Video Game / Star Trek: 25th Anniversary

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary was the first Point-And-Click Adventure Game based on the Star Trek franchise, released in 1992 by Interplay. The game, based on The Original Series, combines classic Point-And-Click gameplay with furious space combat, and features pretty much every staple the series had to offer.

The game is comprised of a series of seven "episodes" (see list), each of which is a stand-alone scenario. After receiving their mission from Starfleet and arriving at their destination, the principal characters (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the obligatory Red Shirt) beam down to investigate, and have to resolve the situation with skill and cunning. The use of inventory items, Dialogue Trees and standard actions is similar to many adventure games of the time. Each mission also has a space battle either at the beginning, end or sometimes in the middle - a fairly simple (though sometimes extremely unfair) Faux-3D simulator played from the bridge of the Enterprise.

What perhaps makes 25th Anniversary stand out among other Star Trek games is its ability to capture the feel of the original series in pretty much every aspect. Missions begin with a fly-by of the enterprise and the name of the episode in yellow Star Trek font. Space battles are accompanied by the fondly-remembered sounds of photon torpedoes and phasers, and you must use your bridge crew members constantly throughout the battle to manage your energy and repair the ship. The ship's computer is ready to provide you with lots of background information about the ships, planets and peoples you'll meet. On planetside, your Red Shirt is likely to die first if you're not careful, Spock and McCoy will constantly banter with each other (and need to be "used" to perform actions suitable for them, like McCoy healing people or Spock examining machinery), and Kirk's particular method of oratory is prevalent throughout the entire game.

To make things even better, the entire cast of the original series gave their voices to the CD-ROM edition. This finishing touch helps bring this game closer to the experience of actually playing Kirk and his teammates in a Trek episode.

Though the episodes are not connected to each other in terms of plot, players are still given a score at the end of the game based on their performance throughout. Most importantly, the player has to take care to conduct diplomacy and seek the peaceful resolution for each episode. In particular, the death of the Red Shirt (though a staple of the series) must be avoided to achieve a perfect score.

25th Anniversary is still considered one of the best Star Trek games made, despite its final mission which consisted primarily of an incredibly difficult space battle. For the CD-ROM edition, that mission was replaced with an actual, very long adventure — followed by an incredibly difficult space battle and occasionally contained a serious bug.

A year later in 1993, Interplay reused the same Point-and-Click engine to produce a sequel, called Judgment Rites. In many regards, Judgment Rites is superior to 25th Annivesary, including both plot and gameplay. As The Other Wiki states, many fans consider these two games to comprise the fourth and fifth years of the Enterprise's five-year mission (since the original series ran for only three seasons).

Interplay also released a version of this game for the Nintendo Entertainment System that is vastly different than this version, which the crew of the Enterprise seek to return to Federation space after a anomaly launches them into unknown space (though certainly not as far as the Voyager - they're actually pretty close to Romulan Space)

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This work contains examples of the following tropes:

• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Comes into play in "That Old Devil Moon", when the Enterprise can't warn the government of an industrial-age world that their own moon is about to launch a nuclear attack on them.
• Almost Dead Guy: Brittany Marata, the last surviving crew-member of the Republic, dies moments after Kirk finds her in sickbay and just as she's done saying her Last Words.
• Alternative Number System:
  • The aliens who left the derelict in "Another Fine Mess" had six eyes and six fingers on each hand, apparently leading them to count and build in a base-6 system - although their mathematics don't really come into play during the mission itself.
  • The ancient Lucrs used a base-3 system, and several of their numbers were considered sacred. Learning those sacred numbers in advance is crucial to completing the mission.
• Ambiguous Robots: The Nauian defense mechanism in "Demon World" reportedly creates "organic constructs" to scare off intruders, but the severed hand of one of those constructs is visibly mechanical (and is at one point repaired by Spock on an electrician's workbench).
• Ancient Astronauts: Quetzalcoatl tried to be this to the ancient Aztecs, teaching them his philosophy of brotherly love. He failed.
• Apocalypse How:
  • The moon of the Nauian homeworld Pollux V broke apart, showering the planet below with meteorites that changed the climate and triggered a severe ice-age. The Nauians had to put themselves into a thousand years of stasis to survive it. Those who didn't gradually became feral until they devolved into mere animals.
  • The Lucrs and Sofs destroyed their entire civilization in nuclear warfare, blasting themselves back thousands of years. They also blasted their moon apart, knocking the remains out of orbit. They spend thousands of years building back up to an industrial age, and are only saved from a second apocalypse thanks to intervention from the Enterprise.
• Apocalyptic Log: The logs of the U.S.S. Republic, describing how the ship encountered what they thought was the U.S.S. Enterprise and contacted it for some help with repairs, only for this supposed Enterprise to suddenly open fire on them.
• Asshole Victim: Harry Mudd is back, and he's being chased around the sector by Space Pirates who want to steal his merchandise. Even Kirk isn't sure whether protecting Harry from his own behavior is a good idea, and has to be forced into it by law (Harry being a citizen of the Federation).
• Being God Is Hard: After hearing what transpired with the Aztecs after he had left them, and what happened to the Klingons on Hrakkour, Quetzalcoatl realizes that his powers have led to nothing good. He decides to have them removed.
• Big Damn Heroes: The Enterprise arrives just in time to save the day several times throughout the game.
  • This starts in the second episode, "Hijacked", with the Enterprise arriving to resolve a Hostage Situation.
  • Continues in "Love's Labor Jeopardized", with the Enterprise arriving to save an entire station, Kirk's Old Flame, and even the Romulans!
  • Finally, in "Another Fine Mess", the Enterprise arrives in time to stop a pirate attack on the civilian ship — only to regret it when the ship turns out to belong to Harry Mudd.
  • Subverted in the last episode, "Vengeance", when The Enterprise arrives 12 hours too late to find the Republic nearly destroyed. To make matter worse, the Republic's crewmembers died thinking that the Enterprise had attacked them.
• Black Site: The Romulans are convinced that the Ark-7 is this, built to develop biological weapons to be used against the Romulan Empire. Kirk must convince them, by his actions, that the Oroborus Virus was developed completely by accident.
• Booby Trap: Multiple, given the underhanded tactics of the enemies involved.
  • The Elasi that have hijacked the U.S.S. Masada in the second episode put all of their hostages into a cell in the ship's brig and plant a bomb inside, hooking it up to the cell's forcefield controls. If you fail to disarm it, the bomb will detonate on trying to open the cell, killing everyone inside.
  • In the episode "The Feathered Serpent", the Klingons throw Kirk and his team into a sort of "test of innocence", which at one point includes a door locked with a code. However the Klingon Admiral who devised the test wants to make sure Kirk won't complete the test alive, so he had a second program planted into the lock which would kill anyone trying to open the door using the correct code.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: The severed hand of the fake Klingon in "Demon World" is the key to the door leading into the facility it was guarding. The hand is apparently mechanical, not biological, but is still the only way to get inside.
• Bottle Episode: The final mission on the CD-ROM version plays with the trope, taking place in a near identical "sister ship" to the Enterprise. The subversive aspect is that, since the game never actually showed us any part of the Enterprise other than its bridge and transporter room, all of the scenes in this add-on mission had to be made entirely from scratch. In this way, they both played the trope straight from the TV series' perspective, and fully subverted it from the game's perspective, at the same time.
• Brought Down to Normal: Quetzalcoatl decides to have this done to himself voluntarily, after realizing that his teachings have failed to help anyone - and have in fact been the cause of so much death throughout history. Fortunately for him, the procedure simply requires the removal of one of his glands.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Elasi stupidly do this several times during the game, threatening and attacking the Enterprise (that clearly outclasses their ships in both firepower and combat expertise). It's only when they use underhanded tactics, or get a replica Constitution-class starship on their side, that they actually pose any real threat.
• Call-Forward: Doctor Carol Marcus is shown working on what could be considered a precursor to the Genesis Device, a torpedo-like device with its "warhead" full of extremely varied microscopic life, intended to kickstart the development of a biosphere on a dead planet.
• Cavalry Betrayal: After a prolonged battle with two cloak-capable pirate ships, the wounded U.S.S. Republic encounters what seems to be the Enterprise - much to its relief - and hails the ship to ask for Scotty's help with the repairs. The Enterprise instead opens fire and nearly destroys the Republic.
• Chemically-Induced Insanity: While messing with the alien ship's medical machinery, Mudd pulls out a random canister which he drops on the floor accidentally. The vapors from the canister drive Mudd into a temporary violent paranoid panic attack. The only way to subdue him is to use Spock's Vulcan nerve pinch. Any attempt to subdue him by force results in violence and a reduction in your score.
  Harry Mudd: You're all space aliens! You're little grey men from inside the hollow Earth! You want to experiment on my body parts! You'll mind control me! Kidnap my children! Dissect my dog!
  McCoy: I think I liked him better when he was less delirious.
• Commonality Connection: Kirk speculates that the newly-revived Nauian culture and the Federation settlers who've made their home on Pollux V would get along great, given that both parties are strongly religious and could "enjoy theological discussions together".
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI-controlled starships can adjust their velocity and heading at speeds no human could ever hope to match. On lower difficulties this is an occasional, minor annoyance, but on the highest difficulty setting it means that when an enemy ship manages to lock into pursuing the Enterprise from behind, you won't have a prayer of shaking them off, all but guaranteeing your imminent death.
• Computer Virus:
  • The Enterprise is infected with one when it scans the base on Scythe in "That Old Devil Moon". The virus shuts down the transporter, tractor beam, and phaser system - the exact systems crucial to the mission. The Enterprise crew finally counters the virus by attacking it with a different virus.
  • In the same mission, one of the alien missile launch computers is infected with a virus that eats up its processing power and causes it to calculate the wrong launch window. To win the mission, Kirk must infect the other launch computer with the same virus by hooking them up together - causing both computers to calculate the wrong launch window and fire their missiles harmlessly into the sun.
• Con Man: Good old Harry Mudd is back. This time he's peddling alien artifacts as his own invention, lies to the Federation about the value of a salvageable derelict he's found, and tries to shirk any responsibility for all of the damage he causes while doing so.
• Continuity Nod: From "Another Fine Mess", referencing Mudd's old episodes:
  Harry Mudd: Kirk, my friend. When have I ever given you the slightest bit of trouble?
  Spock: There was the time that you tried to commandeer the Enterprise to sell wives to miners. And then there was the time you stole the Enterprise to exchange us for androids who were holding you prisoner.
  Harry Mudd: Perhaps there have been a few minor misunderstandings.
• Contrived Coincidence: Brother Stephen, one of the colonists on Pollux V, has managed to acquire a small collection of interesting junk he'd found in the few years they've been on the planet. Among these random items is what seems to be nothing more than a chunk of mineral ore that just so happens to be the key that turns off the machine defending the massive alien cryo-chambers beneath the mountain. Lucky he found it (and for some reason decided to keep it), otherwise the planet would've been plagued by monsters forever, attacking both the colonists and the revived Nauians.
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: Harry Mudd's tiny ship is chased by Space Pirates. When the Enterprise arrives to fight them off, Harry takes the opportunity to slip away without even a thank-you.
• Corrupt Church: According to Quetzalcoatl, he only taught the Aztecs his philosophy of peace. After he left Earth, they subverted his message and started sacrificing each other to his name.
• Darker and Edgier: Most of the missions wouldn't be out of place in TOS, but the CD version of the final mission... put it this way, it makes the wreck of the Constellation in the TV episode "The Doomsday Machine" look tame. It starts with Kirk's horribly injured former Academy classmate (and it's implied former girlfriend) dying as she accuses Kirk of murdering the entire crew of the Republic. Then you get to spend the rest of the mission trawling through the wrecked ship, and seeing first-hand the utter carnage that resulted.
• Defeat as Backstory: Dr. Ies Bredell is holding a grudge against Kirk after Kirk foiled his attempts at some undisclosed Mad Science scheme, many years ago.
• Detonation Moon: In "That Old Devil Moon", the asteroid "Scythe" turns out to be the remnants of the Proxtrian moon that was blown out of orbit in the same nuclear exchange that devastated the civilization on the planet below. Its return into close proximity of the planet triggers a nuclear launch facility that still exists on its surface.
• Distress Call: It wouldn't be Star Trek without them. Technically speaking, every mission starts with one, or at least the suspicious absence of communications with some Starfleet ship or asset.
• Doing Research:
  • Examine everything. Discuss the problem with your teammates. Read and follow up on entries in the ship's computer. Discover and enact a solution. That's almost the entire game right there, when it all boils down to it.
  • The mission "Love's Labor Jeopardized" is almost entirely this. The team must read the scientists' log entries to understand the Oroborus Virus and then conduct biochemical research to find a cure for the virus themselves. The only other thing you need to do is to actually cure the Romulans.
  • In "That Old Devil Moon", failing to research every possible aspect of the Lucrs and their culture on the Enterprise computer will put you in an Unwinnable by Design situation as soon as you beam down to the planet.
• Doomsday Device: A race in nuclear warfare set one up on their moon. It didn't go off. A millennium later, when they worked their way up from the stone age back to radio technology, the moon base picked up the transmissions and rearmed itself, ready to land the blow for good. Fortunately, there's a virus in the system which you can have Kirk and the gang use to infect the missile launching system's timing and thus have the missiles launch harmlessly into space.
• Door of Doom: Two such doors appear in the game.
  • The first is the door to the Nauian suspended-animation facility on Pollux V, in the episode "Demon World". The large, imposing metal door deep in the belly of the mountain scared the miners who found it so profoundly that they declared it as a "gateway to hell". It helps that a mine collapse occurred right as the door was found.
  • Another gigantic door appears on the asteroid Scythe in the episode "The Old Devil Moon". For extra doom value, it is the only terrain feature for miles around, is pock-marked by meteorite strikes, and in front of it is a crowd of long-headed statues directly facing the door. The Lucrs who built it were very fond of building excessively-large religious monuments, and the nuclear missile base on Scythe was apparently one of them.
• Dynamic Entry: To get the maximum score in the second episode, "Hijacked", it's necessary to beam into the bridge of the Masada and take the hijackers completely by surprise. Strangely enough, even if you knock out the energy field blocking access to the bridge and walk in through the door you can still get the exact same ending - but will not get the high score for some reason.
• The Easy Way or the Hard Way: Kirk threatens Mudd over the legal ramifications of his actions throughout "Another Fine Mess", but is willing to overlook them if Mudd donates 5 of every alien artifact found aboard his legally-claimed alien salvage to a Federation academic institute.
• Eerily Out-of-Place Object: While assisting a Federation colony in the episode "Demon World", Kirk and his team are suddenly ambushed by three Klingons, completely out of the blue. Their inexplicable appearance raises a lot of questions, but sure enough, it quickly turns out that these were not real Klingons, but organic constructs designed to exploit the Starfleet officers' greatest fears.
• Elemental Embodiment: Of a scientific kind (as per the Star Trek idiom); A creature made of pure lightning is encountered deep in the mines of Hrakkour. It is defeated by causing it to short-circuit.
• Enforced Cold War: The Organian Treaty comes into play during Feathered Serpent, when the Organians directly intervene in the situation developing around Quetzecoatl and announce that he must be extradited from the Federation to the Klingon Empire, much to Kirk's chagrin.
• Evil Knockoff: The Vardaine-built Enterprise-2 is this to the U.S.S. Enterprise. This naturally culminates in a Mirror Match at the end of the game. Fortunately for our Enterprise, its skilled crew is the deciding factor.
• False Friend: Planet Vardaine is a member of the Federation, but is highly reluctant to adopt Federation ethics or agree to Federation oversight. Eventually, the Vardaine start building their own Constitution-class starships in the hope of defeating the Federation.
• Fight Magnet: Harry Mudd turns himself into one when he starts selling alien artifacts around the sector without realizing that they can be combined into weapons.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The mock battle between the Enterprise and the Republic at the very start of the game foreshadows the events of the final mission.
  • Carol Marcus and her team on Ark-7 are exploring the origins of life. At the center of their lab is a large device that looks like a torpedo, containing millions of unique lifeforms. What use could such a device have?
• Freak Lab Accident: It's not entirely clear how the experiments on the Ark-7, originally designed to study the origins of life, managed to create a Synthetic Plague - but they did.
• Future Primitive: The Nauians who did not put themselves in suspended animation before the ice-age began remained outside on the surface, and over millennia they became feral and eventually devolved into cat-sized reptilian animals.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The Vardaine are reportedly dabbling in eugenics in an attempt to create genetically-superior members of their species. This is cited as enough of a reason for the Federation to consider an ethics violation investigation, which the Vardaine refuse to allow. In the sequel, Judgment Rites, we discover that their project was indeed successful.
• Genocide from the Inside: In "The Feathered Serpent" Kirk discovers that Klingon admiral Vlict had erased all life from his own family's planet Hrakkour after learning that the inhabitants had been "corrupted" with a peaceful philosophy.
• Ghost Ship: The Enterprise discovers Harry Mudd staking a claim on one of these.
• Healing Herb: The objective of the first fetch-quest in the very first mission is to collect Laraxian berries, which grow wild nearby. It's needed in order to synthesize a simple anti-bacterial medicine that, for some reason, is not available on the Enterprise.
• Hellgate: This is pretty much how the religious settlers on Pollux V describe the large metal door they had uncovered down in their hafnium mines. It turns out to just be a big scary door.
• Hostage Situation:
  • Mission 2, "Hijacked", where Elasi pirates do this to a Federation starship. There are several possible endings, and only one where everyone survives.
  • The very next mission also features a hostage situation of sorts, with Romulans holding a Federation research station and its crew captive. However in this case, they only intend to hold it until other Romulan ships arrive to destroy the whole thing. The trope is then Subverted when Kirk has to race against time to cure the hostage-taking Romulans before they die of a virus.
• How Unscientific!: The settlers on Pollux V claim that they have found a "gateway to hell" and have since been attacked by demons multiple times. Naturally Spock is highly skeptical of this, and even Kirk can express his doubts. During the mission it quickly becomes clear that the demons are organic constructs deliberately designed to scare people away.
• Human Popsicle: In the first mission, "Demon World", the Nauians placed themselves into stasis to survive an apocalypse. A telepathic computer reads the minds of any intruder to their stasis facility, quickly manufacturing robots that look like the intruder's most fearsome enemy to try and drive him away.
• I Know What You Fear: The Nauian stasis facility is protected by a computer that can read the minds of anyone who approaches, discover their greatest fears, and create artificial monsters correspondingly to drive the intruders away. For the newly-arrived religious settlers of the planet, the creatures were demons. For the Starfleet officers, they were simply armed Klingon soldiers.
• Informing the Fourth Wall: Kirk protests thusly, even when you order another crew-member to carry out the task.
• Instant Sedation: Despite the fact that TLTDH gas will only cause Spock to say silly things, it will instantly knock out all of the Romulans on the Ark-7's lower decks as soon as it is introduced to the ventilation system. It may help that the Romulans had already been dying of a virus, and were probably more susceptible. Or maybe the gas simply affects Romulans differently than Vulcans.
• Ironic Echo: The game begins with a mock battle between the Enterprise and its sister ship the Republic, which the Enterprise wins easily. In the very last mission, the Republic is actually attacked and defeated by a replica of the Enterprise, followed by the Enterprise itself fighting against its own replica plus two pirate vessels.
• It's Up to You: You get a Red Shirt in every single landing mission, but they never do anything. Given that their only job as security officers is to fight off threats, you'd expect the Red Shirt to at least draw his phaser when the party is accosted by such a threat - but that never happens. Instead, Kirk has to shoot the threat himself every single time to protect the Red Shirt from being shot! Failure to do so can cost a lot of points, too!
• Justified Tutorial: The very first thing you do in the game is a mock battle between the Enterprise and its sister ship the Republic, giving you a chance to prepare for the battles ahead without risking the ship.
• Kangaroo Court: In "Feathered Serpent", Vlict Kenka sets one up for Quetzalcoatl in an attempt to quickly find him guilty for the genocide on Hrakkour. This is meant to cover Kenka's own ass for perpetrating that genocide himself. Kirk only barely manages to convince Kenka to let his away-team go through a trial by ordeal instead.
• Knockout Gas: TLTDH (tantalum bi-lithium thalo-dihydroxide) is a laughing gas that affects Romulans and Vulcans. In "Love's Labor Jeopardized" it must be used to knock out the Romulans on the Ark-7.
• Last Words: Brittany Marata uses her dying breath to accuse Kirk of killing the crew of the Republic.
• Late to the Tragedy: Starfleet receives a Distress Call from the Republic, indicating that it is under attack. The Enterprise arrives at its location 12 hours later, only to find that the ship is very badly damaged and adrift, with only two survivors on board. The away-team beams aboard just moments after one of them dies, and is just barely quick enough to watch the other one die as well.
• Leave No Witnesses: This is the reason Vlict Kenka destroyed all life on Hrakkour, and attempted to get Quetzalcoatl convicted of murder and executed - to leave no witnesses to the fact that himself was responsible for the genocide.
• Lethally Stupid: Everything Harry Mudd touches turns to shit. His most egregiously stupid move is an attempt to download information from an alien computer he knows nothing about, resulting in mountains of unique and priceless information about the alien culture and technology being erased forever. Alternatively (depending on how Kirk chooses to react to Mudd's attempts to mess with the computer), he accidentally(?) drops a tool into the computer core while backing away from it, destroying it altogether. For further examples where Mudd threatens his own life with his stupidity, see Too Dumb to Live below.
• Locked Door: Multiple, as per the Adventure Game genre. Notable examples below.
  • The first locked door you discover is the one in the hafnium mines on Pollux V in the first mission. It has a hand-print identification system that, for some reason, can be opened with the hand of one of the scarecrow constructs produced by the facility to drive off intruders. It's not explained why the constructs would even need to access the facility at all, given that their only job is to keep people away from it.
  • Several locked doors appear in the mission "That Old Devil Moon", with special mention to the first set of doors on the outside of the base. Both doors require a numeric code to open, in base-3, and the codes are numbers of religious significance for the Lucr culture that built them - which means that to open them Kirk needs to study his history before ever beaming down to the asteroid.
• Lost Technology:
  • Most of the stuff found on board the alien derelict in "Another Fine Mess" is this, including several advanced gadgets, a weapon system that works on principles the Federation is just starting to consider, a completely new computing and data storage system, as well as advanced medical technology and substances. Much of this technology is lost forever after Harry Mudd's had a chance to get close to it.
  • Bilabi, the self-proclaimed caretaker of Hrakkour, may or may not be this (he may be a living creature; we never find out). The computer that allows access to Bialbi also counts.
• MacGyvering: As per Adventure Game staples and the technological bent of Star Trek as a whole, many puzzles require you to jury-rig solutions to many problems using a variety of tools and scraps found in each location. During episode 2, "Hijacked", Kirk determines that the best way to subdue the hijackers would be to beam into the bridge and take them by surprise, but the Masada's transporter console is severely damaged. To solve the problem he needs to 1) locate a spent phaser welder. 2) Charge the welder from his own phaser weapon. 3) Acquire a transmogrifier tool from a secret compartment. 4) Scrounge up bits of metal from the rubble in the corridors. 5) Weld the bits of metal into shape with the phaser welder. 6) Stick the metal bits into the transmogrifier instead of its standard bit. 7) Disarm a bomb in the brig and collect its trigger wires. 8) Connect all of these items to the transporter console. Good thing all of those items just happened to be lying around!
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Played straight as per the Star Trek idiom. Every single landing mission includes the ship's Captain, First Officer, and Chief Medical Officer, plus a Red Shirt whose only job is to die (and cost you precious points) if you decide to do something foolish.
• Mercy Kill: In Vlict Kenka's own eyes, he did the inhabitants of Hrakkour a favor by killing them all to prevent a philosophy of peace that had "infected" them from spreading throughout the Klingon Empire.
• Mirror Match: And then some. The Enterprise has a battle against another (fake) Constitution-class starship, except it's armed to the teeth and accompanied by escorts.
• Mistaken for Murderer: The crew of the Republic died thinking their ship was attacked and defeated by the Enterprise. Brittany Marata, an old acquaintance of Kirk's from his academy days, dies accusing him of murdering them all.
• Multiple Endings: Most missions have several possible outcomes. Kirk's score at the end of each mission relies primarily on how the mission ended, though individual actions during the mission may also alter the score. For the best score, you have to make everyone in the mission happy and aim for peaceful solutions.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • The scientists on board the Ark-7 research station were only studying the origins of life. Instead they managed to create an incredibly deadly virus that only kills Romulans. As soon as they discover this, they decide to destroy the virus and all research that led to its creation. Unfortunately, the Romulans somehow learn about the virus and arrive to attack the station first.
  • Quetzecoatl has one of these moments when he realizes that his peaceful teachings have not only led the Aztecs to turn to Human Sacrifice (and eventually be destroyed by the Conquistadors), but that trying it on the Klingons caused an entire planet to get wiped of all life. It affects him so much that he decides to give up his godly powers altogether.
• Mythology Gag: It wouldn’t be Trek without 'em.
  Lt. Buchert: Captain, count your blessings! We haven't met any salt vampires, deranged computers, blood-draining clouds, cell imploding sirens, Greek gods, or any of the other things people keep telling me about in security.
  Kirk [who dealt every single one of those in TOS]: There's not much I wouldn't do to not have to deal with Mudd.
• Nintendo Hard: See Mirror Match, above.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Vlict Kenka kills everyone on his home planet just to stop a pacifist philosophy from propagating throughout the Klingon Empire. This is portrayed as being extreme even by Klingon standards, although one could see how someone from a Proud Warrior Race might come to decide that such an action was necessary to preserve his culture.
• Old Flame: Dr. Carol Marcus, Kirk's old lover and the mother of his son, appears in the mission "Love's Labor Jeopardized". She has managed to accidentally develop a weapon of mass destruction yet again.
  Kirk: You always could put me in my place, couldn't you?
  Carol: That's the one thing I could never do. Your place was wandering the galaxy, and that's the one thing I could never give you.
• Only Mostly Dead: The miner trapped under falling rocks in the Pollux V hafnium mines manages to stay alive until you can excavate him, no matter how much time you waste faffing about. Not only that, but a quick treatment from McCoy is all it takes to fix him up.
• Organic Technology: The way to Quetzalcoatl's house is lined with lamp-posts which are lit by bio-luminescent insects congregating around them. It's not revealed whether this is a natural phenomenon, something artificially attracting those insects, or a manifestation of one of Quetzalcoatl's superpowers.
• Override Command: Kirk repeats his trick from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan of disabling the shields of a hijacked Starfleet vessel by transmitting its "prefix code" override. This time he only uses it to beam a boarding party into the ship (the tugboat U.S.S. Masada) and take control back from the inside.
• Pacifist:
  • Reportedly, the scientists aboard the Ark-7 are all pacifists. It would make sense, given that the head of research is none other than Dr. Carol Marcus. She later had a crew of pacifists with her on Regula-1 as well - yet they still managed to develop weapons of mass destruction on both occasions!
  • The Klingon inhabitants of Hrakkour were starting to adopt Quetzalcoatl's teachings of peace and love. Unfortunately for them, pacifism is an abomination in the eyes of Klingon society, to the point where one of their own proceeded to genocide everyone and everything on the face of the planet just to keep it from spreading.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The ancient Lucrs built a nuclear launch facility on the surface of their moon, protecting the entrance with two huge blast-doors, each locked with a different password. However despite the immense strategic importance of such a facility, the passwords they used are the two most sacred numbers in their society - so well-known that even Federation archaeologists are aware of them, thousands of years later.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: The Enterprise landing party discovers a unique, millennia-old alien weapon system on board an ancient derelict ship, which is still functioning. Naturally, Mr. Scott has no problem installing the system on the Enterprise to boost the range and power of its photon torpedoes.
• Prisoner Exchange: Elasi Cereth hopes to do this when he hijacks a Federation tugboat in the second episode. He demands the release of 25 Elasi terrorists from a Federation prison in exchange for the hostages.
• Race Against the Clock:
  • Near the start of "Love's Labor Jeopardized", Spock is infected with the Oroborus virus, which is deadly to both Romulans and Vulcans. A cure must be discovered before he dies of the virus. Strangely, the virus is supposed to be deadly within one or two days - but will kill Spock within about an hour of gameplay if the cure cannot be found. Maybe it works differently on his half-vulcan physiology.
  • In "That Old Devil Moon", the nuclear base on Scythe is about to launch its nuclear arsenal at the planet below. As Kirk and team beam down to investigate the facility, the Enterprise is attacked by a Computer Virus and loses its phaser banks and tractor beam - the only two systems capable of intercepting those missiles if launched - prompting a race against time. Nevertheless, the mission itself does not have a time limit.
• Read the Freaking Manual: The game's manual contains a couple of paragraphs which stress that getting high scores on each mission increases the overall effectiveness of the Enterprise crew and power systems. Reaching the final battle with 100% completion makes it much easier. Some collectable items get verbal acknowledgement, while others like dilithium crystals, don't, and can easily be mistaken for Bragging Rights Reward, turning the final battle much more difficult without them.
• Recurring Character: Harcourt "Harry" Fenton Mudd, who appeared in two famous Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, makes a comeback in "Another Fine Mess". This time, he has located a derelict and has been selling the alien artifacts he found inside around the sector. This has won him the attention of some dangerous Space Pirates, who've figured out that the artifacts can be put together to make deadly weapons. Kirk's reaction to Harry's antics this time around is already well-informed by both of the previous encounters with him, and much of the banter between the away-team members is about Harry's insufferability and what they should do with him.
• Red Shirt:
  • If you want the best score in the game, you have to keep your Security Officers alive. Regardless, they are the expendable crew member for each mission.
  • The expanded version of the final story, "Vengeance," subverts this trope. At one point, you have to beam your Red Shirt alone to another part of the damaged USS Republic to fix the photon torpedo system. While this seems like an obvious point to kill him off, he gets the job done efficiently and you bring him back without a problem.
• Rogue Agent: In "Feathered Serpent", Vlict Kenka carries out the extermination of Hrakkour of his own accord, and then tries to hide the fact from his own government by holding a Kangaroo Court for the only other likely suspect.
• Save the Villain: As per Starfleet's idiom, showing mercy to your opponents is not only recommended, but required for the high score in several of the missions.
  • Firing the "Kill" phaser at any living threat is a big no-no if you want a good score. The "Stun" setting must be used - if at all! - to solve any and all violent situations.
  • In "Hijacked", you will only get a high score by convincing the pirates on the Masada's bridge to surrender without a fight. Even firing the "Stun" phaser at them would reduce your score. You have to stun the guards in the brig, though.
  • In "Love's Labor Jeopardized", it's necessary to develop a cure for a Romulan-killing virus and then use it to cure all of the Romulans who have hijacked the Ark-7 station - even though they will kill you at the drop of a hat if they get the chance. In fact, even after the virus is cured, you get extra points for giving the Romulans water to counter the virus's unpleasant dehydrating effect.
  • Kirk reluctantly does this to Harry Mudd, seeing as he is a Federation citizen (although it's unclear whether Kirk would've left Mudd to be killed by his enemies if he wasn't one).
  • In "The Feathered Serpent", Kirk must intervene to save Admiral Kenka from a death sentence - even though Kenka is guilty of genocide and has been deliberately and unapologetically setting up Kirk's death all along.
• Scaramanga Special: In "Another Fine Mess", Con Man Harry Mudd has stumbled onto a derelict alien vessel and found a cache of strange alien artifacts. Among these were wands that appear to de-grime anything they're pointed at, and a crate of very high-quality magnifying lenses. Mudd started peddling these around the sector, and apparently had quite a few buyers. Trouble is, when you combine a wand and a lense together, you get a powerful hand-held weapon that can cause explosions at a distance. No wonder then, that the local Space Pirates have become very interested to find out where Mudd's stock comes from.
• Scarecrow Solution: The Nauians built a factory whose only job is to manufacture harmless robotic monsters to terrorize anyone who comes near their stasis facility. As an added bonus, it tailors the monsters to the specific cultural fears of the intruder. For Kirk and company, it was Klingon soldiers.
• Science Hero: A Trek staple. Both Spock and McCoy are always in your landing party in this game, so expect them both to do quite a bit of science in almost every single episode.
• Sea Monster: A creature lurking under a bridge in "The Feathered Serpent" will eat your Red Shirt if you're not careful. Fortunately there's a plant growing right near the bank of the river which is poisonous to the creature.
• Secret Test of Character: Quetzalcoatl throws the away-team into one of these to see if the Human species has indeed advanced as far as they claim. Note that the test is potentially deadly.
• Shown Their Work: The attention to detail is amazing on it's own, but to show how much the programmers really did their research, take half an hour to explore the database of Spock's library computer on the bridge. Information about every single planet visited by the Enterprise in the original series can be accessed, among other things.
• Space Amish: The settlers on Pollux V, the first planet visited in the game, belong to a religious sect called the Acolytes of the Stars. They are luddites in 23rd-century terms, only using technology that is about a few centuries old. They are also non-violent and most are quite welcoming.
• Space Pirates: The Elasi pirates appear several times in this game, and are actually the most frequent threat to the Enterprise. This is the only Star Trek-related work in which they appear at all. The Elasi are comprised of several pirate clans originating from the planet Menalvagor, which was colonized at some point by the Andorians. While presenting themselves as righteous revolutionaries against the Andorian occupation, the Elasi are described in Starfleet's records as nothing more than ruthless criminals, and are classified as a top-tier threat. They fly old Klingon ships armed with Federation photon torpedoes, and by the end of the game it's revealed that they've also acquired cloaking devices from the Romulans.
• Starfish Aliens: The native Nauians look approximately like five foot tall praying mantises.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Quetzalcoatl (yeah, the Aztec god) turns out to be one of these. And he's not happy about the human sacrifice.
• Suicide Attack: Elasi Cereth threatens to blow up the U.S.S. Masada - which he has hijacked and is currently commanding - if his demands are not met.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When the Enterprise is attacked by an alien Computer Virus in "That Old Devil Moon", Uhura, Scotty and Transporter Chief Kyle search frantically for a way to remove it from the affected systems. In the end, they decide to deploy a Klingon computer virus on their own computer, wiping out the alien virus.
• Synthetic Plague: The Oroborus Virus, a virus that is deadly to both Romulans and Vulcans. It is transmitted by air, and kills within two days at most. Developed by accident on the Ark-7 research station, by a team of Pacifists researching the origins of life.
• Talking Your Way Out: Required in several situations, as per the Federation's idiom. It is also usually an alternative to violence, in which case Talking Your Way Out is necessary for the high score.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Any use of outright violence (other than space combat, of course) is a sure-fire way of lowering your score. The "kill" phaser should only be used on inanimate objects, and only when absolutely necessary.
• Thrown Down a Well: Quetzalcoatl does this to Kirk and the away-team, supposedly to teach them a lesson after he is confronted with the atrocities committed by his old disciples the Aztecs. It later turns out that this was just a Secret Test of Character.
• Too Dumb to Live: Not only does Harry Mudd get himself into trouble with Space Pirates by selling alien equipment he knows nothing about, but he also almost manages to kill himself by using a faulty emergency life-support generator model to maintain an atmosphere on the ships he salvages. Naturally the generator starts to malfunction, forcing Kirk and crew to find a way to fix it just to keep themselves and Harry from suffocating to death. While messing with the alien ship's medical machinery, Mudd pulls out a random canister which he drops on the floor accidentally. The vapors from the canister drive Mudd into a temporary violent paranoid panic attack.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: During the sequence with the gem-operated computer underneath Hrakkour, the game gives extremely vague instructions on how operate the computer, and even getting that hint requires using the correct combination of gems by accident first. There are no hints about the correct combination required to get a good ending. There are 27 different possible combinations in total, and one even leads to a Game Over. Hope you saved the game!
• Turned Against Their Masters: The Nauian defense computer will even attack the Nauians themselves if it isn't turned off.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Not in the original version of the game, but as more and more earlier games are put online, people have unfortunately discovered that the second mission is Unwinnable. In-game, when on the ship, the 'tab' key is supposed to switch between flying the ship, and interacting with characters on the bridge. If playing the game on a website, 'tab' still pages between locations on the page without being recognized by the game. Unwinnable By Outdated Controls?
• Unusual User Interface: An ancient computer located deep in the mines of Hrakkour is operated by inserting specific sequences of colorful gems into its operating sockets. Each combination has a different effect. Unfortunately, the game does very little to indicate the logic behind this interface, leading to a possible Game Over if the wrong combination is used.
• Unwinnable by Design:
  • Arguably in "That Old Devil Moon", where failing to research the culture of Lucrs (the people whose base you're going to visit) before beaming down to the planet will put you in a nigh-unwinnable situation: The code to the first two doors of the base is a number that holds great significance for them, and the Enterprise's computer is the only place to find it. On the other hand, the developers did have Spock mention that the Lucrs used base-3 mathematics, so brute-forcing the code is quite possible for anyone who's paying close attention.
  • The final battle in the game was designed to be practically unwinnable... if you haven't achieved a very good score on all missions up to that point, which is only explained in the manual. With excellent scores it becomes a difficult but perfectly winnable fight.
  • One thing built into the game, typical of the time, was a software license check. As each mission is given, the planetary system is given, which the player then looks up on the map of the Federation. The map is located in the manual with all the systems listed. If one tries to play the game without knowing where to go, the ship is thrust into the middle of a space battle against two or more adversaries. Should the ship survive the first encounter, a warp into the next unknown system, without being repaired from the first battle, is a certain death sentence.
• Updated Re-release: The CD-ROM edition. Not only did it include voice acting, it also had an entire landing team mission that was not seen in the original floppy disk version. This also resulted in some cut content. In the original floppy disk version, the player can search the Enterprise's computer database for loads of Mythology Gag; when the game was rereleased on CD-ROM, the impracticality of having the voice actress record all of these entries resulted in the majority of it being cut.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Every mission there is always, always at least one method of getting your Red Shirt killed off for shits and giggles. You do lose points for it, though.
  • The one mission where you've got the option of releasing laughing gas (of both the Human and Vulcan variations) into the air of the station you're on.
  • There's a mission where you can end a hostage situation aboard another ship's bridge by beaming a bomb inside and blowing the bridge up, causing the ship to go out of control and crash into the planet it's orbiting. Expect Starfleet Command to ream you out for such an act of blatant dickery.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Any act of cruelty, hostility, or carelessness, will result in your score being reduced. This primarily includes letting your Red Shirt be harmed in any way.
• Villain Team-Up: In the last mission of the game, "Vengeance", we discover that the Elasi Pirates that had been a nuisance to the Enterprise throughout the game have teamed up with a rogue Federation planet. The Vardaine have outfitted them with cloaking devices, and the final battle involves two Elasi ships teaming up with a Vardaine-built replica of the Enterprise, making for a Nintendo Hard fight.
• Weak, but Skilled: The Enterprise is outmatched during the final fight, having to face an identical replica of a Constitution-class ship along with two cloak-capable Pirate ships. Despite being technologically outmatched, the skilled Enterprise crew are the deciding factor - being able to keep the ship running and maintain its power levels much better than the enemy crew.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Oroborus Virus turns out to be vulnerable to... ammonia.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Discovered by mistake, the Oroborus Virus could potentially be used to wipe out the Romulan Empire. Fortunately, Kirk and team manage to find a cure before it can spread to anywhere.
• We Need a Distraction: In "Vengeance", the Elasi Pirates attack a nearby civilian vessel in order to draw the Enterprise away from the Republic, hoping to create an opportunity to board the damaged vessel and retrieve information from its computer banks.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Klingon admiral Vlict Kenka was born on Hrakkour, a Klingon colony. After Quetzalcoatl had spread a philosophy of peace among the planet's inhabitants (including Kenka's only family, who ruled that planet), Kenka went rogue and decided to wipe all life from the planet.
• Worthy Opponent: If you play cards right and aim for peaceful solutions, the many opponents you face will see you as such.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Employed by Kirk in "Vengeance". When the Elasi pirate demands information from the heavily-damaged U.S.S. Republic's computer banks, Kirk pretends that he has managed to retrieve the information but that the ship is too damaged to transmit it. He then convinces the Elasi captain to beam over a Boarding Party to collect the information manually. When the Elasi drop their shields to beam over, Kirk fires the Republic's now-fixed torpedo tubes at the pirate ship, disabling its weapons.

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