Throughout 12 years and the same number of seasons, Kunal Nayyar played Raj Koothrappali on Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady’s massively popular sitcom, “The Big Bang Theory” (though, as fans learned eventually, Nayyar almost got fired by the network before the show became a huge success). Raj is an important part of the main group — which otherwise includes Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), Leonard and Penny Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco), Howard Wolowitz and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (Simon Helberg and Melissa Rauch), and Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) — and it’s hard to imagine the series without him. So, with that in mind, did Nayyar have any favorite moments or memories from his time as Raj?
In a retrospective posted by TBS (a channel known for frequently airing “The Big Bang Theory” in syndication) on Facebook on the day that the series finale, “The Stockholm Syndrome,” aired on CBS, Nayyar opened up about episodes he particularly loved — and the moments that made them so special. From a major piece of his character’s evolution to some of Raj’s much sillier moments, here are Nayyar’s favorite episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” and why he’s so fond of them.
Kunal Nayyar loved the old-timey cocktail at the center of The Grasshopper Experimentation
When we first meet Raj in season 1 of “The Big Bang Theory,” he’s saddled with a really strange “quirk.” Based on a guy that co-creator Bill Prady knew in real life, Raj can’t talk around women due to social anxiety — and while this condition, known as selective mutism, is real, the way Raj can find a temporary cure for it hopefully isn’t. What I mean by that is that Raj can only talk to a woman if he’s really drunk.
This first comes up in “The Grasshopper Experiment,” the eighth ever episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” in which Raj finds out that his domineering parents have arranged for him to go on a blind date. Based on the fact that Raj can’t even squeak a single syllable when he’s around Penny, the gang rallies to figure out how they can possibly help their friend overcome his anxiety-driven selective mutism on the date in question. When they have some drinks at Penny’s place because she’s working on bartender training at the Cheesecake Factory, they realize that if Raj is extremely intoxicated, he talks to Penny.
Obviously, this all leads to Raj completely ruining his date because he’s too drunk to act normal despite being able to speak. So, what did Kunal Nayyar say about the episode? “This was the first time I spoke to Penny with a drink in my hand,” he said in the video. “And the worldwide sales of Grasshoppers tripled.” (That’s a reference to the cocktail Raj enjoys at Penny’s place, which is a completely out-of-date drink composed of green crème de menthe, white crème de cacao, and heavy cream. There is, of course, no evidence behind Nayyar’s claim, and I personally doubt its veracity.)
Warner Bros. TelevisionMost fans of “The Big Bang Theory” remember the season 3 episode “The Adhesive Duck Deficiency” because it’s the one where Sheldon helps Penny after she slips and falls in the shower. So, why is it one of Kunal Nayyar’s favorite episodes of the series? Because of Raj’s plotline with Leonard and Howard.
While Sheldon and Penny are elsewhere, Leonard, Howard, and Raj go out camping in the desert hoping to catch the Leonid Meteor Shower when they meet a van full of girls with some, uh, “special” cookies. You can see where this is going: They all get really, really high without fully understanding what’s going on. From commenting on how silly Leonard and Howard’s American accents sound to cooking up a lurid fantasy about becoming the ruler of an animal species, Raj definitely feels the effects of the cookies. “If I could speak the language of rabbits, they would be amazed, and I would be their king,” he opines at one point. Meanwhile, Leonard whines about “nerd” being in his name and Howard admits that he lost his virginity to his cousin. “I would be kind to my rabbit subjects at first,” Raj continues, undeterred, as his friends chatter around him. “One day, I hold a great ball for the President of France. But the rabbits, they all hate me and don’t come. I’m embarrassed, so I eat all the lettuce in the world and make them watch.” As they hang out and eat all of the food they brought, they miss the meteor shower completely but still have a really great time.
“Getting high in the desert with the guys and then giving an entire speech about being the cruel king of a land of rabbits was definitely out there for me,” Nayyar recalled to TBS.
The makeup for The Bakersfield Expedition was tough for Kunal Nayyar — but he still loved it
In season 6 of “The Big Bang Theory,” the boys prepare to visit the Bakersfield Comic-Con — which Sheldon says is better than the massive San Diego convention that “went all Hollywood” and isn’t about comic books anymore — when, predictably, disaster strikes. With Sheldon dressed as Data, Leonard as Picard, Howard as a Borg drone, and Raj as Worf, the boys set out in Leonard’s car but stop in the desert to take some photos of themselves in costume. While they’re putting together the perfect pose, someone steals Leonard’s car (because he left the keys in the ignition like a clown) and takes all of their everyday clothes and their phones.
Because nobody will pick up four hitchhikers in full “Star Trek” costumes, the guys wander to a local diner. There, they stick out like a collective sore thumb until Howard’s overprotective mother Mrs. Wolowitz, who’s heard but never seen throughout the show, gets them a rental car to come home. Raj, characteristically, can’t resist a joke about the specific rental agency and irritates all of his friends. “Spending nine hours in ‘Star Trek’ makeup? Not so fun,” Kunal Nayyar recalled. “Getting to make a joke about ‘renting a car from Enterprise?’ Priceless.”
The Justice League Recombination let Kunal Nayyar play Aquaman before Jason Momoa
Warner Bros. Television
In season 4 of “The Big Bang Theory, Penny is dating a nice, beefy himbo named Zack (Brian Thomas Smith), and because of Zack’s resemblance to Superman, the show’s main characters manage to convince the guy to dress as the superhero for a local comic book store’s costume contest. Leonard was originally supposed to be Superman, but when Zack takes over the role, Leonard chooses Green Lantern … leaving Raj to dress up as Aquaman, complete with a fake seahorse around his waist. (In the episodes leading up to this, Raj takes frequent digs at Aquaman, making it clear that he believes the comic book character absolutely sucks.)
“Attaching a foam seahorse to my waist and yelling ‘Aquaman sucks!’ while dressed up as Aquaman was a real treat,” Kunal Nayyar joked in the retrospective. “That is, before Jason Momoa actually made Aquaman cool.” Nayyar is obviously referring to Momoa’s role as the underwater hero in multiple DC Extended Universe films, but still, he should give himself just a tiny bit of credit: He made Aquaman funny, at least.
The Confidence Erosion showed that, after 11 seasons, Raj could still grow
It takes quite a while, but in season 11 of “The Big Bang Theory,” Raj finally undergoes a style transformation … in that he stops straightening his hair. In the episode “The Confidence Erosion,” Raj and his bestie Howard are fighting because Raj is upset that Howard won’t stop making jokes at his expense. As a result, Raj lets his naturally curly hair shine, and it’s revealed that he only straightened his hair to fit in with “cool” Americans like Howard.
In Jessica Radloff’s 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” Kunal Nayyar said that he really felt the emotional weight of Raj’s seemingly simple makeover. “It was so nice when [they stopped straightening it] because it was almost as if he was regaining his identity that he had lost,” Nayyar told Radloff. “It happened in such a beautiful way. He had a fight with his best friend, and said to Howard, ‘You’ve bullied me my whole life.’ Even though he really hadn’t, he’s like, ‘You’ve just put me in this box and I want to be free of it.’ It was so well done.”
In that TBS video, Nayyar explained why he loves “The Confidence Erosion” so much: “Because after 11 years of flat ironing my hair — I finally got to wear it curly and natural as it is.” You can check out all of these episodes, along with the rest of “The Big Bang Theory,” on HBO Max.
Because “Star Trek” takes place in a universe driven by pacifism, exploration, and diplomacy, it may be difficult to gauge which starships are the most “powerful.” In superhero comics, action movies, and “Star Wars” (in many ways, the polar opposite of “Star Trek”), the phrase “most powerful” often alludes to one’s ability to do damage, to dominate, to overpower a foe. Starships on “Star Trek,” however, aren’t damage-inflicting machines. They may be equipped with phasers, photon torpedoes, and other hyper-advanced weapons systems, but a starship is rarely measured by its ability to do damage.
I suppose, if the U.S.S. Enterprise really wanted to, it could handily wipe out entire cities on its own, unleashing a fusillade of explosive energy beams from space. Several Federation starships, working together, could likely make an entire planet extinct within a matter of minutes. For Trekkies, though, it’s more important to measure a ship’s power by the power of its sensors, the power of its engines, the comfort of its crew its all-around versatility and utility.
That said, the following list will vary wildly, with some “weaker” sounding ships ranking high (and “strong” ones ranking low) for reasons of balance. In true “Star Trek” fashion, this will be as diplomatic a list as the author can muster. Some of these ships do indeed have a great deal of destructive power. Others can travel superfast. Others still are merely resilient, able to survive a great deal of time. And one of them is certainly the most comfortable ship ever seen on “Star Trek.”
That said, let us comb through the annals of Trekdom to see what ships rank the highest.
10. The U.S.S. Defiant
The U.S.S. Defiant was the only out-and-out combat vessel ever designed by Starfleet. Compact and squat, with its engines embedded in its body, the Defiant looked like a bulldog compared to its spindly, engines-out Weimaraner-like counterparts. It was a tiny vessel designed to confront and defeat the Borg. It was equipped with rapid-fire phaser cannons and a new type of weapon called quantum torpedoes, which blow things up way better than the old-fashioned photon variety. In a coup, the Defiant was also equipped with a cloaking device, something no other Federation vessel had; cloaking devices had been banned from Federation use by an old treaty.
The only Defiant prototype was not commissioned, however, because it proved to be overpowered and difficult to maneuver. It was only released into service when Deep Space Nine said they needed more substantial military defense from an oncoming onslaught of soldiers from the Gamma Quadrant.
The ship wasn’t comfortable — only Worf (Michael Dorn) was comfortable sleeping on it — but it was a tough little ship that could dole out damage and take a beating. It wasn’t destroyed until near the end of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
9. The U.S.S. Pegasus
In the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Pegasus” (January 10, 1994), a visiting officer named Admiral Pressman (Terry O’Quinn) secretly enlisted Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) to locate and salvage the U.S.S. Pegasus, a ship they had lost many years before. As it turns out, the Pegasus was halfway embedded in an asteroid, deep in the galaxy. It seems that Pressman found the above-mentioned cloaking device ban to be unfair. Why, he felt, were the Klingons and Romulans allowed to use cloaking technology, but the Federation wasn’t?
As such, he illegally experimented on his own old command, the Pegasus, to see if it could handle a cloaking device he acquired illegally. This was a special cloaking device, however. Not only did it make a ship appear invisible to scanners, but it mucked with an entire ship’s molecular structure, allowing it to phase directly into solid matter. It worked with the Pegasus … for a little bit. The Pegasus ended up accidentally re-integrating inside a rock, killing almost everyone aboard.
When used properly, though, that phase device would be one of the handiest things a starship could be equipped with. If a ship could stand the gravity, it could hang out in the center of a star. It could sail right through enemy vessels undetected. It could study pre-warp civilizations by merely flying down to the surface and looking at them up close, completely invisible. That’s pretty powerful.
8. The U.S.S. Enterprise-D
The Enterprise-D from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” hardly needs an introduction, as Trekkies got to know it well throughout seven seasons of television and one movie. Not only was the Galaxy-class vessel fast, but it seemed capable of almost magical feats of technology. Its shields could protect other ships. Its tractor beams could haul massive meteors. And its engines could be heard throbbing throughout the entire ship. Of course, it had a full weapons complement.
The Enterprise’s computers were so powerful, they could literally create artificial consciousness by accident. Not to mention store every piece of art and every recipe ever invented by any species anywhere.
The Enterprise was also the comfiest of all Starfleet ships. There were families on board, requiring a great deal of recreation facilities. There was an arboretum, a school, and, of course, the holodecks. Off-duty officers could hang out in the ship’s bar, Ten Forward (overseen by Guinan) which typically served nonintoxicating synthehol, but also had some actual booze behind the counter for connoisseurs. Of all the ships on “Star Trek,” the Enterprise-D is the one I’d most want to live on.
7. The Shrike
Introduced in the third season of “Star Trek: Picard,” the Shrike was overseen by the bitter changeling Vadic (Amanda Plummer) who was on a mission of retrieval and vengeance. She aimed to abscond with Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) and use his unique brain chemistry for nefarious purposes. She also aimed to use his brain as a means of taking down the entire Federation as retribution for war crimes committed against her people.
Of course, one cannot complete such tasks without a huge, destructive warship at one’s disposal, and the Shrike was a doozy. Riker described the ship as a guillotine, pointing out that it was clearly built merely to destroy other vessels. Its weapons were substantial. Even more impressive, though, was the Shrike’s super-advanced portal technology. If a vessel tried to free its clutches, the Shrike could project a miniature wormhole in front of said vessel, and force it to fly through, only to reappear nearby. It was very much like the gun used in the video game “Portal.”
Having destructive weapons is cool and all, but having portal tech puts the Shrike far beyond most enemy vessels the Federation typically encountered. One could use such technology for benevolent purposes, of course. If Vadic had wanted to, she could evacuate planets with the portal, or save ships caught in gravity wells. Instead, she used it to tease her prey.
6. The U.S.S. Voyager (enhanced)
In the final episode of “Star Trek: Voyager,” called “Endgame” (May 23, 2001), an older Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) travels 23 years back in time to the U.S.S. Voyager when it was still stranded several decades from home. She offered her past self the use of futuristic technology that would expedite the Voyager’s return to Earth. This offers the younger Janeway an ethical issue: taking the technology would help her return home, but it would also erase the timeline that the older Janeway came from.
Younger Janeway decides to take the tech, but for reasons her older self didn’t count on; she aimed to destroy the transwarp conduit technology used by her nemesis, the Borg. For a brief moment, the Voyager was outfitted with high-tech defensive armor, powerful, Borg-exploding weapons, and the capacity to use Borg conduits themselves. It’s the most powerful the Voyager had ever been.
And keep in mind that the Voyager was already plenty strong. It was one of the fastest ships made to date, had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of power, and imbued its holographic doctor with a consciousness of his own. The Voyager was relatively tiny when compared to the Enterprise, but it seemed capable of more.
5. Borg cube
One of the most notorious antagonists of “Star Trek” was the Borg, a species of unthinking cyborgs that saw the universe as nothing more than a garden of raw materials they could use to enhance themselves. The Borg all shared a single consciousness and had no other thoughts beyond expansion and machine-like efficiency. When it met the U.S.S. Enterprise, it studied the ship to determine if it could be cut up and used for parts. Any people they encountered were kidnapped and forcibly assimilated into their collective. When the Borg first appeared, they were scary. It was only through incessant re-use that the Borg started to lose their edge.
Borg ships, because they were built to be efficient, were mere cubes festooned with piping and tubing. There was no vital “center” to the ship, as it was commanded by the thousands of abducted brains inside it. And, most insidiously, the ship could learn. If you blasted off a piece with a phaser, the Borg would adapt instantly to defend itself from that weapon. It could also regenerate its metals and pieces, allowing it to recover from any attack.
It would take a lot of ingenuity to stop the Borg from attacking Earth, as there was no way to overpower them. The Borg didn’t so much fight the Federation as wipe them all out on their way to Earth. They were truly terrifying.
4. The Bioships of Species 8472
The Borg, however, met their match with Species 8472. The tripedal psychics came from an alternate dimension that was filled entirely with liquid. The crew of the Voyager called it fluidic space. The Borg attempted to infiltrate 8472’s dimension but were immediately faced with weapons that could, when combined, destroy Borg cubes in a single blast. Because of the unusual biological basis for 8472’s tech, the Borg had no chance to adapt. They also didn’t know how to assimilate something so complex. They had the Borg … afraid. They had no name for the species, hence the designation of Species 8472.
Unfortunately, 8472 was also hatefully aggressive, and, once in our dimension, were keen to destroy and overpower anyone they came across.
The 8472 ships were ineffably powerful, although audiences did see them equipped with free-floating psychic holodecks, peppered throughout the Delta Quadrant as intelligence-gathering devices. A big part of 8472’s power comes from their mystery. They have no interest in a Starfleet-like cultural exchange and would be just as happy staying hidden behind a wall of tactical offense.
It wouldn’t be until the video game “Star Trek: Voyager — Elite Force” that the aliens would be given a proper name: the Undine.
3. The U.S.S. Protostar
Paramount+
The U.S.S. Protostar was central to the short-lived animated series “Star Trek: Prodigy,” but it was powerful enough to be unique in “Star Trek.” The Protostar, as its name implies, was powered by an artificially captured sun, early in its development, and kept small enough to keep in the Protostar’s engine room. The ship was only a prototype, so its engines weren’t easily controlled, but when the protostar drive was engaged, the ship’s engines became super-powered, allowing the ship to travel many times faster than a typical starship; it could seemingly cross the entire galaxy in a matter of weeks, not centuries.
The Protostar was not a comfortable ship, and was one of the smaller “full size” starships built by Starfleet; it could seemingly house only about 20 or 25 people, max. It was also equipped with an intelligent hologram (one that looked like a young Captain Janeway) that could take command in a pinch. A group of roguish teens ended up taking command of the Protostar and learned how to be better people because of it. The series at large aimed to appeal to a younger generation of viewers.
The Protostar’s speed makes it one of the most powerful ships in Trek history.
2. The U.S.S. Discovery-A
The creators of “Star Trek: Discovery” made their titular ship a little too overpowered, and I think they knew it. The U.S.S. Discovery had discovered that the entire galaxy was populated by a massive cloud of centillions of interdimensional spores that no one had previously been able to detect. The engineers on the Discovery found a way to tap their ship’s engines directly into the interdimensional mycelial network and use it to instantaneously pop from one side of the galaxy to the next. As the show progressed, the spore drive became more and more streamlined until the Discovery could essentially teleport anywhere in the universe.
This, of course, robbed “Star Trek” of, well, trekking. There was no longer any travel time from one place to the next. The spore drive was so powerful, that its existence in “Star Trek” would fundamentally alter the fabric of the show. As such, the “Discovery” writers had to find a way to remove the Discovery from the known “Star Trek” timeline and throw it almost 1,000 years into the future.
Once in the 32nd century, though, the Discovery was further upgraded by ultra-tech. The U.S.S. Discovery-A was given free-floating engines, super-speed, and technology that the crew was impressed by. Personal transporters? Holographic computer stations? This ship is great. The Discovery-A is, by far, the most advanced thing ever seen on a “Star Trek” show for any length of time.
1. V’Ger
Of course, what happens when a simple probe becomes so powerful that it becomes a new life form? In 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” a large threatening cloud appears in space, so powerful it can simply absorb any vehicles that dare to fly close. It doesn’t attack so much as erase others from existence. This is V’Ger. It’s large enough for the Enterprise to fly through for an extended period and not reach the center. The bulk of “Motion Picture” takes place inside of V’Ger.
V’Ger is “powerful,” I suppose, in that it’s so powerful, that the human mind can barely comprehend it. Its entire mass seems to be a combination of physical technology and psychic projection. The Enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. It could erase the whole of our solar system, should that be its intent. Knowing its intent, however, takes Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) the bulk of the film to figure out.
It’s eventually revealed that V’Ger began its life as the (fictional) Voyager-6 space probe, launched from Earth in the 20th century. Out in the wilds of deep space, the probe somehow became enhanced, perhaps via an advanced unknown species of engineers, or perhaps through a time portal. It was now returning to Earth to report its findings, stuffed with more information than anyone would possibly understand. It eventually found that the only thing it had left to learn was love. V’Ger merged with a human and a Deltan and ascended to a higher plane in what could only be described as a galactic orgasm.
Yeah, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” is a good one. And nothing was ever more powerful than V’Ger.
