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Some of the greatest Star Trek In-Jokes
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00:00Do you get it? Do you get it? Yeah you kind of had to be there. In jokes are often
00:06fun if you're on
00:07the in of them, forgive the pun, whereas if you are not they can be about as much fun as
00:13dry rot.
00:14None of these actually count as that though. Dry rot I mean, they all count as in jokes. With that
00:18in mind I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are the 10 greatest Star Trek in jokes.
00:24Number 10, 47. 47 is 42, credit for inflation. Executive producer Rick Berman once joked,
00:30the ultimate answer might cost you more in Star Trek but what is the question? Well have you
00:34ever wondered why Ronan in Sobrosa, Sex Ghost, said he was born in 1647, why shields were often down
00:41to 47% or why Captain Janeway was really from Bloomington, Indiana? The reason is writer Joe
00:47Minoski who began his Star Trek career in season four of The Next Generation and has worked on
00:52Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Discovery. Minoski graduated from California's Pomona College
00:57which apart from excelling in the liberal arts is known for having a thing for 47. The college
01:02even has a club dedicated to the number, the 47 Society, that Minoski was part of as a student.
01:08He then brought this university in joke into Star Trek and it has stuck with the writers
01:12ever since. Bloomington, Indiana, zip codes 47401-47408 is more properly an homage to Voyager producer
01:21Jerry Taylor who was born there but there are pages of other examples of the 47 phenomenon.
01:27Here are just a small few. In Family, Picard is given the 47 vintage, in Conundrum there are
01:3247 Lysian sentry pods, in DS9 pads are often labelled 4747 and weapons lockers 47. In Voyager,
01:41the temporal variance of the Cranum Cranaton torpedo is 1.47 microseconds and I have just
01:47needed between 4-7 Aldebaran whiskies. Number 9. Some kinds of Star Trek. Rarely is anything
01:53more meta than the time Star Trek looked through a telescope and saw itself. Star Trek First
01:58Contact is one big self reference, a trek to the past to ensure its own future. Zefram Cochran
02:04needs some kind of Star Trek as much as it needs him. In that film, First Contact gets a direct
02:09nod, although that was far from the first or last movie or episode title name drop in dialogue.
02:14They toasted the undiscovered country in the undiscovered country and Captain Janeway provided
02:19a counterpoint counterpoint in counterpoint amongst many other examples. Star Trek is
02:24also more subtly self referential at times. In the next generation's 80th episode Legacy,
02:29the Enterprise D has to bypass an archaeological survey of Caymus 2 which happens to be the last
02:35planet visited by another Enterprise in its 79th and final episode. Yes, we are counting
02:41them like that. According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Caymus 2 mention was a deliberate
02:46tip of the hat to turnabout intruder on the part of Rick Berman, Jonathan Frakes and producer
02:50Eric Stilwell. Of course, the end of the beginning of this kind of Star Trek is a prophecy of itself.
02:56We've only postponed the invasion until, what, the 24th century? Number 8. Commerce Seals
03:02and Blaine's twin brother. Our lovely writer Jack has already discussed television's demise
03:07in Star Trek, but it deserves a second mention here. Beyond the canonical prediction, the medium
03:11didn't last much past 2040, for humanity at least, the writers clearly take great delight in having
03:17assigned television to the history books. It's the perfect in-joke. By relying on a lack of awareness
03:21of the characters, the writers can poke fun at their own industry without having to totally demolish
03:26that fourth wall. The gag is perhaps also a gentle reminder to appreciate Star Trek for what it
03:31ultimately is, a piece of television, for as long as we have it. After all, in Star Trek, nobody's
03:36watching Star Trek. After Data's revelation in the Neutral Zone, there have been a few direct
03:41references to TV. When Voyager went back to the 90s, Kess and Neelix were tasked with reviewing Earth
03:46broadcasts and became addicted to the soap opera. We still don't know if Blaine's twin brother was the
03:51father of Jessica's baby. More recently, spoiler alert, in Lower Decks, Boimler got hilariously
03:56hooked on Ferengi television, ironically unfamiliar with the commercials. Commer-seals? And the serial
04:03drama, Cop Landlords Needs It's Own Spin Off. Moreover, the title of that Lower Decks episode was
04:08itself a TV reference. Number 7, Riker. I mean, how could we not? There are plenty of reasons to love
04:16Lower Decks, and top amongst them are the Easter eggs, in-jokes, and altogether weirdly specific references.
04:21In a similar vein, Strange New Worlds has delighted fans by returning to the roots of Star Trek,
04:27all the while pushing the franchise forward. As I well know from Cetacean Observations,
04:32one episode alone of Lower Decks could have filled this list. But we're here for the Strange New
04:36Worlds crossover. Leg over. The episode's title is itself an in-joke, Those Old Scientists, a phrase
04:43first used by Commander Ransom to describe the 23rd century in no small parts. Then, when Boimler and
04:49Mariner are flung through a time portal to said century, they both basically become two excited
04:54fans at the greatest ever Star Trek convention. Actors Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome even took selfies
04:59on set during their own time. It's Ensign Boimler with the Riker maneuver in the ready room, however,
05:04that will surely go down, up and over, as the in-joke to end all in-jokes. In-universe, Boimler
05:10briefly
05:11served with the animated Riker on the Titan. On the set of Those Old Scientists, Jonathan Frakes was directing,
05:16and Quaid improvised the Riker leg-swing, pike-saddle moment in front of him.
05:21Number 6. Smoothing Things Over. The Klingons have gone through many, many changes since their
05:27original appearance in Errand of Mercy. At first conceived by writer Jean L. Kuhn as the Soviet
05:32half of his Cold War allegory, core actor John Kalikos reportedly looked more to the likes of
05:37Genghis Khan for inspiration for the character, leading to some fairly problematic makeup choices.
05:43They certainly didn't have the budget in the original series that they did by the time the
05:47Klingons reared their ridges in the motion picture. The makeup and general look was further designed and
05:52redesigned in the films with Klingons that followed, then again and again in The Next
05:57Generation and Deep Space Nine, with no explanation given. As Michael Dorn knowingly commented in an
06:02interview with Cinefantastique volume 32 numbers 4 and 5, I guess they never thought they'd have to
06:07deal with it on screen at some point. Therein lies the in-joke when DS9 decided to tackle the changes
06:13in Klingon appearance head-on, ish, in Trials and Tribulations. If you can't put ridges on it,
06:18hang a lantern on it instead. Worf's laconic, it is a long story, we do not discuss it with outsiders,
06:23was all about the answer we needed and probably the only one we're going to get until the Enterprise
06:28Exploration which everybody loved and there's been no problems about since. Number 5. Who writes for Mourne?
06:34We all know Mourne, the famously loose-lipped Lurian with a liking for jumjus sticks, a small fortune in
06:39one of his stomachs and his own seat at Quark's bar. His name alone is an in-joke, Mourne is
06:44an
06:44anagram of Norm, the permanent patron of Cheers. The character's reputation as a chatty Cathy might
06:50well precede him, but of course Mourne never actually had any lines. This was far from the
06:54plan for Mourne from the beginning, however. According to the making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine,
06:58on the very first day of filming for Emissary, the man beneath the then nameless Mourne mask,
07:03Mark Alan Shepard, was asked by director David Carson to tell the funniest joke in the universe,
07:07and he did. We won't spoil it for you, but it involves a coconut concertina cosmological argument
07:13and a honeysuckle garbage upholstery rimfire. Mourne made it into the pilot, but evidently the
07:17joke did not. Later, lines that were planned for the character were written out before shooting.
07:22Eventually, it was far funnier for the great raconteur to say nothing at all, becoming what is
07:27certainly one of Star Trek's longest running inside jokes, especially when you take into account the
07:32Cerritos' season three stop at Deep Space Nine. Number four, Okudagrams. We owe graphic designers
07:38Michael and Denise Okuda a great deal for the look, lore and feel of Star Trek from the voyage home
07:45onwards, not to forget the Star Trek encyclopedia through four editions, the next generation technical
07:50manual and other reference books that have become veritable fan bibles. Creator of the computer screen
07:55and console graphics for Star Trek 4 and the L-Cars designs for the next generation and beyond,
08:00Michael Okuda's instantly recognisable work was lovingly nicknamed the Okudagram.
08:04An artistic marvel in their own right, Okudagrams have also provided plenty of
08:08opportunities for a good in Joker 2, often never intended to be visible on screen and mostly
08:13replaced in the remasterings. For example, Troy's search for a family tree in the neutral zone
08:18pre-remaster gives some very interesting results, including the first six actors to have played the
08:24Doctor in Doctor Who, Miss Piggy and Kermit T Frog. The Okudagram of the Enterprise D's engineering master
08:30display features, if you stare hard enough, a duck, a mouse, an airplane, a car and nomad. Usually
08:37covered up for filming, these editions even made it into HD at around 38 minutes and 35 seconds of the
08:43remastered Galaxy's Child. Technically that makes them canon. Number three, Great Birds of the Galaxy.
08:49In the far future, Miles O'Brien was, and will be, rightly instatued as perhaps the most important
08:55person in Starfleet history. Right along there with him was the less glowingly remembered Brad
09:00Boimler. History has its own effect. On Boimler's forever memorialised left arm was one of the Great
09:05Birds of the Galaxy, an in-joke which has a history in itself. You might well know by now that
09:10THE
09:10Great Bird of the Galaxy was Gene Roddenberry, or rather it was the nickname given to him by producer
09:16Robert Justman early in the run of the original series. In point of fact, in The Man Trap,
09:21Sulu says to Janice Rand, may the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet.
09:25The epithet for Star Trek's creator certainly caught on. By the time of the next generation,
09:29the bird began to make an appearance in graphic form. For Roddenberry's 60th birthday gift in 1987,
09:35senior next generation illustrator Andrew Probert painted a full colour Roddenberry-headed
09:39bird of the galaxy with Command Uniform Plumage, Combadge and NCC-1701 nacelles as tail feathers.
09:46A green okudogram sketch version of the painting was then used on screen as part of the rapid
09:51computer searches carried out by Data in The Naked Now and Conspiracy.
09:56Number 2. Tubes of Jeffreys. Walter Matthew Matt Jeffreys, his full name is of importance later,
10:02is the man well known for designing the original Enterprise model, now so iconic it hangs in the
10:07Smithsonian. Jeffreys was also largely responsible for the majority of the Enterprise's interior
10:12design, as well as that of the shuttlecraft, the Klingon D7 cruiser, the hand phaser and a plethora
10:17of other props, sets and landscapes. As shown in the Star Trek sketchbook, the original series,
10:23Jeffreys equally designed what he called the engineering power shaft in his sketch for the
10:27enemy within. As he recalled, we needed a space where Scotty could fix things without taking up too
10:32much room, so I made a tube with all kinds of complicated looking stuff in it. Somebody hung the name
10:37Jeffreys Tube on it and the name stuck, and stick it did, but only behind the scenes on TOS. It
10:42wasn't
10:42until the Next Generation season 3 episode The Hunted that the term Jeffreys Tube was said on screen.
10:48On TOS, designers also liked to add the label GNDN for goes nowhere does nothing to the pipes on
10:54Jeffreys Tube sets. In canon, it is generally accepted that the famous crawlways were named after NX
11:00project designer of the 22nd century W. M. Jeffreys. Number 1. The Writer and the Principle
11:07Far Beyond the Stars will forever be considered one of the best Star Trek episodes ever made.
11:11Powerhouse performances from the cast, from Avery Brooks in particular who also directed,
11:16and the episode's brilliant narrative conceit bring the theme of racial prejudice and its harrowing
11:20consequences into sharp focus in a manner never before managed so directly in Star Trek. The episode
11:26is also notable for its use of insider references. The 1950s style drawing of Deep Space Nine that
11:31inspires Benny Russell to write his story in the first place was a nice touch, and you perhaps
11:35noticed the original series matte painting of Starbase 11 on the cover of competitor magazine
11:40Galaxy. For Benny Russell's group of writers own publication, Incredible Tales of Scientific Wonder,
11:45the front cover of the March 1953 edition sports an image of Delta Vega from Where No Man Has Gone
11:51Before. The issue then features the stories first of a new series, The Cage by E. W. Roddenberry,
11:57The Corbamite Maneuver by Jerry Soule illustrated by Matt Jeffreys, Journey to Babel by DC Fontana,
12:03Metamorphosis by Jean L. Kuhn, and Where No Man Has Gone Before by Samuel Peoples. Finally,
12:08in a memo from editor Douglas Pabst to Herbert Rossoff, being played by Armin Zimmerman, apparently used
12:14as set dressing but never visible on screen was written, no one would believe that a cheerleader can kill
12:20vampires. The snide principal Snyder might also have been but a writer's dream.
12:25Hello, I'm Duncan Rillick, no relation, and my friend Sean Blass has been rushed to Starfleet
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12:54tell them Rillick sent you. No relation. Good luck Sean Blass, hope everything goes okay with the toenail.
13:02That's everything for our list. Do you reckon we missed any in here? Let us know in the comments below.
13:06Thank you so much to Jack Coydy for writing the original article that this is based on. You can check
13:10that out on whatculture.com. Make sure you're following us over on Twitter,
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13:29I'm talking to you again, look after yourself, stay safe, stay calm, and stay logical if you can. You
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