In today’s episode, Sisko’s recent jaunt into the past gets his time card audited, and he’ll have to convince Agents Dulmer and Lucsly that he and his crew didn’t do anything to signficantly alter the timeline. Is Florida still the prime retirement destination in the future? Did Forrest Gump change Ira Steven Behr’s life? And how often does Diane Carey think about butts? All this and more in Trials and Tribble-ations, the book that breaks new ground in introductory self-indulgence.

Trials and Tribble-ations
Author: Diane Carey
Pages: 180
Published: December 1996
Timeline: Early season 5
Prerequisites: “The Trouble with Tribbles” (TOS 2×15)

Voyager and Next Generation have already partied hearty for Star Trek‘s thirtieth anniversary, so it wouldn’t rightly do to leave out Deep Space Nine. And although we’re covering it last, it is certainly not least: of the three 30-year homages to the roots of the franchise, “Trials and Tribble-ations” is the most fun, and not in the cynical “actors getting their contract riders” sense of some of the TNG films, but a real, pure, love-of-the-game kind of fun. There are plenty of reasons for this: you can feel the actors genuinely having a blast; DS9 at this point was already good at loosening up on account of the need to take the occasional breather from all the heavy Dominion stuff; and of the three, it’s the only one to embrace the silliness and the camp that form a fundamental part of the core of TOS.

That sense of fun makes it to the novelization more or less intact—what parts of it actually consist of story, anyway. Trials and Tribble-ations already possesses a svelte figure the likes of which we haven’t seen since the very earliest days of this site, but over ten percent of even that tiny page count is consumed by David Gerrold’s rambling introduction. It’s hard to begrudge Gerrold this moment of triumph; whatever else he was written, and whatever stunningly accurate predictions he has made, “The Trouble with Tribbles” will always be his crowning opus, his most mainstream achievement. Seeing the fruit of your legacy be validated and recreated in painstaking detail must be the thrill of a lifetime, but it’s far more interesting in theory than it is to actually wade through 22 pages of.

So then of the already alarmingly slim 180 pages of this book, only 155 contain actual story. (Ronald D. Moore also pitches in a blessedly brief afterword.) It’s more than understandable that with Diane Carey taking on both this and Flashback—very likely at or near the same time—one would get more attention and TLC than the other. You might imagine, then, that the severe brevity of this one doesn’t leave room for the expansiveness and the author-added flavor that make the novelizations such a treat. But in fact, there’s as much of it present as ever. There are some ways in which it isn’t entirely successful, but the fact that the book doesn’t lose any of that despite being so short is a kinda impressive accomplishment.

Where those supplemental scenes are less successful, it derives from the disproportionate foregrounding of the TOS cast in them. There are several OC scenes that show the TOS characters talking among themselves, and while they are not bad, per se, they are also not the point. I suppose it comes down to whether one perceives “Trials and Tribble-ations” as simply an extension of “The Trouble with Tribbles” or as a DS9 episode playing in TOS’s sandbox. I take it as the latter. Of course, we’ve read enough of Diane Carey by now to know she believes Star Trek would be nothing without the original series and the foundation it built. Which is true, don’t get me wrong—she just has a sort of prickly way of making that point.

It follows naturally, then, that the original material that does work is that which does a better job of bringing the DS9 crew into the Enterprise team’s sphere of awareness. McCoy and Bashir have some interaction that couldn’t have been achieved even with the Forrest Gump tech innovations that made this episode possible,1 and there’s a keen bit at the end after Sisko gets Kirk’s autograph where Kirk muses that Sisko “doesn’t carry himself like a lieutenant.” With the typical tidiness of television, the episode goes to great lengths to assure the viewer that Sisko and Co. saved the day without leaving any noticeable temporal trace, but the book is more pragmatic. It allows Kirk and others to brush with ghosts, then blows it off or rationalizes it away as temporary assignments, and that feels more real.

Still, it’s hard to escape the very palpable feeling that the book—i.e., the entity of paper and ink itself—somehow radiates a tacit approval of the “TOS is the be-all-end-all” approach. It’s even evident in the cover art, where Kirk is in the foreground and Sisko is behind him glowering at him like he’s the one planning the assassination, not Arne Darvin. But the spirit of the episode is too irrepressible to be tamped down by mawkish prefaces or preferential series treatment. It’s still a fine read, albeit a quick and inessential one.

MVP & LVP

  • This week is a dual MVP for Dulmer and Lucsly. What fun characters. Two guys who seem to simultaneously love and hate their jobs. I know there are a few Department of Temporal Investigations novels; I hope they show up in them.
  • My LVP this week isn’t actually a character, but rather a plot thread: the “Bashir worries about boinking his distant relative” bit. There’s nothing wrong with the Whatley character, and it’s even funny how her coming on to him flusters him. But the “I’m My Own Grandpa” business adds nothing to it whatsoever.

Stray Bits

  • David Gerrold’s uncanny knack for peering into the future was evident even before the aforelinked magazine segment. He didn’t say “there will be”, but I’ll still give him credit for this one. On seeing people wearing the old TOS uniforms again, he muses: “It made me start to think … what if Paramount started a new Star Trek show, one that took place in Kirk and Spock’s time? Or how about even a new set of shows about Kirk and Spock? … I wonder if it’s still doable.” Granted, Kirk’s not involved (yet), but I’d still call that a nice shot. (pp. 16, 17)
  • Carey calls Dulmer and Lucsly “clench-keistered” on page 33, which is just a chef’s kiss of a word, in my opinion. But the posterior talk doesn’t end there. One page later: “They weren’t even entirely sitting on the furniture, but only committing to half a butt at any given moment.” I’ve disagreed with Carey on many points in the past, but I will say this for her: she commits to full butt.
  • O’Brien, p. 75: “My old granny lives in a condo in Miami. She’s a real estate broker. Claims to have sold the Blarney Stone half a dozen times and the Atlantic Ocean twice.” Hmm. I suppose it’s good that we solved climate change in time for Florida to remain a retirement destination nonpareil and not break off into the ocean. I loathe the neoliberal attitude that casually writes off entire states and regions of the country as unsalvageable, and I wouldn’t want to catch myself doing the exact same thing. Though I will say, when I’m in one of my less charitable moods, Florida is usually a (if not the) top contender for a board wipe.

Final Assessment

Good. Although this is a lean installment with some indulgences and idiosyncrasies that must be set aside in order to fully enjoy it, it’s still a fine read, though in this case the TV episode remains the best bet. Considering Diane Carey was probably cranking this and Flashback out at the same time, this could honestly have been a lot worse. It’s hardly essential, but it won’t waste your time.

NEXT TIME: Bless the Beasts has a touch of gray