The Trouble With Tribbles

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Star Trek: TOS episode
"The Trouble With Tribbles"
Image:STTroubleTrib.jpg
Captain Kirk up to his shirt in tribbles
Episode no. 44
Prod. code 042
Remastered no. 9
Airdate December 29, 1967
Writer(s) David Gerrold
Director Joseph Pevney
Guest star(s) William Schallert
William Campbell
Stanley Adams
Whit Bissell
Michael Pataki
Ed Reimers
Charlie Brill
Paul Baxley
David L. Ross
Guy Raymond
Eddie Paskey
William Blackburn
Year 2268
Stardate 4523.3
Episode chronology
Previous "Wolf in the Fold"
Next "The Gamesters of Triskelion"

"The Trouble With Tribbles" is a second-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on December 29, 1967 and repeated June 21, 1968. It is episode #44, production #42, and was written by David Gerrold, and directed by Joseph Pevney.

Overview: The Federation and the Klingons have aspirations to develop a nearby planet; Kirk has to deal with the Klingons on one side, the high strung Federation's Undersecretary for Agriculture on the other, and in the middle is a trader who has introduced a very cuddly, and very prolific, little creature.

Contents

[edit] Plot

On stardate 4523.3, Captain James T. Kirk and his crew are called to Deep Space Station K7 by a priority-one distress call. The station is near Sherman's Planet, a world in a sector of space disputed between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, Sherman's Planet would be awarded to whichever side demonstrates that it can manage it most efficiently.

Kirk is furious when he later realizes the distress call was unwarranted, and the undersecretary in charge of agriculture in the sector, Nilz Baris, simply wants someone to guard the shipments of quadro-triticale grain (wheat/rye hybrid) bound for Sherman's Planet. To Baris's annoyance, Kirk assigns two token guards to the task shortly before learning that Starfleet Command endorses Baris's concerns. A Klingon ship soon arrives at the space station and requests that its crew be granted shore leave, as entitled under the treaty. Kirk tells the Klingon leader Koloth that he may only bring members of his crew down 12 at a time, and that he will provide one security guard for each Klingon who beams down.

Meanwhile, an independent trader, Cyrano Jones, brings some little furry animals called tribbles onto the station to sell; he gives one to Uhura as a marketing ploy. She brings it on board the Enterprise, where it and its offspring are treated as adorable pets. The animals purr a relaxing trill that the crew (even the stoic Mr. Spock) find soothing. Klingons, however, find tribbles very annoying, and the feeling is mutual: tribbles emit an ear-piercing shriek of aggression whenever they are around Klingons.

The "trouble" with the tribbles is that they reproduce far too quickly; in the words of Dr. McCoy, "they are born pregnant" and threaten to consume all the onboard supplies. The problem is aggravated when it is discovered that the creatures are physically entering essential ship systems, interfering with their functions and consuming any edible contents present. Kirk realizes that if the tribbles are getting into the Enterprise's stores, then they are a direct threat to the grain stores aboard the station. However, upon examining the holds, Kirk learns the that it is already too late; the tribbles have indeed eaten the grain. It appears the mission has ended in a fiasco. On top of that, Koloth wants Kirk to formally apologize since some of the Enterprise crew members have started, though not without provocation, a western-style fistfight with the Klingon crew in the station's bar.

Spock and McCoy, however, soon discover that around half the tribbles in the hold are dead and many of the rest were dying, alerting the Federation that the grain has been poisoned. Furthermore, the tribbles also give away the identity of a Klingon agent responsible. The saboteur is the only "human" the tribbles don't like: Arne Darvin, Baris's own assistant. Upon a medical scan by Dr. McCoy, it is revealed that Darvin is indeed a Klingon in disguise. Thus the tribbles redeem themselves and enable the Federation to score a diplomatic victory against the Klingons. As for Cyrano Jones, who introduced the species to the station, he is ordered to remove the tribbles from the station (a clean-up task that Spock estimates will take 17.9 years) or be imprisoned for 20 years for transporting a dangerous life-form off its native planet.

Just before departing, all tribbles that were on the Enterprise are somehow beamed onto the Klingon ship by Scotty as a retaliation for the troubles the Klingons have caused, where, in his words, "they'll be no tribble at all".

[edit] 40th anniversary remastering

"The Trouble With Tribbles" was remastered in 2006 and first aired on November 4, 2006 as part of the remastered original series. It was preceded a week earlier by "Catspaw", and followed a week later by "Mirror, Mirror". Video and audio have been digitally restored, and the episode features the all-CGI USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions. Other changes to this episode include:

  • Space station K7 is rendered as a CGI effect with more surface detail added.
  • A Klingon ship has been added in orbit around the station that was never seen in the original episode, but was seen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine tribute episode, "Trials and Tribble-ations". None of the effects from "Trials and Tribble-ations" were used in the remastered episode.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Background

David Gerrold was a college student just learning to write for television when he submitted five story premises to Producer Gene L. Coon. Of those five, "The Fuzzies" was the only one that interested Coon, and Gerrold was commissioned to write the story outline (retitled A Fuzzy Thing Happened To Me. . .) and script while still an amateur.

Gerrold wrote the character of Ensign Freeman with the intention of playing the part himself; however, Coon nixed the idea, saying that Gerrold was too skinny. Paul Baxley, William Shatner's frequent stuntman, was cast in the role. (Gerrold later appeared as an Enterprise crew member watching the destruction of the space station Epsilon 9 in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.)

"Tribbles" was originally intended to be a serious take on the introduction of alien species to predator-free environments, as had happened with rabbits in Australia. Gerrold said he wanted to show how something that looked cute, fuzzy and adorable could be quite dangerous. Another version of the same theme appears in his script treatment "Bandi", in which a crew member has a sort of living teddy-bear for a pet. When the creature feels threatened, it telepathically induces other species to fight or kill on its behalf. D.C. Fontana later used the idea in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Encounter at Farpoint", in which the Bandi are a people who appear to be harmless and peaceful, but are found to enslave other entities to materialize their desires. Possible literary antecedents include Pigs Is Pigs and the flatcats from the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Rolling Stones.[1]

The use of quadro-triticale was supposed to reestablish Mr. Sulu as an amateur botanist. Since George Takei was away filming The Green Berets, all his lines were given instead to Ensign Chekov, marking the only time Scotty and Chekov have a conversation during the original series.[1]

James Doohan did most of his own stunts in this episode, including some of the punches in the bar fight scene, exposing his missing middle finger (lost as a result of a war injury) for the first time (the other being "Catspaw"). The missing finger is also observable under the great armload of tribbles that Scotty carries into the lounge.

"Sherman's Planet" was a reference to Holly Sherman, David Gerrold's girlfriend at the time.[1]

[edit] Setting

Deep Space Station K7 was based on a model for a real-life space station/moon base proposed by Douglas Aircraft as early as 1960. Intended to be housed in the top stage of the Saturn IB or Saturn V rocket, it was designed to deploy like an inflatable balloon. This space station was also available as a model from Aluminium Metal Toys.[2]

[edit] Tribbles revisited

The James Blish adaptation of the episode was included in the Star Trek 3 collection published in April 1969. It is based on a version of the script which incorporated Sulu rather than Chekov. The episode was the basis of the third Star Trek Fotonovel.

A sequel episode appeared in Star Trek: The Animated Series titled "More Tribbles, More Troubles", for which Gerrold also wrote the script. He is writing another sequel for the Star Trek: New Voyages fan film series.

Tribbles are handled by Starfleet personnel in the bar scene in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock while Dr. McCoy seeks illegal passage to the Genesis Planet.

The original episode was later edited and spliced into the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations". In this retelling, the crew of Deep Space Nine witness the original events via time travel in an effort to stop Darvin from returning to change the course of history. This time, Gerrold made a cameo as a gray-haired, red-shirted ensign in a corridor of the Enterprise. During the episode, Worf reveals that Klingons considered tribbles to be an ecological menace and destroyed their homeworld.

The makeup used in the original series was minimal, whereas by the time of the Star Trek films and spinoff series the Klingons had a very obviously different facial appearance from humans. This was not reconciled in the DS9 episode, but merely played for a laugh. Other DS9 crew members look in wonder at the mostly-human-looking Klingons and ask Worf, "Those are Klingons?" Worf offers no explanation, but merely grumps, "We do not discuss it with outsiders."[3]

The original episode is featured on the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Klingon DVD set as the fourth of 13 episodes featured on the four-disc set. It was released on August 1, 2006, in the United States and Canada.

[edit] In popular culture

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • In the cartoon Futurama, in the episode entitled "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", a recollection of the plan to beam the tribbles aboard the Klingon vessel and Scotty's pun serve as a blessing in the ceremonies of the overzealous Trekdom religion, as presented in a flashback sequence. The episode entitled "The Problem With Popplers" is a reference to the title of this episode.
  • The album Alien Worlds by the Swedish synthpop band S.P.O.C.K featured a track titled "Trouble With Tribbles".
  • In the Commodore 64 version of the classic video game Elite, it was possible for Trumbles, creatures based on Tribbles, to infest the player's ship. In PC Elite Plus, the creatures are actually called Tribbles.[4]
  • The computer game Jet Set Willy 2 featured a level called "The Trouble with Tribbles is..."
  • The animated TV show The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron loosely parodies "The Trouble With Tribbles" in the episode entitled "Attack of the Twonkies". Also, as a running gag, the furry twonkies occasionally appear in the background scenes of future episodes.
  • The animated TV show Sealab 2021 based the Season Two episode "Hail Squishface" around a breed of creatures called Gloops that are brought on board by a strange Asian S&M saleswoman, who after being sold off as cute, with warnings ignored by Captain Murphy, quickly reproduce, overtake, and devour Sealab's kelp harvest, until they are burned to death by Sealab's crew. They are also capable of emitting noxious gases, which overpowers Sealab's crew.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Gerrold, David. The Trouble With Tribbles: the birth, sale and final production of one episode. benbellabooks.com. Retrieved on 27 November 2006.
  2. ^ AMT K7 Space Station. Retrieved on 2007-08-30.
  3. ^ A side-by-side comparison of the bar fight from this show and DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations", featuring this conversation
  4. ^ alt.fan.elite FAQ (1999-09-28). Retrieved on 2007-09-24.

[edit] External links

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"The Gamesters of Triskelion"
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