schlock.net > The 47s

Welcome to The 47s, a forerunner in the universe of useless, obsessive Star Trek websites.

What is 47?
Midway through Star Trek: The Next Generation, the number 47 began appearing on Star Trek seemingly anywhere the writers needed a number. Shields would drop to 47 percent; 47 people would die in a disaster; 47 minutes would remain until certain death.

So why is it there?
The number 47 is a campus inside joke at Pomona College; the man who brought 47 to Star Trek, Joe Menosky, is a Pomona College alumnus. Joe was a writer on TNG starting in the fourth season, and apparently he passed the bug on to some of the other writers and the rest is history. Here's more information about the Pomona/47 connection.

What's this site for?
This site attempts to catalog each occurrence of the number 47 in Star Trek as we know it. This includes verbal mentions and visual examples. With only a very few exceptions, 47s requiring mathematical gymnastics and other quasi-47s no longer appear here; we're going for purity of 47 in 2005!

If you do come across a 47 that is not on this list, submit it to me at .

Pick a path:

The Next Generation | Deep Space Nine | Voyager
The Original Series | The Movies | About the 47s

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