The Trouble with Tribbles
"The Trouble with Tribbles" is the fifteenth episode of the second season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek. Written by David Gerrold and directed by Joseph Pevney, it was first broadcast on December 29, 1967. In this comic episode, the starship Enterprise visits a space station that soon becomes overwhelmed by rapidly reproducing small furry creatures called "tribbles".
It is claimed the short story "Pigs Is Pigs" by Ellis Parker Butler inspired the episode, but strong similarities to sections of the novel The Rolling Stones led the producers to seek a waiver from author Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein himself, in a letter to Gerrold, noted that they "both owe something to Ellis Parker Butler... and possibly to Noah."
The original episode has had several produced follow-ups. The first, "More Tribbles, More Troubles", was originally pitched for the show's third season but not accepted; it was ultimately produced for Star Trek: The Animated Series. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Trek in 1996, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" used digital techniques to insert the Deep Space Nine actors into the events of "The Trouble with Tribbles".
Plot
The Enterprise is summoned to Deep Space Station K7 by undersecretary Nilz Baris to guard a shipment of quadrotriticale grain. Captain James Kirk is annoyed at Baris's use of a high-priority distress call for a seemingly trivial matter, and complies minimally. The Enterprise crew enjoy shore leave on the station, as does the crew of a Klingon ship under the command of Captain Koloth.Interstellar trader Cyrano Jones arrives with goods for sale, among them purring balls of fluff called tribbles. He gives one to Lt. Uhura, who takes it aboard the Enterprise. On both the Enterprise and the station, the tribbles begin reproducing rapidly. They make soothing cooing noises and are loved by the Enterprise crew, even the stoic Spock. However, tribbles jump and screech in disgust when around Klingons.
On the station, a drunken Klingon insults the Enterprise, her crew, and her captain. The resulting brawl between humans and Klingons forces Kirk to cancel shore leave. Baris is terrified of possible Klingon interference with the grain project, and suspects Jones of being a Klingon agent.
Doctor Leonard McCoy and Spock are concerned that the increasing number of tribbles threatens to consume all the food aboard the Enterprise. Kirk realizes that the tribbles on the station could be a threat to the grain shipment. He is too late, however; when he opens an overhead storage compartment, he is buried chest-deep in grain-gorged tribbles. Spock and McCoy discover that many of the tribbles in the hold are dead or dying, suggesting the grain has been poisoned.
Infuriated, Baris vows to see Kirk punished for the fiasco, while an equally outraged Koloth demands an apology from Kirk for what he considers disrespectful treatment of his crew. Their arguments are cut short, however, when Baris's assistant Arne Darvin walks into the room and the tribbles react as if in the presence of a Klingon. McCoy reveals Darvin to be a Klingon disguised as a human; Darvin confesses to having poisoned the grain.
Jones is ordered to remove the tribbles from the station, or he may face charges for transporting dangerous life-forms. Just before the Klingons depart, all the tribbles aboard the Enterprise are transported onto the Klingon vessel by Chief Engineer Scott, where, in his words, "they'll be no tribble at all."
Production
Writing
The episode was the first professional work of writer David Gerrold, and went through a variety of drafts before it reached the screen. Because his typewriter used a less common, smaller size font, an approved screenplay version needed to be reduced by twenty pages before filming.Gerrold had been a fan of science fiction since he was a child. When Star Trek was first broadcast, he was concerned that it might turn into something similar to Lost in Space, which he has described as "one full-color hour of trash reaching into millions of homes". His first story outline was sent in to Star Trek after his agent suggested that he wait until the shows started to air under the theory that the show might drop an existing episode in favor of a better script. The story was entitled "Tomorrow Was Yesterday" and concerned the Enterprise coming across a generation ship which had degenerated into a two-tier class system. His agent received a rejection letter from producer Gene L. Coon dated October 3, 1966. The letter stated that the "outline was by no means inadequate. It is, as a matter of fact, very adequate." It went on to say that it would require a budget larger than that available to television, but would have made a good film treatment. Coon offered to meet with Gerrold and explain what they were looking for, because they were not purchasing scripts at that time.
Coon suggested that Gerrold should wait until the following February to see if the show was renewed for a second season. They also discussed several story ideas, including some small furry creatures that bred too quickly. Coon thought it was a cute idea but would be too expensive as they'd have to build each creature. In preparation for the second series submission, by January, Gerrold had put together five premises to pitch. He had his best hopes on two treatments called "Bandi" and "The Protracted Man", but decided to submit his fifth story despite Coon's earlier dismissal of the idea. It was called "The Fuzzies". The idea was based on the introduction of rabbits in Australia in 1859, whose population grew extraordinarily fast owing to a lack of predators.
The initial premise placed the story on a space station to avoid the ecological damage that the creatures would have on a planet. However, Gerrold's agent was concerned that requiring a miniature of the station to be built as well as the additional sets would cause it to be too expensive for a single episode. Because of his agent's comments, Gerrold modified the pitch to place the action on a colony planet instead. This pitch included the plot points such as the creatures getting into a poisoned grain storage, but omitted the Klingons; and Cyrano Jones was called Cyrano Smith. The five pitches were submitted by Gerrold's agent in February 1967, and received a response in June. At the time the show had already purchased too many scripts for the second season, but story editor D. C. Fontana suggested that they should purchase the story and assign it to a staff writer as it was better than some of the other stories they already had.
At the time that Coon got in touch, Gerrold had just been employed at CBS as a typist working on scripts such as the pilot of Hawaii Five-O. As soon as he got the response, he quit the job. Gerrold and Coon met once more, and revealed that the network had recently made a request for more episodes based on other planets. Coon told Gerrold to work up a further pitch. This version of the story added the Klingons, and moved the action from planetside to a space station. During a visit to the set, Gerrold had the opportunity to speak to Leonard Nimoy and ask his advice on how to write for Spock and was allowed to watch the dailies from each day's shoot of the episode "The Doomsday Machine" which was being filmed at the time. This version of the story was entitled "A Fuzzy Thing Happened to Me...", which was purchased by Coon as a plot outline. He offered Gerrold a chance to write the script himself, by promising not to hand it to another writer for a month. However, Coon made it clear that he was not offering Gerrold a script assignment, but was giving him the option of submitting a draft.
Gerrold turned around the first draft script in two and a half days. Both Coon and associate producer Robert Justman gave feedback on the script, and pointed out a few gaps such as there needing to be some way in the plot for the crew to discover that Darvin was a Klingon agent. The following draft had Cyrano Jones discover that Darvin was an agent, which Coon thought was not "punchy" enough. It was then re-written so that the fuzzies were allergic to Klingons. Both Gerrold and Coon thought the idea was "trite... shtick... hokey" and "had been done before". but Coon agreed that it was the direction the story should go. The re-write of the script took a further week.
Image:Nichelle Nichols, NASA Recruiter - GPN-2004-00017.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Nichelle Nichols said that she had never seen a script changed so much but stay the same.
On a further visit to the set, Gerrold was called into Coon's office. He was informed that he needed to change the name of the fuzzies, as the legal department was concerned about similarities in the name with H. Beam Piper's 1962 novel Little Fuzzy. He subsequently came up with a variety of alternative names. Through a process of elimination, he ended up with the name "tribble". Gerrold's submitted script was within the standard page count for an episode, but, when it was retyped for distribution by the production's mimeo department, it ballooned from 60 to 80 pages due to Gerrold's having used a typewriter with 12-pitch Elite rather than the 10 characters per inch Pica standard of the TV and film industry. This meant that some twenty pages needed to be cut from the script. Coon's participation in terms of suggestions and edits was such that Gerrold thought he should have been given a co-writing credit.
Scenes which were cut from the script included the Enterprise chasing after Jones in his vessel, and resulted in the scene where Kirk has tribbles tumbling onto him while in the grain locker. Gerrold felt that this enforced editing process "tightened up the story and made for a better series of gags". Nichelle Nichols said to Gerrold "I've never seen a script go through so many changes – and stay so much the same".
During script development the Kellam de Forest Research firm cautioned that the tribbles and the events involving them strongly resembled the Martian flat cats in Robert A. Heinlein's 1952 novel The Rolling Stones, and suggested that the rights to the novel should be purchased. Gerrold became concerned that he had inadvertently plagiarized the novel which he had read fifteen years before. Coon phoned Heinlein, who, according to Gerrold, only asked for a signed copy of the script and later sent a note to Gerrold after the show aired to thank him for the script. The producers liked the resulting script so much that Gerrold was later tasked with re-writing the script for "I, Mudd".
Heinlein’s own recollections were at odds with this account. In his authorized biography Heinlein said he was called by Gene Coon who gave him a "sob story" about the issue and asked him to waive claim to the "similarity" to his flat cats. Heinlein states he agreed because he’d just been through one costly plagiarism lawsuit against Roger Corman and did not wish to embroil himself in another "chump's game". He had misgivings upon seeing the actual script but let it go, an action he later regretted: "If that matter had simply been dropped after that one episode was filmed, I would have chalked it up wryly to experience. But the 'nice kid' did not drop it; 'tribbles' have been exploited endlessly… Well that’s one that did 'larn me.' Today if J. Christ phoned me on some matter of business, I would simply tell him: 'See my agent.