Writer: Paul Schneider
Director: Vincent McEveety
Producer: Gene Roddenberry
Okay, so I'm just gonna gush, because this is one of my favourite episodes."Balance of Terror" does so many things right, that it's always a joy to watch.
The first, and perhaps biggest, thing it does, is some worldbuilding. So far, we've had very very little idea of what the world of Star Trek looks like. We know we're over 200 years in the future, we know the Enterprise is an Earth ship, we know Earth has colonies and facilities across the galaxy, and we know Spock is half-Vulcan. That's about it. In this episode, we begin to get some idea of history and intergalactic politics. We learn there was a war between Earth and the Romulans 100 years ago (Earth, not the Federation, which we haven't heard about at this point). That neither side saw the other, so no one knows what Romulans look like. That it ended in a treaty, and established the Romulan Neutral Zone, which no side may enter. And when we do learn what Romulans look like (just like Vulcans), we learn more about both races - namely that the logical, peaceful Vulcans, were once devastatingly warlike and savage, and that the Romulans may be off-shoots from that era.
This adds a lot to our understanding of the world of the series, and also sets up the episode perfectly. It's a very simple story idea, namely "just do a submarine story in space", but it was up to writer Paul Schneider to figure out how to best translate those ideas. The cloaking device, a new invention in this episode, serves to give us the sense that we don't know where the enemy is lurking, that they can attack from anywhere. The Neutral Zone gives us that Cold War sense, that the wrong decision at the wrong time could lead to a massive devastating war for both parties. And finally, the decision to make the Romulans physically identical to the Vulcans allows Schneider to work in an excellent subplot about suspicion and bigotry that recalls the treatment of Japanese Americans following the Pearl Harbor surprise attack.
Speaking of the bigotry, it seems that season 1 of Star Trek decided the position of ship's navigator should be kept open so as to have a rotating cast of screw-ups to furnish character drama without sullying the regulars -- to wit, inexperienced and tightly wound David Bailey in "Corbomite Maneuver", leering woman distracted John Farrell in "Mudd's Women" and "Enemy Within", and drunken Irishman Kevin Riley in "The Naked Time". Here it's Andrew Stiles, who has family ancestors who fought in the Romulan Wars and thinks it's his honour-bound duty to continue the grudge. So he gets to sneer at Spock and make paranoid comments and represent that guy who gets nervous when Muslims ride on the plane with him and so on.
All of this leads to great drama, with much of it bearing down on Kirk. This is perhaps Kirk at his most "Horatio Hornblower" esque, faced with making decisions that will perhaps affect mllions of lives, risking his crew to do so, and also engaging in tactics against the enemy. He berates Stiles for his bigotry, letting him know there's no place for it on a starship. He expresses his inner doubts and fears to McCoy, who offers him some advice that also serves perhaps as a mission statement of the philosophy of the series. It's perhaps one of the all-time best Kirk/Bones scenes on the show.
It's also lit beautifully, as is this entire episode. I haven't really talked about Jerry Finnerman's cinematography on the series much, but this episode is gorgeous. Star Trek of course aired on television at a time when colour TVs were what 4K UHD 3D curved TVs are today, and since network NBC was owned by colour TV inventors RCA, all the shows on the network were in colour and expected to pimp colour. Since Star Trek was a "fantastic" series set in the future, it had a lot of leeway and so Finnerman uses a lot of colour in his lighting set-ups, as accents and rim lights and back lights. But I don't think there's a single episode of the show that looks quite as glorious as this. I love it so much.
And I haven't even talked about the Romulans yet! These guys could have just been generic, one-dimensional bad guys (much like the Klingons are when they get introduced), but Mark Lenard plays the Romulan Commander with so much pathos, and the Romulans are written with multiple dimensions to their characters. There's shifting allegiances on the ship, hints of character backstory, as well as glimpses even into Romulan politics. Its fantasic, wonderfully realized writing. And the original Bird of Prey, another Wah Chang creation, is utterly beautiful in it's simplicity and grace.
Finally, when all is said and done, "Balance of Terror" also has a classic ending, one that weighs heavily on Kirk. For one thing, the Romulans destroy themselves rather than be captured, and after the Commander tells him "in another reality, I might have called you friend." And then he has to go and tell a member of his crew that her fiancee was killed in the battle. It's somber and really brings all that stuff about the pointless tragedy of war home.
And hey! An episode with Janice Rand where the romantic tension between her and the Captain is demonstrated without stalking, harassment or sexual assault! Bonus!
Rating: 4 out of 4
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