Star Trek DS9: Triple Tribble Troubles [PLTEB 36231]

There are reasons why I've stuck with laserdisc, and this disk is one of the biggest; it's by far my favourite, and it doesn't seem to be available on DVD which is simply crazy.

What is it? Triple Tribble Trouble collects the three core Star Trek episodes which feature tribbles, furry little balls that were possibly the most unlikely menace the show ever produced.

The Trouble With Tribbles is the Star Trek (Original series) episode in which they were first encountered. An emergency signal summons the USS Enterprise to a space station which is currently storing a cargo of quadrotritricale, a genetically engineered form of wheat, which is vital to the colonisation of Sherman's World. The bureaucrat in charge wants it guarded until it can be shipped out - needless to say Captain Kirk isn't enthusiastic, but posts a few guards and orders his crew to take shore leave.

At which point enter Cyrano Jones, travelling trader and tribble vendor. Jones has a cargo of jun... valuable merchandise which he wants to sell to the bartender / trader aboard the station. The bartender isn't interested until Liutenant Uhuru, who should certainly know better (and should really do something violent about Jones' sexist chat-up line) falls in love with one. Then the bartender gets more enthusiastic and buys them, and Uhuru happily takes her pet back to the enterprise.

Then alarms sound, a Klingon ship turns up, and we get escalating tension between the Klingon's and Kirk's crew, ending in a classic barroom brawl. Meanwhile the Tribbles have been quietly doing their thing; purring, being ridiculously cute, and reproducing every few hours. And in the aftermath of the fight Kirk finally notices that there are hundreds of them aboard the enterprise and the space station.

Things escalate (of course) and we eventually discover that the tribbles have eaten most of the grain - which oddly turns out to be a good thing, for reasons I won't explain since they're spoilers. Kirk turns the disaster into victory, the Klingons leave in a huff, and Scotty finds a funny way to clear out the Tribbles from the Enterprise. Fade off to a happy ending and the Enterprise flying off into the sunset - or rather interstellar space.

That's most of Side A - the remainder is the first part of the next story, which continues as the start of side B:

More Tribbles, More Troubles is an episode of the Star Trek animated series, whose animation seems to have been VERY low budget. The plot of this episode is eerily familiar - the Enterprise is escorting two freighters full of grain to Sherman's Planet, where there has been a famine. Enter Cyrano Jones, hotly pursued by Klingons who want him for crimes against hum... Klingonity(?), accompanied by a load of allegedly safe Tribbles. Needless to say things aren't quite as simple as they look. This time we get some space battles, more fast-breeding Tribbles, and eventually a happy ending and the Enterprise flying off into the sunset.

That would have been the end of it. Except that The Trouble With Tribbles was immensely popular, and eventually someone decided to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the show by revisiting the story in Trials and Tribble-ations - literally revisiting, because it's a time travel story in which the Deep Space Nine team travels back to Captain Kirk's era and tries to stop another time traveller from assassinating Kirk:

It's set in and around The Trouble With Tribbles, using computer technology to insert the character into the background (and often the foreground) of the original episode. It's done incredibly well, with the DS9 team participating in most of the events of the original story, including the brawl and its aftermath. Eventually they save Kirk and return to their present. Which ought to be the end of the story, except that with tribbles around things are never quite that simple... If you like time travel stories you'll like this one, and especially its deadpan Temporal Investigations team who have to deal with the mess and decide if anything horrible has happened to time:

So there you have it - two excellent episodes, plus a (poorly) animated story that's still a lot of fun. And furry things... lots and lots of furry things...



The disk ends with a trailer for Star Trek: First Contact, and has no other extra content. But if you like Star Trek they're must-watch episodes, and this laserdisc is the only way to see them all on one disk.

I've given the release date as 1997, which is the copyright date for the sleeve artwork, but the Memory Alpha wiki (a good reference for Star Trek material) gives the date as October 1996. The entry for this disk is here.

Technical stuff - The original episode and the animated episode have mono sound. Trials and Tribble-ations is digital stereo. The disk is CLV, and total length is 115 minutes.

(edited to fix an error and an omission)

That might be the latest ep of DS9 on a (non-Japanese) LD...

Looks like it - the full(?) list of Star Trek laserdiscs is here

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/LaserDisc

Forgot to say that Trials and Tribble-ations was made for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek.

I've thought about picking this disc up quite a few times as it's a great selection of episodes.

I bought the first 5 seasons of ds9 on ld from good squid in Japan. They should arrive in 2 months. I have all 30 discs which were released in the us(2.5 seasons). I might let those go.

It's a pity S6 and 7 weren't released in Japan. I suppose Voyager sold better, as S5 was released in June 2001(!)

I got a copy of the Captain's Collection set at a thrift store, so I can see how well the shows clean up.

Those DS9 Japanese season boxes look very nice. They are dirt cheap in Japan, and it would be nice if a realistic seller put some up on eBay, as there are some up there lately from a US seller which have been priced insanely high ($400 and more each? ).

Shipping is the deal breaker. I paid about $200 on shipping which will take 1-2 months. They are so heavy. I will get the tng set too but it will cost me even more because its 14 volumes