Customer Reviews

Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 42: The Trouble With Tribbles [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even people who barely know what Star Trek is have seen or heard of this episode. "Tribble" has become a household word. This episode is hilariously funny, expecially if you know the characters. It is generally regarded as the funniest episode in the series. Although it is not my favorite, I love this episode, and highly recommend it. The Enterprise answers a distress call and travels to a space station, where the crew dicovers that there is no emergency. The space station has just recieved a shipment of a new, highly dvanced grain, and the powers-that-be want it guarded. Kirk is, needless to say, very annoyed. Add to that a Klingon ship requesting "shore-leave rights," and a trader selling cute little balls of fluff called Tribbles. Humans instictively like them, but Klingons do not. Once one Tribble is brought on board the Enterprise, it begins mulitplying so rapidly that it becomes a source of concern to Kirk and Spock. There is no better combination for a funny episode.

"The Trouble With Tribbles" is my personal favorite among the nearly 80 hours of the original "Star Trek" series. It is unquestionably the funniest, with David Gerrold's deft, wittty prose creating hilarious scenes and dialogue as precious as any I've seen on Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners". James Doohan's Scotty steals many of the scenes he's in, though highest honors for hilarity deservedly go to Stanley Adams as the trader Cyrano Jones responsible for the tribble infestation on the Federation space station. The fight between the Klingons and the Enterprise crew is certainly among the finest examples of "Star Trek" humor I've seen. Fans of slapstick comedy will not want to miss this terrific "Star Trek" episode.

This was David Gerrold's first professional sale as a writer and remains one of his finest episodes of science fiction television (However, his best probably is the Babylon 5 episode "Believers".).

"The Trouble With Tribbles" might not be the best Star Trek episode, but it is certainly the funniest. The Enterprise rushes to Deep Space Station K-7 only to find a pretentious bureaucrat named Nilz Baris who wants Kirk to protect tons of quadrotriticale, a hybrid grain that will be used to colonize Sherman's planet. Kirk is ticked off that Baris misused the Priority 1 Distress Call and only allots two guards to watch the "wheat". Meanwhile the rest of the ship gets shore leave and Uhura meets Cyrano Jones, a trader of curious items, including the amazing Tribble, the creature that is apparently born pregnant (one of Bones' best all-time diagnoses). While the little beasties threaten to overwhelm the ship, Kirk has to deal with some unhappy Klingons, reprimand Scotty for defending the ship's honor in a bar room brawl with the Klingons, and try to protect all that wheat, er, quadrotriticale. Watching a clearly peeved Kirk deal with all these headaches is a hoot, as is the classic moment when he has to endure a shower of Tribbles. Plus there is the sight of Spock petting a Tribble and Scotty ending the episode with the all-time greatest pun in Star Trek history. They must have had a total blast doing this one.

David Gerrold, who wrote this episode, also wrote one of the more interesting Star Trek non-fiction books detailing how he came to write the episode and how his script came to be filmed. An excellent behind-the-scenes book for aspiring Star Trek writers. If you love this episode, then you owe it to yourself to also check out not only Gerrold's book but the Deep Space 9 episode "Trials and Tribbulations," where Sisko, Worf, O'Brien and Bashir go back in time and re-live the original Star Trek episode to preserve the time-line. That episode is worth it just for the double-take everybody does when they see how different Worf looks like from the "original" Klingons. That episode was definitely my type of homage. Oh, and the "sequel" on "Star Trek: The Animated Series" was that the best episode of that short-lived cartoon series as well.

How could anyone give "The Trouble With Tribbles" a bad review? Kirk has a problem onboard the Enterprise, but it's not any enemies for once. It's some furry creatures called tribbles. They will eat any grains that they can find in order to survive. Kirk discovers that some Klingons are at the planet he goes to and also discovers that the tribbles don't like Klingons. "The Trouble With Tribbles" has some of the most memorable scenes such as when Captain Kirk finds a tribble hideout and hundreds of them fall on him and bury him alive.

"The Trouble With Tribbles" isn't my favorite episode of Star Trek, but it is one of the best. If you're looking for an action packed episode, don't get this one. But if you like episodes that are memorable and have a few funny parts in them, then "The Trouble With Tribbles" is for you.

Robert Heinlein wrote about Martian flat cats in his book "The Rolling Stones". What a pleasant surprise when I saw how the flat cats had been resurrected as Tribbles in Star Trek. Of course, the Stones family managed to sell off the flat cats to lonely miners in the Asteroid Belt, while Capt. Kirk used Tribbles to find Klingons. Overall a great laugh in either incarnation.

Even though this episode is light at heart, it shows off the wonderful interchange of characters within the series and their motivations. This human element is one of the things missing from the later copycat series which follow.

This is definitely one of the most humorous of all Star Trek episodes, although I rank it below the original series episode, "A Piece of the Action." It also contains two of the best lines that have ever been uttered in any Star Trek episode.
According to the terms of the Organian peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, any uninhabited planet will belong to the side that can make the best case that it can develop it. Sherman's planet is the next planet to be controlled and the Federation is basing its' case on a new strain of wheat. The wheat seed is now being stored on station K7 and the commander has panicked, sending out the highest priority distress signal. The Enterprise responds in full battle mode, only to find that they have been summoned to guard the wheat.
A Klingon ship also appears and Kirk has no choice but to allow them to engage in shore leave. An itinerant trader by the name of Cyrano Jones is in the station bar trying to make a credit or two selling trinkets and a furry creature called a Tribble. They emit a soft cooing sound which sooths humans. Uhura immediately states her desire to have one and Jones gives her one.
This starts a cascade of exponential reproduction as the Tribbles multiply until they take over the Enterprise and consume most of the wheat. The wheat has been poisoned by a Klingon agent posing as a Federation official and that kills many of the Tribbles. Furthermore, Tribbles also react very negatively to Klingons, which exposes the agent. At the end, the Enterprise is Tribble-free and the Federation will take control of Sherman's planet.
Everyone in this episode plays their parts to perfection, from the overbearing and unintelligent station manager Nilz Baris, to Kirk expressing his frustration with Baris, to the bartender, to Spock and his deadpan expressions of emotion and Cyrano Jones as a flim-flam man. My favorite scene is the fight when Chekov is battling a sturdy Klingon warrior. He is punching furiously at the man's midriff to no affect. However, the best performance is that of James Doohan as Scotty. His facial expression of anger when the Klingon refers to the Enterprise as garbage, to his role in the bar fight and finally when he is called to task for starting the fight.
The two classic lines are when Spock utters the phrase, "...including, unfortunately Tribbles" and Scotty when describing what he did to the Tribbles, "... I beamed them into the Klingon engine room, where they'll be no `tribble' at all." Nothing better has ever been uttered on television.
This episode also is prescient in that given the human desire and perhaps even need for pets; it is certain that other species will be found on other planets that will fill that role. Once can only hope that the ecological repercussions of Tribbles are the most serious drawback to having the new species as pets.

You know that a ST episode (or any movie) is truly great (if not the best of the entire series) when some reviewers go to the effort to attempt to tear it down. No episode will ever please everyone, but "Tribbles" consistently polls as the fan favorite and that just irks some people enough to cause them to give it a bad review.

You don't see such poor reviews for other great episodes (e.g., "Mirror, Mirror," "City," "A Piece of the Action) because those are not considered the best ST episodes ever. "Tribbles" on the other hand is, so it's not surprising that the small minority who do not like it speak out. They cannot stand that the overwhelming majority disagree with them.

So this fact is the best laudation that could ever be given s ST episode. It is the most popular episode for a good reason: it's the most enjoyable one ever made. ST doesn't always have to be serious and psychological. It is, after all, entertainment! This is the most entertaining ST episode ever made. End of story.

I recently purchased a DVD player so that my wife could watch the first season of the "X-Files". Now I want all of Star Trek on DVD. For anyone who cares, I refuse to buy anymore VHS tapes of my favorite series. And while you're at it, check out the price difference of a Star Trek two-episode DVD versus a one-episode VHS tape. DVD is better quality and more feature rich than VHS.

The Starship Enterprise receives an urgent signal from spac-station K-7 nearby a planet on the verge of colonization by the ferderation. The planet's proximity to the nuetral zone means that the likelihood that the insidious Klingons will try to saboutage the federation's efforts is high. The klingons want this planet badly or at least to deny it to the Federation. Key to the federation's plan is quadrotritacale, a kind of super-wheat which, when cultivated, will allow the Federation colonists an essential degree of self-sufficiency. The wheat stockpiles aboard K-7, therefore, is worth more than its weight in gold and is presumably a prime target for the expected Klingon saboutage.

From such a tense opening, the writers fashion one of the most slyly funny hours of science fiction TV. Now partly overshadowed by the technicolor campiness that has colored most of 60's cult TV. Though the Klingons put in an appearance, the true threat turns about to be the Tribbles - fuzzy little creatures that out-multiply rabbits. Quickly overruning both K-7 and the Enterprise, the seemingly innocuous tribbles become less innocuous as time goes by, and may do the Klingons' work for them.

Everything about this episode pre-figures the endless years of Trek parodies - and surpasses them all in an endless stream (within an hour anyway) of comic moments - like Kirk buried under a mountain of dead tribbles, Mr. Scott being baited into a fight by Klingons (he keeps his cool when they heap insults about Kirk, but when the Klingons put down the Enterprise, Scott goes "Braveheart" on their entire crew), or the way the cute tribbles are friendly to everybody except Klingons. Even the casting is inspired, with William Schalert as the uptight Federation bureaucrat, and William Campbell as the ominous Klingon commander. (Campbell played the gleefully omnipotent Trelane in the "Squire of Gothos", an emotionally premature homicidal, otherworldly superbeing who enjoyed violent behavior. The role seems to clash with the coldly insistent Klingon, but Campbell hints at the fun he could have).

This episode proves why the original series will never be surpassed by any of the next-generation versions, which are populated with its emotionally correct and protacol-ruled officers and figures.