Ah, so much to say, so much to say.\u00a0 The Trouble with Tribbles is a comic episode.\u00a0 It allows Shatner and the rest of the regulars to ham it up outrageously.\u00a0 And as it turns out that is the highest and best use of the series.\u00a0 Uhura, Chekov, Scotty, McCoy, Spock and of course Kirk are provided dialog and space to flesh out their characters with some comic verve.\u00a0 Finally, something to enjoy.<\/p>\n
The plot has the Enterprise summoned by an emergency distress call to Deep Space Station blah blah blah\u00a0 where they find that there is no emergency but that a space bureaucrat is worried that his space wheat seeds will be sabotaged before it can be delivered to a planet in dispute between Klingons and the Federation. \u00a0Kirk is outraged by this high-handed use of a distress call and insults the Under-Secretary of Wheat.\u00a0 Then Kirk is called up by his boss and told to do what the bureaucrat tells him to do.\u00a0 Kirk obeys with bad grace and assigns guards to protect the wheat from the Klingons who are on board the space station for rest and relaxation.\u00a0 The Klingon commander is played by the actor who showed up on the episode, \u201cThe Squire of Gothos\u201d as the titular character Trelane.\u00a0 So Kirk uses the opportunity of the stay at the space station to allow his whole crew to take shore leave on the space station.\u00a0 Scotty is the only crewman who doesn\u2019t want to take leave but Kirk forces him to go and keep an eye on the rest of the crew and avoid trouble with the Klingons.<\/p>\n
A space trader named Cyrano Jones shows up at the space station and among the things he is selling are tribbles.\u00a0 These are fur balls that purr around humans and hate Klingons.\u00a0 Jones gives one to Uhura while she is seated at the bar in the space station lounge.\u00a0 She takes it back to the ship and we find out that tribbles are prolific breeders and within a few days the Enterprise and the space station are both becoming overrun with the fuzzy creatures.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Scotty, Chekov and some red shirts are having drinks in the lounge when one of the Klingons starts insulting Kirk.\u00a0 Chekov is incensed and wants to start a brawl with the Klingons but Scotty restrains him explaining that it isn\u2019t important and everyone is entitled to his opinion.\u00a0 But when the Klingon starts insulting the Enterprise as a ship Scotty punches him in the head and a huge brawl breaks out.\u00a0 The fight alarms the Under-Secretary of Space Wheat and he rants and raves at Kirk about dangerous Klingons and rowdy Federation spacemen and tribbles.\u00a0 Kirk is annoyed and promises to discipline his crew.<\/p>\n
At this point the tribble infestation on the Enterprise becomes a catastrophe.\u00a0 The tribbles have managed to infiltrate the food production systems and we see the spectacle of Kirk staring at his lunch tray covered with tribbles muttering \u201cmy chicken sandwich and coffee\u201d to anyone who will listen.\u00a0 When Scotty explains that the tribbles have managed to get into the air ducts, Kirk immediately realizes that the space wheat storage bins have air ducts too.\u00a0 Kirk, Spock and McCoy rush over to the space station and when the storage bins doors don\u2019t open easily Kirk fiddles with it and the overhead bin opens up and pours down hundreds of tribbles onto Kirk.\u00a0 They\u2019ve eaten all the space wheat and the Under-Secretary of Space Wheat, who was there to witness this debacle, blows a space-gasket and starts heaping abuse and threats on Kirk.\u00a0 Meanwhile Spock, after first estimating the number of tribbles as something north of a million, observes that many of the tribbles are dead.\u00a0 Bones then diagnoses the cause of death as a poison that the wheat contains.\u00a0 A virus has been added to the wheat which renders the eater unable to ingest nutrition and therefore subject to death by starvation.<\/p>\n
Using the tribbles\u2019 hatred of Klingons Kirk is able to discover that the \u00a0Under-Under-Secretary of Space Wheat is a disguised Klingon and poisoned the space wheat.\u00a0 This of course shuts up the Under-Secretary of Space Wheat and allows Kirk to walk away as the hero.<\/p>\n
Finally Kirk returns to the ship and finds it cleared of tribbles and after a lot of hemming and hawing we find out that with the approval of Spock and McCoy, Scotty beamed all the tribbles onto the Klingon battleship just as it was about to warp out of orbit.\u00a0 His words were, \u201cI beamed them into the engineering section where they\u2019ll be no tribble at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other than the fact that writer David Gerrold stole the concept of the tribble from Heinlein\u2019s martian flat cats as they appeared in the novel \u201cThe Rolling Stones\u201d I wholly approve of this episode.\u00a0 It is obvious that a comical take on the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise is the only good purpose the show can be put to.<\/p>\n
Kirk spends the whole episode outraged about everything.\u00a0 The Under-Secretary is a truly annoying character.\u00a0 For once you actually sympathize with Kirk.\u00a0 The Klingons mock Kirk in front of his crew describing him as a strutting autocrat.\u00a0 When Scotty tells Kirk about it and further admits that he didn\u2019t bother to defend Kirk from the insults but did become enraged when the ship was insulted Kirk is cut to the quick.\u00a0 And when the tribbles start discomfiting Kirk at every turn he is irritable and petulant.\u00a0 This was indeed Shatner\u2019s finest hour on Star Trek.<\/p>\n
And Uhura, Scotty, Chekov get much more screen time than on any other episode I can remember.\u00a0 Uhura gets to play with the tribble and converse with the rest of the crew.\u00a0 Scotty and Chekov get a barroom brawl scene.\u00a0 Even Spock gets to ham it up a little.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t quibble about the tribbles.\u00a0 I\u2019m just going to give this episode a 10\u00a0 \/\/\u00a0 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ah, so much to say, so much to say.\u00a0 The Trouble with Tribbles is a comic episode.\u00a0 It allows Shatner and the rest of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,2149,240],"tags":[2633,2150,38,1355,711,44,309,265,1691,293,2030,2632,2634,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-11875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-david-gerrold","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-the-trouble-with-tribbles","tag-tribbles","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n