"Star Trek" The Trouble with Tribbles (1967)

Director:

Joseph Pevney

Writers:

David Gerrold (written by)
Gene Roddenberry (creator)

TV Series:

"Star Trek" (1966)

Original Air Date:

29 December 1967 (Season 2, Episode 15)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi

Plot:

To protect a space station with a vital grain shipment, Kirk must deal with Federation bureaucrats, a Klingon battle cruiser and a peddler who sells furry, purring, hungry little creatures as pets.

Plot Keywords:

Grain | Comedy Episode | Reference To Peter The Great | Vodka | Alien Creature As Pet

Cast

William Shatner	...	Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy	...	Mr. Spock
DeForest Kelley	...	Dr. McCoy
William Schallert	...	Nilz Baris
William Campbell	...	Koloth
Stanley Adams	...	Cyrano Jones
Whit Bissell	...	Lurry
James Doohan	...	Scott
Nichelle Nichols	...	Uhura
Michael Pataki	...	Korax
Edwin Reimers	...	Admiral Fitzpatrick (as Ed Reimers)
Walter Koenig	...	Chekov
Charlie Brill	...	Arne Darvin
Paul Baxley	...	Ensign Freeman
David L. Ross	...	Guard (as David Ross)

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

Desilu Studios - 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Desilu Productions

Trivia:

Writer David Gerrold intended to play the crewman who is with Scott and Chekov when the barroom brawl breaks out, but the role went to stuntman Paul Baxley instead.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: (DVD release) In the bar scene just before the fight with the Klingons, Chekov responds to Korax's needling by saying "That Cossack!" but the closed captions show him saying "That does it!"

Quotes:

Trader: Four credits.
Cyrano Jones: Is that an offer or a joke?
Trader: That's my offer.
Cyrano Jones: That's a joke.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Futurama: The Problem with Popplers (#2.18)" (2000)

Consistently enjoyable episode that has a good story, great sense of humour and nobody taking it seriously even once

The Enterprise respond with all speed to a priority 1 distress call on a space station but Kirk is far from impressed when he learns that the call was signalled by Undersecretary for Agriculture Baris to guard some storage compartments of a new wheat hybrid. Reluctantly, Kirk agrees but only assigns two guards, giving his other available staff shore leave on the station. The importance of the grain is brought home to him though when Starfleet command him into action and the Klingons turn up on the station for "shore leave". With all these pressures on him, peddler Cyrano Jones selling a strangely enchanting creature called a Tribble doesn't even show up on his radar.

I rarely review specific episodes of TV series but for Star Trek I thought I would locate this specific episode and watch it with a critical eye because this tends to be the one that most casual Trek viewers quote as their favourite. Watching it again I can understand why because it is a fine example of the gentle humour that makes the majority of casual viewers enjoy the series. So while we may not always like the clunking moral messages and so on, the humour is what makes it an enduring piece of entertainment. With "Tribbles" the whole story has been written with his humour running deep throughout it and everyone has their tongues in their cheeks throughout with a narrative that is wonderfully silly and fun.

The cast mostly react really well to this lack of action and drama. Shatner wears a great air of weary disbelief about everything and he has plenty of great lines – particularly when mocking Schallert's Baris. He is not a great actor but he shows a real comic touch here and I was rolling with laughter as he stands up to his chest in Tribbles being pelted from above by them while delivering his lines. Nimoy enjoys himself too with lots of "raised eyebrow" moments while Kelley, Nichols, Doohan and Koenig all get good material. Adams hams it up but within the context of this episode it works really well.

A fantastic episode then. It does depend on how you view Star Trek as a franchise because I'm sure many will see this silly episode as a low point but for me personally it is tremendous fun, had me regularly laughing out loud and left me feeling like I had been really entertained.