Starfleet Academy’s Hilarious Glitter Vomit Joke Explained by Jonathan Frakes

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 9 – “300th Night”Jonathan Frakes explains the origin of the most hilariously bizarre running joke in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Frakes directed the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1, which was written by Kirsten Beyer from a story by Beyer and Kenneth Lin.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has delivered dollops of info about Darem Reymi’s (George Hawkins) species. Darem is Khionian, a fish-like species. Although he maintains a human appearance, Darem’s true form is a blue humanoid with gills. Impressively, Khionians can briefly survive in the vacuum of space, but Darem’s people also have some peculiar drawbacks to their unique physiology.

Jonathan Frakes spoke to TrekMovie about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9, where Darem Reymi vomited glitter during a breakneck seqeuence when Starfleet Academy’s cadets stole a shuttle. Frakes revealed Darem’s glitter vomit is the brainchild of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s executive producer Noga Landau. Read Jonathan’s quote below:

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah, they showed me the glitter vomit from the earlier episode. It seems absurd. And you know, it was minimal, but it was… It’s established. Glitter has been a runner with Noga Landau, who’s the showrunner with Kurtzman. She wanted a lot of glitter in that opening sequence, where I have them walking down the hallway and slow-mo and fast-mo, and they’re about to start partying because they’re done with their school year. Yeah, she wanted a lot of glitter in there. I said really? We’re gonna throw glitter in the hallways? So that became a… She ends all of her emails with me with the glitter.

Darem first vomited glitter because he ate bananas on a dare in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 5. It was an unexpectedly funny and utterly bizarre visual attributed to Khionians lacking the enzymes to digest bananas.

Hungover from Klingon alcohol, Darem vomited again after the cadets’ turbulent shuttle escape in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9. This time, Darem lamented his glittery upchuck got “all over my trousers.” Reymi admitted to “judgy judgy Genesis [Bella Shepard]” that Khionans “lack a lot of enzymes.”

As Jonathan Frakes revealed, Noga Landau is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s glitter queen, and Landau wanted more glitter in episode 9’s opening hallway sequence of Genesis gathering her friends as the cadets party about the academic year coming to an end. Amusingly, glitter seems to be a running theme for Noga, even in her emails, according to Frakes.

Darem Reymi can also take a punch, as he absorbed several blood-splattering blows to the face from the Venari Ral in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 9. Perhaps we’ll learn the real-world reason why Khionans are so physically durable in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1’s finale, or in season 2.