Sunday, 3 May 2015

My Random Journey Through Trek #33

Star Trek The Animated Series
More Tribbles, More Troubles

The Enterprise is escorting two grain ships to Shermans Planet bringing the now Federation colony the much prized Quintotriticale when they detect a Klingon cruiser firing on a Federation registered scout ship well within the boundaries of Federation control. Kirk orders warp 6 to intercept and Scotty attempts to beam the pilot of the scout onboard but the Klingons after seemingly toying with the scout destroy the ship and then turn on the Enterprise.
The rumoured new weapon is used to cripple the Enterprise and Koloth the Klingon commander demands the return of the pilot of the scout for Ecological crimes against the Empire and as Scotty finally completes that very tricky transport process we find it's Cyrano Jones and his tribbles.
Kirk learns that he still has control of the "robot" grain ships so uses them as rather large weapons and when the Klingons try to immobilise them the power drain is too great and their new weapon fails, the Klingons flee.
Cyrano claims that the tribbles are now safe since they can not breed but alas they still eat everything in their path but he has an artificially created tribble killer called a Glommer which proves less successful as it's prey grows ever larger. The Klingons return and once again capture the Enterprise and demand the return of their Glommer, it turns out Cyrano stole it after selling tribbles on a Klingon world and all they want is their solution returned as it's the first of it's kind. Kirk has Scotty beam a bunch of uber large tribbles onto the Klingon ship then does a deal with Koloth to return the Glommer and for hostilities to cease.

This is the first of the animated series that has turned up on the random rewatch and it is one of the better ones drawing from the original series Trouble with Tribbles and of course written by David Gerrold. The episode is firmly tongue in cheek ramping up the comedic elements we first saw in the original series and for most part paying off especially the final comments from both Kirk and Koloth.
I wasn't overly keen on the grain ship design, didn't seem sensible for a large bulk transport and until I realised the Klingons wanted to capture the scout ship I had to say they were awful shots but later they have pinpoint accuracy, much better. While the new weapon certainly proved useful in damping modern power systems you wonder if simple ballistic chemical powered missiles and reaction firearms would still work providing a ship with a partial defence. 
I also wondered what the hell they were doing when they demonstrated the Glommer killing a tribble, that's like bringing a snake and then letting it eat a hamster just for the show, thankfully it was off screen. I was also a little concerned over the Klingon sidearms which you would assume could easily vaporise a tribble especially a big one but nope the damn things break apart into hundreds of smaller ones, fun but not realistic (yeah I know).
Still it gave us Koloth saying "Don't do that again" and then Kirk recreating his tribble avalanche with "Someday I'll learn", both had me smiling.

Overall More Tribbles, More Troubles was a good example of the animated series, lots of flaws but made for a young audience and die hard fans:)

Rating 7


TheShayneShow said...

I've always been a fan of the animated series, I've been hoping for some time that the show would be released on Blu-ray with new state of the art animation and also include the original versions of the episodes as well, that's probably just wishful thinking on my part but I can dream.

Mike Crate said...

It seems Paramount/CBS let everyone steal a march, Trek during the lack of live action era was perfect for a top notch animated return.