Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #30 — “Trials And Tribble-ations” And “Flashback”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary wraps up, we here at Comicon continue to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Well, here we are. After 30 (mostly consecutive) weeks, we’re ready to share the 59th and 60th entries for our list of some of the greatest Trek episodes of all time. Currently there are well over 950 episodes of Trek, and still counting, so there were a great many banger episodes that didn’t make the cut for this list.

To finish out this column and its mission, it only felt right to turn the gaze towards previous major anniversary celebrations for the franchise. Over the decades those behind Trek have not missed many opportunities to celebrate the series, its longevity, and those who make it what it is at every level. Whether it be video games, comic books, novels, movies, or television, the franchise has never stopped boldly going.

Since we’re focused on television it was easy to make choices for these final entries as they best showcase how Trek can be celebrated. Both happened to come from the 30th anniversary year, and were beautiful examples of how you can honor and respect the past without losing focus or respect for the present and the future. Non-weaponized nostalgia, and utilization of new technologies, can make for some really fun experiences.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“Trials And Tribble-ations”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 5, Episode 6 (11/04/1996)

Synopsis: Timelines cross as the crew of Deep Space Nine ends up in the 23rd Century. They must prevent a time traveler from assassinating Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) during the Enterprise’s Tribble filled mission to Space Station K-7.

“The Trouble With Tribbles,” episode 15 of the second season of Star Trek: The Original Series, is beyond iconic. It’s one of those episodes that broke containment and is overall known by those who haven’t even really watched a lot of Trek. They might not know depth, characters, and key details but the silliness of the little furry Tribbles and their cooing and that iconic image of them pouring onto Captain Kirk stand tall in our collective memories.

So when deciding what episode from TOS to utilize new splicing technology for the 3oth anniversary, the choice seemed pretty clear. Others were mulled over, but this little fun episode gave space for a lot of interesting and fun moments to plop the very different cast of DS9 into. Klingons without ridges for Worf (Michael Dorn) to brush off, bar fights for O’Brien (Colm Meany) and Bashir (Alexander Siddig) to engage in, and even a moment for Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) to talk with Captain Kirk. Hell, Worf speaking about the Klingon feud with Tribbles was a real gut level laugh moment, delivered in that deadpan straight man humor that Dorn perfected so well over the years.

Thrown back in time, the DS9 crew is trying to stop the future version of Arne Darvin (Charlie Brill), the alias of an altered Klingon operative, from accomplishing what he could not in the 23rd Century. Getting back the same actor to play the older disgraced version of himself, utilizing a Bajoran Orb, was some chef kiss stuff. According to the people behind the scenes, Brill’s path crossed with some producers at the time they were figuring this episode out, as if the fates themselves were delivering this moment.

Stitching together footage old and new is not a simple task. The technology utilized for this episode was still relatively new, and looking back at it now the result still is so perfectly attuned. Each of the DS9 characters are close to seamlessly incorporated into the existing footage, making it actually seem like the actors transported back to 1967 to star in the original episode.

There is a seriousness to the stakes, as Kirk’s death, or any of his crew, would have irreparably altered the timeline as we know it (since the main characters of Trek shows tend to be entwined in some rather pivotal moments of history within the franchise). Take any of these load bearing moments out, and the whole house comes crumbling down — a concept the franchise has toyed with numerous times throughout its very lengthy run.

Despite being someone that didn’t watch much of the original series (being I wasn’t born until the 1980s and then wasn’t interested in looking back) this is one of those episodes that I still love. I have love for that original crew because I did watch all of their movies and loved a bunch of them (not hard since they are generally better movies than what was given to The Next Generation cast, other than the fifth movie which is beyond atrocious).

Through and through I’m a Deep Space Nine guy, and this is one of those perfect episodes during the run that I love. It’s got seriousness but heart and humor and reverence for the franchise, without being stuck in a bow-down nostalgia mindset — which we see far too often these days when it comes to replicating and trying to relive the past rather than honoring, respecting, and growing from it.

Temporal Investigations is part of the framing of the episode, and they are funny in their own sardonic “never break from professionalism” sort of way. They’re a piece that reminds us that Trek has kept growing and time travel happens so often that there are entire divisions tasked with making sure Captains and crews aren’t running amok through time.

Doing an episode like this today would be even easier with technology, but I wouldn’t want to see it. There was a moment for this particular type of past and present collision, and that moment has passed and it’s okay. We have this episode and the feelings it evoked to hold onto, as we keep boldly trekking forward.

That sounds great to me.

“Flashback”
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 3, Episode 2 (09/11/1996)

Synopsis: A dangerous suppressed memory leads Tuvok (Tim Russ) toward a mental breakdown, and puts him and Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) face-to-face with a Starfleet legend.

While Tuvok is his most known and fleshed out role, Russ was no stranger to Trek by the time he snagged the Voyager chief of security gig. He’s no Jeffrey Combs as far as his number of roles, but it’s nothing to blink at that Russ played three separate roles before Tuvok. He’s also one of the few Trek actors to be able to say they were part of the crew of multiple iconic captains.

I mention all of this because one of those previous roles was in the film Star Trek: Generations, where Russ played an unnamed human tactical officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise-B. This episode would pull Russ back to playing a role during that TOS movie era, with the episode happening precisely during the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Besides being a return for George Takei as Captain Sulu and Grace Lee Whitney as Commander Janice Rand, this episode helped really flesh out Tuvok as a character — delving deep into his original foray into Starfleet, why he left, and ultimately why he came back to the organization, which led to his meeting and befriending Janeway.

Having two big, very different, celebration episodes in the same season of television was a pretty swell move here. It allowed both shows to really stretch, and gave multiple opportunities to pay respect back to the very first iteration of the franchise as well as it’s longevity. Since Takei and Whitney were not in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” their appearances here meant all of the main recognized TOS characters appeared somewhere during this anniversary celebration.

Utilizing the mind meld to do time-travel-that-isn’t-time-travel was also an inspired move. It made it so that they could visit the TOS era without both celebration shows being about actual time travel. Additionally, whereas the episode above utilized splicing video tricks to mesh the eras together, this series did something different. Takei, Whitney, and other actors who had appeared in the U.S.S. Excelsior scenes during the sixth movie returned to film new versions of their previous scenes.

(According to reports, this was because many of the folks had changed in the five years since the film was released, making utilization of their previous footage alongside their return not possible.)

Whatever the case, the actual ability for Russ, Mulgrew, and Takei to interact made it all worth it.

A parasitic virus that passes from person to person and hides as a suppressed memory to feed is some real Trek sci-fi stuff. That’s the kind of  thing I love and gobble up on the regular — just one of those ideas that is far-fetched but concrete enough to serve as the perfect foundation upon which to build the crux of the episode. It creates a reason that we end up traveling back to the Excelsior and get to run around with these former characters of legend.

One of the most beautiful things about this event, in both shows, was how much is spread around the love and respect. At this point references and reverence for Captain Kirk was widespread in Trek related stuff. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) got a lot too as a fan-favorite, but others really got the spotlight here, especially with Sulu and the way that the DS9 episode framed the sequences of previous character shots with the current cast.

For the 60th, we didn’t really get a whole ton of on screen celebrations, sadly. A lot of that came from the shifts in ownership and the way that the current era is being pushed off a cliff and those behind it being shown the door. Imagine what could have been, if something even close to the 30th anniversary were attempted again.

Maybe by the time we reach the 90th anniversary, things will be in a better spot. One can hope at least. As Trek has taught us for generations, we always can find hope.

Welcome to the end! That’s sixty great episodes of Trek, and there are many many more to celebrate beyond these. Continue tuning in though as our conversations, critiques, and celebrations centered around Trek are far from over.