85. More Tribbles, More TroublesFORMULA: ± The Trouble With Tribbles (with maybe a smidgeon of Balance of Terror)
WHY WE LIKE IT: Stanley Adams is back as Cyrano Jones.
WHY WE DON'T: Too close a retread of The Trouble with Tribbles.
REVIEW: I've never been a big fan of The Trouble with Tribbles, though I admire some of its qualities. David Gerrold's sequel has much less to admire about it, unfortunately, and seems to just be going through the paces based on the original episode's popularity. For one thing, it's all much too close to the original as we return to Sherman's Planet, again with quadrotriticale, and again meet Koloth and Korax (played by Gerrold here) and again saddle their ship with unwanted tribbles. It's nice to see Cyrano Jones return, charmingly voiced by Stanley Adams returning in the role (side-stepping any mention of his K-7 sentence), though William Campbell doesn't in the role of Koloth (played by James Doohan instead).
The tribbles are now growing fat instead of reproducing thanks to some genetic engineering, or are they? There's a good twist at the end regarding that. The tribbles are more animated obviously, and Kirk rolling a big one off his chair is a funny riff on the original episode. However, they are far from impressive, all tinted the same shade of pink, and becoming increasingly ridiculous as they grow in size.
Some interesting ship designs make an appearance, as the cartoon creators take advantage of their lack of budget restrictions. The new Klingon weapon is interesting, but largely wasted and less than canonical. The glommer, a creature that eats tribbles, is fairly outlandish, but its scenes are somewhat disturbing to me. A certain Axe commercial comes to mind. Overall, I'd call the whole exercise mindless fluff.
LESSON: You can't go back to the well unless there's actually water in it.
REWATCHABILITY - Low: If it went somewhere else with the idea, maybe, but there are just too many returning elements to make this memorable. Koloth here could be any Klingon, and the story is basically on auto-pilot despite a couple of cute moments.
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