Essay: A "Star Trek" Primer Thingie for Stuff I Didn't Explain in the Fic
Background
The Star Trek-universe is inspired by the television show Star Trek (know knows as Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS), which was created by Gene Roddenberry and which aired for the first time on American TV from 1966-1968. It spawned three four five spin-offs:
Terms
Battle of Wolf 359: Fake battle named after a real sector of space. We lost. Badly.
Borg: A race of cybernetic beings who aspire to "perfection." Members of the species (drones) are bound to the hive mind known as the Collective. SCARY AS FUCK, OKAY? Pretty much unstoppable in the Trek universe and the Federation has yet to come up with a way to defeat them.
The Borg have a queen who always seems to be hitting on whomever she's talking to, which is ... unexpected? She acts like she's doing people a favor by assimilating them, because then they leave their sad, insignificant lives behind and become a part of something "greater." WHATEVER, QUEEN.
Humans: If Humans had to have a defining trait in the Trek 'verse, we are wide-eyed, idealistic lil' dreamers. We promote peace, we explore and we fight against injustice and oppression. How other races view that idealism varies. Vulcans think we're foolish and blinded by optimism; Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans think we're too soft and merciful; Ferengi think we're naive and stupid.
Vulcans: Basically, our older space brothers. They have pointy ears and green blood. Vulcans are the first alien species that Humans made contact with and they acted as our mentors in space. For the most part, Humans and Vulcans get along fine. In keeping with the whole sibling thing though, they do at times find Humans annoying while we find them stuffy and humorless. WE WUV THEM, THO!
Vulcans are assholes without meaning to be assholes which makes them amazing at being assholes when they actually try to be a assholes.
The Vulcans favorite thing is logic. The live according to logic, rationality and stoicism. Vulcans do have emotions. They just repress them. Their emotions are 10 times more volatile than a Human's, and in their ancient past they lived in war and violence. It wasn't until a prophet (or scholar … IDK Vulcan philosophy) introduced the idea of controlling their emotions with logic did they become the advanced species they are today … er, or will be tomorrow.
Quadrant: In the Trek universe, the Milky Way Galaxy is divided into four quadrants: Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. The majority of Star Trek species in this fic (and that you probably know) are from the Alpha Quadrant. The Borg are from the Delta Quadrant.
United Federation of Planets: The governing organization uniting a least 150 planets/species under a central quasi-government. (Think the EU.) Known as the Federation for short. Founding species of the Federation are Humans, Vulcans and two others we don't care about.
Starfleet: The military/exploratory arm of the Federation. Officers attend Starfleet Academy. They love them some jumpsuits.
Bridge: The command center of a space ship. All of the major stations on the ship - engineering, security, communications, etc. - can be accessed there and the majority of the commands of the ship - navigation, weapons, defenses, etc. - are issued from there. The captain/commanding officer sits in the center of the bridge and can get information from every part of the ship.
Rank: The officers on a ship, in order of least superior to most superior are: ensign, lieutenant, lieutenant commander, commander, captain. Admirals are above captains, but they tend to lead fleets of ships as opposed to individual vessels. Junsu as the doctor sort of floats outside the chain of command. He has to follow the rules of whomever's in charge, but when it comes to sickbay and its patients, he has the final word.
Rank is signified by the pips on their collar. Captain has four, commander/lieutenant commander has three, lieutenant has two and ensign has one.
Romulans: Vulcans distant, illogical cousins. They fly around with bad haircuts in space ships trying to blow things up and start wars. The main bad guy in the first Star Trek reboot movie was a Romulan. Romulans hate Vulcans.
Stardate: Space calendar. The writers on the show just literally made it up and there's no real way to convert stardates to calendar dates. I just put random numbers in. HA HA.
The Star Trek-universe is inspired by the television show Star Trek (know knows as Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS), which was created by Gene Roddenberry and which aired for the first time on American TV from 1966-1968. It spawned three four five spin-offs:
- ST: The Animated Series (TAS) ( … wait, this one doesn't count)
- ST: The Next Generation (TNG) (The one with the bald captain.)
- ST: Deep Space Nine (DS9) (Space politics, space war and space refugees. You could drown in the metaphor. This makes it the best written series.)
- ST: Voyager (VOY) (They get lost. Maybe my favorite?)
- ST: Enterprise (I LITERALLY FORGOT THIS SHOW EXISTED UNTIL 16 SECONDS AGO.)
Terms
Battle of Wolf 359: Fake battle named after a real sector of space. We lost. Badly.
Borg: A race of cybernetic beings who aspire to "perfection." Members of the species (drones) are bound to the hive mind known as the Collective. SCARY AS FUCK, OKAY? Pretty much unstoppable in the Trek universe and the Federation has yet to come up with a way to defeat them.
The Borg have a queen who always seems to be hitting on whomever she's talking to, which is ... unexpected? She acts like she's doing people a favor by assimilating them, because then they leave their sad, insignificant lives behind and become a part of something "greater." WHATEVER, QUEEN.
Humans: If Humans had to have a defining trait in the Trek 'verse, we are wide-eyed, idealistic lil' dreamers. We promote peace, we explore and we fight against injustice and oppression. How other races view that idealism varies. Vulcans think we're foolish and blinded by optimism; Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans think we're too soft and merciful; Ferengi think we're naive and stupid.
Vulcans: Basically, our older space brothers. They have pointy ears and green blood. Vulcans are the first alien species that Humans made contact with and they acted as our mentors in space. For the most part, Humans and Vulcans get along fine. In keeping with the whole sibling thing though, they do at times find Humans annoying while we find them stuffy and humorless. WE WUV THEM, THO!
Vulcans are assholes without meaning to be assholes which makes them amazing at being assholes when they actually try to be a assholes.
The Vulcans favorite thing is logic. The live according to logic, rationality and stoicism. Vulcans do have emotions. They just repress them. Their emotions are 10 times more volatile than a Human's, and in their ancient past they lived in war and violence. It wasn't until a prophet (or scholar … IDK Vulcan philosophy) introduced the idea of controlling their emotions with logic did they become the advanced species they are today … er, or will be tomorrow.
Quadrant: In the Trek universe, the Milky Way Galaxy is divided into four quadrants: Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. The majority of Star Trek species in this fic (and that you probably know) are from the Alpha Quadrant. The Borg are from the Delta Quadrant.
United Federation of Planets: The governing organization uniting a least 150 planets/species under a central quasi-government. (Think the EU.) Known as the Federation for short. Founding species of the Federation are Humans, Vulcans and two others we don't care about.
Starfleet: The military/exploratory arm of the Federation. Officers attend Starfleet Academy. They love them some jumpsuits.
Bridge: The command center of a space ship. All of the major stations on the ship - engineering, security, communications, etc. - can be accessed there and the majority of the commands of the ship - navigation, weapons, defenses, etc. - are issued from there. The captain/commanding officer sits in the center of the bridge and can get information from every part of the ship.
Rank: The officers on a ship, in order of least superior to most superior are: ensign, lieutenant, lieutenant commander, commander, captain. Admirals are above captains, but they tend to lead fleets of ships as opposed to individual vessels. Junsu as the doctor sort of floats outside the chain of command. He has to follow the rules of whomever's in charge, but when it comes to sickbay and its patients, he has the final word.
Rank is signified by the pips on their collar. Captain has four, commander/lieutenant commander has three, lieutenant has two and ensign has one.
Romulans: Vulcans distant, illogical cousins. They fly around with bad haircuts in space ships trying to blow things up and start wars. The main bad guy in the first Star Trek reboot movie was a Romulan. Romulans hate Vulcans.
Stardate: Space calendar. The writers on the show just literally made it up and there's no real way to convert stardates to calendar dates. I just put random numbers in. HA HA.