I'm watching Business As Usual right now, and watching it has remind me of just how many mob movie scenes that were directly used in specific scenes in this episode. The Third Man: Gala (Staring out a station window) "Do you think if one of those twinkling little lights suddenly went out, anybody would notice?" = Harry Lyme (Staring down from the top of a ferris wheel) "Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?" Goodfellas: Hagath "You think the regent would like THIS?" = Tommy "How am I funny?" Star Trek always has a lot of obvious influences but it's not usually direct scene to scene translations of similar scenes in nearly identical context as the movie they are taken from. What other episodes have these kind of direct scene to scene translation from something else?
TNG:Starship Mine and Die Hard leap to mind. Dialog examples: PICARD: Profit? This is all about profit? McCLANE: So that's is what this is about, Hans? A fucking robbery? ————— DEVOR: The baryon sweep uses a high-frequency plasma field. Your phaser won't work. PICARD: You're probably right. But I'd like to bet this will. A laser welder can be deadly. What's going on in main Engineering? I suggest that you cooperate. DEVOR: You're Starfleet. You won't kill me. PICARD: You sure? (Picard hypos him instead) PICARD: Seems you're right. John McClane: Drop it, dickhead. It's the police. Tony: You won't hurt me. John McClane: Oh, yeah? Why not? Tony: Because you're a policeman. There are rules for policemen. John McClane: Yeah. That's what my captain keeps telling me.
Quark doing The Godfather in The Nagus comes to mind. Also, Jadzia doing The Mask's signature line in A Simple Investigation. "Ooooh! Somebody stop me!"
If there is one movie that I feel DS9 is really drawn to, it's The Sand Pebbles. There are obvious references, like Eddington's death and Sisko saying "Hello, ship," to Defiant 2. However, the overall atmosphere of the film seems to have infected season six and seven.
Moore's INTER ARMES Whatsis is, for all its glorious virtues, a near total ripoff of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD in terms of seeming to set up one party when in fact you're rooting out the other 'good' party for a greater good that seems not very good at all ethically. Moore's THE DEFECTOR TNG has got a ton of similarities to Diane Duane's tos novel MY ENEMY MY ALLY too. Way too close for comfort, WAY too close.
Ausgezeichnette! Danke sehr! (my 4 years of high school german raising its badly accented head there to note that excellent catch and to thank you.)
I can't believe nobody's mentioned the bit where they're testing everybody's blood to see who's a shapeshifter. It's a DIRECT lift of the scene from "The Thing". Also the James Bond holodeck episode where Sisko is Dr. Noah or something and Dax is the beautiful scientist. I can't remember the title as it's been a LONG time since I saw it but I'm sure everyone remembers it.