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The Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Guide

Since 1967, when the first Star Trek comic was published, 2,639 Star Trek stories have been released in print, comic, and original audio form. In the first decades, the majority of these were standalone stories that only referenced the show. However, over most of the past twenty years the majority of Simon and Schuster novels took place in a shared continuity in which the events of one novel often had major repercussions on the novels following it. This modern continuity will be referred to here as the STAR TREK LIT-VERSE.

       Unlike the Star Wars Expanded Universe or various other media tie-in lines, no Star Trek novel, comic, or game is considered canon. Even those written in conjunction with the new, currently in-production series. However, that doesn't take anything away from the quality of the material or its ability to entertain. Even as Star Trek has returned to the small screen and the Simon and Schuster novel continuity has mostly drawn to a close, the inter-connectedness of the novels will likely continue in some form as it has for the majority of Trek history.

       The complete Lit-verse consists of a continuity web of more than 1100 stories. That is approaching half of all Star Trek fiction ever published. In addition to the majority of the novels which have been released over the past two decades, many older novels have been referenced in this continuity as well. Available to the left are reading lists for each of the series. Don't be overwhelmed by the length of some of the lists. All anthology short stories and many comic issues are listed individually, so it's not as much reading as it seems to a newcomer. Not all connections are noted, only the ones which form the branching out of the lists. Author annotations can be found for many stories to provide more extensive references.

       My placement of a story in the Lit-verse is not intended to imply that there are no continuity discrepancies included in the material. There are definite contradictions in the lists I've compiled. The fact is, not even the shows themselves are free of continuity errors, some quite large. The older novels do not always agree in every detail with the Lit-verse, or even with modern canon. Indeed, even the newer novels, written with the modern continuity in mind, sometimes contain a few mistakes. The majority of all this can be ignored, or explained away by a creative mind. My goal here was to include every link possible and leave the continuity problems up to the reader to resolve. If you don't want a book in your personal continuity, then just ignore it. Don't become so invested in continuity that you forget to enjoy the stories themselves.

A Note On the Format of This Website

       Each Star Trek series is given its own reading list page. The major Lit-only series, New Frontier, SCE, Gorkon, Titan, Vanguard/Seekers, Mirror Universe , and Myriad Universes also have their own pages. The easiest way to include Stargazer, The Lost Era, and certain other like-period pieces was to create an Early 24th Century reading list containing them all.

       I then have a simple list of Simon and Schuster stories that take place after Star Trek: Nemesis grouped into "chapters". A more detailed timeline of the stories following Star Trek: Nemesis is given on the Post-Nemesis: Month-By-Month page. Note that these stories were published in the years before Star Trek: Picard premiered, and the authors were given free rein to explore the late 24th century. Things do "eventually" lead back into the modern television continuity now shown in Star Trek: Picard and other series, but tell an alternate history of the intervening years that only makes sense in relation to the canonical storyline at its conclusion in the Coda trilogy.

       Also to the left is a month-by-month breakdown of the Five Year Mission. The Complete Pocket Books Novel List updates the novel list as given in the back of Pocket Books novels in years past, before the list became so long that it was considered impractical to include in every book. I also have a list of all the ebook exclusive Trek stories which have been published and never been released in print. Then there's a vast examination of the minutiae of Klingon date keeping systems. I've keep an exact count of every Star Trek story ever published, updated with each new month's releases, and a count of just how many stories have been told that take place in the Five Year Mission. And for the first two seasons of Discovery, I kept an examination of the dating of each episode. Don't miss pictures of my 1:5000 scale Star Trek ship model collection, and a page where I log all the updates to the site, for those interested in seeing what is new and what has changed.

       Forthcoming is the Complete Lit-verse reading list, which will include every story from the main reading lists in order. Also to come will be more specific reading lists (character specific lists, species specific lists, storyline specific lists). I also want to build a "Simple Pre-Nemesis Reading List." Someday I will develop an explanation of my own personal continuity and a list of what it includes.

       Each anthology is broken up into individual short stories, and each novella and comic issue is included separately. Special cases were The Lives of Dax and No Limits. These were both broken up into their individual stories (which spread them out over different series) and also placed in their respective series as a whole (for those only reading that series.) For example the short story 'Q'uandary from New Frontier: No Limits is essentially a TNG story and is included in that reading list, but for those only reading New Frontier , the entire No Limits anthology is listed there as well. In addition to being broken up across series lines, each story from Tales of the Dominion War is also included on the DS9 page, because of the centrality of the overall story to that series.

       New Frontier presented a specific challenge in that much back story had to be presented to get the series established, because of its Lit-only nature. Thus to experience many of its short stories in chronological order without breaking up some of the New Frontier flashbacks into separately listed sections would have been somewhat unintelligible to a new reader. This is not the case for the TV series based book lines, nor is it a circumstance shared by the other Lit-only series. So with New Frontier some of the flashbacks are presented as separate portions of the list. This is explained further on the New Frontier page.

       With comic series, miniseries were treated as whole unique stories, but only individual linked issues of anthology or ongoing series were included. I didn't consider the "Previously in Star Trek--" intros in Marvel comics to rise to the level of a story reference. Where possible, I have condensed miniseries or story arcs into single entries to trim the length of the reading lists. Above all the proceeding considerations, however, my overriding rule was that if multiple stories were published in the same work, such as a short story anthology or multistory comic book, all stories between those two covers would be included if anything from that volume was connected to the Lit-verse.

       The Strange New Worlds anthologies were forced to break this rule though. At least one story from almost all the volumes of SNW was referenced, and this would have necessitated putting almost every SNW story into the reading lists. Also specifically not included are references involving RPGs or video games.

       The timeline used for these lists was derived from the Timeliners chronology in Voyages of the Imagination by Jeff Ayers and lots of research done on my own, with the Memory-Beta timeline being a very important resource. Much of my process of figuring out the timeline of the various series was recorded on the TrekBBS. Starting here , with more to come in the future.

Note of Inspiration and Thanks

      Very special thanks goes to turtletrekker of the TrekBBS message boards. His work in compiling at least half of these continuity connections was both the inspiration of and basis for this website. This entire idea began from the dozens of message boards questions about what books had to be read before reading Keith R.A. DeCandido's Articles of the Federation. The specific thread that can be considered the grandfather of this website can be found here . Turtletrekker ran with this and compiled the vast Charting the Novel-verse project, the second version of which can be found here . My interest in the project began and was first manifested in a discussion here and continued here .

       More thanks to all the TrekBBS members who contributed to these discussions. Thanks also to Steve Roby, whose amazing Complete Starfleet Library is a great resource. And on the other side of the literary coin is Mark Martinez's Star Trek Comics Checklist , which is invaluable to me, and Curt Danhouser's Guide to the Star Trek Story Records

       None of this would be possible without the original Timeliners who created the Voyages of the Imagination timeline, and all of my colleagues who have kept it alive over the years. I thank them for their allowance to include small tidbits of information here and there. Keep in mind this is simply my interpretation of Star Trek continuity. Your mileage may vary. Enjoy, everyone!

      Questions? Comments? [email protected] Twitter: @ryan1234560 Or vist the Trek BBS Thread

The Star Trek Litverse Reading Guide is not affiliated with CBS Studios Inc.. Star Trek ® is a trademark of CBS Studios Inc.

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Characters / Star Trek: The Original Series

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Main Cast (in order of billing)

• Lieutenant Commander (later Commander) Spock

Doctor (Lieutenant Commander) Leonard Horatio "Bones" McCoy

Played by: DeForest Kelley

Dubbed in french by: michel georges (tos), françois marié (star trek i to v), jean-pierre delage (star trek vi), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek ii: the wrath of khan | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek: the next generation | star trek v: the final frontier | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek beyond note  photograph.

"I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget." — McCoy , "Space Seed"

The third member of the Power Trio . Nicknamed "Bones" by Kirk, McCoy was a highly competent doctor who wasn't entirely comfortable with deep space and always brought a more emotional and moral component to the philosophical debates. He clashed frequently, and colorfully, with Spock, as he found Spock's rejection of emotion to be absurd; however, the two men did genuinely respect each other. Despite his "down-home country doctor" routine, McCoy could and did carry moments of badassery frequently.

• Actual Pacifist : For all the verbal fights he gets into, he’s against war at any cost, is disgusted by prisons and is usually the one telling Kirk to be a diplomat not a soldier.
• The Alcoholic : Drinks in the sickbay on his off hours, regularly brings alcohol to Kirk to drown both their sorrows, and apparently both he and Scotty get worse as they get older, having more to grieve over.
• Ambiguously Christian : He frequently swears in the name of God, or Heaven. He explicitly mentions Jesus in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , one of only three times in the history of the entire franchise He is mentioned by name note  Uhura directly alludes to Him as the "Son of God" at the end of "Bread and Circuses", and a bit character in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Storm Front" also mentions Him . When he is about to kill the salt vampire in " The Man Trap ", he asks the Lord to forgive him. He teases Scotty once for "not believing in God." He remarks in " This Side of Paradise " how their rejection of the spores is the second time Man's been thrown out of Paradise note  Kirk, another Ambiguous Christian, corrects him by saying that this time they walked out on their own . His staunch pacifism is certainly consistent with the tradition of Christian pacifism, and many conscientious objectors have served as medical personnel. However, the character never came out and professed a belief in the divinity of Christ (or in any other religion).
• Anger Born of Worry : Par for the course for a Sour Supporter with Undying Loyalty . He and Spock will often butt heads because either Bones thinks Spock doesn’t understand the feeling, or Spock does but is trying to not show it.
• Audience Surrogate : Is almost always the one to call Kirk out when he’s torturing himself, or Spock when he’s being too alien, or have the more sci-fi language explained to him.
• Badass Pacifist : He's a doctor and takes that very seriously. However, that doesn't stop him from doing extremely dangerous things to save lives. Circumstances sometimes force him to show that he is a decent shot and somewhat competent brawler, but he is hardly a willing Combat Medic , both disgust with violence and unashamed fear always extremely apparent on his face. Possibly best seen in " Space Seed ," where he doesn't flinch at Khan holding a knife to his throat and even gives advice on the best way to kill him from their current position.
• Don't recommend pragmatism and coolheadedness over compassion during a crisis.
• In “ This Side Of Paradise ”, what gets him out of a spores-induced Happy Place is even just the suggestion of not being a doctor anymore.
• Big Brother Instinct : He’s older than Kirk is, and when shit gets rough, looks out for him and tells him not to destroy himself with self doubt or hate himself too much for having a darker side.
• Blue Is Heroic : McCoy 's blue uniform represents his gentleness and kindness. See also Innocent Blue Eyes .
• " He's dead, Jim. "
• " I'm a doctor, not an X !"
• Character Development : Went from having emotional conniptions to the point of Hair-Trigger Temper when the situation looked bleak, to understanding Spock and the benefit of logic more. He admits to Spock’s body in the third movie that he doesn’t want to lose him again, and that helps the patience and understanding on both sides.
• Chivalrous Pervert : He's notable for being more open about his skirt-chasing than Kirk... and less successful at it .
• Chronic Hero Syndrome : He’s very proud of his medical profession, especially comparing it to earlier centuries, and takes it personally when he can’t save everyone. He euthanised his father who was dying, only a few months later to hear that there was a cure, and he's filled with self hatred over it.
• Combat Pragmatist : McCoy is especially fond of hitting an enemy (or even a reluctant friend) with a hypospray to render them unconscious/simulate a disease/etc. in order to get the upper hand. In " Amok Time ," he does this without being an actual participant in the fight in order to save Kirk's life and Spock's career.
• The Confidant : Spock is a great friend, but he’s not that useful when Kirk is feeling anxious, so Bones helps out with advice, reassurance, Tough Love and booze.
• Deadpan Snarker : He specializes in snarky comments. " This Side of Paradise " has a couple gems. McCoy : [after Kirk informs a man that he will be taken from his planet with or without his cooperation] Should I get the butterfly net?
• Determined Doctor : Where Scotty wouldn't roll over and die on keeping the ship together, this man refuses to just let his patients die if he has any means to save them.
• Disappeared Dad : According to the show bible, he has a daughter called Joanna that despite his efforts, he can’t often see. There were a few plans to include her in the show (including one where she has a crush on Kirk and Bones as a father assumes the worst) but never came to fruition.
• Especially in " This Side of Paradise ," when he's under the influence of Applied Phlebotinum that makes him more irritable. Sandoval: We don't need you, not as a doctor. Bones: Oh, no? Would you like to see just how fast I can put you in a hospital?
• Everyone Has Standards : Will tease Kirk for how often he seduces to get his way, but will be the first to be angry on his behalf if Kirk is drugged or gets his body hijacked. Same with Spock, Vitriolic Best Buds , but he’s disgusted that the Platonians will make him laugh and cry by force.
• First-Name Basis : With Kirk, although in Kirk's case, it's McCoy 's nickname, "Bones," never his first name, "Leonard." (Kirk does call him "Leonard" exactly once, in " Friday's Child ", but it's context-specific.)
• Forgets to Eat : For all he complains about Kirk and Spock neglecting their health, he’s the same when he’s wrapped up in his work.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : McCoy is the Sanguine. While he's the complainer of the group, he's also got a folksy joie de vivre and casual manner that directly contrasts Spock's strict stoicism. McCoy is the Id to Kirk's Ego and Spock's Superego.-->
• Friend to All Children : Unlike Kirk who likes them but is never really sure what to do, and Spock who is just awkward, he’s both loving and professional around kids. Helps that he’s a father (who sees his child more often than Kirk does) and a doctor.
• Frontier Doctor : Dr. McCoy is perhaps Trek 's outstanding example of a final frontier doctor —resourceful in the face of alien ailments, preferring simple homespun methods when possible, but cantankerous, eccentric, and not entirely happy with his lot (he fled to space on the heels of a divorce). Star Trek was pretty much the original Space Western , after all, and actor DeForest Kelley had an extensive background in westerns.
• Genre Refugee : He's a western frontier doctor who just happens to work on a starship. It helps that Kelley was a veteran character actor in several westerns.
• Good Is Not Nice : He's not hesitant about expressing his dislike for people or his refusal to suffer fools, but he is most often the one who suggests doing the right thing.
• Good Old Ways : He both enforces and subverts this trope. He's rabidly in favor of fighting the dehumanizing effects of too much technology (especially the transporter) in favor of enjoying "the simple things in life," and yet sees "primitive 20th-century medicine" as just above trepanation, leeches, and blood-letting in its barbarity, preferring the "high-tech approach" to healing. In general, he embraces the positive, constructive aspects of technological progress rather than the destructive or dehumanizing ones.
• Grumpy Old Man : He becomes this in the movies. His brief cameo in TNG has him even older and grumpier.
• The Heart : He's a deeply ethical man underneath his cantankerous exterior and always brings the moral side to a discussion.
• He's Dead, Jim : He's the Trope Namer .
• Honor Before Reason : McCoy believes in doing the right thing no matter what, and he will proudly admit it.
• Hospital Hottie : According to Jadzia Dax , one of her previous hosts discovered he has the " hands of a surgeon ."
• McCoy is always trying to get an emotional rise out of Spock , but in the episode " Plato's Stepchildren ," McCoy jumps to Spock's defense when powerful aliens force him to cry and to laugh. And in other episodes, he's usually the first to jump to Spock's defense any time anyone attacks or insults him, possibly because his issues with Spock are more of a giant angry moral debate while other people tend to operate out of pure racism.
• The same goes for Kirk, as he'll regularly tease the man for being a charmer or Accidental Pornomancer , but looks out for him when he’s in a bad way, and will be first to get angry on his behalf when Sargon shows off the new body, or Elaan has drugged him into kissing her and worse. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has him actually apologise when Kirk tells him bluntly that Carol is an old wound, and to not make jokes about it.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder : He's the Trope Namer .
• Innocent Blue Eyes : McCoy has DeForest Kelley 's bright, shining baby blues. He's probably the kindest, most compassionate character of the entire Trek franchise.
• In-Series Nickname : "Bones" is actually short for "saw-bones," an archaic term for a surgeon. note  Fittingly, in "A Piece of the Action", set on a planet inspired by The Roaring '20s gangster culture, Kirk does address McCoy as "Saw-Bones" when he's in "character". It was originally intended as the nickname of Dr. Boyce from "The Cage," but was never used in that episode, making it available for McCoy .
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : Grumpy, impulsive, sarcastic and rather rude, but at heart he's a good man who always does the right thing.
• Knight in Sour Armor : He's grumpy, sarcastic, and has little respect for authority (with the exception of Kirk), but when the chips are down, you can always count on him to do the right thing.
• Meaningful Name : In addition to "Bones" recalling the old-fashion slang for a doctor ("Sawbones") it also reflects a character who relies on intuition over logic, i.e. he doesn't go by other people think, but by what he feels down to his bones.
• The Medic : He's even able to treat a silicon-based life-form.
• The McCoy : He's the Trope Namer . In a crisis, his proposed solutions usually involve trying to do the right thing in the moment and standing on principle no matter the long-term costs.
• Mildly Military : Unlike Spock who is naturally logical, and Kirk who (pre- Character Development ) always believes in the Federation, he’s the least military; doctor first, in the service second.
• More Hero than Thou : In "The Empath," when aliens offer Kirk the choice of sacrificing McCoy or Spock, McCoy takes out Kirk with drugs. Spock is glad; since this leaves him in command, he can make the sacrifice himself. McCoy proceeds to drug him as well and sacrifice himself.
• Older and Wiser : In sharp contrast to both Kirk and Spock, who struggle with their age, his appearance in TNG has him glad to be old, as it means he hasn’t died yet.
• Promotion to Opening Titles : At the beginning of the second season.
• Psychological Projection : Bones has a tendency to assume what Kirk is feeling (usually romantic feelings for yeomen that he doesn’t actually have) or that Spock has less humanity than he actually does. Both of them call him out for it.
• Rank Up : By the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation , he's an Admiral. His promotion to Captain, while never seen on screen, has been stated in non-canon publications as having taken place sometime in the late 2290s. Several published works have also indicated that he later served as the head of Starfleet Medical School and as the Starfleet Medical Surgeon General. The reference manual Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual states that he eventually became Chief of Starfleet Medical and held a special rank known as "branch admiral".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni : He's the Red to Spock's Blue.
• Reasonable Authority Figure : Is the Admiral of a medical branch in TNG, and seemingly learns from the mistakes of Kirk in the movies, being as peaceful as his grumpy self gets.
• Resignations Not Accepted : At the beginning of the first movie , McCoy has retired to private practice, and is called back into service against his protests on Kirk's request.
• He will follow Kirk into the pits of Hell and back, but he'll grumble about it first.
• Similarly, if Spock is in trouble he'll strive to help him, just don't expect him to hold back on a few jibes whilst he does.
• Southern-Fried Genius : One of the most respected doctors in the Federation —straight out of Georgia.
• Strawman Emotional : At times.
• Super Doc : He can be nothing else such as when he successfully treated the Mother Horta, a silicon based lifeform whose physiology he is not only completely unfamiliar with, but he didn't even believe such a lifeform even existed until that very moment. McCoy : By golly, Jim, I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!
• Team Dad : He’s not a therapist but... he usually tries to give Spock some Tough Love as a counterpoint to his logic, always becomes a worried friend when Jim is being a Love Martyr , and a pregnant woman is very fond of him.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky : Not as tall as Spock, but plenty dark-haired and snarky.
• Tough Love : He and Chapel make a great team for sickbay, her bluffing Good Cop/Bad Cop to self pitying patients, and Bones being a mother hen of both Kirk and Spock, telling them off if they’re ever planning on being martyrs (not that Bones is much better).
• True Companions : With Kirk and Spock.
• Vitriolic Best Buds : With Spock. They argue constantly but if anyone other than him attacks or criticizes Spock (and that includes Kirk), he will always rush to his defense.
• The Watson : Despite serving on Starfleet's flagship, McCoy is routinely unfamiliar with various technical aspects of the ship or other technology he encounters. (He is an excellent doctor, however, which makes up for it.)
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious : In contrast to Spock, it's when Bones calls Kirk "Captain" and not "Jim" that you know he's not messing around.

Lieutenant Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott

Played by: James Doohan

Dubbed in french by: julien bessette (tos), georges aubert (movies), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek ii: the wrath of khan | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek v: the final frontier | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek: the next generation | star trek: generations | star trek: deep space nine note  archive footage | star trek beyond note  photograph.

"I cannae change the laws of physics! I've got to have thirty minutes!" — Scotty , "The Naked Time"

Chief Engineer of the Enterprise . Scotty's most frequent job was to solve a seemingly-impossible crisis with the engine or transporters (or whatever piece of Starfleet technology was making trouble that week), protesting all the way before either hitting on a creative solution or sweating it through. He was also Scottish and had many sterotypical Scottish traits, such as a love of good whisky and namedropping haggis. Scotty was firmly established as the ship's third-in-command behind Kirk and Spock, and seeing as those two were always members of the landing party, he took the conn with surprising regularity. Though he was sometimes used for comic relief, it's worth noting that Scotty was extremely badass whenever he was the ranking officer on the bridge and kept it safe from interfering aliens or Starfleet's many half-crazed admirals.

• The Ace : Scotty is certainly no slouch in the engineering department, and has gotten the Enterprise out of scrapes with his bare hands more times than he can count. It's through his talent than he got a promotion to Captain of the Engineering Division, and managed to rig the Enterprise to run on a skeleton crew of just 5 men. And even a century later, despite feeling useless throughout most of his time on the Enterprise -D, he bounces back and pulls off yet another miracle.
• The Alcoholic : Scotty's love of strong booze is apparent. He keeps a stash of all kinds of liquor in his quarters, including a green bottle of something he can't even identify . He dismisses Russian vodka as mere "soda pop" compared to what gets him hammered.
• Amusing Injuries : In The Final Frontier , he bangs himself up pretty badly trying to fix the Enterprise -A when she's conking out all over, and it's all Played for Laughs .
• Alternate Self : He has a counterpart in the Kelvin Timeline, and another in the Mirror Universe.
• He's a very calm, polite, and peaceful man...unless you call the Enterprise a piece of garbage. Then he'll punch you in the face regardless of the cost.
• As Geordi learned, don't tell him he's getting in the way; he was fixing starships when LaForge 's great grandfather was still in diapers!
• Beware the Nice Ones : Scotty's perhaps the friendliest fellow on the Enterprise . Just don't you dare call his baby a piece of garbage, lest you get a slug in the face.
• Big Damn Heroes : In "Friday's Child," Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are unarmed and surrounded by a superior Klingon force. Kirk: [to Spock] Too bad the cavalry doesn't come over the hill anymore. [cue Scotty beaming down with a large force of Redshirts to save the day]
• Break the Badass : Scotty may be the most renowned engineer of his time, but when he ends up stuck in a transporter loop for 75 years and awakens to find that the times have leaped ahead without him, he feels practically useless.
• Broken Ace : He goes through this arc in "Relics" when it's discovered he was stuck in a transporter loop on the Jenolan for 75 years. Upon seeing that the engineering technology of his time has jumped so far ahead, he takes to Ten Forward and guzzles down some Aldebaran Whisky.
• Bullying a Dragon : Sure, the Klingon who dared to insult the Enterprise had it coming when Scotty decked him for it, but the entire crew was explicitly warned not to start a diplomatic incident—and Scotty isn't a warrior who lived his entire life being bred for combat.
• Butt-Monkey : Sometimes, when he was left in charge of the Enterprise .
• The Captain : He gets promoted to the rank of captain in The Search for Spock , which puts him on equal terms with both Kirk and Spock. It's no small feat, either. He's one of the very few non-command division people to achieve the rank and the promotion is given in recognition of his engineering skills. He never pulls it on anyone, however.
• Captain Ethnic : Or in this case, Lieutenant-Commander Ethnic. In case the accent, taste for whisky, and the occasional wearing of traditional Scottish clothes and playing of bagpipes don't clue you in, there is also the surname. Lampooned in the I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again parody: Uhura (Jo Kendall): Captain, our Scottish chief engineer Scott — "Scotty" for short — from Scotland has something terrible to tell you. Scott (Graeme Garden): [incomprehensible Scots English gibberish] Kirk (Tim Brooke-Taylor): Yes, that was terrible, wasn't it?

• Chick Magnet : He may not be as lucky as Captain Kirk in that department, but he's attracted his fair share of lovely ladies, most notably in "Wolf in the Fold" and even Uhura herself in The Final Frontier .
• Companion Cube : If Kirk saw the Enterprise as a demanding wife, Scotty saw the ship, particularly her engines, as no less than children ("My bairns! My poor bairns!").
• Compressed Vice : “Wolf In The Fold” has him hate women for a while because a woman caused an explosion that injured him. Kirk and McCoy ’s solution is to bring him to see belly dancers.
• A Day in the Limelight : "Wolf In The Fold," "The Trouble With Tribbles," "By Any Other Name," and "The Lights of Zetar."
• Drowning My Sorrows : He always had a liking for the stuff, along with Bones, but after his nephew dies, Scotty thinking Peter stayed to impress him, he gets to the point in the books where Kirk has to pull rank and order him to bed. And when he ends up stuck in the TNG era feeling useless, he gets hammered, then goes to the holodeck to pull up a recreation of his old bridge.
• The Engineer : His primary duty.
• Father Neptune : Though as he is Recycled In Space , perhaps he would be Father Jove or Father Apollo, but you get the idea.
• Fish out of Temporal Water : His fate in TNG shows that in 2294, he was on the way to a retirement colony when the ship he was riding on crashed on a Dyson Sphere. He and one other crew member used a transporter loop to hold themselves inside until someone could find them, but it wouldn't be until 75 years later when the Enterprise -D happened to pass by the area did they pull him out, (and only him, his friend's pattern had deteriorated too much). When he heard that the Enterprise came to the rescue, he thought Kirk had pulled the A out of mothball to find him (having forgotten Kirk had died just a year prior), only to realize how far out of time he really was when Worf showed up. He spends most of his guest spot trying to readjust to his new time.
• Formerly Fit : He's fairly portly in most of his post-TOS appearances. Of course, since it's a live-action show it's a case of Real Life Writes the Plot .
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : Scotty is the Phlegmatic. He's a modest, simple guy and pretty content to just follow orders. The Enterprise is his personal Berserk Button ... but even when a Klingon calls her "garbage", Scotty stays cool and offers him a chance to take it back.
• Gadgeteer Genius : Can MacGyver just about anything on his own, but particularly shines teamed with Spock. The two of them could turn the most obscure theory into a way to save the day.
• Genius Bruiser : Pretty handy with both his fists and his mind.
• Leitmotif : More an example of a Bootstrapped Leitmotif . A piece called "A Matter of Pride" was composed by Jerry Fielding for "The Trouble with Tribbles" to underscore the scene where Scotty admits he started the bar fight with the Klingons. It was then reused for "By Any Other Name" in the scene where Scotty drinks Tomar under the table. It was never used again, but because of its exclusive association with two of Scotty's greatest character scenes, it is sometimes remembered as "Scotty's Theme" among fans.
• Hoist by His Own Petard : Scotty is promoted to the Chief Engineer of the Excelsior in The Search For Spock . He's also the one who sabotages the ship so it can't follow the Enterprise when her crew steals her from Spacedock.
• Mr Fix It : He’s the only one who doesn’t act like an asshole losing his temper with Spock’s reactions in “The Galileo Seven”, mostly because he’s so focused on fixing the shuttlecraft.
• Nice Guy : He's a kind, humble, friendly, quiet and easygoing guy who's very loyal to his crew. He's perhaps the most agreeable - and absolutely the least prone to act like a jerk - member in his crew.
• Rapid Aging : In "The Deadly Years", he's one of a handful of crew members who get subject to a virus that causes this, though it's fortunately reversed.
• Rank Up : In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , he gets promoted to Captain and reassigned to the USS Excelsior as Captain of Engineering during the ship's early test runs.
• Replacement Goldfish : With a bit of reality writing the plot, the book version of “Generations” has Kirk clinging to Scotty now that Bones and Spock are both back home, and it falls to the poor man to tell him off for doing stupid suicidal shit.
• Scotty Time : He's the Trope Namer . His section quote is an example: in that case, the ship didn't have 30 minutes to spare—it had 8 minutes before it would crash—so he had to use some drastic, unproven measures.
• Undying Loyalty : He's always stood by Captain Kirk's side in the most dire of situations.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom : Twice from the same action. His sending the tribbles home with the Captain Koloth apparently resulted in an ecological disaster for the Klingon Empire, which in turn caused the Klingons to hunt down the tribble homeworld and obliterate it, rendering them extinct. At least for a century, or so. The DS9 crew undid the second part by accident.
• Workaholic : Would rather read technical manuals in his off time than actually taking shore leave.
• Wrote the Book : According to the TNG episode "Relics", he wrote some of the Starfleet engineering regulations that are still in use. Hence, he knows when it's safe to ignore them.

Hologram Scotty

Played by: james doohan (archive recordings).

A holographic representation of Scotty 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 .

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura

Played by: Nichelle Nichols

Dubbed in french by: arlette sanders (tos), laure moutassamy (star trek: the motion picture, iii, iv, v and vi), jane val (star trek ii), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek ii: the wrath of khan | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek v: the final frontier | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek: deep space nine note  archive footage | star trek beyond note  photograph.

Uhura: Mr. Spock, I haven't done anything like this in years. If it isn't done just right, I could blow the entire communications system. It's very delicate work, sir. Spock: I can think of no one better equipped to handle it, Miss Uhura. Please, proceed. — "Who Mourns for Adonais?"

Uhura was Enterprise's communications officer and, according to Gene Roddenberry , was fourth in line of command behind Mr. Scott (something flatly contradicted in the series, where Sulu and even DeSalle took command ahead of her). Unfortunately, her character was vastly underutilized during the series' run, although the times she was allowed to do more than be the ship's phone operator, she was pretty good at whatever she was doing. Her role was somewhat expanded after the first season and she did get to take the captain's chair in the animated series.

• '60s Hair : Wore a pixie cut before sporting a bouffant in the later seasons.
• Ace Pilot : Never really allowed to show it off in the series thanks to Roddenberry and execs banning it, but offscreen she was called a great pilot.
• Action Girl : In "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion." Even more so in the Animated Series episode "The Lorelei Signal", where she leads a landing party of female crewmembers on a phaser-stunning spree when the men are all disabled.
• All of the Other Reindeer : The far more Lower-Deck Episode -ish “Man Trap” implies heavily that she feels lonely, and only lets that out when she’s not in other company.
• Ambiguously Gay : She's as starry eyed as Chekov is over the androids in "I, Mudd", and visibly confused when Kirk asks for male androids.
• Badass Pacifist : Strictly on the diplomat side of the soldier vs diplomat conflict nearly every Trek character finds themselves on, finding war to be the last resort.
• Beware the Nice Ones : Very nice and even-tempered but as Bones lampshades in the third movie, it’s a bad idea to get on her bad side.
• For a long time, in interviews Nichols would answer the question, "What is your favorite episode of the series" with "Any episode that got me off the bridge."
• Catchphrase : "Hailing frequencies open." She says this seven times in her debut appearance, "The Corbomite Maneuver", including five times in a row . It's no wonder she complains about hearing the word "frequency" too many times in "The Man Trap".
• Communications Officer : One of the most famous examples.
• Consistent Clothing Style : She always wears sparkling or bright earrings, with fancy nails. Lampshaded in Star Trek: Ex Machina , as she misses the bright colours of the old clothes, and like everyone in the book, hates the first movie uniforms.
• Cool Old Lady : “Catalyst Of Sorrows” has this be the reason for why so many adore her, she’s over a hundred years old and at peace with herself.
• Cuteness Proximity : Is the first to fall madly in love with tribbles.
• A Day in the Limelight : "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Trouble With Tribbles." She also got to play Large Ham as much as the boys did in "I, Mudd". Star Trek: The Animated Series added "The Lorelei Signal".
• Death Glare : “Catalyst Of Sorrows” calls it the Uhura Look, and describes it like a Kubrick Stare just sassier and angrier.
• Hidden Depths : NOMAD complains that her mind is a chaotic mess, full of conflicting wants.
• Humble Hero : “Catalyst Of Sorrows” has her admit that nothing makes her feel older than when people call her a legend.
• Like Brother and Sister : Ironically given that Nichols couldn’t stand Shatner, but forced kissing aside, he picks her up to hug her, she affectionately snarks at him that she never gets shore leave, and he makes her feel safer.

• My Beloved Smother : According to "Catalyst of Sorrows", the only time she felt free as a child was the month where she got to be with her grandparents, and not in a strictly regimented routine of after school activities.
• My Greatest Failure : In a minor Take That! towards the film , "Catalyst of Sorrows" has her call not being able to speak enough Klingon when it was needed as the most embarrassing moment of her career.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent : She is African and her first language is Swahili, yet she sounds American. Justified in that she is a linguist.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat : When trying to make conversation with Spock, it ends up with her telling him super politely that he's predictable.
• Plucky Girl : Attempted in "Plato's Stepchildren", as she tries to protect Kirk as he protected her, and tells herself and him that she's not scared of being forced to kiss him. She's lying — they're both afraid.
• Rank Up : At some point prior to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , she made Commander.
• Ret-Canon : Her first name, Nyota , was used in the non-canon novels for decades before finally being made official. Very early Trek guides suggest that Penda was considered a possibility by the fans. Parodied in the 2009 film when Uhura refuses to tell Kirk her first name until the end of the movie.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran : In "Catalyst of Sorrows", she tells Crusher that the worst part of being a communication officer is having to listen to screams, and she keeps going in the service so she can finally make it stop.
• She appears to show an interest in Spock in a few episodes. (Yes, long before the reboot .) According to Nichols, this was largely her own idea, that it was a one-sided relationship.
• By the later movies, she seems to be in a casual relationship with Scotty.
• She shares a kiss with Kirk in "Plato's Stepchildren", although given that it was under alien Mind Control and both were rather traumatized ; if anything, it may be closer to Ship Sinking .
• Silk Hiding Steel : Uhura may be a non-combatant most of the time, but as noted above, she is quite the Action Girl when necessary. In particular, "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion" show that Uhura can kick someone's ass when necessary, and the animated series shows she's not afraid to take command and take the initiative when needed.
• Stepford Smiler : She's the worst of all of them in "This Side of Paradise", and in the novel version of the fifth film, she tries her best to tell herself that the Enterprise will be fine because everyone else is grumpy about it.
• Team Mom : In a story written by Nichelle Nichols, Kirk tells her she would make a great mother. She replies that she has experience, being that she’s on a ship full of little boys.
• Troll : She sings a light hearted jab about Spock being the devil in “Charlie X”, and the third movie novel has her provide a distraction by mixing all the channels with clips from TV channels.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl : Her tomboy to Christine's girly girl.
• Twofer Token Minority : The only black member of the crew, and the only woman besides Christine Chapel.
• Wrench Wench : She rigs a subspace bypass circuit to restore communications easily, and even gets a compliment from Spock.

Hologram Uhura

Played by: nichelle nichols (archive recordings).

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

Lieutenant (later Captain) Hikaru Sulu

Played by: George Takei

Dubbed in french by: daniel roussel (tos), tola koukoui (star trek i to v), patrick guillemin (star trek vi), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek ii: the wrath of khan | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek v: the final frontier | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek: voyager | star trek beyond note  photograph.

"We're using hand phasers to heat the rocks. One phaser quit on us, three still operating. Any possibility of getting us back aboard before the skiing season opens down here? " — Sulu , the one with the alien unicorn dog

The helmsman, thankfully living in a time before bridge consoles were Made of Explodium . Sulu was an affable and level-headed officer, a staple of bridge drama and landing parties. He worked well with other members of a crew and sometimes shared his hobbies: botany, antiquing, and fencing (although the last one was not exactly in a clear state of mind). When Chekov was added to the cast, they formed a Those Two Guys dynamic. Although it was never firmly established in canon (where there is no clear command structure after Kirk-Spock-Scotty, and several different characters, Sulu included, are shown to take the conn in situations where all three are absent or incapacitated), Sulu is generally regarded as the ship's Third Officer and fourth-in-command.

• The Ace : Like Kirk, an experienced and capable multi-talented officer who went on to have a distinguished career as a captain of his own. Unlike Kirk, who never made time for a family and whose hobbies seem limited to drinking, flirting, and the occasional camping trip/rock climbing expedition, Sulu also managed to have a happy marriage, a beautiful daughter who followed in his footsteps, and cultivated a variety of interests outside his career, including fencing, botany, and tea.
• Brainwashed and Crazy : Again, "The Naked Time."
• Canon Immigrant : His now-canon first name, Hikaru , was given to him in the non-canon novels by Vonda N. McIntyre , before officially being made his name in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Very early Star Trek guides suggest that Walter was considered as a possible first name during the show itself, but never officially used.
• Cultured Badass : Very knowledgeable in many subjects, such as botany, and when he gets infected and runs amok with a fencing foil in "The Naked Time", he even scares Kirk.
• A Day in the Limelight : "The Naked Time" and "Mirror, Mirror."
• Deadpan Snarker : Sulu is prone to making pithy commentary on the events of the episode.
• Demoted to Extra : He has a much smaller role in The Undiscovered Country due to being busy commanding his own ship for most of the movie.
• Doting Parent : As a foil to Kirk, who couldn’t resist his job and wasn’t allowed to see his son, “Generations” as well as expanded material have him as a devoted father to his daughter Demora, who wasn’t planned and lived with him after her mother died.
• Evil Is Hammy : Every Mirror Universe character was hammy, but Takei was a particularly rich, dripping slice.
• Fan of the Past : He's a history buff and a competent fencer. Overlaps with Ace Pilot in the movies when, upon a simple inspection of the controls, he flies a 20th-century helicopter competently enough to perform cargo-lifting duties.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies : Including fencing ("The Naked Time") and botany ("The Man Trap"). In fact, in "The Naked Time," Kevin Riley Lampshades it.
• Generation Xerox : In Generations , we meet his daughter Demora, who is (where else?) at the helm of the Enterprise -B.
• Genius Bruiser : Just happens to be an expert in botany, swordsmanship, French history, and flying ancient aircraft.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars : His Mirror Universe counterpart has a big nasty scar on his face.
• Gun Nut : Overlapping with Fan of the Past , in "Shore Leave," he's thrilled to find an ancient revolver. An animated series episode expanded this to Sulu having expertise with weaponry across the board.
• Inscrutable Oriental : Deliberately inverted per the series bible. Sulu's most prominent trait was probably his sense of humor and enthusiasm for hobbies that never seemed to last. This got an in-joke in the animated series when he claimed, with a wink, you had to be "inscrutable" to fight the way he did—and Kirk replied "you're the most scrutable man I know." note  Incidentally, the episode was penned by Walter Koenig, who was and still is a good friend of Takei.
• Katanas Are Just Better : Averted in "The Naked Time." Sulu was originally supposed to go on his rampage with a samurai sword, but at Takei's request to do something less stereotypical, it was switched to an epee.
• Nice Guy : Consistently friendly and level-headed. Subtly demonstrated in "Day of the Dove", when an Energy Being triggers a Hate Plague on the Enterprise ; Sulu is the only one who never seems to act out or show anger (even Spock is seething with Tranquil Fury ). And when Bailey in “The Corbomite Maneuver” was freaking out, Sulu did most of his tasks for him.
• The One with a Personal Life : This was retconned for Sulu. The TOS movies gave the distinct impression that the crew killed time between Enterprise missions teaching at the Academy. They didn't have personal lives. Then the seventh movie revealed that Sulu had a daughter. The novel The Captain's Daughter (not to be confused with the Pushkin novel of the same name ) elaborates on their relationship. Kirk: Sulu. When did he find the time to have a family?
• Rank Up : The last we see him, he's captain of the USS Excelsior .
• The Reliable One : He's quite competent at a variety of tasks, and very level-headed compared to characters like Chekov or Scotty. He's also fiercely loyal to his crewmates, to the point of disobeying Starfleet orders and potentially causing a serious diplomatic incident just to rescue them.
• Sad Clown : While freezing to death in “The Enemy Within”, he makes jokes about room service to try and reassure the others.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! : In "Turnabout Intruder," Sulu gets a good moment when he says he'll flatly refuse any order to execute a fellow officer.
• Shirtless Scene : In "The Naked Time."
• Those Two Guys : With Chekov.
• Took a Level in Badass : As Captain of the Excelsior in Star Trek VI .
• He adapts pretty quickly to the controls of a Klingon ship in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock .
• In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home he learns to fly a 20th century helicopter in a single day ; possibly barely justified in that he's a Fan of the Past so maybe he read about helicopters of the 1980's in his leisure time.

Ensign Pavel Andreievich Chekov

Played by: Walter Koenig

Dubbed in french by: andré montmorency (tos), thierry bourdon (star trek: the motion picture), vincent violette (star trek ii, v and vi), nicolas brémont (star trek iii and iv), gilbert lévy (generations), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek ii: the wrath of khan | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek v: the final frontier | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek: generations | star trek: deep space nine note  archive footage | star trek beyond note  photograph.

"Of course, Doctor. The Garden of Eden was just outside Moscow. A very nice place. Must've made Adam and Eve very sad to leave." — Chekov , "The Apple"

The ship's navigator from Season 2 onwards. Chekov had a tendency to refer to Glorious Mother Russia and claim that any human advancement, be it technological or cultural, originated there. He also had terrible luck and frequently ran foul of whatever physical or psychological menace the ship was facing that week, mainly because Walter Koenig had an excellent capacity for screaming. Aside from that, he and Sulu were good friends and would frequently banter about the action.

Chekov is, by far, the most junior of the regular bridge officers, but the writers justified his presence by having him act as the relief science officer whenever Spock was busy or incapacitated. In fact, Chekov would often abandon his navigation console in order to take up the science scanner if Spock had to step away, even at warp or in the middle of a battle. In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , in a nod to this, Chekov identifies himself as the "Acting Science Officer" of the Enterprise .

Chekov was added for a few reasons: to attract younger viewers and give a nod to the Russians in the space race. (Also to fill in some of Sulu's role while Takei was filming The Green Berets .)

Koenig is reprising his role for the Fan Film series Star Trek: Renegades , where Chekov is now over a hundred and an admiral.

• Ambiguously Jewish : An idea with some popularity in the fandom , partially since Koenig (and Anton Yelchin , who played Chekov in the 2009 reboot ) are Jewish.
• Brilliant, but Lazy : He does genuinely have a lot of knowledge, he just decides to make it all about Russian history instead.
• This trend continues into the films: In The Motion Picture Chekov gets electrocuted by one of V'ger's energy blasts. In Wrath of Khan he gets a Ceti Eel in the ear; The Voyage Home sees him nearly fatally injured when he falls off a ship onto the dock below. Walter Koenig jokingly subtitled the second film Star Trek II: Chekov Screams Again .
• Cloudcuckoolander : Chekov's constant references to Mother Russia appear to only make sense in his mind.
• Cultural Posturing : What didn't Mother Russia invent?
• A Day in the Limelight : " Mirror, Mirror ," "The Trouble With Tribbles," "The Deadly Years," and "The Way to Eden."
• Deadpan Snarker : Not as much as Bones or even Spock, but he definitely has a smart-assed side. As he gets older, it gets worse.
• Did Not Get the Girl : In the “Generations” book, he tries to avoid retirement loneliness by contacting his old girlfriend from “The Way To Eden”, only to discover that she got married to someone else.
• Glorious Mother Russia : This trope is very much in effect with Chekov. He is the only person on the Enterprise 's bridge who speaks with a thick, nearly incomprehensible accent (in the company of an African, an East Asian, and a half- alien ), and much of his dialogue is Cultural Posturing about how Russia is the greatest country in the world that has apparently in wen ted everything.
• Iconic Sequel Character : Just as recognisable as Scotty, Uhura and Sulu, despite only joining the cast in the second season.
• The Intern : Much is made of his relative inexperience and impulsiveness.
• In the Original Klingon : A Running Gag is that he keeps claiming things were invented in Russia.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All : Chekov both amused and annoyed his crewmates by spouting what he didn't know about Russian history.
• Mr. Fanservice : Really. Brought in specifically to appeal to younger Fangirls , complete with hair straight out of The Monkees .
• Plucky Comic Relief : Particularly as the films progressed.
• Rank Up : At some point prior to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , he got promoted to Commander. Of all the characters in the TOS era, he has the biggest number of promotions (four). note  From Ensign to Lieutenant Junior Grade to Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander to Commander. Sulu is promoted three times, Spock, Scotty, and Uhura are promoted twice, Kirk and Bones just once — only for Kirk to be demoted back to Captain and Bones subsequently promoted several more times after the TOS era to reach the rank of Admiral by TNG. It is unclear what Chapel and Rand's initial ranks were, though they also end up as Commanders.
• Walter Koenig called Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan "Star Trek II: Chekov Screams Again", as Chekov gets a Puppeteer Parasite inserted into his ear by Khan.
• In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , Chekov gets arrested by law enforcement in 1986, and suffers a near-fatal concussion while attempting to escape.
• In "The Deadly Years", Chekov is the only one of the landing party who doesn't fall prey to the aging disease, which would seem to be a good thing. However, what it really means is that he's forced to go through numerous painful and annoying tests so McCoy can figure out why he wasn't affected.
• The Scream : Walter Koenig had a good one, which is why it's Chekov who always gets stuffed into the agony booth , shot, driven insane, tortured by Klingons, implanted with parasitic worms... Koenig lampshaded this by jokingly calling the second movie in the series "Star Trek II: Chekov Screams Again."
• Sixth Ranger : Subverted. Chekov didn't appear on the show until Season 2, but apparently served on the Enterprise long before he appeared, because in the second movie , Khan recognizes Chekov, apparently having met him in the Season 1 episode "Space Seed." Walter Koenig's explanation for how they met is that Chekov actually was serving aboard the Enterprise but was on duty during the night shift, and he and Khan met off-screen. The circumstances of their meeting were thus: Chekov was using the bathroom and he was taking an inordinately long time, and Khan approaches that very same bathroom, needing to use it. Finding it occupied, he soon loses his patience and pounds on the door. When Chekov finally emerges, Khan grabs him and fixes him with a Death Glare , and says "I will never forget your face!" This is further compounded by the fact that he expended all the toilet paper.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute : He was initially this to Sulu, due to George Takei 's absence during much of season 2, with many of Sulu's lines rewritten for him (e.g. Chekov's sudden familiarity with botany, one of Sulu's areas of expertise, in "The Trouble with Tribbles").
• Those Two Guys : With Sulu, which makes sense since Sulu is the helmsman and Chekov is the navigator. The Final Frontier even shows them vacationing together.

Nurse Christine Chapel

Played by: Majel Barrett

Appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek iv: the voyage home.

• Be Careful What You Wish For : She has a crush on Spock, but is horrified and traumatised when the Platonians force them to kiss.
• A Day in the Limelight : "The Naked Time," "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", "Amok Time," and "Plato's Stepchildren."
• "Come along, Ensign. This won't hurt. Much."
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold : Blonde and among the Enterprise 's most caring officers.
• Put on a Bus : Chapel only appeared as part of the crew in the first TOS film. After that other than a brief cameo in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home she never appeared again.
• Rank Up : When she reappears in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , she's a doctor.
• Real Life Writes the Plot : Majel Barrett was the girlfriend and eventual wife of Gene Roddenberry , which may explain why we saw Nurse Chapel so much. In part, her role was also expanded in the latter half of the first season (after only sporadically appearing in the early episodes) due to Grace Lee Whitney leaving, and Nichelle Nichols also threatening to quit, which would have left the show without any recurring female characters.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man : Roger Korby, her fiancé, was a man to whom "life was sacred" by her own description. Given that her reasons for crushing on Spock included his honesty, it seems this applies across the board for Chapel.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl : Her girly girl to Uhura's tomboy.

USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Played by: Majel Barrett (computer voice)

"No bloody A, B, C, or D!" * or E or F or G — Scotty , " Relics "

The most powerful armed ship in Starfleet, and the main method of transit for the entire cast. Alongside Kirk and Spock, she appears in every episode of the series, and is very often regarded as a character in her own right , both in and out of universe; in fact she is the only character mentioned in the legendary opening narration ("these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise ").

• Badass Crew : An important part of what makes her so great — and what becomes an important part of her legend — is her crew. Throughout the series, we are shown her sister ships, which always fail where she would ultimately succeed, and her crew is what makes the difference.
• Boring, but Practical : Unlike her predecessor , her successor , or her alternate timeline counterpart , this Enterprise is not the most advanced ship in the fleet, but rather is just one of the normal workhorse ships Starfleet has in service. That said, she repeatedly shows why the Constitution -class ships remain in service so long by being able to do just about anything Starfleet needs, from science missions to front line combat. With the right crew, she even manages to upstage the ship that was designed to replace her!
• Celebrity Paradox : One of her "ancestors" is the Space Shuttle Enterprise , a picture of which is in her recreation room as seen in TMP. That Space Shuttle got its name from this ship, after a massive write-in campaign from Trekkies convinced President Ford to change it from Constitution to Enterprise . Ironically the Space Shuttle Enterprise never actually went to space.
• Companion Cube : She's like a wife to Kirk and a daughter to Scotty, but everyone on the crew seems to have a certain fondness for the old girl... even Spock.
• Cool Old Lady : By the time we first see her, the Enterprise has been going around the galaxy for at least twenty years, first with Captain April, then with Pike. By the time she's destroyed, she's a good forty years old. Compare that to Enterprise -D, who only lasts slightly over seven years.
• Cool Starship : The Trope Codifier .
• Deader than Dead : Unlike the D or her alternate timeline counterpart, the original Enterprise has no chance of being rebuilt. After the saucer exploded, she is last seen burning up in the atmosphere of the Genesis planet. Anything that survived would have slammed into the surface at high velocity. Then the Genesis planet exploded. Sadly, you'd need a replicator to stitch her atoms back together. That being said, Discovery would find a way to "resurrect" her, when it's found that the Mirror Universe version of the ship is still intact, and is successfully recovered in the 32nd century.
• Explosive Overclocking : Thanks to her captain's tendency to overachieve, the Enterprise has had her systems strained and overloaded on many occasions.
• Famed In-Story : Like her crew, this ship is a legend in Starfleet. Sisko and Dax are awestruck when they see her in person.
• Heroic Sacrifice : During Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , the Enterprise was destroyed as part of a (successful) attempt to rescue Spock... who had done the same thing in order to save her (and all hands) in the previous film .
• Lightning Bruiser : The Enterprise is portrayed to be both very fast and extremely powerful in battle. Thanks to Deflector Shields , she can also temporarily become nearly impervious to enemy fire, but at a high power cost.
• Macross Missile Massacre : More subdued than most examples, the Enterprise can fire up to six Photon Torpedoes at a target in rapid succession without needing to reload.
• Master of All : She can handle pretty much any mission you can throw at her, from scientific surveys, to combat, to interstellar mapping, to cargo hauling.
• Orbital Bombardment : It's mentioned more than once that the Enterprise can destroy a planet's entire surface from orbit .
• Retirony : The Enterprise had been taken off front-line duty and reassigned to academy training when Khan nearly blasted her into scrap metal; after that, she was scheduled for total decommissioning. Then Kirk took her on one more (unauthorized) mission...
• 1: The warp engines' antimatter reactors can be rigged to to blow themselves up , instantly vaporizing the ship and anything else unlucky enough to be nearby .
• 2: A controlled destruction that selectively destroys all livable and critical areas on the ship, leaving a hollowed husk of a ship behind. Kirk activated this one twice. The first time, it was a bluff and he calls it off in the nick of time. The second time wasn't a bluff.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet : In The Search For Spock , the Klingons identify her as a battlecruiser, which is an accurate description of her Lightning Bruiser design.
• Taking You with Me : When she goes down, she takes a Klingon crew with her.
• Took a Level in Badass : She's practically rebuilt after her five-year mission with a boatload of new tech that makes her even more of a Lightning Bruiser . In particular, her new Deflector Shields can No-Sell an attack from V'Ger that utterly vaporized a Klingon battlecruiser.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction : In addition to her ship-to-ship armaments, the Enterprise carries several antimatter bombs that are powerful enough to obliterate a planet's surface in one shot .

Other Enterprise Crew Members

Yeoman janice rand.

Played by: Grace Lee Whitney

Appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the motion picture | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek vi: the undiscovered country | star trek: voyager.

• '60s Hair : The aforementioned beehive below.
• Beehive Hairdo : The infamous basketweave hairdo. Whitney's wig is supposed to be a 'futuristic' version of the contemporary beehive. From Lisabeth Shatner's (daughter of Bill) memoirs of being on-set: Eventually, I began looking around the room, and discovered I had a bird's eye view of the top of the actress's head. I was utterly fascinated by her hair, which was woven into a checkered pattern on top. I stared at that hair for a long time, wondering if it was possible to actually play checkers on it.
• Bridge Bunny : The Trope Codifier .
• The Bus Came Back : She became the Transporter Chief in the first film, had a cameo in Star Trek III , and was Captain Sulu's communications officer in Star Trek VI . She also appears in a flashback episode of Voyager set during her time serving aboard Sulu's ship. Tuvok nerve-pinches her, allowing Janeway to borrow her uniform.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome : Vanished halfway through the first season due to off-screen issues . She was replaced by Dr. Helen Noel in "Dagger of the Mind".
• Clingy Jealous Girl : Spock seems to like stoically taunting her on how Kirk is off-limits, even when he’s coldly seducing someone else.
• Damsel in Distress : She ends up endangered more than once, including being attacked by an evil clone of Kirk, temporarily zapped out of existence, and kidnapped and tied up by the Onlies.
• Got Over Rape Instantly : In " Enemy Within ", Kirk is split into Good and Evil duplicates. The evil one almost rapes Yeoman Rand, and she's traumatized for the rest of the episode, but the reboot button is pressed and she's back to mooning over Kirk in her next episode as though nothing had happened.
• Ignored Enamored Underling : Kirk does have feelings for her, but refuses to act upon them, and after “The Enemy Within”, is mostly dismissive and awkward, except when sick and yearning in “The Naked Time”. Even in that former episode, his “good half” ignores her before his evil half tries to assault her.
• Mundane Utility : Yeoman Rand heated coffee with a phaser in "The Corbomite Maneuver."
• Hypercompetent Sidekick : Implied; there are several references to her ability to keep Kirk from being swamped in paperwork, and one to improvising with a phaser when the food systems won't provide hot coffee.
• Ms. Fanservice : The original media package described her as having "a strip queen's figure that a uniform can't hide." Not that those uniforms hide much, but whatever.
• Rank Up : In the series, she was a yeoman. In The Motion Picture , she's chief petty officer and transporter chief. In The Voyage Home , she's a communications officer assigned to Starfleet Command on Earth. Finally, in The Undiscovered Country , she's communications officer on the Excelsior , going from Lieutenant junior grade to commander.
• Satellite Character : With the exception of "The Man Trap," where she hangs around with Sulu for a large part of the episode, and "Charlie X," where she's the unwanted focus of Charlie's attraction until he (temporarily) zaps her out of existence, she has no significant interaction with any character other than Kirk.
• Although Rand herself vanished midway through the first season, several more episodes for the rest of the season contain a Yeoman character obviously written as Rand but hastily recast and renamed. (As late as the following season, in writing "The Trouble with Tribbles" , David Gerrold had outlined the role that eventually went to Uhura in the finished episode as Rand, before Gene Coon informed him that Rand had "transferred to another ship".) Obvious Rand substitutes include Mears ( "The Galileo Seven" ), Barrows ( "Shore Leave" ), Ross ( "The Squire of Gothos" ), Tamura ( "A Taste of Armageddon" ), and Zahra ( "Operation -- Annihilate!" ).
• Trauma Button : Every official book that includes her has feeling uncomfortable in some way around Kirk, eventually needing time away from him.
• Unreplaced Departed : Rand was intended to be a series regular as a recurring love interest for Kirk, and was featured even more prominently than Spock and McCoy in promotional materials, and indeed was a major fixture of the first half of season one. She was eventually cut from the show by the halfway point of the series. note  It's unclear precisely why Rand was removed. The reasons vary from NBC looking to cut costs and argued that random nameless characters could fulfill her same role for cheaper than a regular, showrunners deciding they wanted Kirk to remain single and free to hook up with the random Girl of the Week , a sexual assault by an NBC executive leading to her termination, or even blaming Whitney having personal or substance abuse problems as the reason. Although Rand's role as Kirk's aide was taken up by the occasional background extra, there was never a permanent replacement for her character.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension : With Kirk.

Lieutenant Kyle

Played by: John Winston

Appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek ii: the wrath of khan.

• The Cameo : He's the communications officer on the Reliant in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .
• Mauve Shirt : Because he was the only recurring redshirt not played by an extra, he usually had much more dialogue than other redshirts , a consistent name and position on the ship, and was allowed to play an active role in the plot (see "The Doomsday Machine" or "Mirror, Mirror" for examples).
• Only One Name : Though non-canon sources have variously used both "John" and "Winston," both obviously in tribute to the actor.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : We never see him on-screen again after being marooned on Ceti Alpha V, which caused much speculation about his fate, despite Kirk's log entry that they are heading there to pick up the crew of Reliant . The non-canon novels and comics established that he survived his unwanted shore leave on the planet, and eventually ended up on the Enterprise -A.

Lieutenant Leslie

Played by: Eddie Paskey

• Inexplicably Identical Individuals : A common fan theory is that there is multiple Leslie brothers or clones, due to Leslie's occasional tendency to be seen on the bridge in one shot, then behind Scotty in engineering in the next.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist : By virtue of Paskey being the omnipresent extra on set, Leslie is seen working in literally every conceivable position on the ship, from medical to security to transporter operation.
• Only One Name : And only referred to by that name on a few occasions. Various non-canon sources have called him "Frank," "Ryan," or "Ed" (the last, naturally, after the actor).
• Red Shirt : The King of the Redshirts, no less, as he has the distinction of being the first Trek character to die and return to life. He dies in "Obsession" , yet turns up later in the episode completely unharmed. Paskey was Shatner's stand-in and lighting double, and Doohan's hand double, so they couldn't really get rid of him, and he actually appears in more episodes than Chekov.

Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley

Played by: Bruce Hyde

• Dark and Troubled Past : Who would've guessed the dorky, fun-loving Riley was one of the few survivors of a horrific massacre when he was just a little kid?
• Dreadful Musician : "Iiiiii'll taaaaake you hooome again, Kathleeeeeen...."
• He Knows Too Much : Lenore poisons him, Hamlet-style, to prevent him from pointing at Kodos as a war criminal. (Ironically, he doesn't even know that Kodos is aboard until near the end.)
• Improbable Age : Riley seems pretty young for a full-braid Lieutenant - Hyde was 24 at the time, and looked it. This also makes him an improbable witness to a man who had disappeared 20 years before, when he would have barely been out of diapers. Amusingly, the greenhorn Ensign Chekov, introduced in the second season, was played by an actor five years older .
• Incessant Music Madness : "And now, crew, I will render Kathleen ONE MORE TIME! Kirk: Please, not again.
• Oireland : Got his "Irish" up when under the influence of the mind virus in "The Naked Time."
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business : Riley, the resident class clown of the lower decks, becomes deadly serious when he learns that Kodos is aboard the Enterprise.
• One Degree of Separation : Riley and Kirk are two of the only people in the galaxy who have seen Kodos the Executioner in person, and they both serve aboard the same ship.
• Real Life Writes the Plot : The reason Riley never returned after "The Conscience of the King," despite being very popular with fans, was that Hyde left to become a hippie. Yes, really. Remember, this was 1967. (He later became a professor of philosophy.)

Doctor M'Benga

Played by: Booker Bradshaw

The ship's ranking Chief Medical Officer when Bones was off the ship, Doctor M'Benga interned on Vulcan and specialised in treating Vulcan physiology, which came in useful when Spock was shot.

• All There in the Manual : The character originated in an ultimately unused script, which gave his first name as Joseph and his nationality as Ugandan. An early novel used "Geoffrey" and the Star Trek Novel 'Verse named him Jabilo . As of Strange New Worlds , Doctor M'Benga's first name has been canonised as Joseph.
• Cruel to Be Kind : Spock needs to be put in pain to be brought out of his trance, so Nurse Chapel taps him gently. Scotty pulls Chapel away from Spock, thinking she's gone mad, slapping her patient around. Then M'Benga steps in and gives Spock the necessary physical stimulus.
• The Main Characters Do Everything : Averted in the episodes he showed up. He fills in for Bones when the latter joins a landing party.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : Never even mentioned outside his two appearances, despite the many times his specialisation in Vulcan medicine would have been useful, and being Bones's second-in-command.

Angela Martine

Played by: Barbara Baldavin

An enlisted crewmember on the Enterprise. Her debut episode, "Balance of Terror," had her about to get married (with Kirk, as ship's captain, officiating) when her wedding was interrupted by an encounter with the Romulans. Her fiancé is killed. She's brokenhearted of course, but she musters her courage to cope with it. Returned in minor roles in "Shore Leave" and "Space Seed" (in the latter, she's addressed as Angela, but once is called "Teller"). Baldavin also appeared under the name "Lieutenant Lisa" in "Turnabout Intruder," though she was made up differently and Lisa is usually considered a separate character.

Fleet Captain Christopher Pike

Played by: Jeffrey Hunter (" The Cage "), Sean Kenney (Disfigured Pike in "The Menagerie")

Dubbed in french by: yvon bouchard.

The previous captain of the Starship Enterprise and Spock's prior commanding officer. A celebrated space explorer, much like Kirk, he was later horribly disfigured in a training accident. Spock's loyalty to Pike was too much to allow Pike to remain a disabled wreck, so he returned Pike to the Talosians to live out his days in an illusion of good health with his love Vina.

For tropes relating to his other appearances, see Discovery and Strange New Worlds .

• And I Must Scream : The training accident he was in gave him a huge dose of delta radiation, bad enough that he's completely immobilized. McCoy notes his brain is working as much as anyone else's, but he can't even speak. And when he realises what Spock's doing, all can he do is repeat "no" over and over again.
• Body Horror : What we see isn't pretty. His face is covered in scarring, and one massive burn going from chin to temple on the right side of his face. And it's hinted the radiation did a lot of other damage, given mention is made of his heart being kept operated by battery. Even getting agitated nearly puts him into a coma from the strain.
• The Captain : The original captain, preceding even Kirk. He later became a fleet captain.
• Celibate Hero : Especially when compared to Kirk . While he’s had fantasies of Orion slave girls, he runs out disgusted, calls out Boyce for being a Dirty Old Man and shows little interest in any husband and wife dreams cooked up for him.
• The Determinator : The Talosians expected Pike to quietly accept captivity. Pike had other ideas and didn't stop until he escaped.
• Due to the Dead : Star Trek: Deep Space Nine revealed that Starfleet named one of their combat decorations in his honor, the Christopher Pike Medal of Valor.
• A Father to His Men : Implied from how Spock was willing to risk his career and life to help his former CO.
• Happily Ever After : The end of "The Menagerie" implies this for him and Vina, as they get to spend their remaining years together in an illusion of good health.
• Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis : "The Cage" can be interpreted as an extended metaphor for a man going through a mid-life crisis. ( Gene Roddenberry was well into his forties when he wrote the pilot, and even cast his mistress as the female lead.) Pike's character is clearly supposed to be older than Kirk, even before the eleven-year Time Skip in "The Menagerie", although Hunter was a relatively young man (he turned 38 during filming of "The Cage"). Subsequent depictions of the character clearly portray him as middle-aged even during his prime (played by 53-year-old Bruce Greenwood in Star Trek (2009) and 45-year-old Anson Mount in Star Trek: Discovery , both set some years before the TOS era).
• Mangst : He’s having a Heroic BSoD over getting some of his crew killed, and it takes drinking for him to admit he’s tired and wants to retire.
• Once for Yes, Twice for No : Following the accident, Pike is left in a state where his only form of communication is a light on his elaborate wheelchair, which he can light once for "yes" and twice in a row for "no".
• Small Role, Big Impact : He only appeared in two episodes, one of which didn't air until decades after the show ended, yet is easily one of the most recognizable things from TOS. His blinking lights and wheelchair have been been parodied and paid homage to in numerous other works.
• Stay in the Kitchen : Can’t get used to having women on the bridge, and when Number One is offended, he tells her she’s different, offending her again.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension : The Talosians noted that both Pike's first officer, the original Number One, and his yeoman were attracted to him, but since we never saw anything further of Pike's adventures, we don't know if anything came of it. He was apparently still in love with Vina, as he later accepted retirement with the Talosians to be with her.
• The Voiceless : The training accident left him unable to speak, so he had to communicate via blinking lights on his wheelchair. One blink for yes, two for no.

"Number One"

• Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep" : Everyone calls her Number One, all the time.
• Not So Stoic : When Pike remarks that he "can't get used to having a woman on the bridge", she looks openly surprised before he excludes her as "different, of course." ' s first officer.-->
• Only One Name : She's only referred to as "Number One" in "The Cage". A variety of apocrypha over the years either confirmed this as a given name or title on her homeworld, or suggested various real names, such as Una.
• Real Life Writes the Plot : Majel Barrett was the girlfriend and eventual wife of Gene Roddenberry , which caused suspicion among NBC executives when they viewed "The Cage". She was removed from the show and not acknowledged again for decades.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension : The Talosians noted that she was attracted to Pike, and her official biography confirms this, but we don't know if anything came of it. He was apparently still in love with Vina, as he later accepted retirement with the Talosians to be with her.

Antagonists

    Khan Noonien Singh  See his page .

Commander Kor

Played by: John Colicos

Appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek: deep space nine.

• Affably Evil : Despite intending to execute Kirk once he discovers his identity, he has a drink with him first and is generally hard to dislike.
• Cold Ham : Dominates everyone in his first scene, not raising his voice in his command, but is shaking with barely contained power.
• Enemy Mine : When the Organians demonstrate their powers and use nonlethal force on both sides, Kor is quick to whisper to Kirk that they should team up to take them on.
• Evil Counterpart : Like Kirk, Kor is a senior field officer, but with the military dictatorship of the Klingon Empire rather than the democracy of the Federation.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name : Kor's control of Organia involves restriction of personal freedoms, mass executions, and constant surveillance.
• No Sense of Personal Space : As well as the famous “you’ll be taught how to use your tongue” line, he sees Kirk and immediately circles him like prey, along with a blatant check out of his ass.
• "Not So Different" Remark : Kor tries to pull one of these on Kirk, saying they are both warriors on a world of cowards. However, he is horrified when the Organians pull one on him and say one day humans and Klingons will be friends.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy : Unlike many TOS Klingons, Kor does seem to embody this trope.
• Small Role, Big Impact : John Colicos played Kor only once on TOS before reprising the role decades later on DS9 , but his Genghis Khan-inspired performance set the standard for all Klingons.
• Yellow Peril : Kor's look was based on Genghis Khan .

Captain Koloth

Played by: william campbell.

• Friendly Enemy : Kirk and Koloth (somewhat sarcastically) greet each other as "my dear captain" when they meet on K-7.
• Large Ham : William Campbell is channeling more than a little of his performance as Trelane into Koloth.
• Noodle Incident : Koloth and Kirk's first meeting prior to the episode.
• Rules Lawyer : Koloth uses the terms of the Organian peace treaty to get his men shore leave on K-7 over Kirk's protests.
• Smug Snake : Koloth is enjoying the opportunity to tweak Kirk's nose while advancing the Empire's plot to poison the quadrotriticale shipment.
• Worthy Opponent : Koloth is clearly happy to be involved in verbal sparring matches with Kirk; decades later, Jadzia Dax tells Ben Sisko that Koloth always regretted never getting to face Kirk in battle.

Commander Kang

Played by: michael ansara, appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: deep space nine | star trek: voyager.

• Cold-Blooded Torture : Kang threatens to torture and execute the Enterprise crew one by one until Kirk confesses to killing his men.
• Deadpan Snarker : He gets a few good lines in. Kang: Most interesting. The bulk of your crew trapped? Your ship racing from this galaxy at wild speeds? Delightful.
• Enemy Mine : When Kang finally accepts that the Klingons and the Enterprise crew are being manipulated by the Beta-XII A entity, he teams up with Kirk to defeat the energy being.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones : His wife, Mara, is his science officer. Though he cares for her, he won't let her be used as a bargaining chip against him.
• A Father to His Men : Kang is pissed at Kirk for having apparently killed most of his crew.
• I Have Your Wife : Kirk tries threatening to kill Mara if Kang doesn't agree to a truce. Kang just shrugs it off as the inevitable result of war.
• Sheathe Your Sword : Kang lays down his arms when he realizes that he's being manipulated by the Beta-XII A entity.
• Yellow Peril : Like Kor, Kang's appearance takes a lot of cues from Genghis Khan.

Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd

Played by: roger c. carmel, appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series.

• Affably Evil : He's a shameless crook and totally unrepentant scam artist, but he's friendly, cheerful, easy-going, and surprisingly likable, so long as you remember never to trust him with anything, especially anything worth money. Basically, he's a proto-Ferengi.
• Con Man : His first appearance is based on his scam to marry gorgeous women secretly modified with drugs to be super-beautiful to lonely, wealthy space-workers for a huge payout. In Star Trek: The Animated Series , it's mentioned he once tricked an alien species by selling them the Starfleet Academy building.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment : This gets visited upon him by Kirk at the end of "I, Mudd."
• Evil Is Petty : While downplayed as Mudd is mostly just a dick, but his role as Kirk’s antagonist just seems to be wanting to see him squirm and take Mudd’s orders.
• Full-Name Ultimatum : Stella: Harcourt! Harcourt Fenton Mudd!... Mudd: Shut UP, Stella!
• Henpecked Husband : It turns out in "I, Mudd" that he had a harridan of a wife named Stella; part of the reason he became a crook was to run away from her to the ends of the galaxy. Mudd: You see, gentlemen, behind every great man there is a woman urging him on. And so it was with my Stella. She urged me on into outer space. Not that she meant to, but with her continual, eternal, confounded nagging. Well, I think of her constantly, and every time I do, I go further out into space.
• Hoist by His Own Petard : By the Stella androids at the end of "I, Mudd."
• Honest John's Dealership : The first storyline involving him is his plan to sell brides to lonely space-miners ( after giving them illegal "Venus Drugs" to make them super-beautiful ). He'd also been convicted as a smuggler prior to his first appearance. In his second appearance, he describes how he escaped Deneb V after being sentenced to death for fraud.
• Lovable Rogue : He's a money-grubber and irresponsible, but he's affable and rarely trying to commit "truly evil" crimes.
• Recurrer : He holds the distinction of being the only non-Starfleet character in the entire series to appear in more than one episode. He returns for an episode of the Animated Series, as well. (He was also planned to make a third appearance on the show, but the proposed story was dropped.)
• Space Jews : His Irish accent, flamboyant dress sense, pierced ear, and dishonesty make him seem like a negative stereotype of Irish Travellers .

Trelane, Squire of Gothos

Appearances: star trek: the original series.

A flamboyant, childlike, and surprisingly dangerous entity encountered by the Enterprise crew. Trelane ("General Trelane, retired") is intrigued by humanity, specifically its more warlike and savage aspects, and wants to "play" with Kirk.

• Agent Peacock : He dresses quite flamboyantly, with a frilled shirt and bright blue tailcoat dripping in gold braid and medals, but he's still a dangerous entity.
• Aliens Steal Cable : Trelane has apparently been monitoring Earth for some time, but his information is quite out of date, considering he's dressed like an 18th-century fop.
• Always a Bigger Fish : The episode is resolved when his parents show up and ground him for messing with the poor primitive earthlings.
• Beware the Silly Ones : Trelane spends the first half of the episode being a vaguely threatening cornball. Then he decides to hunt Kirk for sport and nearly succeeds in killing him.
• Enfant Terrible : Turns out to be one once his parents show up.
• Expy : Not Trelane himself, but Gene Roddenberry deliberately patterned the character of Q after his attitude and manner of interacting with the crew, something that John de Lancie and the TNG production staff noticed. Most fans nowadays take it as a given that Trelane and his parents are members of the Q Continuum, with at least one novel positing that Q is Trelane's father.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language : He switches into French and German to greet Lieutenants DeSalle and Jaeger, but uses English to give Sulu a faux-Japanese greeting, causing the latter to amusedly ask if he's serious.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare : Trelane seems enthralled by human history, specifically its martial aspects; he introduces himself as a retired general and asks Kirk to tell him about his battles and missions of conquest.
• Psychopathic Manchild : He is fascinated by Kirk's phaser, vaporizing several objects in his house before declaring that one could kill millions with it. He later throws a tantrum when Kirk and the others won't cooperate with him and ultimately decides to hunt the captain for sport, gloating and cackling all the while. Then it turns out he actually is a child, at least by the standards of his species.
• Reality Warper : He can twist space and matter as he pleases, though time is a bit beyond him.
• Sore Loser : He doesn't take it at all well when Kirk bests him. When his parents show up to haul him off, he whines and complains like a little boy being told to go to bed and fades out insisting that he "woulda won".

Appearances: Star Trek: The Original Series | Star Trek: The Animated Series | Star Trek III: The Search for Spock | Star Trek: Deep Space Nine | Star Trek | Star Trek Into Darkness

• Big Eater : They'd have to be, to support all that explosive breeding . They chew through the Enterprise's food stores, and absolutely demolish the huge bins of super-valuable quadrotriticale grain aboard station K-7.
• Born as an Adult : And pregnant. Which is quite a time-saver.
• Cuteness Proximity : For some reason, people tend to enjoy cooing over the fluffy, purring fuzzballs. Well, unless you're a Klingon.
• Explosive Breeder : Exaggerated . In three days, one tribble will become 1,771,561. (Assuming that tribbles reproduce every twelve hours with an average litter of ten.)
• Now You Tell Me : "We stop feeding the tribbles and they stop breeding!"
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis : The only species that the Tribbles do not like are the Klingons, and the feeling is very mutual.
• Thrown Out the Airlock : Where they'll be no tribble at all.

Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell

Played by: Gary Lockwood

• Anti-Villain : At first. His initial acts of villainy are simply attempts to stop Kirk and Spock from killing him out of fear for his power. He gradually becomes more evil over the course of the episode and by the end he's left this trope far behind.
• A God Am I : He frequently refers to himself as such. During the final confrontation he uses his telekinesis to force Kirk to kneel and pray to him.
• The Charmer : In Kirk’s bio, the female crewmembers all miss him when he dies, mostly because he flirted with them constantly by making them laugh.
• Chivalrous Pervert : He’s the one that pushed girlfriends on Kirk in the academy days, and apparently flirts a lot (the bio has Kirk be annoyed that he’s hitting on the female crew too much), but he’s a nice guy until his run-in with the galactic barrier causes him to mutate into a Physical God and go insane as a result.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend : The end of the pilot does give the crew a little time to grieve over him, but he's never mentioned again (the for-some-time-ambiguous canonicity probably didn't help), with his role as Kirk's close trusted friend getting transplanted onto Spock and McCoy (in fact, some fans watching the pilot get the impression that Mitchell was supposed to be first officer before Spock). He's there in the novel versions of the movies (and in one of Kirk's Nexus fantasies), with the implication that Kirk is trying very hard to forget about him.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom : After the accident, his eyes start to glow silver. His eyes return to normal when he's injured or is otherwise prevented from using his powers.
• Hoist by His Own Petard : He is killed when he is crushed by rocks while standing in the grave he created for Kirk.
• Hot-Blooded : Kirk’s bio has him making a lot of impulsive, rash choices. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t, and he admits to Kirk at one point that he doesn’t think things through.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : Prior to his transformation.
• Physical God : He starts out gaining telepathy and telekinesis (powerful enough to deflect phaser fire and take control of the Enterprise through thought alone), and eventually evolves to nearly Q and Trelane's level, being able to will matter into existence through thought alone. Being crushed by rocks still kills him, though it takes being weakened in a psychic fight with another god-like being to get to that point.
• Positive Friend Influence : Kirk’s bio posits that he would still play it safe and just be another face in the academy if it hadn’t been for Gary’s charm and showing his friend that he needs to take risks. This is what makes his transformation into an insane god-like being even more tragic.
• Power Echoes : He eventually gains this.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! : Tells Kirk in more than one prequel book that leaving people to die under the guise of the Prime Directive is a shitty thing to do.
• Shadow Archetype : Nearly every later official book involving him has him as what Kirk is considered to be in popular culture; too reckless, doesn’t think and overly flirty. He’s a decent person despite this though, and is a Positive Friend Influence when younger Kirk wants to be a By-the-Book Cop .
• Shock and Awe : After Kirk manages to convince Dr. Dehner to pull a Heel–Face Turn , she and Mitchell blast each other repeatedly with lightning, resulting in a Double Knockout ; unfortunately Mitchell recovers relatively quickly, while Dehner is fatally wounded.
• The Stoic : He quickly loses all traces of human emotion.
• Super-Strength : After being briefly Brought Down to Normal after a psychic duel with Dr. Dehner, Mitchell gets into a fist-fight with Kirk in which Kirk initially has the upper hand, until Mitchell starts regaining his powers; even without his telekinesis, he's strong enough to flip Kirk with an Off Hand Back Hand and lift a huge boulder and toss it at Kirk.
• Tragic Monster : As Kirk says, Mitchell never wanted this to happen to him.
• Übermensch : He believes that he has become a higher being who is destined to change mankind forever.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity : After he starts mutating, he's initially relatively normal and only attacks the crew because they're considering killing him out of fear he'll evolve to the point where he starts to see human beings as insects. Pretty soon, though, he evolves to the point where he sees human beings as insects, losing all empathy for them and even demanding to be worshipped as a god.

The Gorn Captain

• Anti-Villain : While utterly ruthless about how they went about dealing with it, the Enterprise crew concedes that they had no clue the colony was infringing on Gorn territory and that such a thing would look like an act of aggression if things were reversed. In the mind of the Gorn, they are acting in self-defence.
• Attack Its Weak Point : During their initial fight, Kirk manages to briefly stun him by slamming the ear-like nodes on his head. It looks like Kirk managed to hit a vulnerable spot, because the Gorn is otherwise tough enough to No-Sell a microwave-sized rock to the clavicle.
• Genius Bruiser : It looks like a brutish lizard monster that Kirk can't put down, yet it repeatedly outsmarts both Kirk personally and the Enterprise as a whole. Also, instead of relying on his superior natural strength, he takes the time to fashion a weapon from the location environment, just like Kirk does; however, he made a flint knife while Kirk made a cannon .
• Implacable Man : The Gorn Captain shrugs off every physical attack Kirk hits him with and even gets back up when Kirk drops a boulder on him.
• Made of Iron : As Kirk himself notes during the episode, the Gorn Captain easily takes attacks from Kirk that would kill a human being. Even Kirk dropping a boulder on him only knocked him out for no more than a minute, and didn't injure him at all.
• Mighty Glacier : Much more powerful and durable than Kirk, yet moves about as fast as molasses in January.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy : Implied, since their first response to finding a Federation colony on their territory is to utterly destroy it and set a trap for the nearest Federation starship, and they prove to be superior both tactically and in terms of firepower.
• Super-Strength : Kirk manages to pick up a large rock (maybe 60-80 pounds) and throw it at the Gorn Captain, hitting him square in the chest and accomplishing nothing. In response, the Gorn Captain easily picks up and lifts over his head a boulder that has to weigh at least a ton, and throws it (judging by the arc and how much time Kirk had to see it coming and dodge) probably fifty feet.

Janice Lester

Played by: Sandra Smith

• Ambiguous Gender Identity : Maybe she would have had an easier time if she just transitioned into being a man.
• Blatant Lies : Delivered the infamous claim that women in the liberal utopia that is the Federation are barred from commanding starships. Regardless of whether Gene meant that literally or not, several decades and many female captains later and we are able to put this down to the fact that she is just making up excuses for the fact that there is no way anyone would promote someone this mentally unstable to the rank of captain.
• Broken Bird : A manipulative Death Seeker who finds it easy to hit her ex boyfriend and hates herself.
• Easily Forgiven : Kirk has a habit of doing so to people who treat him awfully, but even Shatner complained that nothing in the episode actually got resolved.
• Death Seeker : Kirk points out that her “love” for him was actually torturing and punishing, and that they would have killed each other. She responds with “that might have been better”.
• Domestic Abuse : She's a little too happy to be finally stronger than her ex boyfriend, mocking him for being scared all the time and punches him out to shut him up.
• Final Boss : The villain of the original series' final episode, though due to the show's episodic nature there was no plot-related significance to this other than the fact it just happened to be the last episode filmed.
• I Just Want to Be You : She vehemently denies loving Kirk, telling Coleman that she just loves and wants the life he leads of being Captain.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman : Inverted. Sure she hates Kirk, but still takes the time to grope his abs when she's finally in him.
• Mirror Character : For Kirk, as she seduces her assistant the way he seduces villains of the week, plays wounded gazelle gambits well like how he’s got the Enterprise to play dead multiple times, both have Death Seeker inclinations and while he’s an Agent Peacock comfortable in his gender, she’s rigid in gender norms and is a Troubled Abuser because of it.
• Never My Fault : In their conversation, Kirk is of the opinion that their relationship was a toxic mess, yet she blames Kirk for leaving, claiming he abandoned her when it got serious.
• Psychopathic Womanchild : She’s positively giggling when she manages to trap Kirk in her former body, and snuggles with him in her arms while talking about how he should have killed her.
• Too Clever by Half : Aside from being an Hysterical Woman , she partly fucks up because she thinks being a Captain means you’re formal with everyone, and shows no affection for the crew that Kirk does (like calling Bones “Doctor McCoy ” constantly.)
• Troubled Abuser : According to the hearing, she hated being a woman, and took it out on Kirk, making it hell to be with her.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit : She fakes having deadly serious radiation poisoning to get her Chronic Hero Syndrome ex alone with her and sympathetic.

Ambassador Sarek

Played by: Mark Lenard

Dubbed in french by: roger rudel (star trek iii), georges berthomieu (star trek iv), mario santini (star trek vi), appearances: star trek: the original series | star trek: the animated series | star trek iii: the search for spock | star trek iv: the voyage home | star trek: the next generation | star trek vi: the undiscovered country.

• Abusive Parents : Not intentionally, but cold Vulcan logic means he was emotionally distant toward Spock when he was a kid, and it's helped cause a lot of Spock's anti-human attitude. Sort of tells you what his parenting styles are like when Spock's reaction to being told Sarek's at threat of dying is "meh". Fortunately, they manage to repair their relationship.
• Ambadassador : He's proficient in Vulcan martial arts. Spock points out that he could be a plausible suspect in the Tellarite ambassador's murder since Sarek knows the technique that killed him.
• Antiquated Linguistics : Introduces Amanda as "she who is my wife" rather than just "my wife". He does the same thing decades later with Perrin.
• Blue Blood : Or at least he comes from good family, in so far as Vulcans count such things, and behaves in a courtly manner.
• Gentleman and a Scholar : A cut line indicated that Sarek was an astrophysicist before he turned to politics.
• Happily Married : Though Sarek and his human wife, Amanda, have their differences (as seen in "Journey to Babel"), and though he's culturally inhibited from expressing his emotions, it's clear the couple love each other very much.
• Has a Type : When he resurfaces in Next Generation, he has remarried after the death of his human wife Amanda... to another human woman.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : For all his stern, no-nonsense traits and his differences with his son, he is a loving father and proud to represent his planet for the Federation.
• Killed Off for Real : Died in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification I" .
• Marry for Love : Marrying Amanda was... logical. Obviously. (Well, if you love them, marrying them is pretty logical.)
• My Greatest Failure : Based on the emotions Picard feels during their mind meld, Sarek feels extreme disappointment and regret over his emotional detachment towards both his human wives. He also regrets never expressing his pride and love towards Spock appropriately. "Perrin. Amanda. I wanted to give you so much more. I wanted to show you such tenderness. But that is not our way. Spock, Amanda, did you know? Perrin, can you know how much I love you? I do love you!"
• He teases Amanda in public at the end of "The Way to Babel".
• With a side order of O.O.C. Is Serious Business . In Star Trek III , he's visibly angry when he confronts Kirk about the latter's supposed failure to return Spock's katra to Vulcan. This only escalates when he figures out Kirk has no idea what the hell he's talking about. This is lampshaded later at the foot of Mount Seleya, when Sarek requests the Fal-tor-pan ritual be performed to reunite Spock's body and mind. High Priestess T'Lar protests that the ceremony is dangerous and its outcome uncertain, making his request illogical. Sarek replies " Forgive me, T'Lar. My logic is uncertain... where my son is concerned. "
• Out-of-Character Moment : In Sarek , Picard is shocked to see him moved to tears by a musical performance. This is because he has Bendii syndrome, which is analogous to Alzheimer's in a human.
• Parents as People : He has the unfortunate task of being a full Vulcan parent to three messed up main characters: Spock, Sybok and Michael. Part of his issue is overconfidence in the Vulcan ways, and not really knowing what his children need.
• So Proud of You : He admits this to Spock in Star Trek IV , and in TNG's "Unification: Part II," Spock learns from mind-melding with Picard that he was even prouder , which almost moves him to tears.
• Super-Strength : Like all Vulcans. That Tellarite ambassador mentioned earlier tried to manhandle Sarek during an argument. Sarek effortlessly knocks away his hands with just a flick of two fingers each sending him reeling quite some distance as an aftereffect . He's lucky Sarek didn't actually hit him.

Played by: Susan Oliver

• Anatomically Ignorant Healing : She turns out to have been left disabled and disfigured by the Talosians' well-intentioned efforts to heal her — they were able to successfully restore her to physical health, but their unfamiliarity with human anatomy led to them putting her back together as a scarred hunchback.
• Body Horror : Downplayed, but she has been left scarred, withered and exaggeratedly hunchbacked as a result of her ship's crash.
• Face Palm : She does this when Pike gets punished for thinking wrong thoughts.
• Glamor Failure : Her beautiful appearance is an illusion; she's really an ineptly reassembled mess .
• I Will Wait for You : Enforced. She has to wait many years for the real Pike to return to Talos IV as she cannot leave the planet. The Talosians were at least kind enough to provide an illusion of Pike to keep her company.
• Love at First Sight : Pike and Vina are attracted to each other from their first meeting and explicitly say so.
• Loving a Shadow : The Talosians provided her with an illusory version of Pike to keep her company while she waited for the real Pike to return.
• Space Clothes : Like the Talosians, she wears shiny, silvery clothes.
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Trek-Lit Reading Order Flow Chart

• Crossovers:
• To fully immerse yourself in the litverse, the big crossover event that really starting to bring things together was the Destiny trilogy - A  great place to jump in, leading to stories from several series set after it. One step back from Destiny is Articles of the Federation , which is the perfect introduction to the world of Federation politics which becomes prominent in Destiny and beyond.
• If you're looking to jump in further along, then  The Fall  is a good place to start; the five-part crossover brings together most of the 24th century series, and shakes up the status quo for the series as they continue independently after.
• A cohesive series of Mirror Universe stories builds to a grand finale that has knock-on effects in the prime timeline narrative. These stories begin in the anthology Glass Empire .
• DS9 was the first series to enjoy a post-TV relaunch; the main new DS9 adventures start from Avatar , which is also available in Twist of Faith , an omnibus of the first four books of the series.
• The ongoing TNG narrative really starts from the A Time to… series, but you could jump on from the first book set after Nemesis , Death in Winter . Later on in the run, other good jumping on points are the Cold Equations trilogy, or  Armageddon's Arrow , the first of a run of stories from the same mission for the Enterprise. 
• Another branch of TNG , Titan , featuring Captain Riker's ship, gets going from Taking Wing , or you can explore Picard's backstory in the run of Stargazer novels which begins with Reunion .
• Voyager 's first post- Endgame stories start from Homecoming , but the series got something of a second start later with the return to the Delta Quadrant in  Full Circle .
• Enterprise:
• Enterprise 's post finale adventures begin from The Good That Men Do . This series also has secondary relaunch with the post-Romulan War era in A Choice of Futures  beginning the Rise of the Federation series.
• TOS doesn't have quite the same sort of ongoing narrative as the other series, but there are a few books that form a loose continuity, and The Captain's Oath is a good place to start with those. 
• If you're looking for something more serialised in the 23rd century, then check out  Vanguard , which starts from Harbinger , and spawned a spin-off series Seekers , beginning with Second Nature .
• A side-step from regular TOS adventures gives us a linked series of books featuring the Star Trek universe of the 20th and 21st centuries. A good place to start exploring these is the Eugenics Wars duology.
• Other spin-offs
• New Frontier was the first major spin-off Star Trek book series, featuring the adventures of Captain Calhoun and the USS Excalibur. The series begins with House of Cards , but the first four books were all short, and are also available as a single omnibus .
• IKS Gorkon , retitled in its final book as Klingon Empire , is a Klingon series, which got it's first moment's in the TNG novel Diplomatic Implausibility . 
• Not listed in full on the chart is  Corps of Engineers , also known as SCE , this extensive series of novellas features the engineering specialists of the USS da Vinci and crosses over into other series every so often. Their stories begin with  The Belly of the Beast , or an omnibus of the first four books in the series,  Have Tech, Will Travel .
• Department of Temporal Investigations features the time traveling hijinks, and frustrated bureaucracy, of the Federation's time police. Their adventures start (depending on how you perceive time) with Watching the Clock .
• Prometheus is a unique series, the first tie-in to be originally written in German, but also available in English. A trilogy of books featuring the distinctive ship begins with Fire with Fire .

59 comments:

Thanks for the hard work !!! i do really appreciate it. Do you have plans on updating from time to time ??? regards

It's on version 2 at the moment, I'll probably do an update once The Fall is done and we know what effect that has on everything :)

Thank you so much for updating this. It is possible to find the info yourself on Memory Alpha etc but this is a much easier way to do it and a good way too not scare off new readers with them having to do too much own research.

Where is Spock Must Die in this? Also, you have a typo in the title of "Greater Than the Sum." But... wow, just wow. What a map.

Important question: where does "Planet X", the TNG/X-Men crossover, fit in?

Thanks for the note dwasifer, fixed that error now :) Rev, Planet X doesn't really much connect to the wider continuity as far as I know (I've not read it), but I believe it's a direct sequel to the TNG/X-Men comic Second Contact, which itself takes place immediately after First Contact.

This is an amazing reference. Thanks very much for putting it together. I've been using it to organise my Trek Books and for reading the 20 or so trek books that I've recently bought in the right order.

hi fantastic flow chart! ...what program did you use to create the chart?

I love you for making this. The Pocket Books Novel-verse is starting to become like it's own Star-Wars-Expanded-Universe-esque canon storyline.

This is really awesome! I love Star Trek and after watching everything 1000 times over I need new content so I figured I would dive into the book series for the first time. But where to start? This really helps answer that question and gives me a good reference! Thanks!

First, I absolutely love this thing. I've been trying to get caught up on Trek lit for a while now and this has been VERY HELPFUL. A couple constructive comments: #1 There's a dashed green line going to Serpents Among the Ruins/The Art of the Impossible/Alien Spotlight: Cardassians/Cardassia and Andor that doesn't have a beginning. It's all end arrows, so it's unclear which direction this is supposed to go. #2 Q Are Cordially Invited. I haven't read it yet so I don't know exactly where it goes but I'm thinking it needs to be included.

Hi Benjamin, apologies for the very slow reply, I hadn't spotted your comment! As you might see, we've just posted an updated version of the chart, which might help with your questions, but to expand on them: #1 We removed the multi-directional Cardassian story arrow because ti was a bit confusing indeed, but the idea was to show how all the Cardassian/Garak stories are generally a bit interconnected. But we can sort of communicate that with the series dots not, so we didn't need the confusing arrows to everywhere! #2 Q Are Cordially Invited... tells the story of the Picard/Crusher wedding, which took place some time before Greater Than the Sum. But there is a framing story on an unspecified wedding anniversary. As we couldn't spot a reference to which anniversary we've opted to put it down in almost publication order, with the other TNG ebook, just before The Fall.

Sadly the site that opens once I click on the flow chart stays blank.

Working fine for me. Anyone else having problems?

Thanks for this graphic, it really helps me and will from now on be my guide :) Do you have plans on updating it with the new novels that have been and will be released?

Of course, this is already version four, which includes most of the books coming out this year (that have connections to the wider continuity) and a few even further ahead already. As more books come we'll update accordingly, and also refine the chart once we know more connections in forthcoming books :)

@8of5 That's amazing to hear! Thanks again for your work it really helps!

Thank you for creating this. Watched all the shows, just now getting into the books! This helps a bunch!

I have watched the show, its better if you had created this flowchart with standard flowchart symbols

This is top-notch. Printed it off and have it laminated already! Been able to track all my reading and discover what else to read in some logical order. As a result, just bought 13 new books. Hunting down the older ones are a bit tricky - been using Abe Books but this can be a wee expensive when you live in Australia. Booktopia's great for the more popular and/or newer books. Just wanted to say thank-you

That should be Book Depository. Booktopia a place a hardly buy books from - but I do from time to time. Needless to say, I've never bought any Star Trek from Booktopia. Have a great day :)

I come back to this flow chart every couple of months. Just to find out which book(s) to read next. Thanks for the good work!

The DS9 upcoming book "The Empty Sack" is now titled "Rules of Accusation" and will be out in July, 2016

Thanks for the update Terry!

Hi, Any update incoming?

Working on an update right now in fact, I expect it will be up next week some time (complete with the final title for Terry's book!).

Excited to see it. thanks.

Thank you Baby Jesus I found this

This list is awesome. Unfortuantely, now that the color palette is up to 19, my mild color-blindness is making matching some of these difficult if not a lost cause. Guessing the circles are too teeny to use iconography, so probably not much to be done for it. Still, a minor issue with an awesome chart.

I did revise the colours this time around to try and make them distinct as possible, as someone made a similar remark at the last revision. But yes you're right, due to the rather large number of colours to mark all the different dots, and the dots being too small to do much else it would take a completely different design approach to make it easier to read. It's something we're aware of, but haven't found a solution yet.

A great effort / work! Kudos to you brave souls! :)

Where does the Genesis Wave fit in?

Ty for your hard work

Thanks for your work, I'm following this since version 2 and it's an amazing help for me. This is why I love Star Trek - the fans! (also: great that you included Prometheus!)

Been meaning to catch up with you - thanks for this updated and shared resource. Top-notch! Kimberley.

This has been a great resource for catching up on all of the books/series. I did find one error, though. Somehow, you've omitted A Time to Kill from the TNG:A Time To... saga in version 5. Thanks again for the hard work and maintenance!

This flowchart is really awesome. And thanks for adding "Star Trek Prometheus" But I found an error, too. "Star Trek: Prometheus: Into the Heart of Chaos" is volume III not II. "The Source of All Fury" is II. And: The connection to "Takedown" is the wrong way round. STP take place just before "Takedown" and while it was written later it references events, that take place at the beginning of "Takedown". Bernd

This chart is great, but do you have a merged list of everything in a single chronological order?

This chart is great and all, but... where's Corps of Engineers? Because I don't see it on there.

Im thinking of reading Section 31 Control. Do I need to read Disavowed first?

Absolutely. I think ~most (all) would agree. They are both great reads.

If I remember right, way back last year I had the following experience. I had Disavowed as being the next read on DS9 having been through all the others. But I had to stop reading it after a while - I felt I was missing something. So, I went a few steps back and read The Fall series (esp. A Ceremony of Losses - I think), and then went through Vanguard, Lovell and Seekers (in that order) - I'm now on Seekers #2. It's been really interesting getting familiar with all the backdrop as well as having some great reads. Anyway, whatever you do have a great read. I'm sure you'll be able to get any background info to fill in any detail behind both Disavowed & Control from the Internet (Memory Alpha or Beta) - and thanks for reminding me to order my copy of Control!

Any updates inbound?

Yeah, this list is a bit out of date right now. I'm currently reading "Available Light." (The latest TNG book as of April 2019)

Please could this list be updated, I used to rely on this as which book to read and in what sequence but its now outdated.

Also really looking forward to an update :) would be really appreciated.

Also looking for an update, I use this to find out when new stuff is out, I didn't even know about Collateral Damage

I only just found out about Collateral Damage as well. This graphic is quickly falling behind! I hope it gets updated, it has been a valuable resource.

Kudos to the flow chart. That is awesome and exactly what I was looking for.

Everyone that's been asking for an update, please check the page now :)

Thank you very much for taking the time to update and expand it. Been using it since version 1. I almost read all novels that are one the chart and feeling both sadness that the litverse as we know it will come to an end. But I'm looking forward to what's to come and if there will be one last novel to bring the novelverse in line with Picard.

Great chart!! Thanks for the update. Loving your work. #LLAP

This is fantastic! Thanks for all of the work you did putting this together!

Just a quick nitpick, the "Created By" section in the 2020 version has a typo (I'm assuming). It says "For the latest version, and additional notes, visit: TrekTrekCollective.com" Looks like there's an extra "Trek" in the url. That said, I love the chart. Thank you!

Is a new version planned for rhe chart? One that goes up to the upcoming Coda trilogy?

There are a couple references to the Enterprise-E’s recent experience with the Genesis Wave in A Time to Sow.

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Star Trek: Year Five

• View history

The series is scripted by a "writer's room" of Brandon Easton , Jody Houser , Jim McCann , Collin Kelly , and Jackson Lanzing . Kelly and Lanzing wrote the series' opening story, with interior art by Stephen Thompson and cover art by Greg Hildebrandt . [1]

• 3 Omnibuses
• 4 External links

Creators [ ]

• Jackson Lanzing (#1-9, #11-14, #17, #22-25)
• Collin Kelly (#1-9, #11-14, #17, #22-25)
• Brandon M. Easton (#3-4, #20-21, #25)
• Jody Houser (#5-6, #15-16, #25)
• Jim McCann (#9-10, #18-19, #25)
• Paul Cornell (#25)
• Stephen Thompson (#1-2, #7-8, #11-12, #22-23)
• Martin Coccolo (#3-4)
• Silvia Califano (#5-6, #9-10, #12, #15-16, #20-21, #24-25)
• Maria Keane (#11)
• Kieran McKeown (#12)
• Angel Hernández (#13-14, #18-19, #25)
• J.K. Woodward (#17)
• Elisabetta D'Amico (#22-24)
• Christopher Jones (#25)
• J.J. Lendl (#25)
• Megan Levens (#25)
• Carlos Nieto (#25)
• Charlie Kirchoff (#1-2, #7-8, #11-12, #15-16, #22-25)
• Fran Gamboa (#3-4, #13-14, #18)
• Thomas Deer (#5-6)
• Sebastian Cheng (#9-10)
• John-Paul Bove (#12)
• Thomas Drew (#12)
• DC Alonso (#20-21)
• Neil Uyetake (#1-25)
• Chase Marotz (#1-25)
• Anni Perheentupa (#1-9)
• Denton J. Tipton (#1-14)
• Megan Brown (#21-25)
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 1 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 2 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 3 "
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• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 5 "
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• " Star Trek: Year Five, Valentine's Day Special "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 11 "
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• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 21 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 22 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 23 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 24 "
• " Star Trek: Year Five, Issue 25 "

Omnibuses [ ]

• Star Trek: Year Five - Odyssey's End
• Star Trek: Year Five - The Wine-Dark Deep
• Star Trek: Year Five - Weaker Than Man
• Star Trek: Year Five - Experienced in Loss
• Star Trek: Year Five Deluxe Edition, Volume 1

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• Year Five at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
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Space — the final frontier...

An iconic, long-running science-fiction franchise with eight live action series, three animated ones, and thirteen movies spanning generations of characters, decades of television and multiple realities in the Multiverse .

The setting in every series is about an Earth-based interstellar government called the United Federation of Planets and their fleet of starships, which form Starfleet . Every series dealt with a particular crew, mostly of various ships named Enterprise . As originally envisioned by its creator, Gene Roddenberry , the science fiction nature of the series was just a method to address many social issues of the time that could not have been done in a normal drama. As such, it was not above being Anvilicious or engaging in thinly-veiled social satire, but considering its origin during the 60's, some anvils needed to be dropped .

It was, for the most part, way on the happy end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism , at least partially because of its solid allegiance to the Enlightened side of Romanticism Versus Enlightenment . But it still found some sort of balance between a Dystopia and a Crystal Spires and Togas future. In general, it is a future you hope will come true, albeit after Humanity endured terrible troubles like a third world war and the Eugenics Wars led by the genetically enhanced conqueror, Khan Noonien Singh, and rose above them. All series have sought to show that while you may think the world is falling apart and there is no chance of global unity, all this crap will eventually work itself out.

The series has also had a profound impact on modern culture and media. Everyone with any exposure to Western pop culture has heard of the Starship Enterprise , and the series predicted (and possibly inspired) the PC, tablet, automatic doors, cell phones, natural-language AI and more, decades before their invention. Not so incidentally, the first African-American woman in space was inspired to become an astronaut because of Nichelle Nichols ' pioneering role. Also not so incidentally, the space shuttle Enterprise was named after the iconic starship, as is the first commercial spacecraft.

And finally, Star Trek also gave rise to Fandom as we know it: when Star Trek: The Original Series began to pick up steam in syndication, fans organized conventions, wrote fanfic, dressed in costume, and generally made enough noise to keep the franchise going for forty years and counting. Every fandom since has grown from that original outpouring of fannish activity and devotion.

Television Series in the franchise include:

• Star Trek: The Original Series ("TOS", 1966-1969) Set from 2265-2269 — The one everyone has heard of (at the time, of course, it was just called Star Trek ). It suffered in the Ratings , but gained a devoted fanbase. Uncanceled after the second season, and then Cancelled again at the end of the third. It really picked up steam in syndication, which was about the time demographics came into play - and the Real Life moon landing happened a week after its last episode aired. Nowadays, it looks incredibly cheesy and dated, but the show's writing was good, the cast had great chemistry and the characters themselves were very memorable, to the point of creating three new archetypes: The Kirk , The Spock , and The McCoy . In fact, this series created so many new tropes that it has left an unmistakable mark on both television and pop culture ever since. Not to mention inspired a lot of mostly affectionate parodies .
• Star Trek: The Animated Series ("TAS", 1973-1974) Set from 2269-2270 — Used most of the original cast (and a few additions) to provide voices for the animated versions of their characters. The quality of the show was hit and miss, with some being mediocre cartoon fare while others were excellent, and the series got the franchise's first Emmy award. 22 episodes were produced. The official canonicity of this series has gone back and forth, but at least some elements have bled over into the rest of the franchise (most notably, identifying the "T" in James T. Kirk to stand for "Tiberius" ) and the addition of the cat-like Caitians to the mythos (see Star Trek 2).
• Star Trek: The Next Generation ("TNG", 1987-1994) Set from 2364-2370 — The other one everyone has heard of. Takes place in the 24th century on the Enterprise - D , with the same mission of exploration as the original. Introduced the holodeck (although a version of it appeared first in the Canon /noncanon "TAS"), defined the Klingons as being a society of honor and war , and really hit it home with creating the cybernetic alien race, the Borg. Also, there was Q .
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("DS9", 1993-1999) Set from 2369-2375 — Takes place concurrently with the end of Next Generation and the lion's share of Voyager , and conceived as a Spin-Off of TNG. Set on a former Cardassian space station (formerly Terok Nor, renamed Deep Space Nine) in a politically unstable part of space near the planet Bajor, with exclusive access to a rare stable wormhole that leads from the Alpha to the Gamma Quadrant. From the fourth season onwards, former TNG character Worf joined the cast and the whole series got much darker with a massive interstellar war between the Federation, Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans and the Dominion. Was also the first Trek series to use Story Arcs extensively, rather than persisting with a strictly episodic format. Generally considered the Oddball in the Series as far as the television shows go.
• Star Trek: Voyager ("VOY", 1995-2001) Set from 2371-2378 — Another Spin-Off of Next Generation , conceived as its successor. While searching for a group of rogue Starfleet people called the Maquis, both the title ship and a Maquis ship are flung across the galaxy and stranded in the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light years and seventy-five years' travel from home ( Lost in Space a la Star Trek ). Had the first main character female captain in the franchise. In the mainstream, this show is best — perhaps only — known for its Ms. Fanservice character, Seven of Nine . Among fans, it's infamous for the Villain Decay of the Borg, the obscene levels of Techno Babble , and mashing the Reset Button after roughly every other episode, but it is also notable for tackling controversial topics even other Trek series wouldn't touch.
• Star Trek: Enterprise ("ENT", 2001-2005) Set from 2151-2155 — Prequel to the original series. Set a hundred years or so before Kirk and the Federation, when humans are just getting their space legs (and the Applied Phlebotinum is not nearly as reliable), aboard Earth's first, experimental Warp 5-capable starship, the Enterprise NX-01. It began with a Myth Arc involving the Enterprise crew getting caught up in a "Temporal Cold War" being fought by several rival Time Travel factions, though it gradually fell victim to the The Chris Carter Effect . The series was then Retooled twice: first with the third season introducing an ambitious season-spanning Story Arc centering around the sudden appearance of a mysterious new aggressor called the Xindi, and then with the fourth and final season consisting of several two-to-three-episode-long "mini-arcs" that laid the groundwork for the Federation in earnest. Sadly, just as it began to pick up steam, it was abruptly cancelled. Infamous for the pop song in the opening credits, and for being the first Trek series since the original to be canceled before the usual seven seasons.
• Star Trek: Discovery ("DIS", 2017-) Set in 2256, ten years before the original series, it focuses on the USS Discovery , an experimental science vessel, caught in the midst of the latest Federation-Klingon war. Its second season, focused on the crew hunting down mysterious signals across the galaxy, leading to a confrontation for the fate of the galaxy. Its third season brought a major Retool , sending the crew to the 32nd century and finding a much changed galaxy.
• Star Trek: Picard ("PIC", 2020-2023) Set in 2399, twenty years after the TNG era ended, a long-since retired Picard gets dragged out of retirement by a mysterious young woman who needs his help, setting him on a quest to discover an eons old secret with Data right at the centre. More of a character study than anything else, it followed Picard closing the book on his life and looking back on the legacy he's left behind on the galaxy, finding that the past, however fast you run or however well you hide, will always catch up to you.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks ("LD", 2020-) Set in 2380, Lower Decks follows four of the lowest ranking ensigns in Starfleet, posted on one of the least important ships in the fleet, the USS Cerritos , as they try and move up in the world. Trek Template:'s second animated series and its first comedy, every episode of Lower Decks bursts with Continuity Porn .
• Star Trek: Prodigy ("PRO", 2021-) Set in 2383 in the Delta Quadrant, the show follows a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits seeking to escape a slave camp. Discovering the beached USS Protostar , the group claims it as an escape ship, taking with them the daughter of their captor, the Diviner. Aided by a hologram of Kathryn Janeway, the group soon discovers that their little Protostar is much more important than previously believed.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ("SNW", 2022-) A Spin-Off to Star Trek: Discovery Template:'s second season, Strange New Worlds is another Prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series , focusing on Pike's tenure as captain of the Enterprise . Essentially what the original show was originally meant to be, it's much Lighter and Softer than its contemporaries, opting for a Revisiting the Roots approach to Star Trek by being episodic rather than having a Myth Arc .

In addition to these, Star Trek: Phase II was a series concept designed as the cornerstone of a Paramount Pictures -based network in 1976. A continuation of the original series and featuring a second five-year mission, it would have introduced a number of new characters in conjunction with the original crew. When the network project died and the insane success of Star Wars made sci-fi films profitable again, Paramount elaborated the series pilot into The Movie , which ultimately led to a whole new line of movies:

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) (c. 2273) — Kirk rallies the old crew to intercept a technological Eldritch Abomination heading towards Earth. Said to be a padded out Phase II episode script, and bears resemblance to a couple original series episodes.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (2285) — Khan from The Original Series returns intending to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge .
• Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984) (2285) — The crew find that for Vulcans, Death Is Cheap . Kirk and crew risk everything to get Spock back.
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) (2286/1986) — To save Earth from a destructive, silent alien probe, Kirk and crew Time Travel to The Eighties and save the whales . Also, they need nuclear wessels.
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) (2287) — After a botched attempt to rescue hostages, the Enterprise is commandeered by a radical Vulcan who intends to find God.
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) (2293) — Klingons sue for peace in a near perfect recreation of the Cold War finale. Quite blatantly a rip on the Cold War and its concurrent real-life end, precipitated by a lunar equivalent to the Chernobyl explosion. (In)Famously establishes Klingon blood to be a lovely lilac colour, but only for this installment.
• Star Trek Generations (1994) (2293, then 2371) — A Mad Scientist seeks to destroy billions to reach a Negative Space Wedgie that allows Kirk to meet Picard. The first movie featured the TNG cast and intended as a torch-passing moment rather than a final farewell to the original cast that Star Trek VI was.
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996) (2373/2063) — The Borg attempt to assimilate Earth in the past, with Picard slowly becoming Captain Ahab against them.
• Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) (2375) — Finding that The Federation intends to pillage a Shangri-La planet , Picard actively rebels to save them.
• Star Trek Nemesis (2002) (2379) — The forever secretive Romulans make a surprising effort for peace, but their leader has much more devious intentions. The last film of the prime Star Trek universe and one that nearly mortally wounded the entire franchise, being the only one not to make its money back at the box office.

Many of the concepts from Phase II made their way into Star Trek: The Next Generation and the series itself is considered deuterocanon - not "true" canon, because it never made it to the screen, but allowed in Broad Strokes to fill a gap in Trek chronology (notice the fictional length of time between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan ).

After the cancellation of Enterprise , 2006 was the first year with no new Star Trek stories on film or TV since 1985 . Then, when all seemed lost, Star Trek was revived with a Film Of The Series which promises to kick off a whole new series of movies:

• Star Trek (2009) (2233 — 2258) — A mixture of Continuity Reboot and Broad Strokes with new actors showing that the The Original Series characters will always end up together on the Enterprise , no matter the universe.
• Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) (2259 — 2260) — Set a year later, the crew discovers a militarization conspiracy within Starfleet with them as the Sacrificial Lambs .
• Star Trek: Beyond (2016) (2263) — In the third year of their five-year mission, the Enterprise crew find themselves trapped on an alien planet with a ruthless warlord who aims to destroy the Federation. Released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise.

In total, to watch every minute of "canon" Star Trek (series and movies) would require over 23 days. Of Science Fiction franchises, only Doctor Who and its various canon spinoffs are even within a week.

Star Trek Expanded Universe [ ]

The Star Trek Expanded Universe consists of the expected novels, comics and videogames; these are somewhat infamous in many circles (compared to the Star Wars counterparts) for the casual disregard the producers of the shows often hold for them. Though starting from Star Trek: Discovery Template:'s second season, some of the Expanded Universe had been upgraded to Loose Canon and/or Broad Strokes , featuring adaptations of some novel storylines.

See also the Trek Verse - a discussion of internal Trek history as viewed from a real-world perspective as well as how it affected modern culture.

Tropes common across all series: [ ]

• Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun and Profit : Most societies hover around the Type I mark, though some Type III and above existed in the galaxy at one time. And a handful of extra-galactic races have shown up, seeming to be at least Type IIIs.
• AI Is a Crapshoot : Self-aware computers are Always Chaotic Evil in TOS. Later series had more nuanced explorations of the concept. By the 32nd century, the Federation was outright banned Ridiculously-Human Robots because they keep turning out evil and destroying things. Though Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard suggests that this might be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy , the AIs fighting back against the organics' desire to destroy synthetic life once it gets too powerful.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause : Trope Codifier via General Order Number 1, the Prime Directive, that generator of so many plot devices.
• Almighty Janitor : Boothby, the groundskeeper at Starfleet Academy.
• Alternate History : In Star Trek , the late 80s and early 90s were a genetic renaissance, and superhuman products of genetic manipulation. After the Eugenics Wars , humanity made a push to the stars in the early 21st century, reaching to the point that they could send manned missions to Jupiter's moons in 2024, but this diverted resources away from the very real Earth-bound problems, resulting in World War III erupting in 2026 and ending in 2053. In 2063, humanity discovered Faster-Than-Light Travel and the Vulcans arrived to help them rebuild their world.
• 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.
• Always Chaotic Evil : The Borg, Romulans, and Cardassians. The original series and Enterprise also portray Klingons this way, and The Next Generation does likewise with the Ferengi.
• Always on Duty : The main characters are always on the bridge whenever something interesting is happening. The only time across the entire franchise that we see evidence of any kind of shift system is in a few TNG episodes where Data is shown commanding the night shift, and once when Captain Sulu of the Excelsior in The Undiscovered Country gets woken up by Christian Slater.
• Arc Number : 47, from the middle of Next Generation on.
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving
• Artificial Gravity : Rarely mentioned, but always present whenever the action takes place aboard a starship or space station.
• The Assimilator : The Borg.
• Author Appeal : 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..."
• Badass Army : The Klingons wish they were these but they are more of a subversion. Starfleet qualifies, at least in space--they tend to be somewhat underprepared for extended ground combat.
• 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 .
• Boarding Party : Beaming aboard the enemy ship.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma : Data, Spock, and most Vulcans.
• The Chains of Commanding
• Chekhov's Gun
• Classically-Trained Extra : Patrick Stewart, most famously. He even said that he considered it training for his role as Picard. But the franchise is famous for casting many stage actors over regular TV guest actors.
• Cleavage Window : Female Klingon uniforms.
• Clothes Make the Legend : The black and primary color uniform scheme. Only the first six films and Enterprise didn't follow this... though the uniforms with Wrath of Khan ' s emblematic red-vest-division-turtleneck-and-black-pants is also very popular.
• The colors were shuffled around a bit on TNG , with red (formerly Security and Engineering) and gold (Command) trading places. Blue still stands for Science and Medical.
• 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.
• 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.
• Cool Starship : Every series has one.
• Collectible Card Game
• 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).
• 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 Wail : The standard practice when a Klingon dies is for his/her comrades to hold their eyes open while screaming loudly to the sky to warn those in the afterlife that a great warrior is on his/her way to join them.
• Deflector Shields
• Destructo-Nookie : Klingons.
• Development Gag : Quite a few. Jeffries Tubes were named after the visual designer of the original series (and designer of the original Enterprise) Matt Jeffries. Various shuttlecraft, such as the Justman, were also named after notable production crew. A section of Stage 16 at Paramount Pictures used to portray alien planets had the nickname of "Planet Hell," which was used as a description of an appropriate planet in Star Trek Voyager .
• Dress Up Episode : most common in the Original Series ("A Piece of the Action", "Return of the Archons", "Assignment: Earth"), but happens in the 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.
• Dying Alone
• Emotion Suppression : The Vulcan culture has Emotion Suppression at its core.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism : Romulans vs. Vulcans.
• The Empire : The Klingon Empire, Romulan Empire and Cardassian Alliance. The Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe.
• Epic Tracking Shot : It's an interesting thing to note as the next generation of shows progressed in special effects.
• Everything Sensor : EVERY scanner is like this.
• Evil Is Not Well Lit : Of all the species, only the Borg and Cardassians have an excuse for this - the Borg's minimalism, and the latter's sensitivity to light. Incidentally, this is the excuse for Deep Space Nine being so dimly-lit, since it was designed by the Cardassians.
• Evil Is Visceral : Species 8472, also known as the Undine, are introduced as the only threat to the hitherto biggest threat (the Borg). Their ships are organic and the (CGI) aliens themselves look "more organic" than the usual Rubber Forehead Alien because they don't wear clothes, have extra limbs and strange eyes with complicated irides. Also, they hail from something called fluidic space. To top it all off, the crew of the Voyager are willing to team up with the Borg to fight against them.
• Exotic Eye Designs : Betazoids have black irises.
• Exposition Beam : Vulcan Mind Melds are essentially this, along with a host of other Applied Phlebotinum uses.
• Expositron 9000 : The ship/station computers.
• Fan of the Past : Too many to name.
• Fantastic Racism : There will always be at least a few members of each species that has issues with humans, other species, or vice versa.
• Some Expanded Universe sources imply that biogenic is the equivalent of weapon of mass destruction in current parlance. That is, this is a weapon you had DAMN well better not get caught actually using.
• The Vulcans use "Red Matter" to create pocket black holes . Nero got the bright idea of using it to eat a planet (specifically Vulcan ).
• Fantastic Rank System : Everyone except the Federation has a different one. See the trope page for more details.
• Starfleet - The United States Navy (Both the Earth & Federation versions of Starfleet have individual ranks & systems of hierarchy that correspond with the USN's. The color of Starfleet personnel's uniforms are based on the specifics of their job, just as its done with the flight crews aboard USN aircraft carriers. Also, during the Dominion War, "Deep Space Nine" has Starfleet deployed in the numbered fleet configurations used by the USN, with the 3rd Fleet referenced as protecting Earth & the 7th Fleet all but destroyed in a failed offensive.)
• Vulcans- Great Britain (Not a perfect match-up, but Enterprise depicted them as a regional superpower who eventually lose much of their realm of control as Earth increases theirs.)
• Klingons also had some similarity to post-Soviet Russia in The Next Generation in terms of politics. But as part of Gene Roddenberry 's plan to not make them evil and a race of "black hats", they turned into... vikings. They also had no analogue to the KGB, where the Romulans have the Tal'Shiar (Ministry of State Security), and the Cardassians have the Obsidian Order (The Gestapo).
• Starting in The Next Generation , the Romulans also started to become a bit like Iran, for similar reasons.
• Cardassians as generic colonial powers works just as well as the obligatory Nazi comparison, since Bajor is always called a colony and is run along those lines: occupy and obtain resources (with local slave labor), rather than being a matter of living space or an ideology.
• Cardassians as a version of undefeated (pre-WWII) Japan is a popular alternative, especially among those who look at details like what food they eat and many of the cultural notes in Deep Space 9.
• Bajorans as generic colonized people. (Would support the Cardassians as generic colonial powers interpretation.)
• Bajorans as the Irish, especially in the Circle (IRA) plot-arc.
• Bajorans actually work as a variation of the Jews and the Israelis as well. The episode "Ensign Ro" suggests this with its tale about the Bajorans losing their homeland, treated as pariahs and then resorting to terrorism (Irgun, etc) to try to regain their homeland.
• Orions- The Mafia/ Criminal Underground
• Nausicaans- Gang Leaders
• Ferengi- The East India Companies (most closely)
• Faster-Than-Light Travel : Rather hard to imagine the series without it.
• Fiction Science : The series have produced a large number of Technical Manuals , many of them official. These fill in many details of life in the Trekkian future, especially the inner workings of the Enterprises and other starships.
• Forgot the Call
• Genericist Government
• Generican Empire : The United Federation of Planets, the Dominion.
• God-Emperor : The Klingon treatment of Kahless the Unforgettable.
• Cardassians (and, by extension, the crew of DS9 ) have yellow transporter beams.
• Good Old Ways
• Government Drug Enforcement : Used a couple of times in TNG and Deep Space Nine , also used in the movie Insurrection .
• Graying Morality : From series to series, at least for a while. TNG is grayer than the original series, and Deep Space Nine is even grayer than that.
• Gunboat Diplomacy : The Federation definitely believes in "carrying a big ship " to negotiations. They don't usually push their self-interest too hard with this show of force, but it still makes three things clear. "We are strong." "We are rich." "You don't start fights when we're trying to negotiate."
• Half-Human Hybrid : Spock, Deanna Troi, B'Elanna Torres, Sisko .
• Have I Mentioned I Am a Dwarf Today? : Klingons tend to do this a lot; Worf is only the most prominent example.
• Hero of Another Story : It is implied through the various Star Trek shows that the sort of adventures the Enterprise and her crew get in is just the far side of typical. Lampshaded by Captain Janeway when she stated in Star Trek: Voyager that "Weird is part of the job."
• Humans Are Diplomats : Especially during TOS and early TNG. Gene Roddenberry opposed the idea of a military Starfleet.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform
• Hollywood Tactics : Went up and down depending on the series and the point in the series, but pretty much everybody is woefully under-equipped and fights very poorly in land combat.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside : While most of the species that are encountered look fairly humanoid, many of them turn out to have truly bizarre biological differences .
• This is a bit of Fridge Brilliance . Humor is usually about the incongruity between logic and reality. So, basically, Vulcans have spent hundreds of years watching every other race act like clowns, and they get the joke. They may not guffaw, but their sense of humor is finely honed.
• Sulu tells a young Tuvok once, "Don't tell me Vulcans don't have a sense of humor, because I know better." True enough!
• If You Taunt Him You Will Be Just Like Him
• Inertial Dampening : Occasionally mentioned by the characters, Inertial Dampeners allow an Impulse-drive-powered starship to accelerate from a dead stop to a substantial fraction of the speed of light in under a minute, without turning the crew into crepes. The technology isn't quick enough to compensate for random, unexpected impacts, however, which can result in the Star Trek Shake .
• Inexplicable Cultural Ties : In Roddenberry's Star Trek pitch, he explains how culturally (and biologically ) familiar aliens would make Science Fiction feasible for TV. Star Trek has since been true to what he called the Parallel Worlds concept that prescribes that alien civilizations will usually be very much like humans culturally and therefore not too foreign to the audience.
• Interdimensional Travel Device : Transporters can act this way under certain circumstances (which occur accidentally in the original series, and then are intentionally reproduced in Deep Space Nine ).
• Jabba Table Manners : The Klingons universally gulp and slurp down food like slobs. In their case, it is to show how tough and free of pretentious "good manners" and straightforward and honest their society is, not to show how "evil" they are.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority : The gold uniform worn by Kirk (and also Archer).
• Life Imitates Art : Take the sliding doors, for one thing.
• Letter Motif
• Memory Alpha calls the full-on 'cause the computer to shut down' version induced self destruction , and counts five cases (one inadvertent), all of them by Kirk.
• Long Runners : The second longest running sci-fi show in the world, beaten only by Doctor Who - and Star Trek has more total hours (as stated earlier).
• Love Is in the Air : Several episodes in the different series.
• Ludd Was Right : By means of Space Amish .
• Ludicrous Precision : The Vulcans are prone to this, as is Commander Data.
• Made of Explodium : When a computer blows up in Star Trek, it BLOWS UP. This extends to either independent computer equipment or even the consoles on the bridge. Sometimes characters even die from the exploding bridge consoles.
• Made of Phlebotinum
• Taken to its logical extreme in Voyager , where the ship recorded all of the crew's brainwaves.
• Magnetic Plot Device : The various starships. The Holodeck. The Bajoran wormhole in Deep Space Nine . The Temporal Cold War in Enterprise .
• The Man Behind the Monsters
• Not unintentional, as Roddenberry reportedly based the Starfleet hull-numbering system after the US civil aircraft registration system deliberately referencing the "N" or "NC" numbers used on US aircraft.)
• Considering that the original concept for the series was Hornblower in deep space, and that ship captains during the Wooden Ships and Iron Men era usually were their respective country's highest representative in any area where they were stationed...
• Janeway in Star Trek Voyager once made a comment about how strongly she had to hold onto Starfleet regulations so far from home, but also admired the gung-ho attitude of earlier Starfleet captains ("I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that!").
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way : Other galaxies are inhabited, and their inhabitants show up from time to time, but given that most races are Type I on the Kardashev scale, actual travel to them is uncommon. The overwhelming majority of Star Trek media sticks to the Milky Way.
• Monumental View : Every iteration puts Starfleet academy on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco (and directly across from Starfleet headquarters.) There's a bit of a problem with that as the land there is almost exclusively deep, steep, hills.
• More Hero Than Thou
• Narrating the Present : the Captain's Log .
• National Weapon : The Klingon bat'leth.
• Negative Space Wedgie : From a well-known parody.
• Never Give the Captain a Straight Answer
• No Poverty : A central part of the setting, humanity solved this problem after meeting the Vulcans. Though DS9 notes that this only really applies on Earth.
• They would arguably be the most deadpan of snarkers, ever.
• Novelty Decay : The Borg start out in Next Generation as a mysterious, frighteningly advanced and implacable species from beyond known space. Then Enterprise has them show up about 300 years before that, while their Villain Decay on Voyager makes them seem distinctly nonthreatening.
• Now Do It Again Backwards
• Referring back to the handrail, it came to a head in Enterprise when a crewman actually calls something a handrail, then when its pointed out that where it's placed on a lift would actually sever fingers, is clearly confused and asks why anyone would put their hand there. Considering its Trip of all people , who's asking the crewman this, its even more baffling?
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture : Occasionally subverted or averted, it's still the rule rather than the exception. Notably, Klingons have opera and something like heavy metal.
• No Such Thing as HR : A common point of confusion in the otherwise enlightened future of Star Trek is Mc Coy's humorously treated Fantastic Racism towards Spock, along with the number of physical altercations the crew get into without really getting into trouble. Justifiable in the original series since the ship's on the edge of known space; by the time the franchise moved closer to Earth with Star Trek: The Next Generation , a more established bureaucracy seemed to be in place (though occasionally characters like Worf seem to be allowed a huge amount of leeway as a Proud Warrior Race Guy ).
• Officer and a Gentleman and/or Cultured Warrior : To some degree, almost all Starfleet personnel are one or the other of these. Even the Closer to Earth types have scientific and literary interests. Many enemies are Wicked Cultured as well.
• The Omnipotent : Q is a lower version of this; while he claims omnipotence, other Q can still hurt him or take away his powers.
• The Omniscient : Q.
• Our Doors Are Different : Sliding doors everywhere. Everywhere .
• Palette-Swapped Alien Food : Romulan and Andorian Ale is blue.
• Perfect Pacifist People : Several species in the various works exhibit this trope.
• Photoprotoneutron Torpedo : Photon torpedoes are the Trope Maker . There are also quantum, plasma, and polaron torpedoes, just to name a few.
• Planet of Hats
• Planet Terra : Used a few times (the Mirror Universe has the Terran empire; the original series occasionally contrasts "Terrans" with "Vulcans").
• Precursor Killers : The ancient Type III races of the galaxy are generally thought to have been wiped out by La Résistance , overwhelmed by the lesser races or simply fled the galaxy. Picard suggests that the Higher Synthetics may have cleansed the galaxy of organic life whenever a Robot War began turning in the organics' favour.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy : The original series had the Klingons as being mostly warlike with few redeeming traits. Gene Roddenberry didn't like them being the "Black Hats" of the saga so in The Next Generation he made a Klingon a regular cast member and quickly established the "honor" aspect to their society.
• Ray Gun : Phasers and disruptors.
• Raygun Gothic : The Original Series solidly fits this trope. By the Next Generation era the Federation is in transition between Raygun Gothic and Crystal Spires and Togas .
• The Rez : Whole planets of it.
• Even the slower-than-light Impulse Engines appear to be some kind of reactionless drive. Although they glow an ominous red color while in operation, there's no apparent ejection of matter, and no mention is ever made of the need for propellant storage. (The top speed under impulse drive is supposed to be 0.25 c , which even for antimatter-powered Newtonian engines would require a substantial amount of propellant mass to be expelled.)
• The Reptilians : Some of the most prominent examples include the Gorn, the Cardassians, and the reptile Xindi.
• Sapient Cetaceans : A frequent theme in the series.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale : Zig-zagged. The franchise is generally very good with astrological terms (no one ever speaks about travelling to a different galaxy unless the plot very much means so) but when it comes to power generation figures, the franchise often just throws terms around arbitrarily.
• Screens Are Cameras : The viewscreens behave like this, in all the show's incarnations.
• Screen Shake
• Shout-Out/To Shakespeare
• Sighted Guns Are Low Tech
• Slow Electricity : The console displays always go on/off in sequence around the bridge. If there's a ship-wide outage, expect an outside shot of windows lighting up/going out one at a time.
• Smart House : The ships behave much like this from TNG onward.
• Space Fighter : Fighters are rare, but did turn up now and then — especially in Deep Space Nine . Later Trek series started having a stronger military influence and ships like the Defiant and the Delta Flyer are surprisingly battle-hearted fighters.
• Space Navy : Starfleet
• Standard Sci-Fi Army : Codified the use Security personnel. Follows the visual media model of focusing mostly on Infantry.
• Standard Sci Fi History : Earth's history follows this.
• Standard Sci Fi Setting : One of the most famous Trope Codifiers .
• Standard Starship Scuffle : A likely Trope Codifier .
• Standard Time Units : Stardates.
• Starfish Aliens : While the series is often mocked for excessive use of Rubber Forehead Aliens , special mention must be made of the Tholians that appeared in the original series episode "The Tholian Web", who were so strange, while visible only partly through the main viewscreen during negotiations, that the writers themselves (like anyone else) couldn't figure out what they actually were implied to be for the better part of 30 years, even while being passingly mentioned once or twice in different series. Only toward the end of Enterprise did they finally settle on the head being a carapace, and the Tholians as a race of advanced arachnids.
• State Sec : Romulans and Cardassians both got their own little versions in the form of the Tal'Shiar and Obsidian Order respectively. Arguably Starfleet's Section 31. The Ferengi's FCA might also qualify given their cultural bias.
• Stealth in Space : The Romulans developed a Cloaking Device in the timeframe of TOS, which was soon stolen by the Federation; subsequently, the Treaty of Algeron prohibited the Federation from using or developing any cloaking technology of its own.
• Subspace Ansible : Except when the plot demands its absence.
• Super Doc : Any Sickbay doctor.
• Type 0: Jake Sisko, Kes, Neelix, the Ferengi
• Type 1: Most regulars who are Starfleet officers, Barclay, Klingons, Romulans
• Type 2: Spock, other Vulcans, Khan Noonien Singh , Deanna Troi , Julian Bashir , Seven of Nine, Holograms, Jem'Hadar
• Type 3: Data, the Borg, Species 8472, Changelings, Benjamin Sisko at the end of Deep Space Nine
• Type 4: Kes after her ascension, Armus
• Type 5: The Caretaker, Sphere Builders, The Prophets/Pah-Wraiths, the planet killer, the Whale Probe, Nagilum
• Type 6: The Q Continuum, The Guardian of Forever, The Douwd ( Kevin Uxbridge )
• Talking Animal : Lt. M'Ress, the felinoid alien from the Animated Series ; the Gorn, basically Lizard Folk .
• Techno Babble : More or less the Trope Codifier . In the script it would be labeled as [TECH] and they had a separate writer to put in whatever seemed appropriate.
• Technology Porn
• Teleporter Accident
• Teleport Interdiction : Since the transporters are such an integral part of the Star Trek franchise, it has a lot of this. For example, it's not possible to transport through a ship's deflector shields. Usually this is used as a way to add drama — with the ship having to drop its shields briefly in the middle of battle in order to beam back an away team — but it also means transporter-enabled boarding parties aren't a major part of battle tactics.
• Pre- Nemesis , authors had a standing order not to kill any character that had appeared on-screen. Afterwards, because Nemesis is likely the last time the original timeline will be seen on-screen, all bets are off. (Still non-canon, however.)
• Janeway is described as casually flaunting the timeline so frequently it actually managed to drive Captain Braxton insane . He comes up with something called "The Janeway Factor," meaning that you can fully expect her to blunder into any time-sensitive activities going on.
• Also, the time police hate Kirk; when Sisko gives his report about "Trials and Tribble-ations," and first mentions Kirk, the two operatives look at each other and say something along the lines of "we all hate the Kirk cases."
• Time to Step Up Commander
• Translator Microbes : The Universal Translator.
• Ungovernable Galaxy : The Federation manages its portion of the galaxy quite well. Trouble is, by the mid-24th century, it's only 11% of the galaxy. Even the quadrant it operates in, the Alpha Quadrant, is divided into several states. The Delta Quadrant is a Crapsack World full of pirates, scavengers, tribalists, and the Borg.
• Values Dissonance : There is some of this between the Star Trek shows, spanning decades, and the audiences of various generations, but this trope really comes into its own in universe, with the majority of plots being about or involving inter-species and inter-cultural values dissonance.
• Verb This : In First Contact :

Worf : Assimilate this. *cue Borgsplosion*

• The Verse : Widely recognized as quite possibly the most coherent, internally consistent fictional universe ever created .
• We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future
• What the Hell, Hero? : Every Captain. In every series. And not infrequently either. Either them at the crew for their crap, or the crew to themselves for their own crap.
• Will Not Tell a Lie : Vulcans, allegedly - something of an Informed Attribute . Of course, it's a good idea to pay attention to how the Vulcan said their sentence .
• Worthy Opponent  : The Romulan captain in Balance of Terror most notably. Used on other occasions.
• X Meets Y : Hidden by the influence of Trek on later productions, but the original premise was then novel at least for television, and could easily be described as " Horatio Hornblower meets The Outer Limits ".
• Zeerust : A given for the original series because of general budget restrictions of the time. Caused no shortage of Fan Dumb with Enterprise and the 2009 Star Trek movie because of an attempt to update. Next Generation mostly averts this even though it is over 20 years old now, mostly due to having an excellent--and Genre Savvy --visual designer in Michael Okuda.
• 1 Tertiary Sexual Characteristics

Star Trek: The Original Series /Characters

• E00 The Cage
• E01 The Man Trap
• E02 Charlie X
• E04 The Naked Time
• E14 Balance of Terror
• E20 Court Martial
• E21 The Return of the Archons
• E22 Space Seed
• E23 A Taste of Armageddon
• E26 Errand of Mercy
• E28 The City on the Edge of Forever
• E29 Operation: Annihilate!
• E01 Amok Time
• E02 Who Mourns for Adonais?
• E03 The Changeling
• E04 Mirror, Mirror
• E05 The Apple
• E06 The Doomsday Machine
• E07 Catspaw
• E09 Metamorphosis
• E11 Friday's Child
• E12 The Deadly Years
• E14 Wolf in the Fold
• E15 The Trouble With Tribbles
• E16 The Gamesters of Triskelion
• E21 Patterns of Force
• E01 Spock's Brain
• E08 For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
• E24 Turnabout Intruder
• Fanfic Recs
• Image Links
• Heartwarming
• Tear Jerker
• All Subpages

Characters from Star Trek: The Original Series include:

Crew members of the Enterprise

Captain james t. kirk ( william shatner ).

A description of the character goes here.

• Beam Me Up, Scotty , by omission. No, he never said it. (No, not even in Star Trek: The Animated Series - there he says "Beam us up, Scotty".)
• A Father to His Men
• Acting for Two : In four episodes (Id!Kirk, Android!Kirk, Sam Kirk, and Mirror!Kirk) and in the sixth movie .
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot : Kirk went up against malevolent computers so often that it became something of a Running Gag in the Fandom .
• Always Save Spock
• Anti-Hero : Sixties sex symbol or not, Kirk stumbled into Type I in The Wrath of Khan where his mid-life crisis wears heavy and some poor choices cost the lives of many recruits (and a bulging waistline and receding hairline didn't do him any favors...) Type II in The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek 2009 .
• Berserk Button : Do not hurt his crew . Not when he is The Captain of Starfleet's flagship, with all the genius and heavy weaponry that implies.
• Boldly Coming : Although not nearly as much as his reputation suggests .
• Bunny Ears Lawyer : The things Kirk got away with...
• The Captain : The Trope Maker .
• Companion Cube : Kirk's strongest love in the TV series is for the Enterprise herself; this may vary between Happily Married and The Masochism Tango . The movies have this become overshadowed by loyalty to his Nakama , culminating with his painful decision to self-destruct the original 1701 in Star Trek III the Search For Spock .
• The Chains of Commanding
• The Charmer
• Chivalrous Pervert : May very well be the anti- Bond . Except for a very few times where he used his charm to further a greater purpose, Kirk almost always developed sincere feelings for the Girl of the Week and was just as often badly hurt when they were separated or she met with an unfortunate end .
• Custom Uniform : Had a green uniform shirt that seemed to be specific to his character only, with a wraparound fitting. He did wear the standard gold command uniform shirt (since that was for command roles in TOS, it was changed to red in TNG) whenever the green one wasn't worn.
• Determinator
• Dropped a Bridge on Him : His death in Star Trek: Generations is the Trope Namer .
• Embarrassing Middle Name : Tiberius
• Ethical Slut : Despite Kirk's predilection for getting around with the ladies, he had firm boundaries. The female party in question had to be able to consent of their own free will, and he consistently refused to take advantage of his relationship to get them to do anything immoral, nor would he let them convince him to break his own morality.
• Fake Nationality : Jim Kirk is from the Midwest of the USA (specifically, Iowa). William Shatner is from Montreal .
• Former Teen Rebel : Inverted . Unlike his alternate counterpart , Cadet Kirk was something of a humorless swot as an underclassman, only later developing into the Military Maverick we see in the series.
• Until he gets demoted at the end of Star Trek IV the Voyage Home .
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : The Choleric.
• Gunboat Diplomacy : One of his favorite diplomatic techniques seems to be threatening to blow up a planet that doesn't do what he wants. Somehow he gets away with this. He's Kirk.
• Heroic Willpower
• Heterosexual Life Partners : With Spock.
• I Can Still Fight
• Improbable Age : Minor example in-universe. Background material states that, at 30-ish, he is the youngest man yet to command a first-rate Starfleet ship.
• Large Ham : He's played by William Shatner , after all.
• Mr. Fanservice
• The Not Love Interest : For Spock.
• Not So Different : From the Romulan Commander in " Balance of Terror ".
• Officer and a Gentleman : In addition to judo-throwing aliens and romancing Green-Skinned Space Babes , he finds time to be well-versed in classical literature and offer aid to space-borne refugees.
• Papa Wolf : Hurting his people causes him much Angst . And more anger.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right : Kirk does this quite a bit. Hell, if he were anyone else other than James T. Kirk , he'd have been toast long ago.
• Shirtless Scene : It's not quite to the level of Walking Shirtless Scene , but Kirk appears shirtless a lot in the original TV show. Most famously, it's caused by Clothing Damage during action sequences, but he also tends to just lounge around his quarters without a shirt and such.
• Smart People Play Chess : Spock's opponent of choice in chess games.

Commander Spock ( Leonard Nimoy )

• Always Save Jim Kirk
• Arranged Marriage : Betrothed by his family as a child. His intended bride has other ideas, and doesn't mind sacrificing Kirk for them...
• Back from the Dead : In the third movie .
• Badass Bookworm
• Badass Grandpa
• Beam Me Up, Scotty : He never said "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"; that's from Star Trekkin' . The closest he ever came in canon was the episode "The Devil in the Dark":
• Bizarre Alien Biology : Principally his green blood and the fact that his heart is where a human's liver would be. The latter enables him to survive being shot in the back with a flintlock rifle in "Friday's Child".
• Blue-Green Blood : Not explicitly stated, but his father is a prestigious Federation Ambassador, and T'Pau , one of the most powerful people on Vulcan, officiates at (what should have been) his marriage. He also notes that the large estate where the ceremony takes place has been in his family for over two thousand years.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma
• Boomerang Bigot : Is half-human, but most of the time solely embraces his Vulcan heritage and is scornful of human ways. This was later explained in Backstory due to his relationship with his father and growing up on Vulcan, and he mellowed in his later years.
• Fascinating Eyebrow
• Surprisingly, Spock's mirror-universe counterpart is exactly the same on this - and even explicitly states his reasons (in "Mirror Mirror").
• Deadpan Snarker
• Deuteragonist : A natural result of his popularity with fans ; originally, the show was intended as having plots about "Kirk and X", where "X" would be a different character each week; many of the early first season episodes follow this formula, but gradually "X" and "Spock" became interchangeable.
• Fantastic Racism : A victim of this Trope , as well as a mild subscriber (towards humans).
• Forgets to Eat : Occasionally. While never shown, in "Amok Time", McCoy uses the fact that Spock hasn't eaten for three days in an attempt to convince Kirk that something is wrong, and Kirk dismisses it as simply being Spock in one of his contemplative phases. Another example is "The Paradise Syndrome", where Spock hardly eats for weeks while studying the obelisk.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : The Melancholic.
• Good Is Not Nice : He's rude, tactless and completely cold hearted but he always has the best interests of the ship and crew in mind.
• Heterosexual Life Partners : With Kirk.
• Hidden Heart of Gold
• Insult Backfire :
• Ludicrous Precision
• Minored in Asskicking
• Name's the Same : As Dr. Benjamin Spock , author of the book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care , published in 1946. As a result of confusion between the two, you will often find the... less-informed referring to Mr. Spock as "Doctor Spock".
• The Not Love Interest : To Kirk.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni : The blue to McCoy's red
• Rubber Ear Alien
• Sarcastic Devotee
• Smart People Play Chess : Three-dimensional chess.
• The Spock : The Trope Namer .
• Not So Stoic
• Straw Vulcan : At times.
• Sugar and Ice Personality
• Token Non-Human
• The Unpronounceable : His real name supposedly can't be pronounced by humans.
• Veganism and Vegetarianism : Spock is vegetarian, as mentioned in the episode "All Our Yesterdays" . The Other Wiki says that there is a claim that he is "television's first vegetarian".
• Verbal Tic : His endless permutations of the word "logic", and his unfailing ability to fit them into sentences, border on this.

Doctor (Lieutenant Commander) Leonard "Bones" McCoy ( DeForest Kelley )

• He's Dead, Jim
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder
• Actor Shared Background : Both DeForest Kelley and Bones are natives of Georgia and have Irish-sounding names.
• Badass Pacifist : He's a doctor and takes that very seriously. However, that doesn't stop him from doing extremely dangerous things to save lives.
• Deadly Doctor : He refused to use his knowledge to harm but made perfectly clear he could use that knowledge for exactly that purpose.
• " He's dead, Jim. "
• " I'm a doctor, not an X !"
• Chivalrous Pervert : Is notable for being more open about his skirt-chasing than Kirk... and less successful at it .
• Cool Old Guy : Kind of; Cool Middle-Aged Guy doesn't sound as good.
• Deadpan Snarker : This Side of Paradise has a couple gems.
• Determinator : Where Scotty wouldn't roll over and die on keeping the ship together, this man refuses to just let his patients die if he has any means to save them.
• Fake American : In the reboot.
• First-Name Basis : With Kirk.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : The Sanguine.
• Good Is Not Nice : He's not hesitant about expressing his dislike for people or his refusal to suffer fools but he is most often the one who suggests doing the right thing.
• Good Old Ways
• Grumpy Bear : He's always some degree of cranky, but his morality is firmly established to be good. He's just going to be very ill-tempered most of the time.
• Honor Before Reason : And proud of it.
• Hospital Hottie : To the point he had several women attracted to him. Not to Kirk's level, but still impressive.
• In one episode Kirk temporarily ceases to use it, but given that said episode had an actual skeleton in the same room, it's understandable.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold : He could be dour, he and Spock exchanged Volleying Insults , and he was always the most pessimistic of the group. It still never stops him from doing the right thing regardless.
• Knight in Sour Armor : He's grumpy, sarcastic, and has little respect for authority (Except for Kirk). But when the chips are down, You can always count on him to do the right thing.
• More Hero Than Thou : In "The Empath" when aliens offer Kirk the choice of sacrificing McCoy or Spock, McCoy takes out Kirk with drugs. Spock is glad; since this leaves him in command, he can make the sacrifice himself. McCoy proceeds to drug him as well and sacrifice himself.
• Promotion to Opening Titles
• Red Oni, Blue Oni : The red to Spock's blue.
• Resignations Not Accepted : At the beginning of the first movie , has retired to private practice, and is called back into service against his protests on Kirk's request.
• Renaissance Man
• Sarcastic Devotee / Sour Supporter : He will follow Kirk into the pits of Hell and back, but he'll grumble about it first.
• Southern-Fried Genius : One of the most respected doctors in The Federation -- straight out of Georgia.
• Southern Gentleman
• Strawman Emotional : At times.
• Vitriolic Best Buds : With Kirk. Spock as well, but for different reasons.
• What Could Have Been : An episode exploring his Backstory was planned and shelved at least twice. One of the main points (that he joined Starfleet as an established MD after a nasty divorce) finally saw the light of day in the 2009 movie .

Lieutenant Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott ( James Doohan )

• Handicapped Badass : Scotty wasn't canonically, but his actor, who lost half a finger, was. Doohan went to great pains to conceal this on camera, but he couldn't conceal his hands 24/7, giving Scotty the unstated appearance of this trope.
• He also said " Ah cannae change the laws of physics", and not " Ye cannae". That's from Star Trekkin' .
• Berserk Button : If you insult the Enterprise , you better take his hint (said through gritted teeth) of "Don't you want to rephrase that..."
• Bonnie Scotland
• Companion Cube : If Kirk saw the Enterprise as a demanding wife, Scotty saw the ship -- particularly her engines -- as no less than a child ("My bairns! My poor bairns!").
• "Aye, sir. Queen to Queen's level 3. "
• A Day in the Limelight : "Wolf In The Fold", "The Trouble With Tribbles", and "By Any Other Name".
• The Engineer
• Fake Nationality
• Father Neptune : Though as he is Recycled in Space perhaps he would be Father Jove or Father Apollo but you get the idea.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble : The Phlegmatic.
• Gadgeteer Genius : Can MacGyver just about anything on his own, but particularly shines teamed with Spock. The two of them could turn the most obscure theory into a way to save the day.
• Grease Monkey
• Nerd : He was the kind of man who could entertain himself just fine reading tech manuals when he had the opportunity to get shore leave on a starbase in "The Trouble With Tribbles".
• Scotty Time ( Trope Namer )'

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols )

• Action Girl : In "Mirror, Mirror."
• Bridge Bunny
• Canon Immigrant : Her first name "Nyota" was used in the non-canon novels for decades before finally being made official. Very early Trek guides suggest that "Penda" was considered a possibility by the fans.
• The Cast Showoff : Nichelle Nichols got to show off her singing ability a couple times.
• Catch Phrase : "Hailing frequencies open."
• Communications Officer : One of the most famous examples.
• A Day in the Limelight : "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Trouble With Tribbles".
• Fake Nationality : Uhura is from the "United States of Africa", but Nichelle Nichols is American (as is Zoe Saldana in the reboot).
• Meaningful Name : "Uhura" is derived from "Uhuru," which means "freedom" (which carried a strong Reality Subtext in the 1960s), while "Nyota" means "star".
• Ms. Fanservice
• Also appears to show an interest in Spock in a few episodes. Yes, long before the prequel .
• Twofer Token Minority

Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu ( George Takei )

• Absentee Actor : Missing for much of the second season because George Takei was filming The Green Berets .
• Cultured Badass : A man of many talents (see "Fleeting Passionate Hobbies" and "Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?" below), and capable of handing much bigger opponents their asses.
• Took a Level in Badass
• Beam Me Up, Scotty : Don't expect to ever hear Sulu say " Oh, my ." That's George Takei 's personal Catch Phrase . Sulu himself was the only regular who lacked a memorable Catch Phrase or Verbal Tic , one of the reasons he didn't show up in too many parodies (and when he did, he was usually the Straight Man ). More recently, given Takei's predilection for Adam Westing , parodies of Sulu are basically parodies of Takei (including the Camp Gay antics - see below).
• Brainwashed and Crazy : Again, "The Naked Time".
• Canon Immigrant : His now-canon first name "Hikaru" was given to him in the non-canon novels by Vonda McIntyre . Very early Star Trek guides suggest that "Walter" was considered as a possible first name during the show itself, but never officially used.
• A Day in the Limelight : "The Naked Time" and "Mirror, Mirror".
• Evil Is Hammy : Every Mirror Universe character was hammy, but Takei was a particularly rich, dripping slice.
• In some of the non-canon novels, Sulu explains that his background is mixed, but primarily Filipino and Japanese.
• Fan of the Past
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies : Including fencing ("The Naked Time") and botany ("The Man Trap").
• Generation Xerox : In Generations , we meet his daughter Demora, who is (where else?) at the helm of the Enterprise -B.
• Genius Bruiser : Just happens to be an expert in botany, swordsmanship, French history, flying ancient aircraft.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars : His Mirror Universe counterpart has a big nasty scar on his face.
• Sadly played straight in the reboot movie - it's not exactly a normal katana, but it seems clearly intended to invoke this trope.
• Shirtless Scene : In "The Naked Time".
• Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs? : Initially the show's creators couldn't make up their mind what to do with Sulu and he featured prominently as a botanist of all things before becoming the helmsman.
• As an interesting coincidence, Sulu is the only one of the six male regulars who never had an on-screen love interest, so there's no "proof" either way ( Mirror Sulu, on the other hand, is obviously attracted to women, as Uhura can attest).
• 2016's Star Trek Beyond has confirmed that Sulu (the reboot instance of him at least) both is gay and has a daughter. With the same scene.

Ensign Pavel Chekov ( Walter Koenig )

• Ambiguously Jewish : An idea with some popularity in the Fandom , partially since Koenig (and Anton Yelchin , who played him in the 2009 reboot ) are Jewish.
• Chekov's Gun : Often seen with Chekov, especially on landing-party duty. Like Chekhov's Gun , if it makes an appearance, it will most likely be used by the end of the episode or movie.
• Cultural Posturing : What didn't Mother Russia invent?
• Cloudcuckoolander : Chekov's constant references to Mother Russia appear to only make sense in his mind.
• A Day in the Limelight : " Mirror, Mirror ", "The Trouble With Tribbles", and "The Deadly Years".
• Mr. Fanservice : Really. Brought in specifically to appeal to younger FanGirls , complete with hair straight out of The Monkees .
• The Intern : Much is made of his relative inexperience and impulsiveness.
• Lzherusskie
• Plucky Comic Relief : Particularly as the films progressed.
• Running Gag : "It vas inwented in Russia."
• Russian Guy Suffers Most : Oh, yeah.
• The Scream : Walter Koenig had a good one, which is why it's Chekov who always gets stuffed in the agony booth .
• This is further compounded by the fact that he expended all the toilet paper.
• What Could Have Been : Was originally planned to be a British character. Apparently Roddenberry changed it after having a letter from the Soviet Union which praised the show's message but criticized the lack of a prominent Russian character .

Head Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett)

• A Day in the Limelight : "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
• Hospital Hottie
• Mad Love : Most of her personality ( well, all of it, really ) centers around her unreciprocated crush on Spock. Think of her as an in-universe Spock Fan Girl . Unlike many of her real-life counterparts, she doesn't seem to be a Yaoi Fangirl .
• No Rank Given : In the series, Chapel was always addressed by her position rather than her rank. She is formally promoted to Lieutenant later on in the five-year mission , and by the time of the first movie , has an MD under her belt, and is prepared to assume the role of Chief Medical Officer. We can therefore assume that, especially given her position as Head Nurse, she was a junior officer (probably a mustanged Ensign, given her backstory).
• Real Life Writes the Plot : Majel Barrett was the girlfriend and eventual wife of Gene Roddenberry, which may explain why we saw Nurse Chapel so much.

Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney)

• Beehive Hairdo
• Bridge Bunny : The Trope Codifier .
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome : Vanished halfway through the first season due to off-screen issues .
• The Bus Came Back : She became the Transporter Cheif in the first film.
• Damsel in Distress
• Hello, Nurse!
• Hypercompetent Sidekick : Implied--there are several references to her ability to keep Kirk from being swamped in paperwork, and one to improvising with a phaser when the food systems won't provide hot coffee.
• Ms. Fanservice : The original media package described her as having "a strip queen's figure that a uniform can't hide." Not that those uniforms hide much, but whatever.
• Satellite Character : Has no significant interaction with any character other than Kirk.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension : With Kirk.

Lieutenant Kyle (John Winston)

• The Cameo : He's a bridge officer on the Reliant in Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan .
• Mauve Shirt : Because he was the only recurring Red Shirt not played by an extra, he usually had much more dialogue than other redshirts , a consistent name and position on the ship, and was allowed to play an active role in the Plot (see "The Doomsday Machine" or "Mirror, Mirror" for examples).
• Only One Name
• Teleporters and Transporters : Contrary to popular belief , he was the Transporter Chief, not Scotty. Like other redshirts , he was occasionally seen on the bridge, though usually he was explicitly pinch-hitting for someone else (as in "Who Mourns For Adonais?" when Spock has taken command and Chekov is in the landing party, and Kyle mans the science station).

Kevin Thomas Riley (Bruce Hyde)

• Ascended Extra : Actor Bruce Hyde was cast as a crewman with a significant part in "The Conscience of the King" without anyone realizing he had also played uber - Irishman Riley in "The Naked Time". When the producers finally realized this , the script was hastily re-written so that Hyde played the same character in both episodes.
• Dreadful Musician : " Iiiiii'll taaaaake you hooome again, Kathleeeeeen.... "
• Oireland : Got his "Irish" up when under the influence of the mind virus in "The Naked Time."
• Real Life Writes the Plot : The reason Riley never returned after "The Conscience of the King", despite being very popular with fans, was that the actor left to become a hippie. Yes, really. Remember, this was 1967.

Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd (Roger C. Carmel)

• Affably Evil
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer : "Mudd's Women".
• Carpet of Virility
• Full Name Ultimatum :
• Henpecked Husband
• Hoist by His Own Petard : By the Stella androids at the end of "I, Mudd".
• Honest John's Dealership
• Loveable Rogue
• Recurrer : He holds the distinction of being the only non-Starfleet character in the entire series to appear in more than one episode.

The Enterprise

• Cool Starship
• ↑ They were leery of casting an actor of non-Japanese descent until Takei himself assured them that it would be all right, claiming that the character represents all of Asia (note that Sulu is not a Japanese name). This paved the way for Korean-American John Cho to assume the role.

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Boldly go: Every 'Star Trek' series, ranked

The Final Frontier is full of some amazing television.

With over 800 episodes of space-based adventure logged, Star Trek is the sci-fi TV franchise to beat.

For more than 50 years, whether fans have followed the voyages of the Starship Enterprise or the animated antics of the Lower Decks  and Prodigy  crews, Star Trek has proven that it is endlessly imaginative and consistently inspiring. The franchise takes its Vulcan mantra of “Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations” to heart, offering series led by an ensemble of complex and supportive characters that act as guides and companions on trips to the strange new worlds that Star Trek helps audiences escape to on a weekly basis. From Captain Kirk’s original five-year mission (which unfortunately was curtailed after just three), to Patrick Stewart's return in  Picard , there’s something for everyone in the Final Frontier.

In honor of Star Trek: Discovery return to Paramount+ to finish off its fourth season this week, we have beamed down our definitive ranking of every Trek series. So replicate yourself a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot, and see if your favorite made (ahem) Number One. 

11. Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1975)

Credit: CBS via Getty Images

Unbound by live-action TV budget limitations, Star Trek: The Animated Series makes up for its low-fi animation and sometimes stiff pacing issues with an impressive execution of big sci-fi premises. From giant Spocks to flying plant dragons, TAS features truly out-there storylines that push the boundaries of what one would expect to find in Trek’s take on outer space. In the '60s. The Animated Series may not have the same respect or importance as other Trek shows, both animated and live-action, but TAS at least deserves some praise for its ambition and for trying to keep the franchise alive during its fallow period. 

Featuring most of the original cast returning to voice their iconic characters, along with several key writers from The Original Series , the Enterprise's brief run of animated adventures delivers a nostalgic, kid-friendly continuation of the voyages fans fell in love with in the '60s.

10. Star Trek: Short Treks (2018-2020)

Credit: Michael Gibson/CBS

An inventive and (mostly) satisfying mix of live-action and animated tales, Star Trek: Short Trek s acted as a bridge between releases of full seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, with side stories centered on key characters and aspects of the then-CBS All Access era of the franchise. The shorts, with run times between ten to 20 minutes, feature storylines that cater largely to Discovery fans, with appearances from fan-favorites Ensign Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) providing audiences with a peek at what happens in the periphery of the flagship series. These side missions allow the franchise to take one of its most unique and creative swings in its entire history; think Star Trek ’s version of Marvel’s “One-Shot” shorts. 

While not every installment feels necessary or particularly engaging — the Saru-centric “The Brightest Star” struggles to find a compelling pace that works well with its heartfelt glimpse into the alien’s homeworld — Short Treks does provide impressive visuals and interesting bits of connective tissue to make the experience of watching future Discovery episodes more whole. The highlights of this brief run of shorts include the distant future-set “Calypso,” with a teleplay by Picard Season 1 showrunner and author Michael Chabon, and the zany animated tale “Ephraim and Dot,” which director Michael Giacchino injects with a strong dose of Tom and Jerry -esque antics as his film pinballs between certain iconic events from Trek ’s extensive history on both the big and small screens. 

9. Star Trek: Picard (2020-Present)

Credit: Trae Patton/CBS

After a 26-year absence, Patrick Stewart and his iconic character of Jean-Luc Picard returned to the small screen in Star Trek: Picard . The highly anticipated, big-budget nostalgia play was a mixed bag of creative choices that fell somewhere between thrilling fan service and noble misfire. 

Picard finds the former Enterprise-E captain struggling to enjoy life on his family vineyard after a mission to save Romulan refugees forced him into early retirement. But, when an android-human hybrid shows up at his home, hunted by ninja-like Romulan assassins, Picard must boldly go once again into space to find out who this woman is, what she has to do with the late Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner), and how all of this ties together with the Federation’s work in helping former Borg drones re-enter civilian life. The elevator pitch for the first season is basically Star Trek: Blade Runner , starring one of the most beloved Trek characters in the Rick Deckard role. However,  Picard doesn’t bring much new to this premise, which sci-fi has more than adequately covered by now — and that’s unfortunate, because the last thing a Star Trek show should make one feel is a near-constant sense of “been there, done that.”

As fun as it is to see Picard, Data, and Jeri Ryan’s badass Seven of Nine back in action, it comes at the cost of some baffling and frustrating character choices, namely with Picard. For the first third of the series, we see a Picard who behaves in emotionally dishonest and unlikable ways. (For example, after the former Captain has a falling out with a dear friend and fellow officer, he never once checks in with her until years later — when he needs something.) To present a formerly selfless hero as someone who is now more selfish than ever before results in a profound narrative flaw at the core of this series, which progresses to a confounding finale where Star Trek cures death and no one bothers to even think about pointing that fact out. The limited success Picard does find, outside of impressive visual spectacles, are in the brief but rewarding scenes where our hero reunites with past Next Generation crew members or revisits certain dark areas of his traumatic past with the Borg. Here’s hoping Picard Season 2 packs more resonance with fans by affording the character more to do than just travel through other sci-fi’s great story ideas in search of his own. 

8. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005)

Credit: CBS

UPN's attempts in 2001 to use Star Trek: Enterprise as a way to revitalize the franchise and make it more appealing to non- Trek audiences was, at the time, a risk that made creative sense. One that even occasionally paid off episodically. But the arrival of this prequel series arguably did more harm than good. (Remember those ads featuring The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go?" Woof.) 

By the time Enterprise premiered, executive producer Rick Berman had already created three other shows during his time as the franchise’s overseer, and his tenure with Star Trek at this point had a very “assembly line” feel to it. On paper, the idea of exploring the early days of Starfleet from the bridge of a pre-Kirk Enterprise seemed like the shot in the arm that Trek needed, one ripe with possibility. But in execution, the series struggled to find its identity or connect with audiences in the way previous shows or their significantly more compelling and likable ensemble casts did. Enterprise ’s first two seasons never quite lived up to the marketing’s promise of a more rough-around-the-edges, action-packed Trek . Most of their episodes could have existed on any other Trek series, which didn’t help Enterprise stand out among its trailblazing predecessors. 

The voyages of Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) and his intrepid crew really hit their stride in Seasons 3 and 4, however, especially in the latter. The show’s final season finally let Enterprise embrace its Trek- ness with callbacks to Original Series canon. (Mirror Universe FTW!) But, by then, it was too late. And that’s too bad, as Bakula brought a ‘90s-esque, Harrison Ford action hero vibe to the franchise as a Captain struggling to do what’s right and best for the galaxy’s future at a time when he is a vital figure in shaping it.

While we're here, let's give a special mention to the show's most underrated asset, Chief Engineer Trip Tucker (Conner Trinneer). He's basically McCoy and Scotty rolled into one.

7. Star Trek: Discovery (2017-Present)

Literally going where no Trek TV series has gone before, in both scale and tone, Discovery is the most diverse and progressive Trek  so far, which is why it has, in part,  such a passionate fanbase. The series is a thematically-driven, character-first, action-packed depiction of a Starfleet charged with test driving their Utopian ideals in the middle of a war with the Klingons — all on the bleeding edge of the Final Frontier. 

While hardcore fans initially bumped against the show's darker elements, crying, "This isn't Star Trek, " after four seasons, those naysayers have seemingly come around to embracing Discovery ’s big-budget attempt to mix the current trend of “grounded and gritty” television with what makes Trek , well, Trek . After a bumpy first season launch, Discovery eventually found how to make that mixture work with its effortlessly entertaining Season 2, which brought the U.S.S. Enterprise from Captain Pike’s day into Discovery ’s prequel storyline. Combining the two crews and their histories allowed for a very entertaining season of fan-service highs, one that afforded Discovery to showcase one of Trek ’s strongest suits: Great characters. 

The dynamic established by Discovery’ s diverse and endearing ensemble allows the series to tell stories that do what all great sci-fi does — use a future setting to hold up a mirror to our very present reality. In doing so, Discovery delivered one of the franchise’s most fully-formed and likable heroes ever, starting with Sonequa Martin-Green's conflicted Michael Burnham. (We are also big fans of Season 1’s duplicitous, and fortune cookie-loving, Captain Lorca, played by Jason Issacs.) And while the first season’s Klingon War arc comes off half-baked and under-serviced, in favor of a season-arc involving the Mirror Universe, that detour is totally worth it for a late-Season 1 phaser battle that is among the best action scenes Trek has ever produced.

6. Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-Present)

This first animated Trek show since the ’70s, Lower Decks is also the first outright sitcom in Trek history. 

Centered on the very junior, and very funny, crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos, Lower Decks premiered in 2020 on Paramount+ to quickly become one of the most talked-about and entertaining Trek series ever. From creator and showrunner Mike McMahan ( Rick and Morty ), Lower Decks is often a perfect mix of funny and Trek -level pathos. The show finds a unique and comical way to spin the mundane tasks of day-to-day life as a member of this plucky and endearing crew that embraces the best of Trek . This is a show featuring characters we laugh with but never at as they deal with the rewarding dirty work that Kirk and Picard’s crews never had time for. In doing so, Lower Decks manages to add a much-needed sense of levity by using memorable tropes and moments from Trek’s past to push the franchise and the overall story forward. 

5. Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

Star Trek: Voyager made TV history by being the first Trek series with a female captain when it premiered 26 years ago. That long-overdue and inspired choice was one of the few things that held Voyager together as it, like most Trek series post- TNG , got off to a rocky start during its early seasons. Voyager arguably had one of the bumpiest of beginnings in Trek history, as the UPN series struggled from the jump to fully deliver on its great premise: Federation officers and their freedom fighter counterparts are lost in space, 70,000 light-years from Earth, struggling to get back home. What was intended to be a showcase for what happens when you have no starbases to repair battle damage or replenish supplies turned into Next Gen Lite ; only a handful of episodes in the back half of the series’ run truly achieved best-of status or came close to fulfilling the series’ core concept. Most of Voyager ’s run feels like each new ep is almost re-piloting the series, which makes Voyager feel like a show ironically searching for its own path just as its characters try to find theirs back to Earth. 

But what makes Voyager so consistently compelling to this day, aside from some of the series’ show-stopping space battles and a very likable cast, is Kate Mulgrew’s iconic Captain Janeway. Mulgrew invested Janeway with a fierce intelligence and endearing charm as she was both captain and “mother” to this crew, someone determined to get all of them home despite how many of the Delta Quadrant’s vast network of alien threats stood in her way. (Why she would sometimes prolong this mandate with exploratory detours that would risk depleting the ship’s already-low resources is debatable.) The introduction of former Borg Seven of Nine gave Voyager the shot in the arm it sorely needed. 

Seven’s addition to the cast inspired a Kirk-Spock dynamic between her and Janeway, giving the show a strong dose of conflict and humanity as the two characters butted heads just as often as they worked together to save this family from castaway status. It is too bad Voyager all but flatlined with a big, lackluster series finale that shows Voyager returning to Earth after seven seasons without giving its crew — or the fans — a dramatically satisfying homecoming. The series finale concludes with the baffling choice to relegate Voyager's arrival at Earth to the episode’s final scene, and stopping the show there. This momentous occasion plays like it were just another planet that the starship visited. Both the characters and the fans deserved a better final episode.

4. Star Trek: Prodigy (2021-Present)

It’s fitting that Star Trek: Prodigy is a pseudo-sequel series to Star Trek: Voyager . Not just because the former features the latter’s iconic Captain Janeway in hologram form, but because Prodigy is another series about untested but likable heroes forging a found family in one of the most distant corners of the galaxy, the Delta Quadrant. And, in doing so, they give fans some of the most thematically well-told, character-driven stories in recent Trek history.

All the popular and expected Trek tropes are there — along with the appearance of legacy Trek characters. But Prodigy is the first show to tackle them through the welcomed POV of non-Starfleet characters. Our young heroes, led by the cocky-but-capable Dal, aren’t even trained or really know what a starship like theirs, the experimental Protostar, is. By having the characters serve as a surrogate for the audience, to put us at ground level with them as they have some very intense on-the-job training in the world of Star Trek , makes it so that every panicked breath they take or victory they earn feel like one of our own. That creative choice yields some truly resonate storylines (and feature film-worthy dramatic and comedic beats) that elevate Prodigy to being not just an excellent animated show for kids, but also just overall a great television series.

3. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969)

Featuring the best first two seasons of any Star Trek series, the original adventures of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are classic television for a reason. 

Aside from the uneven third season, plagued by budget cuts and behind-the-scenes creative issues, Star Trek ’s original voyages succeed largely by grounding their fantastic sci-fi concepts on the backs of characters you couldn’t help but root for. The show was one of the first series to have something to say, as creator Gene Roddenberry and producer/writer Gene Coon used the Enterprise and her crew to service themes and subject matter that were especially relevant to 1960s culture. In doing so, Star Trek created icons out of Kirk and the rest of his intrepid crew. It also set the standard for telling sci-fi stories on television in relatable and resonant ways that would inspire and fuel every subsequent Trek series. The first two seasons’ worth of storylines warp out of the gate with episodes centered on eugenics, the moral fog (and ethical cost) of war, what it means to be a captain when your best friend becomes your enemy, and, of course, the Mirror Universe. Never before or since has a Trek series premiered as close to fully-formed as this one does, with the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate headlining one of the most memorable and engaging casts in television history. Star Trek broke racial barriers with Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, and it used science fiction — and the way the Enterprise crew explored the vastness of space — as a way to give its very human audiences an opportunity to look inward and find what makes such exploration still worth taking. 

2. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

Credit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Pound for pound, you won't find a more consistent or entertaining run of Star Trek episodes than The Next Generation ’s third and fourth seasons. That's when this classic syndicated series found its narrative footing, after two very uneven seasons burdened with epic behind-the-scenes clashes among creatives. The show that emerged from all of that turmoil gave us Sir Patrick Stewart, the Borg, Star Trek ’s first cliffhanger ("The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1"), and several stone-cold sci-fi classics such as "Yesterday's Enterprise," "The Inner Light," "Cause and Effect," and the all-timer series finale "All Good Things". 

While TNG petered out creatively during its last two seasons, it managed to change the genre and the franchise in a way that still resonates today. The core characters (especially the meme-friendly likes of Jonathan Frakes’ Riker and LeVar Burton’s Geordi LaForge) are arguably more popular now than they were when the series premiered in 1987. We can credit that continuing popularity to the new (pun intended) generations of fans finding the show via streaming and helping ensure the legacy of this iconic Enterprise crew. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is perfect TV comfort food at a time when we really could use it. Unlike The Original Series, TNG had the time and budget to flex its full potential and find unique opportunities for sci-fi drama that only the Final Frontier affords. In doing so, Next Gen made nothing short of TV history. 

01. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999)

Credit: Paramount Television /Courtesy Everett Collection

One of the first pre-Peak TV series to embrace long-form, serialized storytelling, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was and still is the bastard, rule-breaking stepchild of the Trek universe. And it is all the better for it. 

DS9 never found the ratings that its predecessor The Next Generation did, but it did find a deeper and more complex vein of sci-fi storytelling to tap into — one that has allowed the series to prove even more rewarding on subsequent rewatches. Released at a time when serialized television was often frowned upon, DS9 was more concerned with telling stories worth audiences’ time than complying with the times. The epic Seasons 3 through 7 embrace the diversity and heady themes that Trek is known for, by finding inventive — and, at times, harrowing — ways to bring intergalactic action and big emotional stakes to an anchored space station instead of to a flying starship. 

Prejudice, racism, PTSD, and humanity’s often tenuous grip on morality are the rich thematic tent poles that the series frequently thread its gripping characters and their addictive story arcs through — to much success. And while adding Michael Dorn’s Worf from TNG was an attempt to boost ratings in the space battle-heavy fourth season, it also brought a surprisingly effective jolt of tension and character growth to the core ensemble’s dynamic, as they faced a growing, casualty-heavy battle with The Dominion. The riveting dramatic possibilities provided by DS9 ’s unique mix of aliens and humans, friends and foes, helped elevate this underrated Trek installment to become the franchise's crowning achievement.

Watch Resident Alien Now!

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
• Star Trek: Picard
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Star Trek: Voyager

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10 Best Sci-Fi Tropes Star Trek Popularized

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction, and opened up previously obscure genre tropes to a wider audience. Here are ten of the most memorable.

Star Trek changed the face of science fiction forever. Even before its popularity took off during the reruns and conventions of the 1970s, Star Trek: The Original Series endeavored to talk about more than just rocket ships and ray guns. It posited something extraordinary -- a viable vision of human utopia -- and slowly built it into a pop-culture bedrock.

In the process, it embraced a number of sci-fi tropes that other movies and TV shows came to emulate. Star Trek’s popularity elevated the profile of such notions, which had previously been limited to a few novels and short stories. Below is a list of ten classic sci-fi tropes that Star Trek helped make popular, presented in subjective order.

10 Controversial Star Trek: TOS Episodes That Wouldn't Fly Today

Ray guns were certainly nothing new when Star Trek came along, having served as a sci-fi staple since the days of H.G. Wells. The Original Series draws on the likes of Fantastic Planet and the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials for inspiration, which invariably made copious use of the weapons. It's only natural that Star Trek would deliver its own version, with the slightly more innovative title of phasers.

What really sets the weapon apart from other ray guns, however, is the stun setting, allowing targets to be neutralized without permanent harm. The phrase “set phasers to stun” has become one of Star Trek’s signature lines . More importantly, the weapon’s nonlethal qualities speaks to the franchise’s values: envisioning a future in which violence has been tempered.

9 The Alien Non-Interference Clause

Better known as The Prime Directive, the alien non-interference clause states that no member of Starfleet can interfere with a planet’s natural development. That includes anything from providing advanced technology to revealing the existence of off-world life. It makes for a strong moral dilemma, as figures like Jean Luc-Picard must stand by while terrible things happen to innocent people.

Not surprisingly, the Prime Directive is noted more in its breach than its keeping. James T. Kirk, in particular, is quite cavalier about it, but it remains an easy fulcrum for good storytelling. The Prime Directive is also a way to talk about more down-to-earth issues like colonialism and environmental devastation.

10 Star Trek Phasers, Ranked

8 human/alien hybrids.

The existence of humanoid aliens precludes the ability to cross-breed, producing children with the genetics of both parents. With Star Trek , the notion goes all the way back to Mr. Spock: the product of a human mother and a Vulcan father. The other prominent canon examples include Star Trek: Voyager’s B’Elanna Torres, the child of a Klingon mother and a human father, and Worf’s son Alexander on Star Trek: The Next Generation , who also has human blood.

Such characters help science fiction explore the exchanges between different societies, as well as the unique challenges faced by the children of two or more cultures. That can lead to simplification or dismissal of complex issues. The trope is only as strong as the TV show using it, but it also gives creators a safe space to discuss those issues before a wider audience.

7 Fantastic Racism

Racism is a weighty issue and addressing it head-on won’t always fly on a series intended primarily as entertainment. Instead, Star Trek talks about racism in a more general way, using alien cultures as a stand-in for various kinds of prejudicial oppression. In the simplest terms, it helps point out the fundamental absurdity of racist beliefs, most notably in The Original Series Season 3, Episode 15, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” which features Frank Gorshin’s black-and-white alien at war with this white-and-black cohort.

Fantastic racism isn’t a perfect trope, and can often whitewash real problems by casting them in the realm of fiction. But it also allows shows like Star Trek to address those issues while still retaining a vision of a more mature humanity who has set such petty hatefulness aside. For good or ill, it certainly allowed other science fiction projects to follow its example.

6 Alien Empires

Humanoid aliens necessitate an essentially human political process, which Star Trek uses as one of its narrative bedrocks. Other entities such as the Klingons and the Romulans don’t necessarily embrace democracy, and have their own agendas that often conflict with the Federation’s. This leads to various schemes, conflicts and outright wars: generating easy storylines and culminating in epic clashes like Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War.

Alien empires predate science fiction movies, going back at least to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and the John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Original Series uses them as thinly veiled stand-ins for contemporary geopolitical foes like the Soviet Union or China under Chairman Mao. Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series have developed their aliens more fully, while providing new narrative material in concepts like the Klingons’ Great Houses and The Romulans’ Qowat Milat.

10 Best Television Universes, Ranked

5 alternate history.

Star Trek originally used the Stardate notion to get around the question of exactly when the story was taking place. It took 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to pinpoint its 23rd century setting. Even before then, however, it built its own future history without the slightest inkling of the franchise it was helping to create in the process.

Star Trek's alternate history comes complete with developments like the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s (swapped around to account for the passing of real time) and Zephram Cochrane breaking the warp barrier. The timeline allows new projects to develop their own stories at different points on the timeline. Subsequent franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have done much the same thing.

Star Trek's 10 Greatest One-off Characters

4 parallel realities.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the notion of a Multiverse widespread, and written works such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle form the foundation of the idea. But Star Trek brought parallel realities to popular attention long before more modern projects, most notably with Season 2, Episode 4, "Mirror, Mirror." That episode introduced the notion of the sinister Mirror Universe, which the franchise has used in other projects as well.

Star Trek continues to play with parallel realities, and indeed the concept has created some of its finest moments such as Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3, Episode 15, "Yesterday's Enterprise." The Kelvinverse series of movies similarly exist in a parallel reality, allowing them to tell their own stories without risking undue continuity errors.

3 Rogue AI/Robots

Rogue AIs go back to the foundation of science fiction, as Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein creates a being he can’t control. Star Trek’s utopian setting makes fertile ground for stories of science to run amuck, with each new era adding its own distinctive touch. The Original Series has the berserk robot Nomad and the M-5 "ultimate computer." Star Trek: Discovery uses the AI Control as its primary antagonist during Season 2, while The Next Generation may have topped them all with the Borg Collective. Even Star Trek: Lower Decks has gotten into the act with the likes of Badgey and Peanut Hamper.

The trend certainly didn't begin with Star Trek , but it made the public increasingly familiar with the notion, while removing it from the more literal image of a Boris Karloff-style monster. As technology has advanced, it's allowed the franchise to continue using it: making pointed comments on contemporary issues behind the veneer of science fiction.

Star Trek: 10 Best Captain Pike Quotes

2 cool starships.

Before The Original Series , sci-fi spaceships tended to come in two types: rockets and flying saucers. The original USS Enterprise manages to look like both at the same time, while giving Star Trek a singular visual image that sums up its entire zeitgeist. It becomes a character in and of itself during the first crew’s adventures, to the point where its destruction in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock initially elicited cries of grief among the faithful.

Subsequent series have made distinctive ship design a priority: giving them a brand identity distinctive from the rest of the franchise while still being resolutely Star Trek . Other creators took note, as 2001: A Space Odyssey's Discovery and Star Wars's Millennium Falcon emphasize visual distinctiveness to sell their worlds. The flying saucer is well and truly dead, and The Original Series' Enterprise may have killed it.

Star Trek’s best known piece of future technology arose out of a logistical necessity. Having created an iconic spaceship in the USS Enterprise , series creator Gene Roddenberry realized he had no way of landing it on the surface of the different planets the show was supposed to visit. Teleporting down via the ship’s transporters made an elegant solution, avoiding the clumsy logistics of a shuttle and providing a nifty effects shot to boot. It also allowed for easy drama, as Scotty invariably pulled the away team up from the planet's surface in the nick of time.

While it never caught on with other science fiction projects, that kept it a singular part of the franchise itself: never duplicated lest the presented be accused of imitating Star Trek . The rest of the public need not act with such care, of course, and "beam me up" has become a short-hand term for the desire to escape any unpleasant situation.

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In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. In the 23rd Century, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 277 User reviews
• 99 Critic reviews
• 16 wins & 31 nominations total

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• Trivia In the hallways of the Enterprise there are tubes marked "GNDN." These initials stand for "goes nowhere does nothing."
• Goofs The deck locations for Kirk's Quarters, Sickbay and Transporter Room vary (usually between decks 4-7) throughout the series.

Dr. McCoy : "He's dead, Jim."

• Crazy credits On some episodes, the closing credits show a still that is actually from the Star Trek blooper reel. It is a close-up of stunt man Bill Blackburn who played an android in Return to Tomorrow (1968) , removing his latex make up. In the reel, He is shown taking it off, while an off-screen voice says "You wanted show business, you got it!"
• Alternate versions In 2006, CBS went back to the archives and created HD prints of every episode of the show. In addition to the new video transfer, they re-did all of the model shots and some matte paintings using CGI effects, and re-recorded the original theme song to clean it up. These "Enhanced" versions of the episodes aired on syndication and have been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
• Connections Edited into Ben 10: Secrets (2006)
• Soundtracks Star Trek Music by Alexander Courage

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Star Trek TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer

Updated: September 8, 2023

The Star Trek universe kicked off in 1966 with the original series , created by science fiction visionary Gene Roddenberry , and later exploded into a massive film and TV juggernaut.

While the original series, which starred William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, saw only three seasons, it made an indelible impression on the sci-fi genre. Live-action TV follow-up Star Trek: The Next Generation , with  Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard leading an ensemble cast, captivated viewers from 1987–1994 and inspired three more series that would air within the next decade:  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ,  Star Trek: Voyager , and  Star Trek: Enterprise .

Starting with 1979’s  Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Paramount Pictures has been regularly cranking out Trek films with the original series and Next Generation casts, as well as a rebooted version in 2009 with Chris Pine as Starfleet Academy cadet James Kirk and Zachary Quinto as young Spock. ( See the Star Trek films ranked here. )

In 2017,  Trek  returned to small screens with season 1 of CBS All Access streaming title  Star Trek: Discovery , set during a tumultuous wartime era about a decade before the original and starring Sonequa Martin-Green . The new series marked a TV franchise reboot by Alex Kurtzman , writer on the 2009 Star Trek film and its sequel  Star Trek Into Darkness .

RELATED: All Star Trek Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

The year 2020 gave fans a celebration of one of its most iconic characters with the premiere of Star Trek: Picard and Stewart reprising his role in the new streaming series that launched its second season in 2022. New live-action series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was also released in 2022, and its first season was quickly Certified Fresh with a 100% Tomatometer score (it has since dropped to 99% on one review). The show’s second season, released in 2023, was nearly as well received and is Certified Fresh at 97% on the Tomatometer.

The TV franchise has since introduced two animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks , about the misfit support crew on one of Starfleet’s least-important ships, and kid-friendly Star Trek: Prodigy , which tells the story of a diverse group of teens who inadvertently become the crew of a prize starship and learn important lessons in their subsequent adventures. The latter series — No. 3 on our list below — has since been canceled by Paramount+, but a petition to save the show has gathered over 33,000 signatures.

Have a look below to find out which series score highest with critics in our Trek TV by Tomatometer list.

Disagree with the results? Tell us in the comments which series you think should have been ranked higher (or lower).

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022) 98%

Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973) 94%

Star Trek: Prodigy (2021) 94%

Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020) 92%

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) 92%

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) 91%

Star Trek: Picard (2020) 89%

Star Trek: Discovery (2017) 85%

Star Trek (1966) 80%

Star Trek: Voyager (1995) 76%

Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) 56%

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Star Trek: Best Book-Only Characters

• The Star Trek novels introduce unique characters like Akaar and Treir, adding depth to the expansive Starfleet universe.
• Characters like Nick Keller and Elias Vaughn bring new perspectives to the post- DS9 era, facing challenging galactic events.
• Mackenzie Calhoun leads the USS Excalibur in a new hero ship series, showcasing tactical genius in the New Frontier books.

Just like the universe itself, the Star Trek franchise is huge and far-reaching, encompassing several television shows, and numerous video games, movies, and books. While many of Star Trek 's most iconic characters appear in various series and films, there are many other great characters who only feature in alternative media sources. For instance, the final frontier has spawned some memorable video game-based characters .

Star Trek: 8 Most Powerful Federation Starships, Ranked

Yet perhaps the richest source of characters is the now questionably canon series of books that take place following The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine . From fresh takes on classic species like the Andorians and Orions, to some of Starfleet's finest officers, the Star Trek novels are a treasure trove of notable figures.

Leonard James Akaar

First appearence: star trek mission gamma book one: twilight.

• Author: David R. George III
• Publication Date: September 2002

Leonard James Akaar is unique among novel-only characters in that he does, in fact, make a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance on televised Trek . "Friday's Child," an episode of The Original Series , ends with his birth; however, the Capellan royal would not be seriously fleshed out until 2002's Mission Gamma: Twilight . By the time of the Deep Space 9 novels, Akaar had risen through the ranks of Starfleet to become an influential admiral with the ear of the Federation president.

Akaar's strategic mindset and steely resolve proved essential in preserving the Federation through some of its darkest periods, including the Borg invasion depicted in the Star Trek: Destiny series. The Starfleet legend may have been born in The Original Series , but the Star Trek novels were where he made his name.

First Appearence: Star Trek: Demons of Air and Darkness

• Author: Keith R. A. DeCandido
• Publication Date: September 2001

Star Trek features many inspirational female characters, from Kira Nerys to Katherine Janeway. However, few are as resourceful or as motivated as Treir , an Orion Dabo girl who transformed Quark's Bar into a highly successful business during the post- DS9 novels. Following her escape from Orion servitude, Treir earned her place as Quark's right-hand woman by implementing a series of radical reforms, including hiring a Dabo boy to attract more customers.

Star Trek: The Fates Of Every Live-Action TV Show's Main Character

Treir may not play a significant role in the canon-shattering events depicted in the Deep Space 9 novels, but this ruthless businesswoman helped to make Star Trek 's prose universe feel like a living, breathing place. If anyone is capable of giving Quark a run for his latinum, it's her.

Nick Keller

First appearence: star trek new earth: challenger.

• Author: Diane Carey
• Publication Date: August 2000

New Earth , a series of six novels that take place between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan , was intended to act as a backdoor pilot for a new narrative focusing on Commander Nick Keller . In the final novel, Keller takes command of a makeshift starship in order to defend the human colony of Belle Terre from alien attack. Keller was conflicted between overthrowing his inept captain and preserving the lives of his comrades, and it's a great shame that a full series based on the space cowboy's adventures never emerged.

Interestingly, author Diane Carey based Keller's appearance on Scott Bakula, who would go on to play Captain Jonathan Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise . Keller, however, would make only two more appearances in the Star Trek universe, with both being part of the multi-series Gateways crossover event.

Elias Vaughn

First appearence: star trek: avatar (book one).

• Author: S. D. Perry
• Publication Date: July 2001

Elias Vaughn was a Starfleet officer and intelligence operative who joined Deep Space 9's command staff following the end of the Dominion War . Despite only holding the rank of commander, Vaughn's expertise proved a boon to the Federation outpost, and he played a role in several key events, including the USS Defiant 's post-war exploration of the Gamma Quadrant (depicted in the Mission Gamma sub-series).

Star Trek: 8 Impressive Things Kirk Did Before Joining The USS Enterprise

Vaughn was haunted by the death of his wife, Ruriko, and his troubled relationship with his estranged daughter, Prynn. This relationship was complicated by the fact that Prynn was also assigned to Deep Space 9. However, father and daughter were eventually able to reconcile–but not without some bumps along the way.

Christine Vale

First appearence: star trek: the belly of the beast.

• Author: Dean Wesley Smith

While William Riker's USS Titan has made notable appearances in Star Trek: Lower Decks , the starship's adventures were originally chronicled in a series of spin-off novels. These books featured Christine Vale , a former detective turned Starfleet officer, as Riker's second-in-command. Vale was initially unwilling to take the post, as she disliked the idea of Riker working so closely with his wife, Deanna Troi.

Luckily, Vale took the post, which allowed her to act as a counterweight to any of Riker's Troi-related biases. During her time aboard the USS Titan , she helped to explore the Beta Quadrant and fend off a Borg invasion. Indeed, her record was so good that, following Riker's promotion to admiral, she took command of the Luna -class starship.

Thirishar ch'Thane

From their initial appearance in 1967's "Journey to Babel" and 2001's "The Andorian Incident," references to Star Trek 's Andorians were true and far between. One important detail was disclosed in The Next Generation , however: Andorians have four sexes , with all four required for successful reproduction.

The character of Thirishar ch'Thane (or "Shar") was a response to this premise. Shar served as Deep Space Nine's science officer following the end of the Dominion War, but was torn between his commitments to Starfleet and to his mating group, who wished him to return to Andor. This dilemma was further complicated by a dangerous decline in Andorian fertility, which threatened to cause the Andorians' extinction in the long term. Shar was eventually able to use his scientific knowledge to help solve the Andorian fertility crisis.

The Jem'Hadar are one of Star Trek 's most iconic creations , a powerful race of warriors motivated by their addiction to the chemical ketracel-white. During the Dominion War of 2373–2375, the Jem'Hadar were central to the Dominion assaults which nearly overwhelmed the Federation Alliance.

8 Best Starfleet Ships During The Dominion War

After the war's conclusion, Taran'atar , a Jem'Hadar without a ketracel-white dependency, was sent to Deep Space Nine as a cultural observer. Taran'atar's struggle to adjust to the Alpha Quadrant during peacetime makes for fascinating reading, as does seeing the fearsome warrior growing closer to his former enemies. Taran'atar's story takes some strange twists and turns, but he remains a fascinating character.

Mackenzie Calhoun

First appearence: star trek new frontier: house of cards.

• Author: Peter David
• Publication Date: July 1997

In 1997, Pocket Books published the first of Peter David's New Frontier books. While these novels included several characters from TV Trek (mostly notably Commander Shelby from "The Best of Both Worlds" ), they focused on a new hero ship, the USS Excalibur , and a new captain: Mackenzie Calhoun . Calhoun, an alien warrior modeled after Mel Gibson, was depicted as a tactical genius capable of beating Starfleet's toughest challenges–including the infamous Kobayashi Maru test.

Calhoun soon became a fan-favorite, with his New Frontier series including over 20 volumes. The Xenanian captain was even popular enough to be made into an action figure, the only example of this honor being bestowed on a character originating from any of Star Trek 's novels.

Created by Gene Roddenberry

First Film Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Latest Film Star Trek Beyond

First TV Show Star Trek: The Original Series

Latest TV Show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Creation Year 1966

Screen Rant

7 things that happen in every time travel movie & tv show.

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10 Common Errors That Time Travel Movies Surprisingly Still Make Today

8 sci-fi movies that break their own time travel rules, jason statham's highest-rated movie proves two harsh truths about his 26-year career.

• Time travel content often relies on established tropes and rules to drive the plot and avoid paradoxes.
• The use of time travel tropes signals to the audience what to expect next in the story.
• Characters traveling in time often face consequences like unintended changes to the future or dangerous paradoxes.

Time travel in film and television falls under the sci-fi genre, and many tropes and story elements can be found in every movie and TV show about time travel. Part of this stems from the fact that for time travel to work effectively within a story, there must be rules and restrictions for how the ability can be used, or too many paradoxes will arise. Sometimes, these paradoxes continuously appear across content that centers on time travel. Early examples of the genre have done much to influence what remains in films and TV series that deal with multiple timelines.

Additionally, the use of a trope simultaneously creates the ability to subvert it, which is something that many recent time travel movies and TV shows have been playing with.

The best time travel movies have much in common, and it's easy to see why filmmakers are so drawn to the tropes, even if they've been done many times before. They're classics for a reason and the use of a trope signals to the audience that they will understand the next part of the story and are in on the narrative shorthand writers employ. Additionally, the use of a trope simultaneously creates the ability to subvert it, which is something that many recent time travel movies and TV shows have been playing with.

Time travel movies are rife with contradictions, errors, and inconsistencies. These are some of the most common mistakes that movies still make.

7 The Future Is Worse After The Characters Change It

The butterfly effect (2004); the umbrella academy (2016–2024).

When the characters in a film purposely use time travel to change events in the future, they have a specific goal and a world-ending event to stop. Conversely, they might also go back for their own personal uses and designs, to prevent a family tragedy, or get a do-over after a particularly difficult situation. However, almost invariably, when the characters return to the future, excited to see the fruits of their labor, they're met with the opposite of what they intended. The future is different but for the worse.

Additionally, there could be an even more devastating result; that nothing changes and the future is fixed no matter what the characters do. In The Butterfly Effect , a man with the ability to change his past continuously goes back to stop the pain of a loved one, but each time he returns to the present something goes wrong. Additionally, in the Netflix original, The Umbrella Academy , time travel is introduced as a potential solution to the characters' problems. However, when they return to the present, the world has shifted so that they practically never existed.

The Butterfly Effect

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The Butterfly Effect is a time travel sci-fi movie centered around Evan (Ashton Kutcher), a young man who discovers he has the ability to change events from his past by embodying his younger self. The 2004 film explores the titular concept, which states that any small change in a system's initial conditions results in extremely different results.

6 The Characters Meet Their Parents

Lost (2004–2010); dark (2017–2020).

Though Back to the Future might be the most famous example of a child going back in time and navigating an unexpected relationship with their parents, many great movies and TV shows have followed in its footsteps. It's a well-worn subject because if a character interferes with their parents, they run the risk of never being born, disrupting their entire future. This is a recurring worry that all time travelers face, as the act of meddling with the timeline inherently puts a person's life and existence in peril.

However, a large group ends up in the past, causing a mother, Eloise, to accidentally kill her own son because she doesn't know who he is.

The rules of time travel in Lost can be difficult to comprehend, but the consequences are always clear. Once time travel is introduced, the characters are flung across the time stream. However, a large group ends up in the past, causing a mother, Eloise, to accidentally kill her own son because she doesn't know who he is. Additionally, in the psychological thriller series, Dark , a portal is discovered that allows people to interact with past and future versions of themselves and their loved ones, but the results are rarely favorable.

Lost is a mystery drama series created for TV that follows a group of survivors of a plane crash and tells its story between the past, present, and future via flashbacks. When Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashes and lands on a mysterious island in the pacific ocean, the castaways discover their new temporary home may have a mind of its own, as strange supernatural events keep them locked to the island. From an unknown black smoke creature to dangerous islanders, the passengers must work together to survive the island's seemingly deadly intentions.

5 People Making Themselves Rich

Back to the future part ii (1989); primer (2004).

Unfortunately, it's all too rare in film and television for people to act out of purely selfless motivations. More often, they have an angle or ulterior motive that's the driving force behind their decisions. In time travel movies, the first thing that comes to mind when people gain this power is how to best use it to their advantage. The answer is almost always using their knowledge of the past to make as much money as possible. Whether this is through sports betting or stock market manipulation, it's an easy way to cheat the system and get rich.

The sports betting plot is used in Back to the Future Part II when Biff gets his hands on a collection of sports results throughout the years and uses the DeLorean to give it to his younger self. Of course, the money ultimately leads to his ruin, as in Primer . Though Primer is one of the most intricate and scientifically accurate time travel movies, its biggest conflicts can be boiled down to a disagreement about how to use the machine and the money that's made from it. The main characters want to make money but take different approaches.

Back to the Future Part II

Taking up where the first movie left off, Back to the Future Part II sees Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to the year 2015, where their efforts to fix the future end up causing even bigger problems as Biff Tannen wreaks havoc across the timeline with the help of a stolen sports almanac. Martin J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd return in Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's second installment of their iconic trilogy.

4 Characters Encounter Multiple Versions Of Themselves

Avengers: endgame (2019); looper (2012).

It's aptly put in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that if a person sees another version of themselves who claims to be from the future, they would believe they were losing their grip on reality.

It's aptly put in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that if a person sees another version of themselves who claims to be from the future, they would believe they were losing their grip on reality. While this is sometimes the case in time travel content, certain movies create universes with multiple explanations for these events. In the case of Avengers: Endgame , when the Avengers go back in time to collect the infinity stones, Captain America must fight a younger version of himself, and the younger man believes his dopplegänger must be the creation of an evil entity.

This circumvents the need to over-explain the paradox and allows the movie to have fun with the multiple Steve Rogers'. Conversely, in Looper , Joe is aware that another version of himself is out there, and it's his younger self's job to kill his older self who's sent back in time. This expands upon the initial questions of the difference between a person at the beginning of their life and the end, and whether or not an individual is the same across multiple timelines. Though the audience knows old Joe and young Joe are the same man, they’re vastly different.

Avengers: Endgame

The penultimate chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Endgame , marks the finale of the first three phases of the MCU and acts as part two of Avengers: Infinity War. With Earth's Mightiest Heroes failing to stop Thanos from wiping out half of all existence, the heroes discover one final chance to make things right. Journeying back through space and time, the surviving Avengers attempt to stop Thanos before all is lost.

Even the most beloved of sci-fi movies break their own time travel rules, prioritizing plot and impactful scenes over maintaining consistent lore.

3 The Characters Are Stuck In A Time Loop

Groundhog day (1993); edge of tomorrow (2014).

Though the best time loop movies could be considered their own genre, they still fall under the umbrella of time travel. A character getting stuck in a time loop is a tactic employed to be the thrust of entire movies as well as standalone episodes of TV shows . Sometimes it's used for comedic effect, in the case of Groundhog Day , a film that sees a curmudgeonly man begin to find the everyday joys in life after he's forced to relive the same day. This inspired the recent comedy, Palm Springs , which was lauded as a great update of the genre.

However, in Tom Cruise's adventure film, Edge of Tomorrow , the stakes are much greater and the fate of the world hangs in the balance of his character getting the loop right. The introduction of the time loop is an incredible twist, and the stakes are maintained by having Cruise and his co-star, Emily Blunt, gain new skills and insight into their battle as the day repeats itself. Though it's quite brutal, as Cruise's William relives his own death, it's never boring no matter how many loops there are.

Groundhog Day

In Groundhog Day, the arrogant weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) finds himself living the exact same day over and over for what feels like an eternity. To cope with his curse, he learns a variety of skills in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and tries to earn the heart of his colleague Rita Hanson (Andie MacDowell) while he adapts to the time loop.

2 The Events Couldn’t Have Happened If They Didn’t Travel In Time / Chicken And Egg Paradox

Interstellar (2014); the terminator (1984).

It's only later that Cooper realizes he has been controlling the events from the beginning.

In both Interstellar and The Terminator the film's story and the fate of the future are predicated on time travel having already taken place. Cooper is given the coordinates and his daughter receives the equation because he decides to leave Earth, but he only makes this decision because of the messages from his future self. It's only later that Cooper realizes he has been controlling the events from the beginning. Similarly, in The Terminator , the Terminator is sent back to prevent Sarah Connor from giving birth to her son, John.

However, the man who was sent back in time to protect Sarah, Kyle Reese, is John's father. Sarah conceives John while the Terminator hunts her and Kyle. In both cases, all of the major beats of the film could not have happened without each other and without the timeline getting disrupted. This begs the question of what action needed to occur first for everything to play out as it does. For films like these, the audience must suspend their disbelief and accept that time travel inevitably creates these paradoxes.

Interstellar

From Christopher Nolan, Interstellar imagines a future where the Earth is plagued by a life-threatening famine, and a small team of astronauts is sent out to find a new prospective home among the stars. Despite putting the mission first, Coop (Matthew McConaughey) races against time to return home to his family even as they work to save mankind back on Earth.

1 An Eccentric Scientist Creates The Machine

Back to the future (1985); rick and morty (2013–present).

While tropes and story structure are constantly revisited in time travel and sci-fi movies, the repetition of character archetypes is just as common. The "mad scientist" character is familiar to any audience member, but Doc Brown in Back to the Future created a new version that has been copied and paid homage to many times. Rick and Morty owes a lot to Back to the Future , as the satirical TV series was conceptualized because of the 1985 film. Having an older, eccentric scientist traverse time and space with a reluctant teenager is a great blueprint for any movie or show.

These two pieces of content are hardly the only instance of a reclusive scientist being the one to finally crack the code of time travel. In early books and texts that speculate about time travel, it's a misunderstood but brilliant inventor who keeps going and pushes the boundaries of reality even when nobody believes in him. Luckily, in Back to the Future and Rick and Morty , the scientists have close friends who serve as strong companions on their adventures.

Back to the Future

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown. In 1955, he meets his parents when they were his age, and must step in to make sure they wind up together before he gets back to 1985.