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.

The Man Trap (TOS)

Yes, I get why NBC pulled this episode into the number two spot, skipping the ones we've hit so far. It's probably the strongest TOS episode yet (though believe it or not, we're 5 in).

What's really nice about this script is how it does a couple of things that The Original Series isn't always great at: it uses the whole ensemble, and it lets them have some fun. The main plot with the salt vampire succubus was ok, I'll get to it in a second. But the bits of this episode that would have had me tuning in next week are things like Uhura trying to flirt with Spock or Sulu and Rand shooting the breeze in the arboretum. There are a lot of ingredients in the formula that makes Star Trek Star Trek, but one of them is definitely family and that sense of fun.

And it's not like "The Trouble With Tribbles", which is just a fun, goofy episode. This is an episode where several people die and in the climax McCoy has to shoot his lost love with a phaser. And it's also a fun episode.

Ok, so the downside is that the Salt Vampire loose on the ship masquerading as different people was a little reminiscent of Evil Kirk loose on the ship just last episode. At some point it's just like "Hire a security force already." But I digress.

In this episode, the Enterprise is conducting the somewhat bizarre duty of giving an annual physical to a scientist on a strange backwater planet and his wife, who also happens to be, as Kirk's voice over puts it "that woman" in Dr. McCoy's past.

But strangely, Nancy Crater looks like three different women to the three different members of the landing party. And the blueshirt Lt. Darnell gets led off into the desert by the vixen he sees her as and turns up dead with red rings all over his face.

It turns out he's had all the salt sucked out of his body by a shapeshifting salt vampire, who later ends up sneaking on board the ship. It's the last of its kind, like the buffalo (as Dr. Robert Crater says in a painfully strained analogy).

After a game of cat and mouse, and a lot of shots of crewmen stalking and seducing their way across the ship in search of delicious delicious salt, the monster is caught, and McCoy has to shoot it. But he's totally convinced that it's his ex-girlfriend. The anguish is a little too manufactured, maybe, but it makes for a pretty good climax. It's good to see someone other than Kirk having to make the tough decision and save the day, and there's a bittersweetness to the way the crew has to kill an animal that isn't evil to save themselves.

I've berated other episodes for not being Star Trek-y enough in terms of having a real cerebral problem at their heart, and this one might fail on that score, to be perfectly honest. But when an episode is fun enough to watch, it's much easier to forgive that particular failing.

Random Observations:

-- This week's redshirts were actually blue shirts, which if it weren't the very beginning of the show would be a real twist on the formula.

-- A little bit of flirtation between Rand and Sulu here.

-- Of course, Uhura hitting on Spock also -- could this be the seed that led to the full on romance in JJ Abram's version of the story.

Cheesy thing of the week: (Because Nathan's Voyager counts look fun.) Beauregard the Plant is ridiculous, has a ridiculous name, makes a ridiculous sound, and is so obviously a guy in a glove. Love it.