Do you know Tribbles?
| Episode of the series Spaceship Enterprise | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| title | Do you know Tribbles? | ||
| Original title | The Trouble With Tribbles | ||
| transcription | The hustle and bustle with tribbles | ||
 | |||
| Country of production | United States | ||
| original language | English | ||
| length | 50 minutes | ||
| classification | Season 2, episode 15 44th episode overall ( list ) |
||
| First broadcast | Dec 29, 1967 on NBC | ||
| German-language first broadcast |
23 Sep 1972 on ZDF | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Joseph Pevney | ||
| script | David Gerrold | ||
| production | Gene L. Coon | ||
| music | Jerry Fielding | ||
| camera | Jerry Finnerman | ||
| cut | Bruce Schoengarth | ||
| chronology | |||
| |||
Do you know Tribbles? (Original title: The Trouble With Tribbles ) is an episode from the second season of the American science fiction television series Spaceship Enterprise , which was first broadcast in 1967 . It is about the rapid proliferation of small, "Tribbles" called, fur animals on the Enterprise and a space station and is one of the most popular episodes of Star Trek . The script was written by the then 23 year old writer David Gerrold .
action
The Enterprise receives a distress call from the Federation Space Station K7. Arrived there, Kirk agrees to the request for help from the Federation representative Baris, with some security guards to protect the transport of the grain Quadro triticale from the station to the planet Sherman, which is claimed by both the Federation and the Klingons . After a Klingon battle cruiser arrives at the station, its captain Koloth receives from Kirk and the station manager Lurry the promise that his crew members can visit the station for recreational purposes.
In the station's bar, the traveling merchant Cyrano Jones tries to sell a specimen of the Tribbles species to the host. Tribbles are small furry animals that make a peaceful, cooing tone to humans and a repellent, fearful chirping sound to Klingons. After the Tribble has eaten from the quadrotriticale that Chekov has with him, Uhura receives the Tribble as a present from the dealer and takes it with him on the Enterprise, which is orbiting the station at the time. The next day the animal multiplied unexpectedly. While the Enterprise crew and some Klingons are at the station, Jones tries to sell more tribbles there. In the meantime the landlord already has several tribbles with him.
In the bar, a drunk Klingon provokes the Enterprise crew members present. This leads to a fight between Klingons and humans, which has the consequence that the crews of both spaceships are no longer allowed to stay on the station. The Tribbles now multiply on the station and the Enterprise including its bridge. When confronted by Kirk, Jones admits that having the largest possible number of Tribbles is a good fit for his business. Baris then accuses Kirk of the merchant of being a Klingon spy and targeting the grain. However, Kirk sees no evidence of Jones acting as an agent.
Kirk and Spock find their assumption confirmed in the station's grain silo that the Tribbles multiply so much because of the consumption of the grain. Since some of the tribbles found there are already dead, Kirk and McCoy conclude that the grain is poisoned with a substance that is deadly for the tribbles. When Kirk suspects the Klingons of poisoning, a tribble uses its fearful sound to reveal the man Arne Darvin, Baris' assistant, who is disguised as a person, as a Klingon agent. He is then arrested and taken away.
Eventually, Jones is required to remove all tribbles from the station. Scotty unauthorized beam the Tribbles that are on the Enterprise from there onto the Klingon ship, just before the Enterprise flies away.
reception
The episode was nominated for the Science Fiction Prize Hugo Award in 1968 .
The Tribbles appeared a few more times within Star Trek , such as in the episode More Tribbles, more Troubles (1973) of the animated series The Enterprise . In the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , the episode Always the Burden with the Tribbles was created in 1996 on the occasion of the 30th Star Trek anniversary , for which several scenes from Do you know Tribbles? have been reused. The tribbles were also adapted for several Star Trek comics .
In the original English version of the episode, Spock says that the Tribbles had increased to 1,771,561 within three days and that a Tribble produced ten offspring every twelve hours. In the German dubbed version, on the other hand, there are 1,771,551 copies with a birth rate of ten Tribbles daily. The scientist Metin Tolan proved mathematically that the sum of 1,771,561 mentioned in the original version was calculated correctly, in contrast to the German translation.
Web links
- Do you know Tribbles? in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Do you know Tribbles? in the Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha
- Do you know Tribbles? at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Metin Tolan : Numbers, please! Trouble with 1,771,551 tribbles , in: heise online from July 19, 2016, accessed on March 21, 2017