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This page lists references to Star Trek in the animated television series Futurama.
- When the episode begins, Fry is talking while playing a video game. His speech is somewhat similar to the speech in the beginning of most Star Trek series which begins with "Space, the final frontier". Also, the music is similar to the Star Trek theme.
- Right after the title sequence, a door opens with the same sound effect as the doors in Star Trek: The Original Series (actually, it's the sound effect for doors closing).
- Fry approaches a door which opens automatically and exclaims: "Cool, just like on Star Trek!"
- Fry and Bender hide in the head museum where Fry meets Leonard Nimoy's head in a jar:
- Nimoy: Welcome to the head museum; I'm Leonard Nimoy.
- Fry: Spock?! Hey, hey, do the thing! (does the vulcan salute to Nimoy)
- Nimoy (laughing): I don't do that anymore.
- When Fry and the others board the starship, the door opens with the ST:TOS sound effect (this time the one for a door opening) and the coffee machine also makes a sound effect that we recognize from ST:TOS.
When one of Bender's neighbors closes her cell phone it makes the same sound as the ST:TOS communicators.
There are many references in this episode.
- Zapp Brannigan's outrageously self-centered personality is a parody of captain Kirk, and the bridge of his spaceship, particularly his chair, is similar to that of the USS Enterprise.
- Zapp says the uniforms are made of velour, just like the Star Trek uniforms are.
- Zapp files a captain's journal, giving a stardate.
- Zapp confuses chess with poker, a reference to Kirk and Spock's chess/poker discussion in The Corbomite Maneuver.
- Brannigan's Law, "The Democratic Order of Planets prohibits interfering with undeveloped worlds", is a parody of the Prime Directive.
Trisolians (the people of the planet Trisol) are liquid lifeforms, and one of them refer to Fry as "the solid". This may be a reference to the Changelings/Founders from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine whose natural state is a gelatinous liquid and who also refer to people as "solids".
Fry finds a Mr. Spock collector's plate on the surface of the big ball of garbage.
Zapp tells Kif: "Divert power from the shields. Full speed ahead!" This is probably a reference to the constant habit of diverting power from one thing or another in Star Trek.
As Fry pilots the ship to defend Earth against invading alien ships, he says "I'm gonna be a science fiction hero, just like Uhura, or Captain Janeway, or Xena!". The first two heroes listed are Star Trek characters.
Leela and Professor Farnsworth are playing a game of 3D Scrabble, a reference to the game Tri-D Chess which can be seen for example in the ST:TOS episode Where No Man Has Gone Before.
The empathy chip that Professor Farnsworth installs in Bender may be a reference to the emotion chip that Data gets in Star Trek: Generations.
This episode in many ways parodies the ST:TOS episode Amok Time. Dr. Zoidberg and Fry take on the roles of Spock and Kirk respectively.
- Dr. Zoidberg becomes violent and erractic when his species' mating season comes, just like Spock begins to lose control when he enters pon farr.
- The king of Dr. Zoidberg's homeworld is similar to T'Pau: a throne which is carried with removable handles, a similar staff and the same accent and speech pattern.
- The national anthem of Dr. Zoidberg's world is the ST:TOS fight theme.
- Dr. Zoidberg and Fry must engage in a fight to the death over Edna, just as Spock and Kirk do over T'Pring.
- Fry is allowed to choose from three weapons. The top and middle ones are a lirpa and an ahn'woon respectively – both traditional Vulcan weapons used in the fight between Kirk and Spock.
- Dr. Zoidberg rips Fry's shirt, as Spock does Kirk's.
Flexo – an 'evil' Bender – has a goatee. This is a reference to the mirror Spock in Mirror, Mirror.
Sitting around the briefing table, Fry discovers that Hermes has a brainslug:
- Fry: Wait a second, he's got a brainslug on his head!
- Leela: Sssh! You're gonna get us all assimilated.
- Amy: Just act normal and switch to a garlic shampoo.
This is a possible reference to the Borg and their practice of assimilation.
- Captain Muskie (a former member of the Planet Express team) has a disfigured face and sits in an advanced wheelchair covering everything but his head and shoulders. His appearance closely resembles that of Captain Christopher Pike in the ST:TOS episode The Menagerie. Muskie is an abbreviation of muskellunge, a member of the pike family. The music that plays while Muskie rolls in is from Star Trek: The Original Series. Muskie beeps once, which in the ST:TOS episode means "yes".
- Professor Farnsworth has invented a universal translator, a device used in all Star Trek series. Unfortunately "it only translates into an incomprehensible, dead language", French.
The alarm that sounds when the Planet Express ship is dragged down under water is the ST:TOS red alert effect.
- The title parodies the ST:TOS episode The Trouble with Tribbles.
- Leela takes some readings on the distant planet and concludes: "Well, it's a type M planet, so it should at least have roddenberries."
- In Star Trek, a Class M planet is a planet with conditions similar to Earth.
- Roddenberries are a reference to Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek.
Nichelle Nichols, dressed as Uhura, appears in this episode with the Vice Presidential Action Rangers to protect the space-time continuum.
Fry plays with a model Planet Express ship: "Giant space robot, this is Captain Fry of the USS Planet Express ship. We come in peace." USS is the prefix of all Federation starships, e.g. the USS Defiant.
One of the nominees for "best soft drink product placement" at the Academy Awards ceremony is Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation.
Leela undergoes "phaser eye surgery."
The wharf where Bender falls out of the sky is named Fisherman's Worf. See Worf.
While on the Internet (which in the year 3000 is a virtual reality environment) Fry and Leela walk past a chatroom called OldTREK-vs-NewTREK.web, where two men are arguing:
- Man 1: No way, Kirk could kick Picard's ass!
- Man 2: Yeah? At least Picard had the guts to admit he was bald.
- Man 1: What? You take that back!
Bender loses his head in Earth's past, where it lays buried for centuries before being excavated and reattached to his comparatively younger body in the present. The same happened to Data's head in ST:TNG's Time's Arrow.
Dr. Zoidberg assesses Bender's vital signs with an ST:TOS tricorder.
- Opening credits tagline: "PLEASE TURN OFF ALL CELL PHONES AND TRICORDERS"
- Free-floating through space, Bender encounters a celestial entity that he suspects is God:
- Bender: But why would God think in binary? Unless... you're not God, but the remains of a computerized space probe that collided with God!
The ST:TOS episode The Changeling involved Nomad, a sentient machine created in the collision of a 21st-century Earth probe and an alien probe.
At the Blernsball Hall of Fame, we are introduced to several legendary players who "broke the various color barriers." Among them is one of the half-white, half-black aliens from ST:TOS' Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
A train car reads "Wrath of Conrail," in reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The title is derived from "where no man has gone before", and this whole episode is centered around Star Trek and Trek fandom. The original cast appears as themselves, with the exceptions of James Doohan (who declined to appear) and the late DeForest Kelley. It would take pages to cite all the in-jokes and references, but two notes of significance:
- In this episode, it is revealed to be an unthinkable crime in the 30th Century to mention Star Trek, since the series at one point spawned a cult that threatened mankind. However, characters have openly discussed Trek in past episodes with no apparent fear of repercussions.
- As with most of the Trek references in Futurama, those in this episode are confined to the original series and movies. The closest the episode comes to acknowledging the spin-offs is a miniscule cameo by TNG's Jonathan Frakes, who takes over Nimoy's space at the Head Museum in his absence and exclaims "Yes! Front row!"
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Fry uses his three fingers and a thumb to form a Vulcan salute.
The warlike Klingons have an embassy on Earth. It is decorated entirely in pink and purple and resembles a girl's dollhouse.
- The crew visits the Nimbus' "holoshed," a takeoff on Trek's holodecks, where any imaginable situation can be brought to virtual life (and more often than not, proceed to malfunction and run amok.) Sure enough, the simulation is hijacked by an army of historical characters led by Professor Moriarty (the same holocharacter who took over the ship in two ST:TNG episodes).
- In the aftermath, the crew are treated by a Dr. McCoy analogue in the ship's "Sick Bay & Horta Burn Clinic." (The Horta were silicon-based life-forms seen in ST:TOS' The Devil in the Dark, who tunneled through solid rock by secreting acid.)
- Zapp quips that Kif's toilet must have been "set on 'stun,' not 'kill.'"
- The Planet Express ship's headlights accidentally destroy a space station identical to Deep Space Nine.
- Children's books seen in this episode include "A Child's Garden of Space Legends," which depicts a Gorn on the cover, and "Charlotte's Tholian Web."
Similar to Spock's funeral in Star Trek II, Fry's coffin is fired into space like a torpedo while Scruffy (cf. Scotty) plays the bagpipes.
Kif is imprisoned on "Commander Riker's Island".
The ziggurat-like Omicronian palace resembles the Klingon homeworld matte painting used throughout ST:TNG.
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