TOS-0109 Balance of Terror

Image Credits: IMDB 🖖 The Original Series-1966 Season:01 Episode:09

Overall Score:       37.80 / 100
Star Trek Values:    3.00 / 5
Inspiring:           3.50 / 5
Story Development:   4.50 / 5

View Episode (Imbd)

The Story, Briefly

A Romulan vessel passes the neutral zone and damages federation outposts. And Enterprise crew pursues them. Their mutual understanding of each other’s moves, seems like a plausible friendship opportunity in an alternate reality.

Name of the episode:

The balanced strategic confrontation of two enemy ships.

Thoughts

We see early encounters with Romulans, their faces haven’t seen before. And this brings both a wonder and an adventurous story development.

• When they saw pointed ears, some crewman suspected of Spock, which seems a premature and raw story development example. Because in the federation they saw different genetic properties and pointed ears might be something like moles on the skin. (In TOS series, we see simple and impulsive behaviors of the crew, in the following series crew became more professional.)
• Our man became dead, on his own wedding day. Cliché for 2025, but may not be for 1966.
• Kirk’s impressive deductive thinking on figuring out cloaking and energy requirement relation…
• I don’t know, is it a common thing that Romulan commander lowers an officer’s rank by 2 degrees on an instance. Instead of a penalty. A tiny example to feel what they’re like.
• Whenever a starship went to radio silence, the bridge also unilluminated, it seems a good visualization to understand the situation and feel the atmosphere. It’s logical design, but total darkness cause the crew to make mistakes, like Spock pressed a button accidentally.