The Enterprise Incident
The Plot:
A beautiful Romulan commander (Joanne Linville) woos Spock after
capturing the Enterprise in the neutral zone. (Tivo)
- I don't think I appreciated when I first watched this episode
just how much of it was a Mission: Impossible plot. Well, that show was
never on when I was growing up, at least not so I'd notice. David
Gerrold made the point in _The World Of Star Trek_ that the mission is a
pretty despicable one, the Federation doing something outright illegal
and which would have been perceived as an outrage had the Romulans
pulled a parallel trick on the Federation, and we're expected to be glad
that Our Heroes got away with it.
I'm of a couple minds on this. On the one hand, I agree, this
is a clearly illegal act the Federation authorized, and if the Romulans
felt ready to fight a war it would be a pretty fair casus belli. On the
other hand, it is almost certainly a necessary move: cloaking technology
is a menace to the Federation and they have to take what steps they can
to counter it. For a real-world example, although with much lower
strategic value, the United States kidnapped a Sputnik model the Soviets
showed at a World's Fair for examination -- disassembling,
photographing, and reassembling and then returning it overnight --
although in that case there wasn't anything in the Sputnik which
revealed anything we didn't already know. But, of course, had the
Soviets known (or wanted to make known) that the United States was
peeking under their satellites it would have been awkward at a minimum.
Gerrold also complained that the Spock/Romulan Commander
seduction scenes weren't very alien -- most of the hints of alien
passion amounted to the finger-touching which Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt
did to perfection in 'Journey to Babel'. On the other hand, they have
to establish something which looks plausibly like a romantic scene with
very little time and a fairly busy plot going around them. Using what
would have been the routine moves for a Mission: Impossible team
seducing the femme fatale from Pottsylvania with a few striking alien
touches to it was probably the dramatically correct choice.
This episode introduced the idea that Romulans were using
Klingon ****ps, basically because they didn't have the original Romulan
model available for some disputed reason and so they resolved the matter
in as inexpensive a method as possible. This did give fans the idea of
a Klingon-Romulan Alliance, I suppose out of the theory that the Leading
Bad Guys must be teamed up. I wonder what fan folklore would be like if
the Gorn or the Tholians had got named in a second episode and so been
given the chance to occupy quite the same psychic space as the Romulans.
This is the second and last time Romulan people would appear on
character (****ps alone appear in 'The Deadly Years', and the Enterprise
plunges deep into Romulan space in 'The Way to Eden'), and already the
Federation seems to know volumes more about them than was suspected just
two years before when nobody even knew what they looked like. The
evidence of The Final Frontier suggests that around this time the
Federation and the Romulans were on speaking enough terms to set up a
cynical little effort at the Planet of Galactic Peace. That suggests a
surprisingly rapid thaw in their relation****p, really, although stranger
things do happen.
Thoughts While Watching:
- Chekov has a little puppy-dog look when Kirk chews him out.
- They're scanning out half a parsec these days.
- Course of 185 mark 3 takes them into the Neutral Zone. If I
believed in the 360-by-180 scheme for navigation this would suggest they
barely skimmed the zone before.
- The intelligence re****t about Romulans using Klingon designs
gave so very much to fandom. Trek fan folklore would have been vastly
poorer without the Third Season -- no Preservers, no presumed
Klingon-Romulan Alliance, no seven-year cycle for pon farr, no
``forget'' telepathic command, it's a *huge* loss. Granted a two-season
rather than three-season Trek would have been much poorer just because a
third of the episodes wouldn't be available, but there's a rich source
of things to use for storytelling ideas in this year.
- The Remastering replaced one of the Klingon ****ps with a
Romulan, and it put bird-of-prey paintings on the Klingon designs. Good
and clever adaptations. I approve, at least.
- Spock is awfully smug about knowing Standard Romulan
Procedure.
- Is the tripod graphic where we got our idea for
Klingon/Enterprise relative sizes from, canonically?
- ``I believe the Romulans have developed a cloaking device.''
TOM: Two seasons ago, the first time we saw this gimmick.
- The briefing room conference is so urgent that Kirk's called
some of the leading non-player characters to stand around in Lieutenant
Commander cuffs.
- I think this is where we get the upper limit on Spock's
career. 18 years, 11 with Pike.
- You know, it'd be slick if Kirk and Spock had, like,
remote-camera contact lenses to gather intelligence on the interior of
Romulan ****ps.
- The Romulans are quick on the draw with the phasers once they
beam in.
- There's apparently more than one treaty defining Neutral Zone
conditions.
- Romulans know that Kirk commands the Enterprise, but not who's
second-in-command?
- If the Romulan Commander were more careful about blocking her
scenes she wouldn't have to take a couple steps to slam a table.
- I wonder if people watching this episode the first time it was
ever on thought it was possible Kirk had actually gone insane, and it
was Not A Hoax! Not An Imaginary Story!
- The Romulan Commander insists on talking to the Enterprise
like the leering supervillain, when she'd really do better to simply
stick to factual declarations: the Enterprise invaded Romulan space,
it's been captured, and we will be as considerate as possible to the
crew.
- Those fields! The Romulans threw Kirk into the Enterprise's
brig.
- The Romulan corridors are all redresses of the Enterprise's,
aren't they? New lights and little features on the side?
- Kirk is more depressed in episodes where he isn't pretending
to be depressed. But Kirk runs borderline depression most of the time,
at least when serious matters are going on.
- The Vulcan Death Grip is apparently not tal shaya. I wonder
if part of the inspiration for this wasn't making a bit of fun of how
they could whip up things like inner eyelids and Vulcan Healing Trances
whenever the plot desperately needed it.
- So, a nerve pinch looks like death? Or are Romulan doctors
just Dr Crusher-grade inept?
- So, the secret plans were for McCoy to be told the part he'd
have to play in faking Kirk's death while Kirk was sitting in a Romulan
brig?
- However, Scott's storming into sickbay is a neat bit of
staging and revelation.
- Apparently the Romulans aren't likely to detect trans****ter
activity?
- I've got it. The Romulan Commander sounds like Captain
Janeway in her tender modes (episodes whose production number is
divisible by four or seven, but not both).
- The Romulan Commander's Name would become the subject of
roughly one-fourth of all Star Trek novels written before I bailed out
on the series in about 1992.
- Spock figured out the cloaking device location from knowing
the existence of a single restricted area?
- The Romulan Commander's dress looks vaguely like something
Emily Hartley would wear on 'The Bob Newhart Show'.
- Kirk could have saved himself so much trouble knocking out
guards if he thought to have an answer to the question ``Who are you?''
Like, say, if he had any name at all.
- Kirk is awfully lucky he could identify a cloaking device.
Wouldn't he be embarrassed if he turned out to have stolen the Romulan
pizza-maker?
- Oh, by the way, the Enterprise can do warp nine.
- ``Scotty, switch on that device.'' ``I did, sir, it's not
working.''
CROW: Try jiggling the switch! Sometimes it gets stuck.
- Well, what did Kirk *think* the Commander would order if given
the chance to communicate with her ****ps?
- The new disappearing-into-cloaking effect is pretty
good-looking too. Arguably it's more effective than simply having the
printing fade out. There are a few shots of the Romulan ****ps pursuing
and firing at vastly wrong angles which look better to me than, I think,
any of the analogous scenes from recent Trek shows or movies. That may
be partly because Original Series designs in action always look so
sweet.
- Apparently, projecting courses from available data is
something done only on command in the Trek universe.
- Apparently Deck Two is at the way bottom of the ****p, based on
how long Spock and Commander spend going down. This is, however,
consistent with the numbering scheme from The Final Frontier.
- Sheesh, Kirk is back from the dead about four minutes and
already he's got paperwork to sign? Like what? I know the Space
Clipboards are supposed to make the show look like there's actual
procedures and policies and activity in addition to the fun stuff,
though.
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