Tribble-ing Dilemmas

 

This is my entry in the 10th Annual Favorite TV Episodes Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts.

Star Trek is one of the most prevalent franchises to ever grace the small (and big) screen.  Beginning with the original, commonly referred to as Star Trek: The Original Series (or Star Trek: TOS for short) in 1966, the franchise spawned (as of today) 10 TV shows, an animated cartoon series, 13 movies and God knows how many novels and movie tie-in books. The fan base continues to grow, even to this day.  There are grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) of the people who watched the first series who are jumping on board, who weren't even passing thoughts in the minds of their predecessors when it first aired.

As for me, I was still a little too young to actually watch the first iteration, even though I was alive at the time. I didn't actually get into the show until watching reruns in the mid 70's. I do remember going with my sister to watch the first movie when it came out.  (I want to say it was Christmas Eve, but it may have been before then.) By then we had both been exposed to the original series so we didn't go in blind, but it was still fairly fresh, at least to me. I had only been catching syndication episodes here and there.

One of the classic episodes I remembered was the one called "The Trouble with Tribbles" which was more like a comic relief episode than an actual drama like most of the others.  Being the comedy fanatic that I was at the time, I enjoyed it. And it ranks favorably with the more fanatic Trekkies (as fans are traditionally known), too. One site I saw puts it at #12 in a ranking of the first series episodes, not a bad place even though there were only 79 episodes in that first series.

By the time I was in college and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Star Trek; TNG) came along I was still a fan of the original, however, it took a while for me to warm up to the new show.  My main problem with the new one was the character of Troi.  While I thought the actress, Marina Sirtis, that played her was attractive, I found the idea of an empath race to be very un-scientific, and as a result shied away from it for years.  I only got into it after it went into syndication and my parents were watching it.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine (Star Trek: DS9) appealed to me more.  It seemed to have a bit more of the kind of characters i could relate to.  And it had several episodes that really piqued my interest, since by then I was heavily into time travel stories.  Two in particular that dealt directly with the concept of time travel  were "Little Green Men", which took on the Roswell incident by implying that the aliens who crashed were three of the Ferengi characters on the show who had somehow been transported back in time to Roswell, circa 1947.

The other was "Trials and Tribble-ations". Side note: Don't ask me why I was more willing to accept a race of creatures that could multiply itself in such a radical fashion as the tribbles were capable when I was unable to accept an empath.  Maybe it's just the comic part that made it less offensive, even to my rational mind. Because tribbles make no sense from a evolutionary standpoint.  How could a creature evolve that only exists to consume and procreate? (And some of you more cynical readers are countering that argument, I know...)

The best part of this DS9 episode was how they managed to meld interaction between the two series. They used clips from the original series and yet managed to smoothly intersect the characters on the new series with those of the old show, even though some 30 years had passed between the two shows (although in terms of the two shows timeline it was actually more in the neighborhood of  100 years between the two).

Watching both in succession is an interesting way to see how the characters interact with these curious creatures. 

The Trouble with Tribbles: (Star Trek: TOS episode: Air date Dec. 29. 1967)

(Note: If you are lucky enough to locate a copy of episode author David Gerrold's  reminiscence of the background to this episode, The Complete Story of One of Star Trek's Most Popular Episodes "The Trouble With Tribbles", it's worth checking out.  He details his early background in attempts to get a story filmed on the classic show, including some of his story ideas that were not accepted.)

The story begins with a preparation to visit a space station near the border of Klingon territory. In the history of Star Trek, the Federation spent some time in a "Cold War" with the Klingons (who were a sci-fi equivalent of the Russians with whom the U.S. had it's own Cold War during the time). Kirk is in a meeting with Spock and Chekhov discussing the implications of a competition between the Klingons and the Federation concerning the sector.  Essentially there is a treaty between the two that whoever can lay claim to the best improvements in the sector will lay claim to the sector itself.

In the middle of this comes a Priority 1 alert, But when the Enterprise shows up, there is no sign of danger.  Kirk, of course, is incensed, because a Priority 1 distress signal means there is serious trouble brewing (you know, like maybe the Klingons are blasting away with photon torpedoes on the station or something...). It turns out that the local bigwig in the area, Nils Baris (William Schallert) had issued it so that the Enterprise could guard a shipment of special wheat.  Wheat?  A Priority 1 Alert to guard wheat???

 

Well, the wheat is extremely valuable to the Federation's interests. However, at least to Kirk, not worth a fuss.  But given a command by higher ups, he concedes to put two, and only two, guards on detail.  And issues a shore leave for all other personnel not involved in the detail.

Uhura goes shopping and in a bar meets up with Cyrano Jones, a trader who is trying to get the bartender to buy something, anything, that he has to sell.  But the bartender rejects all items.  That is until Cyrano brings out a tribble.  (Essentially just a ball of fur.) But the tribbles are extremely friendly and Uhura likes it, so Cyrano gives her one.  And convinces the bartender to buy more.

The tribble has only two qualities that are essential to it's survival.  One: it will eat almost anything. And two: (and this is the source of the plot for this episode) it reproduces quite rapidly.  By a few hours later, Uhura now has a half a dozen of the little creatures.

In the meantime, a Klingon ship has shown up at the space station.  And the captain of the ship, Koloth, demands shore leave for his own crew.  (Note: The Klingon ship must be cloaked most of the time, because when long shots are shown of the space station the only ship you see is The Enterprise, although for the life of me I can't imagine why it would want to stay cloaked all the time if it's current mission was only peaceful...)

 

Kirk reluctantly agrees, but insists that the contingent be a one on one basis; for every Klingon there will be a Federation person on the space station, basically to keep an eye on the Klingons.

One thing that becomes readily apparent is that the tribbles like everyone... except Klingons.  (Pay attention to that, it becomes relevant later.)  Meanwhile, the tribbles themselves are multiplying at a phenomenal rate, and threatening to overrun the space station, as well as the Enterprise. As Dr. McCoy observes, they are apparently "born pregnant".  Fairly soon there are more tribbles than you can shake a stick at.  

 

And eating everything in sight.  

Ultimately the tribbles get into the valuable grain storage.  And of course consume the entire batch.  But the downside is that the tribbles are dying after eating the grain.  And it turns out that the grain shipment has been poisoned.  And the blame falls on Baris' secretary, Darvin (Charlie Brill). 

 

 

And Darvin, it turns out, is not a human... he is actually, you guessed it... a Klingon.  Which is revealed when a tribble is brought near him and the tribble reacts the same way as it has near every other Klingon.

So the tribbles have become heroes, even if they had to sacrifice their lives to do so.  And the only thing left is to get rid of the remaining tribbles on the base.  Kirk tasks Cyrano with that duty, which will take years... hell of a fitting punishment if you ask me.  And Scotty comes up with an ingenious plan for those tribbles that are still on the Enterprise.

 

Trials and Tribble-ations: (Star Trek : DS9 episode: Air date: Nov 4, 1996)

The crew at Deep Space Nine have a problem on their hands.  They are being visited by the Time Patrol (not the actual name of the organization, just one I made up to keep from having to type in the full name every time).  It seems that the crew accidentally went back in time, not on purpose, as far as they are concerned.  Just that certain circumstances caused it to happen:

What happened?  They took on board a man who had been trapped in Cardassian space and had been released to the crew.  The man introduced himself as "Barry Waddle".  

 

At the same time, the crew had been tasked with returning a sacred relic, the Orb of Time, to the Bajorans, which had been held in Cardassian possession for some time.

 While en route they run into a massive surge of "chroniton radiation" and end up 100 years in the past, near the space station K7 (see the previous Tribble episode.) They are able to stay cloaked, but because they are where they are they are also near the events of that previously mentioned episode.  And there on the screen is the first Enterprise.

It turns out Waddle is not who he claims to be.  It is actually Darvin, the Klingon spy from the original series episode.  

 

 

 

No one is sure why, but Darvin managed to use the orb and the ship to go back in time. They speculate that either he intends to warn his younger self of his impending unmasking or, even more ominous, that he intends to kill Captain Kirk (which would certainly put a damper on the timeline as we know it.)

As it turns out, the latter is exactly what Darvin plans.  He has secreted a bomb in one of the tribbles. Which creates a suspenseful problem. Because although the spaceship can be scanned in toto with basically one fell swoop, onboard the K7, each tribble has to be individually scanned. With some 1,000,000 tribbles on just the space station alone, that's going to require days.  And "days" are not what the crew has.  They only have minutes.

 

Fortunately for the crew  (and the time line), they do manage to get to the tribble in question and have it beamed out into space before it explodes.  And the crew returns to it's right time line. Although not entirely with the same contingent that originally went back in time...

Both of these episodes prove that you can mix a little comedy in with sci-fi (not entirely unprecedented, mind you. The entire genre of sci-fi has had it's own share of comedic interludes). But thanks to Gerrold and his fellow writers for the DS9 episode we do have an interesting  side trip from the serious for a bit.

Well, folks, that wraps up this trip back through time.  Have fun.  And don't pick up any strange little furballs on your way home.

Quiggy