Best comic-relief puns in ST fiction -- any nominations?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

My own nomination is (I think it was in a Diane Duane novel, but I may be wrong) a reference to a musical ensemble having (and forgive any errors, I'm quoting this from memory) "a synthesized percussionist: the player, not the instrument; Dethwe was a clone."

 

[DS9Continuing]

One of my favourites was from Christopher's The Buried Age, when 'young' Picard is meeting with 'young' Data for the first time, and tells him, "I want to get to know the man behind the machine." Then Data turns in his seat and looks behind him.

.

 

[zarkon]

My favourite is probably when Stone offends Picard in "rock and a hard place", picard orders him to the ready room, and stone refuses because "I'm not ready".

There was a scene in....I think Imzadi II, where Worf complemented data on pushing crusher into the sea in Generations while she's standing there. Not so much a pun but it was hilarious.

 

[Thrawn]

One of my favourites was from Christopher's The Buried Age, when 'young' Picard is meeting with 'young' Data for the first time, and tells him, "I want to get to know the man behind the machine." Then Data turns in his seat and looks behind him.

.

I loved everything about that scene from beginning to end.

If we had a top-10-treklit-scenes-of-all-time competition, definitely high on that list.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Spock was having an animated discussion with Arex and M'ress in Peter David's "God's Above".

 

[Csalem]

I always found Sela in Double or Nothing quite funny when she gave the order to "Fire at Will" while Riker was in command of Excalibur.

 

[Christopher]

I always found Sela in Double or Nothing quite funny when she gave the order to "Fire at Will" while Riker was in command of Excalibur.

That was an amusing pun in theory (and the basis of a Starlog cartoon years earlier, wherein Data's literalism turned out badly for Riker), but it didn't work for me in that context, because Sela was raised Romulan, was probably speaking Romulan, and had no reason to want to make that English-language pun if she was even aware it existed. Not to mention that she never seemed to have much of a sense of humor.

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

I always found Sela in Double or Nothing quite funny when she gave the order to "Fire at Will" while Riker was in command of Excalibur.

That was an amusing pun in theory (and the basis of a Starlog cartoon years earlier, wherein Data's literalism turned out badly for Riker), but it didn't work for me in that context, because Sela was raised Romulan, was probably speaking Romulan, and had no reason to want to make that English-language pun if she was even aware it existed. Not to mention that she never seemed to have much of a sense of humor.

So it's only funny the first time and only if you don't over think it. Actually I think I just needed an excuse to laugh when I read that...

 

[vegaslover62]

In Over a Torrent Sea, there were two spins on very old punchlines, where Chaka has to have his legs severed in order to fit into a diving bell. He said his legs could be reattached and still retain full use of them, but if they weren't reattached soon, he would grow new ones, and his severed legs would grow a new head. He mused that "death was easy, but comity would be hard."

Later on, as Riker was rescued from being cut off from the Titan, during which his captors could not nourish or even clothe him properly, he made something from leaves which he called a thong, but not the salacious kind. When he was in sickbay recovering, it was evident his mental faculties would take time to reassert themselves with proper food. As he was bragging about his improvised clothing, Vale thought to herself, "The thong is over, but the malady lingers on."

 

[Deranged Nasat]

In Over a Torrent Sea, there were two spins on very old punchlines, where Chaka has to have his legs severed in order to fit into a diving bell.

Cethente, not Chaka. Chaka is the giant spider-beetle; the green lamp on spindly legs is Cethente.

 

[Christopher]

In Over a Torrent Sea, there were two spins on very old punchlines, where Chaka has to have his legs severed in order to fit into a diving bell. He said his legs could be reattached and still retain full use of them, but if they weren't reattached soon, he would grow new ones, and his severed legs would grow a new head. He mused that "death was easy, but comity would be hard."

Chaka is a female Pak'shree. The character was Cethente, the Syrath. The setup was that, since the species had memory and personality distributed throughout the body and could regenerate from severed parts, they could potentially grow into identical copies of the same personality, who would have difficulty with getting along (i.e. comity) since they would both consider themselves the original.

And I had to go to bat to keep that line in the manuscript, since Marco thought it was too silly. I felt the idea it conveyed was a perfectly plausible extrapolation from Cethente's thought process; it was just the way I chose to translate it into English that made it a pun. In fact, I didn't plan on making the joke at all; it just occurred to me spontaneously as a response to what I'd already written. I only had to put in one sentence that was phrased to set it up.

 

[Stevil2001]

Definitely gotta be Ensign Pheytus in New Frontier. Pure hilarity.

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

Definitely gotta be Ensign Pheytus in New Frontier. Pure hilarity.

Sure was! Followed by Ensign Neuborne. I was thinking Ensign Mann should follow to complete the set. Or maybe Boyer first...

 

[vegaslover62]

Does EVERYBODY have to ruin a perfectly good post with nitpicking?!?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Does EVERYBODY have to ruin a perfectly good post with nitpicking?!?

I don't see how noting that the wrong character name was used is nit-picking, or how it "ruins" a post.

Has the above post also been ruined now by this nit-picking?

 

[Christopher]

I'm sorry, but as the writer of the joke you attempted to retell, I have to say that it wasn't a perfectly good post. You totally mangled the telling of the joke in a way that rendered it incomprehensible and completely unfunny, and since it was my joke, I'm entitled to complain about that. Detail is important in joke-telling. So it was hardly nitpicking. Nitpicking means dwelling on irrelevant details. But when the details you get wrong or omit are the ones that make the joke comprehensible in the first place, they're entirely relevant.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . who would have difficulty with getting along (i.e. comity) since they would both consider themselves the original.

Sort of like that running gag in the sci-fi sitcom, Quark: whenever the Bettys (played by former Doublemint Twins the Barnstable Sisters) were asked which one was the clone, they'd respond, in perfect unison, pointing at each other, "SHE IS!"

 

[PKS8304]

Aside from the fact that a few months ago I literally laughed out loud at David Mack's Pinky & the Brain joke. One funny moment that has stayed with me over the years was when McHenry says he is never wrong, then remembers one time, then rescinds that saying "No wait, that wasn't me, my mistake"

 

[E-DUB]

Not a pun but I'm rereading "The Buried Age" myself and noted a line where Ariel says ".............on to the next bit".

Now, I don't know if Ariel ever saw "The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu" where the title character, portrayed by Peter Sellers, in what I think was his final performance, says exactly the same thing, but I'm willing to bet that Christopher did or, at the very least, got the line from someone who did.

 

[Christopher]

I think I saw that movie when I was very young, but I have no memory of any of its dialogue. I just used that line because it sounded right in Claudia Black's voice, which is what I imagined for the character. It wasn't an homage to anything. It's not that unusual a phrasing, I would've thought, though probably more common in Britain or the Commonwealth than the US.