The Star Trek universe has been around since 1966, and since we first saw Kirk tooling around the galaxy, chewing the scenery no man has chewed before, it has spun outwards into seven television series, thirteen movies and more merchandise than a replicator can handle. With 50+ years under its’ belt, this is a franchise that has attracted fans old and young, from all walks of life, to gather together, marvel at the intricacies of this utopian universe, and to poke holes in it whenever they can.
You can’t really live that long and expect to be beyond reproach. When you have a science fiction universe that has existed longer than most cars people own, you are going to have people that have scrutinized every little aspect of it, and found some things worth laughing at, and the internet being the wonderful place that it is, we share those hilarious findings with one another. But we don’t share them like animals, with a few succinct words or well-reasoned arguments. Those are the tools of a bygone era. No, here in the future, we need to share our irreverent humor via comics, images and mostly memes.
And until we all share a collective consciousness like the Borg, we have to go out and find those jokes ourselves. Or, even better, we find people to compile articles full of those jokes for us, which is what I am about to present to you. Set your phasers to funny, because things are about to get ridiculous.
25 I’m A Doctor, Not A Paleontologist!
I really laughed a lot harder than I should have at this meme. I don’t know what it is, I think it was just because it confused me so much at first. When it says “Bones” is it talking about McCoy or what he’s looking at? Is Leonard saying it? Because the next line makes it seem like he’s giving his professional medical opinion on what is clearly a very old skeleton, which is funny in its’ own right.
Whatever the case may be, the execution of the image is flawless, since McCoy has to use that exact phrase far too many times in the show. It also might be a slight jab at Kirk for needing the help of his crew member to ascertain whether a skeleton is dead or not, which is pretty accurate, Kirk does get through most scenarios by the skin of his teeth and the minds of the better crew members around him.
24 Those Legs Go All The Way Up?
When I started writing this article I had no idea I would be getting such an eyeful of Patrick Stewart’s shapely man calf. Can’t say I’m disappointed, though, those are some toned legs for a guy who spends 95% of his day drinking tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Patrick has always had that “I can’t tell if he’s a tough guy who’s nerdy or a nerd who might be tough” kind of vibe going for him.
What I especially love about images such as these is that they correct a huge oversight in the original series. Why were the females of the crew the only ones subjected to wearing skirts? That’s some archaic hogwash I’d expect at my local Hooters, not aboard a Starfleet vessel. So when pictures like this show that both men and women had the option of wearing skirts, it gladdens my heart a little. Plus, you know, those calves, dude.
23 Remind Me To Buy More Red Shirts
There’s a lot of beauty to behold in this picture. There’s the gloriousness of the V-neck that Kirk is rocking, the line up of disposable human beings who all look like they KNOW they are disposable, and the fact that everyone is laughing except Spock. As always. And overtop of all the splendor these images have managed to capture, there’s the whole punch line, which is actually pretty funny, for a meme.
The implication that the super-civilized Starfleet captain, who lives in a utopian society and believes that violence is the last resort, knows that his red shirt crew will be killed is kind of hilarious. Everyone knows the trope that red shirts get super murdered when they are part of the landing party, but for Kirk to be in on the joke adds a fun little dark layer to the whole experience. I always knew Kirk had a dark streak to him.
22 Set Your Phasers To Dig
Man, red shirts just cannot seem to catch a break. Between them and Stormtroopers, all of space seems to be cluttered with useless cannon fodder. You’d think that after the first few times they sent people down to get eaten by space bugs, they’d start wearing spacesuits or armor. But no, they always go down in brightly colored uniforms that get torn apart by a slight breeze, and next thing you know, the Captain is saying a brief sentence about what a shame it is to lose life so senselessly. Then they are on to their next adventure where they find a sentient gas thingy maybe.
The real question I have is where do they keep getting crew members? I understand that the Enterprise can hold around 430 people, but that number should drastically drop if you lose people every time you send out an away party. And that isn’t counting all the times crew members get lost in the transporter or sucked dry by an iron absorbing vampire creature.
21 The USS Billy Corgan
It looks like this pumpkin landing party has had a transporter malfunction, which is never pretty. Oh well, it only happened to a redshirt. Seriously, though, how many people are going to make the same joke? We get it, they have a very low surviving rate, change the record, please.
At least this one was a little more creative, since it decided to eschew using words at all, and decided to just let the paint on the pumpkins act as all the clues you’d need to figure out the joke. Still, you have to wonder, is retelling the same joke that every nerd has heard a thousand times really worth exploding a perfectly good pumpkin? That could have been turned into a delicious pie, man.
I also wonder why they decided to use two different versions of the Starfleet symbol. Is there another layer to the joke that I’m missing?
20 Sure You Do
Worf, one of the only Klingons to joining Starfleet Academy, was always presented as a kind of tough guy who acts before he thinks. He always wanted to show off his warrior’s strength, boasting of his exploits and desiring to end all things with bloody combat. That’s what he was supposed to be, conceptually, I suppose.
In reality, I don’t think I can remember Worf every being intimidating except for that one time he took out some Borg in the cold of space, which is admittedly pretty awesome. That aside, most of his run in The Next Generation involved him growling at people before making a complete fool of himself. I’m next to certain I’ve seen every member except for Wesley beat him up. Oh, I don’t even need to guess, here’s a supercut of Worf failing at everything he undertakes. I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed how much he sucks.
19 “Passed”
Star Trek did a heck of a lot with very little budget. They had those gross throbbing veins in the side of the aliens head in The Menagerie. Spock’s blue eye shadow was to die for. Heck, when they traveled through space, those stars passing by looked incredible. I can’t imagine how much of the special effects budget went into Shatner’s girdle.
So when they were blowing our minds with other stellar uses of a limited television budget, they had to cut corners in other areas. Here they went full Grinch and just strapped a single horn to the top of a dogs head. And hey, I’ve never been to the far reaches of space, so I can’t exactly comment on how accurate this is or isn’t, so maybe there is a sad, stupid creature out there that looks like this. Not everything you run into is going to be as cool as the Gorn or Balok.
18 We’re Living In The Future!
I always found the Replicators on Star Trek kind of a cheat. Due to their ability to turn energy into matter, and since energy was never in shortage due to antimatter and dark energy or whatever, there was never a short supply of anything. The Replicator is part of the reason that The Federation can live in a time of such prosperity; they live in a world where scarcity is no longer a thing. If everyone has the ability to have whatever they truly need at their fingertips, there is no more conflict for resources, or even trade deals that allow people to become rich for little work.
The 3D printer is definitely a step in the right direction if that’s the kind of future we are all envisioning. A device that can sit in your home and provide you with a basic structure of something you need. Sure, they take up way more materials than a Replicator, and sure, the blueprints for everything aren’t stored in their databanks, but it feels like it is within our grasp. Heck, they 3D printed a human heart, which is already pretty much science fiction become fact.
17 Even In The Future, Accents Are Funny
Do you want to know something weird? Did you know that they added Chekov in the second season as a way to make it more appealing to younger audiences and women? Yeah, I don’t see it either, and I always assumed he was shoehorned in the as a way to suggest that the Cold War would eventually end peacefully, with all humans becoming allies in the end. To me, that makes more sense than him being a girl magnet.
What other reason would they make an actor put on a ridiculous Russian accent? This isn’t to suggest that all Russian accents are silly, but rather that Walter Koenig, who played Chekov, never quite nailed an accurate Russian accent and so it always seemed like he was really sinking his teeth into all the “w”s. What may have been a poor casting choice at the time has spun into a lasting joke that persists even in modern iterations, with the late Anton Yelchin’s portrayal of Chekov struggling with voice commands through his thick accent.
16 Feline Ka-if-fee
Yes, I understand that if you don’t know what music the person is talking about, that image is complete gibberish. I’m here for you, here’s a link to the scene this is referencing. It’s a fairly classic Star Trek scene where one of Spock’s bizarre Vulcan rituals blows up in Kirk’s face and they end up fighting each other with disastrously impractical weapons. I know I’m making fun of it here, but honestly, it is a great scene. Shatner’s acting in this episode and scene is actually a kind of humble, approachable everyman for once, acknowledging that he’s doing something for his friend Spock. It’s fun seeing Kirk when he realizes he has bitten off more than he can chew.
What also makes this image work for me is that there are people across the globe that hear that particular music whenever they see any two combatants square off against each other. That’s how you know that your television show has been a hit, when people associate it when it really has no bearing on what they are looking at.
15 To Heck With Continuity
Star Trek Discovery has been pretty divisive so far, but what isn’t lately? Look at how much people hate each other over the election results or the stone cold fact that The Last Jedi is a good film. I think it comes down to the fact that we are in this weird period in civilization where we don’t want exact copies of things, but we don’t want them to be too different either. So when Discovery introduced a new makeup layout for Klingons, it ruffled people’s feathers.
I couldn’t tell you why, though. As the image illustrates, Klingons have already had a few changes, so why not just keep going with it. You shouldn’t limit yourself because of fan service, you should utilize all of the newest special effects at your disposal. I for one think the new Klingon design is superb, because it actually looks more like a being from another planet and not just a guy with papier maché on his forehead.
14 The Captain Is Compromised
Come to think of it, I can’t actually recall if I have ever seen Kirk put anything in the “Captain’s Log” or if it was just a series of voiceovers. I’m sure some super dedicated fan out there is itching to tell me just when and where we can see Kirk feverishly writing down his encounters with the Mirror Dimension in the log, but honestly, I don’t have time for that.
What would be even better than Kirk coming apart mentally and developing inner voices would be if he was genuinely saying these things out loud, but with no idea that he’s doing it. He’s just walking down the halls of the Enterprise, talking about how he isn’t sure how they will get out of this, and some yeoman just sees their trusted captain talking to himself like a nut. Heck, maybe it would lead to a mutiny! There can never be enough space mutinies.
13 My Tricorder Is Detecting That You Have No Taste
I’ll be the first to admit that the Star Trek universe is heavily flawed. In fact I’m kind of banking on those flaws for a lot of this article, so I’m kind of grateful for them. That being said, the flaws are kind of what give it the flavor it has, and despite those easily overlooked f;aws, it is a remarkable franchise. It broke down barriers of racism, it showed a society that was motivated by the betterment of fellow beings and not just the pursuit of wealth, and it showed us that even if you try to resolve things peacefully, sometimes you still get to use Photon Torpedoes.
So what isn’t to like? I think most people that say they don’t like Star Trek are just those dogmatic meatheads that think that showing any interest in something as dorky as science fiction will be an affront for the carefully constructed façade that is their own bravado.
12 Barking Up The Wrong Tree
I think we have all made a dingus out of ourselves at one time or another by trying to flirt with someone who played for a team that wasn’t interested in you. Heaven knows why we get so embarrassed, it isn’t even a full out rejection because we are ugly, we just aren’t what the person is in to. But embarrassed we get, and imagine how embarrassed Uhura will be when she finds out how Sulu rolls.
George Takei has been a very vocal proponent of the LGBTQ community for years, and is seen as something of a gay icon nowadays. I’m not so sure he was as open about it back when Star Trek was first on the air, since it was a different climate of tolerance, so having chemistry between him and Uhura seemed perfectly plausible at the time. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
11 Can You Hear Me Now?
Depending on who you ask, puns are either the highest or lowest form of comedy. Wherever you stand on them, you have to give the author if this one some credit, because it’s a two for one. I feel like I will diminish the comedy if I break down how the wordplay works here, but I have confidence that these articles only attract the most intelligent readers on the Internet, so I’m sure you got how funny it was.
What really tickles my funny bone, though, is that this scene is ridiculous OUTSIDE the premise of the pun and meme. Inside of the show, it doesn’t make a lick of sense why Data would have a phone built into his stomach, let alone a ROTARY phone. I’m not even going to research the context of the image, because I can tell you right now, it’s going to have something to do with the holodeck malfunctioning, which it does every three episodes.
10 Fascinating
The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise went to some wacky places in their five-year mission, and not all of them made sense. I recently watched an episode where they landed on a beautiful world where the events of Alice in Wonderland seemed to be playing out. The whole thing ended up being a sort of intergalactic amusement park, despite the fact that a few crewmembers were killed. The show can be a little silly, is what I’m trying to say.
Luckily for everyone on the Internet, that silliness results in images like this, where we see the impeccable Spock throwing caution to the wind and dressing up like a snapchat filter. It’s nice to see Spock let that bowl cut hair down once in a while, it reminds us that even the most rigid of people are still only human. Or half human, whatever. Just enjoy the picture and stop analyzing everything, will ya’?
9 Set A Course For Fashion
Here’s a fun little piece of trivia for you: when Gene Roddenberry was working on Star Trek: The Next Generation he hated the casting of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. His reasoning was that nobody would want to see a bald captain. There are even pictures out there of the early filming days when he forced Stewart to wear a wig. Go ahead and look it up. Luckily, they managed to convince Gene that in the future, people would be enlightened enough to not care about baldness as much as we do now in out superficial society.
I’m not exactly sure how I was going to transition that factoid into a funny comment about the crew wearing hats, but we are here now. If Gene was so hung up on Picard looking like a goof because of a bit of shine on the top of his head, why wouldn’t he nix a scene where everyone looks like they are about to play hacky sack?
8 Shoot For The Stars
The first time I saw a meme like this, it was actually about Batman. That’s a goal that seems a little more unattainable, since Batman is an inherited billionaire and Kirk is a self-made man that rose up through the ranks of Starfleet Academy, mostly by cheating at the Kobayashi Maru test. So yes, I suppose it is better both logistically and morally to strive to be Captain Kirk and not Batman.
By why stop there? This is the realm of fiction, you can strive to be literally anyone. Preferably someone who isn’t a womanizing yahoo that routinely puts the lives of his crew in mortal danger on a hunch. Janeway never pulled that nonsense, why not be her? Heck, why not try to be someone who really knows how to be the moral superior while cruising recklessly through space? Why not attempt to be The Doctor, who is also self-made and arguably might have the bigger ship.
7 That Just Might Work!
When it comes to the structure of using technobabble and Applied Phlebtonium in Star Trek, I think Futurama actually summarized it best:
Fry: Usually on the show, they came up with a complicated plan, then explained it with a simple analogy.
Leela: Hmmm… If we can re-route engine power through the primary weapons and configure them to Melllvar’s frequency, that should overload his electro-quantum structure.
Bender: Like putting too much air in a balloon!
Fry: Of course! It’s all so simple!
Since us, the audience with our primitive analog minds, couldn’t keep up with the technology of the future, all they had to do was string together a series of scientific sounding words and we would just nod along with our mouths agape. The most commonly used jargon was the reversing of the polarities, which could literally be used to do anything, from making your shields more durable to making yourself invisible to scans.
6 A Way Of Her Own
I’m not sure if this meme is trying to compliment or insult Janeway. On the one hand, she’s a commanding presence who manages to think her way out of most scenarios. On the other hand, she got her crew lost n the other side of the galaxy, and kept them that way for an extended period of time. Plus I think she got turned into a slug in an episode? I may be remembering that wrong.
Whatever the intended purpose of the image was, it’s pretty accurate in my mind. She always did things her own way, not in a smarmy, egotistical way like Kirk, not in a no-nonsense way like Picard, but with a delicate but intelligent touch that only she can pull off. Plus she always had stellar hair, which must be hard to pull off when your ship is perpetually running low on every conceivable resource.
