Balance of Terror Observations

[CAPTRousseau]

I'm trying to remember. If the last scene was of the U-boat commander on his bridge saluting the destroyer Captain as the U-boat went down. I think that the U-boat Commander was played by Curt Jurgens. Kind of reminiscent of the final scene of BOT where the Romulan Commander tells Kirk "In another time and place, we could have called each other friends."

There are a few scenes after the salute. The destroyer captain throws the U-boat commander a rope and brings the German Captain and XO to the destroyer. The American suggests they hurry to the boats and leave the XO because he's dying. The German says, I can't leave him he's my friend.

The next scene is on another US destroyer. The Germans and Americans are gathered together having a funeral for the XO. After the funeral the two captains move to the fantail. The German says, I should have been killed many times, but somehow manage to survive. This time it was your fault. The American says, I didn't know. Next time I won't throw you the rope. The German turns to look out at the sea and says, I think you will

 

[Captain Rob]

Time to break out the DVD again.

 

[UnknownSample]

Best not to get hung up on the word "honor", which is extremely vague and means anything the speaker wants it to mean. We "honor" people with awards for their work on reality shows and game shows, after all. I'm sure all conquering people think they're doing it "honorably" because of respected military traditions they follow, whatever. It's soldier-speak that validates taking what others have.

 

[David cgc]

* Such a touching moment during the final Romulan plasma attack when Rand steps to Kirk, her chin on his shoulder, neither of them knowing if this will be their last moment when the weapon impacts.

You know, that reminds me. A long, long, long time ago, someone posted a link this board to what was purported to be a late-era TOS writer's bible. I was never able to turn it up again, but there was a bit in it describing the Captain and his beautiful Yeoman hold each other as an enemy ship closed in on them, and then described it as unprofessional, untrue to the characters, and distractingly melodramatic. It wasn't until later that I realized it was describing this scene from Balance of Terror. I was never able to track it down again, though. Same with the alleged memo inventing Sythohol and trying to figure out how it would affect Scotty; had he always been drinking fake booze, or was he an eccentric who preferred the real thing?

 

[feek61]

That is also in "TMOST" regarding the "unprofessional" characters (on pages 324-325). I always found it weird that they described that scene as NOT being that was acceptable in Star Trek.

 

[Christopher]

You know, that reminds me. A long, long, long time ago, someone posted a link this board to what was purported to be a late-era TOS writer's bible. I was never able to turn it up again, but there was a bit in it describing the Captain and his beautiful Yeoman hold each other as an enemy ship closed in on them, and then described it as unprofessional, untrue to the characters, and distractingly melodramatic. It wasn't until later that I realized it was describing this scene from Balance of Terror. I was never able to track it down again, though.

Yeah, that's from the second-season revision dated April 17, 1967. I'm surprised you haven't been able to find it; it's pretty common. I bought a copy from Lincoln Enterprises decades ago, and there are PDFs available online as well (here's one).

Same with the alleged memo inventing Sythohol and trying to figure out how it would affect Scotty; had he always been drinking fake booze, or was he an eccentric who preferred the real thing?

The behind-the-scenes idea was that synthehol was a Ferengi invention (to let them gain an edge by staying sober while their competitors got drunk), so it wouldn't have been around in Scotty's time.

That is also in "TMOST" regarding the "unprofessional" characters (on pages 324-325). I always found it weird that they described that scene as NOT being that was acceptable in Star Trek.

Well, it was the second-season revision of the bible, after all. I think they realized in retrospect that that particular scene in "Balance of Terror" had been cheesy -- maybe they were criticized for it by fans or reviewers -- and the critique in the bible was their way of admitting their mistake and pledging to do better.

 

[David cgc]

Yeah, that's from the second-season revision dated April 17, 1967. I'm surprised you haven't been able to find it; it's pretty common. I bought a copy from Lincoln Enterprises decades ago, and there are PDFs available online as well (here's one).

Thanks. I'd tried to track down the thread, since I didn't remember the document specifically enough to try and search for it, and IIRC, it hadn't been definitively identified. I feel like there were some other details that implied it dated to after the run of the show, a 4th season, TAS, or even Phase II revision; It could've been those aspects that were questionable, and the section about BoT was a holdover, despite being the only part I remembered.

The behind-the-scenes idea was that synthehol was a Ferengi invention (to let them gain an edge by staying sober while their competitors got drunk), so it wouldn't have been around in Scotty's time.

That was one of the questionable things about the doc. My guess had been that if it was legit, it would've probably been from the development of Phase II, since the movies were unlikely to go into the minutiae of drinking, and TOS never quite got that far in trying to smooth off all the vices of the human characters for the idea to have been originated. Again, I don't remember anyone reaching any kind of conclusion about the memo's source, but this was a long time ago, and I still can't track it down, no matter how many spellings of synthohol/synthahol/synthale I try.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Yeah, that's from the second-season revision dated April 17, 1967. I'm surprised you haven't been able to find it; it's pretty common. I bought a copy from Lincoln Enterprises decades ago, and there are PDFs available online as well (here's one).

...

Well, it was the second-season revision of the bible, after all. I think they realized in retrospect that that particular scene in "Balance of Terror" had been cheesy -- maybe they were criticized for it by fans or reviewers -- and the critique in the bible was their way of admitting their mistake and pledging to do better.

Looking at the first few pages of that Writer's Guide, I'm struck by how often the actual show broke its own rules. Yeoman Rand's chin rest in "Balance of Terror" is the least of it. We got Trelane and Apollo veering toward fantasy, and we got "whole civilizations" in the form of an ancient Rome planet and a Nazi Germany planet.

I think the line "don't give the enemy Starflight capability and then have them engage our vessel with grappling hooks and drawn swords" might have been inspired by the Lost in Space episode "Mutiny in Space." I'll bet Roddenberry watched that show after work one night and said "THIS! This is what we must NOT do!" And still, along comes "Day of the Dove" with a magical entity and sword fights aboard a starship.

The difference between Star Trek's stories about "things that can't happen" and those of Lost in Space was that ST would ask us to accept one impossible thing, like say the powers of Trelane, but everything following from that one leap was a serious look at how grownups would respond. When Lost in Space shifted to comedy, they went all-out silly.

 

[Christopher]

That was one of the questionable things about the doc. My guess had been that if it was legit, it would've probably been from the development of Phase II, since the movies were unlikely to go into the minutiae of drinking, and TOS never quite got that far in trying to smooth off all the vices of the human characters for the idea to have been originated.

What? No, synthehol was a creation of TNG. Like I said, it was meant to be a Ferengi invention.

 

[UnknownSample]

Looking at the first few pages of that Writer's Guide, I'm struck by how often the actual show broke its own rules. Yeoman Rand's chin rest in "Balance of Terror" is the least of it. We got Trelane and Apollo veering toward fantasy, and we got "whole civilizations" in the form of an ancient Rome planet and a Nazi Germany planet.

I think the line "don't give the enemy Starflight capability and then have them engage our vessel with grappling hooks and drawn swords" might have been inspired by the Lost in Space episode "Mutiny in Space." I'll bet Roddenberry watched that show after work one night and said "THIS! This is what we must NOT do!" And still, along comes "Day of the Dove" with a magical entity and sword fights aboard a starship.

The difference between Star Trek's stories about "things that can't happen" and those of Lost in Space was that ST would ask us to accept one impossible thing, like say the powers of Trelane, but everything following from that one leap was a serious look at how grownups would respond. When Lost in Space shifted to comedy, they went all-out silly.

It's a basic part of science fiction to speculate far enough ahead (or outside of human experience) to technology that looks like magic to us backward folk, and that's only because we don't know how it works. The point with a being or phenomenon like Apollo was how much it appeared to be fantasy or magic on the surface, and how it very much wasn't, once you look into it. That's not actually on the boundary between SF and fantasy... it's really core SF.

 

[CAPTRousseau]

You know, that reminds me. A long, long, long time ago, someone posted a link this board to what was purported to be a late TOS-era writer's bible. Same with the alleged memo inventing Sythohol and trying to figure out how it would affect Scotty; had he always been drinking fake booze, or was he an eccentric who preferred the real thing?

Laddie, I was drinking Scotch a hundred years before you were born. And I can tell you that whatever this is, it is definitely not Scotch.

As for the "unprofessional behavior" could that have been Yeoman Colt and Gary Mitchell in WNMHGB?

 

[Spock's Barber]

When Lost in Space shifted to comedy, they went all-out silly.

You mean this, for example........

 

[Christopher]

As for the "unprofessional behavior" could that have been Yeoman Colt and Gary Mitchell in WNMHGB?

No, the passage in the season 2 bible refers to specifics from the "Balance of Terror" scene (Kirk embracing his yeoman as an energy-plasma bolt closes on the ship). Looking into it a bit more, I realize that it was D.C. Fontana who was in charge of the bible revision (since she was story editor by that point), and neither she nor producer Gene Coon had been involved with BoT, so that was probably them criticizing something in their predecessors' work on the show and declaring that it wouldn't happen again on their watch.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

It's a basic part of science fiction to speculate far enough ahead (or outside of human experience) to technology that looks like magic to us backward folk, and that's only because we don't know how it works. The point with a being or phenomenon like Apollo was how much it appeared to be fantasy or magic on the surface, and how it very much wasn't, once you look into it. That's not actually on the boundary between SF and fantasy... it's really core SF.

Okay, but picture this: Ripley and her shipmates aboard the Nostromo are desperately searching for the Alien, hoping to kill it before it kills them. Suddenly Trelane appears, much like Endora would "pop in" on Bewitched. He snaps his fingers and the Alien is made to vanish. Then he zaps Ripley into a flowing 18th century formal gown and they have a waltz.

You may call that scenario "core SF," but I'm telling you, something has changed, not just in degree but in kind. Before Trelane's big entrance, Alien was serious SF. Afterward, the necessary suspension of disbelief is vastly greater. The audience can swallow Trelane's power only by saying that it is possible "somehow" -- but with no underlying theory whatsoever.

I'm putting it badly but I think the illustration is piercing: a fantasy character like Trelane, Apollo, or Charlie Evans would obliterate a science fiction story like Alien, because suddenly the writer is asking for a blank check where we must suspend disbelief to the point where anything goes.

Sticking to just Star Trek, could you even bear to see such a character zap his way through "Balance of Terror" or The Wrath of Khan? It's a compatibility problem, indicating two different kinds of fiction.

 

[FormerLurker]

It sounds like you're asking if Deus Ex Machina is a viable storytelling device in Science Fiction, and then answering that no, it isn't. The problem with this is that it invalidates stories like Errand of Mercy and anything with Q in it. Sometimes the Deus Ex Machina is necessary in Science Fiction, as it's the only way to get out of the situation. No one really likes it, but there are ways of taking advantage of it, like Errand of Mercy, that give a budget-conscious production the ability to tell stories effectively, without breaking their budgets on a regular basis.

 

[publiusr]

The linitations allowed less of a cop out. It's all in how its done.

You have everyone die just about in Reservoir Dogs. Have some faith healer bring them back in the last scene--even though it is cheap effects wise (just get up) cheats the whole movie.

 

[Christopher]

It sounds like you're asking if Deus Ex Machina is a viable storytelling device in Science Fiction, and then answering that no, it isn't. The problem with this is that it invalidates stories like Errand of Mercy and anything with Q in it. Sometimes the Deus Ex Machina is necessary in Science Fiction, as it's the only way to get out of the situation. No one really likes it, but there are ways of taking advantage of it, like Errand of Mercy, that give a budget-conscious production the ability to tell stories effectively, without breaking their budgets on a regular basis.

I think that's taking the term "deus ex machina" too literally. As a term of criticism, it doesn't actually mean using godlike powers to resolve a situation; it means resolving a situation by introducing some hitherto-unmentioned element out of the blue, essentially cheating to get out of a corner you've written yourself into. It doesn't have to be literal divine intervention, just anything arbitrary and out of the blue. For instance, if the heroes are helpless to defend themselves against an intractable killer... and then the killer is randomly run down by a truck. Or if the protagonist spends the whole story dealing with a problem resulting from being impoverished and having no way to get money... and then she suddenly finds a winning lottery ticket in the laundromat.

So the intervention of godlike aliens isn't really a deus ex machina as long as it's set up ahead of time, as long as it's a logical outgrowth of the story to that point. If, say, "Yesterday's Enterprise" had been resolved by Q suddenly showed up in the final battle and snapping his fingers to put everything right, that would be a deus ex machina. But if the story is about Q all the way through, if he's the focus of the plot rather than something randomly tacked on at the end, then the use of his powers to resolve the situation is not a deus ex machina. As for "Errand of Mercy," it may seem that the Organians' revelation is a sudden twist, but it's foreshadowed throughout the episode by the Organians' calm, their insistence that they're in no danger and need no help, and by various subtle clues like the way the council chamber doors swing open by themselves and the way Ayelborne inexplicably frees Kirk and Spock from prison. So that's not really a deus ex machina either. The mystery of the Organians' true nature is woven through the episode, and the revelation of what they really are is the payoff to what's been building all along.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I expressed the problem awkwardly, which sent you guys off on a tangent. The problem was not deus ex machina. Sorry.

My point was: did Star Trek go against its own Writer's Guide by using fantasy characters with godlike powers that will never be found in real life?

And wouldn't that type of character wipe out the plausibility and seriousness that makes most of the best episodes so good? Look at Balance of Terror, The Corbomite Manuever, The Doomsday Machine, The Wrath of Khan -- and tell me that Trelane or Charlie Evans are a better kind of challenge for Kirk to deal with, that those stories would be better (and cooler, and more loved by the fans) if a godlike being was thrown into the plot. The Writer's Guide said no.

 

[Ithekro]

But as they did, they didn't throw the godlike being into the plot, they made them the plot. There is a difference.

You don't have the same plot every week. One week we are saving a planet from an invading parasite. The next we are outthinking a Romulan starship commander starship to starship, the following week we have to outthink what is essentially a godlike child who what to play with his new human toys.

You don't put the godlike character into another plot, you make them the plot. Either as the antagonist, or in the case to Q, the sadistic teacher giving you a pop quiz when you don't even know the subject matter and failure is at worst death. In Q's case, he usually presents the problem for the crew to solve, needles them from time to time, and then sees if they can solve the problem themselves, or if they can't (the Borg) returns them to where they started with the warning that "you better get yourself ready".

 

[UnknownSample]

Okay, but picture this: Ripley and her shipmates aboard the Nostromo are desperately searching for the Alien, hoping to kill it before it kills them. Suddenly Trelane appears, much like Endora would "pop in" on Bewitched. He snaps his fingers and the Alien is made to vanish. Then he zaps Ripley into a flowing 18th century formal gown and they have a waltz.

You may call that scenario "core SF," but I'm telling you, something has changed, not just in degree but in kind. Before Trelane's big entrance, Alien was serious SF. Afterward, the necessary suspension of disbelief is vastly greater. The audience can swallow Trelane's power only by saying that it is possible "somehow" -- but with no underlying theory whatsoever.

I'm putting it badly but I think the illustration is piercing: a fantasy character like Trelane, Apollo, or Charlie Evans would obliterate a science fiction story like Alien, because suddenly the writer is asking for a blank check where we must suspend disbelief to the point where anything goes.

Sticking to just Star Trek, could you even bear to see such a character zap his way through "Balance of Terror" or The Wrath of Khan? It's a compatibility problem, indicating two different kinds of fiction.

The point of Trelane was that they had already established that it was a hard, harsh universe, based on physical laws that could not be broken or ignored... and then here's this *seemingly* magical being. It wasn't a TV gimmick. It wasn't a Lost In Space wacky device. It was an extreme weird novelty, that they then had to explain in SF terms. It was meant to be almost as bizarre to them as it would have been to US, in reality, if the guy... thing... appeared. I don't need to have it pointed out how inappropriate such an image is, in an SF context. That inappropriateness was the point. I would never like anything like Trelane to happen ever again (I hate Q), but THAT ONE TIME, it works.
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So Apollo was another instance? I admit they pushed godlike beings at us a lot, but I think they got away with it. The idea and story were different enough.
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I don't think of Alien as more strongly "core" SF, than s1 Trek. There isn't a lot of speculation, or SF ideas, just a higher budget version of 50s monster movies, done well for what it is, the equipment looks great... There are many classic SF kinds of phenomena and characters and events which would have no place intruding into Alien, which are still valid in other contexts.
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