Star Trek TOS: Episode 14 - BALANCE OF TERROR

“While investigating a series of destroyed outposts, the Enterprise discovers a lone Romulan vessel with a cloaking device.”

An A+ across the board; writing, acting, action – you name it. Certainly this episode is one giant reference to the Cold War and Vietnam. In fact the term Balance of Terror was a common Cold War term for the nuclear arms race. In addition to that the neutral zone that plays such a big part in this episode, was also an important area in the Vietnam War (the DMZ). A few months before this episode was written, the U.S. sent an additional 200,000 troops to Vietnam. Just to put that into perspective, the U.S. has had something like 100,000 troops total in Afghanstan/Iraq.

A quick recap: Balance starts off with a wedding between two crew members. Suddenly the alarm goes off (which it does about 4 more times in the episode and it’s so annoying), it seems that Earth’s outposts are being destroyed along the Neutral Zone. This zone had been set up after the Earth-Romulan War. Now, even though the Earth had a war with the Romulans, no one has ever seen what they like. Not even Spock.

The Enterprise encounters a Bird of Prey but it cloaks. Kirk is able to track it through scans and they shadow it. The Romulan captain is shown on screen and it looks just like a Vulcan. Spock explains that they are an offshoot of the Vulcan race. This causes Lt. Stiles to suspect Spock of being a spy. 

Probably the greatest chess match between two captains is about to occur. The Romulan Commander is just a smart as Kirk and they repeatedly outplay each other. The Romulan ship lays a trap of a cloaked nuclear weapon. But, Kirk destroys it and cripples the Romulan ship in the process. He offers to beam over the survivors, but the Romulan Commander denies the offer and he shows much compassion for Kirk. He claims that in another time they could have been friends, then he self-destructs the Bird of Prey.

We find out that there had been one casualty on the Enterprise, it is the man who was about to be married in the beginning. Kirk visits his grieving fiancé and the episode ends with Kirk silently walking down the hall with a stunned look on his face. What an awesome ending. Not a happy note to be found. Mark Lenard is great in this one, as he always is. We’ll see him more as he also plays Spock’s father and the Klingon Commander in the 1^st movie. Now in case anyone forgets why the Romulan culture is a mirror image of the Romans, we will be answering this soon in the episode “Who Mourns For Adonis?”.

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