Showdown: Star Trek alien or gourmet cheese?

Image by williac via Flickr

It's time for another geek showdown, where I list off 20 or so unlikely terms and you guess which of two antithetical but bizarrely similar categories each entry belongs to. This week, just in time for the new Star Trek flick, we give you a matchup of Trek alien races and real-world gourmet cheeses. The descriptions for each are in "invisible" text after each entry, just highlight the area to figure out which is cheese, and which is just a cheesy use of make-up.

1. Bolian - The blue-skinned dudes with a single ridge running down their faces; played waiters and barbers on NextGen.
2. Caprino - Italian goat cheese.
3. Quark- Russian version of ricotta cheese.
4. Breen - Evil race that team up with Cardassia and the Dominion during DS9's Dominion War seasons. Helmets kinda look like the one Princess Leia wore when she pretended to be a bounty hunder in Return of the Jedi.
5. Sbrinz - Swiss version of Parmesan cheese.
6. Gorn - Slow-moving lizard dudes that Captain Kirk beat by building a homemade cannon out of rocks and sticks.
7. Sakura - Japan's only famous cheese, made using cherry leaves.
8. Nausicaan - Predator-faced mercenaries famous for stabbing Capt. Picard in the heart when he was just out of Starfleet Academy.
9. Briori- Alien race from Voyager that famously kidnapped Amelia Earhart.
10. Benzite- Grey-faced aliens from NextGen that have smoky little humidifiers sticking out from their chests, and made a habit of befriending Wesley Crusher.
11. Tyrolean Grey - Famously stinky Austrian cheese with sticky grey or black centers.
12. Brunali - Remember that baby Borg, Icheb, that Seven of Nine saved and adopted and made into Wesley Crusher 2.0 on Voyager? He was Brunali.
13. Rokpol - Polish blue cheese.
14. Caitian - Feline species made famous by the hottie Uhura-wannabe M'Ress from the original Trek animated series.
15. Edo - Remember the planet of half-naked hotties that wanted to execute Wesley Crusher for stepping on a garden? They were Edo.
16. Kobali- Alien race from Voyager that reproduces by reanimating corpses from other species.
17. Valdeon - Spanish blue cheese.
18. Menk - Neanderthal-esque race from the episode of Enterprise where Dr. Phlox sort of invented the Prime Directive--by letting another race die of plague.
19. Coon - Australian Cheddar.
20. Tamarian - The race that spoke only in metaphors from NextGen, and gave us the nerd catchphrases "Darmok at Tanagra" and "Shaka, when the walls fell."

Note: Bonus points if you notice the Prime Directive joke hidden in the cheese-versus-aliens pattern.

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