Help:Linking to episodes and films

This page is a tutorial for learning to work with links to episodes and films that make up the Star Trek saga. On Memory Alpha, we use templates to to distinguish episodes from their redirects or alternate meaning titles sharing the same name. These templates allow Memory Alpha to add special tool tips to the links so that when a mouse cursor moves over it, a special text box pops up. These also allow us to maintain all of the episode pages at once without having to edit most every page on Memory Alpha.

Episode links
Episode links (also known as "eplks") are done by using the e or EpLink template. A regular wiki link would look like Yesterday's Enterprise, and the template version appears like. The template use automatically formats the episode title properly for the wiki by wrapping inside quotes.

Please note that, just like a regular link, if you do not get the episode name correct when adding an episode link, it will appear as a "red link". When using episode links, be sure to use the "Preview" option and correct the link rather than creating a redirect or a new article from that target. Every episode and film produced in the Star Trek universe will have an article on Memory Alpha, and thus does not need to be duplicated.

For example:

will produce:

These episode links can also be used in conjunction with a series short form to properly format the episode or list of episodes when using them as a reference on an article. The series identifiers are as follows:
 * TOS – Star Trek: The Original Series
 * TAS – Star Trek: The Animated Series
 * TNG – Star Trek: The Next Generation
 * DS9 – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
 * VOY – Star Trek: Voyager
 * ENT – Star Trek: Enterprise

Each of these series links can support up to five episode titles that will be formatted in the proper style for Memory Alpha.

For example:



will produce:

Linking to episode talk pages should be done with the EpTalk or et templates.

If more than five episode titles are used in a single reference, any beyond the fifth will be marked as "and more", and the article will be added into a maintenance category. If this happens, it is best to try to split the references up so that they apply to the specific thing that is being cited.

Film links
Similar to the episode links, there is a film template that is used for automatically formatting and linking to each of the Star Trek films. This template, like the episode link template, can only link to one film at a time. Instead of using the title of the film, the template takes a simple number – the number of film in question. As such, the original movie,, would use the number "1", while would use the number "7".

For example:

will produce:

This will also cover instances where a film's title has a conflict in the main namespace and must be suffixed with "(film)". The eleventh film falls into this situation, and displays.