Can you boldly go farther?

Okay, let's see if you are ready for promotion to non-expendable.

1. Which of these species made the first (official) First Contact with humans?
   Vulcans. Officially, of course. The Borg were there, darn 'em, but they were trying to prevent First Contact. And the Ferengi showed up in 1947 (remember Roswell?), but that incident has been mercifully repressed.
2. You are at the helm. You look up and see something really weird on the giant viewscreen. Which of these do you not say?
   'Swirly thing alert!' 'Swirly thing alert!' is definitely a Red Dwarf signature line. However, when announcing unusual phenomena in Star Trek, you should always precede your description with the words 'some sort of'. It sounds more scientific.
3. Which of these species haven't tried to destroy Earth yet?
   The Klingons. Earth is probably beneath their notice. It could be argued that NASA have almost destroyed Earth, since their Voyager probe returned from a galactic cruise in the form of a murderous entity called V'Ger. NASA haven't been declared a species yet, however.
4. Which Star Trek captain was once forced to apologise to aliens using a chainsaw?
   Captain Archer. Archer probably did the most apologising, anyway. In this case, it was because his dog peed on a sacred tree. The apology required was elaborate, to say the least. We suspect Janeway never apologised for anything.
5. Which of these Star Trek aliens is blue?
   Shran the Andorian. Orion slave girls are green. (And hot.) Shran's a fetching shade of powder blue, and has antennae that move to show emotion. They are remote-controlled, no less.
6. What is the difference between a holodeck and a holosuite?
   A holodeck is found on a starship, a holosuite on a space station. That's all there is to it. They all malfunction, or what would be the point?
7. What was Terok Nor?
   A space station. It's the original Cardassian name for Deep Space Nine.
8. What do Nurse Chapel, Lwaxana Troi, and the Enterprise computer have in common?
   They were all played by the same person. Majel Barrett, the wife of Gene Roddenberry, played Nurse Chapel in TOS, Lwaxana Troi in the other series, and several versions of computer, which allowed her to have arguments with herself. Ms Barrett also played the First Officer in the original Star Trek pilot, but retrograde network executives wouldn't believe a mere woman could hold such a high position. We hope they are still alive, and know the name of the US Secretary of State.
9. As everybody knows, Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy are in San Francisco, because they're a lot of space hippies. Which of these would you not be likely to see there?
   Quark, tending bar. Quark tends bar on Deep Space Nine. Ruby does it in San Francisco, while fending off marriage proposals from Starfleet. Boothby tends the grounds at Starfleet Academy, while admirals do that thing they do.
10. It's your first day on the job, and you'd like to do something original to get the Captain's attention. Which of these faux pas hasn't been tried yet?
    Turning him into a Klingon targ. At least, it hasn't shown up in the logs yet. Captain Picard's met crew members who spilled water on him (Wesley, but we're still not sure how), and hot chocolate (Ensign Gomez' day went downhill from there, the Borg showed up), and Archer's dog got lost, although to be fair, he was an admiral then. You have to work hard to make a worse first impression than some of these crew members.

If you didn't get them all, don't be discouraged. We understand it took Lieutenant Barclay a rather long time to get promoted, mostly due to holodeck addiction. If you know any Trekkies, try these tidbits out on them. They deserve it.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

03.12.12 Front Page

Back Issue Page