Star Trek: 10 Most Overused Plot Tropes

Everyone knows Q, the sassy omnipotent alien, able to control all of space, matter, and time. He and the rest of the Q Continuum put humanity on trial for their barbaric history and, during The Next Generation, subjected Picard and the Enterprise-D crew to several tests to see if humanity was worthy to expand farther into space.

While the Q Continuum may have been the most powerful aliens ever seen in Trek, they were far from the only godlike aliens with an interest in testing the human race. The Metrons from the Original Series episode, Arena, possessed very similar powers and forced Kirk to battle with a Gorn Captain to experiment on human morals. Another example was the alien from Where Silence Has Lease who wanted to kill half the crew of the Enterprise-D to learn about death, as well as many more.

All-powerful alien entities are incredibly common throughout Star Trek and many of them are so ancient and so far evolved beyond humanity that they experiment on us like we would experiment on mice, usually only stopping after the Captain, or others, convince them of our worth.