Jammer's Reviews

While escorting a shipment of grain to a colony where it's needed to avert a famine, the Enterprise encounters a Klingon battle cruiser in Federation space firing on a scout ship. They rescue the scout ship's passenger, one Cyrano Jones (Stanley Adams, reprising his role from TOS), whom Kirk immediately suspects as having provoked the Klingons in some way. Meanwhile, the Klingons, under the command of Kirk's adversary Koloth, open fire on the Enterprise with an experimental new weapon that renders the ship immobile and defenseless.

After the Enterprise evades the Klingons, Cyrano boards the Enterprise with a new version of the tribbles, which don't reproduce, and which he expects will be a raging success compared to their endlessly multiplying predecessors. He also possesses a creature called a "glommer," a tribble predator that disposes of excessive tribbles by eating them.

With the Klingons still out there, Kirk now has to complete his original mission of delivering the grain, while fending off the Klingons and whatever it is Cyrano Jones might have up his sleeve. But these tribbles, rather than multiplying, grow exponentially larger, especially once they start eating the grain stored in containers in the corridors of the ship.

"More Tribbles, More Troubles" has all the plot pieces it needs to be a fun comic romp, and they're even probably in the right approximate alignment. But what it doesn't have is the comic timing to support it. This is where you really lose the impact of comedy by having such limited animation in the place of what would probably be funny reaction shots and actors elevating the material. (And this series' tendency for pauses and dead air also doesn't really play into this sort of episode, either.) I didn't dislike the spirit of this episode, but the jokes are far too tame (Kirk keeps pushing increasingly larger-sized tribbles off the captain's chair) and I didn't laugh even once. And that's unfortunately a problem for a would-be comedy.

It's interesting that this was the first of the TAS episodes produced, but the fifth to air, given its tie-backs to TOS and the familiarity fans had with the tribbles and the guest characters. Either the creators wanted to get the series out the door on its own terms first, or something on the calendar indicated it was better to hold onto this one until further into the series' run.

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