A '70s Sci-Fi Show Parodied Some Of Star Trek's Best Episodes

Few remember Buck Henry's sitcom "Quark," but those that do know they have access to a very special cult TV password. The series was set on a garbage scow in the year 2226, and the crew was tasked with sailing around the galaxy bagging up stray refuse. Captain Adam Quark (Richard Benjamin) kind of hated his job and aspired to greater things, but constant turns of bad luck kept him stuck. "Quark" was a slapstick spoof that lampooned sci-fi TV the same way that Henry's "Get Smart" spoofed spy movies. 

In particular, "Quark" was a send-up of "Star Trek," and regularly satirized specific stories and plot points taken from single "Star Trek" episodes. It also poked fun at other pop sci-fi of the era, including "2001: A Space Odyssey," and old-timey space adventures, such as "Flash Gordon." Recall that "Star Trek" was canceled in 1969 but had become immensely popular in reruns, becoming a familiar pop culture institution by 1977. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was only two years away. One can only theorize that the writers of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" named their Ferengi character after the title character on "Quark."

Buck Henry's series only lasted eight episodes, airing from February 24 to April 7 in 1978, before being swept from the airwaves and into trivia books. Sci-fi fans and lovers of the obscure, however, have sought it out and happily tell you it's actually an okay show. It even attempted (with scant success) to include a gender-fluid character named Gene, or Jean (Tim Thomserson), on the series. It's a progressive notion, but it's not handled terribly well. The character "flips" unexpectedly between male and female personalities, ultra-macho one moment and gentle in the next. Gene/Jean rely on a lot of gender stereotypes and a certain amount of queer panic.

Captain Quark worked for a Federation-like organization called United Galaxy, although it was more grumpy and bureaucratic than anything on "Star Trek." Quark's boss was the semi-evil Otto Palindrome (Conrad Janis), who hated Quark's flippant attitudes. Palindrome, in turn, answered to a creepy, large-headed alien master only ever called The Head (Alan Caillou). The Head is the mastermind behind Quark's petty tasks.

On board Quark's garbage scow is Gene/Jean, as mentioned, as well as a very Spock-like first officer named Ficus (Richard Kelton). Ficus was a humanoid plant being, a Vegeton, incapable of feelings who responded to every scenario coldly. He's not so much a spoof of "Star Trek's" Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as a parallel universe version of the same character. The ship's pilots were a pair of comely navigators called the Bettys (Cyb and Patricia Barnstable). One was a clone of the other, but they seem to have lost track of which one was the original. The Bettys sported fabulous 1970s feathered hairdos, wore revealing costumes, and had an insatiable lust for Captain Quark. Quark, a professional, rebuffed their advances — Buck Henry certainly keyed into how horny Gene Roddenberry was when he made "Star Trek." The scow also had a mad scientist on board in the form of Dr. Mudd (Douglas V. Fowley), but only for the pilot episode. There was also a neurotic box-headed robot named Andy (voiced by Bobby Porter).

"Quark" essentially had the same premise as the more recent "Star Trek: Lower Decks," a series that was set on board a high-tech Federation starship that was always tasked with the most boring, tedious jobs in the galaxy. "Quark" was set in a super-advanced sci-fi future, but one that still required garbage truck drivers. Captain Quark was evidence that even sci-fi utopias contain unseemly, undignified work.

As mentioned, "Quark" lifted a few of its episodes directly from "Star Trek," just with a comedic twist. The third episode of "Quark," called "The Old and the Beautiful" (March 3, 1978), is about Captain Quark finding a contaminated piece of space trash that accelerates his aging to two years every hour. This is a direct lift of the "Star Trek" episode "The Deadly Years" (December 8, 1967), in which Kirk and other Enterprise crew members contract a virus that makes them elderly over the course of a few days.

The following episode, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ficus" (March 10, 1978), saw Quark's garbage scow pulled into a black hole that mysteriously bifurcated the crew into their good and evil halves. Ficus, being a plant, didn't have an evil half, but Quark did, and the pair get into a fight. This episode is a clear homage to the "Star Trek" episode "The Enemy Within" (October 6, 1966), wherein Kirk is accidentally bifurcated by the Enterprise's transporters, separating his "good" and "evil" sides. It's also borrowing from "Mirror, Mirror" (October 6, 1967), the famed episode wherein Kirk and co. visit a parallel universe where everyone is evil, and the Federation is a tyrannical conquering force.

In "Goodbye, Polumbus" (March 17, 1978), Quark and his crew travel to a mystical planet in deep space where fantasies become manifest. This is reminiscent of multiple "Star Trek" episodes staring with "Shore Leave" (December 29, 1966), where the Enterprise encounter a planet that reads their minds and manifests their fantasies as androids. Both stories, however, are reminiscent of Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel "Solaris" (itself adapted into two feature films), so this may be a case of both shows drawing inspiration from the same source. That's nothing to say of the many other "Star Trek" references peppered throughout "Quark." The series is not available to stream anywhere, but resourceful internet scouts might be able to find it. Sci-fi fans should certainly get a kick out of it.