Running Gag / SF Debris

Main Page | Tropes A to F | Tropes G to L | Tropes M to R | Tropes S to Z | YMMV | SFDebris's Character Interpretations | Running Gags | Shout Outs

---

• At the end of all Voyager reviews, we get a stinger featuring the final scene of "The Thaw":
  Evil Clown: I'm afraid!
  Janeway: I knooooow.
• At the end of every Star Trek review, he hands out various awards. Some of these "Prizes" include:
  • "Janeway Pie" for when Voyager's autodestruct is used. (A reference to her command code, "Janeway Pi-1-1-0".)
    "No one blows us up except me! Understood?!"
    • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ended up getting a "Kirk Pie" for the use of Enterprise's autodestruct.
    • "Prime Factors" (VOY) got an honorary prize when Janeway baked a pecan pie.
  • "Burn Baby Burn" for when a shuttlecraft is lost. In other words, on a weekly basis.
    • Lampshaded in "Barge of the Dead" when Torres casually wrecks one to save herself time, like Mario sacrificing Yoshi into a pit for a sake of a double-jump. This earned her a trip to the Principal's Office:
      Janeway: Those things are irreplaceable, you know.. ..HAAAAHAHAHAHAHA! Go give it a Viking funeral and then replicate me another one— with leather seats and a cigarette holder this time.
  • "Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh?" for whenever they refer to something in Earth's history as "Ancient," regardless of what time period it took place in.
  • "Damn Dirty Mutant" for when a crewman is subject to LEGO Genetics.
  • "I Am Legion" for when two or more characters are trapped in one body.
  • "20 Dollar Bill" for ethnic cleansing IN SPACE!.
  • "Brahma of the Week" goes to creators of new life.
  • "Like Unto An Amoeba" goes to Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
  • "Smack the Hell Up," awarded whenever an annoying character (not necessarily The Scrappy) gets what's coming to them.
  • "Unsafe at Any Speed" (a nod to Ralph Nader's expose on shoddy American automobiles) for stupidly-designed spacecraft.
  • "You CAN Go Home Again", whenever we encounter a place that looks like Earth, either by deliberate design or coincidence.
  • "Cosmic Faceplant" for episodes in which a once-threatening alien species officially becomes a joke.
  • "Lazarus of the Week" for when a crewman, well, pulls a Lazarus.
    • Tom Paris gets a "Jesus of the Week" for actually managing to raise himself from the dead. Note that this happened without Alien intervention, advanced technology, or Time Travel being involved. He was dead one minute, then alive the next all by his own doing (okay, there was genetic mutation involved, but since it was simply his body's own biology that resurrected him it still counts), hence this exception.
    • Ilia got a "Damn Dirty Mutant Lazarus of the Week" in Star Trek: The Motion Picture for dying, being brought back as a bastardization of science, and then dying again (maybe).
    • Lazarus from "The Alternative Factor" gets it for being named Lazarus.
  • And, of course, "Stupid Neelix Moment" (in pretty much every review involving Voyager's resident The Scrappy). Also that Neelix is a shithead. invoked
    • As a companion gag, he gives a plus one bonus to his "Final Score" for any Voyager episode not featuring Neelix in the episode at all.
    Caption: No Neelix. Life is good.
    • Neelix didn't even get a contractual line of dialogue in "Shattered". It still netted a Stupid Neelix Moment, though, as the episode opens with Chakotay squirreling away booze to hide it from the lousey stalag upstairs.
    • He avoided giving "The Void" a Stupid Neelix Moment, although at the end of his video, Chuck inserted a clip of Neelix, and while not a Stupid Neelix Moment, it did cause Chuck to Hulk out.
    • "Demon" lacked a SNM as well. Apparently the crew was too busy being assholes themselves, most notably Tuvok who ignored a hallway full of cello-carrying evacuees just to confiscate... Neelix's blankie. Non-essential items, you know.
    • In a surprise twist (or a sign of the Apocalypse), he actually gave "The Disease" (where Harry Kim catches an alien STD) a bonus point for featuring a Neelix moment which advanced the plot in a helpful, non-annoying manner. To paraphrase Chuck, "it was as if Harry had used up the supply of shame in this episode." The same outcome occurred in "The Omega Directive", except that Harry seemed to draw on Neelix's petulance rather than shame.
    • In "Tsunkatse" he does not award a Stupid Neelix Moment despite the fact that Neelix appeared in the episode, because he had been spending his time earlier that week watching Battlefield Earth and thus couldn't find it in him.
  • "Once Upon a Time" dodged the bullet on account of a few meager frames of footage: namely, Neelix's bewildered look at the Doctor being "pleased" to see him.
    "No one is ever happy to see me. Even I know that."
  • Since none of the other Trek shows feature a regular character as consistently annoying as Neelix, he resorts to "Annoying Character", for the person who's the most annoying in the episode.
  • Amazingly, Wesley Crusher, who is an actual in-universe Creator's Pet, has only got this award four times so far. On top of that, Wesley's every single scene in "Ménage à Troi" is welcomed as distraction from stupid plot. Much like "The Disease", the usually annoying character suddenly being competent is only redeeming part of episode.
    • Captain Okona has received this award in two TNG episodes and one DS9 episode, despite only appearing in one of them ("The Outrageous Okona", the other ones being "The Game" and "The Changing Face of Evil"). That's what they get for keeping Okona in-canon.
• '...because Chakotay has always been into (sound of dice rolling) [Insert Interest here]' Examples include 'Paleontology!', 'a fervent... Anthropologist!' and 'a keen interest in... Boxing!'
  • Which ends inevitably, and gorgeously, with "(roll roll roll) ...Seven of Nine!"
  • Harry got his own variant in "Bride of Chaotica!" when he voiced annoyance at the lack of Captain Proton slave girls as advertised. Because he's always been into... (roll roll roll) 'Heterosexuality!'.
• The "Off Button Hypospray" used when Instant Sedation is called for (or even uncalled for), and "the Medical Phaser" for when the OBH isn't sufficient or fatal enough for some hapless soul.
• Conversely, often notes that Guns Are Worthless, at least when used against the main cast, who often take direct hits that would grievously injure, if not outright kill, Red Shirts hit with the same weapons.
• In his Season One TNG reviews, he jokes that Picard keeps firing his chief engineers at the end of the episode since we rarely saw the same one twice until they settled on Geordi.
• Alluding to Seven and Chakotay's Last-Minute Hookup in "Endgame" by noting sarcastically that she clearly wants to hump his brains out some day.
• Variations on, "And once again our "survival expert" nearly gets everyone killed!" or "once again showing why Janeway will one day make him her ambassador" when Neelix does something incredibly undiplomatic and/or rude.
• The TOS movies frequently re-use stock clips from the previous film as 'surveillance' footage. Chuck prefers to think Starfleet are firing up their brand-new Trek Blu-Rays.
• Star Wars allusions in First Contact. Hey, The Force makes as much sense as Picard's sudden Borg telepathy.
  "I sense something. As if a bit part cried out in terror and was suddenly silenced.''
• "Accidentally" calling the Remans "Orcs" before catching himself. Undoubtedly, Chuck's mind was on another movie he'd rather be watching, instead of Star Trek: Nemesis.
• Chuck's overview of the plot of Mass Effect 2 is based mostly around whichever option lets the most people die all around Shepard. His running gag for this is saying, "[insert name]... is... now... DEAD."
  • My God... even Shepard's pet fish aren't safe!
• FemShep as a frequent target of his Male Gaze. "Those teats, they have weight!"
• Confabs between Captain Sisko and his franchise counterparts. Picard gives technobabble solutions, Kirk suggests giving a Kirk Summation followed by hitting someone, Janeway is her typical dastardly self, and Archer is gibbering in a corner.
  • Inverted in "In a Mirror, Darkly": Archer's in charge, with Kirk, Picard, and Sisko all sporting Beards of Evil. In this universe, Janeway (also bearded) is a harmless Granola Girl.
  • Jake Sisko and Chris Pine's Kirk get in on one of these in the review of "The Visitor". Pine's Kirk gets swiftly beaten up by Shatner's Kirk.
• He's stated that he loves his Don't fuck with the Sisko jokes
  • He jokes that the Borg invasion in First Contact occured while Sisko was in the badlands because the Borg planned it that way to avoid him
  • The Defiant is known as "USS Ben Sisko's Motherfucking Pimp Hand"
• The Saratoga is starfleet's bitch
  • In "Emissary", the immovable object meets the unstoppable force, when Sisko is an officer on the Satatoga against the Borg.
• In his X-Files reviews, referencing stereotypes about the US state an episode is set in—such as Idaho and potatoes ("Deep Throat") or Wisconsin and cheese ("Fallen Angel").
  • Insisting, either as himself or as Mulder, that aliens moved his belly button.
• Repeatedly confusing Captain Jack Harkness with "Captain Jack Sparrow."
• On Voyager, no matter what the medical problem, no-one leaves Sickbay without a "Neck-Thingy".
• Seems to be developing one with leaving milk out for fairies.
• Counselor Troi's skill set consisting entirely of crashing the ship into things. This even got an Actor Allusion in his Gargoyles review.
• Rimmer's blue jumpsuit (in the Red Dwarf movie) makes him look eerily like Scott Bakula, AKA Captain Archer of the NX-01. Alas, this only increases Chuck's glee at his misfortune.
• Getting flustered at the Ho Yay between Paris and Kim.
  "Because, dammit, there's nothing gay about this!"
  • He tries to carry this one over to the Doctor Who reviews and all the Doctor/Master Ho Yay but eventually loses it and gives up
    "Okay, I give up, it's gay, it's so gay!"
• Any mention of "The Last Outpost" will likely be accompanied by Chuck describing "Noble Riker standing tall and proud" in a bombastic voice
• Any time someone in the future shows ignorance of the events of Enterprise, the typical excuse is "Jonathan Archer is dead to us."
  Picard: *ptooey!* His name tastes heinous!
• "No-Pants Thursday." Chuck observes it, and seems to be trying to make it an officially observed holiday.
• He has started calling Doctor Phlox (Star Trek: Enterprise) the name of another awful doctor- Doctor Zoidberg!
• "Almost sexual, isn't it, Smithers?"
• Many jokes involve alternate names for things, combining personal opinion, behind-the-scenes facts, Actor Allusion, and more.
  • Captain Archer is frequently called "Duchess," to show how insane he is.
  • Pulaski is known as The Gorgon due to his hatred for her personality.
  • Klingon "Bird Of Prey" warships (specifically the one in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home) the name "Kia of Prey," because compared to the Enterprise, they look about as primitive as a Kia (a type of car).
  • Janeway's sanity inspired the nickname "Captain Crunch."
  • He couldn't remember the name of the friendly Peacekeeper female from one episode, so he calls her by the very apt title of the episode she appeared first in: "PK Tech Girl." (Peace Keeper Technician)
  • He nicknamed one of the Andorians from "The Andorian Incident" "Andorian Colin Mochrie" after his strong resemblance.
  • He named the female changeling from his Deep Space Nine reviews "Sanders" simply because, as he was committing ten weeks in a row to DS9's final arc, and she was a prominent figure in that arc, it was much faster for him to say over and over. And because her illness gave her the complexion of KFC fried chicken.
• Janeway apparently really likes Mexican Food, claiming in one instance that "She needs to kill off Maquis more often" because of the nachos they serve at their funerals, and in the review of "Ashes to Ashes", she claims that the only reason that she attended the funeral of (a different) deceased crewman was because they served tacos.
• "Poor, dumb Harry." Usually dropped on Harry Kim, but was also invoked with Harry Sullivan on one occasion.
  • One of Trek's classic stereotypes, an angry Scotsman, is caught jamming his fists into the wires of the Enterprise-D, giving himself a lethal shock. "Poor, dumb Harry Beaton." ("Sub Rosa")
  • Sometimes, he uses the basics of it for other characters, like John Crichton or Bernie Wiseman.
  • Harold The Lesser has at least once been referred to as "poor, dumb Harold."
• "Bunny-cat is a dick."
• It's not a joke unique to Chuck, but he uses the following enough for it to be a personal trope of his: following up a sentence with some structural ambiguity with, "... the (x), I mean, not the (y)."
  "The shuttle comes back with Harry Kim on board looking badly dehydrated. Harry, that is, not the shuttle. "
• When something horrible is going to happen to the crew of Voyager or the NX-01, it's "too good for them, I say!" This is more infrequent now, perhaps for the same reasoning he doesn't preface Enterprise or Voyager episodes with the old "Welcome to the idiocy" line: namely, it made it seem like he was just complaining about those shows instead of trying to provide a balanced review.
• "Romulan marijuana" is the drug of choice in the Star Trek universe, apparently, whether Picard is tripping on it or Janeway shooting down an enemy ship to protect her stash.
• Torres will always and forever be the Chief Engineer "who can't identify sh!t, even with a tricorder".
• An increasingly common one is an alternative to Good Angel, Bad Angel: Shoulder Spider, who advises those on whose shoulder he sits to eat other people... and occasionally all of creation. First showed up in "Year of Hell", for Janeway, again in a far more sophisticated fashion in "Remember Me", and most recently in "Scientific Method", again appearing to Janeway.
• In his Stargate SG-1 reviews, the very first time Lord Yu came up Chuck immediately seized on the Who's on First? joke that even the show itself eventually decided had overstayed its welcome, and ran it right into the ground. We'll see if he keeps using it.
• Tarantulas seem to come up a lot — whether it's the one on Janeway's shoulder, Beverly's "Dr. Arachnoschmidt" or the episode "Twisted" compared to two tarantulas fucking — to the point where we may assume spiders are Chuck's primal fear.
• When people get into a fist-fight, he sings "So they fight, and they fight, and they fight, and they fight..."
• Torres has three episode options: "fix something", "pissed off", or "screw somebody".
  • "Barge of the Dead" doesn't count, because it was conceived as a Worf story.
• Whenever somebody dresses up in hideously silly looking ceremonial/formal/military garb: "Hey, respect the uniform, if not the man!"
• "Because...quantum."
• His openings for Full Moon are usually some variation of how this is a lighthearted tale/children's cartoon about a terminally ill orphan girl and her friends, a pair of death spirits, with the occasional mention of her emotionally abusive grandmother.
• Chuck has on numerous occasions commented how stupid the concept of a Moon being an Egg is, in reference to a Doctor Who Episode which did that very thing.
• Whenever Paul Winfield appears, Chuck usually precedes his name with "The late, great".
• Starfleet doctors know where the heart is. It's in the leg.
• Anything Varrick does in The Legend of Korra has Chuck explain that Varrick is doing so "because Varrick is awesome."
• During his review of Knights of the Old Republic he had the PC kill a shark to reach one of the star maps. Right after that he found out that the shark was apparently sacred to the inhabitants of that planet. All of the video game reviews after that have some mention of this incident.
• Due to its status as a Pleasure Planet, Risa is often the source of some less than savory things in his Star Trek reviews, particularly STDs.
• Many a reference is made to Chuck's background as a teacher, with just as many hints that he was really bad at it.
• In his reviews of the Star Trek TOS Films (specifically The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country) due to the ridiculously dated outfit the security officers wear, he calls at least one of them "Thrust Barcode". He built a story around him as a pulp space-type hero, including being a master of Martian Judo, having a trusty sidekick, and flying into enemy space with nothing but a moon laser and rocket pack.
• "...And I'll thrash you from top to bottom-ous."
• He jokes in several TNG season one episodes that there are more of them than possible. According to Chuck, it's like the universe is retroactively creating season one TNG episodes just to make him have to review them. For the record, there are twenty-six; he has reviewed nineteen of them as of this writing.

---