They had a planet called Draylon 2.

Whenever Kirk is in a fight, his shirt always gets torn in exactly the same place - horizontally across the chest.

The predictability and grinding slowness of it all. Each episode takes a very long 50 minutes and they all break down like this: explanatory opening scene(3 mins); humorous interlude in bar/ holo-deck(6 mins); shots of Enterprise whizzing through space(5 mins); Captain argues with irate alien (1 min); crew stagger to left and right as proton torpedoes hit (7 mins); Transporter room shenanigans (4 mins); running about in caves (14 mins); Captain cops off with female alien (2 mins); female alien killed (30 secs); knife fight (2 mins); explanation of what's been happening all along (6 mins); jolly finale, usually a hilarious misunderstanding featuring Data or Spock (2 mins).

All alien food looks strange and disgusting. Filthy foriegn muck, eh?

Whenever the cast of Star Trek travel in time, it's always into American history, never anyone else's.

Neelix: Voyager's own Keith Flloyd, but without the bad behaviour.

Everybody has to have a long-lost twin, or a Romulan doppelganger or and identical android counterpart knocking around somewhere in the universe.

And everyone has to have a sibling or parent who died "tragically"(usually of warp-core scabies or something and whose demise they can't get over without a Vulcan mind-meld and much weeping.

Spock's funeral in The Wrath of Khan, a tour de force of cinematic crappiness, with Scotty playing the bagpipes as the deceased Vulcan is "buried in space". He would have wanted it that way, you know.

Counsellor Troi's mum and her stupid butler.

Come to think of it, all their relatives, apart from Spock's old man.

No one ever fancies anyone else on the Enterprise, apart from the dreadful Riker and Troi. If anyone else feels the slightest sexual twinge, it's evidence of a) intoxication; b) infection by a hostile intelligence (if their human); or c) the onset of a violent mating phase (if their alien). Of course, we wouldn't suggest that this is because Star Trek fans can't handle adult sexuality.

Nor that Spock and Data are popular for exactly the same reason.

The "touching" reunion scens that take up the first 45 minutes of all the movies.

Scotty and McCoy's dewy-eyed reminiscences of intergalactic derringdo, taking up the next 20 minutes.

All poems, records, novels, "technical manuals" and cookbooks by members of the Star Trek cast.

The story titles in the first series. They're all like "For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky" or "The Corbomite Manoeuvre".

No one ever listens to music apart from squirly computer burbling that's supposed to be future pop music.

Mr. Warf's grip-the-controls-and-snarl routine, which means, "These humans are a bunch of women. String `em up, I say. It's the only language they understand."

Lt. Uhura. First decent role for a black woman on network TV, and what does she get to do ? Answer the space phone for the white guy.

Captain Janeway's patent unfitness for command. She'll put up with any kind of disobedience - Torres beaming aboard mysterious spaceships, Paris stealing a shuttlecraft - so long as it furthers the plot.

Romulan cloaking devices. Another excuse for a story where nothing happens.

"The subtext of the series is that if a local culture is tested and found wanting in the eyes of a starship captain, he may make such changes as he feels necessary." this, by the way, is not just the word of some militant Dr Who fan. David Gerrold, the man who invented tribbles, said it in The World of Star Trek. Ha!

Next Generation's superficial political correctness. Let's take a close look at this vaulted step froward for equal rights in space. There are three women in TNG: Deanna Troi (wittering, hysterical, plunging cleavage), Dr. Beverly Crusher (mumsy, nurturing, sensible hairdo) and Tasha Yar (hot, blonde kung-fu mama). That's progress, eh ?

People whingeing about how unfair is was that the original Star Trek got cancelled. Listen - it go killed because no-one was watching it; beacuse it had run out of ideas; because its was rubbish.