You can’t keep a good tribble down. The adorable but troublesome fuzzballs reproduce so quickly that even if you get rid of one, about a thousand will take their place, and they’ve been making Star Trek stories funny and weird since their 1967 debut in “The Trouble With Tribbles.” Since then, the franchise has used tribbles sparingly, and usually as a quick Easter Egg or punchline rather than a serious plot point.
But an under-the-radar Star Trek story just revealed a shocking new detail about tribbles. And once you know what that detail is, you’ll be surprised that it’s taken this long to think up. Spoilers ahead for IDW’s Star Trek #500 comic book.
In a special 500th anthology issue of IDW’s ongoing Star Trek comic book series, a new story called “I Knew You Were Tribble When You Walked In” tells the story of the tribbles in “The Trouble With Tribbles” from the point-of-view of the little critters themselves.
The story, co-written by Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt, is just a few pages long. We start with the perspective of one tribble and quickly learn that it has a thing for Captain Kirk. In its mind, this tribble refers to Kirk as “my golden beloved.”
But that’s not all. When the little tribble can’t find Kirk, it uses “my hive mind network” to locate him, which means the tribble’s consciousness can transfer to all tribbles. At one point, it describes itself as “everywhere,” and we see various scenes from the episode, as well as Deep Space Nine’s time travelers, Captain Sisko and Lt. Dax, when they dropped by in the 1996 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations.” The tribbles aren’t exactly ageless, but their telepathic network does seem to rival Trek’s other famous hivemind race; the Borg.
This makes perfect sense when you think about it. The tribbles are depicted as highly sensitive, and though not complex creatures, they do seem to behave with some shared purpose. And now, assuming this comic is low-key canon, we know that their shared goals are thanks to the fact they all can move their minds between one another at will.
In Deep Space Nine, Worf said the tribbles were once considered an ecological blight, and that the Klingon Empire had regarded them as mortal enemies. This hivemind detail makes that plot point make a little more sense. Not only can these tribbles become obsessed with human beings (again, this one is hot for Kirk), but they can also all decide to feel the same thing simultaneously. Like hunger for Klingon crops.
In the Short Treks 2018 episode “The Trouble With Edward,” we learn that Lt. Larkin (H. Jon Benjamin) was at least partially responsible for genetically modifying the tribbles to make them breed at exponential rates. This retcon, however, doesn’t exclude the tribbles secretly being telepathic or part of a hivemind. In fact, what “I Knew You Were Tribble When You Walked In” asserts is that we’d have no way of knowing what tribbles were thinking because their language and thoughts are all internal.
Although Spock held several tribbles in the classic episode, it doesn’t seem like he ever mind-melded with them. If Spock had telepathically linked with the tribbles, then everything about how that episode plays out would have to be changed. And while Spock probably would’ve favored trying to find a way to live with the tribbles, their hivemind abilities might have freaked Kirk out regardless of how cute they are.
While this new story should be read with a sense of tongue-in-cheek zeal, the ending does show the tribbles' fate. They’re beamed onto the episode’s Klingon ship, where they seem to connect with one Klingon officer. We know the tribbles and the Klingons didn’t team up after this moment, but if they had, they probably could’ve conquered the galaxy.
