Most Gratuitous Trek MacGuffin!

Slightly OT, but Sam & Max had their own adventure about McGuffins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpR-Misimgw

 

They couldn't have replaced the humpback whales by rats, because they needed a species which upcoming extinction was plausible. They couldn't have replaced the humpback whales by koalas, because they needed a species which transport would be difficult. They couldn't have replaced the humpback whales by tigers, because they needed a species which is presumed smart. They couldn't have he humpback whales by elephants, because they needed an aquatic species.

 

Quadrotriticale is important only because it's needed for Sherman's Planet, which is—not important to the viewer. The plot revolves the grain, just as plots revolve around all MacGuffins. The fact that this MacGuffin is edible is part of the humor involved (such as it is). It's edibility provides the means by which the tribbles end up "possessing" it, foiling both the Federation heroes who want to use the MacGuffin and the Klingon villains who want to destroy it (as tribbles, dumb little creatures, are shown to eat everything).

 

The Trouble with Tribbles is about how a trouble maker can save the day by the trouble he made himself. The sabotaged ressource could have been something else than poisoned food

Yup, Sherman's Planet is only there to set another confrontation between the Enteprise and Klingons.

 

The "Stone of Gol".

 

basically the whole Abramsverse is a MacGuffin.

 

Basically? As in not at all?

 

^ This. Absolutely.

 

definitions expand.

 

Not on your say-so. But thanks for being on the show.

 

They expand. They don't become something completely different.

 

I went for "red matter". If they only needed a microscopic drop of whatever the hell it is, why then do they have a huge ball of the stuff? It's just begging to be abused by a madman.

 

People still seem to have difficulty with the definition of McGuffin.

 

Yep.

 

Ok, I believe that the definition of Wikipedia is a good one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

The nature of Red Matter, for example, is quite important for the plot (it destroyed Vulcan, an important plot element for the 2009 movie and the sequel!)

A a MacGuffin is a plot device. How can a narrative universe be a plot device?

 

But Red Matter is not a "goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues".

 

Which leaves out quadrotriticale, because its nature was important to the plot.

 

No, it said specific nature unimportant to the overall plot. Quadrotriticale's specific nature as a "high-yield, perennial, four-lobed grain" [link] is completely immaterial to the plot, as is its importance for Sherman's planet. It only needed to be something that the Klingons could covertly sabotage and that the tribbles could subsequently and overtly sabotage without covering up the Klingon sabotage. Nothing else mattered.

 

The nature of the "Sherman's Planet problem" didn't matter. The show is a comedy about Kirk dealing with all these fucking rabbits, and the punch line is a ton of them falling on him. If you think the hows and whys of that are other than trivial you've missed the point.

 

Only? That's ALOT of plot relevance in my book.