Feeling a bit bored, I went down to the London Central Library’s “Star Trek Celebration of Tribbles” today. It was a bit awkward and comforting to see so many fellow geeks in public again. We got to see the Tribble trinity: The original 1967 “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode, the surprisingly good “More Troubles, More Tribbles” from the 1973 Star Trek animated series, and the incredibly well executed “Trials and Tribble-ations” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in homage of Trek’s 30th anniversary. It was interesting to see these three episodes in one sitting – all had a similar theme, all took place in the same universe, all had well-executed storylines (something Voyager never had and Enterprise still struggles with), and yet it was interesting how the limited budget of the original series and the drab static cartoon backgrounds of the Animated Series contrasted with the dynamic camera shooting and glowing special effects of DS9.
Oh, the picture on the left is of Silverlotus’s tribble she purchased at the gift shop at the Las Vegas Hilton. It comes with warnings affixed to it stating “Live Specimen – Do Not Feed”.
An interesting factoid: the library mentioned that “The Trouble with Tribbles” contained the only mention of Canada in the Trek universe; Spock points out that the wheat/rye hybrid grain known as quadrotriticale was derived from triticale, which was invented in “20th century Canada”. (Which is true btw, it was first made a viable crop by the University of Manitoba in 1959.)
I did some digging, and with some relief I can say my Star Trek does include more Canada – just not a lot more. The best Canadian reference goes to DS9, of course, where Eddington, Starfleet officer turned Maquis rebel leader, mentions he has a family heirloom in the form of “an old Earth coin…with a bird on the front”. “My lucky looney,” he continues. “Been in the family for over two hundred years.”