Glory be!
Edward Gorey's black humor meets Star Trek's bit of fluff in Shaenon K. Garrity's inspired comic, Edward Gorey's "The Trouble with Tribbles".
Thank you, Kellie, for turning me on to this work of webcomic genius!
(Being a bit of a slow bear about these things, it took me a while to figure out how to "turn" the pages, so I'll tell you: once you've clicked onto the Tribble site, click on the drawing and the next one will appear.)
Oh, or click here for a scroll-down version of Shaenon's comic, which starts with an article about Gorey, including this clipping (right) from 1977.And here's a link to a search of Shaenon's Drunk and Watchin' Star Trek series, about ST: TNG.
Star Trek's bubbly "Tribbles" episode never enamored me, but it seems to work like club soda: it makes a great mixer. Not only does it mix well with Gorey, it mixes well with Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I'm not a huge fan of computerized special effects, but I must say, the computer work in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" is magic.
In the episode, DS9 Captain Sisko & friends go undercover, back in time to the 23rd century (exactly 105 years, 1 month, and 12 days earlier--a Friday), on Capt. Kirk's Enterprise, in order to set things right during the original tribble troubles.
(In real-time, the original episode aired in 1967; the DS9 episode almost thirty years later, in 1996. I saw it last week, in 2008, 12 years after it first aired.)
It's a hoot to see the DS9 crew seamlessly inserted into some of the old episode's scenes. In the photo at left, you can see Sisko (center, left, bald guy from New Orleans) and Dax (center, right, gal who is hiding her spotted skin with makeup and is actually a Trill, not a human) behind Kirk (white guy from Iowa, far left) and Spock (in blue shirt).
(Fun note: Of course the first Enterprise crew is famous in DS9 times, and here Dax is giving Spock the eye and commenting on how surprisingly attractive he is in person. )
My favorite scene, though, is when the DS9 crew are changing into the "old" Starfleet uniforms of Kirk & Spock's time. It made me nostalgic for something that never even happened. Or is that, nostalgic for something that hasn't happened yet?