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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 fun 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 dry 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 even
01:03has a club dedicated to the number, the 47 Society, that Minoski was part of as a student. He then
01:08brought this university in-joke into Star Trek and it has stuck with the writers ever since.
01:13Bloomington, Indiana, zip codes 47401-47408, is more properly an homage to Voyager producer Jerry
01:22Taylor who was born there, but there are pages of other examples of the 47 phenomenon. Here are
01:27just a small few. In Family, Picard is given the 47 vintage, in Conundrum there are 47 Lysian
01:34Century pods, in DS9 pads are often labeled 4747 and weapons lockers 47. In Voyager, the temporal
01:42variance of the Cranum Cranaton torpedo is 1.47 microseconds, and I have just needed between 4 to 7
01:49Aldebaran whiskeys. Number 9, Some Kinds of Star Trek. Rarely is anything more meta than the time
01:55Star Trek looked through a telescope and saw itself. Star Trek First Contact is one big self-reference,
02:00a trek to the past to ensure its own future. Zephram Cochran needs some kind of Star Trek as much as it
02:06needs him. In that film, First Contact gets a direct nod, although that was far from the first or last
02:12movie or episode title name drop in dialogue. They toasted the Undiscovered Country in The Undiscovered
02:17Country and Captain Janeway provided a counterpoint counterpoint in counterpoint, amongst many other
02:23examples. Star Trek is also more subtly self-referential at times. In The Next Generation's 80th episode
02:29Legacy, the Enterprise D has to bypass an archaeological survey of Caymus II, which happens to be the last
02:35planet visited by another Enterprise in its 79th and final episode. Yes, we are counting them like
02:41that. According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Caymus II mention was a deliberate tip of the hat to
02:47turnabout intruder on the part of Rick Berman, Jonathan Frakes, and producer Eric Stilwell. Of course, the end of the
02:52beginning of this kind of Star Trek is a prophecy of itself. We've only postponed the invasion until, what, the
02:5924th century? Number 8. Commerce Seals and Blaine's twin brother. Our lovely writer Jack has already discussed
03:06television's demise in Star Trek, but it deserves a second mention here. Beyond the canonical prediction, the medium didn't last much
03:12past 2040, for humanity at least, the writers clearly take great delight in having assigned television to
03:18the history books. It's the perfect in-joke. By relying on a lack of awareness of the characters, the writers can poke fun at their own
03:24industry without having to totally demolish that fourth wall. The gag is perhaps also a gentle reminder to appreciate
03:30Star Trek for what it ultimately is, a piece of television, for as long as we have it. After all, in Star Trek, nobody's watching Star Trek.
03:36After Data's revelation in the Neutral Zone, there have been a few direct references to TV. When Voyager
03:42went back to the 90s, Kess and Neelix were tasked with reviewing Earth broadcasts and became addicted to the soap opera.
03:48We still don't know if Blaine's twin brother was the father of Jessica's baby. More recently, spoiler alert, in Lower Decks,
03:54Boimler got hilariously hooked on Ferengi television, ironically unfamiliar with the commercials.
03:59Commercials? Commercials? And the serial drama, Cop Landlords Needs It's Own Spin Off. Moreover, the title of that Lower Decks episode was itself a TV reference.
04:10Number 7. Riker. I mean, how could we not? There are plenty of reasons to love Lower 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, all the while pushing the franchise forward.
04:29As I well know from Cetacean Observations, one episode alone of Lower Decks could have filled this list.
04:35But we're here for the Strange New Worlds crossover. Leg over.
04:38The episode's title is itself an in-joke, Those Old Scientists, a phrase first used by Commander Ransom to describe the 23rd century in no small parts.
04:47Then, when Boimler and Mariner are flung through a time portal to said century, they both basically become two excited fans at the greatest ever Star Trek convention.
04:56Actors Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome even took selfies on set during their own time.
05:01It's Ensign Boimler with the Riker maneuver in the ready room, however, that will surely go down, up and over, as the in-joke to end all in-jokes.
05:09In-universe, Boimler briefly served with the animated Riker on the Titan.
05:13On the set of Those Old Scientists, Jonathan Frakes was directing and Quaid improvised the Riker leg-swing, pike-saddle moment in front of him.
05:21Number 6. Smoothing Things Over.
05:24The Klingons have gone through many, many changes since their original appearance in Errand of Mercy.
05:29First conceived by writer Jean L. Kuhn as the Soviet half of his Cold War allegory, core actor John Kalikos reportedly looked more to the likes of Genghis 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 Klingons reared their ridges in the motion picture.
05:48The makeup and general look was further designed and redesigned in the films with Klingons that followed, then again and again in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, with no explanation given.
05:59As Michael Dorn knowingly commented in an interview with Cinefantastique volume 32 numbers 4 and 5, I guess they never thought they'd have to deal with it on screen at some point.
06:08Therein lies the in-joke when DS9 decided to tackle the changes in Klingon appearance head-on, ish, in Trials and Tribulations.
06:16If you can't put ridges on it, hang a lantern on it instead.
06:18Worf's laconic, it is a long story, we do not discuss it with outsiders, was all about the answer we needed and probably the only one we're going to get until the Enterprise Exploration, which everybody loved and there's been no problems about since.
06:31Number 5. Who writes for Mourne?
06:33He writes for Mourne.
06:34We all know Mourne, the famously loose-lipped Lurian with a liking for Jumja Sticks, a small fortune in one of his stomachs and his own seat at Quark's Bar.
06:41His name alone is an in-joke, Mourne is an anagram of Norm, the permanent patron of Cheers.
06:47The character's reputation as a chatty Cathy might well precede him, but of course Mourne never actually had any lines.
06:53This was far from the plan for Mourne from the beginning, however. According to the making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, on the very first day of filming for Emissary, the man beneath the then nameless Mourne mask, Mark 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 and a honeysuckle garbage upholstery rimfire.
07:15Mourne made it into the pilot, but evidently the joke 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 certainly one of Star Trek's longest running inside jokes, especially when you take into account the Cerritos' season 3 stop at Deep Space Nine.
07:34Number 4. Okudagrams.
07:37We owe graphic designers Michael and Denise Okuda a great deal for the look, lore and feel of Star Trek from the voyage home onwards.
07:45Not to forget the Star Trek encyclopedia through four editions, the next generation technical manual and other reference books that have become veritable fan bibles.
07:53Creator of the computer screen and console graphics for Star Trek 4 and the Elkar's designs for the next generation and beyond, Michael Okuda's instantly recognisable work was lovingly nicknamed the Okudagram.
08:03An artistic marvel in their own right, Okudagrams have also provided plenty of opportunities for a good in Joker 2, often never intended to be visible on screen and mostly replaced in the remasterings.
08:14For example, Troy's search for a family tree in the neutral zone pre-remaster gives some very interesting results, including the first six actors to have played the Doctor in Doctor Who, Miss Piggy and Kermit T Frog.
08:26The Okudagram of the Enterprise-D's engineering master display features, if you stare hard enough, a duck, a mouse, an airplane, a car and nomad.
08:36Usually covered up for filming, these editions even made it into HD at around 38 minutes and 35 seconds of the remastered Galaxy's Child.
08:44Technically, that makes them canon.
08:46Number 3, Great Birds of the Galaxy.
08:49In the far future, Miles O'Brien was and will be rightly instatued as perhaps the most important person in Starfleet history.
08:56Right along there with him was the less glowingly remembered Brad Boimler.
09:00History has its own effect.
09:01On Boimler's forever memorialised left arm was one of the Great Birds of the Galaxy, an in-joke which has a history in itself.
09:08You might well know by now that THE Great Bird of the Galaxy was Gene Roddenberry, or rather it was the nickname given to him by producer Robert Justman early in the run of the original series.
09:18In point of fact, in The Man Trap, Sulu says to Janice Rand, may the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet.
09:24The epithet for Star Trek's creator certainly caught on.
09:27By the time of the next generation, the bird began to make an appearance in graphic form.
09:31For Roddenberry's 60th birthday gift in 1987, senior next generation illustrator Andrew Probert painted a full colour Roddenberry headed bird of the galaxy with command uniform plumage, combage and NCC-1701 nacelles as tail feathers.
09:45A green okudogram sketch version of the painting was then used on screen as part of the rapid computer searches carried out by data in The Naked Now and Conspiracy.
09:55Number 2, Tubes of Jeffreys.
09:57Walter Matthew Matt Jeffreys, his full name is of importance later, is the man well known for designing the original Enterprise model, now so iconic it hangs in the Smithsonian.
10:08Jeffreys was also largely responsible for the majority of the Enterprise's interior design, as well as that of the shuttlecraft, the Klingon D7 cruiser, the hand phaser and a plethora of other props, sets and landscapes.
10:19As shown in the Star Trek sketchbook, the original series, Jeffreys equally designed what he called the engineering power shaft in his sketch for the enemy within.
10:28As he recalled, we needed a space where Scotty could fix things without taking up too much room, so I made a tube with all kinds of complicated looking stuff in it.
10:35Somebody hung the name Jeffreys Tube on it and the name stuck.
10:38And Stick It did, but only behind the scenes on TOS.
10:41It wasn't until the Next Generation Season 3 episode The Hunted that the term Jeffreys Tube was set on screen.
10:47On TOS, designers also liked to add the label GNDN for Goes Nowhere Does Nothing to the pipes on Jeffreys Tube sets.
10:54In canon, it is generally accepted that the famous crawlways were named after NX project designer of the 22nd century W.M. Jeffreys.
11:03Number 1 The Writer and the Principal
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,
11:15and the episode's brilliant narrative conceit bring the theme of racial prejudice and its harrowing consequences into sharp focus in a manner never before managed so directly in Star Trek.
11:24The episode is also notable for its use of insider references.
11:27The 1950s style drawing of Deep Space Nine that inspires Benny Russell to write his story in the first place was a nice touch,
11:33and you perhaps noticed the original series matte painting of Starbase 11 on the cover of competitor magazine Galaxy.
11:40For Benny Russell's group of writers own publication, Incredible Tales of Scientific Wonder,
11:44The front cover of the March 1953 edition sports an image of Delta Vega from Where No Man Has Gone Before.
11:51The issue then features the stories first of a new series, The Cage by E.W. Roddenberry,
11:56The Corbamite Maneuver by Jerry Soule illustrated by Matt Jeffreys,
12:00Journey to Babel by DC Fontana, Metamorphosis by Gene L. Kuhn,
12:04and Where No Man Has Gone Before by Samuel Peoples.
12:07Finally, in a memo from editor Douglas Pabst to Herbert Rossoff being played by Armin Jimmerman,
12:12apparently used as set dressing but never visible on screen was written,
12:16No one would believe that a cheerleader can kill vampires.
12:19The snide principal Snyder might also have been but a writer's dream.
12:24Hello, I'm Duncan Rillick, no relation, and my friend Sean Blass has been rushed to Starfleet Medical,
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12:41Anyone can use it, even people like me, who may not be the sharpest typo in the spanner box.
12:46If you would like to try this deal, you should go to squarespace.com forward slash trekculture,
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12:52Cheep, cheep, when you go, tell them Rillick sent you. No relation.
12:56Good luck, Sean Blass. Hope everything goes okay with the toenail.
12:59That's everything for our list. Do you reckon we missed any in here?
13:04Let us know in the comments below.
13:06Thank you so much to Jack Coyney for writing the original article that this is based on.
13:09You can check that out on whatculture.com.
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13:28Until I'm talking to you again, look after yourself.
13:30Stay safe, stay calm, and stay logical if you can.
13:34You are awesome and wonderful.
13:35Thanks very much. Bye.
13:37Bye.
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