Star Trek References

Throughout the show the guys present their love for the Star Trek universe.

See also additional references regarding the character Spock and Wrath of Khan.

Guest Stars

• Wil Wheaton, who played ensign Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, appeared as himself in The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary, The Wheaton Recurrence and The 21-Second Excitation

• George Takei, who played the helmsman Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series, appeared as an imaginary himself in Howard's fantasies in The Hot Troll Deviation.

Items

• When the guys enter the Physics Bowl Sheldon designs uniforms for the team based on the uniforms worn in the Original series of Star Trek. He wears "command gold" while his three team members wear "support red" (0113).

• As a teenager, Sheldon had a Starfleet academy cadet uniform and a mint in-package Wesley Crusher action figure (0305).

• Sheldon creates t-shirts for a bowling match against Wil Wheaton with his team's name printed on it: "The Wesley Crushers" using a "play of words" with Wil Wheaton's Star Trek character Wesley Crusher (0319).

• Sheldon stores Season 2 of Star Trek: The Original Series on a high-density flash drive as part of his emergency provisions (0321).

References

• When Penny asks Leonard and Sheldon a trivia question: "Tweety bird tawt he taw a what?", both think she speaks in the Star Trek language of the Romulans and Sheldon answers "Romulan" (0113).

Note: The Romulan language sounds very similiar to the sentence Penny asked. The correct answer, however, would have been "puddy tat" refering to the trademark line "I tawt I taw a puddy tat" (I thought I saw a pussy cat) of the fictional cartoon character Tweety Bird who had a speech impediment.

• Raj was interested once in someone dressed up as an Orion slave girl at Comic-Con. Unfortunately, Richard the Slave Girl turned out to be a guy (0202).

Note: Females from the Orion race are particularly attractive and seductive women in the Star Trek universe.

• When the guys return from the expedition to the North Pole, Sheldon's beard looks the same as that of "Mirror Spock" (0301).

Note: "Mirror Spock" is a character in a parallel universe of "Star Trek: The Original Series". He wears a goatee as seen in the episode "Mirror, Mirror".'

• In the beginning of The Adhesive Duck Deficiency, Sheldon records his personal log in a Star-Trek-like fashion, stating the stardate 63345.3 as the current date.

Note: Episodes of the various Star Trek series used monologues of the characters recording their logs as a narrative tool. Episodes often started with "Captains log, stardate ...", giving the viewer an update about what had just happened.

• During a bowling tournament, Sheldon attempts a "mind meld" with the bowling ball, making the classic gesture with his hand and adopting the classic line "my mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts" to:

Sheldon: I am the ball. My thoughts are its thoughts. Its holes are my holes.

Note: A mind meld is a technique by the Vulcans to form a telepathic link between two individuals and share thoughts. It is performed by one person touching the other person's face in the same, specific pattern of the fingers that Sheldon demonstrated.

• Sheldon includes the transporter from Star Trek on his list of cool modes of transportation (0319).

• When Penny's friend Zack asks how the guys can be sure they won't blow up the moon with their laser experiment, Leonard replies, they set the lasers "to stun".

Note: The "phasers", classic hand-fire weapons in the Star Trek Universe, had two main settings - kill and stun.

Quotes

• Sheldon shoots Penny with his Paintball gun and says revenge is a dish best served cold (0216), quoting a phrase commonly used by the Klingons. He uses the same phrase again, but this time in Klingon (bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay') at his all-time enemy number six Wil Wheaton during the Mystic Warlords of Ka'a tournament in the Comic book store (0305).

• Leonard says that Howard's space toilet will enable "a crew of international astronauts to boldly go where no man has gone before" (0222), referring to the opening monologue of captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series.

• Both, Leonard and Howard refer to Sheldon's excellent hearing with "damn his Vulcan hearing", a line that was frequently used by Kirk and Dr. McCoy referring to Spock (0301).

• During the Mystic Warlords of Ka'a tournament in the Comic book store in October 2009, Sheldon uses numerous quotes from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (see Wrath of Khan, 0305).

• When Sheldon decides to move to Bozeman (the name of a shuttlecraft), Montana and records a video to say goodbye to his friends, he ends the clip with the Vulcan salute "live long and prosper" accompanied by the characteristic hand gesture (hand raised with thumb apart and fingers parted between middle and ring finger) (0313).

• As the guys fight for a “Lord of the Rings”-Ring, Sheldon states that “resistance is futile”, which is the main slogan of the Borg (0317).

Note: The Borg are a cybernetic race in the Star Trek Universe whose aim is to achieve perfection through "assimilation" of other species. This makes them one of the most dangerous of the evil races on Star Trek.

• Sheldon again slips into the role of Khan from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan when Wil Wheaton returns (see Wrath of Khan, 0319).

• When the guys start their "firing-at-the-moon-laser-experiment", Sheldon gives the start signal by saying "Make it so!". That is Captain Picard's famous command to make his crew execute an order (0323).

Dialogues

• In the beginning of 0113, the guys discuss the upcoming Star Trek movie and how a scene picturing Spock's birth would look.

Howard: Maybe they had to go to a clinic. Can you imagine Spock's Dad in a little room with a copy of Pointy Ears and Shapely Rears?

• Both, Sheldon and Leonard think that man holding the record for being named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive must be one of actors playing the captain of the Enterprise. Sheldon thinks, it's William Shatner (Kirk), while Leonard believes it must be Patrick Stewart (Picard) (0113).

Note: Neither is right.

• The guys decided that they needed to become invisible when they use their new time machine, Sheldon remembers that Kirk will steal a cloaking device from the Romulans on stardate 5027.3, which is January 10, 2328 by pre-Federation reckoning. Leonard sets the time machine controls to take him to that date, presumably to take the cloaking device from Kirk (0114).

Note: Sheldon's referring to an episode from the third season of the original series called "The Enterprise Incident" ([1]).

• Sheldon thinks the worst Star Trek movie was Star Trek I, while Rajesh thinks it was Star Trek V. In return, Sheldon's favourite Star Trek movie is Star Trek IV, while Rajesh's is Star Trek II (0208).

• When Leonard dates Stephanie, Sheldon reveals that he has formed a "landing party" from his friends with him being Spock, Leonard being Captain Kirk, Howard being engineer Scotty and Rajesh being "the guy that always gets killed". He adds that Stephanie would be the perfect addition, acting as the medical doctor McCoy, that they "were always missing" (0209).

• In the episode 0209, Sheldon tries to declare Leonard unfit and wants to relieve him "from command" according to Star Fleet general order "104 Section A". Leonard replies pretty unnerved that the Star Fleet order would not apply because "this is not Star Trek" (0209).

• Penny (!) even refers to Star Trek she tries to tell Alicia not take advantage of the guys (0219):

Penny: They don't know how to use their shields. Alica: Shields? Penny: Ya, you know like in Star Trek when you're in battle, you raise the shields.

Note: In the Star Trek universe shields are protective force fields around a starship that are raised when the ship is under attack.

• When Penny tries to comfort Sheldon and explain that the other guys lied to him to "deal with a difficult situation" but not to hurt him, she compares it to a scene from the new Star Trek movie (the eleventh Star Trek movie), in which Kirk is forced to lie to Spock (0301).

Note: In the new Star Trek movie, which takes place in a parallel time line to the old movies, a young Kirk tells a young Spock several lies (like that Spock had never loved his mother) to force him to acknowledge that he is emotionally compromised and not fit to command the Enterprise. Thanks to this, Kirk can take over the command and safe the Enterprise. Subsequently, Spock and Kirk become friends.

• Sheldon reveals in The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary that he idolised the character Wesley Crusher, played by Wil Wheaton from Star Trek: The Next Generation when he was a child. In 1995 he traveled ten hours by bus to the Dixie Trek SciFi Convention in Jackson, Mississippi to get his Wesley Crusher action figure signed by Wil Wheaton. When the actor failed to show up, Sheldon placed him on his personal all-time enemy list.

• While driving to the hospital rather slowly, an injured Penny (!) tries to motivate Sheldon to drive faster by saying: "Warp speed ahead, Mister Spock!". Sheldon, however, informs her that Spock, as a science officer, did not pilot the Enterprise (0308).

• In The Maternal Congruence Leonard asks Sheldon what he wants:

Sheldon: What I want is to be departing starship Enterprise in a one-man shuttlecraft headed to the planetoid I rule known as Sheldon Alpha 5.

• When Penny is asked who Stan Lee was her first guess is that "he was on Star Trek" (0316).

• In the beginning of The Pants Alternative, Sheldon wonders why William Shatner wasn't in the new Star Trek movie. Implying he was ignored, Sheldon then draws a parallel to himself being ignored by the university stating "I am the William Shatner of theoretical physics" (0318).

• Howard tells Wil Wheaton that he's a big fan and wants to know whether he ever "hit it" with Whoopi Goldberg? Wheaton just looks irritated (0319).

Note: Whoopie Goldberg had a recurring minor role in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wil Wheaton responded in "real life" on Twitter saying "@wilw: No, I didn't hit that, Howard. Also, I was 15 and heavily crushing on Marina Sirtis at the time. I thought everyone knew that." (9:46 PM Apr 12th 2010). Marina Sirtis played Deanna Troi one of the major characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

• The first barrier to "roommatehood" that Leonard had to pass, was the answer to the question "Kirk or Picard" to which he replied "That's tricky. Original series over Next Generation but Picard over Kirk". Sheldon sees this as the correct answer (0322).

• When trying to motivate Sheldon to come to a date, Raj and Howard remind Sheldon that "even Spock had a date once every seven years". Sheldon points out that Vulcan pon-farr is something completely different than a date (0323).