Star Trek

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Star Trek is one of the classic nerd interests, with over 40 years of Geek history that span several generations, and is one of the longest running Sci-fi franchises. If you are a nerd (and you are, otherwise why the fuck would you be on this site?) you are at least somewhat familiar with Star Trek.

Star Trek is to gwai-lo barbarians what Gundam is to weeaboo faggots. The polar opposite Noblebright to Warhammer 40,000's Grimdark.

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.

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.

The Original Series

"Wagon Train to the stars". Created in 1966 (yea, wow) by legendary sci-fi god Gene Roddenberry, it's a Pulpy adventure sci-fi, with fist-fights and gunfights and occasionally sword-fights. The Original Series isn't deep, folks. It's good, hammy fun, monster-of-the-week type stuff. 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 often find that man has in fact gone there before. James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy have sex, 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 realise it was never a good idea to begin with and done out of pure expediency. This 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 the ship would have a "Transporter" to special effect people to where they were going.

The Next Generation

Here's where it starts getting a little deeper, and a little darker. The USS Enterprise-D (usually just called Enterprise) is once again 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 (but he'd like to learn emotions), Riker and Worf have sex and get punched by things, respectively, Wesley Crusher is an abominable little shit (even the guy who played Wesley hated him), and Geordi LaForge gets shit done.

Deep Space Nine

Unlike all the other series so far, Deep Space Nine primarily takes place on a space station - the titular Deep Space Nine, out near the borders of Federation Space. Said space station is near a recently-freed world and a wormhole, so all sorts of crazy shit goes down. 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.

Voyager

Voyager is...well, it's controversial shit. Many people say it's the worst series. The USS Voyager gets teleported over to the other side of the galaxy, and the plot of the series as a whole centres on its efforts to get back home with the primary obstacle being the consistently terrible decisions of its own captain. Like TNG and DS9, it's a character-driven drama just as often as it is a sci-fi adventure romp.

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. It's a prequel to the rest, taking place on the first enterprise, before the Federation got a lot of shit figured out - 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. It started getting a bit better later on, but then it got canceled.

Films

As a general rule the odd numbered ones are shit

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (AKA the Slow Motion Picture)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (KKKHHHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!!)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Where is Spock? He's on Genesis. ALL AHEAD FULL!)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (The crew of the Enterpise travel back in time to save whales)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Mysteriously the movies just jumped from 4 to 6)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (The sendoff for the original cast)
• 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)
• Star Trek First Contact (TNG crew face off with the Borg, best of the movies with the TNG cast)
• Star Trek Insurrection (If you thought the Na'vi were a bunch of Mary Sues, you ain't seen nothing yet!)
• Star Trek Nemesis (The last stand of the TNG cast, ending not with a bang but a wimper)
• Star Trek (2009 Alternate timeline "reboot" with the original crew.)

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. Takes some liberties with the setting, which is why "Star Trek" isn't actually in the title.
• 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 IX (2009 movie)

There are two sides to every story, and when you can't compromise you can see two completely different views of the same goddamn thing. What we need is compromise. What we have is well... To get things straight, people either love or hate this movie for what it is and it can be summarized in two paragraphs:

Trekkie Hipsters think: This was given to be a total revamp of the entire Star Trek universe, a modernization that would invite new generations of Trekkers to the fold. It resulted in one of the largest nerdrage controversies in the history of Sci-fi, with J.J. Abrams labeled as a total fucktard for effectively ignoring 45 years of Star Trek history. Set in what is clearly an alternate timeline version of the 'The Original Series', it adds flashy, sexy, lens-flare faggotry to the aging Star Trek universe. Featuring a newly redesigned Enterprise that looks like it was built by Apple and more action than an entire season of TOS, it did indeed win new fans over. It also, to be fair, pissed off a lot of the old fans, but let's be honest: they could have remade Wrath of Khan shot for shot and old fans would have been pissed off about something.

Trekkie Fanboys think: This was given to be a total revamp of the entire Star Trek universe, a modernization that would invite new generations of Trekkers to the fold. It resulted in one of the largest nerdrage controversies in the history of Sci-fi, with J.J. Abrams labeled as a total fucktard for effectively deleting 45 years of Star Trek history. Set in the timeline of the 'The Original Series' (where good ol' Abrams could do the most damage), it adds flashy, sexy, lens-flare faggotry to the aging Gene Roddenberry Star Trek universe. Featuring a newly redesigned so-totally-Not-phallic ship (the Enterprise), and proceeds to butcher and rape Star Trek fluff from there.

>> Trekkie debates are so much more civilized than the rest of /tg/. DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS

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