, or Q and Reg Barclay on Voyager. Worf also went from TNG main cast to DS9 main cast as a ratings boost
  • the much-reviled Enterprise finale, "These Are the Voyages...", is framed as a holodeck recording being viewed by Commander Riker centuries in the future, with Troi appearing as well
  • The SNW episode “Those Old Scientists” features Mariner and Boimler from Lower Decks arriving via time portal, making the jump from animation to live action! Mariner references the event on a later episode of LD.
• Crying a River: One Klingon myth involves a guy named Kahless losing his dead father's sword in the ocean and then crying enough to flood said ocean.
• Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: Star Trek: The Original Series has "Turnabout Intruder", an episode in which a crazy woman claims that women can't be captains. Later on, the writers gave this a Hand Wave by saying that it was only the woman's insanity that made her believe this and included female captains in Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Discovery, which were both set before Original Series. Also, a female captain was the main protagonist of Star Trek: Voyager.

D

• Darker and Edgier: See here.
• Data Pad: PADDs.
• Deadly Training Area: The holodecks were intended to be used for training, but they're one of the most hazardous areas on the ship thanks to Holodeck Malfunctions.
• Death Seeker: All Trek captains (and associates, Spock and Bones were just as bas as Kirk) tend to be a little too willing to die for the cause. Lampshaded by Star Trek: Discovery episode "Choose Your Pain", as self-sacrifice is one of the characteristics listed to be a good captain.
• Death Wail: The standard practice when a Klingon dies is for their comrades to hold their eyes open while screaming loudly to the sky to warn those in the afterlife that a great warrior is on there way to join them.
• Deck of Wild Cards: The Mirror Universe actually expects this of their underlings...up to a point. Here, in a reality where the Federation is actually the twisted and xenophobic Terran Empire, every officer who rises in stature has to kill their predecessor in order to get where they want to be. Should they succeed, they are rewarded for their strength; fail, and they will be subject to the most horrid of Cold-Blooded Torture they can imagine. The Original Series shows that Mirror Kirk rose to captaincy of the Enterprise by killing Christopher Pike, while Discovery reveals that a coup was staged against the Terran Emperor Phillipa Georgiou because her follows thought she was being too soft on alien species by enslaving them instead of killing them.
• Decoy Backstory:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Garak, the "plain, simple tailor" who's the sole Cardassian on the promenade left after his people pulled out of Bajor, claims to be just a tailor, but all onboard the station suspect him of being a spy. "The Wire" makes a plot point out of this when he starts falling ill, and Dr. Bashir discovers he has an implant in his body that they eventually learn is a device of The Obsidian Order, designed to put him in a state of euphoria if he was ever tortured. Unfortunately, Garak had been abusing it to the point that the withdrawal nearly kills him, and in a maddened state to try and get Bashir to back away from helping him, he gives three contradictory backstories behind his exile. First, he claims he destroyed an entire Cardassian ship to keep Bajoran prisoners from escaping and was exiled because one of the passengers was related to a member of the government. Then he says he refused to torture starving and battered children, and was reprimanded for his failure to duty. Then he claims it's because he tried to betray his best friend in the Order, Elim, but said friend backstabbed him first. All of these stories are only partially true, or as he puts it, "They were all true, especially the lies": he's really the illegitimate son of former Obsidian Order director Enabran Tain, was exiled for betraying him, and "Elim" is Garak's own given name.
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: "Under the Cloak of War": Dak'Rah "the Butcher of J'Gal", a former Klingon general-turned-Federation ambassador, claims to have had a Heel Realization during the bloody battle for the moon of J'Gal during the Great Offscreen War, killing several of his own officers to stop them from massacring everyone who wasn't a Klingon soldier and then defecting. Dr. M'Benga ultimately reveals he knows damn well Rah didn't kill his officers, because M'Benga himself did: Rah gave the order for the massacre and then fled when M'Benga snuck into his base camp to assassinate him.
• Deflector Shields: A standard feature on most starships. Also called "deflector screens", they project a defensive barrier with some similarity to a plasma wall: it deflects both matter and energy, and can be adjusted to more effectively block electromagnetic radiation. On the larger ships, there are actually multiple separate deflector screen grids on the starship's hull, set in an array, that are arranged so that they overlap and protect the entire ship. The shields can regenerate, but a sustained attack with sufficient weaponry will eventually deplete them. Also, they are not to be confused with the Navigational Deflector, which is a totally different device.
• Destructive Teleportation: Transporters work by disassembling an object (or person) into energy, shooting it some distance away, and reassembling that object at the new location. It consists of the following parts:
  1. A de-materializer, which breaks down the object in a controlled fashion
  2. A buffer, which holds the disintegrated object until transmission
  3. A transmitter, which transmits the disintegrated object as a beam of energy
  4. A re-materializer, which reintegrates the object in a controlled fashion
  5. invoked Contrary to popular opinion, the transported object is indeed the original object from the start, and the device does not kill living things that are being transported. ^note People transported are in fact conscious during transport. If there's unbroken continuity of consciousness, then there cannot have been a death. However, as you can probably imagine, transporters can be rather scarily dangerous if some part of the process were to be interrupted.
• Destructo-Nookie: To Klingons, rough sex is the norm. It's even considered good luck when a clavicle gets broken on a couple's wedding night.
• Distant Sequel:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are all set approximately a hundred years from Star Trek: The Original Series, which in turn takes place a century after Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis, all take place one hundred years after Star Trek: The Motion Picture and its sequels.
  • Although Star Trek: Discovery starts out as a prequel to The Original Series, season 2 ends with the main cast travelling 930 years into the future, making it the most distant example here, and a Distant Sequel to every other part of the franchise.
  • Star Trek: Picard takes place in 2399, twenty years after Star Trek: Nemesis.
• Dress-Up Episode: most common in the Original Series ("A Piece of the Action", "Return of the Archons", "Assignment: Earth"), but happens in Next Generation a fair amount too ("The Big Goodbye").
• Doctor's Orders: The medical personnel can remove the captain from command.
• Due to the Dead: A good number of funeral customs, at that.

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