The Class M planet Earth.

In the fictional Star Trek universe, a Class M planet is the classification used to refer to a planet that is suitable for supporting humanoid life. They usually have oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, suitable surface temperatures and plenty of water necessary for life to evolve and survive. Earth is considered a textbook example of a Class M planet. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (3000x3002, 6358 KB) The Blue Marble: This photo is of Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula as taken en route to the Moon by Apollo 17s Harrison Schmitt on December 7, 1972. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (3000x3002, 6358 KB) The Blue Marble: This photo is of Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula as taken en route to the Moon by Apollo 17s Harrison Schmitt on December 7, 1972. ... // Earth (IPA: , often referred to as the Earth, Terra, or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ... Star Trek is an American science-fiction franchise spanning six television series, ten feature films, hundreds of novels, computer and video games, and other fan stories. ... The eight planets and three dwarf planets of the Solar System. ... The term humanoid refers to any being whose body structure resembles that of a human. ... For other uses, see Life (disambiguation), Lives (disambiguation) or Living (disambiguation), Living Things (disambiguation) Look up life, living in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... General Name, Symbol, Number oxygen, O, 8 Chemical series Nonmetals, chalcogens Group, Period, Block 16, 2, p Appearance colorless (gas) very pale blue (liquid) Atomic mass 15. ... General Name, Symbol, Number nitrogen, N, 7 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 15, 2, p Appearance colorless Atomic mass 14. ... Atmosphere is the general name for a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass. ... Water is a tasteless, odorless substance that is essential to all known forms of life and is known as the universal solvent. ... // Earth (IPA: , often referred to as the Earth, Terra, or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ...

Aside from Earth, a few other well known Class M planets in the Star Trek series are: Qo'noS, Cardassia Prime and Bajor. The meeting place of the Klingon High Council in the First City of the Klingon Empire In the fictional Star Trek universe, QonoS is the Klingon homeworld, also known as Kronos or Klinzhai. ... In the fictional series, Star Trek, Cardassia Prime is the main planet in the Cardassian Empire. ... A typical major city on Bajor In the fictional Star Trek universe, Bajor (IPA: /bedʒoɹ/ or /beʒoɹ/) is the homeworld of the Bajorans. ...

On the series Enterprise, Sub-commander T'Pol uses the Vulcan term Minshara-Class to mean the same thing. The starship Enterprise (NX-01) Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. ... Commander TPol is a fictional character played by Jolene Blalock in Star Trek: Enterprise. ... This article or section may need to be cleaned up and rewritten because it describes a work of fiction in a primarily in-universe style. ...

In Futurama, the home planet of the Popplers is said by Turanga Leela to be a Type M planet. This leads her initially to expect to find "roddenberries" (a reference to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry). Futurama is an American animated sitcom that follows Philip J. Fry after he is cryogenically frozen at midnight, December 31, 1999, and is revived a thousand years later in the year 2999. ... Lrrr, Emperor of Omicron Persei VIII Omicron Persei VIII is the fictional home world of a race of belligerent aliens, known as the Omicronians, ruled by emperor Lrrr and his wife Ndnd, on the animated television series Futurama, set in the early 31st century. ... Turanga Leela (referred to as simply Leela) is the primary female character in the animated television series Futurama. ... Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek Eugene Wesley Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American scriptwriter and producer. ...

Criticism

Many viewers of Star Trek have complained about how often planets visited in the show are Class M and that the characters rarely go to more bizarre worlds. The reason for this is simply one of the television show budget. Scenes taking place on an Earth-like planet are more easily filmed right here on Earth. Otherworldly planets would need detailed sets made in studios or expensive computer generated effects.

An in-character reason for the numerous "Earth-like" worlds in the show would be the idea that humanoid life would better evolve on planets similar to Earth. It has also been mentioned in the series that two advanced precursor races of aliens (Preservers, Progenitors) "seeded" humanoids on many Earth-like worlds thousands and billions of years ago which resulted in most sentient races looking more or less like Earth humans. Another might be that these planets would be more likely to be of interest to explorers, and so are more frequently visited than uninhabited or lifeless worlds. In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Preservers are an ancient race of aliens who visited Earth thousands of years ago and removed some human specimens from the planet. ... A Progenitor as seen in the ST:TNG episode The Chase The Progenitors were a race of humanoids in the fictional Star Trek universe that were one of the universes oldest sentient species. ...

Some newly produced sci-fi television shows with higher budgets or access to computer graphics effects (Farscape, for example) have attempted to design and dress worlds to look as vastly different from Earth as possible, sometimes even getting into more esoteric backdrops like those seen on Lexx. Computer graphics (CG) is the field of visual computing, where one utilizes computers both to generate visual images synthetically and to integrate or alter visual and spatial information sampled from the real world. ... Farscape (1999 – 2003) is a science fiction television series, featuring a present-day astronaut who accidentally travels through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy. ... It has been suggested that Dark Zone be merged into this article or section. ...

See also

• Star Trek planet classifications — A list of other Star Trek planet classifications.

In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Planet Classification System is a system developed by the Federation to categorize planets by many factors, such as atmospheric composition, age, surface temperature, size, and presence of life. ...

External links

• Class M article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.