By Chris Snellgrove | Published
One of the coolest things about Star Trek is that the franchise has had a lot of world building from the beginning. Some concepts, like faster-than-light travel, are based on real-world scientific ideas, but the writers and producers had to figure out how those scientific ideas would evolve over the next few centuries. For example, how would these future explorers categorize the different worlds they discovered? The Original Series he gave us a partial answer, revealing that Earth-like worlds are called M-class planets.
This designation was still used in The Next Generation by Captain Picard and his crew, and the title was repeated over and over again as spinoffs Deep Space Nine again Voyager. However, after decades hearing this name, fans began to ask obvious questions: what makes “M-class” even said? Where does the term come from, and when did Starfleet first use it? Ultimately, these mysteries were answered in “Strange New World,” a forgotten episode from the much-maligned spinoff. Star Trek: The Enterprise.
Strange New World
Of Business episode “Strange New World,” the crew has just begun their journey across the stars. They come across a planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth and decide to explore it. When a bad storm approaches, some of the crew (including Tucker and Mayweather) suggest taking shelter in a cave. But things take a turn for the worse when they start seeing creepy crawlies inside the cave and are surprised that T'Pol is hiding things from them. In a strange way, it turns out that there were no hostile aliens on earth: just some pollen that made everyone see through the eyes of the flesh. We get a relatively happy ending, and everyone gets a cure and lives for the adventure another day.
So, what does this strange story of triple space pollen have to do with Star Trek history? It's actually the first episode in the franchise to clarify that the “M” in “M Class” stands for “Minshara Class.” However, where does this unusual name come from? Vulcans, of course. “Strange New World” reveals that “Minshara-Class” was the term used for Earth-like planets by Vulcan explorers who (at the time) gathered information from probes instead of scanning the planets. Captain Archer's Enterprise was the first Starfleet ship to bear the name, which became a common voyage within three years.
Setting a new standard for Starfleet
Thanks to Archer's early adventures in episodes like “Strange New World,” Starfleet had a handy way to isolate planets like Earth. This was important because, according to the The Original Series In the episode “Balance of Terror,” there are approximately three million such planets in the Milky Way galaxy. While Business helped fans learn what the M-class actually means, we're still left with a few questions. For example, i The Next Generation he found that there are four levels of M-class planets. While this may have been used to distinguish different areas of the planet (such as dry Vulcan, rainy Ferenginar, and hot Risa), this has never been confirmed by the franchise.
Business is a much better show than fans think, and it's worth watching for this dip into franchise lore. Thanks to this show, we know how much the original Starfleet owed to the Vulcans, adopting the aliens' planetary classification scheme and using it to centuries. Honestly, that was a better decision than letting a space cowboy like Kirk pick the planet's nomination. If Star Trek (2009) is any indication, he would probably call them “BB-class planets,” and we'll have to wait four decades to find out that “BB” stands for “Beastie Boys.” And of course, who knows better than Kirk about how to fight for your right to (stay in) the party?
