Star Trek: Voyager’s “Flashback” episode walked so Deep Space Nine’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” could run

Star Trek: Voyager introduced us to “Flashback” which payed homage to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Star Trek fans are all about that throwback magic. Maybe the standard bearaer for that specific type of episode was the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”. In it, the crew of Deep Space Nine end up back on the USS Enterprise during the events of the Original Series’ “Troubles with Tribbles” episode.

It was a masterpiece in how to blend old and new footage into nearly seemless shots. At least for the time. Yet, it wasn’t the first time that the Brennan Braga era of Star Trek did something like that. Voyager did a verey similiar concept first, but instead of injecting new characters into old footage, they just re-shot the scenes they wanted ot use.

Taking place during the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kathryn Janeway and Tuvok go on a mind meld adventure back to the events of the film, where Tuvok served as an ensign. The episode featured the Voyager debuts of Star Trek icons George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney as Captain Hikaru Sulu and Commander Janice Rand. Joining them were two other talents from the film,  Jeremy Roberts as Dimitri Valtane and Boris Krutonog as Lojur. Both had appeared in the film prior reprising their role on Voyager.

It was a wonderfully done episode that recontextualized the events of The Undiscovered Country and helped give Tuvok some much needed backstory, but it was also the episode that allowed for “Trials and Tribble-ations” to exist.

Voyager’s “Flashback” proved Deep Space Nine’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” could work.

You may look at “Flashback” and wonder how it set up the evetaul DS9 episide, “Trials and Tribbleations”. Sure, “Flashback” aired two months before “Trials and Tribble-ations” but that’s not saying much as the DS9 episode was among the first to go into productino for Deep Space Nine’s fifth season.

However, the Voyager episode was one of the last to go into production in second season of the show. This meant that the DS9 production crew knew long before they went into production what Voyager was doing.

How much the Voyager episode influenced the Deep Space Nine episode isn’t truly known but it’s fair to say that the two shows were very well aware of what one another were doing, considering all the back and forth that went on at the time.