Friday, October 1, 2004

TV X-O HoF: TNG

I'm having that time of the month......

THE TV CROSSOVER HALL OF FAME
October always ends with a holiday of horror, so we figured to kick off the month with a salute to the supernatural - ghosts, monsters, aliens. And sometimes the monsters are unfortunately all-too-human.

As we continue our year-long salute to 'Star Trek', marking the 35th anniversary of the original series' cancellation. And of all the aliens and predators encountered by the crew of the starship Enterprise, none were more dangerous than....

THE TRIBBLES
Yes, those cuddly, cooing balls of fur were a menace to the galaxy. It is assumed that their home planet's environment was so hostile, their survival hinged on a remarkable evolutionary quirk - apparently they were born pregnant.

Possessing both genders in one body, tribbles seem to impregnate themselves as soon as they are fed. Left unchecked, tribbles would soon devestate a world with their numbers; devouring everything they could find.

Such a fate nearly befell the space station orbiting a contested planet desired by the Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire. But the voracious appetites of the tribbles actually saved the day, however - by consuming all the grain earmarked for planting on the planet's surface, the tribbles soon died of poisoning. (The Klingons had introduced an inert compound into the grain so that it couldn't grow.)

So, in a way, by their sacrifice the tribbles became heroes.

Captain Kirk encountered a tribble again a few years later, one that had been genetically engineered not to become pregnant as soon as it was fed. But instead, the tribble kept growing larger and larger the more it was consumed, and so was just as big a threat. (Literally!)

Finally, some of the staff on the Deep Space Nine station orbiting Bajor went back in Time to that first encounter with the tribbles. They worked behind the scenes to prevent a Klingon provocateur from tampering with established history.

(A few aspects of the timeline were altered, but an investigation by agents of the Temporal Bureau determined that no lasting harm took place.)

And so we salute these fecund furballs of the Final Frontier by inducting the tribbles into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame.

A gif image of a tribble has been created to forever illustrate their membership in the Hall. One day I'll have a web site up and running to celebrate all of the inductees in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame. And representing that honor for the tribbles will be one "Joey Tribble-iani".

I make no apologies.

'Star Trek' (the original series)
'Star Trek' (the animated series)
'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'

In case anyone was interested in who the other 'Trek' inductees have been up to this point, here's the rundown of the year so far:

January - Captain James T. Kirk
February - Lt. Uhura
March - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy
April - Commander Montgomery Scott
May - Yeoman Janice Rand
June - Zephraim Cochrane
Birthday Honors - The Cast Of The Original 'Star Trek':
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichole, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney
July - Ensign Pavel Chekov
August - Helmsman Hikaru Sulu
September - Gene Roddenberry

Every month I'll be posting the next inductee into the Crossover Hall of Fame, and we still have a few 'Trek' personnel to go!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

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