T's Trek Trivia Tuesday: "The sincerest form of flattery"

In this 1991 episode of THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW, all the male STAR TREK characters were gender-swapped when the Enterprise passed through the Estrogena-7 anomaly

Star Trek has been in the public consciousness for fifty-five years. As you might imagine, such a respected and venerable franchise has its imitators. There have been multiple Trek parody sketches on Saturday Night Live; series like The Orville and Futurama, which venerate Trek; and there have been so many impressions of William Shatner’s Captain Kirk floating around that last year Vanity Fair produced a video of Shatner himself reviewing some of them.

It may be impossible to find a comprehensive list of every Star Trek reference ever to appear in films, television shows, comics, and books, but finding them is a fun pastime, and the ones below are some of our favorites. How many are you familiar with?

---

In Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, the titular pair returned for their second outing, this time on a mission to prevent the forces of uncoolness from changing history. About twenty minutes into the film, Bill and Ted are planted on their couch with a couple of beers, watching Star Trek, and bemoaning the fact that their most bodacious girlfriends have broken their hearts. Then there’s a knock on the door and they come face-to-face with…themselves

What episode of Trek are they watching, and how does it tie into what happens next?

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) meet Death (William Sadler) in 1991's BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY

Star Trek has a long history of filming at Vasquez Rocks, near Los Angeles, starting with the Original Series. In Bogus, Bill and Ted are watching the episode “Arena,” which spends a good deal of time there as Kirk fights the lizard-like Gorn, devising a weapon with MacGyver-like skill.

The doppelgängers that show up at their door, unfortunately, aren’t actually B&T from the future, but evil robots designed to look like them. Their mission is to kill the real Bill and Ted in order to prevent the utopian future their music brings about. Immediately after watching “Arena,” our heroes are lured to Vasquez Rocks, only to be shoved off them to their death, in approximately the same filming location as Kirk’s battle with the Gorn. It is a totally heinous situation. Rather than the end of their adventure, though, it’s just the beginning as their ghosts arise and decide to make things right.

---

The television game show Jeopardy! has, at times, referenced Star Trek. Back in 2011, for instance, they had an entire category devoted to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. You can watch it below and see how many of the answers you can come up with. It should be an easy task for any true “Niners” reading this.

The long-running host of the series, Alex Trebek, passed away in 2020, but in 2017 he was still going strong, when his “Clue Crew” came up with a pair of categories referencing a fan-favorite Trek episode. The first category was about a Zulu king, the other about war.

Any idea what episode the category headings referenced?

On the episode in question, slipped in among the category headings, were two that stuck out to Star Trek: The Next Generation fans. The first, “Shaka,” quizzed contestants about the nineteenth-century founder of Africa’s Zulu Kingdom. The second category, “When the Walls Fell,” headed a list of clues relating to war and conquest. Put them together, and you have “Shaka, when the walls fell.”

The phrase is a familiar one to fans, who vividly remember the episode “Darmok,” in which Captain Picard found himself stranded on an alien planet in the company of a Tamarian captain. They find it nearly impossible to communicate, until Picard realizes that his counterpart speaks only in allegory, using stories familiar to his own people, but unintelligible to any race that doesn’t know the myths and histories to which he’s referring. “Shaka, when the walls fell” represents a failure in the Tamarian language.

---

The animated series Futurama was a show inspired by several science fiction properties, but heavily referenced Star Trek. Zapp Brannigan, a recurring captain on the series, was very much a parody of Captain Kirk and in the Nebula Award-nominated episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” the entire cast of TOS voiced themselves (with the exception of DeForest Kelley, who had passed by then, and James Doohan, who was uninterested.) But this wasn’t the first time a Trek cast member had been on the show.

Who was the first star of Star Trek to play himself on Futurama?

Fry, Leela, and Bender meet Welshie, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, William Shatner, and Leonard Nimoy in FUTURAMA's "Where No Fan Has Gone Before"

In the series’ pilot episode, Fry is accidentally cryogenically frozen, waking up in the 31st century. There, he discovers that the heads of famous people throughout history have been preserved and now reside in jars, on display in the Head Museum. Upon entering the museum, Fry hears a familiar voice, “Welcome to the Head Museum. I’m Leonard Nimoy.” Fry tries to get him to make the Vulcan salute, but, as Nimoy is only a head with no body, he must admit, “I don’t do that anymore.” He tells Fry that the heads in the museum share their accumulated wisdom with those who need it. “It’s a life of quiet dignity,” he claims, at which point the Head Museum Caretaker drops food flakes into Nimoy’s jar and the disembodied head swims up to eat them like a goldfish.

---

Movie and film tie-ins are not unusual, and Star Trek has had its share. From KFC to Gucci to Heineken, many companies of various descriptions have paid homage to the series. In the early 1990s, one restaurant chain produced a series of Star Trek: The Next Generation cups, covered with designs, ships, and iconography from the series. The tie-in commercials named the restaurant in question: “Triqqa Pli’c.”

What was the (human) name of the famous chain?

Two of the line of cups that a certain restaurant chain produced in the 1990s

Triqqa Pli’c, as everyone knows, is the Klingon name for Pizza Hut. The television commercial followed a group of Klingons as their Bird-of-Prey was destroyed by the Enterprise-D. The unfortunate aliens escaped with their lives, beaming down to Earth and dining on pizza and soda. Two of the Klingons destroy the third’s souvenir cup and the commercial ends in a Pizza Hut waitress comforting the weeping Klingon. The entire commercial was narrated in Klingon and can be found on YouTube, if you’re in the mood for ‘90s silliness.

---

In 2016, scientists trudged around the jungles of Southeast Asia, unearthing newly discovered species. One of these was the tylototriton anguliceps, which, simply put, means “angular-headed newt.” As described in a paper written about the finding, it is “a moderately stout newt with a broad, hexagonal head that is longer than wide.” It sports an ochre-brown torso, highlighted by a creamsicle-orange head, toes, and tail. But while its official name is an accurate description of the creature, it lacks a certain flair. Often a new species will be given a nickname, one that holds more appeal to the public. Such is the case with this little guy.

What nickname was chosen for him?

Meet tylototriton anguliceps, discovered in 2016

One of the defining features of our brown-and-orange friend here is a “well-defined, narrow, protuberant, and somewhat rough dorsolateral bony ridge on its head that runs from directly over its eye to the anterior portion of its parotoid gland.” Now, can you think of a Star Trek character, or perhaps an entire race of characters, who have a bony ridge on their heads? If you said “Klingons,” then you win the prize!*

The nickname given to this little creature is “Klingon newt,” an appropriate moniker for our bone-headed friend.**

---

*No actual prizes awarded.

**No offense meant to either Klingons or newts.