Trope Suggestions [TrekLog]

Some TrekLog trope suggestions:
Transporter Malfunction
Holodeck Malfunction
Romance of the Week, for when a character falls madly in love and they break up by the end of the episode (specifically thinking of DS9 with this)
Character Cloned
De-Ageing / Devolution (also. can the TARDIS Guide de-ageing trope be expanded to include devolution. examples: The Long Step Backward, Ghost Light)
some kinda trope for when they meet superpowerful godlike aliens
more involved suggestion: Time Travel as a trope rather than a separate field since it’s not baked into the concept like it is with Doctor Who.
subtrope for the above for when they specifically go to contemporary Earth (Back to the Present? Tomorrow is Yesterday?). also Time Loop and Aborted Timeline
Dimensional Travel to go with the time travel trope

sorry if this is too many suggestions at once, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit.

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also for TrekLog remove the It’s Bigger on the Inside and Spaceship tropes that got added with the Assimilation^2 import

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What about when it’s evolution rather then deevolution (i.e: Threshold)?

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good point. Accelerated Ageing / Rapid Evolution (or whatever the TARDIS trope is called)

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or: Salamanderfication

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You’re also left with the question of whether you tag it every time it’s mentioned.

IIRC, Lower Decks: Twovix and Prodigy: Mindwalk (Which would have several other tropes, and entirely satisfactory levels of Janeway…).

(Prodigy also mentions Tuvix, but in a different episode…)

Only when it happens? unless you mean the hypothetical salamanderfication trope tracking every time the events of Threshold are acknowledged

another Trek suggestion: Prime Directive – for stories where the prime directive is a major plot element. possibly too subjective

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Maybe times the prime directive was violated, and times it was obeyed separately? With it being required for the prime directive to have been mentioned, so we don’t just chuck entire series in the prime directive being violated bin…

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for star trek:

  • badmiral, where there is a admiral character who ends up the villain.
  • only ship in range.
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I like how Lower Decks literally went and named an admiral “Buenamigo”, or good friend…

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Thanks for all these suggestions!

  • I’ve copied all the TARDIS Guide tropes to both TrekLog and AudioLog, and deleted ones I think don’t belong (there are probably more I should delete, let me know here!)
  • I’ve added those TrekLog specific ones you asked for!

Please go ahead and start adding Tropes :blush:

Also, both TrekLog and AudioLog have the full list of Content Warnings now.

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some trope removal/edit suggestions:
probably remove: Anachronisms, By Royal Command (obv they do meet alien rulers but it’s not really the same), Days of Future Past and Days of Present Past (there are stories that would fall under these but again it’s just not the same imo), Evil Toys (TNG’s The Game might fall under this?), Factory, Influencers, News Report, Profiting from time travel, Romans, Time Agent, Time Eddy, Vikings

maybe remove: All Aboard! (not enough trains in Trek, alas), Capitalism is bad (this is just the Ferengi), Controlling the Beast (I can’t think of any instances of this), Dear Diary (or maybe rename to Personal Log for that Star Trek vibe? idk), Dinosaurs (there are dinosaur stories but are there enough?), Everybody Dies (too many core cast members for “everybody” to pack the same punch. also not sure it happens that often), Everybody Lives! (same sort of reason), Human Traitor, Life force, Living Art, Monster Origin Story (I can think of at least one thing that would fall under this but idk. Trek doesn’t really do monsters the same way Who does), New Old Friend, On the Beach (do they go to the beach ever?), Reality TV (I can think of one story that would qualify for this), Halloween (there are a few but generally Trek doesn’t have that much holiday stuff & there’s a big overlap with Spooky anyway), Post apocalyptic, Stone Circle, Time Travel Pivotal (doesn’t make as much sense in a setting without regular time travel), some amount of Tourist Attraction/its subtropes, Virtual Reality (substantial overlap with holodeck, although there are some non-holodeck VR stories), Tombs

definitely remove: Deadlock Seal, Earth Invasion, Edge of the Universe (maybe replace with Edge of the Galaxy?), End of the Universe, Fake Regeneration, Frost Fair, Mysterious planet Earth, Non-interference policy (covered by Prime Directive), World War I, World War II

other suggestions: edit the Faulty Translation description to just be in-story since i.e. Klingon goes untranslated all the time. take out the ‘past lives’ bit in the description of Flashbacks. Rename “Held at Gunpoint” to “Phaserpoint” maybe? although that sounds silly. Also in general there are a lot of trope descriptions that reference the Doctor.

Are “Badmiral” and “Only ship in range” meant to be subtropes of Prime Directive? That seems odd.

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wow that is way longer than I thought it was going to be.

“Is Red (or Yellow) Shirt dies” on there?

It is not

oh! another suggestion: First Contact

Translation does get a little tricky, since not translating for the audience is kinda half of Discovery, and translation not working varies from “Darmok” to the first episode of Prodigy, where translation’s highly restricted to keep slaves from working together, to the season 1 finale, where all the universal translators aren’t working…

(Prodigy had such great themes of communication…)

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I couldn’t see a trope for where a main character is forced to fight another character against their will. I’m thinking of Arena from TOS, Code of Honor from TNG or that episode of Voyager where Seven of Nine fights The Rock. So maybe something for that? Come to think of it, TARDISGuide could probably do with that trope as well.

Also, how about a trope for when a crew member has their uniform torn apart, usually (but not always) during a fight. It seems to happen quite a bit in TOS but I’m sure there are other instances all over.

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Thinking about this some more maybe instead the general Holodeck trope should be deleted? & Holodeck Malfunctions made a subtrope of Virtual Reality instead. Or double nest it if possible.