Classic “Star Trek” fans will instantly recognize Nomad, the rogue robot brought on board the USS Enterprise in the episode “The Changeling” from 1967. Nomad was a 21st-century Earth probe that drifted into deep space, had mysteriously evolved, and was now hellbent on destroying what it considered to be imperfections and “biological infestations,” meaning humanoid populations all over the galaxy. Nomad spared the Enterprise from its destructive impulses, as it had mistaken Captain Kirk (William Shatner) for its inventor. Kirk ultimately dispatched of Nomad by pointing out its own flaws, forcing it to destroy itself. It seems that Nomad, deactivated, somehow made its way to the USS Cerritos over a century later.
Right next to Nomad was a lirpa, the bladed weapon that Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) used to fight one another in the episode “Amok Time.” Lirpas are five-foot staffs with a moon-shaped blade on one end, and a heavy weight on the other. One might note that the heavy weight would make using the blade immensely difficult. There is also a quick shot of a “Next Generation”-era bat’leth, a perfectly common Klingon sword with four points and multiple handles. (You might remember that a bat’leth hung on the wall in Worf’s quarters.)
There is a spider in the warehouse as well, stored in a glowing glass cylinder. When Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) reaches out to touch it, Tendi (Noël Wells) yells at him. It seems that the spider will “make his head fall off and skitter away.” This is apparently not a “Star Trek” event, but a reference to John Carpenter’s 1982 film “The Thing,” a film wherein someone’s head fell off — actually a shape-shifting alien — and became a spider-like creature before skittering away.
