The Romulun not-Sarek making his first appearance in Star Trek historyHa! Ha! Finally, we get some actual sci-fi. But not until after an outer space wedding ceremony that looks remarkably like a traditional wedding ceremony of the 20th-century United States, if you could imagine such a thing set in orange and taupe (classic Star Trek colors). Of course, the ceremony is interrupted, not by the weird glamour lighting on Kirk's face, but by an emergency beacon sent by Earth Outpost 4, "Under Attack! Under Attack!"
Lest you be worried that Star Trek beginning to experiment with the fact that it's marketed as a science fiction series might affect the lone wolf leadership of Kirk, I'll let you know, Kirk maintains his role.
If you want to know the real excitement of Episode 14, we're finally introduced to the idea of Star Fleet enemies, and a neutral zone in space. Kirk takes us up against the Romuluns, to be exact. Further, we're also told the Romuluns fly ships like birds of prey. What's the move to actual sci-fi consist of then? Kirk takes the Enterprise up against an invisible ship, with an unknown weapon of enormous force.
The wedding that opens the episode is used throughout as a point of tension meant to highlight the personal realities of war. The happy couple coo and flirt against the backdrop of battle with an as-to-yet unclear enemy. We don't, after all, understand the Romuluns at all at this point in Star Trek history. Though we're told there was a small war with them a generation earlier, according to dialogue with a previously unseen lieutenant. With birds of prey, the neutral zone, cloaking devices, Romuluns, and their history with Vulcan, "Balance of Terror" opens up a driving plot point of Star Trek history.
We see the bird of prey appear and disappear from view. Star Fleet at this point has no knowledge of Romulun's ability to cloak ships in space. Spock, as first Science Officer, lets us know early on that invisibility is theoretically possible, by deflecting light rays, but only at enormous power cost. Kirk utilizes this fact to somehow track the invisible vessel in space, and operate as an echo, or mirror image of the Romulun vessel. Strangely, this somehow also results in us being able to see inside the Romulun vessel where we discover... get ready!
Sarek! Oh! It's too good. It's only the devoted current day trekkie that would know the man we've seen is Spock's father, since the episode itself never reveals this. In the meantime, all we know is that the commander aboard the Romulun vessel looks a lot like Spock "racially" speaking. In being exposed to the activities aboard the Romulun vessel we discover that Sarek is a dogged individualized leader as well, that is, he is certain of his own authority and sole power of leadership just as Kirk is.
Again, as exciting as it is that Star Trek has finally introduced us to the idea of alien enemies, we should not assume this new development to be too developed. The alien makeup barely exists, and the storyline, while introducing sci-fi elements still looks more like a classic war drama than a journey through the unique demands of outer space. Still, I can't help but celebrate the introduction of more Vulcans.
Okay, okay. Now that I've gotten you excited about the episode, I have to be honest with you. Sarek isn't Sarek at all here, and he's not Vulcan either. Who I'm calling Sarek here is actually just the famous actor of Sarek appearing as the first Romulun in Star Trek history, while also making his first appearance in the series. He becomes known as Sarek, Spock's father, later in the Original Series, and then even plays a Klingon commander in Star Trek I: The Motion Picture. As a result, Spock's father is the first person to play characters of three different 'races' in the Star Trek universe. No wonder he and Spock had so much tension.
The Romulun-Star Fleet storyline is only just being developed here. We don't even know the genuine history of the Romulun-Vulcan relation at this point. We discover later, of course, that Romuluns and Vulcans went through a historic split since which the Vulcans embraced logic, while the Romulun's rejected it. In this episode Spock begins to suspect this connection based on his knowledge of ancient Vulcan history and a mythical story in which, during the age of savage warfare, some Vulcans left the planet to colonize other areas. (I love how Spock serves as an open vessel of truth in the Original Series. I mean this in the sense that because he claims he is incapable of emotion, and emits only logic, we are simply expected to take his determinations of any dilemma as actual truth, or at least high likelihood. As a result, his character serves, so far, as the semi-omniscent narrator able to step in and explain to us, the audience, what might be hard for the writers to illustrate otherwise.)
"Balance of Terror" is considered by many to be one of the top episodes of the Original Series. The acting is better than in many previous episodes. The complexity of the guest star character is well developed. The storyline is compelling. The writer of this episode, Paul Schneider, based it on an old submarine war story treating the Romulun bird of prey as the submarine, and Enterprise as a surface vessel. The idea of the submarine is meant to be carried out through the Romuluns cloaking device, with it being an analogy to the challenge of surface ships tracking undersea vessels. Space travel here is compared, then, to an ocean voyage in unknown waters. Kirk even finally says, "I wish I were on a long sea voyage somewhere", while reflecting on his own tension over leading a ship in the midst of battle. Perhaps even more interesting, Schneider claimed he developed the Romuluns as a re-expression of the ancient Roman empire set in outer space.
Though we are meant for the most part to understand the Romuluns as evil in this episode, as well as illogical, the Romulun not-Sarek exhibits incredible intelligence both in his command of his ship, and in his ability to anticipate the command behavior of his opposition--Kirk on the Enterprise. Kirk, too, seems to understand how to imagine his way into the ruling mind of not-Sarek. Their ability to read each other is so profound, not-Sarek finally understands Kirk as a kind of sorcerer, able to read the thoughts of his enemy. By the end this intense connection between the two characters causes the Romulun to regard Kirk as someone he would have been friends with in some differing political situation.
A friend of mine said that as a kid watching Star Trek there were episodes that scared her so badly she'd turn up the volume (so as not to truly miss anything), and then hide behind the couch so she could hide her eyes from the scenes that scared her. "Balance of Terror" is certainly an episode to consider hiding from the kids. With the intensity of the violent space fighting, and the personal tension around the wedding I've mentioned, I'm going to avoid having Sabrina 9 years old watch it.
Two final notes on the episode: First, Kirk has a profound inability to comfort those facing death. We've seen this previously in "The Corbomite Maneuver" episode when he reminded everyone on board that had just been told they were about to die that there was no real unknown in life, just temporary unknowns. Now as the Enterprise loses a crew member and Kirk tries to comfort the loved one he tells her to remember the death won't make sense but there was a reason. Finer words in the face of grief would be hard to write. Such sensitivity and grace, our Kirk. Second, the makeup for the crew in Episode 14 is intensely bad. Dear lord.
Poor Makeup (and Lighting) on Yoeman Janis in Episode 14; trust me, McCoy looked even worse
1 comment:
"The happy couple coo and flirt against the backdrop of battle with an as-to-yet unclear enemy."
Perhaps a metaphor for then-new ideas about relationships b/w men and women?
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