Season 2, Episode 42 "The Trouble With Tribbles"

"The Trouble With Tribbles"
Production Number: 42
Air Order: 44
Stardate: 4523.3
Original Air Date: December 29, 1967


Happy Memorial Day to all of the servicemen and women, whose sacrifice and service have oddly allowed me to write this ridiculous blog. Thank you.

*******

As I sit here typing this on Towel Day, I am reflecting on the fact that the production number on this episode is 42. Sweeeet.

This week we begin with a briefing between Kirk, Spock, and Chekov. They're discussing the circumstances of a space station nearby, K-7. It seems that the planet nearby is in dispute, being claimed by both the Klingons and the Federation. Chekov makes a little joke about being close enough to the Klingons to smell them, and Spock dickishly points out that scent does not transfer through space. Dude, we know. It's a joke. Build a bridge. I feel like Spock has lived among humans long enough to be used to their dumb little amusements, and should have already been just internalizing his annoyance at it.
The other part of this scene which bugs me is that the planet in question is called "Sherman's Planet", which is just awful. If you're going to name a location after someone, just use their name, and drop the possessive. "Sherman's Planet" sounds like a food cart with the food part missing: "Sherman's Falafel Planet".
 "Sherman's Kombucha Planet".
"Sherman's Gluten-Free Paleo Planet."
Just call the planet Sherman, okay?
Anyway, Uhura calls the briefing room to inform Kirk that K-7 has made a priority one distress call to them, and the E goes to Red Alert.

Kirk's Log 4523.3:  "Priority one is an emergency call. It pretty much means that your ship or station is FUBAR, so we're rushing over there."

When they get to the station, it's fine. Also, check it out - the production guys went to the trouble to build a space station. That's pretty awesome, even if it does look like an ugly late-60's Christmas ornament.

Kirk calls the station. "Hey, K-7. WTH? Why did you yell "fire!"? There's nothing wrong with you."
The manager, Mr Lurry, apologizes in a way that makes him sound as though he accidentally butt-dialed 911, and is hoping that he won't get fined. He asks Kirk to beam over so he can explain.
So Kirk and Spock beam over, and Kirk starts yelling at Lurry for issuing a scary alert when some little bureaucrat asshole steps forward and says he made the call.  This guy is Nilz Baris and apparently we all better recognize, because don't you know who he is? He's the Federation Undersecretary in charge of Agricultural Affairs in the quadrant, according to the snivelly little PA at Baris' elbow.

You know, I'm sure most PAs are nice people, and are just trying to do their jobs. So why are they always portrayed as weasels, kind of on the small side, heads up their boss' ass, and nasty to people they consider beneath them?
Kirk asks why Baris called them, and dude replies that he wants a contingent of Reds to hop over to the station to guard this super-awesome grain called quadrotriticale. When Kirk asks what that is, Baris snidely remarks that he wouldn't expect Kirk to know, but Spock heads him off by giving a thorough history of it. It seems that this hybrid grain is the only thing that will grow on Sherman's Pleasure Planet, which is important, because in order to secure their claim on the planet over the Klingons, they have to show that they can make the space more productive than the other race.
Pissed off that they were called in by some inflated douchebag to watch over some wheat, Kirk starts to go off on Baris and his underling. Spock points out that there are Klingons nearby, and the Sherman's Pizza Planet thing is important to the Federation, so Kirk resignedly calls Uhura and orders a pair of Reds to beam down and report to Lurry, then gives the command to give the rest of the off-duty crew shore leave.
"The fuck?" yells Baris. "This is important! MOAR REDS!"
"Bite me," says Kirk. "I already have half a mind to report your ass for abusing Priority One."

Check that out: it's the E out the window, orbiting the station.
I don't know who thought to add that detail, but good on ya,
buddy.

Kirk and Spock go to the station bar -- what in gay hell is that? The waitresses are wearing short plastic backless romper things...with wings. This leaves me to imagine all of the situations that might have lead to this outcome, including:
- the costumers found wings at the Dollar Store, and thought, "Boy, I'm sure I can put these to good use!"
- somebody on the crew was in charge of making their kids' costumes for the school play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. They then donated these items to the low-budget television show they worked on.
- someone in the costume department is on drugs.
- everyone in the costume department is on drugs.

So Kirk and Spock are drinking in the drug lounge on the space station, and Kirk is bitching about Baris. As they leave, they meet Uhura and Chekov coming in, and they have a brief exchange about the quadrotriticale. Chekov takes the bottle of it from Kirk before he leaves. As Uhura and Chekov approach the bar, the bartender tells a guy wearing a coat with too many pockets that he's not buying any more of his crap. Too Many Pockets displays a few things on the bar, then pulls out a ball of lint.
"Hey, that's cute!" says Uhura. "Can I hold it?"
The lint ball purrs in her hand. The bartender and Pockets argue about how much the bartender will pay for the lintball, which Pockets refers to as a tribble. At one point, Uhura puts the tribble down, and it eats some of the quadrotriticale that Chekov spilled on the bar. Pockets gives Uhura the tribble, figuring it'll make good advertising for people to see a cute girl with a ball of living lint.

Lookin' creepy there, Pavel.

Kirk and Spock are back in the briefing room on the E when Uhura calls from her station (wow, that was some short shore leave). Starfleet admiral Fitzpatrick tells Kirk the same thing that Spock said before, about how the grain and Sherman's Freaking Planet are important, and he is to make himself Baris' bitch for a while. Kirk is annoyed as hell, but has to do it because it's orders. OR, he could just do like he always does, and ignore orders.
Okay, I have to interject here: if this situation is so damn important, why was Baris not simply given a bunch of Reds of his own from the get-go? Why the hell is he harvesting them from the E at the last minute? That makes no sense.
Uhura calls again to tell Kirk that there are Klingon ships in the vicinity, and they go to red alert again. When Kirk and Spock arrive on the bridge, they call Lurry.
"They won't attack," says Lurry. "Their captain is sitting here with me."
We zoom out and see it's true. Dramatic music!

The E is still visible outside the window. E-ception!

Kirk's Log 4524.2: "Oh, fuck me. First I have to deal with that prick Baris, now I've got Klingons on my ass. Calgon, take me away."

Kirk and Spock beam down, and Kirk greets the Klingon captain, Koloth, by name. Koloth greets him back, and my inner Grumpy Cat says NO. Koloth is played by William Campbell, the guy who played Trelane, the Squire of Gothos. Campbell was perfect as Trelane. He was selfish, impetuous, and had a child-like enthusiasm for everything, as well as a shit-eating grin that he employed often. My brain immediately rejects him as a Klingon. He's too smiley, too fun, too dorky. He is not gritty enough to be a Klingon.

"We're here for shore leave," Koloth says brightly.

"That's up to Lurry," says Kirk.

Lurry pulls Kirk aside to tell him that he doesn't want Klingons on his station, but that he isn't really allowed to say no. Kirk turns back to Koloth, and replies that his men may have shore leave here, but that only 12 can come on board at a time, and that he's posting one Red on board for each of Koloth's men.

"That's cool. We're totes peaceful," says Koloth. The one or two lines that his companion has had in this scene mark the lesser-ranked Klingon as the better example of the race. Kirk and Koloth exchange some bullshit diplomacy that neither actually means, and the Klingons depart.

Back in the E breakroom, Kirk and Spock find Scotty relaxing with technical manuals. The way Scotty talks about those manuals makes it sound like they have a diagram of the E's engines as a centerfold. Ooh, baby. Check out the couplings on her!

Uhura has a table full of tribbles. Apparently, it had babies overnight. Spock picks one up and observes that the purring of the tribble has a calming effect on the human nervous system, and notes that he is lucky because it does not affect him. They all turn to find him snuggling the tribble.

Uhura gives one to Bones to study back in sick bay, and then gives the others away to crew members. You guys are going to spay and neuter those, right? RIGHT?

Out in the corridor, Baris calls Kirk to bitch about the Klingons.

"All of my Reds are either guarding grain or the Klingons," replies Kirk. "What the hell else do you want?"

He signs off and goes to sick bay to get headache meds.

Bones now has 11 tribbles. "Their metabolism is 50% reproduction," he tells Kirk. "Know what you get when you feed a tribble too much?"

"A fat tribble?" guesses Kirk.

"Nope," says Bones. "Lots of little hungry tribbles."

Kirk then heads down to the transporter room to see off some crew members. Scotty doesn't want to take shore leave, but Kirk pulls rank, and Scotty resignedly gets on the pad.

Oh, vot dammit. This episode offers pop-up trivia balloons, which are clearly not working right, as I'm 19 minutes in, and this is the first pop-up we've had. It appears to be the second of a two-parter, and it gives a reason for Kirk to sometimes wear that Casual Friday wrap-around blouse, only it doesn't give the whole thing, so I'm stuck with the world's most uninteresting mystery.

Scotty, Chekov, and some random Gold enter the station bar, followed shortly by Too Many Pockets. He offers to sell them a tribble, but they politely refuse, so he turns to a table of Klingons. Koloth's companion bristles at the sight of it, and barks at Pockets to get it the hell away from him. The tribble sort of growls or something. Pockets then tries to sell another tribble to the bartender, who pulls a good dozen tribbles from behind the bar.

At the table, Scotty and Chekov make fun of each other's choice of drinks. The Klingon makes his way to the bar and loudly starts some shit about "Earthers". (Seriously? Earthers? I guess it's supposed to be a slur or something.) Chekov's hackles go up. He wants to beat the crap out of the Klingon, but Scotty stops him, recognizing that the Klingon would snap Chekov like a dry twig. Scotty keeps his cool... until the Klingon starts talking smack about his woman, the Enterprise. Then he starts a knock-down drag-out brawl with the whole fucking bar. Scotterprise: he ships it.

With the bartender gone, Pockets helps himself to free drinks behind the bar. There's some physical comedy that's just kind of okay as he makes his way through the brawl to the door while trying not to spill his drink. It was really not necessary to add that, though I suppose it meant not having to watch a boring-ass fight scene, so I'll call that a draw.

Kirk's Log 4525.6: "A big-ass fight went down on the station, so I canceled shore leave. I can't believe I missed the fight. That super-sucks."

Kirk lines up the shore-leavers in the briefing room to drill them about the fight, but everyone is like "I dunno, it wasn't me!" Everyone is grounded, and he keeps Scotty back in the hopes that he'll rat out one of his fellow crewmen.

"Dude, I started it," admits Scotty. He has the worst black eye make-up ever. It looks like he's turning into a pink dalmatian. "Chekov wanted to come out swinging when they started talking shit about you, but I told him to sit his ass down. But then they started in on our girl E, so I had to put the smack-down on them."

Kirk seems put-out. Maybe he's upset because Scotty picked the E over him. Or maybe he realizes that they're both in love with the same woman. Either way, Scotty is now grounded too. He seems ecstatic, as this will allow him to stay locked in his quarters with his engine porn.

There's kind of a throw-away scene next where Bones and Spock use the tribbles to insult one another, and the only way that the story is forwarded at all by this scene is that it shows them utilizing sick bay equipment to study the tribbles.

Entering the bridge, Kirk fails to notice that nearly every surface is covered in tribbles, until he sits on one. Bones comes in and reports that the tribbles appear to be bisexual, and seem to be born pregnant.

"Saves time!" he says cheerfully.

"They're eating the supplies, and giving nothing in return, the freeloaders," remarks Spock.

"No way," protests Uhura. "They give love!"

"Dude, get these lintballs off my bridge," Kirk tells Uhura. "Then call Lurry and have him hold Pockets." He, Bones and Spock leave in the lift.

Okay, so it wasn't until the previous scene that we actually learn Pockets' name, and it turns out to be even more ridiculous than Too Many Pockets: it's Cyrano Jones. However, I kind of like "Pockets", so we'll stick with that.

Kirk, Spock, and Lurry interrogate Pockets in Lurry's office. Spock, in typical Vulcan-speak, tells Pockets that, by removing the tribbles from their natural habitat and predators, that he has brought about an overpopulation on the station. Pockets actually looks at him and says "Huh?"

Baris and the weasley PA enter just as Pockets exists. Baris accuses Pockets of being a Klingon agent. Kirk laughs in his face.

"We checked him out," insists the brown-nose PA. "He was there for the barfight, and he has been in Klingon space within the last four months."

"Yeah, I checked him out, too," says Spock. "Dude is just a peddler of crap."

"You're a peddler of crap, too," Kirk tells Baris, and he and Spock leave.

"You tell 'em, boss! You tell 'em!"

Kirk and Spock enter the breakroom, which is covered in tribbles, and they go to the food replicators. They pull out trays of tribbles for lunch. Scotty comes in with an armload.

"They're in the machinery, and probably traveling through the air vents," he says.

"Fuck!" says Kirk, making a realization.

"Fuck indeed," replies Spock, knowing what he means. They call the station, and ask for a meeting with Baris and Lurry.

Beaming down, Spock and Kirk rush to the storage compartments with Baris and Lurry. Kirk opens an overhead compartment and it rains tribbles (as opposed to men). Kirk is now wearing a lovely hoop skirt of furry purries.

The WTF Faces here on Baris and Lurry are the best. 

"Kirk, you bitch! This is your fault! They ate my grain," huffs Baris.

"Baris, shut the fuck up," says Kirk.

Bones comes running in, all excited. "They stop reproducing if you don't feed them!"

Wow, really? So if feeding them too much produces little tribbles, then not feeding them produces none? You're a genius, Bones. Tell us now what happens when you get them wet. Will the babies be evil if you feed them after midnight?

"So... most of these tribbles are dead," says Spock. "I think there's something wrong with the grain."

Bones takes some dead tribbles and some grain samples back to the E to study them.

Everybody heads back to Lurry's office to interrogate Pockets again. The Klingons come rushing in, and Koloth demands that Kirk apologize to his men for treating them like crap.

"Don't do it!" says Baris. "They'll use that as leverage to get Sherman's Gluten-Free Paleo Planet!"

You know, they really should give the planet to the Klingons. They'd probably give it a better fucking name.

"We'll talk to you civilly if you get those tribbles out of here," Koloth tells Kirk.

The Reds carry the tribbles past the Klingons, and the furries make that squeaky-growl again. The door opens, and it's the slimy PA. When the Reds try to carry the tribbles past him, they freak out again. Bones comes in with his results, but before he can give them, Kirk runs a test. He holds the tribbles up to Spock, and they purr. He holds the tribbles up to Baris, and they purr. He holds them up to the PA, and they squeak-growl. 

Bones scans the PA. "Dude is a Klingon."

Because in TOS, all you have to do to be human is shave off your fu man chu.

"So the grain is poisoned," Bones continues.

The PA confesses in the same voice as an unmasked old man in costume. "I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids."

The PA is arrested, and Baris follows them out.

Kirk turns to Koloth. "So that apology... go fuck yourself, dude."

The Klingons rush out.

Kirk and Spock take Pockets back to the bar, where the bartender is buried in tribbles.

"Guess what?" says Kirk. "We won't turn you in for shady business practices if you pick up all of these tribbles."

"Um, there are more than one million tribbles on this station," says Pockets. "That will take years!"

"Yeah, 17," replies Spock.

(Really? Seventeen? That seems iffy to me, Star Trek. By that math, he only has to pick up about 160 tribbles a day to reach his goal within 17 years. He could really pick up more than that and be done much sooner. Plus, you're not taking into account the fact that some of those tribbles will reproduce in the meantime. Also, where is he going to store them? In the poisoned grain lockers? I think you choose an arbitrary number of years. Knock it off.)

Back on the E bridge, Kirk checks his chair before sitting down. He asks where the tribbles went. Bones passes the buck to Scotty, who passes it to Spock, who bounces it back to Scotty again.

"Um..." says Scotty. "Beamed 'em off."

"Into space?" demands Kirk. "You asshole!"

"No... I beamed them onto the Klingon ship," admits Scotty.

And the idea of the Klingons warping away with all of those screaming tribbles on board makes them all laugh, despite the fact that the Klingons probably will end up beaming them out into the depths of space to get rid of them.

The back and forth of this episode kind of annoys me. In one scene, Kirk is on the Enterprise. In the next scene, he's on the station. Then he's on the E again. In the course of six hours, Kirk and Spock beam back and forth 8 times. That's one beam each, every 45 minutes or so. Seems like a giant waste of energy to me. Like, how much energy does it take to run the transporter? Probably quite a bit - it has to disassemble someone in one place, and reassemble them elsewhere. And you can't tell me that shit doesn't give some people motion sickness. I'd have barfed on the transporter pad by beam four. Clearly, Kirk and Spock have heartier constitutions than I.

Death Toll:
Red deaths this episode: 0
Red deaths this season: 12
Gold deaths this episode: 0
Gold deaths this season: 6
Blue deaths this episode: 0
Blue deaths this season: 1
Total crew deaths this season: 19
Total crew deaths thus far: 35

*******

This week's tea is Blackberry Sage by The Republic of Tea. It's good and fruity, with a snap of sage. The black leaf base gives it a slightly bitter aftertaste, but not in a bad way. I think I underestimated how sweet this tea would be on it's own, because it seemed a bit too sweet for me after I added my regular amount of rock sugar. I bought the loose leaf tea, but it also comes in bags and bottles (though those bottles are a whopping 5 bucks for one - ouch!).

http://www.republicoftea.com/blackberry-sage-black-full-leaf/p/V00559/

ST:TAS Season One, Episode Five: More Tribbles, More Troubles

"More Tribbles, More Troubles"
Air Order: 5
Star Date: 5392.4
Original Air Date: October 6, 1973



I had a dream the other night that Chris Rock had three arms and three legs. I recall thinking, "Wow, this dream has really good CGI!" The moral of the story is: don't watch animated Star Trek and The Fifth Element before bed unless you want to wake up confused.

As far as I can tell, I should credit this to Masao (?) as it appears to
be from his/her Photobucket.

*******

We start out this week with a really slow, long shot of the Enterprise. Seriously. It drifts across the screen like in real time, and the 15 seconds or so it takes to make it from the middle of the screen to disappear off to the right is the longest 15 seconds ever. "Tra-la-la, waiting for the show to start."

Kirk's Log 5392.4: "We have to take quadrotriticale to Sherman's Planet in these two robot ships. Like, the grain ships are being run from our bridge. Cool, huh? I have no idea what's going to happen, even though the audience already knows. Also, Sherman's Planet is not a stupid name at all."

I don't know about the design on these robot ships, you guys. They look like buildings featured on The Jetsons, which then had warp nacelles attached to the back at the last minute. And they're not terribly aerodynamic-looking. I mean, I know there's no air in space, so they wouldn't need to be aerodynamic, but I sort of liken space travel to underwater travel, and let's face it, submarines are built to move quickly and efficiently through the water, so... whatever dynamic you need for space travel, this doesn't have it.

So anyway, the E is running these two robot ships to Sherman's Falafel Hut and Celestial Body, where they are having major issues with starvation and famine. They have a reason to rush. So why do they take a detour? They see a Klingon ship nearby, chasing a much smaller ship of Federation design. I wanna repeat that: the small ship comes from Federation space, but is not Star Fleet. Kirk dragged two huge robot ships and his own over to this other area, moving further away from the planet they are rescuing, so he can rubberneck a car chase. I get it: the E is like the sheriff of space. We already established that in an earlier episode. But you're tending to an emergency, which could mean the saving of millions or billions of lives. RADIO TO STAR FLEET FOR SOMEONE TO COME CHECK IT OUT, YOU IDIOT.

Kirk gives the excuse to his bridge officers that the Klingons are rumored to have some swanky new weapon, and this is their chance to gather some intelligence on it.

They reach the car chase, and the Klingons have begun firing on the smaller ship, which Spock reports is a little one-person affair. Kirk calls Scotty and tells him to beam the captain of the little ship onto the E.

Scotty replies back that he's plugging in the coordinates, and some shots show him (voiced with the correct accent), but it's interspersed with shots of Kyle, the Red who sometimes runs the transporter. There's budget-conscious, and then there's laziness, Filmation.

What follows is like three versions of the same scene, which makes me think that they're padding for time. Basically, Kirk asks to have the shields go up and communications open. Then he hails the Klingons and asks them to identify themselves. He yells at the Klingon ship to tell him who they are no less than four times. In one version of the scene, Sulu replies that shields are up. In another, Uhura reports that hailing frequencies are open. They're cut with shots of the battle outside; namely, the Klingon vessel firing on the smaller ship. I notice that at no point in time does Kirk try to hail the smaller vessel. He just tells Scotty to beam the lone person onto the E. Won't that other captain be surprised when he's randomly transported to another ship!

So the Klingons succeed in blowing up the little ship, but Scotty is down in the transporter room swearing at the equipment because something having to do with the Klingon ship has shut his shit down.

The Klingons turn and fire some kind of icy death ray or something at the E and Kirk is marveling at it. Spock just starts reporting on the thing, and he still is when it hits. Y'all, he reported it would hit in four seconds. Kirk couldn't have at least tried for evasive maneuvers?

Spock says it's some kind of stasis field, and after some quick checks, they determine that the weapon has knocked out all of the ship's higher functions, including phasers and torpedoes.

Uhura actually sighs and says, "Well, we could always throw rocks."

I burst out laughing. That was pretty awesome.

Kirk calls down to the transporter room, but Scotty says that while he managed to beam the pilot off the little ship, whoever it is is stuck inside the machinery as a pattern. Uhura says she is being hailed and Kirk has her put it on viewscreen. It's the Klingon captain.

"Dude, what the hell?" demands Kirk. "Why are you in space, blowing up Federation ships?"

"Chillax," says the Klingon. "We just want the captain of that ship. He committed ecological sabotage against us."

"Bite me," replies Kirk. "That dude is under our protection. Also, let my ship go."

"Hey," Uhura whispers to Spock while Kirk is arguing with the Klingon. "The robot ships are drifting off. If they get too far away, we'll lose contact with them completely."

Kirk is paying enough attention to have her mute the Klingon and explain the situation.

"Oh, I have a great idea!" says Kirk. "Sulu can navigate those robot ships back to us, and he can use them to ram the Klingons! Then we'll get away!"

"That's a dumbass plan," says Spock. "We'll lose that grain, and people are depending on it to, you know, not die."

"Shut the hell up," says Kirk. "My plan is awesome, and my ship is worth more than all of those starving people."

TL;DR:

So Kirk has Uhura bring the Klingon back up on the viewscreen, and he tells the Klingon (who turns out to be our old friend Koloth from - what else? - "The Trouble with Tribbles") that he isn't going to give up the mysterious ship captain, and that he's going to free his ship from the Klingon death ray beam.

"Yeah, right," says Koloth. He holds up a guitar pick or something, like it's threatening. (Don't worry, friends. We never find out what that thing was that Koloth was holding.) Then he signs off.

Kirk thinks Koloth is bluffing.

Bluffing in what way? About boarding your ship and strumming your musical instruments? Cuz he'll do it, Kirk. He'll not only strum those instruments, he'll gyrate his pelvis and make all the girls in their ass-bearing tunics scream with fangirl joy.

Kirk orders Sulu to bring the robot ships in from two different angles so they can attack easier.

Kirk's plan totally doesn't work. The Klingons, surprisingly, have a way to split the death ray beam into three, so that they halt all three ships at once.

NEVER FUCK WITH KOLOTH AND HIS SCARY-ASS GUITAR PICK!

Only it doesn't work. Apparently, this new weapon needs an extra frickin' huge battery, and the energy required to hold three ships at bay is too much. The stasis field peters out, and Koloth ends up firing at one of the robot ships (probably because he was pissed off, and - let's face it - throwing a tantrum). So all Kirk got for his Bigger Dick Contest was a damaged robot ship. The Klingons limp away, too weak for a fight.

Kirk finally remembers that they have someone lost in the transporter pattern buffer, and he calls down to Scotty to check in. Scotty confirms that he is materializing the captain of the little ship now. Once again, that amazing thing happens where only two seconds pass, but somehow Kirk, Spock and Bones all manage to make it to the other side of the ship in that time.

"Oh hey, we know that guy," says Spock when the new person appears on the transporter pad.

"Oh, fuck me," laments Kirk. "Did I just save Cyrano Jones, Douchebag Extraordinaire, and four big piles of tribbles from the fucking Klingons?"

Fun fact of the Day! Why are the tribbles pink? Because director Hal Sutherland was colorblind, and often mixed up pink and grey. Why the colorblind director was making decisions for the ink and paint crew, I have no idea. You'd think someone would have stepped forward and said, "Hal, did you mean for these to be pink or grey?" This is also why the normally drab tunics on the Klingons are pink. Apparently, this pink/grey problem will come up quite a few more times over the course of TAS.

Kirk's Log, supplemental: "So one of the robot ships was damaged, and now we have Cyrano Jones and a shit-ton of tribbles on board, but that detour was totally worth the lives it probably cost on that famine-stricken planet, because we kind of got a look at the new Klingon weapon, and made a bunch of guesses about it that we can send back to Star Fleet. So good job, Kirk. I should find someone to pat me on the back. I deserve it."

Kirk tells a skinny ensign to seal off the area so no tribbles get out. That ensign is actually David Gerrold, who wrote the script. He wrote himself into "More Tribbles, More Troubles" because he had wanted to be in the original TOS episode, but had been judged to be too skinny.

"WTF, Jones?" demands Kirk. "Tribbles have been deemed dangerous. You're breaking a bunch of laws by transporting them."

"No, it's cool," says Jones. "I bred these to be sterile. They don't reproduce. Also, I have this cool new thing, called a glommer. It eats tribbles."

He pulls this thing from his pocket that looks like drawings of aliens that you made as a kid. It's got four legs and two eye stalks and random fangs even though it appears to lack a mouth. 

He sets the thing on the floor next to a tribble, and he, Kirk and Bones all lean over to watch. We don't get to see it eat the tribble, we just see the men leaning over, and then we check back in with the glommer to see that the tribble is gone.

"Why were the Klingons chasing you?" Kirk asks.

"They're Klingons. Klingons are dicks," Jones brushes him off. When pressed, he replies that he sold tribbles on a Klingon planet, not knowing that it belonged to them.

"You're a dumbass," says Kirk. "And you broke like, 50 laws. Beeteedubs, while you're here, I'm confining you to quarters."

Down in sick bay, Bones is scanning tribbles to check them out. Later, he goes to a senior officer meeting and tells the others it's true that these tribbles do not reproduce, they just get fat. Pacified, Kirk turns the meeting topic back to the Klingon weapon. Scotty says that the death ray beam can immobilize enemy ships, but it drains the Klingon ships' energy. Spock wonders how long it will take the Klingons to recharge, and surmises that they'll come back after the E when they're ready, probably taking out the other robot ship to prevent Kirk from trying that maneuver again. He points out that the Klingons really just want Jones.

Scotty reports that when the robot ship was damaged, all of the barrel of quadrotriticale were transferred over to the E (because of course they were), and that the barrels now line the corridors because there isn't room, and now the extra weight is slowing them down. It now sucks more that Jones is on board with his tribbles.

"It's worth it," says Kirk. "Sherman's Gluten-Free Paleo Planet desperately needs that grain."

I'd like to take this moment to reach through the screen and punch Kirk. Just to put things into perspective, Kirk has caused a grand total of all of this drama. The E was directing two large ships of grain to a famine-stricken planet when he detoured to rubberneck. Instead of reporting the fight and going onward to the planet, he got involved. His hubris got one of the robot ships damaged, so the grain had to be transferred to the E, where there isn't room. He also, without hailing the other little ship and checking to see who was onboard, beamed the captain off, which turned out to be Jones and a bunch of tribbles. If he had actually ascertained what the trouble was before blindly beaming, he would have figured out that the Klingons probably had a legit claim against Jones. If he had passed by the fight and continued to Sherman's Terribly-Named Planet, then some other Federation vessel probably would have intervened, and no one would be late getting to the famine party. But just like every time they need to beam down to another planet, Kirk must be at the center of the action.

Up on the bridge, Spock reports that the Klingons appear to be battle-ready again, and Kirk pushes a tribble out of his chair. It's much larger than the ones Jones brought on board initially, and he mutters, "How fat do these things get?"

You're one to talk, Kirk.

They ready for battle, but the Klingon battleship veers off to the side and takes out the warp nacelles on the remaining robot ship. Koloth specifically targets the propulsion system and leaves the cargo undamaged. This does two things: one, it means that Sulu can't use the robot ship to pull that same ploy that they tried earlier; and two, Koloth doesn't give a damn about the grain. He isn't out for some kind of revenge against Kirk. He just wants Jones. So he probably has a legit claim to the trader. The bridge crew really only makes a note of the first of that, though.

With the robot ship out of commission, the Klingons fire phasers at the E.

The E fires back, and the Klingons move away. Spock surmises that the weapon isn't fully charged yet. So Koloth only waited until they had enough juice to take out the robot ship, then he limped away to continue charging. Smart.

So apparently, the barrels of grain in the corridors got knocked over during battle, and of course they spilled everywhere. And of course it is now being eaten by the tribbles, which have grown to like, three feet.

Kirk tells Sulu that they will have to tractor in the other robot ship. Spock points out that that will slow them down by a lot, and make them less maneuverable, which is probably what the Klingons wanted in the first place.

Kirk asks if he has a plan to combat this.

"We could always throw tribbles at them," he shrugs, playing off of Uhura's earlier remark.

"I didn't think Vulcans had a sense of humor," muses Kirk.

"We don't," replies Spock, which is a complete fallacy to anyone who has watched this show. Vulcans have a dry, sardonic sense of humor and will utilize sarcasm with a dead-pan expression.

Scotty comes in to say that the grain has spilled all over the corridors, and the tribbles are eating it.

We get some shots of grain and tribbles, and this one that shows that the tribbles are now too big for the glommer to eat:

Kirk calls Jones to the bridge while Sulu keeps an eye out for the Klingons. He then yells at Jones about the tribbles eating the grain in the halls. He demands to know if introducing tribbles to a Klingon planet is the ecological sabotage that Koloth was talking about. In the course of this discussion, he pushes a large tribble out of his chair twice. Just freaking sit down, Kirk.

The Klingons return, and Kirk orders Sulu to cut the tractor beam to the robot ship, which they'll pick up later.

Kirk's Log, supplemental: "The Klingons want this guy. I have him. I don't know why they want him, or why I have him. This really could have been resolved if I'd just hailed Jones during the first battle. Then I could have just said, "Oh, it's you, muthafucka," and moved on."

So the Klingons use their weapon again, and while they're frozen, Koloth calls them.

"Dude, give us Jones, or we're gonna take your ship."

"I'd love to give you that a-hole," replies Kirk. "But he's a Federation citizen, so he has to stay with us." 

Kirk cuts the transmission, and we see Koloth on his ship, giving the orders to board the E.

On the bridge, Kirk tells Scotty that they're going with "defense plan B," which is something that Spock suggested.

Next we see Klingons lined u to board the E, but when the doors to the their transporter room open, giant tribbles flood out and into the inner workings of the ship.

Scotty turns off the transporter and reports that defense plan B has been completed.

Kirk hails Koloth and asks if he is ready to release the Enterprise.

"What the hell are you talking about?" demands Koloth. "We're getting ready to board your ship and take over."

There's an animation eff-up here, where instead of setting the Koloth character behind the viewscreen, they set his animation cells on top of the bridge cell, so he briefly appears to be standing on the bridge instead of speaking from his own ship.

Kirk tells Koloth that he has "immobilized your ship worse that you have immobilized mine" which Koloth doesn't get until a huge tribble rolls by behind his chair.

Now, suddenly, everyone is willing to talk. Jones' "eco sabotage" was actually him taking the glommer from one of their planets. The glommer was artificially created by the Klingons to kill off the tribble population, and they had intended to make more, but Jones took the only one. In truth, they're prepared to go to war to get it back, and they don't give a shit about what happens to Jones.

"Oh, okay," replies Kirk, and he calls Scotty to have the glommer beamed over.

See how easy it is when you just fucking talk to one another?

Down in the transporter room, Jones is arguing with Scotty, and trying to claim that he gets space salvage rights to the glommer, but Scotty points out that space salvage rights don't extend to landing on the surface of a planet and outright stealing shit. But if he really wants it that badly, Scotty will beam him over to the Klingon ship. Jones gives him the glommer.

The glommer is beamed over, the Klingons turn their beam off, and everyone goes their separate ways.

Out in the grain-covered corridor, Bones explains that Jones' biological tampering with the tribbles was half-assed. He shut off their fertility, but left their metabolism rates set for sky-high. What's more, each huge tribble is actually just a colony of tribbles.

On the Klingon ship, Koloth takes the glommer to what I guess is the engine room, and tells the glommer to attack the tribbles. Then he opens the door, to reveal one huge tribble. The glommer runs away in a comical fashion.

Realizing that he's in a bit more of a pickle than expected, Koloth lets loose with some swears that are super-squeaky clean for Saturday morning television ("tin-plated"? What does that even mean?) but that you know are substitutes for nastier stuff. Either way, Kirk deserves it. 

Koloth orders another Klingon to shoot the tribble, but it just explodes into a thousand little individuals, burying both Klingons.

Back on the E, Bones explains that he can give the tribbles shots of something that slows down their metabolic rate and keeps them from forming one big tribble. he gives the closest one the shot, and it breaks into little tribbles.

"You missed one," says Kirk, pointing to a huge tribble in an exposed Jeffries tube.

"No, I got that one," says Bones, and it breaks up into tiny tribbles, which then bury Kirk.

"One day, I'll learn," he mutters.

The last few scenes have been scored with this bouncy, "fun" music that lets you know that Star Trek is being goofy on purpose. I can't figure out if it's okay, or just annoying. 

Haha, isn't it funny that Kirk and the Klingons have Too Many Tribbles?

"If you're gonna have tribbles," says Scotty, "it's best to have little ones."

I think that was supposed to be a punchline, but it really isn't that funny. Kirk makes a face like he's devising recipes in which to cook tribbles.

This episode is kind of all over the place. What annoys me is that Kirk The Great is responsible for 100% of the "More Troubles" that they encounter, yet only Spock calls him on it, and even then, it gets brushed off. Beyond that, both the ending solution and a bunch of the gags were lifted directly from the original episode, including beaming the tribbles onto the Klingon ship, the gag with Kirk's chair always being filled with tribbles, and the "being buried in tribbles" gag.

One of the really interesting things about the animated series is that they frequently made use of scripts that had been written for the original series, but had not been shot. This one is one of those. It had not gone into production because TOS producer Fred Frieberger did not like the original tribble episode. One of those things that ended up being cut: the initial idea for the glommers was that they would breed as fast as the tribbles, and then members of the E crew would go missing, implying that the glommers would snack on many kinds of prey. But the powers that be decided that that would be too gruesome for Saturday morning, so they cut it back to one glommer, trying to eat huge tribbles and failing.

Here's the part where science fails me: I don't know much about colonies, but the huge tribble = many tribbles thing doesn't seem to add up very well. So they eat the grain, and rather than reproducing, they get bigger. That makes sense. But then it turns out that they're not getting bigger, they're just...snuggling? More grain = tribbles hanging out together? What?

Star Trek, are you trying to baffle me with bullshit again?

*******

I don't really select new teas to try with any kind of system (unless I'm working my way through a mixed box), so my selection usually involves looking at boxes on the shelf and asking, "What have I not tried as of yet?" If something on the label says "blackberry" I'm grabbing it. Likewise if it says peach.

In this case, I grabbed the Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Blackberry Pomegranate. I always enjoy a good Sleepytime, because who wants to be up at 2 am after making the mistake of drinking java mate before bed? (Also, I like the Sleepytime bear. Sue me.)

Now, the last thing you expect to think when you open a box of green tea spiked with berries is, "Why does my tea smell like mint?" but it does. In fact, the first and third ingredients listed on the box for this tea are chamomile and spearmint. I brewed a cup anyway, and... it tastes like chamomile and spearmint. I honestly couldn't taste the berries at all. Now, I've grown rather accustomed to the taste of chamomile, and it's grown on me a bit, so it's not a bad cup of tea. But there's virtually no berry taste, so if that's what you're after, look elsewhere. If you're down with the chamomile, you may really enjoy this tea.

http://www.celestialseasonings.com/products/wellness-teas/blackberry-pomegranate

Quiche also enjoys the Sleepytime tea.

ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Eight "Future Imperfect"

ST:TNG Season Four, Episode Eight "Future Imperfect"

Production Order: 8
Air Order: 8
Stardate: 44286.5
Original Air Date: November 12, 1990

HOLD THE MOTHERFUCKING COMM BADGE!

SirPatStew confirmed on Twitter.

Am I disappointed that they're hiding it behind a paywall?

Yes.

Would I reconsider ponying up for All Access to watch this show?

Maybe.

Here's the link for that story:

https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-patrick-stewart-picard-cbs-all-access-1202895410/ 

*******

Picard's Log 44286.5: "Chilling near the Neutral Zone. No Roms in sight."

It's Riker's birthday, and he's playing the trombone in Ten Forward for his friends. Apparently, he's not very good at this particular song.

Sassy Troi Moment: "Some things improve with age. Maybe yours can be the trombone."
Bahahaha, damn.
They go to the cake and he blows out the candles. Interesting that they still have those traditions in the 24th century. (This week's rabbit hole: that tradition started in ancient Greece.)
"What did you wish for?" asks Troi.
"Music lessons," he laughs.
It's a nice time. I like when they show the crew during downtime, just enjoying themselves.

On the bridge, Picard tells Data that they have to hurry along to the party, but of course they get stopped before they reach the lift, because there's an anomaly or some shit. They check it out. The E is being probed by the third planet in a nearby system, which reports say is uninhabited. Picard muses on the rumor that there's a secret Romulan base in this sector.
Ooh, a secret Romulan base! Mystery! Intrigue!
Meh, I tried. Romulans bore me.
Picard calls Riker in Ten Forward.
"Hey, I know it's your birthday party and all, but I need you to head an away team right now."
Ugh, lame. There's no emergency. Let the dude finish his damn cake.

On the bridge, Data tells Riker and Picard that the planet is class-M, but it's "barren and inhospitable." The scan is coming from a cave under the planet's surface.
Worf guesses Romulans.
Riker picks him and Geordi for an away team.
The boys beam down.

They takes scans. Geordi names off a bunch of crap in the air that sounds like a bad time.
"Will we be okay?" asks Riker.
Sassy Geordi Moment: "For now. Wouldn't want to spend my vacation here."
Picard calls, and from the shitty reception, they all agree that maybe the away team should beam back up. Geordi adds they better do it soon, because the chamber they're in is gonna fill with gas soon.
An attempt is made. The lady running the transporter can't get a good lock.
The away team starts to choke as the chamber begins filling with gas and smoke. They cough. Riker keels over.

He wakes up later in sick bay.
Nurse Ogawa calls Crusher, telling her that Riker is awake.
Crusher looks different.

He calls her by name.
"Oh, good. You remember me. That's awesome, Captain."
"Captain?" he demands.
He sits up, and once again, there's an oddly-placed (read: convenient) mirror in sick bay, where Riker can see that his hair is shot with grey.

Dramatic, psychological music! Opening credits break!

When we return, it's revealed that there are more high-tech mirrors around the sick bay bed where Riker is sitting. He tells Crusher that he's very confused, and beeteedubs, why is she calling him captain? He is a commander.
She asks what he last remembers before waking, and he talks about the away team with Geordi and Worf.
"Yeah, it was nothing but toxic gas, and they barely beamed you up in time, right? That was 16 years ago," she replies.
She tells him that he contracted an Altarian virus from that away mission, and it tends to do its thing, then hole up in your system, dormant, for years. When it comes back, it erases all of your memories back to the moment when you first got the disease. For the past ten days, he's been in a coma with the virus.
"Your fever finally broke this morning," she says, which does not explain why he's in full uniform and not a sick bay gown.

"You've been captain of the Enterprise for nine years now. Memories are formed by association. Stuff that's familiar. So you should move around the ship and see if it triggers anything."
"Great," he snaps. "Let's go."
"Um, just so you know, in a lot of these cases, the memory loss is permanent."

Also, some things have changed.

On the way to the lift, Crusher tells Riker that neither Geordi nor Worf contracted the virus, just him. She wants him to go back to his quarters to see if anything there will jog his memory, but he insists on going to the bridge. He tells Majel to take the lift to the bridge, but she asks him to repeat himself. Crusher tells him that there's something wrong with the computer, and Geordi has been fixing it. We find out that Mr La Forge is now a commander. Good for him.
There are a few surprises on the bridge. Geordi has cloned implant eyes. Worf has a crazy scar all up his face. Data is now Number One. There's a Ferengi ensign at navigation.

"Warbird uncloaking," announces Worf.
"Whoa, shit," says Riker. "Red alert, shields up!"
Everyone looks at him funny, but the ship goes to red alert.
"Um, we were expecting the Decius," says Data.
"Oh, um, okay. Cancel red alert."
The viewscreen comes on.
Hey, hey!

They make some small talk, then beam over.
Picard, Troi and Riker go to Obs Lounge to talk. However, no one mentions the fact that Picard is wearing extensions, or the fact that they all have grey paint in their hair. Nope, they talk about the mission.
Seems that four years earlier, a wounded Romulan battle cruiser limped into Federation space, and Riker managed to fix them up. The Romulans were impressed and opened talks with the Federation. The negotiations are mostly complete now, with Riker at the helm of it all. They just need to take the Romulan ambassador to the final signing, and everyone will be buddies.
"Ooh, this is shit timing," says Riker. "I don't remember any of this. I can't do it."
"Should be fine," shrugs Picard. "We'll just brief you really well."

Troi suggests that they go to Riker's quarters to see if he can regain some memories.
"Good idea," he agrees. "I've had enough surprises for one day."
Yeah, about that -

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Mini Riker is chatty and friendly, but soon his face falls. He realizes that Riker doesn't remember him. Troi asks the kid, Jean-Luc, to step out of the room so she can talk to his father.
"What the hell?" he demands quietly.
"Crusher thought springing him on you might help you remember stuff," she says.
Noop, clearly not.
And now, the million-gold-pressed-latinum-bar question: "Who is that kid's mother?"
"Your wife Min died two years ago in a shuttle accident," she says quietly. She describes a woman who could be anyone, then adds that Min was a great captain's wife, and the ship's counselor who replaced her when she took a better position at Starfleet Command.
Holy shit, Will. Are you planning on dating every ship's counselor? Are you dating the current one, too?
She encourages him to spend time with his son, then leaves.

Riker goes into the next room with Jean-Luc and gives him tips on the trombone. He plays "Misty" again and hits the wrong note, joking about how, after 16 years, he should be able to get it right.
"You always get that note wrong," Jean-Luc laughs.
Riker goes into the front room and asks Majel to give him his service record. She gives him a technical shrug. Jean-Luc comes into the room, and Riker grumps at him that Geordi is doing a diagnostic thing, and he can't get at his stuff. The kid turns the computer towards him and then back again. The written record is now up.
But no time to look into that now, the bridge is calling to say the ambassador is here.

Picard, Riker and Troi walk to the transporter room to meet the ambassador, who will be going to the signing via the E.
The ambassador beams over.
Oh, fuck me.
It's that asshole Tomalak.

Everyone but Riker exchanges pleasantries, and Picard and Tomalak leave.
"Are you shitting me?" Riker asks Troi. "Fucking Tomalak?"
"It's cool," she assures him. "We're buddies now."

They make their way to the bridge, exchanging more pleasantries about how the treaty will benefit both cultures, and Tomalak says it's fortunate that Riker is well enough to go to the signing, as he deserves to see the fruits of his labor.
On the bridge, Riker pawns Tomalak off on Data for a tour, and he yanks Troi and Picard into the ready room for a harried chat.

"Come the fuck on," says Riker, once they're all seated. "You really trust this guy? Also, did I hear right that we're signing this treaty at Outpost 23? Like super-hella-secret Outpost 23?"
"Oh. Right. Crap," says Picard. "Outpost 23 is no big deal anymore. It hasn't been for a few years now. It's okay for the Romulans to know where it is."
But no time to worry about that now: Crusher calls to tell Riker that the son he met like ten minutes ago is now injured.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

Riker rushes down to sick bay, where it is revealed that his kid has broken his wrist playing Parrises Squares.
"WTF?" demands the elder Riker. "You might have broken your neck!"
Crusher pulls him aside while Nurse Ogawa mends the wrist.
"Chill the hell out," Crusher advises.
"I've been a dad for pretty much one day, and my kid tries to kill himself," he protests.
"Uh-huh. And how old were you when you started playing Parrises Squares?"
He manages to look abashed, because he was younger.
"How about easing up?" she suggests. "Kid lost his mother, and now his father doesn't remember who he is."

Riker takes Jean-Luc back to his quarters, and apologizes for starting out on the wrong foot. He admits that his own father was shit, and that he really wants to do right by Jean-Luc, to avoid turning out like Kyle. They hug it out, and make plans to go holo-fishing. Jean-Luc tells him some stories about holo-fishing with Riker and Min the Mystery Mom.

When they get back to their quarters, Jean-Luc disappears into the bedroom to change out of his Parrises Squares clothes. In the meantime, Riker asks Majel to show him family pics. Majel pulls up a video of Riker and Jean-Luc.
"That's neat," he tells Majel, "but how about something with my wife in it?"
"Huh?" asks Majel.
"Freaking computer hiccup," mutters Riker.
Jean-Luc enters again, and after asking what's wrong, is magically able to get the computer to fetch what Riker wants. On this new video, Riker and Jean-Luc goof around, then a dark-haired woman brings in a lighted birthday cake.
Wait.
WTF?

"Minuet?" demands Riker. He stares suspiciously at Jean-Luc.
No time for that now, though. Geordi pages him to the bridge.
"What?" demands Riker, hitting the bridge.
"Engines on the fritz and stuff," says Geordi cheerfully. "Gonna fix all the things."
"Really?" demands Riker. "Just like you fixed the computer?"
Geordi is pissed. "I said I'm doing the thing!"
"For thirty fucking hours? Geordi isn't that incompetent!" Riker turns on Worf. "Where'd you get that scar?"
"Combat," says Worf vaguely. He isn't able to give details.
"How long between here and Outpost 23?" Riker interrogates Data.
The android pauses before answering, but Riker throws more equations at him, rapid-fire. Data does not answer.
"Sorry, sir. Some anomalies are interfering with my abilities, and I can't -"
"You used a contraction!"
Picard, Troi and Tomalak enter the bridge. Picard and Troi try to calm Riker, but he barks at them to shut the fuck up.
"End this charade!" he yells.

"Okay," says Tomalak.

Dramatic music! Commercial Break!

*le gasp!*
Riker comes to surrounded by Romulans, wearing the correct number of pips on his collar and the right comm badge. Wherever he is looks like a sweet burger joint hangout from a 90's sitcom. Pastels, neon, and abstract geometric shapes.

Also, why is everything pink? I'm reminded of TAS' pink Klingons and Tribbles.
Is the art director for this episode also colorblind?

"That shit was fake," Riker spits. (He's talking about his scripted life, and not the 90's diners.)
"Yeah, we did it through neural scanners and a holodeck," says Tomalak. "How did you figure it out? It should have been good enough to convince you."
"You guys tried to fake me out with the ol' holographic wife trick."
"No way," says Tommalak. "In your mind, that girl is real and alive, and you were in love with her."
"Still fake," snaps Riker. "She was from a holodeck program. If you wanted info on Outpost 23, why didn't you just use your neural scanners to get it?"
"Those are calibrated for Romulan brains," says Tomalak sulkily. "Human brains are different. There were gaps. So we spent a bunch of time and effort constructing an elaborate ruse for you, to get it that way."

That subordinate Rom leaning against the wall is killing me.

Tomalak escorts Riker to the brig, explaining on the way that the away team beamed down really close to the base, and it was super easy to divert his transporter signal.
"We let the others beam back up."
"They won't stop looking for me," argues Riker.
"They already have."
 He shows Riker to a cell, which is already occupied.
"Jean-Luc?" asks Riker.

"Bitch, that's not his name," laughs Tomalak. "We just used his image to augment your program."
The kid takes off into a corner like a feral kitten.
Tomalak tosses off some last douchey thing before turning on the brig force field and walking away.
Riker gets the kid to give him his name: Ethan. He tells Riker that he and his parents were at a station on some uninhabited planet near the Neutral Zone, and the Roms hauled them away, separating them. He also has no idea why the Roms are keeping him here.
Riker mentions getting them out of here, and Ethan says he's tried it before, hiding in a secret place for weeks, but the Roms caught him again when he came out to get food.

Tomalak stomps back in to demand the location of Outpost 23, and Ethan unexpectedly starts a fist fight with the Romulans. Riker just kind of goes with it and ends up with a disruptor, which he uses to stun a Rom in the corridor outside the cell. He stuns another guy as he and Ethan run to Ethan's Secret Base (No Girls Allowed). They close themselves up behind a screen, which Riker jury-rigs with a bit of wire.
The Roms run up and shake the screen.

Dramatic music! Commercial break!

The Romulans move on, and Ethan says that the scans don't pick them up because of the rocks in this area. He leads Riker down a tunnel and talks about how the Roms forgot about this storage area when they redid their tunnels. Also, Ethan has a chart of the tunnels, which he explored previously.
They get down to brass tacks, cuz there's only five more minutes left in this episode.
Ethan points out the shuttle hangar, and Riker mumbles plans to get shuttle, but there's a snag: the system is voice-activated.
"Whose voice?" asks Riker, who knows the answer already.
"Ambassador Tomalak," says Ethan.

Oh, fuck. Here we go again.

"Oh, really? Ambassador Tomalak? You wanna tell me how you heard he was an ambassador, when dude is only a captain?"
"Um, you told me?"
There's a pause, and the sound of a commotion nearby.
"They found us!" yelps Ethan. "We need to go!"
Wow, how convenient.
"Yeah, no. Tell me who you are, and what you have to do with this."
And I'm not even shitting you here, the Roms come bursting through the wall like douchey Kool-Aid Men.

Riker looks at Ethan. "You wanna tell me the truth?"
The Roms disappear. Also, the tunnels.
Yeah, it was All About Ethan.

Upstairs, Data has found Riker's comm badge signature on the planet's surface.
"You okay?" Picard pages Riker.
"Yep. Geordi and Worf?"
"Beamed up an hour ago, but we lost you mid-beam."

Riker says he'll get the scoop on what's going on, and he signs off. "Spill it," he tells Ethan.
So Ethan (not his real name) was left on this planet by his mother. Their planet was invaded, and the invaders wanted her, so they killed everyone and hunted her down. She left the kid on the planet with a bunch of scanners to keep him safe from more invaders, and a super-sophisticated holodeck program that reads his mind. It gives him pretty much anything he wants. But he essentially kidnapped Riker because he wanted someone real to hang out with. He set up Riker's program to give him the things he thought Riker wanted as well, but it fell apart, and he had to think up other stuff to try to keep Riker on the planet with him.
Riker is less pissed. "I have to go. But you can come with me."
The kid changes over to his real form, and says his name is Barash.
And... you know how when you see an alien costume, and you know someone in make-up and effects put a lot of time and effort into something, but it still comes off looking like an alien costume from a 1950's B-movie? Yeah.

Riker says he'll always think of the kid as Jean-Luc, then they both transport up.
The end.

I'm not really sure where I stand on this episode. There are parts that I like, and parts that fall a bit flat for me.
Things that worked for me:
- The disease that Riker contracts that reoccurs, and drags you back to the initial infection time, erasing all of your memories in between. That could be a super interesting subject to explore. I can see the Federation opening an in-patient clinic for people who lost a shit-ton of memories. Like a strange memory-care facility where you eventually are able to leave once you can coincide the fact that you lost a bunch of stuff in the meantime.
- Riker struggling with being a parent, and then committing fully to the idea because Kyle was a shitty father, and Riker wants to avoid that at all costs. He also admits to the kid that he had been afraid of the idea of parenthood, specifically because he didn't want to repeat his father's mistakes. That's good character development there.
- There are small hints that the kid is the key, but it's not overly obvious. The episode manages to keep the focus on everything else so that you don't figure things out as quickly.
- The kid choosing Minuet as his substitute mother. As Tomalak said, the algorithms chose her because Riker had fond memories of her in his mind. I like that that callback was included, and that it was the ultimate downfall.
- They didn't go straight for Troi, but had her life go in a different direction. She and Riker are still friends, and she coaches him through some changes.
- Riker's actions with the Roms landed him in the favored position of heading up the peace talks. Saving a Romulan ship was right in line with Riker's character development. Riker may hate you, but he's not gonna let you die in space. His attitude toward the kid was in line as well.

Things that worked less for me:
- Every time the program had trouble figuring out what to do, it was explained as a computer malfunction. That got old. Then the kid would have to do a patch himself. Felt a little convenient.
- The holo-ception. I was okay going along with it when it was just "Romulans kidnapped me and played with my brain," but it turned out to be a fantasy-within-a-fantasy, and while I was okay with that in the movie "Inception" (because they tell you right away that that's what you should expect), I was less patient with the "fooled you again!" presented here. I guess they started out with just the Romulan ruse, but it wasn't working, so they added the next layer with the kid. But... that's not especially satisfying to me. It's the same ruse, but with two layers.


- Fun Facts:

- If the plot point of "oddly convenient mirror in sick bay allows crew members to see how they've aged prematurely" sounds familiar, that's because it is: it was used in TOS' "The Deadly Years."

- For all of the TNG and Law & Order I've watched over the years, it never once occurred to me that Minuet and Dr Elizabeth Olivet were played by Caroline McCormick. And now I feel like a crappy fan of both of these shows.

- Apparently, the idea for this episode (Riker wakes up 16 years in the future, captain of the E and a father) was an instant-buy. Michael Piller was really into it.
- The only major change to the original story was the inclusion of the holo-ception. It had a kind of dream-ending, which Piller didn't like, so they added the Romulan ploy. Writer David Carren was talking to Piller, and Carren was not understanding what Piller was saying. "You mean Riker thinks that it's a Romulan plot for an act?" asked Carren. "No," Piller started started to reply, then realized that he liked the idea.

Gene Rod visits the set of "Future Imperfect."

- The title is a play on words. Past perfect is used to describe a tense that talks about an event that occurred before another. Here, Riker is dealing with the future, and an imperfect one at that.
- The scene in the turbolift with Riker and the kid was added the night before filming. The episode was running a bit short. Glad it was added. I think that scene introduced some good character development for Riker.
- Andreas Katsulas (Tomalak) was not especially comfortable playing his role as a person interacting live with other actors. He preferred to play Tomalak as a giant floating head on the viewscreen. (Sounds a bit like "what do I do with my arms in these huge sleeves?")
- The Romulan base was a redress of the Borg Cube sets.
- Interestingly, in the original version of this episode, Riker asks "Shall we end this charade?" and pronounces the word "charade" the way the British do - as shuh-RAWD instead of shuh-RAYD. It was later redubbed so that he says shuh-RAYD, but you can briefly see that his mouth doesn't sync right to the American pronunciation.
- This episode takes place in 2383, sixteen years in Riker's future. It predicts a lot of things that actually come true:
  - Nog would become the first Ferengi in Starfleet only seven years in the future (DS9).
  - B'Elanna Torres becomes the first (half)Klingon Engineer Chief in Starfleet four years in the future (Voyager).
  - Geordi gets ocular implants in the film Star Trek: First Contact, and his retinas are briefly regrown in Star Trek: Insurrection.
  - Here, Riker becomes captain of the Enterprise seven years into the future, though in the actual timeline, he becomes captain of the USS Titan twelve years into the future.
  - This false future takes place as the same time as events from the film Star Trek: Nemesis. In that film, peace with the Romulans has begun four years earlier. So... kind of right on schedule.
  - Troi wears the standard bridge uniform in this episode. She'll actually start wearing it regularly in season six.
  - Riker's relationship with his son is similar to the one Benjamin Sisko has with his son at the beginning of DS9: both had lost mothers, both had fishing as an important bonding ritual.
- This episode marks the first appearance of Nurse Alyssa Ogawa.
- Barash was played by Dana Tjulander. It is her only acting credit. They needed someone who was over 18, but very small, and she fit the bill.
- Tomalak will appear once more (on a viewscreen) in the series final of TNG.
- Andreas Katsulas is best known for his roles as the one-armed man from The Fugitive and as Ambassador G'Kar on Babylon 5. Along with his final appearance as Tomalak on TNG, Katsulas would appear once on Star Trek: Enterprise before his death in 2006.



Red deaths: 0
To date: 0
Gold deaths: 0
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Blue deaths: 0
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Unnamed color crew deaths: 0
To date: 11,000

Obnoxious Wes moments: 0
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Legitimate Wes moments when he should have told someone to go fuck themselves: 0
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Sassy Geordi moments: 1
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Sassy Wes Moments: 0
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Sassy Worf Moment: 0
To date: 2

Sassy Riker Moments: 1
To date: 3

Sassy Picard Moments: 0
To date: 4

Sassy NPC Moments: 0
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Sassy Data Moments: 0
To date: 1
Sassy O'Brien Moments: 0
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Sassy Crusher Moments: 0
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Sassy Troi Moments: 1
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Sassy Guest Star Moments: 0
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Number of times that it is mentioned that Data is an android: 1
To date: 8

Number of times that Troi reacts to someone else's feelings: 2
To date: 8

Number of times that Geordi "looks at something" with his VISOR: 0
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Number of times when Data gives too much info and has to be told to shut up: 0
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Picard Maneuvers: 2
To date: 12
Tea, Earl Grey: 0
To date: 2

When the dogs are crated, Aries takes advantage.