10 Greatest Star Trek In-Jokes

10. 47

"47 is 42, corrected for inflation," executive producer Rick Berman once joked. The Ultimate Answer might cost you more in Star Trek, but what is the Question?

Well, have you ever wondered why Ronin the Sub Rosa sex ghost said he was 'born' in 1647, why shields were often down to 47%, or why Captain Janeway was really from Bloomington, Indiana? The reason is writer Joe Menosky, who began his Star Trek career in season four of The Next Generation and has worked on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Discovery.

Menosky graduated from California's Pomona College, which, apart from excelling in the liberal arts, is known for having a thing for 47. The college even has a club dedicated to the number — The 47 Society — that Menosky was part of as a student. He then brought this university in-joke into Star Trek and it has stuck with writers ever since.

'Bloomington, Indiana' (zip codes 47401-47408) is more properly an homage to Voyager producer Jeri Taylor who was born there, but there are pages of other examples of the 47 phenomenon. Here are just a small few: In Family, Picard is given the '47 vintage; in Conundrum, there are 47 Lysian sentry pods; in DS9, PADDs are often labelled 4747 and weapons lockers 47; in Voyager, the temporal variance of the Krenim chroniton torpedo is 1.47 microseconds… and I have just needed between 4 to 7 Aldebaran whiskies!