Webcomic / Planet of Hats

Planet of Hats is a webcomic by David Morgan-Mar (author of Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids) that recaps Star Trek: The Original Series in screening order. Unlike his other comics, these are drawn by hand. After TOS was finished, Morgan-Mar went on to do every episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and concluded the comic with the six films featuring the original cast, as well as Kirk's point of view during Star Trek: Generations. Morgan-Mar started recapping Star Trek: The Next Generation in 2020.

Named after the trope Planet of Hats, itself named for the tendency of several Star Trek: The Original Series episodes to display this trope, most clearly seen in the episode "A Piece of the Action". Inspired by Shaenon Garrity's Monster of the Week: The Complete Cartoon X-Files, which is likewise a 12-panel Abridged Series of a popular SF series, named after a trope.

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This webcomic provides the following tropes:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Invoked in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"— Kirk says, "There's someone lurching around back there," referring to Ruk the android, played by Ted Cassidy, who played Lurch in The Addams Family. Cassidy also voiced the Gorn in "Arena", who is introduced with a "Lurch!" sound effect.
  • And invoked again in "The Search for Spock Part One". Kruge, played by Christopher Lloyd, says "Great Scott!" when the Grissom exploded, and when he takes David Marcus hostage, Marcus asks "Is this a hold-up?" and he replies "It's a science experiment"; both quotes from Doc Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy.
  • Instead of quoting from Shakespeare as General Chang (played by Christopher Plummer) does in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the Planet of Hats version of Chang quotes from The Sound of Music.
• Angels Pose: In the recap for the Animated Series episode "Once Upon a Planet".
• Anvilicious: Invoked: "Let That Be Your Last Battlfield" ends with Kirk literally dropping an anvil as he delivers the Aesop.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: From "The Menagerie, Part 2":
  Spock has pled guilty to mutiny, sabotage, and contacting planet Talos IV, the only death penalty offense in the Federation.
  • "The Squire of Gothos":
  Trelane: You are guilty of treason, conspiracy, and spoiling my party. You will hang by the neck until dead!
• Art Evolution: Invoked, the author's stated goal is to improve his drawing skills.
• Art Shift: "Plato's Stepchildren" is done in crayon, as a Take That! at the episode's poor writing.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In the episode "The Changeling", Uhura's mind is wiped, and Nurse Chapel retrains her in English with Dick and Jane books. Uhura says, "Je, mimi kupata nje ya hii kuku samadi outfit?", which is Swahili for "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?"
  • In the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the whalers in the Sea of Alaska get the following dialogue:
  Whaler 1: Missä helvetissä me olemme? Tämä ei näytä Itämereltä.
  Whaler 2: Sanoinhan, että meidän olisi pitänyt kääntyä Alpukerkin kohdalla vasempaan!

  This is Finnish, and translates to: "Where the hell are we? This doesn't look like the Baltic Sea." "I told you we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque!"

• Breaking the Fourth Wall: "The Menagerie, Part 1" and "Part 2":
  Spock: Jim, don't stop me. For dramatic reasons, I can't explain until the next episode.
  Caption: TO BE CONTINUED!...
  Kirk: Okay, it's the next episode. Explain.
  Spock: We still have the rest of the pilot episode to watch.
  • Happens again in The Final Frontier, Part 1 - although, since no names are mentioned, one could make the case that it's not Spock breaking the fourth wall to complain about the horrible script and lack of directorial ability, but Leonard Nimoy himself breaking character to complain about the horrible script and lack of directorial ability. No need to ask Who Writes This Crap?! -he knows.
• Call-Forward: "The Trouble with Tribbles" includes the time travellers from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribbleations". O'Brien gets a line of dialogue and Odo, Sisko, Dax, Bashir, and Worf can be seen in the background.
• Cardboard Prison: Van Gelder escapes from the prison planet of Tantalus V by hiding in a box which is beamed up to the Enterprise, in "Dagger of the Mind". Note that this pretty much happened in the episode proper.
• Celebrity Paradox: Kirk is inspired to make his cannon "from an old 21st century episode of MythBusters." In reality, not only were the Mythbusters specifically testing Kirk's cannon from the original episode, they actually busted it, at least as portrayed.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: "The Apple" plays up the resemblance of the Vaalian natives of Gamma Trianguli 6 to Oompa Loompas, by having them speak only in Oompa Loompa verse based on the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Every panel in the strip has a line from one of the songs from the film.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Spock mentions "a young ensign named Chekov in our future" when examining the silicon nodule early in "The Devil in the Dark", punning on the obvious Chekhov's Gun in the original episode, in which the nodules turn out to play a major role in the plot later.
  • A similar pun is made in "I, Mudd" - when Mudd reveals an android that later becomes plot-important, Ensign Chekov notices something happening to his gun.
• Clothing Damage: Kirk, repeatedly: "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Shore Leave".
• *Cough* Snark *Cough*: In "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", Kirk tells McCoy he can't marry the high priestess of a primitive culture that worships a computer hidden in an obelisk. Bones replies "<koff> The Paradise Syndrome <koff>."
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Limited Palette variant: the only color is the Starfleet uniforms and civilian clothing. And occasionally blood.
  • Inverted with "Catspaw", where there's lots of black shading, as a nod to the episode's status as a "Halloween" show.
• Deus ex Machina: Lampshaded by name in "Charlie X".
• Department of Redundancy Department: The "Dagger of the Mind" strip has: "Inevitably, the inevitable happens."
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: Kirk asks Saavik this in "The Search for Spock Part Two", failing to notice she's actually been Other Darrined.
• Dutch Angle: Parodying the original use in "Wink of an Eye".
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: "(Despite hundreds of deaths.)" "The Ultimate Computer".
• Evil Is Hammy: Lampshaded heavily in "The Enemy Within".
• Evil Lawyer Joke: "The Menagerie, Part 1":
  Commodore Mendez: Damn. You'd make a good lawyer, Mr Spock.
  Spock: Insults do not faze me, Commodore.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: "The Conscience of the King" is retold entirely in Shakespearean rhyme.
• Frequently-Broken Unbreakable Vow: Kirk and various Starfleet orders.
  • Not to enter the Romulan Neutral Zone in "Balance of Terror".
  • Lampshaded in "Tomorrow is Yesterday": when Spock warns about causing time paradoxes, Kirk responds, "How many rules do I need to break before you realize it always turns out all right?"
• Future Society, Present Values: Invoked and Lampshaded in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".
  Major Nelson: Female crew?
  Kirk: Oh yes. We're very socially progressive in the 23rd century.
  Major Nelson: What do they do?
  Kirk: Make coffee, hand me reports to sign. One is even a nurse!
• Gasp!: Kirk in "Court Martial" when damning evidence against him is revealed.
• Genre Savvy: Spock points out the following in "The Galileo Seven":
  Spock: Latimer, Gaetano, stand guard outside while Mr Scott repairs the shuttle.
  Latimer: Guard against what?
  Spock: The humanoid aliens who almost certainly inhabit this planet. Have you not taken basic space biology?
• Girl of the Week: Several. Specifically called out by Kirk in "The Squire of Gothos": "Get your hands off my latest Yeoman of the week!"
• Godwin's Law of Time Travel:
  • Paraphrased by Spock in "The City on the Edge of Forever" as "the First Law of Time Travel - Time travel: ergo Hitler".
  • The punchline of "Yesteryear", in a Call-Back to "The City on the Edge of Forever", has Spock return from saving his past self to be greeted by McCoy in a Nazi uniform.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Kirk and Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
  • Kirk and Finnegan in "Shore Leave".
• Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: The entirety of "The Conscience of the King".
• Greek Chorus: Chekov and Sulu narrate the story of "Amok Time" as a Greek chorus.
• Hurricane of Puns: "Who Mourns for Adonais?" has a pun about hands for every panel.
• Idiot Plot: Invoked with everyone ignoring or overlooking obvious ways to help Sulu not freeze to death in "The Enemy Within".
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: How Spock can recognise when someone's imitating Kirk, because only the real Kirk would rip his shirt in a fight.
• Inferred Holocaust: Invoked when "Operation--Annihilate!" ends with the caption "And within five years everyone on Deneva develops melanoma..."
• Insistent Terminology: Bones would like everyone to remember he is a PLAGUE doctor, who deals with PLAGUE.
• Is This Thing Still On?: The Metrons, in "Arena", after setting up the Involuntary Battle to the Death between Kirk and the Gorn.
• J'accuse!: Spock in Space Seed.
  • Used as an Unsound Effect when Kirk accuses Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor".
• Kirk's Rock: Seen as a background in "Shore Leave".
  • Featured prominently as a background in "Arena", echoing its role in the original episode.
  • And in "The Alternative Factor".
  • Arguably subtly lampshaded in "Friday's Child", as Kirk suggests making a primitive cannon like he did in "Arena", saying "the geology seems right".
• Lampshade Hanging: "The Man Trap"
  McCoy: I don't know how Darnell died.
  Kirk: How can you not know?! This is the 23rd century! We're advanced & socially progressive! The crew includes a black woman, an Asian guy, and an honest to goodness alien who barely even looks human!
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Played with in "Dagger of the Mind", as Kirk forgets repeatedly that he asked Helen to test the neural neutraliser on him to see if it wipes his memory.
• Ludicrous Precision: Played for laughs in "The Lorelei Signal", where the 27.346-year cycle of ships disappearing in one region of space is exact enough that Spock starts counting down to the next disappearance.
• Meaningful Name: "Dagger of the Mind" lampshades Lethe, the woman who has forgotten everything about her past, and Helen Noël, who Kirk met at a Christmas party.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "The Squire of Gothos":
  Trelane: I shall abduct some of the more attractive members of your crew. And Mr Spock.
• No OSHA Compliance: "The Naked Time" is pretty much a catalogue of OSHA violations during the original TV episode.
• Obviously Evil: "The Man Trap"
  McCoy: I know how Darnell died. Something sucked all the salt out of him.
  Kirk: No salt? I guess he can't be cured.
  Sulu: Hi, Green. Do you want something?
  Green: Saaaaalt...
• Only Sane Man: Spock often points out logical flaws or inconsistencies in the original episodes. No one ever pays attention to him.
• Pass the Popcorn: The Metrons in "Arena", after setting up the Involuntary Battle to the Death between Kirk and the Gorn.
• Pimp Duds: Harry Mudd, with appropriate implications, in "Mudd's Women".
• The Plague: An adult-killing one in "Miri" gets McCoy excited.
• Planet of Hats: The Trope Namer episode "A Piece of the Action".
• Professor Guinea Pig: McCoy is incredibly keen to inject himself with an experimental plague cure, in "Miri".
• Rapid-Fire Interrupting: Happens to Spock in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" when he keeps trying to point out illogical or downright impossible things that happen, but rarely even gets to finish a sentence.
• Running Gag: PLAGUE!
• Science Marches On: Invoked when "The Galileo Seven" points out how knowledge of what a quasar is has changed since 1966 when the episode was made, casting the planetary system sized "quasar" Murasaki 312 as "a billion times smaller than normal and within our own galaxy".
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Lampshaded in "Wink of an Eye".
• Shirtless Scene: Kirk wrestles Charlie shirtless in "Charlie X", despite everyone else in the gym wearing a robe.
  • Sulu gets one in "The Naked Time".
  • Kirk walks through the Enterprise corridors with his shirt off for no specific reason, in "The Corbomite Maneuver".
• Shout-Out:
  • "Impossible. Pike is a mute version of Davros!" "The Menagerie, Part 1".
  • The Talosians' plan in "The Menagerie, Part 2" is to keep the humans "in an illusory reality matrix and extract energy from your bodies!"
  • Kirk officiating a wedding: "Mawwiage..." in "Balance of Terror".
  • White Rabbit: "Nyah, what's up, Doc?" "Shore Leave".
  • Caretaker: "My dear guests! I am the Caretaker, your host. Welcome... to Fantasy Planet." "Shore Leave".
  • Kirk: "Launch shuttlecraft for three-hour tour... I mean astronomical survey." "The Galileo Seven". For bonus points, a later caption reads "The space weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed..."
  • In general, "Allons-y!" is practically Kirk's Catchphrase.
  • In the fight against the Gorn in "Arena", Kirk evokes Moby-Dick: "Sulu, run that ship down like a whale! They task me! Outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it!"
  • In the same episode, Kirk recalls how to make gunpowder from "an old 21st century episode of MythBusters.
  • Tomorrow is Yesterday :
    • The entire plot is turned into a crossover with I Dream of Jeannie (complete with Jeannie returning the Enterprise to its own time using genie magic), because, as DMM puts it, "this episode really does feel more like an episode of that than an episode of Star Trek."
    • When describing how the Enterprise has entered a time warp, Spock says "It's just a jump to the left..."
    • When Spock and Jeannie are introduced to Dr. Bellows:
    Dr. Bellows: What next? A flying nun? A talking horse? A blended family with three girls and three boys?!
  • A few in Space Seed:
    • Lieutenant Mc Givers compares Khan to other "dreamy men" of the 1990s. Specifically, the Backstreet Boys. Khan's first words quote their song Everybody (Backstreet's Back).
    • Khan quotes Captain Ahab's line from Moby-Dick: "Thus, I give up the spear", foreshadowing his role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
    • Speaking of which, Spock's closing line is changed to "It would be interesting to return in, say, 18 years to see what has sprung from the seed you plant today," referencing the 18 years of in-universe time between this episode and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  • In "A Taste of Armageddon", Kirk describes the futility of war: "a curious game. The only way to win is not to play".
  • The resemblance of the episode "Errand of Mercy" to several other related films is called out:
    • Seven Samurai (Kirk: They clearly need our help defending their planet. In exchange for white rice.)
    • The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars (Spock: Like some sort of... Space Cowboy? Kirk: Where's Robert Vaughn when you need him?)
  • "The Changeling":
    • When Spock mind-melds with the Nomad probe, his speech devolves into "Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate!"
    • A Bilingual Bonus: When Uhura gets her mind wiped, her reaction to Kirk retraining her with Dick and Jane is Swahili for "How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?"
    • When enumerating the probe's errors, Kirk lists "You've gone in against an Iowan when death is on the line!"
    • And he concludes his counting with "Four errors! Ah ah ah ah!"
    • The last panel:
  Spock: What if there are more old Earth probes out there, repaired by alien machines, reprogrammed to sterilise biological organisms, and seeking out their creator?
  Kirk: Oh come on, what are the odds of that?
  • "The Apple"
    • The strip heavily references Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as noted under Charlie and the Chocolate Parody, after DMM's wife noted the similarity between the episode's aliens and the Oompa-Loompas.
    • The last panel, with Kirk eating an apple in the centre seat, functions not only as a literalisation of the heavy-handed metaphor, but a reference to his reboot self.
  • "The Doomsday Machine" contains yet another allusion to Moby-Dick.
  • "Catspaw":
    • The apparition of the three witches get the lines "When shall we three meet again?" "Well, I can do next Tuesday."
    • In the same episode, when the landing party fall down a trapdoor they suffer 1d6 falling damage.
  • In "Metamorphosis" Kirk says that Zefram Cochrane died 150 years ago and "was an old drunk guy", referring to Cochrane's appearance in Star Trek: First Contact.
  • Yet another one to Moby-Dick in Obsession: One of the security officers introduces himself, "Ensign Garrovick. But call me Ishmael." And Kirk does.
  • "The Immunity Syndrome":
    • When the space amoeba wipes out Gamma 7A, Spock says "I felt a great disturbance. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." He follows that up with "They're dead, Jim. They're all dead. Everybody's dead, Jim."
    • Later, Spock compares entering the body of the amoeba to "some kind of fantastic voyage."
  • In "Patterns of Force", Kirk's reaction to Ekos's Nazi society is to say, "Nazis! I hate these guys."
  • In "Bread and Circuses", Marcus says the alternate Roman Empire has conquered the entire world "except for one Gaulish village."
  • "Elaan of Troyius" is an extended riff on Casablanca, with Kirk as Rick, Elaan as Ilsa, and Ambassador Petri as Captain Renault.
  • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" has one to The Butter Battle Book.
  • Panel four of "The Pirates of Orion" is in the style of Asteroids.
  • "The Trouble With Tribbles":
    • Spock suggests trading the wheat for sheep and ore.
    • After getting caught, Darvin says, "I would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling tribbles!"
• Space Is an Ocean: The similarities of the Enterprise versus the Romulan ship cat and mouse game to a submarine combat are lampshaded in "Balance of Terror".
• Space Madness: Joe in "The Naked Time".
• Star Trek Shake: Appears in "The Immunity Syndrome".
• Stealth in Space: Spock declares this makes no sense, in "Balance of Terror".
• Stealth Insult:
  McCoy: Nancy! Wow, you haven't aged a day.
  Kirk: Yikes! Went for older women back then, huh?
• Take That!: The Final Frontier, Part 1 is full of Take Thats at the sheer awfulness of the movie.
  Spock/Nimoy: This is inane.
  Kirk/Shatner: The singing?
  Spock/Nimoy: Your script.
• Technology Marches On: Lampshaded and invoked. In "The City on the Edge of Forever", when Spock says he "needs radio tubes to access my tricorder's memory circuits", Kirk remarks "That thing has less functionality than an iPhone."
• Tempting Apple: Kirk munches an apple conspicuously at the end of "The Apple". Not that surprising as the original episode is a loose allegory of the Garden of Eden.
• Teeth Flying: When Scotty punches a Klingon in "The Trouble With Tribbles"
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: McCoy gets very excited whenever there's a PLAGUE! and seriously resents Spock attempting to horn in on this.
• Totally Radical: Kirk attempts to adopt 1920s slang to fit into the gangster-era Chicago analogue in "A Piece of the Action", with little success, instead mangling slang from various different time periods and places in a manner not unlike this xkcd strip.
  Kirk: You dudes make love, not war, or else we'll shiver your timbers.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: "Errand of Mercy", which explicitly references both Seven Samurai (white rice) and The Magnificent Seven (Robert Vaughn).
• Unsound Effect: "Telekinesis!", in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
  • This being David Morgan-Mar, there are of course plenty of these. "The Menagerie, Part 2" has "Impale!" and "Vanish!", "The Conscience of the King" has "Intervene", "Arena" has "Disintegrate!", "Space Seed" has "Seduce!" as does "Catspaw", "The Alternative Factor" has "Fall", "J'accuse!", "Sneak", and "Steal", "Operation—Annihilate!" has "Drama!" and "More Drama!", "Who Mourns for Adonais?" has "Fade", "Patterns of Force" has "Die".
• Wedding Smashers: The Romulan attack in "Balance of Terror" interrupts the wedding of Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Spock lampshades the fact that nobody seems to care about how or why the planet they've found is an exact duplicate of Earth, at the end of "Miri".
• Widowed at the Wedding: Angela Martine in "Balance of Terror".
• Writers Cannot Do Math: In "The Corbomite Maneuver", Spock begins to point out how the measured dimensions and mass of Balok's cube mean it has a ridiculous density (but is cut off).
• You Look Familiar: Invoked when Spock notes that the Romulan commander looks like his father in "Balance of Terror". (Both characters are played by Mark Lenard.)
• You Meddling Kids: "The Trouble with Tribbles": "I would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling tribbles!"

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