More Tribbles, More Troubles

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (More Tribbles, More Troubles)

One of the stories I was most looking forward to seeing, just like 'Yesteryear,' but I didn't realise it was next, I was just ready for more as opposed to waiting half a year between episodes! On the surface it's another lighthearted story, as you'd expect for a sequel to the comedic 'The Troubles With Tribbles' written by the same writer, and even more when it's part of a children's cartoon series. But if you stop to think about it beyond the bright colours that take things even further than 'TOS' did (pink Tribbles, orange Glommers and Klingons wearing purple uniforms!), it's more edgy than you'd expect and I'm sure there'd be people up in arms about this sort of thing now. There's genetic modifications: we learn the Klingons created this Glommer as a solution to the Tribble problem, an artificial predator to glom onto them and remove the troublesome little pests. We also learn these Tribbles have been modified so they don't reproduce. But mainly it's the fact that they're used as weapons, surely not ethical for Starfleet! It's all a good joke really, but people are much more sensitive in today's world so I can imagine it sticking out. For me it was another enjoyable story that had bonuses in the shape of the hardware we see. The advantage of animation is you have no limit to what can be shown so we get more ships than a handful of 'TOS' episodes when they were often forced to either avoid showing vessels since they couldn't match up to the expensive Enterprise model, or have them be so alien they could be represented as merely a glowing shape.

Not so here as we have a couple of robot grain ships that feature the same starship configuration of two warp nacelles and a deflector dish, yet attached to a large cargo hold for transportation of the needed grain. Then there's the trader's ship which looks a little like a shuttlecraft, but a bit sleeker. And the most impressive of all: a Klingon Battlecruiser in full pomp. It's such an impressive design and a thrill to see in animated form, and bearing down menacingly on its victims it strikes the right sense of power and threat. To top it all we have a returning character from 'TOS' as its Captain: Koloth, one of the three most memorable of the series who went on to join his fellow warriors in an episode of 'DS9' ('Blood Oath'), around twenty years later. While Kor and Kang both made more than one appearance in later Treks, Koloth (whom we see die in the 'DS9' episode), never got as much exposure as his brothers so it's nice that he had an outing on 'TAS.' Sadly, either the budget didn't stretch to getting actor William Campbell to voice his character or he was busy as it's clearly James Doohan performing the role, which he did for many of the aliens and guest characters. Intriguingly, they did appear to get Stanley Adams back to reprise his role as Cyrano Jones the dodgy trader who was responsible for causing all the Tribble trouble last time, so maybe they could only afford one guest, although he's not credited in the episode. But I'm pretty sure it is him as otherwise they'd have had Doohan do it.

Attention to detail and continuity is one of those things Trek used to do so well for its first forty years (not so much now!), and while 'TAS' was quickly determined as non-canonical compared with its live-action brethren for some of the things that didn't quite match up, it's still good to see them try to add to the ongoing story where they can (and of course if anything ever appears within live-action it becomes canon retroactively as has happened with some aspects of 'TAS'). Writer David Gerrold had invented Tribbles so it was fitting that it would be he who brought them back, but the episode is just as much a draw for its tense ship encounters, the Klingons having developed a new 'stasis field' weapon that can immobilise a starship, though as we see, Kirk has the tactical ability to probe for weaknesses and save his ship. I was wondering how the Tribbles would get into those metallic containers and eat the grain as was quite obvious would happen, so having them damaged in the battle and the grain spill loose into the Tribbles' path made sense. There was a good dose of humour in both dialogue and visuals with Kirk's exasperation or the Tribble he keeps pushing off his chair getting bigger each time. There are even a couple of times when the explanation Spock's just given is repeated in simpler language by other characters - this works as both a good joke with Spock slightly nettled that that's what he just said, while also having the benefit of making things clear for the child audience, signs of a good writer at work.

There are inconsistencies once again, both in story terms and visuals, the most pressing being that disabling a Federation starship would surely be classed as an act of war (though true to Starfleet form, Kirk orders weapons ready, but only to fire on the Klingons if they fire first), and also what happened to the Organian peace treaty backed up by their power so they were unable to use weapons against each other? It's been a while since I've seen all of 'TOS' so maybe in later episodes that wasn't followed through with on that series, but it was a slight niggle. The animation mistakes are curious: one shot has the viewscreen image of Koloth framed wrong so that he's actually on the Enterprise Bridge even while his chair is on the screen behind him - perhaps the holo-comms from 'Discovery' aren't as unprecedented for this era as we thought! Another shot of Cyrano Jones standing in front of the Turbolift door on the Bridge shows the red door with some missing part at its base as if it was damaged. Very odd, but I'm glad they haven't gone back and 'fixed' such anomalies as they add texture to the piece and show it in all its flawed glory. We're permitted to see more of the Enterprise herself including corridors, and most interestingly for me, the bottom of a Jefferies Tube in which a giant Tribble is wedged. Not sure on the biology of giant Tribbles exploding into a mountain of little ones, but that's why this is a cartoon and not to be taken too seriously!

I don't remember ever seeing aboard a Klingon ship in 'TOS' (unless the Romulan ship in Season 3 was actually a Klingon ship which they'd modified as they had some treaty around then so they could reuse the Klingon model), so it was a treat to see inside one of those. The Klingons themselves were also well drawn and that's the joy of the series: seeing familiar Trek morphed into line drawings and bold, flat colours. Cyrano Jones' likeness was also very accurate so it wins on all counts. Shame they never introduced the Glommer into later iterations of Trek, but there's still time - I'm imagining a CGI creature rather than the far simpler, and easier to produce fluff-ball that is a Tribble! At this stage of the series the pace is right and they don't appear to reuse too many shots. That's my main memories of the series as a child in the Nineties, that it was a bit boring because they kept using the same stock shots and it was dreadfully slow, but this is an example of the series doing its job well.

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