As a fan of Star Trek, I can't help but notice many of the recurring themes and plot devices used by the franchise throughout its history. Here, I have compiled a short list of common quirks and cliches of the Star Trek Universe.
- Ships, weapons, and warp drives make all kinds of racket despite being in a vacuum.
- Obscure jazz and classical works have survived the last 400 years and have become popular, while rock 'n roll, rap, and reggae have not.
- No one has composed any new musical pieces since the 20th century. All humans listen to jazz and classical music exclusively
- Randomly pushing buttons on an ancient alien console you know nothing about will always result in the strange ancient alien device doing what you want it to do
- Time it takes to learn how to pilot a shuttlecraft: about 1 year. Time it takes to learn how to pilot an alien shuttlecraft you know nothing about and are hijacking to save the captain: 15 seconds.
- In order to be a truly legendary captain, you must fight a strange alien captain on an unknown desert planet for the amusement of powerful, omnipotent energy beings. Extra credit if the alien captain is ten times stronger, yet much slower and stupider, than you are.
- Reversing the polarity is always the solution....always
- The deflector dish will never break down despite the amount of abuse it is put through by captains who constantly reverse its polarity and use it to close wormholes, rifts in the space-time-continuum, travel through time, or blow up stars
- Although english has changed drastically in the last 400 years, 400 years from now it will not have changed one bit.
- A member of a race that is neither male nor female will without fail sleep with Commander Riker
- A Federation starship can cruise through a planet's atmosphere at high speeds despite having the aerodynamics of a bar stool.
- There are no restroom facilities on star ships. Pooping and showering no longer happens in the 24th century.
- Despite having pissed off an innumerable amount of hostile alien species, no one has wiped Ferenginar off the face of the galaxy.
- Traveling back in time requires falling into a borg time-rift or slingshotting around the sun at warp 10. Getting back is such a trivially easy matter it bears absolutely no explanation in the plot.
- Space ships make banking turns like world war II fighters despite the complete lack of gravity and air
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