10 Times Star Trek Broke The Fourth Wall

Few species in the Star Trek canon are as iconic as the Klingons. With their language, traditions and iconic Bat’leths, you’d be hard pressed not to spot one in a line-up, with or without facial ridges. Wait…without facial ridges?

Although Klingons have been portrayed with their customary cranial features since the beginning of The Next Generation, in The Original Series they appeared almost completely human, creating a sort of continuity error that a show with this much time travel simply had to address. Deep Space Nine’s ‘Trials & Tribble-ations’ takes place concurrently with TOS’s ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’, and sees the crew of The Defiant travelling back in time to stop a genetically disguised Klingon from assassinating Captain Kirk.

During their time undercover, several smooth faced Klingons walk in to the bar whilst Worf, O’Brien and Bashir sit and observe. When Worf’s human friends note the difference in appearance, Worf bluntly responds ‘We do not discuss it with outsiders’.

Whilst Enterprise would later go on to canonise the difference as a result of genetic engineering gone wrong, in the meantime we all got to enjoy this little meta-joke from the writers, as they shrugged and declared: ‘your guess is as good as ours’.