Star Trek: The Original Series/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • From The Original Series, the ending of "I, Mudd" where the crew defeats Harry Mudd's robots by confronting them with a barrage of bald-faced illogic, climaxing with some incredibly silly pantomime with the crew enjoying every minute of it. Particularly good is Spock telling a pair of identical robots that he loves one and hates the other, and it's precisely because they're identical that he feels that way.

Mudd: ...Do know what the penalty for fraud is on Deneb Five?
Spock: The guilty party has his choice: death by electrocution, death by gas, death by phaser, death by hanging....
Mudd: The key word in your entire peroration, Mister Spock, was, death.

  • A scene in "A Piece of the Action" in which Kirk distracts a group of gangsters by teaching them Fizzbin, a complicated card game which he improvises on the spot. Kirk, Spock and McCoy break free while the gangsters are busy trying to figure out the intentionally complicated rules.
    • From the same episode, Kirk's attempts to drive a 1930's styled car.

Kirk: I kind of like this. I'm going to get one myself. (proceeds to drive the car in reverse.)
...
Kirk: (about to drive again) Are you afraid of cars, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Not at all, Captain. It's your driving that alarms me.

    • Also from "A Piece of the Action" near the end, when Spock tells the gangster, "I suggest yous keep dialin'."
  • "The Trouble with Tribbles" - Kirk's growing frustration with the Tribbles multiplying on his ship is hysterical to watch, especially this bit where he ends up buried up to his armpits in tribbles. The glare he gives Bones after telling him to find out how the Tribbles died is priceless.
      • No, the best part is the massive shit-eating grin McCoy is wearing when he comes in to say how to stop the tribbles from breeding.
      • Then Kirk's reaction to it:

Kirk (with deadpan exasperation):Now he tells me

    • This moment is even funnier when you stop and think that those tribbles that keep hitting Kirk in the head every few seconds are being thrown by some prop guy on the other side of the little door.

Kirk: As a captain I want two things done. First find Cyrano Jones. And second... close that door?

    • It gets even better. In-universe, those tribbles keep falling on him because Sisko and Dax were throwing them!
    • Spock picks up a tribble and begins absent-mindedly stroking it.

Spock: Their purring seems to have a tranquilizing effect on the human nervous system. Fortunately... I am... immune...

(realizes everyone's staring at him, looks rather embarrassed for a Vulcan, and quickly puts it down)

    • Not to mention the end of "Trouble with Tribbles" when we find out that the fuzzy little balls of trouble were transported to the Klingon ship.
  • "By Any Other Name" - Scotty working his way through his entire liquor cabinet:

Scotty: I found this on Ganyroom... uh, uh, Ganymeer... mede..
Tomar: What is it?
Scotty: It's... uh... it's green!

Scotty: We did it...you and me!

  • Kirk's attempted explanation of Spock's ears in "The City on the Edge of Forever".

Kirk: He caught his head in a mechanical... rice picker... but, fortunately, there was an American, uh, missionary living close by who was a, uh, skilled, uh, plastic surgeon in civilian life who -...

  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday" - Kirk's expressions as the 1969 Air Police who have just captured him play with his phaser, not even knowing it's a weapon.
    • Or when they're interrogating Kirk about his Space Clothes, leading to the wonderful line:

What, this little old thing I just slipped on?

  • How about "Shore Leave" and all the craziness that goes on in that episode? Like the white rabbit and McCoy calling Sulu.
  • "The Naked Time" - Sulu is a Musketeer. "Richelieu, beware!"

"Ah, fair maiden!"
"Sorry, neither!"

  • After kissing Lieutenant Ariel Shaw on the bridge of his ship ("Court Martial") Kirk goes to sit in the captain's chair with the stiffest poker face ever seen; Spock and McCoy, on either side, are staring straight ahead. After a pause, and a flicker of a glance at Spock...

Kirk: She's a very good lawyer.
Spock: Obviously.
McCoy: Indeed she is.

The absolutely deadpan delivery would shame the most orthodox Vulcan.
  • In "The Tholian Web", part of the plot includes McCoy using an infamous Klingon nerve gas agent. Scotty, incredulous, points this out, to which McCoy stresses that in the form he intends to use it in, all it will do is "deaden a few brain cells". It leads to this immortal line:

Scotty: Oh, well, any decent brand of Scotch'll do that.

  • "Friday's Child": The alien chief's wife didn't want her own baby. McCoy tried to psychologize her into loving it. She didn't quite understand what he was trying to say. Hilarity somewhat ensues.
    • Also, what happens to McCoy as a result of being left alone with the baby all morning.

McCoy: Oochie woochie coochie coo!
Spock: (further up the hill and totally confused) "Oochie woochie coochie coo," Captain?
Kirk: (totally deadpan) An obscure Earth dialect, Mr. Spock. Oochie woochie coochie coo. If you're curious, consult linguistics.

      • And more than likely that's exactly what he did when he got back to the ship. I don't know whether linguistics is a computer or a department of people, but I almost feel sorry for them, having to explain that sort of thing to a Vulcan.
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