SDS9 – S5E6: "Trials and Tribble-ations" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on January 19, 2025.

We recap "Trials and Tribble-actions," where the DS9 crew goes back in time again to meet the original Star Trek crew.

SDS9 seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 can be found wherever you stream Southpaw. Season 5 is only available to paid subscribers.

You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app

(Note: Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also other ways to watch DS9 that we're sure you internet space explorers can figure out. Otherwise, since Scott does such an excellent job with the play-by-play, you don't have to watch the episodes to enjoy our breakdowns.)

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this Stardate, January 19, 2025, we are discussing trials and tribulations. Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

Yes, I was about to start doing the episode from The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll by Bob Dylan. I was like, Luxley and Delmer from Temporal Investigations. Anyways, Luxley and Delmer from Temporal Investigations, they're like time cops, arrive on Deep Space Nine aboard the USS Nash. Kira and Jadzia meet them, and the time cops ask for Ben.

Jadzi is like, always on time. Joke, it doesn't work. And they talk about Bajoran orbs that they have. And they head straight to Ben's office, and they demand the truth. Domer asks why the Defiant traveled back in time. Ben says it's an accident, assuring that he didn't create a predestination paradox. They're relieved. They're not a fan.

Two weeks earlier, the Cardassians offered to return a Bajoran orb taken during the occupation. The Defiant went to retrieve it. They were under cloak. They were unsure if it was real. It was the orb of time. Ben had it verified, and they took on a passenger. Worf brings Barry Waddle, a stranded human merchant, into the hall.

They joke about Cardassian fish juice, Klingon coffee, and awkwardly apologize. O'Brien and Bashir tease Worf about the way he smells, and he's not really appreciative. And then they lay eyes on The Enterprise. But it's not any Enterprise. It's the original series Enterprise. Luxley and Dolmer ask, what Enterprise? It's the first Enterprise. Kirk's Enterprise.

And they're like, Kirk is a menace. He made a lot of time travel travesties. And we find out that Waddle is actually Arn Darvin, a Klingon who's altered his face to look human. Worf tells Ben that the younger Darvin is currently on K7 posing as a Federation official. Odo adds that

He believes the mission was to sabotage colonization efforts by poisoning food, and in 18 hours, Kirk will get him arrested. Darwin's arrest ended his career. Klingon intel disowned him, and he spent a century being a sad merchant and was left on Cardassia during the Klingon invasion.

Ben pieces that Darwin probably knew about the time warbs and that it might be able to do time stuff. Bashir thinks that he is going to warn the younger Darwin to change things around. Jadzia thinks he's going to kill Kirk. Bye-bye. Ben decides they'll

search K7 Enterprise and try to not do time crimes and that's when they dress up in the old school original series gear the outfits the comms the whole nine the hair it's great and they board this historical ship Everyone is there. The tech is slightly different because it's a bunch of years old.

Jadzia's like, damn, these ships are way more packed than now. And you have to remember, Jadzia is connected to the Dax symbiote. So part of her was actually alive when this happened. And is kind of having a fun time playing with the old gadgets. Odo's in the cafeteria, scans the bar with a portable device,

and then none other than Chekhov and Yuhura walk in. And Waitress asks Odo for something to drink. He orders a Raktachino. They're like, we don't serve Klingon drinks. Why is anyone ordering this stuff? An elderly human ordered it. And he says he's coming back. Odo settles for some tea, watches Yohuro get a Tribble from Cyrano Jones.

On the Enterprise, Bashir scans for Darwin, while Miles fumbles with repairs. The wiring's a mess. Bashir jokes that it looks like O'Brien's work, um, This young engineer is like, why is a doctor fixing a relay? Bashir claims it's a stress study. Miles kills the power, quickly restores the power. Bashir is like, let's get out of here.

And Miles is like, just be discreet. And the... Engineer agrees and wishes him well. Worf finds Odo, who reports his search is done, but hears a sound. Odo is holding up a Tribble. These creatures made famous by the original series episode Trouble with Tribbles. This episode was to celebrate 30 years of Star Trek.

Odo is transfixed by these hairy little space hamster guinea pig guys. The squeals and scowls abound. Worf is upset. Odo tells Worf to chill, but Worf says that they are gross and mortal Klingon enemies. An eco-menace, a plague. They procreate voraciously, and there was a great Klingon-tribble war, which obviously is hilarious. Then alarms go off.

They go to see what's going on. Ixgroth, a Klingon ship, is coming to the Enterprise. Jadzia thinks that it must be her old past life friend, Koloth. Sisko feels it's not cool for her to see her past life friend. They're trying to not mess with time. The Klingons come. They don't cause any drama.

Back on the space elevator, they... talk to the engineer Wartley again she is flirtatious Bashir thinks that she is his great grandma and that it's a predestination paradox and he wants to go meet her and be his own great grandfather awesome dude come on Ben and Jedzia see Kirk and

Spock doing their thing Jedzia is like he's so handsome And Ben is like, Kirk? And she's like, no, Spock. And remembers the timeline of when she was alive back then. Bashir, Miles find Odo and Worf at the bar. They tease him for sitting around while they are doing the dirty work. Odo says they're waiting for Darwin.

And, uh, Bashir picks up on the Raktachino thing going on. And then we see from the original series, Chekhov, Scotty walk in, and Miles thinks that one of them is Kirk. Worf wants to meet Kirk. Miles wants to buy him a drink. Oda reminds him, we don't mess with time. The waitress warns them, stop asking for Raktachinos.

Odo presses because Waitress Pines points to another group of Klingons that are trying to order Raktachinos, but they look very different. If you understand, in the original series, Klingons did not have the makeup that we know. They just looked a little problematic, and they're different looking. Worf is a little obtuse.

He's clear, not clear, and says that what happened is a secret that they don't talk about. Koi Worf is a funny Worf. Korax loudly insults Kirk. Chekov wants that smoke, but Scotty holds him back. Miles is impressed by who he thinks Kirk is, patience. But Bashir's like, that dude's a lieutenant. He's not Kirk. Korak insults the Enterprise,

which is too much for Scotty, who I'm named after, and throws a punch. A fight ensues. Everyone gets down. They're arrested. Back in the regular time, the time cops chide Ben about the repercussions of starting a past fight. Kirk asks some questions. He reprimands. Miles lies to Kirk, feels bad about it.

They are dismissed, and they notice lots of troubles. Odo and Worf arrest Darwin. Darwin has set in motion something that will make him a hero, and he will kill Kirk. Death by Tribble. Because there is an explosive device in one of the Tribbles. Except there's over a million Tribbles.

They procreate exponentially, finding the Tribble bomb going to be hard. Kirk is not happy. And then we see Bones, McCoy, another original series character, steps onto the bridge and talks to Kirk. And Jadzia starts talking about him, remembers him. And Ben's like, oh, that's a doctor. Chad Zia recalls that when she was Emonie,

she met him on Earth at Ole Miss when she was doing a gymnastics competition and remembers that he had nice hands and knew that he'd become a doctor. It sort of suggests that she may have hooked up with McCoy. And then the scan finishes. They can't find any explosives.

So Jadzia states that the bomb is probably on K-7, on the bar K-7. They're going to the Tribbles. No luck. Maybe it's somewhere else that Darvin knows. Kirk is very upset. They're like, maybe the storage compartment? And guess what? The Tribble Boom Boom is in the storage area, and there's so many Tribbles. Meanwhile,

it seems that maybe what's happening right now is that the Tribble episode is happening on the original series, and Ben finds the Tribble bomb, and they throw it into space. This allows Kirk to get Darwin, and then they use the orb, and they go back in time. But he also tells Kirk that he's awesome. Ben does.

And the time cops will likely let it all be. And then you realize that there's triples on Deep Space Nine.

So, another fun episode. And another iconic episode that transcends DS9 fandom. Where even non-viewers are aware of this episode. What made this episode work even better was they based it on another famous episode that transcends classic Trek fandom. So even if you don't watch DS9 or Trek, you can enjoy this episode.

This speaks to the power of mythology and why we discuss mythology. Mythology isn't just canon, but the things that transcends the show. So even non-Trek fans are aware of Trek mythology. Now, despite being shot in the 90s, I thought they did a really good job mixing old and new footage, where even today, I'm like, wow,

that looks really good. And seeing the original side-by-side with DS9, I can even see the charm of the original show. The old show, even in its camp, had a swagger to it. I think that also comes from knowing you're doing something new and groundbreaking. Now, Scott, let me ask you this.

Were you a fan of the original Trek?

Not particularly. My dad loved it. That's how we got into Star Trek. I enjoyed it, but it's not my jam. I do like pretty much... All the Star Trek movies, save for one of the TNG ones. But I don't connect. But I loved Trouble with Tribbles, the episode. I had a book about it.

I thought it was a cool episode.

What was the book about?

Oh, Star Trek has all these books that are not canon. So I just had a non-canon Tribble book, like a novel about Tribbles. And fun little fact... When they were trying to figure out the episodes due for the 30th anniversary of Star Trek, there's also a Voyager episode that celebrates the past.

They were thinking it was between Tribbles or a piece of the action. I don't know if you've seen that episode, but it's a very silly original series episode where they go to a world that's basically 1920s gangsters. It's a really silly episode.

As far as your all-time favorite DS9 episodes, where do you rank this episode?

Like nine?

Oh, it's in your top 10.

Yeah, I guess. I really like it. I really like it. It's hard because this is spoiler free, but the end of the show is like a 10-part series finale.

Oh.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, I don't think that's really giving away anything. It's just like, that's how they build it. I don't remember the exact number.

A big chunk of the final season.

Right. So do I list all of those as one episode? You know what I'm saying? There's one episode that we haven't gotten to yet, which is Arguably one of the greatest Trek episodes, period. That is most people's favorite Deep Space Nine episode. It's probably my favorite Deep Space Nine episode. It's that one or another very memed episode.

So these are episodes that transcends the show where even non-fans, like I might be aware of it because of memes.

Yeah. Or I might use this episode to get people into Deep Space Nine that are like, I don't like it. I like the original series. So that's why it's high. And I rate it 4.5. I don't really consider it a mythology episode, but it kind of is.

But I just think it's a really great episode and understands the assignment.

Yes.

Yeah, it understands the assignment, and I like that.

Now, you already mentioned this, but I'm glad they changed the Klingons because the original Klingons had a lot of problems with it. It's not just in how they looked, because they were painted or acted, but also the accent. So as groundbreaking as the show was, it still had problems. Even the writing of female characters as well. Mm-hmm.

As white and male as Hollywood is today, back then, it was probably exclusively white and male.

But also, I mean, at this point, everyone knows this, I think. But the actress, Nichelle Nichols, I think her name is, that played Uhura, was going to leave the show because she wasn't really feeling it. And Martin Luther King, who's national holiday if is is this week as we record this tomorrow is tomorrow uh went

up to her and he was like he was like this is what you're doing is really important and you're showing a future where you know black people are in space in science doing this stuff exists in the future exists in the future um This is way more important than you think it might be.

And she decides to stay on the show. And again, this story used to be not as well-known, but now it's a pretty well-known story, which I'm glad, you know. Any time that you can humanize and show Martin Luther King in past the I Have a

Dream is great because he has some really powerful praxis and inspires me as a leftist that believes in God, even though I'm not a Christian. I didn't know how I was going to bring some leftist thought into this episode, but I did.

You have your ways, man. You have your ways. I think because we've been doing this for a while, it's just like martial arts. The more you practice, the better you get.

I haven't been practicing that much, but that's a different story. Martial arts, not Star Trek. I'm pretty excited. There's a Star Trek movie coming out on Paramount Plus this month. Michelle Yeoh. It's exciting.

Now, the other thing we're mentioning in this episode are the Time Cops, the Department of Temporal Investigations. You said this episode isn't big on mythology, which it isn't, but kind of like the last episode with the Paul Reitz, this episode, even though it was a lighthearted episode, launched that whole mythology of the Time Cops.

And it's interesting that these kind of mythologies... got started on fun episodes instead of serious ones is there anything else from this episode that is also important for mythology like little things like like sort

of giving an explanation for the Klingons and and how they changed looks and and I and they it's a little messy in the ways that they try to explain it in other shows

And they didn't really explain it. It was just using more of the wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We know it don't make sense, but we're addressing it. Yeah. One little detail that I did like, and I'm curious about your thoughts as far as if you noticed it or not, is other DS9 or even Trek episodes,

when they go back in time, they just kind of go back in time and then figure out some clothes to wear, right? Mm-hmm. But here, when they went back in time, I just expected they would put on the original clothes, but their hair.

Exactly, yeah.

Their hair had so much product on it. And then in DS9, their hair is just kind of more like less product and just like more natural. Yes. So right away, it's like, okay, they're back in time. It's what? Now, can you tell us about the next episode?

Yeah. Worf and Jadzia go to a pleasure planet.

Until then...