Friday, August 27, 2010

Two Additional Shakespeare Allusions in Star Trek: The Animated Series

“The Practical Joker.” By Chuck Menville. Perf. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and George Takei. Dir. Hal Sutherland. Star Trek: The Animated Series. Season 2, episode 3. NBC. 21 September 1974. DVD. Paramount, 2008.
Star Trek: The Animated Series offers a quote from King Lear late in its run. Earlier, it provided two near quotations.

The first is based on a speech from 1 Henry IV. Falstaff says, "The better pat of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life" (V.iv.119-21). Kirk's version is the usual paraphrase: "Discretion is the better part of valour."

Kirk also modifies Polonius' "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't" (II.ii.205-06), giving us "There is a method to this madness” in place of the more cumbersome phrase:


And the idea that The Enterprise is seeking revenge makes the entire episode into a Hamlet derivative!

Well . . . not really. But you can see how easy it is to get carried away.
Links: Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.
Copyright 2008-2039 by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest