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Star Trek clichés?

Every long-running show creates its own patchwork quilt of clichés over time, and Star Trek is no exception.

I wonder how many of them there really are, though? Has anyone ever made a list?

Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

- Explosive consoles

This one: the same kind of explosive console that kills a redshirt or an unfortunate crewmember just causes a few superficial scars to our heroes. No nipping and tucking necessary.
Riker flying through the air quickly gets up unscathed, crewmember flying throught the air breaks his/her neck beyond help....:ack:. If they keep doing that there are not enough ensigns left to be promoted. Harry Kim is likely to get a command of his own sooner than expected.
 
^perhaps the officers climbing to the higher ranks aren't the best, just the, eurm, sturdiest.

If so, Data has a bright future ahead of him in Starfleet ….
 

Use the replicator once to generate the food from bulk matter, use it again to dematerialise the plate and food back again.

Or, reuse the plate, use your lazy damn hands to wash it, use the replicator only to generate better portions of food than the wasteful amount.
 
Use the replicator once to generate the food from bulk matter, use it again to dematerialise the plate and food back again.

Even if the person eats all the food on the plate, the plate itself is going to be dematerialized anyway once they're done. So there's really no waste here.
 
This is one that has bugged me about movies and TV shows for most of my life :guffaw: :guffaw: If I had a dollar for every time a 'dinner scene' in a show or movie begins with characters serving/ordering their food, sitting around a table delivering expository dialogue at each other, then getting up and leaving at the end of the scene... (bonus points if, at no point during all of this, do they actually pick up any of the food and eat it :lol: )

The “big breakfast” variant: Mom serves a huge appetizing breakfast for the family. Dad comes in the room, takes one sip of coffee and says “sorry, big meeting this morning, no time for breakfast” and leaves. What absolute bullshit. Almost as bad as the couple that meet for a drink, which are then served and on the table, but no one drinks anything.
 
Starship Captains being buddy-buddy with their Chief Medical Officers ;). Sharing breakfast or Saurian Brandy.
 
That's related to questions like why they still need to carry around PADDs to other officers with info when they could all be interconnected into the ship's 24th century equivalent of wifi. Probably just to have jobs for everyone :)

I keep telling you guys, that's a security protocol. Wifi's can be hacked, but the individual desk consoles can't.:mad:
 
If you're a mad alien or villain or alien villain, and this is a trek movie, you will somehow always have or end up with a really big menacing ship to fight the heroes with.

It's real easy to break out of a jail, prison or brig even with guards standing outside with weapons and the prisoner having no weapons. You name the species, it's happened to them.
 
I keep telling you guys, that's a security protocol. Wifi's can be hacked, but the individual desk consoles can't.:mad:

That would be remarkably prudent of them, given the spotless track record Starfleet has considering security issues in general....

("But that's a fractal quantum recursive encryption algorithm exploiting variable subspace properties! In the 168 years since its invention, no-one has ever been able to .... oh, I see you're in.")

It might even be another cliché itself (not sure how often it really occurs throughout the series though).
 
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"We're really sorry Captain, our naughty little boy (really a non corporial being) has taken over your ship, killed four redshirts and manhandled your women, but he's just a child who doesn't know better. Here's control of your ship back, we're off to spank his non corporial arse"
Usually spoken by one or two blobs of light on the bridge.
 
I recently finished my third novel and in the editing process my daughter (a freelance editor) noticed that in one scene I had my female Medical Examiner talking to the lead detective on the murder case about the cause of death, which in this case was poison from a South American tree frog. My daughter wrote in a line for me for the doctor to say:

Detective: "what species of frog was it?"
Medical Examiner: "Damn it, Mike, I'm a doctor, not a herpetologist."

I love that I raised a Trekkie. :)
 
The excessive destruction of starships - most of them named Enterprise, but also Defiant, Excalibur - and you know that it'll be replaced by its successor. The alphabet has many letters. Scotty prefers the original Enterprise.
 
An officer and an alien stranded on a planet together, unable to communicate with each other, need to cooperate.
Hm. Not necessarily ST in origin. Or as Dathon might put it, "Willis Davidge and Jeriba Shigan on Fyrine IV."
“The girl” isn’t who she says she is.
Or necessarily what she says she is. (If you see her habitually sucking on her knuckles, you probably don't want to be alone with her unless you have a 50-kilo bag of rock salt and a phaser rifle.)
 
If Kirk is looking forward to meeting a mentor or idol, chances are they are evil, deluded, or insane. :)

Or have been deluded into being insanely evil. :)

The one I hate, and it's not necessarily unique to Trek is when someone calls up to the bridge (usually McCoy) and says something like "I need you to come down here". Kirk replies "What is it?", to which McCoy just says something like "You'll need to see for yourself.". Arghhh. Like the captain of an interstellar ship of the line has got nothing better to do with his time? IIRC, McCoy isn't the only offender - I think other, including Scotty have committed the same offense.
 
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