“‘Galaxy Quest’ is, without a doubt, the best ‘Star Trek’ movie.”
So said Wil Wheaton in the 2019 “Galaxy Quest” documentary “Never Surrender”, and he should know a thing or two about the subject, having spent many years boldly going in “The Next Generation”, “Picard”, and “Prodigy“.
While 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 Guide to the Galaxy”.
“Trek”‘s numerical obsession was initiated by “The Next Generation” writer Joe Menosky, who started writing the number into scripts as a tribute to his time at Pomona College in California.
Forty-seven has special significance there thanks to a jokey student project from the ’60s, which attempted to prove that the number appears in nature more often than any other. It has no basis in scientific fact, but the idea caught on to the extent that the educational establishment now has an annual celebration on April 7 (4/7).
It also inspired Menosky to ensure that 47 became ubiquitous in the idealized future of the Federation. The number has subsequently made dozens of cameos across “TNG”, “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager”, “Enterprise”, “Discovery”, and now “Starfleet Academy”.
And while I’m no conspiracy theorist, adding 47 and 13 together gives us 60, and this year is Star Trek’s 60th anniversary. Coincidence? Almost certainly yes, but fun nonetheless.
So, as Nus Braka and his Venari Ral fleet prepare to deploy his new Omega 47 toy to cut the Federation off from the rest of the universe, comfort yourself with the knowledge that its name appears to have been inspired by “Starfleet Academy”‘s writers having a bit of a laugh.
The finale episode of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” season one debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, March 13.
