What’s it all
about?
Ahhhhh. What’s not to like here? The Enterprise receives distress calls from
outposts bordering the neutral zone between the Federation and Romulan space.
Yes, folks, the Romulans, who would become the dominant enemy in the Star Trek
Universe for a while after the Klingons had made peace with the Federation, did
actually make their appearance before the Klingons.
The Romulans and the Federation were at war 100 years
earlier. Amazingly, nobody has ever seen a Romulan, which does make me wonder
hwo the Federation carried out peace negotiations in the first place. Still, it
turns out that a Romulan bird of prey ship has been sent across the neutral
zone to attack the outposts in order to gauge the relative strength of the
Federation. If they are found to be weak, then the Romulans wil start war
again. Kirk and the Enterprise track the Romulan ship, and decide that they
must destroy it before it can enter the neutral zone. If they follow it into
the neutral zone, then this would give the Romulans a pretext for declaring
war. If the Romulan ship gets home with a favourable report, then war will happen
anyway.
The Romulan ship only has impulse power, it does not
possess a warp drive. However it has two advantages over the Enterprise. The
weapon it carries is incredibly destructive. One good hit from that and the
Enterprise would be destroyed Also, it has a cloaking device, that renders the
ship invisible. Although strictly speaking this seems a bit pointless since the
Enterprise seems to manage to track it even when it is invisible a lot of the
time.
Complicating matters is the fact that, gawd knows how, but
the Enterprise is able to get visual on the Romulan ship, and we see what
appears to be nothing so much like a ship full of Vulcans. This enables a sub
plot since helmsman of the week, Mr. Hansen, had family killed in the Romulan
War, and he suspects Mr. Spock, and is frankly insubordinate, so much so that
for my money it’s shocking that Kirk didn’t have him flogged amidships for his
pains.
So what we get is a game of cat and mouse between two
commanders – Kirk and the Romulan, who seem to be able to anticipate each
other’s every move. And if that sounds a bit of a bore, well, it really, really
isn’t. In fact, I don’t know if this was an influence on Gene Roddenberry and
writer Paul Schneider at all, but it reminds me of a submarine movie starring
Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster called “Run Silent, Run Deep”, because
essentially that’s what the Romulan ship and the Enterprise are for this
episode – the firing debris out to make it look like the Romulan ship has been
destroyed is straight from that movie for example.
In the end one of the Romulan subordinates, who is close
to the Romulan Praetor, presumably the ruler or a very high status official,
threatens the captain to go in for the kill on the Enterprise, or he will be
having words in high places when they get home. Thus he falls into the trap,
and zap zap zap with the phasers, and the Romulan ship is disabled.
There’s a terrific climax, where, having offered to take
aboard the Commander and his crew, Kirk has to watch as the commander refuses,
telling him that this is not the Romulan way, and he adds, “You and I are of a
kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.” Now, ok, this is
the sort of thing that a couple of decades later Red Dwarf would decry as ‘all
that Star Trek crap’ but I don’t care, I like that.
You Probably Already Know That: -
·
Mark Lenard, who played the
Romulan Commander, would return in Season Two to play Spock’s father, Sarek. He
also played General Urko, leader of the Gorillas, in the short-lived TV series
version of “Planet of the Apes”.
·
In the UK during the 70s you
could Aurora sold plastic self assembly model kits of the Enterprise, a Klingon
Starship, and the Romulan War Bird. I bought and made the Enterprise. Today a
second hand original kit, if you can find one, could cost you as much as a
couple of hundred pounds.
·
The ‘cloaking device’ as it
becomes called is one of those ideas which proved too good to just use in a one
off episode. Later in the original series not only do the Klingons get the
device from the Romulans, so does the Enterprise as well.
·
This is not the only example
of “Star Trek” seemingly being influenced by the movie “Run Silent, Run Deep”.
In “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, the first movie, the relationship between
Admiral Kirk, and the young Decker, whose command the Enterprise would have
been is extremely similar to the
relationship between the Gable and Lancaster roles in the film.
The Verdict
You must have already gathered
that my feelings about this particular story are almost completely positive.
Almost? Well, yes, we can always criticize. The frame of the story is that
right at the start in the pre titles sequence, Kirk, as Captain, is presiding at
an on board wedding, between crew members Angela Martine and Robert Tmlinson.
Before we get to the do you – I do – she does business, the attack starts, so
they are not yet actually married. During the fight with the Romulans, sadly
Tomlinson gets killed. At the end Kirk, quite rightly, has to go to talk to Martine,
and comments that some times none of it makes any sense. I want to yell at the
telly – fine! Stop it there! That’s enough! Sadly it goes on to have Angela
Martine looking up bravely at Kirk, smiling through her tears, and telling him
she is alright, and it’ alright. Arrgggghhhh! Still, it could be worse. Kirk
might have invited her back to his quarters for a wee dram.
That aside, I my opinion it
really doesn’t get a lot better than “Balance of Terror”. Watch it and you’ll
understand why they wanted to find a way to bring Mark Lenard back in as
similar a role as possible – he’s great.
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