Star Trek

A successful franchise including five TV series and numerous films, Star Trek is one of the best-known sci-fi universes in history.

The Star Trek galaxy is our own Milky Way, several hundred years in the future. The stories are centered on ships and individuals from the United Federation of Planets, and their interactions with the many thousands of other civilizations that occupy the galaxy (some of the more notable of which include Klingons, Vulcans, Ferengi, Cardassians, and the Borg Collective). The Star Trek galaxy is dominated by humanoid creatures, which is due to a 'seeding' of many worlds by a single, original humanoid race billions of years ago; the genetic material they planted on various planets directed the evolution of life towards beings similar to themselves - and Star Trek humanoids are, in fact, so genetically similar that they can actually interbreed without difficulty.

The Star Trek galaxy is divided into four quadrants (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta), each of which hosts hundreds or thousands of intelligent species. The Federation istelf is but one of the major powers in the Alpha Quadrant. Throughout the quadrants, there are various diverse civilizations: huge empires which occupy as much as nearly a fourth of the galaxy, such as the Borg and Dominion; smaller sovereignties such as the United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire; still smaller regional powers such as the Cardassians and Ferengi; and finally small civilizations which may only hold one or a few colonies. Trade within and between these kinds of civilizations is a routine part of Star Trek economics.

Technology is surprisingly universal in Star Trek, with many species independently developing similar systems. Such technologies include: weapons like phasers, disruptors, and photon torpedoes; FTL travel by means of warp drives; starship systems such as shields and cloaking devices; and everyday devices such as transporters (teleportation devices), replicators (which can swiftly produce food and most other items directly from raw materials), and holograms (force-field based, photorealistic computer simulations).

The Star Trek saga takes place over several hundred years, beginning with humanity's first forays into the stars (in the series Enterprise), then during the heyday of colonization under the multi-species Federation (in the Original Series), and finally with struggles for local superiority (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager). There are also numerous time-travel incidents which reveal that the Federation, among other powers, continues on for at least several hundred years beyond any of the five series to date.

Record 58 - universe - Last update 07 Nov 2007, 06:43:22

Entry written by: Torvus

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