Synopsis: A shipboard wedding is interrupted by a distress call from a star base on the Federation Romulan Neutral Zone. The Zone is the buffer between the two powers that cannot be crossed without provocation war. The Enterprise is too late to reach the base in time and the base is destroyed by an alien ship that has the ability to become invisible. It turns out it is the Romulans and Kirk must decide whether to risk war by engaging the ship before it can return home and report on how easily the Federation can be defeated.
Ok… I’ve said this in earlier threads but this is the best episode yet!! This show gets better and better.
The idea of a Nemesis in competition is a good move. It can lead to interesting later stories.
That Romulan Captain was very good. He wasn’t evil just dedicated to his cause and man was he clever. He out smarted Kirk a few times. It was like watching a chess tournament with two masters.
“In another reality I could have called you friend” A great line.
Is it me or are Romulan’s very Roman like? Centurion, Praetor, the use of an eagle as the symbol on their ship.
That Plasma weapon the Romulans fire was pretty damned powerful.
I’m not sure I understand the need for the crew to be so quiet in the waiting scene. As far as I know noise doesn’t travel in a vacuum. And How did that beeping thing Spock touched alert the Romulan’s?
The Ships Phasers seem a little odd. The hand held ones shoot a beam while these seem to be pulses. Also it seems the set up is so inefficient. First you have the captain order them to fire, the Helmsman presses a button, The Fire control chief gets a signal and orders one of the people to press a button.
This episode was great. Nice battle, a bit of human interest, some background history, cool aliens, and a dark, tragic ending.
No dress uniforms for the wedding?
Great scene where we meet the aliens. I love the ‘moral villain’ idea. Far more interesting than the standard “the other guy is always evil” approach. Actually, have we had an out-and-out villain, yet? The actor that played the Romulan captain did a super job. Too bad they killed him off, it would have been good to see more of him.
Castrodinium? The hardest substance known to science is named after a commie dictator?
And the racism subplot was interesting. I thought it was neat that as soon as we see Stiles glare accusingly at Spock, we get reaction shots from the black girl and the asian guy.
The sensor shadow manoever was awesome. The whole battle of wits between the two captains was extraordinarily well played. The range limit on the plasma weapon was an extremely dramatic scene (and what is it between Rand and the Captain, anyway?).
A couple of weird lighting things. Kirk seemed to have a tight spotlight focused just on his eyes a couple of times, like during the ceremonial reading at the wedding. And there were a couple of scenes on the bridge where he seemed heavily shadowed.
Thumbs up all around. One of the best so far, for sure.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. Maybe it wasn’t the beeping sound, but the sudden output of energy that the Romulan’s detected?
Perhaps that’s because they’re laying down a barrage in the hope of hitting something they can’t see? Too wasteful to let rip on full rock’n’roll?
A nod o’the head towards surface ship weaponry, I guess. But seriously, if you’re after something the size of a starship, how often would the odd second’s delay matter?
Seconded, thirded and fourthed. I hope we see a lot of these Romulans! They have the makings of really good campaign villains - and how creative to avoid a sort of generic Russian/Chinese hybrid enemy race. Star Trek already strikes me, a Brit, as being a little too Americocentric for something that’s allegedly not even Earth-centric, so a big round of applause to the writers for picking these quasi-Romans instead of just godless Commies.
It reminded me an awful lot of a movie called The Enemy Below. That one starred Robert Mitchum as the hero and Curt Jurgens as his opposite in a battle between a submarine and a surface ship.
But I don’t want to take anything away from this episode, which was very good. I wonder if now that we know Romulans look and sound a lot like Vulcans* if they’ll have Spock dress up as a Romulan and go spying at some point?
*I mean, it’s an uncanny resemblence. That Romulan commander looks like he could be a close reletive of Spock.
The guy who played the Romulan Commander is (I went to the library and looked in the READER’S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE) a NY stage actor named Mark Lenard. He played Eilert Lovberg in Hedda Gabler and Platonov in Chekov’s A Country Scandal a few years back.
I guess if there’s lots of aliens out there that look like humans, the other major spacefaring race the Vulcans might have some progeny too. I wonder if they’re one of the militaristic Vulcan groups that didn’t want to live under logic and all.
Lenard has one of the most beautiful voices ever to issue from a human being! I wish they didn’t have to kill him off.
Anybody else catch the Civil Rights Movement message in it? Subtle, but still… kunilu is right. This is a virtual rewrite of that movie. Doesn’t detract from how good this ep is, but it does help explain scenes like the silence scene and whot not.
That Romulan guy, what did they call him? He was amazing! In a few short moments, I felt the weight of his entire history on me. I would like to see more of this guy!
Shhhh! The context of the thread is that we’re discussing the episodes in order. That particular actor may or may not be back later in a different role, but we aren’t supposed to know that at this time.
It reminded me of submarine warfare, too. In that context, the “silent running” thing would make perfect sense, of course. In space, however, it seems a little odd.
[2005] Hey dropzone , the idea behind these threads is that we’re pretending we’ve never seen Trek before, and watching the original series in order. This is the first time Mark Lenard has appeared. Journey to Babel won’t be on for weeks yet.[/2005]
My favorite episode so far. I love the tactics that the opposing captains use. And this one shows us why Kirk is the Captain. It isn’t because he can do well in fistfights, or have teenagers fall for him, but because he is a master strategist. His quick understanding of what needed to be done when the Romulan ship didn’t show up in the Nebula was masterful. We also see the reason the Enterprise is so heavily armed at last.
Odd, though, that the Romulans knew to use Roman terms for their officers being named by humans after a character in Roman myth.
I’d like to know more about the history of Vulcan. Clearly the Romulans left so long ago that the Vulcans didn’t remember it - unless they are ashamed of that period, and don’t tell. So they have had space travel for a lot longer than humans. So, how come humans seem to be in control?
I also liked the scenes of meetings of Kirk’s staff. That’s how stuff is really done, so I can really believe in this starship. The scene where Spock unexpectedly agreed with Stiles about the need to attack was great - it showed how different Vulcans are. Cool also how the screen is shown not just displaying stars but also displaying charts.
The real explanation for the burst of phasers, of course, is that they are depth charges. The big E is the destroyer and the Romulan ship is the submarine.
One thing I didn’t get - if the Enterprise is so far from home that it takes days to get a message back with subspace radio, how did the humans get anywhere near the place before the invention of Warp drive? If they did have Warp, and the Romulans didn’t , they would have been able to kick Rommie butt. So the back story isn’t jelling for me.
Oooops! Sorry! Didn’t know because you guys hadn’t done one of the eps I liked as much as this one yet so I hadn’t bothered to read the threads. But since this one’s my all-time fave…
[1966] I’m getting a message from the future. (scrunching my eyes and placing fingers on my temples) The episodes get worse from this point on…and Kirk gets fatter. [/1966]
You underestimate how much we science fiction fans like this show. And how obsessed with detail we are. Just last year, when I was in 9th grade, I did a 25 page English paper on Arthur C. Clarke. After having suffered through Lost in Space and Time Tunnel, and being disappointed by most of Outer Limits, I’m ready for a good sf show that assumes we are smart enough to understand about the speed of light barrier.
[2005]I’m going to have to look up when the article on Star Trek by G. Harry Stine appeared in Analog. It treated the show quite respectfully. [/2005]
I’m a little confused about the starship speeds. Scotty says the Romulans have “simple impulse”. Is impulse slower than light, and Warp speed faster than light? The Romulans would have to have faster than light speed to travel to other stars. And the plasma weapon traveled faster than Enterprise. How do you see a projectile that travels faster than the speed of light?
Or maybe I should just relax, after all it’s only a show.
I loved this episode. They built the Romulans up into something mythic (please, no Remus jokes). Then, they actually managed to live up to those expectations.
The Romulan captain ejecting his friend’s corpse really gave the character depth. ‘My friend is dead, and I’m very upset about it. Now, I have to desecrate his body in an attempt to save the ship.’
BTW, is anyone else freaked out by all the bizarre looking aliens they’ve got on this show? The Balok kid was bad enough and the science officer were bad enough. Now we’ve been treated to an entire ship full of men with those grotesque ears and weirdo eyebrows. << Shudder >>
No wonder the original pilot didn’t sell. These Romulanians are pretty freaky looking, but those big-headed aliens with the mental powers… Ewww! Not groovy at all.
There is no indication that they do travel to other stars. The chart of the neutral zone seemed to indicate it was very close to the Romulan system. How the humans got there is another matter. Why they didn’t have video communication between ships is also strange. I’ve heard that they’re going to be taking live tv cameras along on Apollo missions - surely they’d have video between ships by the time we get to Romulus.
