More Tribbles, More Troubles

*** (3 stars out of 5)

"More Tribbles, More Troubles" does what it says on the tin. Writer David Gerrold returns (and appears as a toon cameo) alongside his fuzzy creations.

Enterprise is trying to protect a quintotriticale grain shipment to Sherman's Planet when they must intervene to save a civilian from a Klingon battleship.

It's a space battle! It's not very animated, but it's more special effects than could be managed by models back when, and technically speaking, the first time we see the ship of...

...Koloth! Radiant, like all his crew, in his daring lavender vest. He's attacking Cyrano Jones, known in the Empire as an ecological saboteur. Stanley Adams reprises Jones' wheedling voice to good effect.

Cyrano has shortened his parole on Station K-7 by finishing the tribble clean-up with an assistant: the genetically engineered predator called the glommer. Jones has had 'safe' tribbles made: they don't reproduce, they just get fat. Also, they're pink.

As a side business, Jones stopped selling Spican flame gems and now sells Spican flame gems (rhymes with frickin' instead of lichen).

My favourite image is the glommer unable to get its mouth around a fat tribble. I guess I can relate: I've made my own attempts to bite off more than I can chew, usually pie!

A derivative sequel to a fun episode is still a fun episode. Maybe it would've been more fun, or maybe no fun at all- if Gerrold had used his original (but not Saturday kid fare) notion in which the glommers breed rapidly as well, but feed on the crew.

I liked the tribbles when they were fat, but I had to scratch my head at the less amusing revelation that they were colonies packed together. That just returns us to the tribble avalanche gag, and the "fob them off on the Klingons" ending we've already seen. But at least McCoy got them out of Kirk's chair.

As Scotty put it: "It's best if all your tribbles are little ones."