2x15 The Trouble With Tribbles

Is it silly? Yes, absolutely! But it's fun and memorable nonetheless. It's a guilty pleasure of mine and the first epiosde of the original series I've ever watched. I watched this episode right after watching DS9's excellent take on it for the first time (titled Trials and Tribble-ations). A DS9 episode of which could be said the same btw. The existence of DS9's tribute episode (and the fact that I remember that Odo once mentioned that the Tribbles are the archenemies of the Klingons) even ups the rating of the original episode up a notch (Yes, I'm aware that this a strange assessment if you you prefer a chronological run through the franchise but I can't purge my memory banks to come up with an unbiased rating). There's even a more serious plot line about a spy/ saboteur. That's not funny but an acceptable story in its own right.

It's unfair to discuss plot flaws. Primarily, it's meant to be a fun episode. But let me point out two weak points:

• The crew takes forever before realizing the threat (to both the ship and the station) - this makes the episode kind of slow paced. Instead it could have been a fast paced screwball comedy (perhaps "rolling snowball" is the better word: just like the pets procreation rate can be described by an exponential function).
• The only ones who are worried about the ship are perhaps Spock, McCoy and Kirk. I know these flurry balls have a soothing effect on people but to my liking the rest of the crew feels way too tranquilized.

[7.2/10] It’s hard to be too disgruntled with Star Trek when it’s just silly. “The Trouble with Tribbles” isn’t the cleverest the show’s ever been, and it’s as full of cheese and convoluted or convenient story developments as any of the show’s lesser lights. But it’s also just a lark of an episode, which clearly does not take itself too seriously, and that makes it hard to do anything but sit back and enjoy the ride.

“Tribbles” is one of the show’s most iconic episodes, but also one of it’s most overtly comedic, which may help explain the notoriety. The light comedy, free of much of the polarity-reversing treknobabble or babes of the week or thinly-veiled social commentary that otherwise characterizes Trek makes the episode accessible to an average viewer in the way not every episode is.

It also doesn’t hurt that the episode is centered around a growing horde of adorable little fuzzballs. As the crew’s coos and coddles indicate, people just like cute things. It’s not hard to imagine why scores of fans latched onto the purring Trump toupees as mascots for the series, with their purrs and pets looming large throughout the franchise.

The episode also gives Shatner an opportunity to show off his chops as a physical comedian. The most obvious moment of that comes when he opens the shipping compartment and a waterfall of tribbles pours down upon him. The ensuing scene after the break, where he tries to make sense of this with the latest in a long line of incompetent and stuffy Federation administrators (this one’s an undersecretary of something or other!), is uproarious in how Kirk tries to carry on the conversation while errant puffballs keep squeaking and landing on his head.

But even less dramatic comedic gestures -- like Kirk picking up a tribble, meaning to toss it aside, and then seeming to go “ah the hell with it” and hanging onto it -- show the way that Shatner works best in an episode with this sort of tone.

Granted, much of the comedy is fairly broad or tepid. “Tribbles” suffers from the Tommy Wiseau problem of having characters recount a scene that the audience just watched in the name of comedy. It’s amusing to see Scotty try to calm down an angered, vodka-drinking Chekov when a ridgeless Klingon calls Captain Kirk a regalian bloodworm, only to turn pugnacious himself when the Klingon starts insulting Scotty’s beloved ship. But Scotty repeating the details of this scene to Kirk himself isn’t especially funny, and feels like filler in an episode with just a wisp of story between the fluffwad-based humor.

In short, both the Federation and the Klingons are trying to lay claim to “Sherman’s Planet’ which has some vague strategic value, and the claim somehow depends on how efficient they can be working the land. That leads to both Starfleet crewmembers and Klingons congregating for shore leave on a nearby space station while each tries to prove their claim. And, of course, the know-nothing undersecretary is incompetent and tries to throw his weight around with the swashbuckling Kirk.

That leads to some amusing bon mots between Kirk and the undersecretary, with cutting lines about someone only needing “a title” to cause problems on a space station, but for the most part it just provides a skeleton for the episode jokes and gags. There is a tacked on mystery involving a secret Klingon agent (in a reveal that doesn’t really comport with the TNG-era fan’s understanding of Klingons, but it’s no big deal), but for the most part this is an excuse to watch the crew fawn over some amusingly furry set decorations and let the comedy roll in.

Not all of that comedy is great. While it’s always fun to see Spock and Bones joust (with Bones praising the little creatures for being lovable and claiming that’s a quality Spock is beyond, with Spock retorting that he can appreciate them because unlike Bones, they don’t talk too much), a good amount of the humor centers around Cyrano Jones, a poor man’s Zero Mostel who plays a huckstery salesman offering his wares in a space station bar. There’s some physical comedy as he weaves his way through Scotty’s fistight, and old school sitcom rhythms to he and the barkeep’s back and forth, but on the whole it’s not especially funny shtick.

Still, it turns out man can live on tribbles alone, at least for a light, one-hour episode of network television. The design of the little creatures is great, with the pulsating, purring puffs making for an amusing presence as they become scattered all over the ship. At the same time, the actors do a great job reacting to the little stuffed animals, whether it’s Uhura stroking one like a miniature pet, Bones cooing over a colony of them, or Kirk using them as bad guy detectors to sniff out the Klingon turncoat.

It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff. If anything, it’s a pretty easy episode, one that plays in the usual know-nothing superior officer and treacherous Klingon tropes that The Original Series has already hit several times. But it does so in a way that’s light and amusing, which means it’s hard to hold any of that against “Tribbles.”

It speaks to the diversity of what Star Trek is capable of. While some of my favorite episodes like “The Menagerie” and “The Metamorphosis” strike notes of high drama, some of the show’s most enjoyable episodes, like “I, Mudd” and “A Piece of the Action” turn The Original Series into a zone for comedy and light adventure.

When Star Trek goes for high drama, or melodrama, or serious philosophical thought, sometimes it comes out looking prescient and incisive, but others it comes off as overwrought and missing the mark. But when it goes for comedy, even in an episode like this one where plenty of the humor falls flat, it’s still just plainly entertaining. Sure, adding in some cuddly fluffballs makes it easier to win the audience to your side, but whenever TOS goes for laughs, it’s a lot easier to warm to in weaker moments then when it’s trying to be more serious and stumbles.