A Tribble Trouble

[Spock's Barber]

In The Trouble With Tribbles Scott is mortified when Kirk asked if he beamed the little fuzzy creatures into space. “Captain Kirk! That would be inhuman!” Yet Scott ended the episode by saying that he sent all of the Tribbles onto the Klingon spacecraft. Sooooooo….what would the Klingons do with their new cargo? They wouldn’t adopt them as mascots. It would be Operation : Annihilate Tribbles.

I know it’s a funny script ending to a funny episode, but it wasn’t a happy ending for the Tribbles. Your thoughts and opinions may vary…

 

[Henoch]

I know it’s a funny script ending to a funny episode, but it wasn’t a happy ending for the Tribbles. Your thoughts and opinions may vary…

There's a chance a few tribbles may survive in some nooks and crannies, eventually spreading to other Klingon territories and resulting in the Great Tribble Hunt.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Star Trek's Krazy Komedy Episodes. Anything for a laugh.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

He didn't just snuff the tribbles out, he gave them a chance to die gloriously in battle (tribbles might have a few tricks up their furry non-sleeves).

 

[Phaser Two]

In The Trouble With Tribbles Scott is mortified when Kirk asked if he beamed the little fuzzy creatures into space. “Captain Kirk! That would be inhuman!” Yet Scott ended the episode by saying that he sent all of the Tribbles onto the Klingon spacecraft. Sooooooo….what would the Klingons do with their new cargo? They wouldn’t adopt them as mascots. It would be Operation : Annihilate Tribbles.

I know it’s a funny script ending to a funny episode, but it wasn’t a happy ending for the Tribbles. Your thoughts and opinions may vary…

Agreed. Actually the ending honestly disturbs me a bit to this day. I enjoyed the repartee among K/S/M/S, and the scene is well-acted, but the actual plot development is problematic and not really super-hilarious as played.

 

[Metryq]

He didn't just snuff the tribbles out, he gave them a chance to die gloriously in battle

I don't know if I'd trust a Scot who didn't know the difference between a claymore and a claybeg. (Day of the Dove)

 

[ZapBrannigan]

In The Trouble With Tribbles Scott is mortified when Kirk asked if he beamed the little fuzzy creatures into space. “Captain Kirk! That would be inhuman!” Yet Scott ended the episode by saying that he sent all of the Tribbles onto the Klingon spacecraft. Sooooooo….what would the Klingons do with their new cargo? They wouldn’t adopt them as mascots. It would be Operation : Annihilate Tribbles.

I know it’s a funny script ending to a funny episode, but it wasn’t a happy ending for the Tribbles. Your thoughts and opinions may vary…

Another problem with the episode is that Cyrano Jones is ordered to "pick up" every tribble on the station, but he isn't told what to do with them.

Pick up is what you do with litter. I think the unstated truth is that Cyrano was tasked with pest control. He was supposed to kill every tribble to clear the infestation.

And if you really want to let the air out the balloon, consider that when a tribble dies, its fleas don't do the honorable thing and commit hari-cari. They hop off and go looking for another host. Next stop: people.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If it's his product, he's expected to take them and do whatever he wants with them. Presumably, he'd go sell them somewhere else if somebody can be found to buy them, not just destroy his increased inventory.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

If it's his product, he's expected to take them and do whatever he wants with them. Presumably, he'd go sell them somewhere else if somebody can be found to buy them, not just destroy his increased inventory.

If Space Station K-7 has a furrier in its shopping mall, then the problem solves itself.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Or a butcher, or a replicated material processor....ew.

I hope the remaining tribbles Scotty didn't beam over live happily ever after in a tribble rescue/preserve/as someone's beloved pet.

 

[Set Harth]

its fleas don't do the honorable thing and commit hari-cari.

the sportscaster?

 

[M'Sharak]

its fleas don't do the honorable thing and commit hari-cari.

the sportscaster?

Possibly related, but also the Americanized misspelling/misspeaking of the term:

also called harakiri

 

[Maurice]

Heinlein's Martain Flat Cats—which the Tribbles are with only the serial numbers filed off—are explained as going into a hibernation state when there's little or no food, which is why they reproduce so explosively when food is available. If the Tribbles are the same, then what Cyrano has to do is grab them as fast as possible, put them in some escape-proof rooms, let them go dormant, then shovel them into ships and dump them back on their home planet.

The alternatives are all unpleasant for the Tribbles, especially if they don't hibernate.

They'd be tossed into those escape-proof rooms and:

1. Starve to death
2. Be exterminated
3. Beamed onto Klingon ships and get burned with fire/disruptors

So what are the ethics? Does The Federation Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (FSPCA) have ethics guidelines for space cockroaches? Ought we think twice about using insecticides on termite infestations?

Cyrano may sell the idea that Tribbles are "love" that money can buy, but they're just fluffy vermin that make noises humans find endearing. They're still space cockroaches.

 

[Nerys Myk]

They had to abandon ship. Koloth was dishonored

 

[Spock's Barber]

Fire the Tribbles through the photon torpedo tube.

 

[scotpens]

The alternatives are all unpleasant for the Tribbles, especially if they don't hibernate.

They'd be tossed into those escape-proof rooms and:

1. Starve to death
2. Be exterminated
3. Beamed onto Klingon ships and get burned with fire/disruptors

4. Turn to cannibalism until there's just one left, which would die of starvation. Like the Killer Shrews.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Another problem with the episode is that Cyrano Jones is ordered to "pick up" every tribble on the station, but he isn't told what to do with them.
.

Of course, we learned later in TAS that Cyrano somehow obtained a "Glommer" from the Klingons that ingested or otherwise destroyed all the Tribbles. So that's how he picked them up.

 

[Maurice]

Of course, we learned later in TAS that Cyrano somehow obtained a "Glommer" from the Klingons that ingested or otherwise destroyed all the Tribbles. So that's how he picked them up.

The whole end premise is a punchline in search of an explanation that is about as durable as a wet paper bag, both at the end of the 1967 episode and the animated follow-up.

Spock mentioned 1,771,561 tribbles in the storage compartments, and if we assume all those tribbles and their offspring died off quickly due to the poisoned grain, that means venting the compartments into space gets rid of most of them. But…

The mystery factor is how many tribbles there are everywhere else on the station, which is unknowable without knowing how many Cyrano supplied the barman with and how quickly, and how much food there is for them on the station. Assuming he sold the barman only ten tribbles almost immediately, and enough food for them to all reproduce, there could be over ten million of them by the time Kirk gives Cyrano his sentence, and if they can't cut off the food supply pronto, maybe 100 million plus by then.

Assuming Uhura's Tribble was the only one brought aboard the Enterprise, and assuming all of them managed to find enough food to reproduce, Scotty would have ≈1 million of them to beam out, which would occupy maybe 150,000 cubic feet, which would be like a cube of fluff 50 feet to a side.

None of these factors in the unknown lifespan of tribbles, especially unfed ones, which suggests a mind-boggling number of fuzzy, rotting corpses to toss into space.

 

[Ssosmcin]

With the Treknology at hand, there's really no reason for it to take years for Cyrano to clean up the mess. Even K-7 has transporters and airlocks. But allowing for Spock's calculations, is Mr. Lurry just going to sit around for years while tribbles either continue to multiply or decompose on his station?

Just put it up there with McCoy forgetting his communicator on Sigma Iotia with no word of going back for it (and he's pretty sure he knows where it is) or leaving Harry Mudd to be nagged to death by androids instead of, I don't know, facing charges or something.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

If K-7 cleans up the mess by beaming the tribbles out into space, it kind of implies that this is how they dispose of all their garbage. That means interstellar space stations of this type (just sitting there between the stars) are surrounded by disgusting debris fields that only get worse over time.

Starships can drop their garbage in out of the way places. The International Space Station puts its trash into the empty resupply craft on their way out, and these space capsules are sent to burn up over the Pacific.

K-7 can't do that. It must have some kind of garbage compactor (they'd never waste oxygen on an incinerator), and then I guess K-7 has a mass driver to fling the parcels in a direction away from the space lanes. That would get rid of it, never to be seen again unless someone goes looking for it. And it would use vastly less energy than a transporter-based solution.