The original Sci-Fi Channel special from 1996.
The Making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Trials And Tribble-ations was a documentary which was broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US on November 4th, 1996. The documentary looks at the writing and production of the episode and features footage filmed during production of the episode. Some of the interviews later appeared as special features in the DS9 Season 5 DVD.
The documentary features interviews from the actors Terry Farrell, Armin Shimerman, Rene Auberjonois, Alexander Siddig, Colm Meaney, Cirroc Lofton, Michael Dorn, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, and Charlie Brill; the writers Ira Steven Behr, Rick Berman, Ronald D. Moore, Rene Echevarria and David Gerrold; and the production staffers Gary Hutzel, Herman Zimmerman, Michael Westmore, Michael Okuda, Joe Longo, Dennis Madalone, Mary Ellen Bosché, Kevin Bouchez, and Don Lee.
Uploaded to YouTube by Analog Video Archives.
File this post under I needed to geek out about something to take my mind off of things for a while.
I hadn’t watched that special since it first aired in 1996 (dinosaur noises) and one thing struck me that I didn’t put much thought in at the time. The Enterprise, Deep Space K-7, and the IKS Groth were all newly-made practical models shot just for this episode!
So after I made the Re-watch post for The Trouble with Tribbles just yesterday, I watched the YouTube compliation comparing the original effects with the Remastered (CG) effects. And one of the comments on that video says it would have been cool if they had left Dax and Sisko in the scenes they infiltrated during Trials and Tribble-ations to bring continuity around full circle.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it actually made. Their actions were intentionally made to avoid interfering with the original events of the timeline, so the episode would be unchanged except for seeing DS9 characters in some scenes. And they were so expertly inserted into the real footage you would have to be a Trek fan to even realize that they weren’t originally there.
Back to the practical ship models… Trials and Tribble-ations was released in 1996, as part of Star Trek’s 30th Anniversary, and the Remaster of The Trouble with Tribbles was done in 2006 - 10 years later.
inhales
Why didn’t they use the existing practical model shots for the Remastered episode? Why did they throw all that hard work away just to use CG?? They made a five and a half-foot Enterprise that was an exact replica of the eleven-foot model in the Smithsonian Museum. I don’t know what the fate of those models were, but that footage had better be digitized and preserved somewhere!!
I’m fine, really.
So here are some screencaps of both episodes to compare the 1996 practical shots (left) with the 2006 CG (right). For the most part, I made sure the comparisons are of similar styles of shots, with similar angles, and roughly from the same point of their respective episode. Incomparable shots are at the end of the gallery.
Comparison Gallery
Shots exclusive to Trials and Tribble-ations
Shots exclusive to The Trouble with Tribbles Remastered
The biggest different I notice is that the CG is lit to match the tone of the original series footage, while the practical shots are warmer and a little darker, to match the tone of DS9 in general. And the Constitution-class Enterprise looks stunning in that light. Ironically, a few episodes of the Remastered Star Trek do show the CG Enterprise with darker lighting, but it just looks darker. None of them match the mood of the Enterprise seen in Trials and Tribble-ations as far as I’m concerned.
tl;dr, There needs to be a version of The Trouble with Tribbles in HD with practical model shots and brief glimpses of certain time travelers.
I remember watching this back in the day. It’s a great behind-the-scenes! you can tell they had a ton of fun making this episode