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On stardate 5943.7, the starship USS Enterprise arrives at the class M planet Sarpeidon to evacuate its inhabitants, doomed by an impending superno...
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On stardate 5943.7, the starship USS Enterprise arrives at the class M planet Sarpeidon to evacuate its inhabitants, doomed by an impending supernova explosion of the system's star. Oddly, sensors detect no signs of humanoid life on the surface and Captain Kirk, along with Dr. McCoy ("Bones") and Mr. Spock, beams down to investigate.
Once there, the landing party finds a sophisticated computer library where they encounter a man named Mr. Atoz — his name being a play on "A to Z", that is, a library. Mister Atoz explains that the library contains an archive of historical data disks. Kirk warns Atoz of the planet's imminent destruction and that they must leave immediately. Atoz however, says he is aware of the destruction of his world, and is already prepared. He informs that he will be joining his wife and family soon. He then activates a machine, called the "Atavachron". By viewing the historic disks, the time portal can send any who enter back in time to the point recorded in the data.
Kirk hears a woman's scream on the other side of the portal. Without realizing what the doorway is, he rushes through and disappears. McCoy and Spock rush into the portal after him, despite Atoz' warnings not to go through, since they have not been "prepared". The two find themselves transported through time 5,000 years into the past, to when Sarpeidon was in the midst of an ice age. The two are trapped in the brutal cold and desperately look around for their captain.
Meanwhile, Kirk arrives in an alleyway at a point in Sarpeidon's history reminiscent of England's Restoration Period. He manages to rescue a disheveled-looking woman from being assaulted by sword-bearing nobles. Kirk chases the assailants away, but then discovers the "maiden in distress" is really a thief who was attempting to steal the man's purse.
He offers to have McCoy treat the woman's wounds, but on looking whence he came, sees only a stone wall. Kirk steps back to the alley, but cannot locate the time portal. He discovers he can still talk to McCoy and Spock, but cannot get to them.
Spock surmises that all of the planet's inhabitants have escaped their demise by going through the portal to their past, which explains why only Atoz is left. (Atoz later confirms this. He was just about to depart when the landing party arrived.)
Authorities arrive and arrest Kirk for helping the thief. At the same time, McCoy asks his captain about what is going on at his end, and the guards are shaken when they hear the mysterious disembodied voice. The thief then betrays Kirk and tells the guards that he is using witchcraft, and the voices forced her to steal against her will.
On the verge of freezing to death, Spock and Bones look for shelter and encounter a figure wrapped in heavy furs, who leads the strangers to a warm cave. Unrobing to reveal a beautiful woman, she identifies herself to Spock as Zarabeth, and explains that she and her family have been exiled because one of them was involved in a plot to assassinate Zor-kahn, the tyrant who ruled in her time, or as she wryly puts it, her crime was "choosing my kinsmen unwisely".
Meanwhile, Kirk, taken to a jail cell, is interrogated by a prosecutor. Kirk mentions the "library" from which he came through time, and the prosecutor becomes nervous, realizing what Kirk means, for the prosecutor is also a refugee from Sarpeidon's future. At first, the prosecutor seems to believe that Kirk is innocent, but the guard and thief maintain they heard the mysterious voices and that Kirk must be a witch. Kirk realizes the prosecutor is from the future, and earnestly refers to the library and Mr. Atoz in the hope of getting back. The prosecutor becomes frightened and rushes away, saying he wants nothing more to do with the prisoner.
Back in the ice age, Zarabeth listens to McCoy's and Spock's story of their arrival, and informs them that she too is from Sarpeidon's future. She explains that the Atavachron portal is "one-way" and alters a traveler's molecular structure so that if they return to their time, they will die.
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(11 hours ago)
"The Trouble With Tribbles" is a second-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on December 29, 1967 and repeat...
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"The Trouble With Tribbles" is a second-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast on December 29, 1967 and repeated June 21, 1968. It was written by David Gerrold and directed by Joseph Pevney.
On stardate 4523.3, Captain James T. Kirk and his crew are called to Deep Space Station K7 by a priority-one distress call. The station is near Sherman's Planet, a world in a sector of space disputed between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, Sherman's Planet would be awarded to whichever side demonstrates that it can manage it more efficiently.
Kirk is furious when he later realizes the distress call was unwarranted, and the undersecretary in charge of agriculture in the sector, Nilz Baris, simply wants someone to guard the shipments of quadrotriticale, a four-lobed wheat-rye hybrid grain, bound for Sherman's Planet. To Baris's annoyance, Kirk assigns two token guards to the task shortly before learning that Starfleet Command endorses Baris's concerns. A Klingon ship soon arrives at the space station and requests that its crew be granted shore leave, as entitled under the treaty. Kirk tells the Klingon captain Koloth that he may only bring members of his crew down 12 at a time, and that he will provide one security guard for each Klingon who beams down.
Meanwhile, an independent trader, Cyrano Jones, brings some little furry animals called tribbles onto the station to sell; he gives one to Uhura as a marketing ploy. She brings it on board the Enterprise, where it and its offspring are treated as adorable pets. The animals purr a relaxing trill that the crew (even the stoic Mr. Spock) find soothing. Klingons, however, find tribbles very annoying, and the feeling is mutual: tribbles emit an ear-piercing shriek of aggression, and jump, whenever they are near Klingons.
The "trouble" with the tribbles is that they reproduce far too quickly and are capable of eating a planet barren if their breeding is not controlled; in the words of Dr. McCoy, "they are born pregnant" and threaten to consume all the onboard supplies. The problem is aggravated when it is discovered that the creatures are entering essential ship systems, interfering with their functions and consuming any edible contents present. Kirk realizes that if the tribbles are getting into the Enterprise's stores, then they are a direct threat to the grain stores aboard the station. However, upon examining the holds, Kirk learns that it is already too late; the tribbles have indeed eaten the grain—a fact he learns the hard way, by being buried to more than half his own height in tribbles when he opens a hold with an overhead hatch. It appears the mission has ended in a fiasco. On top of that, Koloth wants a formal apology from Kirk, since some of the Enterprise crew members have started, though not without provocation, a western-style brawl with the Klingon crew in the station's bar.
Spock and McCoy, however, soon discover that around half the tribbles in the hold are dead and many of the rest are dying, alerting the Federation that the grain has been poisoned. Furthermore, the tribbles also give away the identity of a surgically altered Klingon agent responsible. The saboteur is the only "human" the tribbles do not like: Arne Darvin, Baris's own assistant. He had infected the grain with a virus that becomes an inert material in an organism's bloodstream; the more that is eaten, the more inert matter builds up, till the organism cannot take in enough nourishment to survive and essentially starves to death. Upon a medical scan by Dr. McCoy, it is revealed that Darvin is indeed a Klingon in disguise. Thus the tribbles redeem themselves and enable the Federation to score a diplomatic victory against the Klingons. As for Cyrano Jones, who introduced the species to the station, he is ordered to remove the tribbles from the station (a clean-up task that Spock estimates will take 17.9 years) or be imprisoned for 20 years for transporting a dangerous life form off its native planet.
Just before the Klingon departure, all tribbles that were on the Enterprise are somehow beamed onto the Klingon ship by Scotty as a retaliation for the troubles the Klingons have caused, where, in his words, "they'll be no tribble at all."
Tribbles (Polygeminus grex) are small, non-intelligent lifeforms originating from Iota Geminorum IV. Known for their prodigious reproductive rate, these round, furry creatures emit cooing sounds while touched, which have a tranquilizing effect on the Human nervous system. Born pregnant, a single tribble with sufficient food can quickly increase its number exponentially through presumably asexual reproduction, bearing an average litter of ten every twelve hours. On their homeworld, tribble populations are kept in check by a large number of reptilian predators.
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