ST:TOS; The Balance of Terror
One of the best episodes, IMO. True, it's mostly on the Bridge and typifies submarine warfare, but we get to see Kirk truly BE Captain. It is acted well (Mark Leonard is great as the Romulan) and gripping. Very little cheese. Shatner is solid, as is Nimoy (and the cast).
It's not often stories so "simple minded" leave the viewer feeling sympathy for the death of the "bad guy". Great script.
Thoughts?
(and yes, dammit, I am going to continue to do this weekly until we are done).
This is my favorite episode ever. It's an edge-of-your-seat thriller in many ways, it presents a sympathetic antagonist, we get to deal directly with race issues, we get background on the Vulcan race, with the distant connection to the Romulans (a theme which is carried over into "The Enterprise Incident" and later into TNG and also the latest movie), we get some great character moments with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Yes, it's thinly disguised sub hunt, but it's an awesome sub hunt. I enjoy this episode a little more every time I watch it.
ETA: Mark Leonard's part as the Romulan commander is exceptional.
Last edited by dread pirate jimbo; 08 Dec 2009 at 11:18 AM.
Hell is other people.
This one really stands out. It does not matter how many years it has been since I have seen it. It is one of my favorites and was really well done. I agree that Mark Leonard was great in this episode.
I will have to try to watch it soon, but somehow I just don't find the time to fire it up online.
Quoted for truth, my man.Originally posted by dread pirate jimbo
The suspense and drama in this episode was just absolutely spot on. Even having seen it multiple times now, it holds up and does so quite well. The acting is superb and it seems like each time I watch it I notice some new nuance.
One aspect I love is that there has been no contact between humans and Romulans since the Earth-Romulan War. At the end of the war, they didn't have two-way visual communication between ships and so neither side even knows what the other looks like. The racism that Stiles exhibits when they finally get their first glimpse of the Romulans is handled in a very nice, not at all heavy-handed way.
In fact, the reaction of Stiles towards Spock felt like a reference to the response to Japanese-Americans during WWII, but it also makes me think of something else I hadn't recognized when I first watched the show as a kid. I think it is metaphorically similar to Night of the Living Dead in how it captured the fear, irrational behavior, and paranoia that existed during the height of the Cold War. "The enemy" can look just like your most trusted allies and the paranoia that causes can lead to dangerous consequences.
There's a hell of a lot more I could write about the episode in general beyond that, though. It's just fantastic.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
I forgot to mention another of my favorite elements of this episode, which is the wedding. The series frequently had red shirts dying all over the place, but there is typically little or no emotional impact to those losses. In this episode we only have one minor character die, but that death is made all the more poignant by adding the extra context of him being about to get married to a fellow crewperson. I think we all feel the devastation that Angela Martine feels as she tries to deal with the loss of her fiance at the end of the episode.
What decides what episode is upcoming? Can you give a weeks warning like we use to do with the film club?
I'm using the numbering of the episodes from the CBS.com site. I am not going by the order of production, but the order of airing.
Next week's show is "Shore Leave".
Jimbo--I especially like the way Kirk goes to her to offer what comfort he can. It's one of the few times we see him actually "walking the walk" (he talks the talk quite a bit re his ship and crew). I also like how she's not real comfortable with the captain enacting that role (perhaps they should have had the Federation equivalent of Father Mulcahey).
One caveat: in production, there were several (at least 5) episodes shot prior to Shore Leave, and if they had aired in the "proper" order, we would not feel that Lt (Ensign?) Martine was a heartless bitch. For elucidation, please watch Shore Leave!
In fact, although the actor (Barbara Baldavin) is the same in both episodes (and she also makes an appearance at communications in "Turnabout Intruder"), the characters were not originally intended to be the same -- although they changed her first name to "Angela" in production for "Shore Leave" they left her last name as "Teller" in that episode, whereas her last name in this episode is "Martine." And in "Turnabout Intruder," 2 years later, she's referred to as "Lisa." There's been a certain amount of retconning to make that fit, according to Memory Alpha, but that simple fact is that issues of continuity were not very high on the priority list during the TOS years, creating lots of these weird little loose ends. Why did Gary Mitchell put "James R Kirk" on Kirk's tombstone? Why didn't they just send a shuttlecraft down to rescue Sulu and the rest of the stranded team in "The Enemy Within?" Because a) they hadn't really decided on a middle initial for Kirk when they did the second pilot and b) because they didn't have shuttlecraft when they made that episode. Basically, they were just making things up as they went along, with the goal of telling a good story, without realizing that nerds would be endlessly debating the minutae of the series for decades afterwards.One caveat: in production, there were several (at least 5) episodes shot prior to Shore Leave, and if they had aired in the "proper" order, we would not feel that Lt (Ensign?) Martine was a heartless bitch. For elucidation, please watch Shore Leave!
ETA: Yeah, I thought they handled that last scene nicely, with Kirk offering what comfort he could and Martine accepting briefly before putting on her brave soldier face. Well played moment.
Last edited by dread pirate jimbo; 10 Dec 2009 at 10:33 AM.
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