The Trouble With Tribbles
From Conservapedia
"The Trouble With Tribbles" is a second-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Plot summary
The Federation wants to colonize Sherman's Planet with the aid of a grain hybrid called quadro-triticale. However, the Klingon Empire wishes to do the same, and there is a treaty stipulating that whoever can manage the planet best has claim over it. A Federation official abuses a high priority distress call to lure the USS Enterprise to Deep Space Station K7 as protection for the wheat, much to the ire of Captain Kirk. However, a Klingon ship arrives soon after, ostensibly to claim shore leave rights undere the terms of the treaty, and Kirk chooses to remain.
Meanwhile in the station bar, the merchant Cyrano Jones is selling tribbles, small furry animals whose trilling has "a tranquilizing effect on the human nervous system." Lt. Uhuru brings a free tribble back to the ship, and it spawns over a dozen more by the next day, the same size as itself. McCoy brings one to the lab to analyze it, and it spawns 10 more.
The trouble starts when a drunken Klingon soldier uses an encounter with tribbles (which shriek when near a Klingon) as a pretense to provoke a group of Enterprise crew members. Lt. Cmdr. Scott attacks the soldier, and the fight continues until security arrives. Kirk treats the incident mildly: he cancels shore leave for both ships and confines Scott and the other involved crew to quarters.
It would be unfair to the reader to give away the rest of the story, but the idea for tribbles is reminiscent of the Martian flat cats of The Rolling Stones, a science fiction story by Robert Heinlein.
