Class M planet

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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.

Aside from Earth, a few other well known Class M planets in the Star Trek series are: Qo'noS, Cardassia Prime, Vulcan, Romulus and Remus and Bajor.

On the series Enterprise, Sub-commander T'Pol uses the Vulcan term Minshara-Class to mean the same thing.

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).

[edit] 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.

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.