By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Do you remember those weird hidden image pictures from the ‘90s? Like the one in Mallrats where, if you stare at it long enough, you can see a special picture within the picture? Believe it or not, Star Trek is a bit like those pictures: stare at the various series long enough, and you start to see weird patterns that you never noticed were there. For example, the number 47 appears many times in shows like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager for seemingly no reason. There was a reason, though: it’s a secret reference to a weird math club one of Trek’s most prolific writers once joined.
Have you never noticed all the 47 references in Star Trek? They’re all over the place. Deanna Troi learns there are 47 references to Darmok in the ship’s computer; the virus made to kill the Borg Collective is named 4747. Speaking of the Borg, 47 crewmen are left on the rogue Borg planet in “Descent.” In DS9, Jake Sisko writes on a PADD labeled 4747. Even JJ Abrams included numerous references to 47 in Star Trek (2009). Obviously, this is just a tiny list of places where 47 is referenced in the franchise. Look closely, you’ll also see references to 74 (47 backwards) and 23 (half of 47, rounded down).
Star Trek’s Most Popular Number
What’s up with all this numerical weirdness, and where did it start? It all began with Star Trek: The Next Generation writer Joe Menosky. When he attended Pomona College, he was a member of The 47 Society. This was a special campus club with a deliciously insane belief in a mathematical proof that demonstrates all numbers add up to 47. They also believe that 47 occurs with greater frequency than any other number. Now, it’s uncertain how much of this Menosky actually believed or if he just enjoyed numbers-based trolling. What is certain is that he started including references to 47 as an in-joke, starting in Season 4 of TNG.
Once the rest of the writers learned what he was doing, they got in on the joke and started including references to 47 in their own scripts. This occurred across all shows in the Golden Age of Star Trek, though the DS9 writers eventually got tired of the joke and stopped doing it. However, Trek producer Rick Berman didn’t get tired of the joke; once, when he was asked what was so special about this number, he quipped that “47 is 42, corrected for inflation.” This is, of course, a winking reference to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which famously stated that 42 was the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
While JJ Abrams brought some 47 references into the Kelvinverse, this joke pretty much died out after the Golden Age of Star Trek. Characters stopped referencing this number in later shows like Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy. Honestly, though, that might be for the best. Even at the height of Trek’s popularity, this was an in-joke that most fans never even noticed and few ever truly understood. It’s tough to imagine the subtlety-hating NTrek writers trying to weave these references in. Although, in her own way, Ensign Tilly carried on the spirit of Menosky’s insanity. After all, this decades-long numbers joke was a way to demonstrate exactly one thing: the power of math, people!
