The 10 Best Episodes Of Star Trek: The Original Series

The Trouble With Tribbles

We’ve spoken a lot so far about TOS‘s intelligence and heart, but it’s important to remember that it could be very funny at times, too. Generally, this took the form of the banter between Kirk, Spock and Bones, but the humor occasionally takes center stage, and that’s never more evident than in “The Trouble with Tribbles,” an episode that really shouldn’t work as well as it does.

On the surface, a light story about the Enterprise being overrun by cuddly furry critters that reproduce ad infinitum should be filler at best, but the material is so deftly handed and played so well by the cast that “The Trouble with Tribbles” is just so much fun to watch from start to finish, even if the Federation politics stuff takes a back seat.

It’s worth mentioning that Deep Space Nine later paid homage to this episode in “Trials and Tribble-ations,” which celebrated the 30th anniversary of Star Trek. Using some then pioneering digital effects, it saw the show’s main characters travel back to the events of this episode to prevent a time-travelling plot to assassinate Kirk.