Star Trek: First Contact with Earth's Ruling Alien Species (Cats)

The Star Trek episode when the enterprise went back in time and made first contact with the alien species that would rule the Earth

This meme parodies the iconic 'first contact' trope from the Star Trek franchise. The top caption reads: 'The Star Trek episode when the enterprise went back in time and made first contact with the alien species that would rule the Earth'. The image below is a screenshot from Star Trek: The Original Series, showing Captain James T. Kirk, Dr. Leonard McCoy, and a redshirt crew member looking down at a small tabby kitten. The joke satirizes the grand sci-fi concept of first contact by framing domestic cats as the 'alien species' that have come to 'rule' human households, playing on the popular internet joke that cats are dominant, beloved pets in many homes. The humor comes from recontextualizing a serious sci-fi scene with a mundane, relatable animal.

The meme uses a screenshot from the 1960s TV show Star Trek: The Original Series, edited with an added caption and the kitten inserted into the scene. This type of parody meme is widely shared on social media platforms like Reddit (in communities such as r/startrek and r/memes), Twitter/X, and Facebook, as part of the internet's long-running obsession with both cat memes and Star Trek fan content. It is a derivative work that repurposes original show footage for comedic effect.