Last night’s midseason premiere of “Breaking Bad” featured a memorable scene in which Badger (Matt Jones) shared his “Star Trek” idea with his fellow perennial stoner, Skinny Pete (Charles Baker). But that bit of fan fiction didn’t come out of nowhere.
According to Vulture, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan has been sharing that “Star Trek” story with his writers for years. Peter Gould — the writer of last night’s episode — specifically asked to borrow Gilligan’s tale for Badger. “We talk about Greek tragedy in the writers’ room, but there are a lot of geeks, so there’s a lot of geek tragedy, too,” explained Gould.
Vulture also commissioned animator Matt Czap to create an animated sequence around Badger’s “Star Trek” story; which revolves around a pie eating contest on the Enterprise that goes horribly wrong.
Vulture even spoke with Star Trek’s official fact checker, John Van Citters to get his take on the tale.
“Theoretically, Scotty could compare the pre-contest Chekov pattern with the ‘new’ Chekov and remove any foreign contaminants from the transporter stream, much the way it would filter out any dangerous new micro-organisms or parasites,” noted Van Citters. “However, that depends on him continuously scrambling and dematerializing all of Chekov and not just beaming the pie from his gullet into space.”
Van Citters added that Chekov’s entire plan “seems like a lot of work to cheat at a pie eating contest.”
