My goal has been to keep as many TV series on the same world, the main Toobworld, as possible. Of course, certain TV shows were always going to defy me on that. Naughty shows! The zombie shows had to be relegated to their own dimension and the same goes for any remakes with all-new casts.
And thanks to the influx triggered by ‘The West Wing’, a whole slew of new Toobworlds had to be created for each concurrent series dealing with a fictional President of the United States. (Earth Prime-Time has to have the same President as Earth Prime because plenty of shows will eventually mention the POTUS. And with Presidents like Clinton and Drumpf, there were references a-plenty!)
But I wasn’t going to just keep tossing TV series out the window just because some TV show considered them to be a TV show and not part of their own world. So I had to come up with that splainin.
And it’s a multiple part splainin. First of all, I had to accept that there were citizens of Earth Prime-Time whose lives proved to be so fascinating to some producer that they made a TV show about those people which would then be shown on TV within the TV Universe.
Sounds confusing, don’t it? But think of all those times you’ve seen clips from our TV shows being watched by fictional characters who should be living on the same world as the people who are in those TV shows they’re watching. This is the best way to get around that.
Although the show may be based on their lives, the plots don’t necessarily have to adhere to the storylines we saw on our own version of those shows. There have been times when a character will mention an episode of a TV show which has a plot that bears no resemblance to what we actually saw in the real version of the show.
I saw this happen in a TV movie clip in which the main character mentioning that she saw her current situation play out at a wedding reception in an episode of ‘Columbo’. No such scene existed in the ‘Columbo’ episodes we got to see. And in an episode of ‘Extras’, Andy Milman got to act out a scene in ‘Doctor Who’ with David Tennant which never existed for us.
But the actors they hire to do those shows have to be the televersions of those actors in the “real” version of the show, because of those clips being shown. The aforementioned Tennant is a good example.
In my head, I keep coming back to ‘The Brady Bunch’ as an example of Toobworld citizens whose home situation was perfect fodder for a TV series to some fictional version of Sherwood Schwartz (just in case he ever gets cited in the dialogue.) For us, we’re seeing the televersion of the Bradys being played by the real actors. For the fictional characters in other shows who are watching ‘The Brady Bunch’, they’re s’eeing the Brady Family’s televersions being played by the televersions of the actors we know.
Another reason these Zonkish TV shows exist is because of a shadow ops group which I’ve called UNReel creates them in order to debunk claims that such things actually happened in their world. So that people who claim to have seen something outrageous – like superheroes, alien invasion, secret agents and a certain alien Time Lord in action – they could be dismissed as crackpots who can’t distinguish between “reality” and a TV show. A video version of “swamp gas”.
I bring this all up because this year I’ll be inducting a few of those televersions of TV shows within TV shows into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame – as long as they pass the requirement of being mentioned or even seen in at least three other TV shows.
And I’m kicking it off with ‘Star Trek’.
From Wikipedia:
‘Star Trek’ is an American media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, called ‘Star Trek’ and now known as "The Original Series", debuted on September 8, 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC.
It followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise on its five-year mission, the purpose of which was "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!".
The USS Enterprise was a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century. The ‘Star Trek’ canon includes the Original Series, an animated series, five spin-off television series, the film franchise, and further adaptations in several media.
“Star Trek” has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. ‘Star Trek’ had a themed attraction in Las Vegas that opened in 1998 and closed in September 2008. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world.
The series has its own full-fledged constructed language, Klingon. Several parodies have been made of ‘Star Tre’k. In addition, viewers have produced several fan productions. As of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making ‘Star Trek’ one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
‘Star Trek’ is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also noted for its progressive civil rights stances. The Original Series included one of television's first multiracial casts.
And I blame the time traveler known as The Doctor.
In a way, it’s probably like the ‘Doctor Who’ episode “Blink” in which Sally Sparrow had to get all of her notes to The Doctor so that he could then prepare her for what was coming in her past. A temporal loop.
In this case, The Doctor brought a massive file to the late fifties, early sixties, and delivered them to a motorcycle cop named Gene Roddenberry with instructions that he should develop it all into a TV series, right down to supplying suggestions as to who to cast in the proposed series.
It’s one way to splain how a CHiPs officer could come up with such an idea.
I’m not sure if the world of ‘Star Trek’ exists in the future of those shows which have to be relegated to other Toobworlds and yet still have mentioned the show, like ‘Lois & Clark’ or ‘Spin City’.
As for ‘Blake’s 7’ which made a somewhat veiled reference to the show, it is set in the Evil Mirror Dimension an thus is current with the Evil Spock as Captain of the Enterprise.
‘Star Trek’ is a good show to begin this end of month series of TVXOHOF inductions – there are so many TV shows in which fictional characters are watching ‘Star Trek’ or discussing it, and sometimes even acting it out themselves, complete with costumes. An episode of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ even mentioned that there was a ‘Star Trek’ musical!
But even if the name ‘Star Trek’ isn’t actually stated, we know that the show exists when characters from other shows start spouting the dialogue. Lines like “Beam me up” (Scotty or no), “He’s dead, Jim”, “To boldly go where no man has gone before”, “Set your phasers on stun”, and “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank.)” - these are a sure sign some fictional character is a Trekkie. Or Trekker.
It's time to present the evidence to support its membership. We’ll begin with those shows which actually showed scenes from ‘Star Trek’.
- ‘Young Sheldon’
- “Der Minister” (a TV movie)
- ‘St. Elsewhere’ (Actually we heard it on the TV as John Doe #6 changed the channels. Our POV was from an angle where we couldn’t see the screen.)
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And that list is still growing! The series premiere of 'Avenue 5' had Hugh Laurie's
That’s-a some spacey mentions!
Here's just one example from an episode of 'Nurses':
Welcome to the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame, ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’!
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