10 False Star Trek Facts You Probably Still Believe

This one is an easy one to debunk and is depicted on screen often, so it really is for the newly initiated. It was evident from the beginning that if humanity were to start flying around the stars, they couldn't be spending valuable time in each episode trying to work out what the new aliens were saying. Thus, the universal translator was born.

It has seen various incarnations across the years. It began life as an instrument that looked somewhat like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, then changing shape for the movies. By the time of the Next Generation, the translator was inbuilt in the comm badges that the crew all wore on their shirts, though often times they were seen to understand alien races without these!

Deep Space Nine updated it again, depicting the translator as a piece of hardware that was inserted into a person. When Quark, Rom and Nog crash-land in 1940's New Mexico, they physically repair the translator with a hairpin, working their way in through the earlobe.

Star Trek Discovery moves back a little. In the second season, the translator is now a shipboard piece of technology that seems to be working constantly, though how exactly the crew hear every word translated has never really been satisfactorily explained. In fact, Star Trek Beyond offers one of the most realistic depictions of the technology, as the audience can both hear the alien language and the translator simultaneously.

While conceived as a time saver initially (much like the transporter), the universal translator is now an accepted piece of the furniture in Star Trek.