STAR TREK
The Trouble with Tribbles

From Wikipedia:

"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.

More here.

Fair disclosure: I know more about this episode of Star Trek than any other. The reason why is that I am a huge David Gerrold fan, and have consequently read his book chronicling the making of the episode, also called "The Trouble with Tribbles." Gerrold, who was something of a wunderkind in his youth, did what no other Trek writer, before or since, ever pulled off. He came out of nowhere with one of the best Star Trek scripts in the cannon. I mean, he literally came out of nowhere. He was a college student who fell in love with the show during the first season, and managed to get some of his story ideas to a producer who liked them. Then he wrote the script and they shot it. This is amazing because he only had some passing knowledge about how television functions, and the limitations the medium places on the writing. I mean, I have some passing knowledge of how the medium functions, but even if I had ideas as good as his, I sincerely doubt I could come up with something that would actually work in terms of the realities of making TV shows. That is, Gerrold, even as a kid, is brilliant not only as a storyteller, but also as a craftsman who can get his stories to work in multiple media, whether it's print with his fantastic Heinleinesque sci-fi novels, or on the screen with his Trek stuff.

Because I've read his book about it, I understand the clockwork functioning of this episode, and it's difficult for me to think of it any other way than as a series of successfully performed exercises in writing science fiction for television. So revisiting this episode, I see the great Oz behind the curtain, which is supposed to destroy the illusion. But "The Trouble with Tribbles" is great precisely because such forbidden knowledge doesn't destroy the illusion.

And it's not all just because of Gerrold's great script, an ensemble piece which gives fairly equal screen time to principle characters as well as guest stars. It also has what's probably the best episode-specific cast of the series. Gerrold includes yet another asshole Federation bureaucrat, which has, at this point, already proven to be a good plot device for Trek, but casting veteran TV actor William Schallert in the role was a stroke of genius--I mean, this guy's got "dick" totally down. And we also see not one, but two, fantastic Klingons, who are as good, or better, than any actor who ever played one of the warrior race: William Campbell, who played big gay Trelane in the first season's "The Squire of Gothos," returns to play Koloth, the most refined and swishy of all Klingons, but it's Michael Pataki as the loudmouth Korax who steals the show by goading Mr. Scott and his men into an extraordinarily long and fun bar fight. Then there are the bartender, and the space merchant Cyrano Jones, who starts all the tribble, I mean "trouble," by bringing the rapidly breeding but insanely cute and cuddly alien animals into the space station environment, both played by well experienced character actors.

But like I said, this is an ensemble piece, and our regular cast has great moments, too. Uhura, now increasingly used to do things besides opening up hailing frequencies, greatly forwards the plot by accepting a tribble gift from Jones, and then bringing it to the Enterprise, where it breeds out of control. Scotty and Chekov mix it up with the Klingons in the above mentioned bar fight, after which Kirk dresses them down in a classic military discipline scene. Spock and McCoy continue their ongoing argument about logic and passion.

Have I mentioned yet that this is another straight up Star Trek comedy, at least as funny as last week's "I, Mudd"? Everybody's got their shot at cracking jokes and being goofy, but it's Kirk who anchors the humor. Really, this is an extended slow burn, in which the Captain attempts to maintain his dignity while reality falls apart around him. I mean, he's taking shots early on just to deal with the dickishness of Federation Undersecretary of Agriculture Baris, but it's the rapid breeding of the tribbles, and the seeming nonchalance which most everybody else displays, that really gets under Kirk's skin. At first, it's no big deal, but the tribbles just keep breeding.

Indeed, the whole episode necessarily leads up to Kirk being buried by them. And Spock wittily jumps on his captain's distress like an alien fly on green Vulcan shit. Fucking hilarious.

Yet another great episode of Star Trek. Check it out.



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