The continuing popularity and deeply loyal fandom of the Star Trek universe is truly, as Mr. Spock might have put it, “fascinating.” For a franchise that started out with a mere three seasons and 79 episodes, Trek has far outlasted its originally stated “five-year mission”; it recently celebrated its 57th year in our firmament, and is still going strong. The high-minded idealism and hopeful vision of humanity’s future created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966 has earned a place of pride in our pop culture pantheon—which means that it can certainly take a bit of ribbing from time to time. Whether in the form of affectionate homage or full-on parody, Trek and its cast of characters continue to also fuel some memorable movies, TV episodes, and sketches. And the best part? The original cast members of the various series are often in on the gag!
Here, then, are seven of my favorite alternate takes on the worlds of Trek— boldly, and occasionally hilariously, putting a new twist on the characters and situations we’ve seen before…
Saturday Night Live (1975-Present)
Star Trek had only been off the air for six years when Saturday Night Live launched, but it wasn’t long before the sketch series was lampooning it, with “The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise” featuring John Belushi in the Captain’s chair, Chevy Chase as Spock, and Dan Aykroyd as Dr. McCoy. Since then we’ve gotten Owen Wilson as Capt. Jeff Bezos in “Billionaire Star Trek,” and Chris Pine reprising his rebooted Kirk role in a “lost episode.” Most memorable and controversial, though, was not exactly a Star Trek parody—but the episode in 1986 when William Shatner (the original Capt. Kirk) showed up in a sketch about a Trek fan convention to tell his admiring followers to “get a life.” Is it the nadir or apex for SNL parodies? Maybe both.
In Living Color (1990-1994)
With “The Wrath of Farrakhan,” the second episode of In Living Color dipped into the Trek universe with a wildly over-the-top parody featuring Jim Carrey as an overacting Captain Kirk, David Alan Grier as Mr. Spock, and Kim Wayans as Lt. Uhura. (It was the most diverse version of the franchise until Star Trek: Discovery began airing decades later.) In the typically irreverent sketch, Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan (Damon Wayans) comes aboard the Enterprise and incites mutiny, then becomes the new captain and sets a new course: “Warp factor 5. We’re going home—destination 125th Street.”
Galaxy Quest (1999)
More a loving hug than a parody of the Star Trek universe, Galaxy Quest is a true homage to several things at once: fan conventions, actors stuck in career-defining roles who clearly have not embraced their inner Shatners, and the power of a science fiction TV show inspiring enough that it manages to travel across the universe and convince aliens to seek out its heroic crew. At a reunion convention for the stars of the 1980s space adventure series Galaxy Quest (some of whom are there more grudgingly than the others) tempers and egos flare—until most of the cast is transported into space by aliens called Thermians, drafted into their conflict with an extraterrestrial warlord. With a cast that includes Alien star Sigourney Weaver and Professor Snape himself, Alan Rickman, plus Tony Shalhoub, Tim Allen, and Sam Rockwell, it’s hard to find a missed step in this delightful, funny, and affectionate comedy.
Futurama (1999-Present)
Futurama itself isn’t based on Star Trek, but all the science fiction staples, spaceships, and aliens on hand (plus its writers’ love of pop culture) make it a natural home for all manner of riffing on the classic series. And boy, does it riff, with tons of references sprinkled over its many seasons: Leonard Nimoy’s (Spock) head appears in the very first episode, while whole episodes replay classic Trek storylines (like Fry going to Zoidberg’s home planet for mating season in “Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love”). But the ultimate expression of Futurama’s love of Star Trek has to be “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” when Fry learns that the Trek franchise became a religion in the 2200s. Every main cast member from the original series appears in the episode, except for the late DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) and James Doohan (Scotty)—instead, a likeness of McCoy was used without dialog, and instead of Doohan’s Scotty we had a newcomer called “Welshie.”
The Orville (2017-Present)
There’s so much love out there for the idea of a hopeful voyage to the stars that Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy fame) was able to get a series that was basically a Trek homage—and a surprisingly earnest one—greenlit. After two years on Fox it moved to Hulu, though it’s not yet renewed for a fourth season. MacFarlane (who also stars) has long been a Star Trek superfan; he’s included multiple references to the show on Family Guy (where he also roped in a bunch of TNG, Voyager, and DS9 actors to share their voices). But many devoted to The Orville have noted that it has outgrown mere comparisons to Trek and become its own thing—an organic, looser evolution of the original franchise.
Stalled Trek (2012-Present)
Muppets! In! Space! No, wait—this is the crew (sort of) of the Enterprise, but not as you’ve seen them before—Capt. Krok, Mr. Spott, Dr. McGruff, Lt. Uhiya, and they’re all animated…but rather muppety at the same time. This is the vision of Mark R. Largent, who has crowdfunded and released two parodies of Trek episodes (“Amutt Time” echoes “Amok Time”; “The City on the Edge of Foreclosure” echoes “The City on the Edge of Forever”) that are deeply funny—and also deeply adoring of the original material.
“The Dumbsday Machine,” which remakes “The Doomsday Machine,” was funded on IndieGoGo, and Largent told me he’s thinking about Stalled Trek: The Next Generation. “Star Trek was in heavy syndication when I was growing up,” he says in an email. “My friends and I would come home from school as kids, watch Star Trek and then go outside and play Star Trek. Around the same time, I discovered Mad Magazine and Cracked… and my uncle took me to see Airplane when I was 12. Toss all of those things into a young, impressionable mind and you get Stalled Trek.”
Black Mirror (2011-Present)
Blending its take on Trek with the world of multiplayer online gaming and an embittered programmer (played by Jesse Plemons), “USS Callister,” a standout, 76-minute episode of the ongoing anthology series, won four Emmy Awards in 2018. The episode focuses on Plemons’ character Robert, who’s created his own mini-world within the larger game he created, and the parts of the episode set aboard the Callister are more a homage than a parody of Trek. In this virtual world, he turns his digitally cloned co-workers into the crew of his own spaceship, where he runs the show as captain. It’s a story that references Trek in various small details and in its visuals as well as in more obvious ways. But while there are funny moments, Robert is disturbingly abusive to his characters/co-workers—and there’s a very dark comeuppance for him in the end. (This is Black Mirror, after all.)
Randee Dawn is the author of the funny, fantastical pop culture novel Tune in Tomorrow, which was a finalist in the 2023 Next Generation Indie Awards. She’s also the co-editor of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion and co-edited the anthology Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles. An entertainment journalist who writes for The Los Angeles Times, Variety, Today.com, and many other publications, Randee is working on her follow-up to Tune in Tomorrow and lives in Brooklyn with her spouse and a fluffy, sleepy Westie.
In print, there’s Scalzi’s RED SHIRTS.
It’s a misapprehension that Galaxy Quest is exclusively a Trek parody. Yes, Trek is one of the main things it parodies, but there’s a lot more in the mix as well. Indeed, the in-universe Galaxy Quest TV series is uncannily similar to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, mainly its second season where it was retooled into a starship-based series. Within the film’s reality, the Galaxy Quest series ran from 1979-82, while Buck Rogers ran from 1979-81. Both GQ and BR S2 were Star Trek-like starship adventure series with a macho male lead whose actor tended to hog the spotlight (Taggart/Buck), his stoic alien warrior best friend who’s the last survivor of a slaughtered people and has a skullcap-based makeup (Dr. Lazarus/Hawk), and a somewhat marginalized token female lead/love interest who has a vaguely defined shipboard role and is basically there as eye candy (Tawny/Wilma). Meanwhile, Laredo, the child prodigy navigator of the Protector, strongly reminds me of Gary Coleman’s Hieronymous Fox from Buck season 1.
Granted, Buck season 2 was only set on a starship because its incoming producers retooled the show to be more like Star Trek. But there’s a good deal of other classic SFTV referenced in GQ as well. The cheesy wire-work special effects are a nod to Irwin Allen’s shows, and the child-genius character also owes something to Lost in Space and Galactica 1980. Alexander Dane’s personality is very similar to Space: 1999‘s Barry Morse, a distinguished British actor who was embarrassed by his association with a cheesy sci-fi show. Tawny Madison’s role as a crew member whose job is mainly to repeat what the computer says is similar to the Space: 1999 character David Kano (although he was at least reading from printout tape). And then there are things like the corridor of gratuitous deathtraps, the casting of a non-East Asian actor as an East Asian character (Tech Sergeant Chen), and the countdown stopping on 1 second, which are just generic TV tropes not specific to any one show.
But the thing is, Star Trek is the only one of these shows that most people remember, so they mistakenly assume it’s the only thing GQ is sending up, when really it’s just the central part of a more eclectic mix of pop-culture references. The Buck Rogers parallels in particular are so strong that I can’t believe they were coincidental.
Also in print form, there’s John M. Ford’s HOW MUCH FOR JUST THE PLANET.
@3/LisaJulie: Except How Much… actually is a licensed Star Trek novel, not a Trek parody or homage. So it doesn’t fit the category.
The Orville is a fine, proper homage to Berman-era Trek, but my favorite MacFarlane related Trek riff was when Stewie kidnapped the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. You’d think the tiny fanboy/devil child would drive the actors nuts, but the reverse happened: The TNGers were like a bunch of cranky five year olds and Stewie nearly exploded from aggravation.
You have to think that Patrick Stewart (a MacFarlane regular on American Dad) gave the Family Guy writers tips on how the cast interacts off camera, because the episode felt very “inside baseball.”
Well, also, despite what the makers might say about it being officially part of the canon, Lower Decks is obviously meant to be a parody of some sort. At least it comes across that way to me.
The CSI episode “A Space Oddity” included several fantastic sequences that parodied original Trek (primarily “The Gamesters of Triskelion”), while also praising Trek fandom for being optimistic and taking some fantastic potshots at the “Darker and Edgier” trend exemplified by the then-recent (this was a 2009 episode) Basttlestar Galactica reboot.
Most notably, in the story a producer has bought the rights to the old SF TV show “Astro Quest” and is rebooting it D&E style. He shows a clip at a convention, and the crowd is stunned and horrified, until someone yells “You suck!” triggering a near-riot.
The yeller was played by Ron D. “the guy who rebooted BSG” Moore.
The episode has a story credit to Dr. Naren Shankar, who went from a Ph.D in applied physics and electrical engineering to interning for the TNG staff (he is he namesake of Narendra III, the linchpin planet/battle in the episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”), to writing and serving as science consultant, to producing, and was at the time an executive producer on CSI. (He went on to EP The Expanse.) The episode was written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, who were writing partners on DS9 before being hired by Moore to BSG and then eventually joined the CSI writing staff. (They’re now writing for For All Mankind, another Moore show.)
Basically this was an entire episode of inside baseball.
There’s a little 1999 movie called Free Enterprise about a couple of devoted fanboys who accidentally cross paths with William Shatner (played by himself in self-deprecating fashion with exaggerated over-the-top swagger). I only saw it once, but thought it was funny!
@2,
I am showing my age here but I will refer to the 1970’s Buck Rogers in the 21st Century as “the reboot.” I still remember the original Buck Rogers movie serials which in some ways was better than the Flash Gordon films.
Galaxy Quest certainly pulled on all the tropes of the 1960’s and 170’s SF shows whether it be Star Trek, Buck Rogers, or Space 1999 (the REAL Moonbase Alpha)
Saturday Night Live also had an episode with William Shatner and the Enterprise becoming a restaurant.
Its not that great. https://youtu.be/SpPgavT5am4?si=cJZuv4-4WJlhlPdr
@7/scifantasy: One more bit of inside baseball: The two CSI regulars whose characters were portrayed as the biggest Astro Quest fans, Wallace Langham and Liz Vassey, were the two who’d actually been guest stars in Trek (Vassey was a bathing-suited crewmember in TNG: “Conundrum,” and Langham was Flotter in VGR: “Once Upon a Time”).
@9/DrThanatos: There was only one Buck Rogers serial, which I reviewed here: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/buck-rogers-bonus-review-the-1939-serial-spoilers/
@7/Loved “Space Oddity.” Favorite Trek shout out– lab tech David Hodges (Wallace Langham) to LVPD Det. Jim Brass after they discover the murder victim: “He’s dead, Jim.”
(CSI also did a version of TNG’s “Lower Decks” featuring Hodges and the other lab rats, written by Naren Shankar.)
What no Captain Link Hogthrob from Pigs in Space?
@2/Christopher – The premise of Galaxy Quest (aliens misinterpreting science fiction shows as documentaries about real heroic space exploits) is also very similar to that of Diplomatic Act, a comedic novel/ quasi-self-insert fic by Peter Jurasik (Babylon 5‘s Londo Mollari) and William Keith Jr.
My personal favourite is Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a Finnish parody of both Star Trek and Babylon 5.
The Big Bang Theory was an almost inexhaustible fount of Trek nerdiness, abetted by WIl Wheaton and (later in the run) Brent Spiner.
FRASIER (original series) took many an affectionate poke at Star Trek fandom through the character of Noel Shempsky (Patrick Kerr). Noel’s Trek obsession (“A man named Gene Roddenberry had a dream!”) was depicted as a little odd–but really, no odder than Frasier’s obsession with vintage wine.
My favorite Trek bit was when Noel tutored Frasier’s son on the Torah portion for Frederick’s bar mitzvah. Noel was a little angry with Frasier at the time, so he taught Freddy to say it in Klingon.
(It turned out surprisingly well.)
I’m so glad that Link Heartthrob and the crew of the Swinetrek got some attention, albeit far less than enough
Thank you, mcy
Oh, I almost forgot about the first Trek parody I saw. In 1975, the year after its animated Star Trek ended, Filmation Associates produced a comedy called The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty (parodying The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but renamed The New Adventures of Waldo Kitty in syndicated reruns after Filmation was sued for copyright infringement), in which a live-action cat voiced by Howard Morris would have cartoon daydreams of being one of five heroic figures: Catman (based on Batman), Catzan of the Apes, Robin Cat, the Lone Kitty, and Captain Herc of the starship Secondprize, though there were only two “Cat Trek” segments out of the 13 episodes of the series. (As it happens, Filmation had previously done or would later do straight adaptations of all those series except Robin Hood.)
Captain Herc’s crew consisted of Mr. Crock, Dr. Moans, and Sergeant O’Hoo-ha, and Waldo’s dog nemesis Tyrone (Allan Melvin) was a captain of the evil Click-offs. Howard Morris did a surprisingly good William Shatner impression — not in the sense of the pause-laden Shatner caricatures we’re used to today, but in the sense of capturing Kirk’s general manner and tone. The show was full of silly sight gags and corny one-liners, my favorite of which was the recurring joke where Tyrone would order his henchdogs to “Seize him!” and the henchdogs would reply “We seez him, we seez him! What about it?”
@7 My favourite part of “Space Oddity” is when one of the cops sees a bartender at the convention wearing an alien mask, and assumes he’s forced to wear it by the management. He pushes back the mask to reveal severe scars, says he got them in Afghanistan, and that he’s very interested in a future where people settle their differences peacefully.
There’s always the Star Schtick parody from Wayne and Shuster, dating back to the 70s. A sketch show parody, but one of their long form ones, clocking in at over half an hour.
Not sure where to consider it but Blake’s 7 was the Anti-Trek with The Liberator & crew fighting the dystopian Federation.
@21/wlewisiii: There may have been a slight Trek nod intended with the evil organization in Blake’s 7 being called the Federation, but its creators based it largely on Robin Hood and The Dirty Dozen, and it was also influenced by Westerns such as The Magnificent Seven and dystopian literature like 1984 and Brave New World, as well as real-world revolutionary movements and the history of the Nazis (a major influence on a lot of Terry Nation’s creations, notably the Daleks).
Also, since it premiered in 1978, its creation was undoubtedly far more a reaction to Star Wars, which it strongly resembles in its focus on a band of rebel underdogs and scoundrels fighting a totalitarian empire. It’s more likely that they just called it the Federation because Empire was too Star Wars-y.
Clearing out a few loose ends here…
I almost forgot about the infamous Frasier/Voyager comedy sketch, which featured Kate Mulgrew as Janeway and David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves, John Mahoney and Peri Gilpin as (basically) their Frasier characters, only… you know… on a starship. It wasn’t all that funny, and I thought Mulgrew–who is usually game for stuff like this–looked uncomfortable throughout. (They can’t all be winners.)
Correction: in the “Star Mitzvah” episode I mentioned above, it was Frasier, not his son, who said the prayer in Klingon.
Since I love The Next Generation, I tried to get into The Orville (watched all of season one and the beginning of season two) but I just couldn’t. It just felt second-rate. The entire time watching it I found myself wishing I was watching TNG instead. It didn’t help that many of the show’s fans were so obnoxious, insisting that The Orville was “real Trek” as opposed to Star Trek: Discovery. Maybe I’ll give it another shot in a few years.
I only recently watched Galaxy Quest (I somehow missed it when it came out) and I loved that it was as much an homage to sci-fi fan culture as it was to the shows it was imitating. However, I’m not crazy about the rumors that Paramount is working on a TV sequel. If there ever were a time for that, I feel like it was probably 15 years ago.
No love for Red Shirts by John Scalzi?
@24/David Pirtle: I found The Orville‘s first season uneven but okay, and the second and third seasons are both excellent. After season 1, they stopped trying to live up to the expectation that a Seth MacFarlane show had to be a comedy, and they went all-in with making it a straight dramatic SF show, still with moments of humor, but not in as forced or intrusive a way as in season 1. Now, I loathe Seth MacFarlane’s comedy shows; I find them completely unfunny, superficial, imitative, crass, and mean-spirited. I’d come to the firm conclusion that he was a talentless hack, not only as a writer but as an actor. So I resisted giving The Orville a try for several years. But when I finally gave in and watched it, I was deeply impressed by the intelligence of MacFarlane’s dramatic writing in The Orville and feel he’s done fairly good work playing Captain Mercer. I’ve come to conclude he’s just been working in the wrong field up until this show.
Certainly The Orville‘s worldbuilding is way too imitative of Trek, but sometimes it does Trekkish things even better than Trek does, like giving a much clearer explanation of how a moneyless, replicator-based post-scarcity economy works, or showing how giddy and eager the crew gets at the prospect of a first-contact mission.
I have to mention “Where No Duckman Has Gone Before”, which is possibly my favourite parody of Star Trek and which sadly seems mostly forgotten. It does an excellent send up of many of the original series tropes, plus it has a cameo by Nimoy at the endwhich is just perfect.
NIGHT CREW !!!!!
The Scottish sketch show Chewing the Fat did Taysiders in space (probably NSFW):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoBk8bxU1rs
You forgot “Stone Trek”, and “Star Trekkin'” song from The Firm. Here two in one ;) :
https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX7_a2KcqKE
I can’t believe nobody mentioned Red Dwarf yet! In addition to skewering many of the tropes in Star Trek, Red Dwarf has an episode that’s an explicit parody of ST:TNG. In ‘Holoship’ (Season 5), the hologram Rimmer is taken aboard the holoship Enlightenment. It’s crewed by holograms with superior intelligence and skill and represents a rational utopia: twice daily sex is encouraged, emotional attachments are not. Rimmer, of course, is none of these things. It’s a send-up of the Enterprise and the ideology of Star Trek in general.
There was a Halloween episode of Night Court with two factions arguing in true nerd fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIQ8E3d4Umo
None of the clips on this page worked for me.
My personal favorite is “Pigs in Space” Miss Piggy always does it for me.
In webcomics we have the delightful Attack Pattern Tuggs, which starts off as pure parody but has been slowly evolving into a Trek story in its own right as the 2 dimensional characters gain backstory and start to fill out
How about the very first one? The original? Mad Magazine’s “Star Bleccch” with the starship Boobyprize?
Futurama made *one* mistake. When finding the heads of Shatner, Nimoy, et al, the head of Shatner should have been visibly much bigger than the others.
After all, Shatner will *always* be the Really Big Head from THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN (though the interchange between Shatner and Lithgow about just how bad their flight was, definitely connected both Twilight Zone versions of “Terror at 35,000 Feet”).
@33–I always wish the Muppet Show had followed that up with “Deep Space Swine”.
@37 – on Muppets Tonight (which for reasons seems to languish in unavailability except on YouTube) they had Deep Dish Nine: The Next Generation of Pigs in Space. As I remember it it was just the same set up as Pigs in Space, rather than a proper parody of Star Trek of the day.
Let us not forget the magnificent song/video “Star Trekking”! https://youtu.be/gi3Xt3Yjk14?feature=shared
No one mentioned Sev Trek? Originally started as webcomic series, with often a fan competition to provide the best punchline.
https://sevspace.com/stupidarchive/archive.asp-category=1.htm
And in 2002 they released a movie Sev Trek Pus in Boots, which you probably can still find online…
Where to file the episode of ABC’s FRIDAYS where they were expecting Shatner as guest host, but due to a multi-parallel space-time inversion got Kirk instead…?
@26. ChristopherLBennett — You’ve just convinced me to give The Orville another shot. I had the same reaction to it and McFarlane’s work in general as you but didn’t make it past a few episodes into Season 1. Unfortunately our Trek family rewatch has been stalled early in Deep Space Nine for lots of life reasons, and The Orville will likely have to wait some time.
Here’s something really obscure – back in the 1970s in the UK the glove puppet Basil Brush had his own series. He had human sidekicks, Mister Rodney, Mister Derek and others, and at the end of each episode they would read Basil a story. The first (and probably best) was Basil de Farmer, The Man In Shining Armour, which was a sort of Ivanhoe parody, but they also did Bulldog Basil, the Secret Service Man (based on Bulldog Drummond) and Captain Basil in Outer Space (or something similar – this was the Star Trek parody).
@ChristopherLBennett: Galaxy Quest may have had many ancestors, but the driver of the story is the broad-based, intense, continuing fandom. Is there anything other than Star Trek which could have turned out hundreds of people to light the way home? And IMO How Much… is a parody even if it was licensed — and censored — by Paramount; did any of the other novels make such a fool of Kirk, especially by carrying his weaknesses to extremes?
I hope most of you got a chance to see the documentary about the making of Galaxy Quest; 20 years afterward, the chief Thermian could still do That Voice.
@44/chip137: It’s not a competition. Obviously Galaxy Quest was heavily influenced by Trek; everyone knows that already, so I don’t need to mention it. But everyone overlooks the other influences it had, including the very clear, strong parallels to Buck Rogers, so I feel it’s important to make sure those are noted alongside the Trek influences everyone already knows.
After all, usually the best parodies are those that parody a whole range of things, rather than just one. Spaceballs is primarily a Star Wars parody, but it also includes nods to other things like 2001, Planet of the Apes, Alien, and The Wizard of Oz. Airplane! is a direct remake of Zero Hour!, but also heavily parodies Airport 75 and its sequels, as well as having nods to Casablanca, Saturday Night Fever, Jaws, Pinocchio, and more. It’s a good thing if a movie has wider cultural literacy rather than being tunnel-focused on a single reference. So I don’t understand why people sometimes seem offended when I point out that Galaxy Quest is richer and more multilayered than an exclusive Star Trek parody would be. Obviously Trek is the heart of it, but it’s not the only ingredient in the soup.
“And IMO How Much… is a parody even if it was licensed…”
You could say the same about Lower Decks, or various comedy episodes of other Trek series. Self-parody is always possible. But I think it’s shifting the goalposts from what the article was intended to be about.