Class M planet

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The Class M planet Earth.

A Class M planet is a fictional classification of a planet in the science fiction franchise Star Trek. The class denotes a planet that is suitable for supporting humanoid life. They usually have oxygen/nitrogen atmospheres, suitable surface temperatures for humanoid life, earth-like gravity and are water rich. 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.

1 Criticism
2 Pop culture reference
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Criticism

Some viewers of the original series 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. Scenes taking place on an Earth-like planet are more easily filmed at real locations. Otherworldly planets would need detailed sets made in studios or expensive computer generated effects, not available at the time.

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, Ancient humanoids) "seeded" humanoids on thousands of Earth-like worlds 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.

This approach changed dramatically with the introduction of new computer graphics and the way special effects were made. The newer series such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise introduce the viewers to many inhospitable planets (to humans at least.) As far as many creatures in the Star Trek series looking "human," this has now been explained simply: The biped form developed is efficient, although number of toes, noses, organs change, two legs seem to be the most common trait through the stars.

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.

[edit] Pop culture reference

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).
In Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode #801 Revenge of the Creature, Gypsy mentions the Satellite of Love is about to crash into a familiar class M planet.