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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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00:00There is absolutely no denying that Star Trek is a pop culture juggernaut. It has been around
00:05for over 50 years and managed to imprint itself upon nearly every corner of sci-fi, not to
00:12mention having been lovingly homaged, referenced and parodies in all types of TV, movies, video
00:19games, books and music. But outside of its own canonical universe, Trek has been showing
00:24up on other TV shows for literally decades at this point. Some shows were certainly subtler
00:30than others with their references, but each surely left a huge smile on the face of any fan watching.
00:36So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Trek Culture and here are 10 times Star Trek appeared
00:42in other TV shows. Number 10, The Simpsons. It is no secret that The Simpsons creator Matt
00:49Groening and his writer's room are big fans of Star Trek, which has been continually referenced
00:55in more than 50 episodes of the animated sitcom. But the most memorable of them all was a more
01:01involved parody of the original series in 1992's season 4 episode, Itchy and Scratchy the Movie.
01:08The episode begins with a mocking faux trailer for a new Star Trek film entitled Star Trek 12
01:14So Very Tired, with an over-the-hill Captain Kirk monologuing, Captain's Log, Stargate 6051.
01:22Had trouble sleeping last night. My hiatal hernia is acting up. The ship is drafty and damp. I complain,
01:28but nobody listens. The trailer narrator assures audiences the film will be the crew's latest,
01:33greatest adventure, all while Sulu is seen sporting a cane and Scotty is too overweight to
01:39reach the control panel. This was quite clearly a lampooning of the later Trek film
01:44starring the original series cast, particularly 1991's Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country,
01:51where William Shatner and co. were clearly starting to show their age.
01:55Fittingly, The Undiscovered Country was the final film to feature all of the original Enterprise crew,
02:01likely enlarged due to sentiments like this being made by fans and critics alike.
02:079. Black Mirror Black Mirror may be best known for its blackly comedic social satire,
02:14though writer Charlie Brooker managed to roll this into a pin-sharp Trek parody in the Emmy-winning
02:20Season 4 episode USS Callister. The episode follows video game programmer Robert Daly, who, in order to
02:27take out his frustrations against his unappreciative co-workers, creates a modded version of the game,
02:33and inserts digital clones of his co-workers into it by surreptitiously obtaining their DNA.
02:39The modded game, modelled off Daly's favourite sci-fi TV show Space Fleet, bears a blinding
02:45resemblance to Trek's original series, right down to the costumes, hairstyles and design of the USS Callister.
02:53The scenes set within this modded game also adopt the stylistic tropes of classic Trek,
02:57the 4x3 aspect ratio, use of Dutch angles, and by the episode's end, a shift towards the sleeker
03:04widescreen style of the J.J. Abrams reboot series. Jesse Plemons even worked with a vocal coach to
03:10approximate the delivery style of William Shatner. In addition to winning four Emmys,
03:15this episode was widely acclaimed by critics and Trek fans alike, praising its clear admiration
03:21for the franchise and its impressive attempts to recreate its style and tone.
03:268. Family Guy
03:29The Family Guy team are clearly also huge Trek fans, as evidenced by the dozens of episodes
03:35which have even a mere passing crack about the show. Though there are lots of good ones,
03:41such as the entire cast of The Next Generation playing themselves in Season 7's Not All Dogs Go
03:47to Heaven. Easily the single most iconic Trek reference in Seth MacFarlane's irreverent animation
03:53has to be its outrageous portrayal of William Shatner. Season 1's I Never Met The Dead Man
03:59features a number of cutaways depicting a hilariously exaggerated version of Shatner's performance as
04:05Kirk, characterised here by idiosyncratic, nonsensical line delivery and excessive gesticulations.
04:11As luck would have it, Shatner then knocks on Peter's door after getting a flat tyre,
04:16and the two go to an Oktoberfest-style event together. At episode's end however,
04:21Meg accidentally hits Shatner with the car and kills him. Shatner's physically implausible
04:26movements and disjointed line delivery, as impersonated by Seth MacFarlane, just might be
04:32the single greatest pop culture reference in all of Family Guy.
04:377. Mad Men
04:39Though most of the TV shows on this list are unsurprisingly animations and sitcoms,
04:44there is a little room for some solid gold prestige TV drama too.
04:49Mad Men of all shows managed to pull off one of the most memorable nods to Trek's original series
04:57in the season 5 episode Christmas Waltz. With Mad Men being a 60-set period show, this episode
05:03takes place in Christmas 1966, while the original series was midway through its first season.
05:10One of the episode's subplots involves the re-emergence of ex-copywriter Paul Kinsey,
05:15who meets with former colleague Harry Crane at a coffee shop to catch up. Among other developments,
05:21Paul hands Harry a script that he wrote on spec for Star Trek, hoping that Harry would pass it to
05:26the right people and get it seen. The episode was called The Negron Complex and focused on a race of
05:31white people who were subservient to a race of colour. The script was, by Harry and Peggy's declaration,
05:37quite terrible, prompting Harry to try and gently let Paul know that he didn't have a future in
05:42screenwriting. There is some additional amusing context though. The Negron Complex bears a similar
05:48resemblance to an episode that did get made, Season 3's Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. As a result,
05:56though Harry did manage to persuade Paul not to sell his script, this suggests that he did indeed
06:01persevere and get his script bought, which was then heavily rewritten into Let That Be Your Last
06:07Battlefield. Who knows?
06:10Number 6, Futurama. Back to Matt Groening now, who amps up the Star Trek references considerably
06:17in his glorious sci-fi comedy Futurama. All in all, there are close to 100 separate Star Trek references
06:25across Futurama, but arguably the piece de resistance is Season 4's episode where no fan
06:32has gone before. This widely acclaimed Nebula Award-nominated episode reveals that Star Trek
06:38is banned on Earth after it became a global religion in the 2200s. And in the wake of the bloody Star Trek
06:45Wars, the remaining tapes of the show and movies were jettisoned into space. And so, with the help of
06:52Leonard Nimoy's head, Ben DeFry and company set off on a mission to recover the tapes, bringing them into
06:58contact with almost every major cast member from the original series. The exceptions are James Doohan,
07:04whose agent flatly refused, and DeForest Kelly, who had passed away a few years prior and so only appeared
07:11in likeness form. With his loving array of homages to Trek, while also making light-hearted fun at the
07:18fans' obsessiveness, there is arguably no single better sustained parody of Trek than this. Certainly
07:26not in animated form, that is. Number five, The Orville. Further proof of Seth MacFarlane's love
07:33for Star Trek can be found in his live-action parody homage series, The Orville. When it first launched,
07:39Star Trek fans were enormously sceptical, feeling that MacFarlane would just relentlessly be making
07:45fun of Star Trek without much affection. And though the first season was certainly more of a parody
07:50than a dew-eyed homage, season 2 received considerably more acclaim from critics and fans for its more
07:57earnest, sincere storytelling that veered away from outright parody. But the single most interesting
08:03thing about The Orville? Star Trek actually exists within its universe. Well, sort of. The first season's
08:11fifth episode shows the crew watching a clip of Seinfeld. And considering that there was a number
08:16of Star Trek jokes made in Seinfeld, we're left to conclude that Star Trek actually exists as a TV
08:22show within the world of The Orville. Genius. Number four, South Park. This one's both subtle and
08:30really, really weird. To be fair, Star Trek has been referenced in more than 30 episodes of South Park,
08:38but there's one that stands tall above all the others for its hilariously deranged specificity.
08:45In the season four episode, Something You Can Do With Your Finger, the boys plan to form a boy band.
08:50But when Randy finds out what his son Stan is up to, he throws a fit of rage, screaming,
08:55NO! NO! and headbutting the glass doors of the nearby living room cabinet, smashing the china plates
09:02inside. You could easily miss it, but the sound effects are actually sampled from Star Trek First
09:07Contact, namely the scene where Picard smashes his own glass cabinet with a gun during an intense
09:13argument with Lily Sloan. It's such a bizarre way to reference such a memorable moment from the film,
09:19and yet, the sound effects are just vague and brief enough that the more casual Trek fans might just miss it.
09:26Number three, The Big Bang Theory. Love or hate The Big Bang Theory, there is no denying the love
09:33its writer's harbour for Star Trek, given that the four central characters are all shown to be major
09:38fans of the franchise and are even fluent in Klingon. Trek is by far the most commonly referenced
09:44franchise in the series, and it has even enjoyed cameos from the likes of Will Wheaton, Brent Spiner,
09:50George Takei and William Shatner. But the single greatest invocation of Trek occurred in the season
09:566 episode, The Bakersfield Expedition, where the guys dress up as the next generation characters
10:02Worf, Data, Picard and a Borg drone respectively, to visit a comic book convention in Bakersfield.
10:08The boys end up stopping off at the iconic Vasquez Rocks, where numerous Trek episodes have been
10:14filmed, including Kirk's infamous encounter with Gorn. But their car and clothes are stolen in the process,
10:20and so they never end up making it to the convention, and are instead forced to walk to a nearby diner to
10:26call the cops. Incidentally, this was the first episode of the series to cross the 20 million
10:32viewer mark, seemingly confirming how much everyone loved the Trek homage.
10:38Number two, Robot Chicken. Believe it or not, Robot Chicken is still on the air today, and even
10:44celebrated its 200th episode last year, proving the unexpected viability of a stop-motion animated
10:51series made with toys, action figures and plaster scene. While it's fair to say that it has parodied
10:57Star Wars far more extensively, even releasing three Star Wars specials, Robot Chicken has delivered more
11:04than 15 skits making fun of Star Trek 2. There are a ton of hilarious ones to choose from, though the easy
11:11winner is the Season 7 skit Star Trek The Sext Generation. Patrick Stewart lends his voice to
11:17portray Captain Picard, who exits the bridge to be relieved by the Enterprise's night crew, led by
11:22Captain Jake, who just so happens to be voiced by Chris Pine of all people. As it turns out, Captain
11:28Jake is a beer-swigging meth head without any real leadership capabilities, as becomes a major problem when
11:34the Borg attack. Jake tries to defuse the situation with a keg party, but the Borg simply tell him
11:40partying is futile. Yet, when they attempt to assimilate him, his beer-filled blood sends the
11:45Borg into a beer-chugging frenzy. Back on the Enterprise, a seemingly angry Picard arrives to relieve
11:51Jake from his shift, only for Picard to then ask for a beer and start partying with the crew himself.
11:57The fact that Patrick Stewart agrees to play the part himself makes this a truly legendary parody.
12:031. Boston Legal William Shatner spent five seasons playing the legendary attorney Denny Crane on the
12:12legal comedy series Boston Legal, and it goes without saying that the writers simply couldn't resist
12:18making Star Trek references every now and then, but then simply went past mere wink-nudge nods and
12:24damn near implied that somehow Denny and Kirk were the same person. In the Season 2 episode Finding
12:30Nimmo, Denny and Alan take a fishing trip to British Columbia, where Alan reads a book that describes a
12:36type of sea lice as cling-ons, hilariously prompting Denny to pause and ask, did you say cling-ons?
12:42Later in Season 2, the episode The Cancer Man Can has Denny open up his new flip phone, which makes
12:48the exact same sound as the personal communicators on the original series. In other episodes, Denny talks
12:54about beaming himself to Boston every morning, refers to himself as the captain of the ship,
12:59and even flat-out tells reporters that he was once the captain of his own spaceship.
13:04There comes a point where the Metanus is stretched beyond snapping point, and Boston Legal pretty
13:09much got there. You love to see it. And that concludes our list. If you can think of any
13:14other examples, then do let us know in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like
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13:24and with your help, we can meet that goal by the summer. Just don't forget to hit the subscribe button.
13:30Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by
13:34searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with Trek Culture. I hope you have a wonderful day,
13:39and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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