10 Most Overused Plot Tropes In Star Trek

Let's take a look at some recurring plots that've come to define Star Trek!

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#StarTrek #StarTrekGenerations #OnlyShipInRange

[HariSeldon]

Worf: Shields down to 30%
Picard: Send a warning that we are willing to return fire
Worf: before or after the ship is completely crippled?

[Akira]

Here’s another trope: exploding consoles. Whenever a starship is under attack, or if there’s some power surge, you’ll see consoles blowing up in shower of sparks. Don’t they have any fuses in the future?

[jptrostle]

Can't believe you missed the "Every Admiral is Evil/Incompetent" trope! It's like all of Starfleet is one big Peter Principle lol

[johnharris]

Galaxy Quest did such a good job of pointing these things out.

[Ginger_Dalek]

Don't also forget:
"Engineerring, we need warp power. NOW!"
"Captain, the warp engine is offline. It'll take 6 hours to get it back online."
"You have 10 minutes!"

[DredPirateRobrt]

For the number of specialized types of Starships in Starfleet, and the seemingly endless number of starships, and all of those starships being able to travel at ludicrous speeds across unfathomable distances across the galaxy it is a little crazy to think there is only one starship in range, especially when that one starship is at or near the Sol system.

[patrickl]

As the successful writer once said, “It isn’t a cliché, it’s a traditional narrative element!”

[drunkrdm]

"human technology turns destructive" isn't a trope, it's just humanity.

[SkeletonCrewMotionPx]

How about the "Deflector Dish Solves Everything" trope: Crew finally figures out the problem propelling that week's plot. Without missing a beat, crewmember (Geordi or Data usually) says something like, "We can rig the main deflector dish to emit a beam of Make it so. Problem solved. It's literally the first thing the Enterprise D did to save the day in the pilot TNG episode...

It's amazing that Earth wasn't conquered by the Klingons, Romulans or whomever when you only had ONE ship in the hood and it wasn't even fully functional and/or had a trainee crew.

[benthomson]

Me, an aspiring Star Trek Adventures GM:
*"Write that down, write that down!"*

[scottholle]

12:50 My second to breathe is watching these videos. Thanks much for the distraction.

[johnharris]

"Sir, the Holodeck characters are coming to life " "Damn, the last time that happened I got hit with 3 paternity suits" Zapp Branigan from Futurama. Even Futurama pointed out the Holodeck trope.

[LyingTube]

In fairness to the only-ship-in-range trope, space is kind of ridiculously massive. Like we have 50 aircraft carriers in the world today across 15 navies and that's not even remotely enough to assail any given point of Earth's seas at a moment's notice. And space is several hundred orders of magnitude larger! The original NCC-1701 Enterprise had a crew of only 428 at its peak, which was described by Jadzia Dax as "packed", meanwhile the real-world Enterprise aircraft carrier had a population of four and a half thousand. Even travelling faster than light, it's inconceivable that Starfleet even at its peak could actually have more than one ship close enough to a problem at any given point in time.

[Satori]

Your heartfelt sign offs are genuinely appreciated <3 thank you <3

[EvilHomer]

Captain Kirk talking computers to death is the best

[twocvbloke]

It was the line "the only ship in the quadrant!" in that always got me, having grown up with TNG, DS9 and Voyager, knowing that there were the four quadrants of the milky way (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta), it's like they were saying that "Starfleet's gone and effed up, and er, we have no ships at all anywhere except for the Enterprise!", now I could understand that at the time of say TMP, maybe they only had 500-750 active ships spread out, but, they can't all have suddenly gone off to Beta and Gamma to avoid the 82 AU in diameter V'ger probe... :P

[mrbojangles]

the only sector with plenty of ships is... Risa, Wink wink, nudge, nudge

[brunozeigerts]

One thing overlooked in Wrath of Khan. Kirk says, 'We're the only ship in the quadrant.' Spock should have replied, "Is the Reliant not also in the quadrant?' "Yes, but they haven't been able to contact her. H'mmm that's beginning to sound suspicious...'

[ErrolJ]

I wonder if the end of Voyager was a nod to the "only ship" trope. Given the fact the transwarp conduit was so close to Earth they were able to get more than a dozen ships to it before the Borg sphere emerged.