“‘Galaxy Quest’ is, no doubt, the greatest ‘Star Trek’ film.”
So mentioned Wil Wheaton within the 2019 “Galaxy Quest” documentary “By no means Give up”, and he ought to know a factor or two in regards to the topic, having spent a few years boldly moving into “The Subsequent Technology”, “Picard”, and “Prodigy“.
Whereas we respectfully disagree with Mr. Wheaton — “The Wrath of Khan” is clearly number one — the 1999 “Trek” spoof isn’t too far behind. It’s that rare parody that totally understands what makes its subject matter tick, without ever making fun of the source material or — crucially — its fans.
Dean Parisot’s movie manages to cram in all of the necessary story beats, while also pointing a finger at some familiar “Trek” tropes — one of which has apparently inspired the name of a weapon in “300th Night”, the penultimate episode of “Starfleet Academy”‘s first season.
The Omega Fan
In “Galaxy Quest”, the so-called Omega 13 device was installed on the NSEA Protector. Unfortunately, none of the regular crew had any idea what it was for.
In the original TV-show-within-a-movie “Galaxy Quest”, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart ordered the Omega 13’s activation, only for an end-of-season cliffhanger — and the show’s subsequent cancellation — to leave fans trapped in perpetual limbo, destined to spend eternity wondering about its actual purpose.
But when Jason Nesmith (the actor who plays Taggart, himself played by Tim Allen) activated the device “for real” in the fully-functioning Protector built by the Thermians (the film is so meta), it turned out to be a “temporal matter re-arranger”. TL;DR version? It gave users the ability to travel a few seconds back in time.
A version of the unstable Omega particle already existed in “Star Trek”, and Captain Janeway’s crew had a mission to neutralize the highly dangerous substance in “Voyager” season 4 episode “The Omega Directive” (which debuted before “Galaxy Quest”).
But it surely can’t be a coincidence that the top-secret variant “Starfleet Academy” Big Bad Nus Braka stole from Starbase J19 Alpha in “Come, Let’s Away” is called Omega 47, just a stone’s throw away (34, to be precise) from Omega 13.
In fact, while this Omega’s functionality is very different from the “Galaxy Quest” iteration — it shreds subspace, rendering warp travel impossible within its blast radius — it feels like the “Trek” writers’ room is taking the opportunity to unleash a great big NSEA Protector in-joke on an unsuspecting 32nd century.
It’s hard to imagine the guardians of the James Bond franchise doing similar with the sharks with laser beams attached to their heads from “Austin Powers”…
Agent 47
As for the 47, that’s relevant too.
As well as being — like 13 — a prime number, 47 has a long history in “Star Trek”. In fact, it’s arguably the final frontier’s answer to 1138 in “Star Wars”, A113 in Pixar, or 42 in “The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy”.
“Trek”‘s numerical obsession was initiated by “The Subsequent Technology” author Joe Menosky, who began writing the quantity into scripts as a tribute to his time at Pomona School in California.
Forty-seven has particular significance there due to a jokey scholar venture from the ’60s, which tried to show that the quantity seems in nature extra typically than some other. It has no foundation in scientific truth, however the thought caught on to the extent that the academic institution now has an annual celebration on April 7 (4/7).
It additionally impressed Menosky to make sure that 47 grew to become ubiquitous within the idealized way forward for the Federation. The quantity has subsequently made dozens of cameos throughout “TNG”, “Deep Area 9”, “Voyager”, “Enterprise”, “Discovery”, and now “Starfleet Academy”.
And whereas I am no conspiracy theorist, including 47 and 13 collectively provides us 60, and this yr is Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary. Coincidence? Nearly definitely sure, however enjoyable nonetheless.
So, as Nus Braka and his Venari Ral fleet put together to deploy his new Omega 47 toy to chop the Federation off from the remainder of the universe, consolation your self with the data that its identify seems to have been impressed by “Starfleet Academy”‘s writers having a little bit of fun.
The finale episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” season one debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, March 13.
