Star Trek and Star Wars Jokes

Sometimes when you see a bandwagon it's too late to get on board. Some of us have been watching Star Trek forever, so we get the running inside jokes. Some people are glomming over to see what the fuss is about because our guys just had a hit movie or because Trek is continuing to morph into ever more of a cultural phenomenon. Well, the johnny-come-latelies of cinematic criticism and cultural anthropology have a lot of catching up to do.

I've been saying this for a while of course, but today something different happened -- I remembered something. I remembered some of the actual jokes put over on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. You know how it usually goes -- you remember how impressed you were by a joke, or how hard you laughed, but you just can't think of a joke when you need one. Well, today I was vacuuming the floor and a few of them just floated back to me. (I wonder how many I can still crank out six hours later.)

For one thing, tall, beautiful Jadzia Dax channelled the ladies from children's shows like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when she spoke to two little Ferengi in the manner said ladies reserve for little puppets on their shows. The directors really drove this home by making Dax appear even taller in relation to the Ferengi than she might normally.

Let's see, what else? Oh, the Ferengi have this habit of re-discovering human proverbs in telling ways. "The more things change, the more they stay the same," said Quark, in a beautiful context in the final episode. "It's not set in stone; and even if it was, so what?" says a dream vision of a deceased Ferengi Grand Negis. And then there's my favorite: As three Ferengi hurtle towards Earth's 20th century (itself an old Star Trek joke)one of them picks up a 20th century news clip featuring a black man who resembles the station's captain. When he points it out to the others one replies, "All humans look alike." Oh, it just cracks me up. Nb. I think it was in the 20th century that some wise-crackers liked to joke, "All blacks look alike." (That's for those of you who haven't visited the 20th century lately.)

Those were the ones I remembered. I wish I had more, because Star Trek is alive with this kind of humor that turns on itself and on us. Oh, wait. Another example is coming to me now.

Here it is: Vic Fontaine is a holoprogrammed character on DS9 that has a running club show in a 20th century setting, singing in the style of Frank Sinatra. It's very funny to see an alien(Odo)snapping his fingers to the music and being hip. Because it makes the audience reflect on what it means to be hip -- it means the opposite of being an alien. When we all sat around in a circle digging groovy music and nodding to the beat, we were saying that the music resounded with us -- that it was part of us or we were part of it or both. We grooved to identify with a group. It was the opposite of being an alien. So the alien hipster thing was very funny. The scene also recalled a joke from an old radio show I heard once:

ALIEN: Be-bop? What's that? Is that some kind of music?
TEEN GIRL: Music?!?! It's out of this world !!
ALIEN: Well, that's where I've been and I haven't heard any.

Oh, man, Star Trek is a riot. Star Wars episode II isn't too far behind in the joke department, by the way. I'm amazed that critics didn't have more to say about the jokes in it. My cousin and I, who complete one another's thoughts, totally keyed into that material. I found out that my cousin thought the same exact things when I told my impressions to my Aunt and she said that Charlie had said all of the same things already. This wouldn't impress me so much except that she only heard these things from the two of us and not from any journalists or critics. In fact, I never heard it from any journalists or critics either and it was right there under their noses.

To wit (since I've already opened that can of alien larvae,) Star Wars Episode II gives witty answers to some of 1977's Star Wars'(Episode VI, A New Hope's)urgent questions, like, why do all the vespin guards resemble one another and Boba Fett? (Probably a matter of uniform sized costumes and interchangeable actors, but the clone thing works, too.) I wish I could remember some other questions and answers right now, but I do remember this; Send in the clones. It sounds like "Send in the Clowns," that old song that fit that love scene between the heroes so perfectly. Ah, yes, they were dying and finally admitting their love. Send in the clowns. "No, wait," thought the audience, "Send in the clones!" And they did, right on cue.