Is Star Trek: Discovery about to copy the twist from The Trouble with Tribbles?

At first glance, the classic Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” and the new series Star Trek: Discovery don’t have a lot in common. One is a lighthearted romp with some critters that are basically designed to be as adorable as possible, and the other is a fairly dark, serious take on Trek in a wartime setting.

But there is one similarity: both shows feature a basic plot of “the Klingons are in conflict with the Federation.” But it’s possible that the two shows may share more in common than just that, if this theory from the AV Club is right.

Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery and a 50-year-old episode of Star Trek below

In Discovery, the primary Klingon antagonist is a Klingon named Voq, played by an actor named Javid Iqbal. As the AV Club lays out, Iqbal doesn’t seem to actually exist. No photos appear of him outside of his Klingon makeup, he hasn’t appeared in any other TV show, movie, or even a commercial, and basically has no presence on the internet at all.

Meanwhile, actor Shazad Latif — who was originally cast as the role of a Klingon named Kol — was said to be playing the same role as Voq before plans changed and his part was switched to a Federation officer named Lieutenant Ash Tyler. In last week’s episode, Latif made his first appearance as Tyler, a Klingon prisoner who was rescued and brought back to the Discovery by Captain Lorca.

But while Latif only appeared on-screen last Sunday, he’s shown up in the credits for every episode of the show so far as a series regular, leading fans to believe that the actor has shown up in the role of Voq, hidden under facial prosthetics and Klingon language.

And here’s where the tribbles come in. When we last saw Voq in the show, he was embarking on a personal mission to take the fight to the Federation, one that was said to require him to “sacrifice everything.” And what would be a bigger sacrifice, the theory goes, for a Klingon who hates everything the Federation stands for, than having to disguise himself as a human and pretend to serve on a Federation ship like the Discovery in order to spy out their secrets?

The thing is, this is basically beat for beat the plot of “The Trouble with Tribbles,” albeit with a great deal fewer darkly lit interiors and savage beatings. In that episode, a Klingon agent named Arne Darvin masquerades as a human to infiltrate a Federation post, where he attempts to poison grain meant for a planet with disputed Federation-Klingon ownership. Darvin is only outed because the innocuous, fluffy tribbles have a particular hatred of Klingons, and tend to freak out in their presence, which leads Kirk to discover his identity and save the day.

And guess who already has a tribble — again, a species whose sole purpose in Star Trek is to look cute, eat food, and out undercover Klingon spies — sitting on his desk? Captain Lorca, of course. (In fairness, tribbles have become a sort of catch-all Easter egg in Trek, and have appeared as recently as Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013, so it’s also possible that’s all this is here.)

It’s possible that Javid Iqbal is in fact a real actor and is just extremely new to the industry, or extremely private about his life. But looking at all the pieces of the puzzle, and it starts to look a lot like Voq and Tyler are in fact one and the same.

Besides, as Anton Chekhov once (almost) said, “One must never place a loaded tribble on the stage if it isn’t going to go off.”