Star Trek / Tropes I to L

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

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I

• Identical Grandson: This naturally pops up a couple of times in a franchise that spans over 300 years of in-universe time.
  • Besides Data and his two brothers, Brent Spiner also played their creator/father, Noonian Soong, in an episode of TNG. Fast-forward (rewind??) to Enterprise and Spiner appears in a few episodes as Noonian's ancestor Arik Soong. He's a geneticist with a shaky grasp on ethics, so one wonders if perhaps he cloned himself… And then Spiner shows up in Picard as Noonian’s never-before-mentioned human son Altan Soong, and as Dr. Adam Soong (quite possibly the first Soong of them all) in the 21st century. So apparently all Soong men just look identical. There are shades of this with the girls, too, as Altan and his colleagues created several android women who share a face with Adam's test tube Designer Baby daughter Kore Soong (played by the same actress, Isa Briones).
  • Worf's actor, Michael Dorn, appeared in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as a Klingon colonel also named Worf. It's never confirmed onscreen, but Word of God affirms the character is supposed to be Worf's grandfather (retroactively making Worf a Dead Guy Junior).
  • Captain Janeway and her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel are both played by Kate Mulgrew in the flashback episode "11:59"
• In Spite of a Nail: The Mirror Universe as seen throughout the franchise has a radically different history to the main universe, yet somehow very specific similarities pop up constantly between the two.
• Indubitably Uninteresting Individual: The Vulcans appear to wear this hat, as their culture is based around logic, emotional control, spartanism, mentally-challenging-but-boring activities, and vegetarianism. Their voices also do not change emotionally. On the other hand, there are a few Vulcans that resisted these ideas. Although, for the normal individual, it is a VERY bad idea to let one's emotions go unchecked, as Vulcan emotions are very strong and can easily get out of hand. Plus, when a Vulcan loses emotional control or shows a hint of emotion, it is often a bad sign that either something is wrong, either with them, with the situation, or that they are dead-serious about something.
  • Some people seem to find the (fictional) future of humanity in Star Trek: The Next Generation much like this:
    • Unless something is wrong aboard ship, on most starships including the Enterprise-D, the corridors, hallways, and crew quarters are spick-and-span spotless. This, combined with its design, has led some people to compare the Enterprise to a glorified cruise ship. Even Scotty, in the episode "Relics", points this out.
    Scotty: "Good lord man, where have you put me?"
    Ensign: "These are standard guest quarters sir, I can try and find something bigger if you want".
    Scotty: "Bigger? In my day, even an admiral would notta had such quarters aboard a starship!"
    • Design documents from when the show was still in the planning stages show this even worse, with a decentralized bridge that more-or-less resembles a retro-futuristic shopping mall.
    • Most music selections are from composers like Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. (Although Riker likes jazz, but Worf likes Klingon opera).
    • Most selections of literature are based in vintage-looking books.
    • Games are mostly board-based in the strategy category, or simplistic.
    • Particularly egregious, in the first season, children as young as 8-10 are shown to be taught CALCULUS (a normally middle-to-high-school subject!)
    • Food, although rarely non-nutritional, is served in neat servings.
    • On the other hand, this is semi-averted with Data. He was built that way. He does not need to consume food. His off-duty activities include reading poems, studying schematics, painting, being company for his pet cat Spot, and playing music whether on violin or just listening to it. Despite this, his exploration of humanity, his desire to be more human, and his superhuman abilities makes him interesting. Also averted in that he does find acting in certain stories, such as Sherlock Holmes or The Tempest, appealing.
    • Furthermore, in a cancelled spin-off called "Star Trek: Federation", the United Federation of Planets becomes this, losing a lot of member worlds in the process.
  • In the episode "Someone to Watch Over Me", the one-time alien race that Voyager encounters, known as the Kadi, have this as their all-encompassing hat, even moreso compared to the Vulcans. They are actually offended by anything that does not match their bland way of life. The ambassador the ship takes on in exchange for mineral negotiation averts this, as he wants to take the chance to sample ''EVERYTHING'' that he can. (Including hitting on Seven of Nine, who doesn't take well to it).
    • Lieutenant Tuvok, the Vulcan tactical officer of the bridge crew, manages to be just as bad, if not worse. (possibly because of the quality of the writing at the time) For him, he somehow manages to be a hardass to he rest of the crew by standing aloof from them, insulting their emotions and culture, and taking the fun out of their ideas by being literate, logical, and socially distant ALL THE TIME; and he gets seriously called out for it not once, but TWICE, with other smaller callouts peppered throughout the series.
      (From the episode "Flashback") Sulu: "Mr. Tuvok, if you're going to remain on my ship, you're going to have learn how to appreciate a joke. And don't tell me Vulcans don't have a sense of humor; because I know better".
      
      (From the episode "Alter Ego") Marayna: "But what about you, Tuvok? Will you always be alone?"
• 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.
• Inevitably Broken Rule: If anyone brings up the Prime Directive in an episode of any Star Trek series, it will either be broken or cause a lot of conflict over whether or not to break it.
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Patterns of Force," a Federation historian shattered the Prime Directive when he used a developing alien culture to create what was essentially a fascist dictatorship with a more benign ideology. He failed in the most disastrous way imaginable, as his experimental society eventually became just as racist and genocidal as the real Nazi Germany.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Pen Pals," the Enterprise violates the Directive to save a planet that is breaking down. However, it was already broken by Data prior to this, as he had been communicating with a young girl on the planet, which is how they found out about the problem in the first place.
  • In Star Trek: Voyager, the episode "Thirty Days" involves Tom Paris breaking the Prime Directive by protecting the huge ocean the aliens live in despite their refusing that protection. He is subsequently jailed for that decision.
  • In Star Trek Into Darkness, Kirk and Spock violate the Prime Directive by preventing a volcanic eruption that would have wiped out the planet's inhabitants. Spock seems overly obsessed with not leting the natives see them interfering, seemingly misunderstanding the point of the Directive, but regardless Kirk loses his command over it.
  • Pike elects to ignore this rule in SNW's pilot, to prevent two warring factions annihilating each other with technology they were only able to acquire because Starfleet had a huge space battle in their backyard. Fortunately he gets away with it because the battle in question is highly classified, and the Federation's government can't prosecute him without bringing it up.
  • Some episodes imply that there is a loophole exempting planets that are contacted by other nations. This would cover many of the Original Series lapses; a lot of the primitive planets the Enterprise visits are caught up in the Federation/Klingon conflict and it's reasonable to assume First Contact was made by the Klingons. The Next Generation episode "Devil's Due" shows a bucolic planet that's highly unlikely to have developed warp drive, Pentax II, that's in full communication with the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Exposition within the episode explicitly states that the Klingons made First Contact on Pentax II.
• 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.
• Insistent Terminology: Back in the days when "geek" was a bonafide insult rather than a badge of honor, fans considered "Trekkie" insulting and belittling. It was Trekker, thank you very much. As times changed and being a nerd became cool, the diminutive came to be embraced as more like a term of endearment.
• Intelligent Gerbil: Lt. M'Ress, the felinoid alien from the Animated Series; the Gorn/Cardassians/Xindi, basically Lizard Folk; the Bolians are based loosely on dolphins.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: While almost certainly all non-canon there have also been several licensed crossovers with other franchises, including X-Men, Planet of the Apes and Doctor Who.
• Internal Deconstruction: Several of the later series deconstructed the Federation's depiction as a utopian society resolving social wrongs on other planets, something played straight throughout the early series.
  • Deep Space Nine took place partially from the perspective of various non-Starfleet citizens who viewed the Federation in a hostile light for trying to change their ways of life with no regard for their own opinions, and since the titular space station was, well, stationary Sisko and his crew had to face the consequences for whatever changes they did enact.
  • Lower Decks takes place from the perspective of ensigns on the crew of a ship generally in charge of taking care of whatever mess Starfleet has left behind, and thus takes a rather critical look at the habit of abandoning planets after supposedly "fixing" them. Several planets from previous series are shown to have either fallen back into their old ways or to be pissed at the Federation for leaving them to deal with the consequences of their meddling, and the Federation's negligence results in the Pakleds becoming a serious threat.
  • Multiple later series also dismantled the idea of the Federation being a Perfect Pacifist People. Deep Space Nine and Discovery prominently feature Section 31, an amoral black ops division that shows the Federation has just as many skeletons in the closet as its enemies, and similarly demonstrate that it can be just as ruthless. Picard starkly shows the consequences of Starfleet's imperialism and demonstrates it can be just as prejudiced as any of its enemies. And Lower Decks shows that for every heroic idealist serving in Starfleet, there are just as many corrupt, venal bureaucrats more interested in their own careers than actually serving Starfleet's ideals and are willing to screw over other officers for their own ambitions.
• Insane Admiral:
  • Probably the Trope Codifier. If a visiting guest, alien enemy or a spatial anomaly wasn't behind the Problem of the Week, it was almost certainly one of these.
  • Writer Ron Moore (responsible for many of these types in the TNG era) joked that "something must be in the water at Federation Headquarters". Lower Decks, on the other hand, explains that the reasons so many admirals go down 500 miles of bad road is the result of frustration with their careers hitting a wall and being stuck behind a desk with so many other flag officers jockeying for attention. Thus, they create ill-advised vanity projects to ensure they won't be forgotten, but inevitably these go south and result in a fiasco.
• 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).
• Interspecies Romance: A staple of the show, and interestingly many species are genetically-compatible and can produce viable offspring, even if their anatomy and biochemistry are dissimilar. Several main characters such as Spock, Deanna Troi and B'Elanna Torres are Half-Human Hybrids born from marriages between humans and aliens.
• Inverse Dialogue/Death Rule: The "instant vaporization" effectiveness of phasers is inversely proportional to the importance of the character they're being fired at.
• Irony: Episodes of Star Trek series that originally aired between 1987-2005 ended with a Paramount Television logo with a jingle that sounded like the theme to rival franchise Star Wars (It's actually a re-arrangement of "Paramount on Parade".) Even more ironic, Star Wars producers Lucasfilm did a film series that was originally distributed by Paramount, Indiana Jones, complete with a TV series made during the period where Paramount Television's logo had that Star Wars-esque jingle.
• It Will Never Catch On: Gene Roddenberry's first pilot episode didn't sell. He had to recast the Captain and shoot it all over again, and it was still smoked by Gunsmoke's ratings.
  • invoked The Original Series was, famously, Un-Cancelled after college students had a chance to catch up with it in reruns.
  • Ironically, this later success ended up jeopardizing the series' future. When news hit of TNG, fans were up in arms, and the original cast members weren't shy about voicing their displeasure either. The show flailed about for two seasons trying—and failing—to distinguish itself from its parent series, recycling plots and characters, having actors defect and leave the show, and nearly losing Patrick Stewart (who saw the shadows lengthening and opted not to renew his contract). Were it not for the cliffhanger ending in "The Best of Both Worlds", TNG might not have been renewed and the franchise would have ended there.

J

• Just a Machine: Star Trek in general draws a distinction between the special cases like Data and the Doctor, and the ubiquitous ship computers responsible for getting everything done in the background. Despite the fact that ship computers can pass the Turing Test with ease, act on their own initiative, and occasionally even display signs of emotion, this is never investigated or even mentioned in-story: ship computers are always just-machines and limited to being background elements (this is doubly notable since some of the special case characters, such as the Doctor, run on a ship computer). A.I. is a fairly infrequent thing in the Star Trek 'Verse, but recent addition Star Trek: Picard shows the Federation was beginning to use android workers… only to turn around and ban them when things went horribly wrong.

L

• Lacerating Love Language: Klingons are known to get rather violent in their courtship rituals. Post-coital trips to the Infirmary are not uncommon, and a broken clavicle on the wedding night is considered to be a blessing on the marriage.
  Worf: [Mighty Roar] That is how the Klingon lures a mate.
  Wesley: [Beat] Are you telling me to go yell at Salia?
  Worf: No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... [smiles, lost in thought] and claw at you...
  Wesley: What does the man do?
  Worf: [Still smiling] He reads love poetry... [Regains his stoicism] He ducks a lot.
• Large Ham: Pops up a lot, but becomes near-certain whenever a Klingon is on screen.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: The gold uniform worn by Kirk (and later, Archer and Pike).
• A Lesson in Defeat: The Kobayashi Maru test is an Unwinnable Training Simulation designed specifically to invoke this, as it cannot be beaten without cheating.
• Legacy Vessel Naming: Has its own page.
• Licensed Pinball Tables: Several, all collected here.
• Loads and Loads of Races: The Milky Way of the Star Trek universe is a very busy place. Memory Alpha lists 512 humanoid species and 97 non-humanoid ones.
• Logic Bomb: Though there were precedents in pulp SF, Kirk did this to no fewer than three computers.
  • 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 franchise 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 throughout the different series. Subverted in the infamous Risa episodes.
• Ludd Was Right: Zig-Zagged, depending on which show, which writer, etc., like many other topics. Trek likes to explore every side of this issue. Overall, technology is depicted in a positive light, but it's usually made clear that great technological advancements must also be accompanied by strong moral responsibility. Plenty of people in Federation society (e.g. Picard's dad and the community where Owo grew up) choose to live a simple life without modern tech. However, this lifestyle is portrayed as negative when it is forced on others (e.g., the colony leader from DS9's “Paradise”, Picard's dad again). Starfleet is depicted as heroic while using machinery to heal the sick and explore the stars; the Borg are portrayed as pure evil while using machinery to augment their bodies. The Ba'ku are portrayed as sympathetic for giving up advanced technology to become Space Amish despite exiling any of their own who disagree. Ultimately, Star Trek never settles on a definitive answer but does err towards Ludd's side of things, with many main characters having hobbies that involve working with their hands, and technology that lacks a human element (well for given values of “human”) is usually shown to be harmful.
• Ludicrous Precision: The Vulcans are prone to this, as is Commander Data.

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