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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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To boldly go
Where no number has gone before
The Star Trek-Pomona connection has been common knowledge around campus
for years. A number of the show’s staff writers were once Sagehens.
Patrick Stewart, the famous thespian and former captain of the
Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, gave a commencement
speech in 1995. And the Borg—an enemy race that inhabits a labyrinthine
cube on the show—is, by some reports, named after Pomona’s slightly
labyrinthine Oldenborg Hall.
But the most curious link between the College and the television series
may be the frequent recurrence of the number 47 in the show’s episodes.
Starting in the 1990–91 season, the number starts appearing
everywhere—from computer screens to snippets of dialogue. The crew stops
at Sub-space Relay Station 47. Data is unconscious for 47 seconds.
Captain Picard drinks a ’47 vintage wine at dinner.
 The man responsible for proliferating Pomona’s magic number on the show
is Joe Menosky ’79. A long-time staff writer for series follow-ups
The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine,
Menosky traces his fascination with 47 to his freshman year at Pomona:
“I was a freshman in Wig Hall, and Eric Level ’76, our RA, was a
47-fascinated math major who passed it on to the rest of the dorm.”
As soon as Menosky started working at Star Trek, he began
slipping the number into scripts. More importantly, he convinced his
co-writers to do the same. Before long, the number became an “in-joke’
with the staff. Menosky admits that, at first, they had to write in 47
“surreptitiously,” so that their producers wouldn’t find out. The joke
soon became habit.
“You’d be surprised how many times the number can appear and have nobody
notice unless they’re looking for it,” Menosky says. After reflecting,
he adds, “actually, we weren’t going out of our way to hide it ... [it
was] more like hidden in plain view.”
When asked why he started including 47 in episodes, Menosky admits,
“After Pomona, Eric and I maintained a correspondence and typically
would mention in passing any new sightings. It seemed like placing 47s
rather than just spotting them would be a way to continue the reference
for any alumni who happened to watch the series.”
The ruse has obviously been quite successful, helping to further the
Pomona community’s infatuation with its special number. Still, Menosky
denies 47’s “magical” significance: “
I don’t think of 47 as magical, more like an exercise in consensual
meaning. It could as well have been 29 or a certain shade of blue.”
Magical significance or not, 47 became enough of an establishment on
Star Trek that other series have begun to incorporate the number in
their own scripts. The most significant of these is Alias, which has
made 47 a deliberate and recurrent theme. Suzanne Geiger ’91, second
unit first assistant director on the series, was not able to confirm
whether the trend was attributable to a Pomona connection, though she
admits, “It’s normal [for shows like Alias and Star Trek]
to have a recurring theme for the fans.”
A few years after Menosky began incorporating 47 into Star Trek
scripts, someone clued in a producer. “Once that happened,” Menosky
says, “he just kept seeing it everywhere and thought enough was enough.”
The number was banned from all future episodes. “But by then,” Menosky
adds, “the 47-Trek connection was already all over the Internet.”
—Noah Buhayar ’05 |
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