BALANCE OF TERROR
The Romulan Empire has come up with a new plasma-energy weapon and ship cloaking device that it wants to try out outside of the Neutral Zone. If it works out OK, then they'll think about starting a new war with Earth or anywhere else they want. So, they dispatch a Bird-of-Prey painted ship Captained by a very philosophical and tired Marc Lenard (the name of the character I don't know, so I'm referring to him as Marc Lenard) over a small crew, one of whom is a very old friend of his (a guy called "the centurion," for some reason. The whole concept of Romulans were based on Romans, complete with Roman style helmets).
So the Romulan ship violates the treaty of the Neutral Zone and flies out and destroys several Federation Outpost Stations situated inside asteroids located next to the Neutral Zone. A quick aside: it is explained in the show that one hundred years before TOS there was a nasty war with the Romulans, at a time before viewscreens made visual contact possible. So, the ships in the battle couldn't even see each other, and therefore nobody knew what Romulans looked like. After the war, both sides agreed, by radio contact, that there was a Neutral Zone in stations on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. The Romulan ship wasfore calling for an Act of War by destroying the outpost stations. And as another aside: here we have a MAJOR continuity error: the new "Enterprise" series is supposd to take place a hundred years before TOS. And as stated above, a hundred years before, we were at war with the Romulans at some point. Captain Archer has not yet heard of Romulans, and he sure as heck doesn't have any problems with visual contact between ships. So we can only assume here that the Romulan war is still pending, and that the Romulans didn't have any way for visual contact in their own ships. It sure would be exciting if the Romulan war were introduced during the run of "Enterprise."
Anyway, the Enterprise is dispatched to the outpost stations to check things out when the commander of one of the stations tells him what's going on, and that the attackers were definitely Romulans with a new kind of weapon and some sort of invisibility shield. The ship reappears and finishes off the asteroids and vanishes, leaving Kirk to realize that the only way to prevent a war is to find and stop the Romulan ship.
A visual shot of the interior of the Romulan ship reveals that the enemy crew consists of pointed-eared men, inside what appears to be a very small ship. This first look touches off a feeling of racism in one of the Enterprise Bridge crew, Stiles, who seems to believe that Spock is somehow connected to this enemy menace. Stiles had lost ancestors in the Romulan war, and doesn't trust Romulans, or, apparantly, anybody with pointed ears. To this, Kirk tells Stiles to leave his bigotry in his quarters.
Kirk calls his officers into the briefing room to discuss what to do. This is kind of cool here: Kirk doesn't want to jump in and battle the Romulan ship, he wants advice of his other officers. I like that aspect of his character. They discuss attack, which Stiles pushes for, and for which Spock agrees. Spock uses logic to figure out that if the Romulans were offshoots of Vulcans, then Romulans weren't going to simply give up, that the Romulans would fight for expansion.
This is where things get tense. The Enterprise follows the Romulan ship, matching move for move, trying to appear as a sort of shadow. Marc Lenard figures out that they are being followed. The Romulan commander, Marc Lenard is an interesting case study here. He appears tired. Tired of fighting he really just wants to get home. They've tested their weapons, they know it works, now Romulan High Command, or the Praetor, can figure out what to do next: probably outfit more ships with the same weapons and start a war. Marc Lenard doesn't care. Speaking in philosophical tones, he reasons that the Federation ship that is following will attempt to stop them in whatever means possible, and he knows they will likely fail to get home. They are running out of fuel because of the cloaking device and will need to fight or hightail it out of there.
Suspense in the Enterprise is thick here. They are following the Romulans and know that when the time is right, they will attack. The Enterprise is an exploration vessal, but equipped with weapons if they need them. And here is an instance where the Captain must make a choice: destroy an enemy vessal now, or let it get away and face a new war. What a hard decision to have to make.
The Romulan vessal flies through a comet tail and the Enterprise travels to the other side to catch them when they come out, but Marc Lenard guess what the Federation commander will do, and takes a different route. Suddenly, Kirk realizes his error and the Romulan ship decloaks and fires the energy weapon at the Enterprise. Full reverse, maximum warp. The Enterprise must outrun the shot fired. Phasers are offline, and they have to run. If the plasma weapon hits them, they are doomed. They outrun the weapon, but are still hit. They catch back up and fire on the cloaked vessal. To make a long story short, they nearly destroy the Romulan ship, the Romulan ship releases "an old-style nuclear weapon" into a debris field, which detonates and literally rocks the Enterprise so hard everyone falls off their chairs. I suppose such a blast could make the ship rock that much when they weren't ready for it, but it did make for a nice effect. Things get so tense during this period that Yeoman Rand asks if Kirk wants to jettison the logs and he actually hesitates, not sure if he wants to bother to or not since the situation looks so grim. He has them jettisoned, though.
After Kirk retaliates and blasts away at the Romulan ship, nearly destroying it and offering to beam aboard its survivors, Marc Lenard tells Kirk, no, surrender is not "their way," and that in a different situation, the two captains could have tipped a few glasses of Romulan Ale together. Marc Lenard self destructs the ship, thus making the Romulan test of the new weapon a failure. There will be no war.
The ship's phasers had a different look in this episode, didn't they? I thought it was odd that the phasers looked very much like photon torpedos, UNLESS these were actually phaser "blasts," a quick blast of phaser fire intended to hit the enemy ship in short bursts. A steady stream of phaser fire (seen in other episodes and used most effectively in the Wrath of Khan) might have been ineffective in this situation. A photon torpedo could have been seen as a waste of good torpedos if the Enterprise didn't know exactly where the enemy ship was.
Secondly, why is there a separate room where phasers are aimed and fired? This seems like a terrible waste of time, because Kirk orders "Fire," then we cut to the phaser room where the groom/crewman says "fire," then another guy pushes buttons, meaning that about seven to ten seconds after the order, a phaser is fired. Seems inefficient. If I could venture a theory as to why they did it this way here, I would say that this was either a temporary setup, or they were trying out a new phaser room to possible eliminate errors during potential battles.
Now for the subplot. "Balance of Terror" is full of great action, but it needs that human involvement to make it Star Trek. We have some of that with the philosophical Marc Lenard, but mostly we have the human interest part with the interruped wedding. At the beginnin of the episode, two crewmembers are getting married, officiated by Captain Kirk. During the battle scene, there is a phaser coolant leak in the phaser room where the groom is stationed, and he is killed--the only casualty. This episode could have done nicely without this subplot, but I'll discuss it here anyway. We see for the first time that the Enterprise has a chapel, which is this uninviting, utilitarian room that suggests that the Enterprise doesn't cater to any one particular religion, kind of a come-when-you-want-to kind of place (I've seen hospital chapels that look nicer). Also, there isn't a ship's minister. The Captain of the ship officiates weddings, which is how things work on seafaring ships. We can assume that the Enterprise doesn't hold Sunday services, unless Kirk adds that aspect to his list of duties, if so, the chapel might be bigger. Also, nobody dresses up for this wedding: everyone wears their normal duty uniforms to this wedding. I would expect that at the very least the bride and groom would dress up in some kind of wedding garb.
A central theme interwoven into the plot was that of racism and bigotry, social themes that Gene Roddenberry liked to explore in his show. The Chekov stand-in, Stiles, let Kirk know his feelings about the Romulans in no uncertain terms, and when the Romulans revealed that they looked like Vulcans, Stiles shifted his racist viewpoint toward Spock, and even ventured a guess that there were Romulan spies aboard.. This was a terrible mistake on his part. He should have KNOWN that Vulcans had nothing to do with Romulans. Aside from the pointed ears, the similarities end. At one point, he practically tells Spock to mind his own business, and calls him "Vulcan" in a very nasty tone. If Spock were able to feel emotions, he probably would have told Stiles that he was out of line and to kiss his green ass and think about his racism while he sits in his quarters during a very exciting battle sequence. And of course, Stiles has a change of heart when Spock saves him from dying in the phaser room.
Classic Star Trek, great science fiction, a space battle and human interest stories all on in one episode. This is Star Trek at its best.
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