Star Trek Took Inspiration From The Simplest Children’s Game
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Move Along Home,” our intrepid Starfleet heroes are stuck inside a bizarre alien game named “chula” whose rules they cannot understand. Audiences watching at home couldn’t understand the rules, either, which is one of this awful episode’s many problems. Just when you thought this episode couldn’t get any worse, here’s a real gut punch: that game that nobody could figure out is mostly a three-dimensional version of Chutes and Ladders.
The Chutes And Ladders Connection
To appreciate how bizarre this story is, you may need a quick refresher on what “Move Along Home” was all about. The episode begins with game-loving aliens visiting Deep Space Nine and taking Quark for all the latinum he’s worth at the dabo tables. When Quark tries to rig the tables in his favor, the aliens notice and force the Ferengi to play a new game called chula.
Quark Is Out Of His Element
Chula is unlike anything Quark has ever played before and has a very special twist: even as the greedy bartender plays against his alien adversary on the station, his colleagues (Sisko, Dax, Bashir, and Kira) are stuck inside the maze-like game, Jumanji-style. As far as Quark knows, his decisions while playing this game will decide whether these characters live or die…quite a bit of pressure from someone whose day job is simply slinging alcohol and selling holodeck time.
Not Even Close To Dungeons & Dragons
When “Move Along Home” first came out, many thought the game’s maze-like structure was modeled a bit after Dungeons & Dragons. However, episode co-writer Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci later said that the writing team’s inspiration went back centuries instead of decades. They researched games from a variety of eras, including Rome, ancient Egypt, and Elizabethan England, picking and choosing various facets from these different diversions to include in their onscreen game.
It’s A Play On Words
Since the writers researched games that stretched back millennia, you might think that chula is confusing because it was inspired by games that were old when your ancestors were young. However, Carrigan-Fauci sheepishly admitted that the biggest inspiration was a game that almost everyone in the 80’s and 90’s had played in their childhood. That game was Chutes and Ladders, and it was chosen because the writers needed a multi-level game and this children’s game would perfectly fit the bill once it was transformed from 2D to 3D.
Carrigan-Fauci claims that chula being inspired by Chutes and Ladders was something that even the Star Trek producers were most likely unaware of. That means they were also unaware of the origin of the game’s name. Simply put, “chula” is a word created by combining the first syllables of two words: “chutes” and “ladders.”
Based On A Simple Children’s Game
Given this information, we can’t help but admire the irony: onscreen, chula is confusing to audiences, and fellow episode writer Frederick Rappaport insists that this was by design because all fans needed to know was that the Sisko and his team “were in jeopardy.” For all that confusion and seeming complexity, though, chula is based on a game so simple that children everywhere know how to play. Maybe those same kids can help us unravel the other big question of this episode: why “Move Along Home” is the worst episode of Deep Space Nine ever made.
