10 Times Star Trek Appeared In Other TV Shows
Some shows were certainly subtler than others with their references, but each surely left a huge smile plastered across the face of any fan watching...
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00:00 There is absolutely no denying that Star Trek is a pop culture juggernaut.
00:05 It has been around for over 50 years and managed to imprint itself upon nearly every corner
00:10 of sci-fi, not to mention having been lovingly homaged, referenced and parodied in all types
00:17 of TV, movies, video games, books and music.
00:21 But outside of its own canonical universe, Trek has been showing up on other TV shows
00:25 for literally decades at this point.
00:28 Some shows were certainly subtler than others with their references, but each surely left
00:33 a huge smile on the face of any fan watching.
00:37 So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Trek Culture and here are 10 times Star Trek
00:41 appeared in other TV shows.
00:44 10.
00:45 The Simpsons It is no secret that The Simpsons creator
00:49 Matt Groening and his writers room are big fans of Star Trek, which has been continually
00:54 referenced in more than 50 episodes of the animated sitcom.
00:58 But the most memorable of them all was a more involved parody of the original series in
01:04 1992's season 4 episode "Itchy and Scratchy the Movie".
01:09 The episode begins with a mocking faux trailer for a new Star Trek film entitled "Star Trek
01:13 12 So Very Tired" with an over-the-hill Captain Kirk monologuing "Captain's log, Stargate
01:20 6051.
01:22 Had trouble sleeping last night.
01:23 My hiatal hernia is acting up.
01:25 The ship is drafty and damp.
01:27 I complain, but nobody listens."
01:29 The trailer narrator assures audiences the film will be the crew's latest greatest adventure,
01:35 all while Sulu is seen sporting a cane and Scotty is too overweight to reach the control
01:39 panel.
01:40 This was quite clearly a lampooning of the later Trek films starring the original series
01:46 cast, particularly 1991's Star Trek 6 The Undiscovered Country, where William Shatner
01:52 and co were clearly starting to show their age.
01:56 Fittingly, The Undiscovered Country was the final film to feature all of the original
02:00 Enterprise crew, likely in large due to sentiments like this being made by fans and critics alike.
02:07 Number 9.
02:09 Black Mirror.
02:10 Black Mirror may be best known for its blackly comedic social satire, though writer Charlie
02:15 Brooker managed to roll this into a pin-sharp Trek parody in the Emmy-winning season 4 episode
02:22 USS Callister.
02:23 The episode follows video game programmer Robert Daly, who, in order to take out his
02:28 frustrations against his unappreciative co-workers, creates a modded version of the game and inserts
02:34 digital clones of his co-workers into it by surreptitiously obtaining their DNA.
02:40 The modded game, modelled off Daly's favourite sci-fi TV show Space Fleet, bears a blinding
02:45 resemblance to Trek's original series, right down to the costumes, hairstyles and design
02:51 of the USS Callister.
02:53 The scenes set within this modded game also adopt the stylistic tropes of classic Trek
02:57 – the 4 by 3 aspect ratio, use of Dutch angles, and by the episode's end, a shift
03:03 towards the sleeker widescreen style of the J.J. Abrams reboot series.
03:08 Jesse Plemons even worked with a vocal coach to approximate the delivery style of William
03:12 Shatner.
03:13 In addition to winning four Emmys, this episode was widely acclaimed by critics and Trek fans
03:19 alike, praising its clear admiration for the franchise and its impressive attempts to recreate
03:25 its style and tone.
03:27 8.
03:29 Family Guy
03:30 The Family Guy team are clearly also huge Trek fans, as evidenced by the dozens of episodes
03:35 which have even a mere passing crack about the show.
03:39 Though there are lots of good ones, such as the entire cast of The Next Generation playing
03:44 themselves in season 7's Not All Dogs Go to Heaven.
03:48 Clearly the single most iconic Trek reference in Seth MacFarlane's irreverent animation
03:53 has to be its outrageous portrayal of William Shatner.
03:57 Season 1's I Never Met the Dead Man features a number of cutaways depicting a hilariously
04:02 exaggerated version of Shatner's performance as Kirk, characterised here by idiosyncratic,
04:08 nonsensical line delivery and excessive gesticulations.
04:12 As luck would have it, Shatner then knocks on Peter's door after getting a flat tyre,
04:16 and the two go to an Oktoberfest-style event together.
04:20 At episode's end, however, Meg accidentally hits Shatner with the car and kills him.
04:25 Shatner's physically implausible movement and disjointed line delivery, as impersonated
04:30 by Seth MacFarlane, just might be the single greatest pop culture reference in all of Family
04:36 Guy.
04:37 7.
04:38 Mad Men
04:39 Though most of the TV shows on this list are unsurprisingly animations and sitcoms, there
04:44 is a little room for some solid gold prestige TV drama too.
04:50 Mad Men, of all shows, managed to pull off one of the most memorable nods to Trek's original
04:56 series in the Season 5 episode "Christmas Waltz".
05:00 With Mad Men being a 60-set period show, this episode takes place in Christmas 1966, while
05:06 the original series was midway through its first season.
05:11 One of the episode's subplots involves the re-emergence of ex-copywriter Paul Kinsey,
05:15 who meets with former colleague Harry Crane at a coffee shop to catch up.
05:20 Among other developments, Paul hands Harry a script that he wrote on spec for Star Trek,
05:25 hoping that Harry would pass it to the right people and get it seen.
05:28 The episode was called "The Negron Complex" and focused on a race of white people who
05:32 were subservient to a race of colour.
05:34 The script was, by Harry and Peggy's declaration, quite terrible, prompting Harry to try and
05:40 gently let Paul know that he didn't have a future in screenwriting.
05:43 There is some additional amusing context though.
05:47 The Negron Complex bears a similar resemblance to an episode that did get made, Season 3's
05:52 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".
05:55 As a result, though Harry did manage to persuade Paul not to sell his script, this suggests
06:00 that he did indeed persevere and get his script bought, which was then heavily rewritten into
06:06 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".
06:08 Who knows?
06:10 Number 6.
06:12 Futurama.
06:13 Back to Matt Groening now, who amps up the Star Trek references considerably in his glorious
06:19 sci-fi comedy Futurama.
06:21 All in all, there are close to 100 separate Star Trek references across Futurama, but
06:27 arguably the piece de resistance is Season 4's episode where no fan has gone before.
06:33 This wively acclaimed Nebula Award nominated episode reveals that Star Trek is banned on
06:39 Earth after it became a global religion in the 2200s.
06:44 And in the wake of the bloody Star Trek wars, the remaining tapes of the show and movies
06:48 were jettisoned into space.
06:51 And so, with the help of Leonard Nimoy's head, Ben DeVry and company set off on a mission
06:56 to recover the tapes, bringing them into contact with almost every major cast member from the
07:01 original series.
07:02 The exceptions are James Duhan, whose agent flatly refused, and DeForest Kelly, who had
07:08 passed away a few years prior and so only appeared in likeness form.
07:12 With his loving array of homages to Trek, while also making light-hearted fun at the
07:18 fans' obsessiveness, there is arguably no single better sustained parody of Trek than
07:24 this.
07:25 Certainly not in animated form, that is.
07:29 Number 5.
07:30 The Orville.
07:31 Further proof of Seth MacFarlane's love for Star Trek can be found in his live-action
07:36 parody homage series The Orville.
07:38 When it first launched, Star Trek fans were enormously sceptical, feeling that MacFarlane
07:43 would just relentlessly be making fun of Star Trek without much affection.
07:47 And though the first season was certainly more of a parody than a dew-eyed homage, season
07:52 2 received considerably more acclaim from critics and fans for its more earnest, sincere
07:58 storytelling that veered away from outright parody.
08:01 But the single most interesting thing about The Orville?
08:05 Star Trek actually exists within its universe.
08:08 Well, sort of.
08:10 The first season's fifth episode shows the crew watching a clip of Seinfeld.
08:15 And considering that there was a number of Star Trek jokes made in Seinfeld, we're
08:19 left to conclude that Star Trek actually exists as a TV show within the world of The Orville.
08:25 Genius.
08:26 Number 4.
08:27 South Park.
08:28 This one's both subtle and really, really weird.
08:33 To be fair, Star Trek has been referenced in more than 30 episodes of South Park, but
08:38 there's one that stands tall above all the others for its hilariously deranged specificity.
08:45 In the season 4 episode "Something You Can Do With Your Finger", the boys plan to form
08:49 a boy band.
08:50 But when Randy finds out what his son Stan is up to, he throws a fit of rage, screaming
08:56 "No! No!" and headbutting the glass doors of the nearby living room cabinet, smashing
09:01 the china plates inside.
09:03 You could easily miss it, but the sound effects are actually sampled from Star Trek First
09:07 Contact, namely the scene where Picard smashes his own glass cabinet with a gun during an
09:12 intense argument with Lily Sloane.
09:15 It's such a bizarre way to reference such a memorable moment from the film, and yet
09:20 the sound effects are just vague and brief enough that the more casual Trek fans might
09:25 just miss it.
09:26 Number 3 - The Big Bang Theory
09:29 Love or hate the Big Bang Theory, there is no denying the love it's right as harbour
09:34 for Star Trek, given that the four central characters are all shown to be major fans
09:39 of the franchise and are even fluent in Klingon.
09:42 Trek is by far the most commonly referenced franchise in the series, and it has even enjoyed
09:47 cameos from the likes of Will Wheaton, Brent Spiner, George Takei and William Shatner.
09:53 But the single greatest invocation of Trek occurred in the season 6 episode "The Bakersfield
09:58 Expedition", where the guys dress up as the next generation characters Worf, Data, Picard
10:03 and a Borg drone respectively, to visit a comic book convention in Bakersfield.
10:09 The boys end up stopping off at the iconic Vasquez Rocks, where numerous Trek episodes
10:14 have been filmed, including Kirk's infamous encounter with Gorn.
10:18 But their car and clothes are stolen in the process, and so they never end up making it
10:22 to the convention, and are instead forced to walk to a nearby diner to call the cops.
10:27 Incidentally, this was the first episode of the series to cross the 20 million viewer
10:32 mark, seemingly confirming how much everyone loved the Trek homage.
10:38 Number 2.
10:39 Robot Chicken.
10:40 Believe it or not, Robot Chicken is still on the air today, and even celebrated its
10:45 200th episode last year, proving the unexpected viability of a stop-motion animated series
10:52 made with toys, action figures and plasticine.
10:54 While it's fair to say that it has parodied Star Wars far more extensively, even releasing
11:00 three Star Wars specials, Robot Chicken has delivered more than 15 skits making fun of
11:06 Star Trek too.
11:07 There are a ton of hilarious ones to choose from, though the easy winner is the season
11:12 7 skit "Star Trek The Sixth Generation".
11:15 Patrick Stewart lends his voice to portray Captain Picard, who exits the bridge to be
11:20 relieved by the Enterprise's night crew, led by Captain Jake, who just so happens to be
11:25 voiced by Chris Pine of all people.
11:27 As it turns out, Captain Jake is a beer-swigging meth-head without any real leadership capabilities,
11:33 as becomes a major problem when the Borg attack.
11:36 Jake tries to defuse the situation with a keg party, but the Borg simply tell him "partying
11:41 is futile".
11:42 Yet, when they attempt to assimilate him, his beer-filled blood sends the Borg into
11:46 a beer-chugging frenzy.
11:48 Back on the Enterprise, a seemingly angry Picard arrives to relieve Jake from his shift,
11:52 only for Picard to then ask for a beer and start partying with the crew himself.
11:57 The fact that Patrick Stewart agreed to play the part himself makes this a truly legendary
12:03 parody.
12:04 1.
12:05 Boston Legal William Shatner spent five seasons playing
12:09 the legendary attorney Denny Crane on the legal comedy series Boston Legal, and it goes
12:15 without saying that the writers simply couldn't resist making Star Trek references every now
12:20 and then.
12:21 But then simply went past mere wink-nudge nods and damn near implied that, somehow,
12:26 Denny and Kirk were the same person.
12:29 In the season two episode "Finding Nemo", Denny and Alan take a fishing trip to British
12:33 Columbia, where Alan reads a book that describes a type of sea lice as "Klingons".
12:38 Hilariously prompting Denny to pause and ask "Did you say Klingons?"
12:42 Later in season two, the episode "The Cancer Man Can" has Denny open up his new flip phone,
12:48 which makes the exact same sound as the personal communicators on the original series.
12:53 In other episodes, Denny talks about beaming himself to Boston every morning, refers to
12:57 himself as the captain of the ship, and even flat-out tells reporters that he was once
13:02 the captain of his own spaceship.
13:04 There comes a point where the metanus is stretched beyond snapping point, and Boston Legal pretty
13:09 much got there.
13:10 You love to see it.
13:12 And that concludes our list.
13:14 If you can think of any other examples, then do let us know in the comments below.
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13:36 I've been Ellie with Trek Culture.
13:38 I hope you have a wonderful day, and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.