Star Trek: The Original Series 2-15: The Trouble With Tribbles

Episode:

44

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Writer:

David Gerrold

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Director:

Joseph Pevney

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Air Date:

29-Dec-1967

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm going to try to find something new to say about The Trouble with Tribbles, arguably the most famous episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It's the one with the tribbles in it.

You've probably figured out from the clues that this was written by David Gerrold. In fact, it was his first professional sale. He went on to provide two scripts for Star Trek: The Animated Series and was part of the team that developed Star Trek: The Next Generation, even writing some of the series bible. Unfortunately, season 1 TNG was a damn mess behind the scenes and he left the show without writing a single episode.

The title card doesn't mention that it was heavily rewritten by producer Gene Coon. It was one of his final episodes as producer, as the work was exhausting and he was butting heads with Gene Roddenberry over the amount of comedy he was bringing to what was supposed to be a serious show.

This was originally the last episode of 1967, which basically covered Coon's time on the series, give or take a few episodes. It's probably not a coincidence that 1967 may have also featured the best run of stories in the franchise's history. They weren't all winners, but the first episode to air that year was The Galileo Seven, one of my favourites, then you've got stories like Arena, Space Seed, Devil in the Dark, Errand of Mercy, City on the Edge of Forever, Amok Time, Mirror Mirror, The Doomsday Machine, Journey to Babel etc. I'm not saying that Gene Coon was the real talent behind classic Star Trek, it was a team effort, but the show shined brightest when he was part of that team. And not just a freelancer dropping off scripts like Spock's Brain.

Okay, I'm going to be going through the whole episode and writing my thoughts underneath screencaps, so there will be SPOILERS here. I won't spoil anything that aired after it though. Even episodes that actually have 'tribbles' in the title.

Star Trek: The Original Series 1-18: Arena

Episode:

18

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Writer:

Gene L. Coon

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Director:

Joseph Pevney

|

Air Date:

19-Jan-1967

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I should really finish writing about Strange New Worlds season one before the second season starts, but I felt like I should cover this episode of the classic series first, for some reason. Like there's something in here that might be relevant...

Anyway, Arena was the 18th episode of Star Trek: The Original Series in its US airing order, coming just a few weeks after the last episode I wrote about, Balance of Terror. Here's some trivia you won't find anywhere else on the internet: Arena is the only episode of Star Trek to share its name with an Elder Scrolls game, and one of two to share its name with a Wing Commander game.

I've got some better trivia for you: they gave a 'story by' credit to writer Frederic Brown even though he didn't do any work on the episode whatsoever. In fact, Gene Coon came up with the whole script by himself. But then he learned that it had similarities to another story printed 20 years earlier in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, which was also called Arena. So Coon decided to just pretend he'd based it on Brown's idea and asked him for permission.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to go through Arena one scene at a time, writing down what happens and I what I think about that, so if you don't know what happens in the episode now, you will do by the time you reach the end. I'll not be spoiling anything that aired after it however, so if you're watching through Star Trek for the first time there'll be no Next Generation or Strange New Worlds spoilers to worry about here.