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.
season 3 of Discovery in January 2020.
The brief trailer for the short was posted to the Twitter of CBS’s 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 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