Background Information

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

 

Star Trek is an American Sci-Fi franchise created by Gene Roddenberry and under the ownership of CBS and Paramount. The story centers on the interstellar adventures of a Federation starship (usually called the Enterprise) and its crew who belong to Starfleet yet their primary mission is to be explorers. Star Trek's heroes have alturistic views and their adventures often cover real world themes in a science fantasy setting. Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades with numerous series, movies, games, comics, books and other media. The various series aired in many countries and are widely known in the world. The franchise's fans often identify themselves as 'Trekkies' and Star Trek conventions exist since 1972. Trekkies as such are often assotiated with geeks/nerds and with good reason. Though things calmed down considerably after the last series got cancelled in 2005.

Overall Star Trek is a mixed bag as does the quality of its cast and the writing behind it. The style of the series is also in a kind of hate-love relation with the viewers. Star Trek generally puts more emphasis on drama or its current theme than it does on action. Time to time the writters are also trying too hard to sell a story which can turn an episode's plot ridiculous. So whether you watch it for the interesting cast and themes or to laugh at their emberassing attempts to present the series, Star Trek can be the source of both.

Enjoy the ride if you will.

 

Protagonist captains throughout the franchise. Above: The Good. Below: The Bad.

 

Canonicity

Star Trek spawned 5 live action television series and 12 movies. This forms the primary canon.

 

Television Series

• Star Trek (later dubbed as "The Original Series" or TOS, 1966-1969)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG, 1987-1994)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9, 1993-1999)
• Star Trek: Voyager (VOY, 1995-2001)
• Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT, 2001-2005)

 

Feature Films

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TOS, 1979)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (TOS, 1982)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (TOS, 1984)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (TOS, 1986)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (TOS, 1989)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (TOS, 1991)
• Star Trek: Generations (TOS/TNG, 1994)
• Star Trek: First Contact (TNG, 1996)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (TNG, 1998)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (TNG, 2002)
• Star Trek (reboot, 2009)
• Star Trek Into the Darkness (continuation of the reboot, 2013)

 

There are also countless comic, book and game spin-off based on the series. Databooks and other such materials are also availible in abdunance.
Albeit these tend to be contradictory with the primary canon and the novelizations/comics technically were disowned from canon a long time ago.  

Also while the plot of the primary canon is overall consistent, the technology's depiction in the series does change multiple times over the years. As such for example when talking about Star Trek in a VS debating sense TOS and the series that came with TNG or thereafter can be considered two different continuities. Similarly a number of creatures and plot elements from TOS are almost completely ignored in the latter series.

Similarly, while technically the reboot movies by JJ Abrams take place around the same era as TOS, they depict a considerably different setting.

 

 

Standing in the Battledome

As explained above even if Star Trek has a mostly intact narrative continuity with newer series giving nice references to the older series/movies, the technology and other plot elements are subject to numerous retcons thus VS debating wise putting many series in their own continuity. This page only describes the "mainstream" Star Trek verse which is more or less TNG, DS9, VOY and the movies related to them.

Star Trek is a sci-fi/space opera setting with numerous interstellar civilizations. The best representative is the Federation/Starfleet where also every series' protagonists belong. Starships firepower and output is redefined for every episode, sometimes claimed to be in the TW range while other times they output enough energy to destroy gas giants. Their primary means of interstellar travel is warp which surounds the ship in a subspace field which alters the speed of light and warps space-time to travel faster-than-light. Unlike many popular Sci-Fi starships travel FTL in real space and at times actually capable of performing maneuvers with it (like when the Enterprise-D did a tigh 180-degree turn at Warp 9.5). Sensors, communications and weapons are also FTL. Sensors in particular are notorious for picking up various random details when it's convenient for the plot and can search everything to the last molecule in many lightyears radius. Star Trek is also infamous for their "tech of the week", various technobabble solutions or plot devices which are used to solve a certain problem and then be often forgotten. Things include various specialized cures against diseases/poisons or worse, messing with frequencies to hit intangibles or other entities, adjusting shields to resist exotic energies or even erasure from time, various time travel, using tachyons to cathastrophically alter the timeline, altering transporters to teleport the crew to a parallel universe and so on. Overall if it were used competently the Federation has such sophisticated technology which almost rivals the Culture and in a few territories even surpass them.

Aside from the "classic" warring civilizations in Star Trek there are various other aliens who are defined as more mysterious. Sufficiently advanced civilizations with various weird technologies, energy beings and a number of godlike entities. Star Trek is an abdunance of these. The most notable are the Q. They are a mysterious sufficiently advanced and powerful race that is seemingly almighty in comparison. They are effectively reality warpers who can appear anywhere and in any time. Their personal weapons during their civil war within their own dimension have the side effect of generating supernovas in realspace and visiting the Big Bang is apparently their preferred tourist spot. There are many other notable superbeings which overall makes defeating the entire Trekverse much more difficult, though if they are in-character these entities would often assume a passive role thus only becoming relevant under special circumstances.

Battledome status of other Star Trek settings:

• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Star Trek: Enterprise
• Star Trek (Reboot)

 

Supporters of the Series

 

• Ultimate Deathsaurer (now called Agent Washington)
  

Many people seen Star Trek and it overall has a huge fanbase. Few years back it also used to have, and in some corners of the net still has, a rather vocal support in VS debates. Unfortunatelly this support mostly consisted of enbittered fanboys who are still recovering from the old Star Trek vs Star Wars debates. As such the reputation of ST fans wasn't too good in the OBD. The above list supports Star Trek supporters in the OBD who doesn't suck (that's why it's so short).

OBD Profiles

Character Profiles

• Data
• James T. Kirk
  
• Khan Noonien Singh
• Nomad
• Spock

Vehicle/Vessel Profiles

• USS Enterprise NCC-1701 (TOS)
  
• USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D
• USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E
• Planet Killer

Weapon Profiles

• Hand Phaser
  

Civilization Profiles

• United Federation of Planets
• United Federation of Planets (TOS)
• United Federation of Planets (nuTrek)

 

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