Best ‘Star Trek’ Parodies, Ranked
Despite it being created by a handful of maniacs back when Bubble Wrap was a hot new commodity, the Star Trek franchise is somehow still going strong. This week, we’re getting the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard, which reunites the Next Generation crew for one more adventure that presumably doesn’t include staying up past 5 p.m. or driving at night.
But as good as Star Trek has been to its fans, it’s been even better to comedy writers. There have been countless Trek parodies over the years — from the time the Frasier gang piloted the USS Voyager…
…to the myriad sketches on shows like Saturday Night Live and In Living Color.
So join us on our five year several-hundred-word mission as we rank some of the most notable movie and TV Trek spoofs...
‘Quark’
Coincidentally sharing its name with Deep Space Nine’s resident bartender/holo-pornographer, 1977’s Quark was a sci-fi sitcom starring Richard Benjamin as the commander of a “United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser” — so basically, a space garbage truck. Created by late Get Smart co-creator Buck Henry, Quark lasted for just eight episodes. Yeah, it’s not great and is wildly dated today, but Quark is still worth watching as a pop-culture curiosity.
‘Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek’
Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek randomly dropped Ömer, the popular Turkish “hobo” character, into Captain Kirk’s Enterprise, thanks to some magic gizmo — and also a ton of stolen footage and unauthorized music cues. An admirably scrappy early Trek comedy that may actually be the first Star Trek feature film, pre-dating Star Trek: The Motion Picture by six years.
‘Black Mirror’s ‘USS Callister’
The original Star Trek vibe was faithfully recreated for the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister,” in which a Trek-like video game becomes an existential hell for the simulated characters who are stuck there for all eternity. Best of all, Jesse Plemons convincingly plays a menacing super-creep who also has the ability to bust out a killer William Shatner impression.
‘The Orville’
Some might argue that The Orville is less of a parody and more of a personal Star Trek: The Next Generation fantasy camp for Seth MacFarlane that happens to be filmed and distributed to the public. But while it’s obviously more of a loving tribute than a cutting satire, we still get some comedic gems, such as the gelatinous alien blob voiced by Norm Macdonald.
‘Futurama’
Futurama’s fourth season episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before” reunited the original Star Trek cast (plus Welshy, of course) for a loving homage that isn’t afraid to poke fun at the show’s familiar conventions and its (often overly intense) fandom. They should just replace Star Trek V with this episode on every Star Trek DVD box set.
‘Galaxy Quest’
Sure, it’s basically just Three Amigos in Space, but Galaxy Quest is still a near-perfect comedy and arguably the best-ever Star Trek spoof, one that not only sends up the tropes of Trek movies and shows, but also the decades of stories of behind-the-scenes turmoil and celebrity pettiness.
You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).
