Star Trek

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Star Trek is a multimedia science-fiction series and one of the keystone nerdy media properties, and one of the few to crossover into mainstream popularity (alongside Star Wars, Doctor Who, and a few others). It's also one of the longest-running sci-fi franchises, with over 40 years of geek history spanning several generations. Needless to say, it's had a huge influence on all things sci-fi, and, by extension, /tg/.

Originally, Star Trek was noblebright beyond noblebright and, in many ways, was the polar opposite of Warhammer 40,000's grimdark. The more recent reboot films, however, have taken a much, much more grimdark tone, which is delightfully Skub.

So why should I care?

Because between them, these 5 TV series and their assorted spinoff movies, books, etc. can provide inspiration for any sci-fi game you could care to run. If you want light-hearted action, look at the sort of things that happened in TOS or DS9 to get the crew into some dangerous situation. If you want a charismatic villain, look at Gul Dukat or the Borg Queen. If you want moral issues and debates, look at the shit that happened to Voyager and remove all the transparent deck-stacking and cheesy moralising (or you could read any decent SF book/watch a Twighlight Zone episode written in the previous 50 years, if you don't need your source material to be served at a 2nd grade level).

Not to mention in any sci-fi RP with remotely freeform rules you're likely to encounter Star Trek fanboys, so you might as well know what they're talking about. The unholy spawn of a Trekkie and a Furry is known as a Chakat, and you should fear it.

Setting

Here's the Cliff's Notes on Star Trek. A couple of general warnings; firstly, Star Trek likes to really take its "racial themes" bits just a little too far. Secondly, aside from very occasional appearances by aliens who are so bizarre that humankind can barely comprehend them (mostly in TNG), all of the aliens look like dudes with rubber masks on (because they are). In real life, this was because there was no budget for anything else, but in-universe it's been explained by some kind of Precursor race who seeded all of the planets with their broadly humanoid DNA, and every race evolved slightly differently from there. There isn't much fluff on what these precursors were like, and some of it was contradictory, and Gene Roddenbery didn't like the idea (although he still had to work with the rubber forehead stuff). The good news for fa/tg/uys who like homebrew is that this makes it fairly easy to write d20 system rules for all of the races -- after all, most D&D races are just humans with rubber masks on...

The Federation

Might as well talk about that main faction. The United Federation of Planets is what the Tau think they are. Its backstory is that in the distant future of the 1990s, übermensch created by genetic engineering began conquering the Earth. The Normals fought back and won through sheer numbers, cryogenically freezing the Ubermensch and kicking them out of Earth, but the damage and mass political unrest of World War III got half the planet nuked. This was why Genetic Engineering was banned. Fortunately, in 2063, a drunkard asshole a heroic visionary named Zefram Cochrane created humanity's first warp drive (based on the Alcubierre drive of wonky gravity manipulation to contract spacetime in front of you, instead of going through a Hyperspace full of Lovecraftian horrors i.e. the Warp) and made first contact with the Vulcans. The Vulcans eventually helped humanity rebuild and overcome poverty, disease, war and hunger. With its Earthly problems solved, man turned to the stars and found out its three closest neighbors were racist xenophobic dicks trying to murder each other. Since any war between them would've swept up puny little Earth and gotten it glassed, humans decided to force their neighbors to sit down and talk things out. Incredibly, it worked, and the Federation was born.

The Federation is a commie noblebright hippieland society with a strong democratic government. It has a post-scarcity economy with no currency (future 3D printers made everything free...depending on the episode) and no hunger (future 3D printers can teleport dust into food, this makes virtually everything that Star Trek main character eats are (somewhat) vegetarian from technical standpoint). As a result, Federation citizens work not because they have to, but because they want to. However, despite their advanced technology, Transhumanism, that is intentionally making SPESS MEHREENS and mutants like the infamous antagonist Khan Noonien Singh, is illegal.

The Federation's Navy is almost always called Starfleet. It's a mix between a military, a coast guard and a space agency, and usually rates scientific research as a higher priority than defense. One of its quirks is that it doesn't subscribe to the "bigger is better" policy used in most sci-fi, and even by most of the other Star Trek factions. If the Federation does make a large ship, it's because they want it to have a daycare, swimming pool and ice cream bar. If they want a warship, they'll take a little gunship half the size of a modern day destroyer and pack it with enough antimatter nukes and guns to exterminate a solar system. In some cases, especially when dealing with ships from several centuries into the future, the ship is bigger on the inside than on the outside allowing it to hide a vast array of powerful armaments, space-bending equipment, and even whole planetary landscapes. They can get away with this because they out-tech almost everyone else by a country mile. The reason for the series' infamous "technobabble" is that even they don't know everything their tech can do! their technology is always evolving, and they know it so well that they can often use it in ways that even the original in-show design schematics did not intend.

In theory, Starfleet follows a rule called the "Prime Directive", which says that you're not allowed to interfere with low-tech races ("low-tech" being defined as "not having invented the warp drive", since warp technology apparently follows naturally from the laws of physics) or else things like turning the locals into Nazis might happen. The Original Series talked about this rule all the time, and Captain Kirk threw it aside whenever there was a sexy alien babe in sight. From TNG onward, it tended to instead be brought up whenever a hack writer needed a reason for the heroes to not instantly resolve a given problem with their superior technology, though there were a few good episodes that took it seriously.

Some of the more important member races are:

• Humans: You know 'em, you love 'em. Comprise 90% of Starfleet for reasons in no way related to the cost of makeup/CGI.
• Vulcan: The Original Space Elves, logical and stoic, pretty bro-tier overall (like the namesake). They are what the average race of fantasy elves think they are, except on Enterprise because the writers wanted to artificially inject tension into the show. Occasionally enter a state called "pon'farr," where they need to either fuck something half to death, kill it with the nearest sharp object, or die of a brain aneurism to let out all that pent-up emotional tension. Fa/tg/uys may recognize this as the sensation they feel every time Games Workshop puts out a new army book.
• Andorians: Blue dudes with antennae and constant fits of passion, the polar opposite of Vulcans. Pretty much fa/tg/uys, right down to the romantic streak, in the technical sense. Also, they live underground on a diet of meatbread and rage.
• Tellarites: Space Dorfs, like insulting everyone and arguing a lot (no, really, petty insults are considered a polite gesture in Tellarite culture).
• Betazoids: Humanoid aliens with empathic powers. Well-regarded by Starfleet captains for their ability to point out the obvious. Their homeworld is like dropping a really hippie college and Space Vegas into a blender.

The Klingons

A Bat'Leth (sword of honor), one of several types of Klingon bladed weapons

"It is a good day to die!"

The Federation's main rival and (movie era and afterwards) the quintessential Star Trek race of lumpy foreheaded aliens. Originally they were a rough analogue to the USSR in a rough cold war allegory with the Federation (even though the Federation are as commie as they come). Their defining feature was that they were militaristic while the Federation was scholarly. This gradually moved more and more into them becoming Imperial Japan/Vikings In SPESSS obsessed with honor, fighting and dying honorably in battle while worshiping at the altar of warrior Jesus, even as they turned from the Federation's bitter enemies into that friend who's fun to be around when he's not getting into drunken bar fights. You see shades of it in during the movie era and it became more and more prominent through TNG, culminating in DS9. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Klingons are nothing more than barbaric savages however; with Worf being part of the crew, and with DS9 dealing with Klingon politics an awful lot we can see Klingon society as it truly is.

The Klingons, in their current iteration, are a feudal society ruled by a council made up of the most powerful families. Klingon society holds very little value on things such as currency and material gain (which results in the Klingon empire having a very simplistic understanding of economics), believing that anything you acquire without some form of blood, sweat and/or tears on your part is a pathetic way of going about things. Another thing to keep in mind is that a Klingon's reputation is literally everything. This can be easily seen in the episode "The House Of Quark" where dying honorably can literally change the outcome of an entire noble house, later when the Grand Council is visibly disgusted at D'Ghor. No respectable Klingon uses money to defeat his opponents. And no respectable Klingon would be so eager to perform an execution of an unarmed Ferengi in what was supposed to be an honorable duel.

Klingons are still capable of being cunning and crafty however, and having a high diplomacy score is viewed as honorable as they still have examples of cunning and clever heroes tricking boorish and stupid monsters. THEY ARE ORKS IN NOBLEBRIGHT

Klingons often carry swords into battle in an age of energy beam guns.

The Klingons are tied with the Vulcans as being the most prominent and recognizable non-human species in Star Trek. Beloved of the Internet and the general public, to the point that there are published books like "A Klingon Christmas" in the world. The Klingons have their own constructed language. If you are ever worrying that you might not be a nerd, learning Klingon will solve that problem for you. They also wrote Shakespeare.

The Romulans

"It's always chess with the Romulans"

You know those Vulcans? Well a few thousand years ago, their planet was ravaged by war. Most of them turned themselves to intense emotional control and logic to tame their murderous passions, while a few others left the planet altogether, founding a colony on the planet Romulus. Since said planet shares a name with a mythical figure known for founding a city which built an vast empire and they had warp drive while those around them did not, you probably know that they turned to building an empire of their own. They hold the second place of prominence as immediate rivals to the Federation. Comically, they actually have better emotional control than the average Vulcan, since they gene-engineered most of their problems away years ago, and don't have to deal with the emotional blowback from pon'farr. The downside is that they lost some of their cousins' niftier powers, like mind reading and being able to transfer their soul into a jar for safekeeping. Although Star Trek Online also revealed that their trip to Romulus was a terrible ordeal, and their gene-engineering was taking during that time resulting in them losing most emotions save for bitterness of being "forced out".

The difference between the Klingons and the Romulans is basically the difference between Gork and Mork, or Khorne and Tzeentch. Klingons will fight you up front with simple brute force. Romulans are sneakier guys, preferring to fight you when you're not looking with spies, cloaked ships and complex plots behind the scenes and playing the long game. There is a lot of political infighting among them, though where the Klingons would duel to the death Romulans would seek to discredit their rivals, have them die in unfortunate 'accidents' or disappear. This deference has left both Romulans and Klingons with a big hate-boner for each other, to the Romulans the Klingons are crude brutish barbarians and to the Klingons the Romulans are a pack of scheming cowardly weaklings.

Like the Klingons, they filled a rough cold war allegory. In this case, they were rough analogs to Communist China (as seen by 1960s Americans). A force which was threatening and vast, but also a secretive unknown. The first major Interstellar War that Star Trek Earth fought was with the Romulans, which was fought entirely in space with neither side ever seeing the other face to face. Afterwards they set up a 'No Fly Zone' between the Federation and the Romulan Empire that no one even tried to cross for a century. From the Original Series onward, they frequently squabble and bicker with the Federation, before joining forces with them to fight the Dominion in Deep Space Nine and having their government devastated in Nemesis.

The Ferengi

A typical ferengi engaged in typical ferengi activities

"A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all."-Eighteenth Rule of Acquisition

Introduced in TNG's early days as the villains for the series. The idea was to make a caricature of capitalism as a contrast with the techno-socialist Federation. This might have worked (an example of this done right would be the Druuge from Star Control-II) if this were not TNG's early days. Instead they overlooked what made Western Capitalist culture successful to Real Life Humans in the first place. They overshot the mark by a light year or so and you got a race of short (Gene wanted to make an evil short race as big evil races were overplayed), big-eared, goblin-like losers about as threatening as a grumpy terrier. Over the first and second seasons they tried to make these guys threatening, but they fell flat on their face every time. Eventually the writers just said "fuck it" and the Ferengi got demoted to comic relief species, and their status as terrible enemies was demoted to propaganda designed to scare the Federation while the Ferengi government tried to figure out what to make of a species that rejected the acquisition of wealth as a goal. The Ferengi had some good moments in the later seasons of TNG, but most of the best stuff that fleshed them out came from DS9, which had an awesome Ferengi bartender called Quark as a major character.

Ferengi religion is only hinted upon in DS9, but what is seen implies a simplistic system based on financial success. Ferengi all follow a rulebook/canon known as the Rules of Acquisition, which can be described as Ayn Rand IN SPACE and condensed into the form of Confucius' Analects. There are 285 of these, each a short piece of advice on how to stay in the black. Examples include "Peace is good for business," "War is good for business," "Never have sex with the boss's daughter," and "Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack." The first, and most important, of these is "Once you have their money, you never give it back." Sometimes, the Ferengi Randian spirituality extends into outright interpretations of the afterlife: according to some, the afterlife consists of the Divine Treasury and the Vault of Eternal Destitution, which are respectively analogous to heaven and hell. Entrance into one or the other depends on one's business ventures at the time of death; those that were turning a profit are allowed to enter the Divine Treasury, and the rest are damned to the Vault.

Ferengi government is ruled over by a Grand Nagus, a mix between a pope and a CEO, and he basically treats his civilization like some sort of company, with citizens regarded as workers. Directly below him is the Ferengi Commerce Authority, a quasi-religious organization dedicated to ensuring that correct business practices were followed and correct moral behavior was shown, although to the Ferengi, these are one and the same. The agents of the FCA are the Liquidators, who are essentially Inquisitors crossed with IRS auditors on steroids.

The Borg

The Borg have assimilated and improved your die. It always rolls six. Crap your pants, 'cause resistance is futile. (ha they'll always lose leadership checks) in such cases, they adapt and roll 1s. Resistance is still futile.

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture shall adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

The Ferengi were utter failures as serious villains, so they needed something to fill that gap. Thus they made the Borg, an aggressive hive minded collective of hyper-adaptive, regenerating cyborgs that assimilates entire species into itself in it's attempt to improve itself. Shit, that's like coming up with Warforged while trying to replace kender.

In many ways, the Borg are the truest dark reflection of the Federation, and despite their name, they're not Swedish. While the Feds want you to join their little club on your own, to "add your culture to the galactic community," the Prime Directive means they will ultimately accept you turning them down, even if you have shit they really want. The Borg say fuck that and just absorb you. While the Feds believe everyone should work together for the greater good, they still have a very strong sense of individualism and a culture of personal accomplishment (unless your individual belief happens to run counter to the Federations principles anyway, in which case you're just WRONG because the Federation is the best). The Borg pool all their minds together into a massive collective consciousness in the pursuit of group perfection. The Federation is all about beauty and tranquility and all that hippie stuff, and their tech is eco-friendly and dolphin-safe. Borg strip mine entire planets and drain entire oceans in the name of growth and efficiency.

Your standard Borg cube is a huge multi-kilometer craft (yes, bigger than most Imperial Navy cruisers) able to go up against an entire Federation warfleet and win. That's right, one of their ships could threaten the entire Federation and Exterminatus Earth. When done right, they are a cold, calculating, nigh-unstoppable force, a threat to all life that wants to retain free and distinct personalities (although they will ignore a single person if not on an assimilation mission, as what they really want is to absorb whole civilizations). Apparently, in Picard's nightmare in First Contact, the Borg assimilation process includes a surgical drill through the eye. While awake.

They got a bad downgrade during Voyager (blowing up cubes full of tens of thousands of drones because a few of them have been severed from the Hive Mind), but even there they were frequently not to be messed with.

One amusing thing to note for people that haven't watched TNG: the Borg were actually only in six episodes (and three were breakaway drones) and one movie, yet they're arguably the franchise's most famous pure villains aside from Khan. Goes to show how good they were when written properly.

The Cardassians

Introduced in TNG, they are third fiddle to the Klingons and the Romulans. If the Klingons are hypothetically-honorable techno-barbarian warriors and the Romulans are an empire of civilized and refined but sly and ruthless expansionists, the Cardassians are essentially scalie fascists re-enacting 1984 IN SPACE. Their trials announce the outcome at the beginning, and the defense attourney is executed if he wins. Also, THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Despite being a whole lot weaker than the Federation, the Cardassians manage to hold their own, partly because what they lack in resources and raw power is made up for by a combination of intense cunning and high charisma stats. Compared to the equally deceptive Romulans, the Cardies are more likely to flash you a smile while tickling your ribs with a knife. Their intelligence service, the Obsidian Order, is also one of the most ruthlessly efficient organizations in the entire sector, managing to outscale the Romulan Tal Shiar when it comes to producing magnificent bastards and manipulating the politics of entire worlds to their advantage. Unlike the Romulans or the Klingons, they don't tolerate the sort of literal infighting that is rampant in both those states, that shit only serves to weaken GLORIOUS CARDASSIA and needs to be stamped out with ruthless efficiency. Exposing that someone who just happens to be your enemy as being an dangerous subversive is just a benefit, although this can result in both sides of a conflict shouting "for Cardassia" as they charge each other. Sort of how Democrats and Republicans are both for America, yet oppose each other.

Cardassia has a very fluid hierarchical government, similar to the political realities of post-Stalin but pre-Collaspe Communist Russia. Broadly speaking, there are three different facets of the government: the Militant arms (which holds all the power) the Obsidian Order (who holds the least amount of power, but controls the most puppets) and the Detapa Council (similar to the High Lords of Terra and just as worthless). Cardassian society holds a very strict view of family, placing family just below the needs of the State.

The State holds a semi-divine mythical status in the eyes of it's citizens, with it being viewed as impossible for the State to ever make mistakes. The ideal Cardassian life was one of complete loyalty and servitude to the State and family. The Cardassian government was assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent by pretty much everyone, with all Cadassians gladly giving of themselves to the State. Such was this level of belief that when Picard was tortured by the Obsidian order, the torturer saw nothing wrong with bringing his daughter to work because he was working for the State, and therefore the torture of Picard could never be disturbing or wrong.

As far as plot significant activities went, they had a war with the Federation a few years before TNG which ended in the creation of a Demilitarized Zone between the two powers and (significant to Deep Space 9) abandoning the previously occupied planet of Bajor that had exploited for resources. They joined the Dominion towards the end of DS9, which was some serious bad news for the DS9 crew.

The Bajorans

The Bajorans are a species native to the Planet Bajor. They were, until shortly before the events of Deep Space Nine, under a brutal occupation by the Cardassians who strip mined their planet. After that, they got their independence, although they're thinking about joining the Federation. The Bajorans have one system and are technologically backwards; the Federation is technically breaking the Prime Directive by interacting with them, but as they've spent years under the oppression of a warp-capable species, they can probably handle it. Also DS9 proves that ancient Bajorans managed to travel at warp speeds to Cardassia using solar sails and an enormous amount of luck, which technically makes them a warp-capable species. The only reason why they are significant in terms of the politics of Star Trek is that they have a wormhole near their planet, which has some timey-wimey aliens living it that they worship as gods. Also, their species has the oldest civilization (roughly a half-million years) of any major Star Trek race.

The big thing that makes the Bajorans unique is that they actually have a serious religion going on -- the human race is depicted as mostly non-religious (because Roddenberry was non-religious and wanted the Federation to be a world without any kind of prejudice). They're also probably one of the most accurate depictions of any highly religious alien race in a sci-fi franchise, because they are divided between the majority who interpret their religion as peace and love, and a small but loud minority of bastards who interpret it as condoning acts of terrorism. A blatant attempt to simulate Israelis for criticism.

The Dominion

A vast empire which exists on the other side of the galaxy. The Dominion is ruled over by a species of liquid shape shifters called The Founders. They have at their disposal a military composed of two genetically engineered species that worship the Founders as gods: the short and articulate Vorta who serve as ambassadors, bureaucrats and military officers and the big brutal Jem'hadar, who are vat grown drug addicted cannon fodder. These oversee a large number of vassal races, including (as of later seasons of DS9) the Cardassians. The Dominion is vast and aggressive, but fortunately for the Alpha Quadrant the only way between the Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant that would not take decades is through the aforesaid wormhole. That's not such good news for the Bajorans and for Deep Space Nine though.

The Shows

The Original Series

Created in 1966 by legendary sci-fi god Gene Roddenberry and pitched as a "Wagon Train to the stars", it's a pulpy adventure sci-fi, full of fistfights and sword fights (the guns never work).

The USS Enterprise is tasked by the Federation to seek out new worlds and boldly go where no man has gone before, though due to budget constraints, her crew often find that man has in fact gone there before. James T. Kirk sleeps with hot alien babes who either die tragically or leave tearfully at the end of the episode, but it's 'k because he's too in love with the Enterprise to ever love a mere woman more. Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are cold and logical and rash and emotional respectively, and Scotty gets shit done.

The Original Series frequently ran out of budget and entire episodes were filmed using spare costumes belonging to the production company, resulting in a series of extremely goofy excuses to go to planets full of gangsters or Nazis. This is often copied by shows who don't realize it was done out of pure expediency, and nowadays it's practically a box to check off when doing sci-fi adventure. The lack of budget also resulted in one of the more memorable inventions; unable to budget for a sequence showing the Enterprise landing on a new planet every week, the writers instead decided to invent the transporter. Also worth noting: TOS had a hell of a cultural impact.

Fun fact: the Enterprise, and each of her 11 sister ships, have enough firepower to Exterminatus a planet by themselves. This may be related to their secondary ship-to-ship weapons traveling at FTL speeds.

The Animated Series

The often forgotten middle child. More or less "seasons 4-5" of TOS with the same writing staff and actors, sans poor Walter Koening. At least he got replaced by a badass birdman. Being animated allowed the staff to get a lot more creative with the alien designs and plots, and the writing and acting remain... well, top notch is a stretch, but certainly at the same levels as the original series. Not nearly as bad as you're probably picturing from the name, although still limited by the low budget and primitive animation techniques of the television era it was aired in. Notably some sci-fi novelists were brought in to write some episodes, such as Larry Niven and, yes, Walter Koening.

Also, since the series now has no excuse for throwing in lots of Space Puritains and Space Wizards, it of course continued to do so to derptastic results, because by this point it had become traditional.

The Next Generation

Here's where it starts getting a little deeper and a little darker. The USS Enterprise-D (the original and C were destroyed in action while A and B were retired) is, like its predecessor, tasked with going where no-one has gone before, but this time around the problems are less likely to be solved in a single episode. Jean-Luc Picard is the captain and he plots and negotiates his way to victory; Mr. Data is cold and unemotional, though not by choice - as an android, he'd very much like to change that; Riker takes over the captain's "sleep with alien babes" duties since Picard is married to the job; Worf the Klingon gets beaten up by monsters to show how tough the monsters are, meaning that Worf winds up looking incredibly weak by the end of the show's run and doesn't regain his badassery until his run on DS9; and Geordi LaForge gets shit done. The less that is said of helmsman boy genius Wesley Crusher, the better.

Although the first couple seasons were laughably bad, the quality began to improve dramatically after Riker growing a beard. The later seasons are widely considered to represent the apex of the franchise on the small screen (although DS9 also had its moments); sadly, however, this series only got one good movie.

Deep Space Nine

Unlike all the other series so far, Deep Space Nine primarily takes place in a fixed location - the titular space station Deep Space Nine, out near the borders of Federation Space. Said space station is near Bajor, which was recently freed from Cardassian occupation, and a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy which allows all sorts of of crazy shit to go down. If the other shows are a wagon train, this one's a border fort.

Benjamin Sisko is the captain, and he alternates between blowing shit up like Kirk and talking people down like Picard in his ultimately-successful quest to become the baddest motherfucker in space. Kira the Bajoran ex-terrorist noble freedom fighter who are we kidding she calls herself a terrorist struggles to free and rebuild her people, Dr. Bashir struggles to find his character, Dax struggles to hold things down and has to switch bodies doing it, Odo IS Liquid Space Cop, Quark runs his bar and heckles the Federation, Garak pretends to be a tailor while dropping killer lines, and Miles O'Brien gets shit done. Also, Worf wanders in halfway through, and actually gets to punch things instead of just getting punched by them. It's a lot more political than other series (though TNG and Voyager have their moments) and the last series to have Gene Roddenberry's involvement.

It's the closest the franchise ever gets to Grimdark, especially when the Dominion show up. The show has aged remarkably well and the terrorist/freedom fighter debate was repeatedly explored in a very mature and honest way. Except that Bajorans and Maquis are a bunch of whiney and irrational dicks. "I feel oppressed, so I'm going to violate starfleet regulation!" DS9 is the most serialized of all Trek shows and could be considered a forerunner to the golden age of television with its long story arcs and deep character development. Overall, DS9 has to be considered the most consistently good Trek show thanks to the excellent writing and fantastic performances from a truly wonderful ensemble cast. Quality dropped abruptly in the final season but hey, what you gonna do. How good is Deep Space Nine? Every Star Trek series and even the reboot movies have pretty much ripped off ideas and concepts established during the series.

Voyager

Voyager is...well, it's controversial shit. Many people say it's the worst series, but those people obviously haven't yet seen how pants-shittingly awful Enterprise is. The plot centres around the USS Voyager, a smallish ship which gets teleported over to the other side of the galaxy, and the plot of the series as a whole centers on its efforts to get back home, with the primary obstacle being the consistently terrible decisions of its own captain. Think Gilligan's Island on a starship. Yeah.

Like TNG and DS9 it's a character-driven drama just as often as it is a sci-fi adventure romp, although it only has one half-decent character, called "The Doctor" (No relation); he's the solid-light hologram representative of the ship's emergency medical computer, who has to take on actual medical duties since their chief medical officer was conveniently killed in the pilot episode. Other than this, Tom Paris is an annoying jerk and is contrebalanced by Harry Kim who is the ideal boy-scout, making him only half as annoying and twice as boring. B'elanna Torres tries to perpetuate a lineage of dudes getting shit done but ends up blankly reciting her technobabble, having second degre plasma burns and – worst of all – systematically fail to get shit done whenever the warp core goes nuts. Tuvok tries hard to be as cool as Spock but ends up being a lame version of the n°1 vulcan who uses logic to justify everything and makes it short for "you are wrong, I am right because I said so". Kes is passed as a fragile and nice character but it takes a couple episode to realize that having a short lifespan does not change the facts : when you can boil someone to death from the inside of their body, drain life from everything arround you to become stronger and do anything you want without knowing how, just by thinking of it, you are a goddamn Mary Sue. From the fourth season onwards the only character the writers seemed to care about is Seven of Nine, a human woman who recently escaped from Borg control and kept all of her cyborg enhancements but regained her free will; another Mary Sue, to be sure, but she's hot, and the other characters are much worse, so that's not really a bad thing. (Actually though Seven was a prominent character the one good character on the show, namely The Doctor AKA the EMH, still received a lot of attention from the writers and almost singlehandedly made the show watchable). There was also Neelix, who was the apparent inspiration for Jar-Jar Binks, and any sane crew would have pushed him out of an airlock on the first episode. Fans who stuck with the show despite its glaring failings were given one final slap in the face with the controversial shit final season, in which the producers decided "screw steadily crafting a satisfying conclusion to a story which we have wasted for most of the last seven years anyway; lets just ignore it until the final episode and then throw in some shit about trans-warp conduits and time travel, bitches love time travel". If you did not care about any of the characters or the subplots or time travel making sense (the writers sure didn't), then the final episode was explosions.

The Doctor never once stopped being totally fucking awesome though, and the great acting from the cast carries the series from being horrific to watchable. Just goes to show that no matter how good your actors are, they can't make diamonds out of shit.

Hopes that the franchise had sunk to a new low from which it could surely only get better were about to be proved wrong in spectacular fashion...

Enterprise

A bold and according to some successful attempt to create a series even worse than Voyager was, from the minute the fantastically awful theme tune started the fans knew in their hearts it was fucking doomed. So bad that even the most devoted Trekkies gave up on it, in just four seasons this series almost single-handedly killed off the Trek franchise (which is actually quite impressive, in a perverse sort of way).

It's a prequel to the rest, taking place on the first Enterprise, before the Federation was founded, and Earth was an independent power - so there's a lot of primitive versions of things from other series. At least the uniforms were pretty cool in an air force sort of way, although when that's the best thing you can say about a series, that tells you all you need to know about its quality (or lack thereof). Captained by that guy from Quantum Leap Jonathon Archer, in hindsight the fact that they had to rename him from their original choice of Jeffrey Archer to avoid confusion with the disgraced British MP and author of the same name probably cursed the series with bad karma before it had even begun shooting. In an unusual twist for a Trek series, his first officer isn't a terrorist noble freedom fighter however she does share a trait with her Voyager predecessor in that the actress who portrayed her frequently criticised the show's writers in interviews.

Was retooled twice, the third season tries to be 24 in space while the 4th is a massive apology about the last three seasons that tries to fix all the problems they had, and as a result, the only season that's close to being good.

Amusingly the final episode is set on the holodeck of the Enterprise-D and leaves us with the firm impression that the producers would have much rather have just continued making The Next Generation; considering the mediocre quality of the TNG movies we got instead, this probably would have worked out better for all involved (Or not since Voyager was that, its first episode was even number 901, as in season 9 episode 1).

Yet despite all this horrible acting, subpar plots, and frankly boring episodes, Enterprise was fucking awesome moderately enjoyable with occasional moments of awesomeness if we're being honest. The focus on founding Federation races like the Andorans was refreshing and the technology level, being somewhere between the original series and the real world present-day, was quite interesting. We also got to see the Vulcans portrayed as arrogant, superior dicks. Which makes a lot more sense than the way they're usually portrayed as fairly submissive towards humans because they are, obviously and objectively, the superior race. The Klingons certainly still considered themselves to be honourable but the show made it clear that the Klingon notion of honour is rarely analogous to the human concept which was interesting as all hell to watch.

And let's be fucking honest, /tg/ loves 40k and the Xindi arc was about as grimdark as shit gets. And that was awesome.

Also makes a neat pairing with Voyager in that they really mess with the prime directive and question the federation.

Renegades

Kickstarter Trek. It's basically comprised of a good Star Trek movie, a mediocre Star Trek season, and a shitty Star Trek fanfic, with all sharing equal screentime. The makers submitted their pilot made-for-TV movie to CBS trying to get it made into a legit on-the-air series (and by god it shows). They said they can still make a season, just not on on TV. Pretty much has good and bad in equal measure. Some characters are actually interesting (about time we saw more of the Breen!) while others are pure Mary Sues (including a male Seven of Nine with a built-in Borg-gun/personal shield/fully-functional hand). Some of the ideas are interesting while others are boring or already-been-done. The CGI is all Hollywood-quality, but the practical effects are okay at best.

Most of all, the biggest thing this needs/needed is time. It's obvious that they made this without knowing that they were going to be able to make a TV show or not, and tried to cram the sort of build-up and intrigue we saw in DS9 into a span of 90 minutes. For now though, it's decidedly meh.

Films

As a general rule, the even-numbered ones aren't complete shit.

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (AKA the Slow Motion Picture, or the Motionless Picture. Old school sci-fi geeks like the ideas, but terrible pace and interminable special effects that were clearly meant to capitalize on this newfangled 3011 doohickey all the kids are yammering about kill them dead for everyone else.)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ( KKKHHHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!! Widely considered the best of all the films, and the only one considered a straight up great film, no qualifiers. If you haven't seen it, see it.)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Where is Spock? He's on Genesis. ALL AHEAD FULL! Not really bad, just run of the mill compared to the superior films that surround it, and with the misfortune of undoing some of the previous film's more-daring decisions. If you had to say that any film broke the odd numbers suck rule, it would be this one.)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (The crew of the Enterpise travels back in time to save whales. No, really. Somehow it works; The Voyage Home is a zany comedy romp beloved by the general public and fandom alike, leaving only the most intractable fanbois to bitch and moan.)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Lies! There is no Star Trek V! It was not called The Final Frontier! It was not directed by Kirk's egotistical actor and did not have a plot that could literally be summarized as "Kirk fights God and wins!" The films mysteriously moved from four to six and we are all improved because of this!
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (The Space Cold War ends amidst Tom Clancy-esque drama. The sendoff for the original cast. Gene Roddenberry watched it, hated it and was going to seek legal advice but died a week later. And good riddance to that, because it's a pretty sweet political thriller if your hippie-panties don't get into a twist at the thought that the Federation isn't a perfect place full of perfect people.)
• Star Trek Generations (Malcolm McDowell blows up planets to get into a magic space ribbon to live forever, no it does not make sense in context. Also, Kirk dies on the bridge in the most face-palming manner possible.)
• Star Trek First Contact (The TNG crew face off with the Borg to ensure the future happens. Lots of action and some good performances make this the only good TNG movie if you ignore the Borg Queen subplot.)
• Star Trek Insurrection (If you thought the Na'vi were a bunch of Mary Sues, you ain't seen nothing yet! B-b-b-baby you ain't seen n-n-n-nothing yet! Also, Riker shaves his beard, and that's basically a war crime.)
• Star Trek Nemesis (The last stand of the TNG cast, ending not with a bang but a whimper. It also required amending the even-good-odd-bad rule to "Galaxy Quest counts as a Star Trek film so this one is also odd.")
• Star Trek (2009 Alternate timeline "reboot" (sideboot?) with the original crew. Skubtastic, but at least watchable, which is more than most odd-numbered films can muster.)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (Terrorism and flapdoodle. Even more skubtastic.)

Relaunch

Like most long time franchises Star Trek has a massive line of books. Unlike most they're basically just fanfics as nothing but the show or movies is canon so the writer can do whatever they want. This changed after Nemesis since they might never have another show or movie in the "Prime" universe the writers got there shit together and wrote a group of books with tight community very close to the shows. The relaunch novels are a continuation of the show they're about. Also they're the Titan books which is about Riker and Troi getting their own ship, which happens to be staffed by every race in the Federation including living rocks and a space cyborg ostrich.

Also the Borg go nuts and eat Pluto... yeah...

Then all the federations main enemies get together to form an anti-Federation and start poking the bear, all the while telling the its allies that they're somehow warmongering dicks.

Star Trek Online is also part of this (it's written by the same writers), although it ignores the Borg part.

Games

There's been plenty of vidya gaems featuring Star Trek, including one of the earliest action multiplayer wargame: Netrek. There's also been plenty of tabletop gaming that was inspired by Star Trek without being merchandising bullshit.

• Star Fleet Battles (1979-2010) The crunchiest starship combat game you're ever going to find outside of a computer. Based on TOS and not any of the later series, for obvious reasons. Takes some liberties with the setting, which is why "Star Trek" isn't actually in the title.
• Star Trek: The Role Playing Game (1982-1989) Made by FASA, essentially Traveller-lite, or a happier, shinier Rogue Trader. Hasn't aged terribly well, what with having been made when the only canonical Star Trek materials to work with were the original and animated series, the first four films, and a couple of now non-canon novels. If you try to dust it off, expect tons of conflict with the rest of the show. Died as they were trying to update it for the new setting, because Paramount's corporate suits (surprise, surprise) had no idea what an RPG actually entailed and were worried about violence and oh you know the drill by now. Welcome to the 80s.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game (1998-1999) The next attempt, made by Last Unicorn Games. Won an award for best new game, which makes it a complete shame that no one has ever played it.
• Call To Arms: Star Trek (2011) Their license for Babylon-5 expired, so they rethemed the game to Star Trek along with improving the system to make it more nifty. Less micro-management than SFB, and ships get some cinematic feats.
• Star Trek: Expeditions (2011) Ignore the tie-ins to the movie, Reiner Knizia designed this. Explore the gameboard, flip over missions, try to have the proper crew to get victory points.
• Star Trek: Fleet Captains (2011) Tile flipping, exploring, and spaceships fighting over resources
• Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator (1983) FASA designed this, so it feels like Battletech but not as good.
• Star Trek Red Alert (2000) A Diskwars game themed to Star Trek.
• Star Trek CCG (many) There's been a few of these, but never popular enough to catch on. They also suffered from the game balance problems of fans wanting their fave character, but needed extra rules for their quirks. There's also the problem of putting numbers to character stats, such as one game that asserted that Picard had about twice the integrity of a Klingon pig. Latest versions are "deck-building" games to try to cash in on the popularity of Dominion and Thunderstone.
• Star Trek: Attack Wing (2013-) WizKids license the flightpath system from Fantasy Flight Games and adds Star Trek to the mix, Skub ensues. The game has been consistently plagued with balance issues, to the point that the rules errata is more than ten times longer than the actual rules. The actual current rules for things like the Borg' special movement and fighter squadrons are completely different than the rules as written.
• Star Trek Online (201?-) An MMO. Decent gameplay mechanics, especially starship combat. Storyline leaves something to be desired, especially when the ostensibly peaceful Federation trades shots at least once with every other faction in the galaxy.

Would you like to know more?

• http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/ Main Memory Alpha: Star Trek wiki
• http://sfdebris.com/ SF Derbis/ opinionated episode reviews, has some non trek stuff as well