The Rules Of Star Trek: How They Keep Roddenberry’s Franchise Alive
Part of the reason Star Trek has endured and what sets it apart from competitors like Star Wars, is that the franchise operates according to a consistent set of rules.
Star Trek has existed for nearly sixty years and shows no sign of going away anytime soon. Part of the reason it has endured and what sets it apart from competitors like Star Wars is that the franchise operates according to a consistent set of rules.
I’m not talking about the Prime Directive here. That’s just an order given to Starfleet captains.
I’m not talking about things that recur, like the guy in the red shirt being first to die. That’s not a rule, that’s a trope.
I’m talking about fundamental laws that make the fictional Star Trek universe work. It’s something few other fictional worlds do as well, and it’s these rules that help keep Star Trek a consistent and connected universe across all its many forms.
These are the rules of Star Trek.
Rule One: Space is Big
Space, is big. That might seem like a given, but it’s not the case in every outer space sci-fi franchise.
In Star Wars anywhere and everywhere often seems to be a short hyperspace jump away. Other franchises use even more instantaneous forms of faster than light travel.
The TARDIS is able to take The Doctor anywhere he wants in the blink of an eye. In Star Trek, things are far away. Planets are vast distances apart, and warp drive, while faster than light, is not instantaneous.
It’s a feature, not a bug, in a franchise built around the excitement of exploration. In exploration it’s the journey that makes it fun, and if the journey is too short or too easy, exploration loses its luster.
So, Star Trek makes things take time.
Captain Kirk took the Enterprise on a five year mission into the unknown, because that’s how long it would take to get out there. It would have taken Voyager 70 years to get home, because in Star Trek space is vast.
Perhaps I should clarify and say that space is vast, when the franchise has good writers and it’s working properly. When writers get lazy they tend to play fast and loose with this rule, and it’s always to the franchise’s detriment. A few writing mistakes don’t diminish this rule’s importance to the franchise, though.
It is the single most important rule of the Star Trek universe, and the more carefully it’s adhered to, the better Star Trek is. In Star Trek, traveling shouldn’t be easy and it should always take a long time to get there.
Rule Two: Infinite Diversity In Infinitely Humanoid Combinations.
In Star Trek, the universe is filled with biological life. That biological life seems to come in very similar forms. Most intelligent life forms have evolved with two legs, two arms, and one head attached to a torso.
There may be some variation around that, but the most common way life evolves is, apparently, to look like your average, garden variety human. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
There are real scientific theories which suggest reasons the real universe might work this way.
For example, there’s the anthropic principle. If you apply it to this problem, it could suggest that if an alien environment is similar to Earth’s, then the life forms there might evolve with some human-like traits to adapt to similar conditions.
Star Trek has its own reason for this. In Star Trek they’ve come up with the idea that humanoid life was seeded around the galaxy by an original, humanoid life form. So, the universe of Star Trek tends toward planets evolving creatures that range from kind of human looking, to exactly human looking.
There are exceptions to this. The Hortas, for instance, are a silicon-based intelligent life form that looks like a rug. But standardized, the rule of Star Trek’s universe is one of infinite diversity in mostly infinitely humanoid combinations.
Whether those humanoids are slow moving lizards, or Chicago gangsters, in the end we’re all surprisingly similar.
Rule Three: The Milky Way, Is The Only Way
Space may be big, but it’s also a confined area. That area is the Milky Way Galaxy and Star Trek almost never leaves it.
This is partly because of, rule one. Outer space is huge, and our one Galaxy is so massive that even at high warp speeds, it would take decades to cross. The distance between galaxies is even larger.
Even if distance weren’t a problem, there’s the Galactic Barrier. In the Star Trek universe, the rim of our Galaxy is surrounded by a massive energy barrier, that makes leaving the Milky Way difficult. Attempting to penetrate it, can result in anything ranging from Godlike powers and subsequent megalomaniacal madness, to immediate death from explosion.
This all means that in the world of Trek, not only is visiting another Galaxy unnecessary, it’s nearly impossible unless you’re a very specific type of Godlike being. So this rule doesn’t apply to someone like Q or The Traveler, but in Star Trek, it applies to everyone else.
Rule Four: Space Is 2D
In reality the universe is a vast three dimensional plane, best pictured as if you’re floating inside a sphere with stars above, below, and all around you. There is a Y axis, a X axis, and a Z axis.
In Star Trek everyone ignores this fact and acts as if the Z axis does not exist. Starship maneuvering is generally limited to forward, backward, and left or right.
On rare occasions, a starship commander will issue an order requiring his navigator to use the Z-Axis, as Kirk does, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. When that happens, the idea is treated as if it’s a revolutionary idea. When it’s over, everyone goes right back to acting as if up and down do not exist.
It’s why Starships always seem to be oriented in the same direction. You’ll almost never see a starship approaching another ship with its bottom up and its top down. They are nearly always rotated the same way. It shouldn’t be that way, in space, but Star Trek has its own rules and they don’t always follow reality.
Making everything 2D, results in some pretty stunning space battle sequences. I’d say it’s worth bending real-life physics to make those battles happen.
Rule Five: God Does Not Exist, And Gods Do Exist
Star Trek spends a lot of time talking about how humans have gotten past the need for religion. It didn’t start out that way, the original series had a slightly more Christian view. Since then, though, the franchise has evolved into a generally atheistic point of view, and that works for it, since it keeps it from taking side.
Humans, and the Federation in general are very respectful of believers and their views, but the general consensus among the Galaxy’s most enlightened races is either that there is no Almighty and never was, or that there was an almighty creator but he’s gone. In the case of the Klingons, their Gods are gone because they killed them. As Worf explained it on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “they were more trouble than they were worth.
At the same time, Star Trek is adamantly anti-creator and extremely firm on the idea that Gods are real and everywhere. While the show and its characters tend to look down on worshippers, Starfleet’s explorers encounter beings with all the powers and abilities necessary to qualify as Gods all the time.
The Q continuum is a group of beings with unlimited power to do anything and everything.
The Prophets of Bajor, seem to control space and time.
Kirk and Spock once encountered the actual Greek Gods and confirmed that Apollo, Zeus, and the rest were definitely not myths.
There was also that one time Commander Jack Ransom turned into a giant floating god head.
The characters of Trek know Gods exist, but in the end the audience must never be left thinking these Gods are their creators. Why in-universe so many persist in avoiding belief is unclear, when it is clear that many of the god powered beings they meet could indeed create life forms and put them on a planet.
In fact, that’s exactly what most in Star Trek’s fictional universe think happened, only it was done by a race of mortal beings called the Progenitors, who were not Gods. Basically the rule here is that God definitely exists, but no one is encouraged to worship him.
Rule Six: Humans Don’t Tip
Star Trek has made it extremely clear, starting with Jim Kirk’s discussion of it in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, that humans don’t use money in Trek’s future. How exactly that works in a massive society like the one we see on television, is unclear.
There is some offhand muttering in Star Trek: First Contact about personal achievement being their currency, and that’s the only explanation we get. It’s definitely not communism, for those of you who’ve jumped to that.
The nugget of the no money idea is that Star Trek is a post scarcity society, a term which means that your people have the ability to make anything anyone wants at any time for free. Post scarcity is exactly what you’d get when you have a magic tech like replicators, and it’s a kind of economic system that’s its own separate thing. Post-scarcity is beyond notions of communism or capitalism.
Humans don’t use money, but that doesn’t mean nobody else does. The Ferengi, for instance, are absolutely obsessed with the stuff. This creates a problem when humans interact with them since the Ferengi won’t work with you if you don’t pay them, and humans aren’t supposed to have anything to pay them with.
It’s never entirely clear but it seems the way they’ve solved this is by having the Federation keep a stockpile of money to use with races outside the Federation. Federation members, and humans especially, never use the stuff when dealing with each other, but when they have to deal with other races and organizations, they’re able to get access to some sort of Galactic banking system, probably run by the planet Bolias.
Rule Seven: Orders are Not Rules
One of the things that makes Starfleet great and something to aspire to, is the way it’s not slavishly devoted to following edicts. It would not work with humans as they are now, but in Star Trek’s future, humans have evolved to the point that they can be relied upon to behave with good intentions while making decisions in shades of gray.
That means when Starfleet issues an order, while they expect it to be followed, if you have a really, really good reason not to they’ll usually let it slide.
Its why General Order One, also known as The Prime Directive, ends up being broken so often with zero consequences for the offender. Its also likely why it’s called a general order, or a directive, rather than a rule or a law.
As explained in Rule One of this list, space is big. Really big. And there’s more out there than anyone could possibly plan for or make a rule for, in advance.
Starfleet’s rules are strong suggestions. It’s a system that could only work in a future, where humans have evolved far past where we are now. It’s something we can all strive for.
Rule Eight: No True Evil
In Star Trek, an enemy is someone who hasn’t become your friend yet. No matter how bitter the rivalry, no matter how bad their behavior, all of the Federation’s tormentors will eventually end up as allies.
Millions were killed by the Klingons in the brutal war they waged on the Federation. A few decades down the road they are the Federation’s staunchest allies.
The Klingon generals who led the slaughter in the war? Now they’re drinking buddies and honored warriors. No one in Star Trek holds a grudge, for long, and anyone who tries is usually viewed as somehow defective.
It even happened with the Borg. They started out as unthinking murder machines and ended as a collective of victims in need of saving from themselves.
There may be a lot of horror and misery until things turn around, but in the world of Star Trek anyone and anything is capable of change.Forgiveness is unlimited for those who do.
Rule Nine: Technological Consistency
A warp drive is a warp drive and should always be treated as a warp drive. It can’t suddenly turn into a wormhole generator or a hyperdrive.
The technical specifications developed for it in past projects carry forward into future ones. Warp drives can get faster, they can get bigger, they can get smaller, but they can’t work without a warp core and warp nacelles or any of the other things we know about them.
Shields are always energy fields generated bya shield grid. They can’t suddenly become a type of armor or be reimagined as a bubble of thought created by kitten whispers and good intentions.
The same is true of all Star Trek technology. What’s established as working one way, can’t suddenly start working another way. It’s this consistency that makes Star Trek, Star Trek, and not Doctor Who or one of the Marvel movies.
The universe has already been built. Use it, and play around with it. Add on to it. Change these fundamental parts of it, and it stops being Star Trek.
Those are the 9 most important, foundational rules of the Star Trek franchise. They aren’t always followed perfectly, but Star Trek does make an effort to stick with them.
When it deviates from these basic, fundamental principles, it stops feeling like Star Trek and starts feeling like something else. And we’ve already got plenty of something else.
