Trials and Tribble-ations

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Production Number: 503
Original air week: 11/04/96
Original stardate: 4523.3

Written by: Ronald D. Moore & René Echevarria (Teleplay)
Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler & Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Story)
Directed by: Jonathan West

Guest Stars:

• Jack Blessing as Dulmur
• James W. Jansen as Lucsly
• Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin
• David Gerrold as a Security Officer [author of "The Trouble With Tribbles"]
• Special appearances by:
  • William Shatner as Kirk
  • Leonard Nimoy as Spock
  • DeForest Kelley as McCoy
  • James Doohan as Scotty
  • Walter Koenig as Chekov
  • Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
• (possible) Special appearances by:
  • [Note: These people appeared in the original Tribbles episode, and might appear here in their original form.]
  • William Schallert as Nilz Baris
  • William Campbell as Koloth
  • Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones
  • Whit Bissell as Lurry
  • Michael Pataki as Korax
  • Ed Reimers as Admiral Fitzpatrick
  • Paul Paxley as Ensign Freeman
  • David Ross as Guard
  • Guy Raymond as Trader

Spellings: quadrotriticale

Notes:

• Features a return to the original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles".

The Stars Speak:

• Walter Koenig, in Entertainment Weekly:
  "I'm getting paid eight times more than I was to do the episode in the first place."
  "It is weird. The minute I walked in, I wanted to shout, 'Keptyn!'."
• Terry Farrell:
  "The miniskirt has a flap in the back. Sometimes the flap sticks. You're walking around with your [backside] hanging out."
• Charlie Brill:
  "I don't really remember very much about filming the first one, except that William Shatner was always doing push-ups on the set."

Production Crew Comments:

• Michael Okuda says: For the Tribbles episode... it was written by Ron Moore, Rene Echevarria and... basically everyone on the writing staff. Those people have great affection for the original Star Trek series and you can tell. David Gerrold who wrote the original Trouble With Tribbles went up to Ron Moore and said, "this is better then anything I could have ever imagined." He said that. I was there. We recreated parts of the original Enterprise, much more then we did for Relics.
  A caller asks: That must have been difficult?
  Michael Okuda responds: It was an enormous about of work, because even worse then Excelsior, there are no surviving drawings. No surviving props. Almost no surviving costumes. Basically almost everything had to be done off of reference from video tape.
• Ira Steven Behr:
  "We just thought it would be fun to have Sisko and Dax and other characters from our show standing on the old Enterprise and suddenly see Kirk and Spock walking by. "It's really every fan's fantasy."

Sisko and the crew travel back in time to a pivotal moment in the history of the original Starship Enterprise. The U.S.S. Defiant is returning from Cardassian space with the Bajoran Orb of Time. A Klingon named Arne Darvin, surgically altered to look human, has come aboard as a passenger. He uses the Orb to send the U.S.S. Defiant more than one hundred years into the past--near the original U.S.S. Enterprise as it orbited Deep Space Station K-7. Records reveal Darvin was a spy then, and that he was caught having poisoned a shipment of grain on the station. Darvin is out to change history, possibly by killing Captain James T. Kirk, who originally exposed him as the spy.

Program Highlights

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE: "Trials and Tribble-ations" -- Sisko travels back in time to a pivotal moment in history of the original Starship Enterprise.

TV Guide Ad

THE TRIBBLES ARE BACK!
Trapped in the past, Sisko must save legendary Captain Kirk--from the Tribbles!

TV Log Listing

More trouble with Tribbles on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.

DETAILED REPORT

The Defiant is returning from Cardassian space with the Bajoran Orb of Time. A Klingon named Arne Darvin, surgically altered to look human, has come aboard as a passenger. He uses the Orb to send the Defiant more than one hundred years into the past -- near the original U.S.S. Enterprise as it orbited Deep Space Station K-7. Records reveal Darvin was a spy then, and that he was caught having poisoned a shipment of grain on the station. Darvin is out to change history, possibly by killing Captain James T. Kirk, who originally exposed him as the spy.

While Sisko, Dax, Bashir, and O'Brien dress in period uniforms and search the Enterprise for Darvin, Odo and Worf, disguised as civilians, do the same on the station. Soon they are interacting -- albeit as little as possible -- with Starfleet legends from a century ago. Odo, at the station's bar, watches as Lt. Uhura has her first encounter with a furry, cooing, adorable little creature known as a Tribble.The Enterprise goes to red alert -- a Klingon ship is approaching the station! But they only want shore leave. Later, in the K-7 bar, Bashir and O'Brien join Worf and Odo, and are swept into a brawl between the Klingons and Enterprise crew members, including Mr. Scott and Ensign Chekov. Odo and Worf spot Darvin during the fight, just as Bashir and O'Brien are taken by Enterprise security personnel.

Bashir and O'Brien are questioned by Captain Kirk himself, then soon notice that the Enterprise is littered with Tribbles. Meanwhile, Worf and Odo materialize on board the Defiant with Darvin. He reveals that he planted a bomb in one of the Tribbles, set to kill Kirk within the hour. Sisko and Dax go to the Enterprise Bridge and scan the starship, but find no explosive. That leaves a manual scan aboard K-7, but there are over a million Tribbles involved.Realizing the bomb is in the storage compartments, Sisko and Dax enter the bin where the poisoned grain is stored, and see that the Tribbles have eaten it all and died. They scan the compartment -- while Kirk opens the outside door and is hit by a stream of falling Tribbles. Luckily, Sisko finds the explosive Tribble before it finds Kirk and has the Defiant beam it into space, where it detonates harmlessly. The timeline continues uninterrupted, allowing Kirk to expose Darvin as before.

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