Trials & Tribble-ations

This Story: Season 5 Episode 6 (production code 503)
DS9 Overall: Episode 104
Trek Overall: Story 364, Episode 385
Airdate: 4 Nov 1996
Story: Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler, & Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Teleplay: Ronald D. Moore & René Echevarria
Director: Jonathan West

Notes

• Alternate ideas that were considered were sequels to TOS episodes “Charlie X” & “A Piece of the Action“.
• The first time that the looks of the Klingons being different from the TOS era vs everything else is addressed.  It is passed off as a joke, but there will be a canonical explanation later on in Star Trek: Enterprise.
• The actor that played Klingon agent Arne Darwin (Charlie Brill) in the original 60’s episode returned here to revive the character in current time.  He was the fourth and final actor from the original series to do this on Deep Space Nine.
• Original Tribble author David Gerrold appeared on screen as what he describes as “the oldest Ensign ever”.  In a hallway shot, he’s shown holding a tribble.  That specific tribble is one from the original 60’s episode he brought with him on the day of filming.
• Funny joke is in the bar scene the DS9 characters think one of the people with Scotty is Kirk.  What’s amusing is that was actually the actor who was Kirk’s stunt double.  :)
• The clip at the end of the episode when Sisko meets Kirk was actually taken from “Mirror, Mirror“, and not the original Tribbles episode.
• Walter Koenig said that he was paid eight times more for permission to use his likeness in the old footage than he was actually paid for the original episode.
• While it is shown that Tribbles made it back to current time on Deep Space Nine, the implication of their being there is never mentioned again.
• There was a book written about the making of this episode.  It is still available (as of Aug 2025) in a Kindle book format.
• This episode was nominated for the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It was also nominated for three Emmy Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects, Outstanding Art Direction for a Series, and Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series.
• As of August 2025, it is the only episode of Deep Space Nine that has been released in High Defintion.  That is because it was included on the Season 2 blu-ray set for the Original Series remastered episode series.
• ADMIN NOTE: I originally did this episode back on 19 Jun 2024 when I was doing the original series I couldn’t wait well over a year to get to this one.  You can view my original two posts from then on Twitter here and here.  The embedded posts on this page now are new.

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