The Trouble with Tribbles
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 29 December 1967
- ON
- NBC
- STARDATE
- 4523.3
- DIRECTED BY
- Joseph Pevney
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 42
WRITTEN BYWritten by David Gerrold
Guarding a precious grain shipment at Deep Space Station K-7 seems a dull job, until Klingons arrive on shore leave and a trader hands Uhura a small, purring, very hungry ball of fur.
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Kirk is irritated to be ordered to Deep Space Station K-7 to protect a cargo of quadrotriticale, a grain vital to Federation plans for Sherman's Planet. The fussy official Nilz Baris is no help, and a Klingon ship led by Captain Koloth soon arrives, its crew claiming shore leave rights. Trader Cyrano Jones gives Uhura a tribble, a cooing furry creature that breeds at astonishing speed. Before long tribbles fill the station and the Enterprise, while insults in the bar lead to a brawl between Scotty's men and the Klingons. When Kirk opens a storage compartment he is buried in tribbles, and many of them are dead: the grain has been poisoned. Because tribbles hate Klingons, they expose Baris's assistant Arne Darvin as a disguised Klingon saboteur. Jones is set to clearing the station, and Scotty quietly beams the Enterprise's tribbles over to the Klingon ship.
- 01David Gerrold's first professional writing credit. Early titles for his story included “The Fuzzies” and “A Fuzzy Thing Happened to Me...”.
- 02Jacqueline Cumeré was paid $350 to sew five hundred tribbles from synthetic fur, stuffed with foam rubber, from a design by Wah Chang.
- 03Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, it came second to “The City on the Edge of Forever”.