The Enterprise encounters an ancient unseen adversary, the Romulans, who emerge from their Neutral Zone confinement to test Earth’s defenses.
- This is a striking episode, one of the best, but also problematic in its astronomical illiteracy, in a way sadly typical of the series.
- The episode could also rightly be criticized as little more than a wartime submarine drama translated into space. If fact that’s what it is – cf. this episode’s entry at, as always, Memory-Alpha, http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Balance_of_Terror_(episode), which indicates the story’s basis in two such movies, The Enemy Below and Run Silent, Run Deep.
- The story opens in the ship’s ‘chapel’, with Kirk about to conduct a wedding, between Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson, who both, we learn later, work in the phaser control room. The chapel is as nondenominational as could be imagined, with candles and a lectern and no religious symbols at all. Kirk speaks of coming together in recognition of their “laws and many beliefs” — as close an acknowledgement to the existence of such beliefs you get in this show, which for the most part assumes a post-religious, secular society.
- This scene and a closing chapel scene form nice bookends to the story, a story which is otherwise a space battle between the Enterprise and a ship from the Romulan empire. This is the debut in the series of the Romulans, a race of humanoid aliens who look very much like Vulcans, in particular Spock, but whose appearance are unknown as this story begins.
- As in “The Corbomite Maneuver”, Kirk addresses the entire crew (via ‘intercraft’) to provide background and resolve for their current mission. Spock adds some history, showing a map, explaining how a war fought over a century ago between ‘Earth’ [the story here is presuming Earth as the source of the Enterprise’s mission, though eventually the role of a larger ‘Federation’ would emerge as the context for the Enterprise, rather than being so Earth-centric] and the twin planets Romulus and Remus, at a time when no visual communication was possible – thus, neither side knows what the other looks like.
- To begin the astronomical issues: the map we see implies a flat plane between planets R&R on the right, the band of the neutral zone in the middle, and a row of ‘Earth outposts’, built on asteroids we’re told, on the left. The reference to asteroids implies R&R are two planets within a single star system; you don’t have asteroid belts out in interstellar space. If so, wouldn’t the outposts be a ring around the star, at some point further out than those two planets? (As outposts surrounding Earth and Mars might be.) Not a single band as seen on this map. Otherwise how would you prevent approach to those planets, from any direction in three-dimensional space?
- Another similarity with “The Corbomite Maneuver” is that here we have an upstart navigator, in this case Stiles. He had family members who died in that earlier Romulan war, and who is as eager to go to battle as Bailey was in that earlier episode. While Bailey was motivated by general belligerence, though, Stiles is motivated by racial animosity…once he sees the Romulans’ similarity to Spock.
- Episodes of Trek would occasionally focus on individual functions within the ship that all other times remained out of sight. In this case, we see the “phaser control room”, and hear the elaborate (and inefficient) chain of commands to fire phasers that begins at the bridge and relays through crewmen in that room – including the couple who were about to get married – before the phasers actually fire. (In the rest of the series, Sulu presses a button and the phasers fire.)
- Astronomical issues: the Enterprise has warp drive, and uses it a couple times in this episode (while the Romulans do not), but at this point in the episode, as they’re presumably entering a star system, they estimate 8 minutes to the nearest outpost. Well, maybe that’s fair; even at multiple times the speed of light, it takes some time to move through a solar system. More problematic: though presumably entering a single star system (asteroid belt, remember), the bridge’s monitor screen still shows *stars streaming past*, as if the ship is swimming through a galaxy of stars at millions of times the speed of light.
- Another first: several times headings of the Romulan ship are identified as “111 mark 14”. This has a nice ring of plausibility; in space, you can move in any direction toward any point of a sphere, not just any direction toward the circle of a horizon; and so you’d need two headings to specify the direction you’re headed. OTOH, as the series went on, most often the first number in such a heading was larger, the second smaller (and never negative), and this wouldn’t be the case moving back and forth throughout the galaxy.
- Near the end of Act One, the alarmist Stiles worries about their being possible Romulan spies on board; Sulu agrees. Why would they think this? Turns out, via the Memory Alpha entry, the earlier scene in which the Enterprise talks to Hansen, before his outpost is destroyed, was significantly longer when first written and shot, before being edited down; in the deleted portions, Hansen had talked about how the Romulan ship resembled “our” starships, which plans might have been acquired via spies. Hardly plausible, given the neutral zone set-up for the past century, I’d think; but that scene would explain Stiles’ suspicion.
- And then – again as in “The Corbomite Maneuver” – the bridge crew manages to pick up a signal showing the interior of the enemy ship. And they all look like Spock! With pointed ears and upswept eyebrows! Stiles and Sulu gaze daggers at Spock; Spock looks bemused.
- Musical cues: this episode has a great, memorable seven-note up-and-down theme, played at times upside-down, inverted; and played variously, depending on orchestration and tempo, ominously, threateningly, or introspectively. Case study in how one short motif can generate a versatile score for an hour-long story. Music by Fred Steiner.
- We see scenes inside the Romulan control room that the Enterprise cannot – their private conversations. Per convention, they speak in English. Unrealistic, of course, but no more so many English-language movie showing foreigners speaking English; though later, more sophisticated SF shows would show aliens speaking their own weird alien languages, with English subtitles displayed.
- And the Romulan commander, we quickly see, is a fascinating character – tortured and uncertain, conflicted about why his government has sent him on this mission to test the Earthman’s strength. Apparently having been through many war campaigns (with whom? Rival Romulan factions? They can’t have fought other alien races, having been confined within their star system), he’s weary of suffering another. Mark Lenard’s performance here is one of the best guest performances in the series.
- Astronomical issues: As Kirk, Spock, Scott, McCoy, and Stiles (why is the engineer, doctor, and navigator involved in command decisions? Presumably they’re all some kind of ‘senior staff’) plan strategy in the conference room, Spock observes that they are approaching a comet, and that the Romulan ship is heading for it. Kirk even has a large, physical book at hand, called “Table of Comets”. What?? Comets are components of individual star systems; there are potentially thousands of them, hovering in spheres at the outer reaches of such systems (e.g. our Oort cloud), while only one or two every year falls down toward its sun to display such a debris trail as depicted here. There’s no way any kind of dictionary of comets could ever be compiled, even within a single star system – and throughout all space is a ludicrous idea, and a serious miscomprehension of the scale of the universe and the objects within it.
- And Kirk [Shatner] mangles the pronunciation of the comet, “Comet Icarus 4”, running the words together and accenting the middle syllable of the name.
- Then we get some background about the Romulans vis a vis the Vulcans – background invented by the writer here, Paul Schneider, that became essential fabric of the Trek universe. Spock alludes to a ‘savage Vulcan past’ as reason to confront the Romulans.
- Astronomical issues: Again, as we see the comet with its long tail approach, we still see stars stream past on the view screen.
- The phasers are prepped but something burns out and for some reason, and to fix it Spock has to duck down beneath his bridge station, open a grate, and put out a fire. Why is this technical problem solved beneath his command post, and not, say, down in the phaser control room?
- Trek physics: The Romulan ship fires its weapon – some kind of plasma cloud – that catches up with the Enterprise, even as the Enterprise reverses course at “full warp astern”. That would be many times the speed of light. Suffice to say, the various writers of these episodes, and even producer oversight, did not pay close attention to the physical implications of their premises about warp vs. impulse speeds.
- Back on the Romulan ship, the weary commander (who’s never given a name), strategizes, with a memorable line: “I must use all my experience now…to get home.”
- And as in a submarine move, he orders debris put out through the chutes, to try to trick the Enterprise into thinking his ship has been destroyed.
- The Enterprise, having lost the Romulan ship after passage through the comet tail, plays a “waiting game”, shutting down all systems. Which is illustrated by the bridge crew switching off all the panels around the bridge, so they sit in silent semi-darkness. We see a shot of the Enterprise ‘hanging’ motionless in space.
- Does this make sense? Maybe for a submarine, but not for a starship. Surely the equivalent of radar could detect the physical bulk of either ship by the other. And the Enterprise crew continues to use their turbolifts to move around the ship, which surely involves some kind of power. This is probably the least plausible aspect of the submarine to starship story translation.
- We get one of the rare scenes in which McCoy comes to Kirk’s quarters to counsel him, and relieve his anxieties. (We saw a similar scene in “The Cage”, between Dr. Boyce and Captain Pike.) Kirk, unsure if what he’s doing in this confrontation with the Romulans is right, wishes he were on a “long sea voyage” somewhere, with no responsibilities. “Why me?” and “What if I’m wrong?” McCoy answers with some cosmic perspective, slowly and thoughtfully:
In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million earth-type planets… and in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this one. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk. - This kind of thinking, understanding the scope of the universe and humanity’s place in it, is where Trek occasionally excelled.
- And then Spock makes his clumsy accident, where he reaches up from beneath his control panel, and accidentally hits a button, that sends out a signal. The plausibility of this accident only works to the extent the submarine parallel works. Kirk makes the best of it; but the Romulan ship detects them, and attacks. The Romulan ship also dumps debris, including a nuclear bomb, that causes the Enterprise to tilt alarmingly from the plane of the camera’s POV.
- The climax of the story is reached as the phaser control room encounters a sealant leak, causing a delay in Kirk’s final attack on the Romulan ship; and Spock, who (very oddly) happened to have just checked the status of that room (why is he wandering around the ship instead of being at his station on the bridge?), rushes back in to hit the red button to fire the phasers.
- The Romulan ship, disabled, hangs at an alarming angle from the horizontal plane of the camera’s POV – more inaccurate translation from submarine physics.
- Kirk offers to rescue the Romulan crew, but their commander, stern and doomed, fulfills his destiny. “I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend”. And then he activates the self-destruct mechanism in his ship, and the screen goes blank.
- We then have a scene in sickbay, where we learn that Stiles, who was in that phaser control room, was rescued by Spock – a plot move that overcomes his instinctive bigotry toward the Romulan-appearing first office — whereas the other guy there, Tomlinson – the “boy who was getting married this morning”, McCoy reminds Kirk – has died. It’s a dramatic closure, but no one wonders, or explains, how Spock rescued one of the two guys from the phaser control room, and not both.
- The dramatic arc ends back in the chapel, where the grieving Angela Martine is gazing upwards; Kirk comes in, offers words of consolation. “It never makes any sense. We both have to know that there was a reason.” (There’s a lovely mysterious vocal theme here, from IIRC the first pilot.) She assures him that she’s fine. And so Kirk leaves, walking down the corridor, a corridor full of crewman about their business, Kirk striding with efficiency and determination.
Blish adaptation, in ST1:
- In this one you can tell Blish, having seen only a handful of early scripts sent to him for this book, and never having watched the broadcast show itself, wasn’t entirely clear about some of the series’ premises. In the opening of this story, as he builds toward justifying the occurrence of a wedding on the Enterprise, he says: “Traveling between the stars, even at ‘relativistic’ or near-light speeds, was a long-drawn-out process at best.” p54.6. Even though at other times he refers to the warp speeds.
- He notes the blandness of the chapel.
- He identified Spock’s homeworld, Vulcan, as a planet of the star 40 Eridani.
- Blish has a nice line describing the Romulan energy weapon fired at the Enterprise: “Moving with curious deliberateness, as though it were traveling at the speed of light in some other space but was loafing sinfully in this one, the dazzling bolt…” I’m guessing this was not a description in the script.
- In Blish’s version, no one has seen a live Romulan – but bodies were found in the first Romulan war and so they are known to be of the “Vulcanite” type – though this doesn’t lessen the dramatic reveal of seeing the Romulans, and how they are “dead ringer”s for Spock.
- Blish understands there would have to be a *sphere* of satellites around the Romulus/Remus system, p59t.
- Technical jargon: Uhura (for some reason it is her) detects what turns out to be the invisible Romulan ship via a “De Broglie transform” and then Spock calculates that the ship is on a “Hohmann D” transfer orbit back to Romulus. Needless to say, not terminology in any version of a script.
- Blish also isn’t quite clear, in this first Trek book, about the relationship between the characters; Spock is a “funny customer”; “his manners are bad by Earth standards”, and no one particular likes him.
- Big plot change: Blish’s story has Kirk take time out to complete the marriage interrupted at story’s opening.
- Also a substantial change: since Blish realizes they’re in a single star system, Spock has noticed a cold comet and now realizes they can use it as a diversion. Not, as in the broadcast show, does the Romulan ship for some reason fly into it directly. (Still, Blish has Spock find the comet in an ephemeris. An ephemeris of what, all comets in all planetary systems everywhere?? Or for some reason, an ephemeris of comets in this one system? Blish may have known his biology, but apparently had no sense for scale in astronomy.)
- (Also, of course, again, Blish omits all scenes in the broadcast episode on the Romulan ship itself, sticking to a single story line.)
- Kirk uses the comet’s passage between the two ships to accelerate toward the Romulan ship and fire its phasers. Then comes the scene in which the phaser crew down below is disabled. Kirk has already sent Spock there, and sees on the intercom screen Spock struggle to hit the phaser fire button.
- And in Blish’s version, both Tomlinson and Stiles die – avoiding the issue, in the broadcast episode, of how Spock managed to save one, but not the other.
