McCoy: "It's a human trait to love little animals, especially if they're attractive in some way."
Spock: "Doctor, I am well aware of human traits, I am frequently inundated by them, but I've trained myself to put up with just about anything."
McCoy: "Spock, I don't know much about these things, but I do know one thing. I like them... better than I like you!"
Spock: "Doctor, they do indeed have one redeeming quality."
McCoy: "What's that?"
Spock: "They do not talk too much."
An episode of the original "
Star Trek" series. The 15th episode of the second season, it was first broadcast on
December 29, 1967. The episode was directed by
Joseph Pevney, and the script was written by
David Gerrold.
This may be the best-known episode of Classic Trek -- its
quirky humor and
cuddly co-stars make it a fun and
memorable story. The
Enterprise is summoned to a
space station near a
planet called
Sherman's Planet, which is in a sector of space which both the
Federation and the
Klingon Empire have laid claim to. To
Captain Kirk's frustration, his big bad
starship is being ordered to guard some grain shipments, but the mission gets more interesting when a
Klingon ship arrives for
shore leave on the space station. Klingons and Federation don't get along, and there's a grand
barroom brawl to get everyone nicely on edge.
On top of these inter-species tensions, a trader with the blaxploitation-flick-friendly name of
Cyrano Jones brings some little
furry balls of fluff called
tribbles onto the station. They're unspeakably
cute, and the Enterprise crew start taking them on as pets. However, tribbles and Klingons hate each other. Unfortunately for the Enterprise, tribbles eat way too much and
reproduce way too fast --
Dr. McCoy describes them as being "born
pregnant." Soon, there are so many that they pose a danger of eating all the ship's
food, and they even get into closed compartments and start eating parts of the ship's systems. Kirk realizes, too late, that the tribbles could eat all the grain stores on the station, leading to the episode's most
familiar image, as Kirk is buried under a small mountain of tribbles when he opens the overhead grain compartments.
As it turns out, many of the tribbles that have eaten the grain are either dead or dying -- someone
poisoned the grain! The tribbles themselves reveal the
saboteur -- they absolutely hate
Arne Darvin, the assistant of a Federation official aboard the station. A
medical scan quickly reveals that Darvin is a Klingon, surgically altered to appear human. It was a clever ruse to get full Klingon control of the planet, but thanks to the horrifically
adorable tribbles, Kirk and crew come out on top again. Cyrano Jones is ordered to remove the tribbles from the station himself, and the tribbles aboard the Enterprise are beamed onto the Klingon starship.
Kirk: "As captain of this ship, I want two things done. First, find out what killed the Tribbles, and second... Close that door."
The players included the show regulars:
William Shatner as Captain Kirk,
Leonard Nimoy as
Mr. Spock,
DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy,
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott,
Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, and
Walter Koenig as Chekov (No Sulu this time --
George Takei was off filming "
The Green Berets"). Guest stars included
William Schallert as Federation Undersecretary Nilz Baris,
Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones,
Paul Baxley as Ensign Freeman (a role that David Gerrold had hoped to play himself),
Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin,
William Campbell as Koloth, and
Michael Pataki as Korax.
Though Gerrold originally meant for his script to be a
serious examination of the problems that can arise when seemingly innocuous species are introduced into
predator-free
environments, that was quickly abandoned in favor of the winking
shenanigans that the "Star Trek" folks were already so good at. There's something very funny about a tale of
Cold War intrigue,
espionage, and
sabotage when told against a backdrop of
bureaucratic bumbling,
culture clashes, and cute, squeaking
fluffballs.
Favorite trivia bits: Though tribbles were somewhat similar to the
flatcats in
Robert Heinlein's novel "
The Rolling Stones," Heinlein didn't pursue any legal action against the show, since he didn't originate the idea either. This episode also marks the one and only time that Chekov and Scotty had any sort of
conversation during the original series. And Spock's line "He simply could not believe his ears" was an ad-lib by Nimoy, who got the line from a
Mad Magazine parody of the series that had just been published.
Gerrold wrote one sequel to the story, which appeared as "
More Tribbles, More Troubles" in the "Star Trek" animated series in 1973. And a 1996 episode of "
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" called "
Trials and Tribble-ations" sent the DS9 crew back in time to interact with the classic Trek crew during "Trouble with Tribbles."
Scotty: "Just before they went into warp, I beamed the whole kit and kaboodle into their engine room, where they'll be no tribble at all."
Research from StarTrek.com, the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), TV.com, and Wikipediascifiquest