Trials and Tribble-ations

Originally Appeared Here

Picking up a strange passenger on a trip to Cardassia Prime
Sends them on an adventure when he activates the Orb of Time
Carried by chronitons, they quickly recover their cloak
See the Enterprise brought by Baris, thinking Priority One Is a Joke
'Cause He's acting on Fear of a Planet of Klingons(1)
A foothold in his sector and everything it would bring on
So paranoid he's afraid to even let Cyrano sell gems
Out here near the border, they're already close enough to smell them(2)
Maybe catch a whiff of lilac, or something earthy and peaty
While they compete for Sherman's Planet under the Organian Treaty(3)

Turns out Barry Waddle was an old Klingon agent
Harboring resentment from grievances ancient
Disowned by his empire, no acknowledgement written or verbal
Left in human form, worse than being cursed, Oh, to be a Blobel(4)
Traveled in his life to set wrong what once went right(5)
But my dad and his crew won't let it go without a fight
Me, I would've panicked if I had to put on a red shirt
And I hate temporal mechanics(6), it all makes my head hurt
Like inventing transparent aluminum just to hold some cetaceans(7)
Or meeting your own ancestor in a bit of predestination
O'Brien rolls his eyes, Bashir says he'll wish they had trysted
When the chief comes back to the present to find he never existed

Rendezvous with Worf and Odo in the bar on the station
While waitress wishes Klingons from a different generation
Would stop requesting raktajino 'cause she ain't ever heard of it
Korax compares humans to blood worms and other invertebrates
Calls out Captain Kirk as a Denebian slime devil
Thinking "Maybe Starfleet's top engineer will climb down to my level"
But Scotty don't care 'til his ship's reputation is tarnished
And he's told the whole thing should be hauled off as garbage
This kind of incident was against all Kirk's orders
Until they tell him the instigator, they're confined to their quarters
Just when the living legend can't approach any closer
O'Brien has to lie to his face and say "I don't know, sir"

But the situation grows urgent when new information is emergent
Explosives among the goods from an interstellar merchant
No calming effect, like the peace of mind you get from a swibble(8)
When there's a bomb, and you gotta check every last tribble
Their population's expanding according to an exponential law
Growing faster than the grains of rice at Ambalappuzha(9)
The find it in a storage bin where it's been gorging on the grain
Beaming into space in this case ain't inhumane(10)
Just one last item of business, not many times to meet a legend
At an important juncture in history like you were named Gary Seven(11)
But even humorless agents who can't seem to have a laugh
Admit they understand when dad went back for an autograph.

1. Refers to the Public Enemy song "911 is a Joke" on the album Fear of a Black Planet.
2. Quote from Chekov in the original episode
3. The terms under which Sherman's Planet is being developed were a result of the treaty which emerged from the episode "Errand of Mercy".
4. A reference to the Philip K. Dick story, "Oh, to be a Blobel", about a human who spends part of his days as an alien Blobel as a result of his time as a spy.
5. A reversal of the introduction to the show Quantum Leap, where Sam Beckett must "Put right what once went wrong".
6. A reference to the episode "Visionary", when Chief O'Brien has a confusing discussion with a temporally displaced version of himself.
7. In Star Trek IV, Scotty gives a man in the 20th century information on how to make transparent aluminum to build a whale tank. McCoy suggests he'll disrupt the timeline, and Scotty suggests the man may be the inventor.
8. From another Philip Dick story, "Service Call", swibbles are an artificially-evolved organism that subtly adjust people's minds to ensure they remain at peace with each other.
9. The legend concerning the Ambalappuzha Sri Krishna temple holds that the god Krishna, in the form of a sage, defeated the king in a game of chess. As a prize, he requested a grain of rice on one square of the chess board, and twice as many on the next square, and so on for every square of the board.
10. In the original episode, Kirk asks how Scotty has rid the ship of Tribbles, and is briefly concerned Scotty has beamed them into space. Scotty says this would be inhuman.
11. In "Assignment: Earth", the agent Gary Seven is sent to avert a nuclear holocaust on Earth.