(At 33:50) The Klingons in the bar start singing a Klingon drinking song. The song was first heard in the DS9 episode The Way of the Warrior (1995). It was sung by Lt. Commander Worf and Klingon officer Huraga, an old friend of Worf's father Mogh. The song was also heard twice on Star Trek: Voyager (1995), in the season six episode Barge of the Dead (1999) when the Doctor sang the song while trying to teach it to Seven of Nine, who reluctantly joined in. It was also heard in the season seven episode Prophecy (2001) after the USS Voyager rescued a group of Klingons who had been lost in the Delta Quadrant for nearly a century.
The song's lyrics are:
Which translate to:
The song's lyrics are:
- 'ej HumtaH 'ej DechtaH 'Iw
- 'ej Doq SoDtaH ghoSpa' Sqral bIQtIq
- 'e' pa' jaj law' moch jaj puS
- jaj qeylIS molor mIgh HoHchu'qu'
Which translate to:
- And the blood was continuously sticky on all sides.
- And the River Sqral continuously flooded red before going onward.
- That there day is most superior,
- The day Kahless truly and clearly killed evil Molor.
Scotty says 'Cross my heart and hope to get stuck in a pattern buffer'. In the Star Trek TNG episode 'Relics' it was revealed Scotty became stuck in a transporter pattern buffer for seventy five years.
During the bar scene when the Klingons start singing they are eventually drowned out by the rhythmic hand banging of the locals. This is a homage to the scene in Casablanca when the occupying Germans at Rick's Café Americain begin singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" but are also drowned out by the French locals who begin singing "La Marseillaise".
Chiaroscuro (the episode title) is an Italian art term meaning "light-dark", it is derived from the Italian words "chiaro" (clear/bright) and "scuro" (dark). It is used to describe the contrast between light and shadow on a flat surface, which is a technique artists use to make flat objects (like a painting) look three-dimensional and create the illusion of volume and depth.
M'Benga mentions the resistance agent who took her own life used the 'Borgia' plant. The Borgias were powerful family in Renaissance Italy notorious for poisoning their enemies.
The plant was first mentioned in The Man Trap (1966) as the cause of Crewman Darnel's death, but was ruled out because the symptoms did not match that of Borgia plant poisoning.
The plant was first mentioned in The Man Trap (1966) as the cause of Crewman Darnel's death, but was ruled out because the symptoms did not match that of Borgia plant poisoning.
