Airing today, the next Star Trek short “The Trouble with Edward” will see the return of the cute yet dangerous critters the tribbles, as seen in a new trailer. Introduced in the famous TOS episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” the creatures are portrayed as cute fuzzy blobs, yet their exponential reproduction rate quickly turns them into a danger as their multiplying numbers gradually overrun a ship through sheer volume.
Short Treks is a series of online shorts that expands the universe of Star Trek as it appears on CBS. Although it currently focuses on Discovery, it will soon be expanded to incorporate the upcoming series Lower Decks and Picard. The stories are supplemental to the main series and don’t need to be seen to understand primary plot lines, although their events are sometimes revisited in the main narrative, such as an episode that told Saru’s backstory becoming relevant when his home planet was revisited by the Discovery crew. The second batch of shorts began last week with Spock and Number One stuck in a turbolift, and more will be released each month prior to the debut of season 3 of Discovery in January 2020.
The brief trailer for the short was posted to the Twitter of CBS’s Star Trek shows, re-introducing the creatures as adorable fuzzballs who soon get out of control. It stars Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel) as Captain Lynne Lucero and Archer’s H Jon Benjamin as the eponymous Edward Larkin, who introduces the tribbles to the ship. Also featured is the inevitable countless multitudes of mindlessly multiplying furballs that must be dealt with if the ship is to be saved. Watch the trailer below.
This is not the first time the tribbles have been brought back for more fluffy infestations. Animated Series episode “More Tribbles, More Troubles” had the creatures potentially neutralized by being unable to reproduce, but their tendency to eat anything they came across led to them instead becoming so enormously fat they blocked corridors and doorways. The Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” saw Sisko and the crew of the Defiant travel back in time and have to prevent the assassination of Kirk by a Klingon agent during the events of the original episode, featuring the contemporary actors digitally inserted into its events as they interact with the historical characters.
The tone of “The Trouble with Edward” is a little unclear, as the brass bombast of the music implies the same kind of comedic framing utilized by the classic episode inspiring it, but in the initial trailer for the series of shorts as a whole its events seemed to be repurposed as horror. As the tribbles never showed any carnivorous tendencies, the parting line of Pike telling Lucero “Don’t show any weakness or they will eat you alive” is likely metaphorical, and him imparting advice to a younger colleague who has just been given her first command. While Salazar may seem young to be a captain, at 34 she is actually only a year younger than William Shatner was when Star Trek first debuted.
Source: Star Trek on CBS All Access