[Nate the Great]

Part Two

The Episode

SPOCK: Quadrotriticale is a high-yield grain, a four-lobed hybrid of wheat and rye. A perennial, also, I believe. Its root grain, triticale, can trace its ancestry all the way back to twentieth century Canada...

Triticale is real ("triti" is from wheat, "cale" is from rye), but its ancestry goes back to nineteenth century Scotland and Germany. It seems odd that Spock would make such a mistake.

LURRY: Quadrotriticale is the only earth grain that grows on Sherman's Planet.

Here we go again, the desire to repeat the "homo sapiens only club" joke. Grow something other than grain, or use a grain from another world!

KIRK: (shows Chekov the packet of wheat) Mister Chekov, what do you make of this?
CHEKOV: Oh, quadrotriticale. I've read about this, but I've never seen any before.
KIRK: Does everybody know about this wheat but me?
CHEKOV: Not everyone, Captain. It's a Russian invention.

The Russia joke is always good for a laugh, but it's a shame that Sulu with his established background in botany couldn't be here for this scene.

BARMAN: I don't want any. I told you before, and I'm telling you again I don't want any more Spican flame gems. Thanks to you, I have enough Spican flame gems to last me a lifetime.
JONES: How sad for you, my friend. You won't find a finer stone anywhere. But I have something better. Surely you want some Antarian glow water.
BARMAN: I use that to polish the flame gems.

Classic exchange. I did a little research into these goods, and was disgusted to learn that Antarian glow water has its glow because there are ground-up Antarean dryworms in it. One wonders if the Ferengi drink this stuff.

BARMAN: Four credits.
JONES: Is that an offer or a joke?
BARMAN: That's my offer.
JONES: That's a joke.
BARMAN: Five?

Great exchange. I love it when the barman says "five" in a way somewhere between a groan and the last rasp of a dying man.

KOLOTH: Captain, we Klingons are not as luxury-minded as you Earthers. We do not equip our ships with, how shall I say it, non-essentials.
KORAX: We have been in space for five months. What we choose as recreation is our own business.

And if you choose to be in space in a ship without any recreational facilities for five months, I call that your problem, not mine.

KIRK: Another technical journal, Scotty?
SCOTT: Aye.
KIRK: Don't you ever relax?
SCOTT: I am relaxing.

Don't look down on reading, captain! Or are you just looking down on nonfiction?

SPOCK: (stroking a tribble) A most curious creature, Captain. Its trilling seems to have a tranquillising effect on the human nervous system. Fortunately, of course, I am immune to its effect.

What really sells the line is how Spock's speech slows down as the tribble demands more and more of his attention. I suspect that tribbles emit low-level psy waves that a telepath like Spock might be more susceptible to.

KIRK: I was not aware, Mister Baris, that twelve Klingons constitutes a swarm.

I wonder how many Klingons it would take before Kirk would call it a swarm.

MCCOY: I can tell you this much. Almost fifty percent of the creature's metabolism is geared for reproduction. Do you know what you get if you feed a tribble too much?
KIRK: A fat tribble.
MCCOY: No. You get a bunch of hungry little tribbles.

Classic exchange, especially Kirk's expression of blunt smugness.

KORAX: No. I just remembered. There is one Earthman who doesn't remind me of a Regulan blood worm. That's Kirk. A Regulan blood worm is soft and shapeless, but Kirk isn't soft. Kirk may be a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood, but he's not soft.

More than one person in the novels has repeated the tin-plated dictator line in reference to Kirk, which makes me wonder where they got it. Did Scotty include this exchange in some form of official log? Did Kirk have to include it when explaining why he's confining Scotty to quarters?

KORAX: Of course, I'd say that Captain Kirk deserves his ship. We like the Enterprise. We, we really do. That sagging old rust bucket is designed like a garbage scow. Half the quadrant knows it. That's why they're learning to speak Klingonese.
CHEKOV: Mister Scott!
SCOTT: Laddie, don't you think you should rephrase that?
KORAX: You're right, I should. I didn't mean to say that the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage.

I love the pause between "should" and "rephrase". Scotty is incensed, but he still had a little self control to censor himself. But then Korax had to take that little bit away...

KIRK: You hit the Klingons because they insulted the Enterprise, not because they
SCOTT: Well, sir, this was a matter of pride.
KIRK: All right, Scotty. Dismissed. Scotty, you're restricted to quarters until further notice.
SCOTT: (big grin) Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. That'll give me a chance to catch up on my technical journals.

The well-laid plans of mice and men and all that. Kirk should've come up with an alternate punishment. What, exactly, I'm not sure. Cleaning the gunk out of the food processors every day for a week?

MCCOY: Does everything have to have a practical use for you? They're nice, soft, and furry, and they make a pleasant sound.
SPOCK: So would an ermine violin, but I see no advantage in having one.

There's a forum game: alternatives to "ermine violin" that fit the qualifications of "nice, soft, furry, and makes a pleasant sound."

BARIS: But he is after my grain!
KIRK: Do you have any proof of that?
DARVIN: You can't deny he's disrupted this station.
KIRK: People have disrupted stations before without being Klingon agents. Sometimes, all they need is a title, Mister Baris.

Burn!

SPOCK: One million seven hundred seventy one thousand five hundred sixty one. That's assuming one tribble, multiplying with an average litter of ten, producing a new generation every twelve hours over a period of three days.

But there wasn't one tribble to start with, there must've been a few dozen at least. And that's assuming that all of the tribbles found enough food to reproduce at full capacity, and that's assuming...ugh, let's move on...

KIRK: Until that inquiry, I'm still the captain. And as Captain, I want two things done. First, find Cyrano Jones, and second (as another tribble hits him on the head) close that door.

Poor Kirk. Then again, Sisko and Dax really didn't have the time to pay attention to where they were throwing the tribbles, did they?

KIRK: Where did you transport them? Scott, you didn't transport them into space, did you?
SCOTT: Captain Kirk, that'd be inhuman.
KIRK: Where are they?
SCOTT: I gave them a good home, sir.
KIRK: (shouting) Where?
SCOTT: I gave them to the Klingons, sir.
KIRK: (a whisper) You gave them to the Klingons?
SCOTT: Aye, sir. Before they went into warp, I transported the whole kit and caboodle into their engine room, where they'll be no tribble at all.

Love that little pause and the disbelief in Kirk's voice at the suggestion that Scotty would beam tribbles into space.