Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5-06: Trials and Tribble-ations - Part 2

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second half of Deep Space Nine's big 30th anniversary episode, Trials and Tribble-ations! Click HERE for part one.

Hey, have you ever wondered how many Star Trek episodes have a dash in the title? Because I haven't. It had never even crossed my mind until right now. The answer is "8": The Magicks of Megas-tu, The Counter-Clock Incident, Q-Less, Trials and Tribble-ations, The Siege of AR-558, Badda-Bing Badda-Bang, Species Ten-C and First Con-tact.

I originally planned to mention here that this is the highest-rated Deep Space Nine episode on IMDb, but it's not anymore. It's dropped to second place, behind In the Pale Moonlight. That's a shame I reckon, because the very next episode to air, Let He Who is Without Sin, is the lowest-rated episode on IMDb. That's the biggest gap in quality between adjacent episodes since The City on the Edge of Forever came out the week after The Alternative Factor.

Alright, I'll be analysing the second half of Trials and Tribble-ations so there will be SPOILERS below. There may be some spoilers here for earlier series as well, but I won't spoil anything that comes after this episode.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5-06: Trials and Tribble-ations - Part 1

Episode:

104

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Writer:

Ronald D. Moore & René Echevarria

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Director:

Jonathan West

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Air Date:

04-Nov-1996

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've finally reached Deep Space Nine's legendary Star Trek: The Original Series tribute episode Trials and Tribble-ations! This would've been a more impressive milestone for me if I hadn't skipped 73 episodes to get here.

Man, I haven't written about a Deep Space Nine episode in four years, that's crazy. I could've waited three more years and written about this 30th-anniversary episode on its own 30th anniversary, but I just wrote about The Trouble with Tribbles and More Tribbles, More Troubles and I've got to complete my tribble trilogy. (Publishing this 8 days earlier would've also been good).

This was the first tribble episode to not be written by David Gerrold, because he didn't work on Deep Space Nine. Instead, they assigned this to Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria, who clearly knew a bit about the classic show. It was directed by Jonathan West, who'd also been working as DS9's director of photography since the start of season three. I guess his cinematography skills were useful for a project like this.

Okay, I'm going to go through Trials and Tribble-ations scene-by-scene with screencaps, so there'll be SPOILERS below. This is first-time viewer friendly, however! Everything Star Trek that aired after November 4th 1996 is off limits, everything that came before is fair game.