Star Trek DS9 - Season 5 - Episode 06
Star Trek DS9 - 5x06 - Trials and Tribble-ations
Originally Aired: 1996-11-4
Synopsis:
Deep Space Nine crewmembers travel back in time and integrate with Kirk's Enterprise crew. [DVD]
Filler Quotient:
0, not filler, do not skip this episode.
- This episode serves as a sequel to TOS: The Trouble with Tribbles and TAS: More Tribbles, More Troubles. Also the scene when Worf falls just short of explaining why TOS Klingons look different is a sort of inadvertent setup for the later episodes of Star Trek Enterprise, Ent: Affliction and Ent: Divergence. And of course this episode is also one of the best and funniest episodes of the entire series and shouldn't be skipped solely for that reason!
Problems
None
Factoids
- This episode is a candidate for my "Best Episode of DS9 Award."
- Kirk was "a menace" because of his repeated temporal violations.
- Emony Dax met Dr. McCoy on Earth and probably had a brief relationship with him when he was a medical student while she was judging a gymnastics competition.
- The intermittent tribbles that fell on Kirk after the initial downpour were actually Sisko and Dax throwing them down the hole. :)
- This episode was nominated for the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
Remarkable Scenes
- Dax' faux pas, time joke.
- Bashir and O'Brien making fun of the way Worf smells.
- The crew dressing up in retro uniforms.
- Bashir: "I'm a doctor, not an historian." Count 18 for "I'm a doctor, not a (blah)" style lines, which McCoy was famous for.
- Sisko: "In the old days, operations officers wore red and command officers wore gold." Dax: "And women wore less."
- O'Brien and Bashir trying to work a 23rd century turbolift.
- O'Brien's and Bashir's confrontation with a local Engineer.
- Worf describing to Odo the history of Klingons and Tribbles.
- Odo: "Another glorious chapter of Klingon history. Tell me, do they still sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt?"
- Bashir speaking of a possible predestination paradox surrounding his birth: "I could be my own great grandfather! If I don't meet with her tomorrow I may never be born! I can't wait to get back to Deep Space Nine and see your face when you find out that I never existed!"
- O'Brien mistaking a low ranking officer for Kirk.
- O'Brien, Bashir, and Odo not recognizing 23rd century Klingons and Worf's reaction to it: "They are Klingons, and it is a long story." O'Brien: "What happened? Some kind of genetic engineering?" Bashir: "A viral mutation?" Worf: "We do not discuss it with outsiders."
- The bar fight.
- Dax calculating the exact number of tribbles exactly the way Spock did.
- Sisko meeting Kirk.
- Tribbles all over DS9.
- Morn Appearances; 1. At Quark's, drowning in Tribbles.
My Review
This episode is wonderfully funny. They did a great job making everything look retro; even the characters' hair, along with splicing together scenes from TOS: The Trouble With Tribbles into this episode. Dax is ridiculously nostalgic, Sisko wants to ask Kirk about fighting the Gorn, O'Brien can't figure out all this old technology, Bashir thinks he's his own great grandfather, and Worf feels shame about Klingon history. All very entertaining and probably the biggest fanboy episode ever made.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
That was such a fun episode, the producers did such an excellent job on recreating the Enterprise and merging the TOS footage. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much during Star Trek!
And as a side note, I think that mystery sixth Enterprise must be the 1701-E, because Geordi says in First Contact that the Enterprise has been out of spacedock "for almost a year", so presumably when this episode was set, the Enterprise-E was out there, stutting her stuff.
Wonderful stuff. A perfect tribute to TOS and a great episode in its own right.
One minor problem: Bashir says to O'Brien "Surely you took elementary temporal mechanics at the academy" but we know that O'Brien didn't graduate because he was worried about having to call Nog "sir".
So much fun. Even if Dax's line about McCoy brings a visual of college-age McCoy "getting to know" Emony...! Still, it's too hard not love this episode!
Very good episode, but as a second watch i found it too easy they captured the klingon effortlessly and silently out of the blue and he told them what he did. Chop chop, time to cut this short :)
A classic episode. It had a wonderful feel and was perfectly pulled off. Just superb!
Just one problem (though the writers couldn't have known at the time) they say that it was the first enterprise when we know that is not true. I guess I was the first Federation enterprise as the Federation hadn't been formed yet when the first was made.
Watching in 2018, I'm still amazed at how seamless they made everything look.
“ All very entertaining and probably the biggest fanboy episode ever made.”
Until Lower Decks came along!