As a child I appreciated the artfulness and story telling of The City on the Edge of Forever, but this was my favorite episode. Fortunately for my memories of childhood this is in fact a rather good episode. I know it is a ways until I get to the review bit, but I am going to set down a rule right now that I add a point to the score of any episode will to end of a pun. This also really made me want to watch the DS9 episode that revisits these events, but that won't be for a while!
The episode begins with the Enterprise on route to Deep Space Station K-7, a station an a critical location for the Federation to claim the valuable Sherman's Planet. The station and planet are both at the edge of Klingon space and the Klingons are determined to have the planet for themselves. It is however apparently space law that whoever can do it better gets to take the planet or something. The Enterprise receives a Code One alert which signals that the station is under attack so they race there at warp 6. Arriving they find that things are in fact fine and the Federation Agriculture official in charge of getting the super grain quadrotriticale to Sherman's Planet wants it guarded. For which he declared a quadrant wide emergency and Kirk is pissed. Kirk orders two guards and allows his crew shore leave.
While exploring the station Uhura and Chekov bump into the captain who gives them a sample of the super grain. Uhura then runs into Cyrano Jones, a trader of some sort who offers her a tribble. The tribble seems to love the super grain, but Uhura loves the tribble even more and takes it back to the ship. Just then a Klingon battleship arrives and demands that they be allowed shore leave. Kirk agrees, but sends down lots of red shirts to keep things under control. Scotty is in charge of the security detail and starts by going to a bar full of Klingons and drinking a giant cup of scotch. Cyrano arrives and tries to sell them all tribbles and we learn that tribbles hate Klingons. But Klingons hate humans even more and they get Scotty to start a fight by insulting the Enterprise.
Back on the ship it seems the tribbles are reproducing at an alarming rate. McCoy takes one to sickbay to analyze and before he can figure out what is going on he has buckets of them. The tribbles multiply so fast that they are literally all over the ship in no time getting through the ventilation ducts into the food storage. Kirk realizes that there are also air vents in the grain stores on the station and beams over with Spock. Kirk checks on the grain by opening a door directly over his head that apparently holds several tons of grain. Luckily for him instead of being crushed by grain he is instead smothered in tribbles. The tribbles have eaten all the grain, but McCoy discovers they are also dying from it!
The finale of the episode takes place in the station administrators office. The Klingons are trying to start an incident over the bar brawl, but Kirk isn't having any of it. They inadvertently discover that the aide to the Agriculture guy is a Klingon in disguise! And by waving a tribble in his face they get him to confess to poisoning the grain with a virus that fills you up with, "inert matter," which makes you starve or something! Kirk returns to the ship to find it tribble free. It turns out Scotty sent them all to the Klingons as a parting gift.
Discourse: Having a comedy episode of Star Trek on it's surface seems like a terrible idea. This one saves itself by being actually well written and having an interesting enough story to keep it moving. Seeing the hardened Klingons freak out about being near a purring ball of fluff doesn't get old.
9 out of 10
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