What does the Star Trek: The Original Series episode The Trouble with Tribbles and The Marvels movie have in common?

There is more in common with Star Trek: The Original Series and the MCU than you might expect. Besides the obvious space opera elements, I mean.

Disclaimer: This isn’t just a quirky comparison between tribbles and tentacled kittens. It’s a reflection on how chaos—especially the adorable, unmanageable kind—reveals what carefully controlled narratives (and lives) often try to conceal. Whether you’re a Trekkie (or Trekker), a Marvel fan, or just someone who’s ever tried to organize your closet (or bookshelf ) and ended up confronting your entire existence, this piece is for you.

Cute doesn’t mean shallow. Absurd doesn’t mean meaningless. Sometimes, the weirdest creatures in the story are the ones telling the truth. You just have to be willing to listen when the fluff starts speaking. Ok, sounds deep, doesn't it? And it is true. No matter how you might be cursing me inside (or out) for daring to compare a classic (that I love the most) and a movie to which many turn their noses on, I hereby invite you to read on, please.

If you’ve ever tried to keep any form of life under control (yes, you can count in here those school experiences), only to watch it unravel into a tangle of fuzzy chaos, you’re not alone.

Because sometimes it’s not the villain or the end-of-the-world crisis that changes the course of a story. Sometimes it’s the furballs. The tentacles. The adorable thing no one saw coming that hijacks the plot and exposes what really matters. They don't do it through brute force, but with (sometimes strange) cuteness, by showing just how fragile the illusion of control really is. As a matter of fact, even if you like or not this specific movie and/or episode, you cannot deny the existential depth they hide in plain sight. The truth is out there fr anyone to see. We just have to look closer.

These aren’t just plot devices with paws and/or fur. A tribble looks like a little ball of fur, and that is how Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, sees kittens. And Flerkens are, well, kittens. Sort of. And what are they then? They’re narrative curveballs. They show up when things are already unstable and throw everything further off-balance, only to reveal something deeper. Something no one wanted to admit. Something no one was ready to face.

And that’s exactly why they matter. Because the truth doesn’t always arrive wearing a cape. Sometimes, it purrs.

Tribbles, Flerkens, and the chaos that clarifies

In The Trouble with Tribbles, the fifteenth episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, the Enterprise crew faces an unexpected invasion of tiny, purring creatures. At first, they’re harmless. Until they aren’t. (Maybe you thought of Gremlins here, did you?)

The Tribbles multiply like a biological glitch in the system, turning an ordinary mission into a full-blown headache. But that’s the trick: they're not just a cute problem. They reveal sabotage, tensions with the Klingons, and even faulty lines no one wanted to deal with.

Tribbles don’t speak. They don’t fight. They don’t scheme. But their presence alone forces everything hidden into the open, and that? That’s their superpower. They’re fluff-covered truth bombs.

They don't overthrow the ship through cunning. They simply become too many to ignore. They force the characters of Star Trek: The Original Series to take a step back and actually look at what had been festering under the surface. The result? A moment of clarity disguised as comic (and cosmic) absurdity.

Fast forward to The Marvels, and Goose the Flerken returns. This time, she will not be alone for long. A whole clutch of Flerken kittens crashes into the narrative, swallowing chaos (and a few people) with casual precision. They’re funny, sure; however, much like the Tribbles in essence, they become key to survival. They force strategies to be shifted, and rules? To be changed. They remind the characters in The Marvels—and us—that not every solution looks like a solution at first glance. Sometimes it looks like a problem. Even if a cute one. Or more, way more than just one.

It’s not just the visual gag of tentacles erupting from a kitten's mouth. It’s what that absurd image enables. The Flerkens are there not for the fun only or just to protect people. Like the Tribbles, they cause disruption in such a way that cuts through bureaucracy, fear, and inertia. They move the plot not by their force, but by forcing people to adapt.

Let the mess speak

That’s what makes both stories hit harder than expected. These creatures aren’t random. They act as signals. Cute alarms. The Tribbles push characters out of routine and force confrontation. The Flerken kittens turn absurdity into efficiency. Neither group exists just for laughs. They’re the mess that reveals the truth.

Because life doesn’t always warn you when it’s about to change. It shows up uninvited, multiplies in the background, and suddenly everything’s different. These creatures don’t destroy the plot. They reroute it. And somehow, the story is better for it.

When the noise settles, the aftermath makes you see things differently. Who was hiding something? Who stepped up? Who froze? Who adapted? That’s what chaos is good for. It doesn’t whisper. It exposes.

There’s always that moment in a narrative when control slips. (As it does in life.) And it’s in that slippage, when the systems fail, the careful plans collapse, and the creatures are running the show, that something real finally breaks through.

Absurdity isn’t the distraction. It’s the reveal

What both Star Trek and The Marvels seem to understand is that chaos has a strange way of clarifying things. A narrative can throw in a thousand explosions and high-stakes monologues, but sometimes it’s the small, ridiculous detail that cuts through the noise.

It’s not about comic relief. It’s about the unexpected becoming essential. The furry invader. The tentacled rescue. The plot twist with a heartbeat and tiny paws. They don’t derail the story—they focus it.

And the best part? They do it without needing permission. They show up, take over, and rearrange the emotional architecture of the scene without ever asking for screen time.

The tension isn’t broken by force—it’s punctured by absurdity. By something too strange to ignore, too sudden to predict, too cute to resist. And yet, in that very unpredictability, the story reorients itself. The fake stakes fall away. What really matters steps into the spotlight.

Tiny creatures, massive truths

In the end, the Tribbles and Flerkens aren’t just background noise. They’re plot scalers, emotion testers, and truth amplifiers, there to create the kind of disruption that makes people (finally) pay attention.

They’re the emotional equivalent of flipping a table mid-dinner just to see who picks up the pieces and who walks away. You don’t forget those moments. Because under all the fur and chaos, something honest finally gets to breathe.

They prove that the things we tend to dismiss—the odd, the silly, the side characters, the noise—are often the keys we didn’t know we needed. They interrupt not to entertain, but to remind us: the world doesn’t always break the way we expect. But when it does, something new gets through.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the things we write off as distractions—those oddball subplots or bizarre intrusions—are actually the core. The thing the story needed all along. The unfiltered truth wrapped in a ridiculous package.

That fuzzy chaos? Might be clarity in disguise.

Ps: If you did read it until the end, here is your bonus video.