10 Worst Things Captain Kirk Has Ever Done

Iconic season two instalment “The Trouble with Tribbles” is best remembered for the cuddly creatures who give their name to the episode title. The Enterprise crew come across the fluffballs on a space station, and find them endearing enough that they bring one back to the ship for further research and cuddles.

It quickly transpires that Tribbles reproduce at a prodigious rate, and have a similarly insatiable appetite. Not long after, the grain that the crew have been hired to protect has been devoured by the pests. Some Klingons show up, there’s some tension, and in due course Kirk kills two birds with one stone by sending the antagonistic aliens packing, and beaming a job lot of Tribbles onto the Klingon ship. It’s treated as a jokey ending, but from what we know about Tribbles - they’ll eat you out of house and home, and they multiply like space rabbits - Kirk has doomed two groups of aliens to death by starvation.

A Deep Space Nine episode makes it clear that the Tribbles became a scourge to the Klingons, who spitefully hunted them for many years to come. Inadvertant or otherwise, Kirk has committed space genocide here.