Summer Hiatus

Looking back on this blog, it looks like Nathan and I only managed one post between us for the entire month of June.  It seems like a good idea to retroactively call this a summer hiatus. We've had a lot of IRL stuff going on and have gotten a little burned out on the Trek blogging.

Our goal of five years was never feasible, so it's no big deal to delay meeting it. We may sneak a post on here here and there over the summer, but we'll be back full strength with weekly updates in September.

Balance of Terror (TOS)

Rather than get on a vicious cycle of trying to catch up and failing, I'm just jumping in with this TOS review. DS9 next week, and then hopefully so on to get back on track.

I’m not an expert, but I’m given to understand the concept of a writer’s room wasn’t around in 1967, at least not in its current form. Original Series episodes were often pitched by outside writers and then “Star Trek”-ized by Gene Roddenberry after the fact. One result of this is that the tone of the episodes varies wildly.

I’ve started to expect by bi-weekly TOS outings to be fun goofy numbers, and all of a sudden, the show delivers Balance of Terror, a dramatic Cold War piece that holds up surprisingly well.

This marks the first appearance of the Romulans (actually prior to the more iconic Klingons, interestingly) and the key pieces are all there: evolutionary offshoot of the Vulcans, ancient Rome-inspired social structure and temperament, and, of course, spying and subterfuge, as encapsulated by their cloaking device.

In the later shows, the cloaking device is an unfair and inconvenient (why is the Federation the only major power without access to it?), yet surprisingly accepted device. By TNG there are so many technical workarounds you start to wonder why anyone bothers turning the damn things on.

But in it’s first appearance, the cloaking device is downright terrifying. The Bird of Prey, unseen annihilator of Federation outposts, could be anywhere at any time. As a game of cat and mouse on the Neutral Zone plays out between the two ships, a much more insidious game plays out on the Enterprise, as a navigator with a chip on his shoulder becomes convinced Spock is a Romulan spy, and Kirk and McCoy but heads about the wisdom of risking war to go after the ship.

I don’t know how to articulate what I loved about this episode, but it was compelling. I was on the edge of my seat even before the introduction in the third act of Mark Leonard’s Romulan captain, a man of honor on a dishonorable mission. The script plays out on the two ships separately, with no communication between them until the last moments of the episode.

One of Star Trek’s problems can be how the universe seems to revolve around the central ship of a given franchise, so it’s impressive here how the Romulan ship becomes a setting of its own, equal to the Enterprise in narrative weight as well as tactical prowess.

Balance of Terror was evidently a rip-off of a submarine movie, but I don’t care. It’s a beautiful piece of television that hits all the right beats and emotional touchstones.

Random Observations:

-- Also there was a wedding. It’s a really interesting way to start and end the episode, though it strays a little too close to phony heartstring tugging. The couple doesn’t really interact with the rest of the plot organically enough for my tastes.

-- Mark Leonard is great here as the Romulan captain, and its easy to see why they brought him back for his more famous role as Spock's father.