That's So 'Trek'

J.J. Abram's new Star Trek film may be fun for the whole family, but one of the truly great things about this movie is its ability to keep the diehard Trek fans tethered to the new canon by keeping them (and by them I mean, us) satiated with a steady barage of nudges and winks in the form of classic Trek in-jokes and references (trek-ferences?).  But if you happened to be part of the vastly larger group of "others" shrugging their shoulders and shooting confused glares at the titters from the nerdy guy wearing the plastic pointy ears, allow me to break out the interphasic scanner and reveal an entire hidden layer of Trek you didn't even know was there.  

Careful though, thar be spoilers ahead...

Set a new course, RAMMING SPEED

While the concept of steering your crippled vessel into the heart of your opponent is an ancient one, George Kirk’s heroic sacrifice of the USS Kelvin to wound Nero’s mighty Romulan vessel bears striking resemblance to the last Star Trek film in which the crew of a crippled Enterprise-E rammed their vessel into a highly advanced Romulan vessel, thus disabling it and saving the day.  A reference?  Well, maybe more of a wink.  Ok, and it was Reman vessel, but same difference.

Cliffhangers and Bar brawls

Maybe more Trek “allusion” than Trek “reference” the young Jim Kirk’s encounter with a steep precipice is not is first time to go hanging from a ledge as many a Trek fan remembers from the film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier along with a certain pair pointy ears wearing rocket boots. 

Bar room brawls are standard in any good science fiction universe where libations have yet to be banned, and twenty-something Kirk’s foolish fight with several surly Starfleet officers brings to mind a certain brazen-youthed Jean Luc Picard and an unfortunate tussle with a group of Nausicaans.  Thankfully young Kirk avoided the knife-through-the-heart finisher.

I’m a Doctor…

Now we’re into meaty trek-ference, the classic line “I’m a doctor, not an <insert witty remark>” was the staple catch-phrase of the Leonard “Bones” McCoy, and was even incorporated as part of another great Trek doctor, the Emergency Medical Hologram played by Robert Picardo in Voyager.  “Damn it Man!” and “My God, Man!” were are also favorites of the cantankerous practitioner.

Going Green

Ah, who can forget the sultry and seductive green women of Orion.  Secreting a pheromone that drives the men wild, the “Orion slave girls” are perhaps one of the most pop-culture notable creations from the original 60’s Trek series.  Grrrowl…

Another green note, if you wondered why Spock and Nero bled green, that’s a famous reference to the shared genetic origins of the Vulcans and the Romulans and their copper based blood which when oxidized turns green, unlike our red, iron based blood.

I don’t believe in the no-win scenario

Surprisingly enough, the test that Abram’s young Kirk cheats his way past, the rescue of the stranded USS Kobayashi Maru, is lifted straight out of real Trek lore, and in is featured prominently as the opening scene to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, becoming an ongoing theme through-out that movie.  The term was also used as slang for a “hopeless scenario” as mentioned by Dr. McCoy in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country referring to their imprisonment on the Klingon prison colony Rura Penthe.  Also, true to Trek canon, Kirk is the only known officer in Starfleet to have passed the Kobayashi Maru exam, and just as in this movie, he cheated.

Show me to the nuclear wessels…

Poor ole Chekov and his troublesome “V’s.”  Despite being a brilliant little piece of comedic wordplay, the young Chekov of Abram’s Trek continues this on-going accent joke which featured prominently through-out the original series, and notably in the iconic “nuclear wessels” phrase from Star Trek IV: The Journey Home. 

Special Combat Training

Probably one of the funniest and most obscure references, Sulu’s odd revelation of being a fencing expert is a direct reference to the hilariously famous episode The Naked Time in which George Takei as an inebriated Sulu runs around the ship half-naked, brandishing a rapier and pretending to be a muskateer.

Red Shirt

Seriously, if you didn’t get this reference, you have clearly kept your self antiseptically sterile from any and all Trek media. Perhaps the most classic reference to Trek is to the ill-fated expendable crewman, the red-shirt.  Notorious for being the no-name extra to be eaten by the glob of evil space slime as soon as the invulnerable main characters beamed to the surface, Abram’s Trek gives a huge shout out in the form of a red-suited space jumper who no-sooner than his character is introduced is rapidly and pointlessly disposed of.

Spock Prime…

“I have been and always will be your friend.”  Poignant words from a dying Spock as choked good-byes are spoken, having sacrificed his life to save the many at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and uttered again by the reincarnated Spock as a glimmer of familiarity and recognition returns to his body at the very end of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.  To hear them as the first words spoken by the grumbly voice of Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime made every Trek fan shed a silent tear.

Also, a note as to why Spock was cavorting with Romulans prior to his tumble through time, the last time we saw the character was in the two-parter episode Unification in Season Five of The Next Generation, in which Spock as Ambassador joins a Romulan underground who seeks to reunite Romulus with their Vulcan brothers.

…Spock Pinch

Not as fun as a Judo Chop, but just as effective, the Vulcan neck-pinch is the pinnacle of extra-terrestrial take down moves.  Too bad Abram’s young Kirk forgot to wear his shoulder pads.

Brain bugs

It wouldn’t be a Star Trek film if it didn’t have a reference to creepy crawlies with brain-controlling prowess.  In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan employs a  Ceti eel which burrows through the ear of its victim and wraps itself around the cerebral cortex making the victim susceptible to suggestion.  In Abram’s Trek, Nero employs a similarly coercive parasite, the Centaurian slug, to pry the earth defense codes from Captain Pike’s brain.  One could also draw parallels to the neural parasites from the TNG episode Conspiracy, but the less said about that episode, the better.

Because you haven’t invented it yet…

Another great Trek reference is when Spock Prime gifts the knowledge of beaming to a warp speed vessel to a young Scotty, who years in the physical past but Trek-ian future gifted (or will gift) a bewildered San Franciscan materials manufacturer the formula for “transparent aluminum.”  When questioned as to the temporal ethics of his gift, he promptly responded, “How do you know he wasn’t the one who invented it?”  I guess we all know where Scotty’s temporal ethics were born.

Through the chompers...

Puzzled as to why Scotty was beamed aboard the Enterprise and sent perilously flooding through a series of tubes toward what looked like a giant blender?  The original series was noted for having chases through parts of the ship that seemed to serve no other purpose than being a giant people-eviscerator.  This theme has provided fodder for many Trek parodies, included the wonderfully inventive and funny Galaxy Quest and the scene where they are chased through the "Chompers." 

I’m given her all she’s got, Captain!

Come on, do I really need to explain this to you?

Eject the core!

As common as taking out the trash, the classic Trek method to get your ship out of a bind is pop open your rear hatch and drop the engine into space.  I believe, in fact, nearly every Trek ship of note has at one time or another has lost its antimatter-reacting lunch to the cold reaches of space and critical necessity.

And so much more…

Imagine that, you thought you were seeing something entirely new, when infact you were being treated to a host of what we as Trek fans have been loving since the 1960s (well, 1980s for some of us).  Odds are, this is just the surface of notable Trek references from this movie, but hopefully this will give you a little better appreciation for the snickering Trekkies that seemed to be watching quite a different movie than you were. 

And to those who say that it seemed like J.J. Abrams and writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman didn’t know their Trek, well maybe the one who’s a little rusty, is you.

Comments

[Stefanie Peters]

You've missed out one. Uhura was the only crew member whose full name was never known (with the exception of Spock, whose name is unpronounceable anyway), but after turning that into a running joke for most of the movie, her first name was finally revealed.

Courtesy of Chris Peters. ;)