Corbomite Maneuver

[Redfern]

I suspect Yarn has found a way to pull your collective goats (no...wait, is it "get your legs"? ) and is now having a lil' fun with you guys.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[YARN]

If so, one would assume him to move to the test where he is "vulnerable" and Kirk has "the upper hand" much sooner.

Why would one assume that?

You deploy an all too convenient sort of skepticism. You are, for example, skeptical that Balok really posed no threat, even though he stated that it was a test and he was simply attempting to learn their intentions. Why? Because (as you say below) he only discloses this information after the test (if had disclosed this during the test, it wouldn't me much of a test would it?).

You repudiate the on screen evidence on the grounds of bare possibility, that we don't know for sure, which is asinine since we don't know anything for sure 100%.

And yet you are entirely credulous of your own speculations about the character of Balok. You think we can conclude that he is obsessed with his border, with protecting his high technology from invaders (even ones that pose no threat to him), and that he will (or even should!) kill life forms which, even though they are not hostile, fail to amuse him with a desperate Hail Mary gambit! You are reasoning from the armchair and against the presumptions established by the text.

Above you are again randomly assertive! We can't even know if the Fesarius could destroy the Enterprise, right? But you can somehow know what Balok's hidden intentions are and what he should do to achieve these intentions.

We don't really know 100% what Balok would have done if the countdown clock had run out. Then again, we don't really know if the Fesarius is powered by Swiss Cheese. We don't know how much time Balok had on his hands or how patient he was willing to be. He indicated that he was lonely, so it appears he had plenty motivation to stretch out the interaction. If you wish to play the skeptic, you should be moot on this point.

Balok obviously wanted to find out how this species would respond when faced with a certain death situation. It's the Kobayashi Maru. How we face death is (apparently to Balok) at least as important as how we face life). I contend that what is most likely is that this isn't even the real or main test - that this is a set up to test their true intentions.

What would have happened if the Enterprise had quietly awaited its fate after the countdown? You would have us suppose that Balok is dick, and that he crushes those who fail to squirm appropriately (even though your are skeptical as to whether the Fesarius could destroy the Enterprise!).

Given what is revealed about Balok, it is much more reasonable to conclude that he would have simply moved to his endgame or another endgame and offered the final test of the crew.

Instead, a lion's share of his test involves finding out what Kirk will do when threatened, cornered and deprived of options.

So what? Where is skeptical Timo now?

One could argue, much more plausibly, that all of that waiting is a set-up. He puts these people in a crisis situation, an ultimate crisis. He lets them simmer in it awhile. Then, he turns the tables and give them the advantage. Now comes his question which probes their intentions: What do they do?

You would conjecture that Balok is like a cosmic bully who punishes creatures that don't adequately attempt to MacGyver their way out of his traps.

I would conjecture that Balok engages in an elaborate first contact test of character. He pushes you to the wall, and then he tests whether your "high-sounding words" mean anything by giving you the apparent advantage.

Things only start to move forward when Kirk demonstrates cleverness and the ability to fight his way out of the stalemate,

No, the curtain is only pulled back when the Enterprise makes good on its morality and attempts a rescue/repair mission. Until then Kirk is talking to a puppet.

The test began with the buoy. They were moving forward the whole time. Again, it is much more plausible to propose that the death countdown is just the set-up for the moral test.

suggesting Balok was ultimately far more interested in Kirk's range of malevolent than benevolent capabilities.

Are you joking? His ship was crippled. They were reduced to warming coffee with hand phasers. Kirk couldn't do anything malevolent. Balok neutralized any chance to fight or flee.

The relevant reasons only come to play after Kirk has proven his worth. So this tells us nothing about what Balok would have done, had Kirk failed to defeat him in the battle of wits.

Here he is. Here is Timo the skeptic. Where were you?

The "relevant reasons" inform us about Balok's character. You would suppose that a man who gives a homeless person money should be supposed to be a misanthrope before the act, because the relevant reasons only come into play at that moment.

Moreover, Kirk would have only "defeated" him in a battle of wits, if Balok had actual malevolent intentions (did you see the end of the episode? He is a jovial little fellow). You are, therefore, begging the question.

I think it is much more plausible that Balok was simply probing and playing along. As far as gambits go, Kirk's Corbomite assertion is paper-thin. The species is demonstrably at a much lower level of technology than Balok. Although Balok notes that he is skeptical of the official history of Starfleet contained in the ships memory banks, he would have had access to the Enterprise's design specs, and found nothing to corroborate Kirk's claim. Kirk only mentions Corbomite at the last minute which makes the claim suspicious. Finally, given the situation (in which a person would say just about anything), Kirk's claim has to be highly suspect. At most, Balok was probably amused. The Corbomite gambit was much more convincing in The Deadly Years (where Kirk "accidentally" lets the information slip in a code that had already been cracked).

Me.

But you are a pure sophist who is contentious merely for the sake of being contentious. Why should you be taken serious when you cry wolf?

Or, rather, I posit that this is at least as valid an assumption as thinking that desperately firing phasers would have sealed Kirk's fate.

But he couldn't fire phasers. The ship was entirely crippled. No warp drive. No impulse. No weapons systems. The Enterprise was a brick in space during the countdown.

If Kirk firing phasers would have sealed his fate, he was fine, because there was no way he could have fired them. Balok simply turned them off.

Or that breaking down in tears would.

We've explored this assumption. It is one which does not square with the text.

Assumptions, when they are valid, exclude other assumptions. I cannot, for example, assume that my car is in the parking lot where I left it and NOT in the parking lot where I left it. Assumptions give us a default frame of reference which guide our judgments and behaviors. You have to do more than establish that you can spin wild conjectures. You have to establish your assumption deserves to be considered ahead of others.

It was a test, after all - and in tests, there are infinitely many ways to fail, but typically just a few ways to succeed, and sometimes none.

What matters is not how many ways there are to fail a test, but the axis of behavior or knowledge that is being interrogated by that test.

Balok announces that he was testing the intentions (NOT the cleverness) of Kirk and his crew.

The episode that matters, that results in the curtain being pulled back, that reveals Starfleet's true intentions (their high-sounding words), is the moral test of whether the Enterprise would render aid to the ailing command ship.

You want to argue the Balok was testing on the additional axis of "malevolent cleverness." You're the one going beyond the text, so it is up to you to prove it. So far, we have wild speculation which is leveraged by an inconsistent skepticism.

And was waiting for Kirk to do something about it. We have no reason to think he would have been satisfied with "nothing" as Kirk's response;

Why not? Prove that the test fell along the lines of the additional axis that you assert. We have every reason to think that doing nothing would have (relevantly) NOT resulted in the Enterprise being destroyed, because it was only a test.

had this been the case, he wouldn't have needed ten minutes of "nothing", he could have written down the results much earlier and given Kirk a passing mark.

The agony-box test in Dune, for example, is not a test of ingenuity, but to see if a person can resist the urge to endure pain to avoid death -- to see if their rational mind can overcome their primal urge to remove their hand. Paul Atreides passes the test by doing nothing after enduring the agony.

Overall (big picture), I agree that Balok's test is NOT a do nothing test, because the real test comes last. More precisely, I contend that the countdown phase of the test (there are three phases - the buoy, the countdown, and the reversal) could easily be passed by doing nothing. The countdown merely puts the crew into a state of crisis. You have to take that time to both get them stimulated, but also to allow them to meditate on the situation. When put against the wall, do you live by your code? Balok tests this by turning the table against himself. Do you show mercy?

One that tests intruders and expects them to measure up.

But the question is HOW they are supposed to measure up. Balok tells us that his axis of inquiry was their true intentions. It is you who supposes that he must have been testing their cleverness to protect his technological resources, etc., etc.

That is all we know about him. The idea that he would have posed no threat to Kirk is your unwarranted speculation;

Unwarranted speculation? What I have argued is warranted by what's IN THE TEXT. You can watch the show and hear him say these things.

Moreover, I am not committed to the claim that at NO point would Balok possibly have destroyed the Enterprise. If, in the end game, the Enterprise cut loose a barrage of phasers and photon torpedoes at the small command ship, Balok might have had to fight back, if only in self-defense.

The only claim I am committed to is that the most reasonable conclusion to draw about the countdown phase of the test is that Balok had no intention of destroying the Enterprise at the end of the countdown, regardless of whether Kirk lied about Corbomite.

at most, it fits the facts equally well with the idea that Balok was the desperate last defender of a realm, willing to go to extremes to do his work.

No, it really doesn't. I have already dismantled this above.

Balok never states that he is the last defender of his realm. Balok is pretty chill. He likes to laugh and drink Tranya.

From which it then followed that Balok gave them the passing mark. Which is hardly unexpected, considering Balok himself is a master of deception, and no doubt considers deceit a virtue.

Yeah, because if Balok is so freaked out about defending his technological realm (of which he is allegedly the last defender), you want to throw in with people who will say anything or do anything to save their skins.

This completely cuts against the grain of Balok's disclosure that he was testing whether they had true intentions.

Well, it appears that he does destroy them. Else where are they? Why has nobody heard of the First Federation yet, and lived to tell the tale to the far-ranging explorers of mankind?

And now we've shifted from being the skeptic all the way to making the argument from ignorance.

Timo, why hadn't they ever heard about ANY of the warp capable cultures they met for the first time out there in space? I guess we should suppose that they also murdered all other space explorers. This is just laughable.

Sure, Balok is a liar.

When he is testing you with his puppet yes. We have no reason to suppose he was lying after the test. Kirk lied about Corbomite, but this does not commit us to supposing he is constantly lying.

But for some reason, you seem to accept at face value that he is as lonely as he claims.

Yes, because that is the most direct, charitable, and plausible reading of the text. We in that part of the show called the denouement, where all the loose ends of the episode are tied up. This is where questions are answered and things are brought to a close.

Kirk passing the test, surviving, and making friends with him is a rare achievement, then.

And we've turned the corner again, from skeptic to speculator.

1. We don't know how many species Balok encounters. The Enterprise may have been the first ship in many years.

2. We don't know that Balok kills those who fail the test (implied by your use of the term "survive"). For all we know, those who fail might just be sent along their merry way. Balok is so much more advanced than the Federation, that he can take a naturalist's approach to the situation. He can observe a species, determine if they are worthy of contact, and return them to their habitat if they are not.

3. Perhaps many other have passed the test too, but Balok is especially amused by Kirk's ploy and so wants more contact with humans.

We know that he desires company and conversation, because his ship is so advanced that it needs no crew, but we don't know why he is hanging out by himself.

The alternative to that being that Balok is telling even more complicated lies than either of us thinks, especially after dropping his disguise...

If so, the screenwriters are violating the conventions of the denouement, which is highly unlikely since every episode of TOS wraps things up very neatly (sometimes too neatly and tidily, as when they all have a chuckle about Spock's weird Vulcan-ness after several crew members die). There is nothing to indicate that this is an aberrant episode and that the third act is leading into a deeper game.

If we were supposed to suspect that this is the case, then we would also have to judge Kirk rather harshly, because he just left a rather stressed young officer in the hands of this monster. No one concludes this, of course, because this is NOT what we are supposed to conclude.

You seem to have a pretty weird idea of the concept of "test". What you describe is not testing, as it supposedly has no failing grade.

1. He learns how this species faces death.

2. More importantly, he primes the pump for the real test - what do they do after having been put at such a disadvantage and find that they could destroy him? Balok is getting the them rattled, making them think, setting them up. When that counter went down to zero and Kirk said nothing, our best projection is that Balok would not have killed them, but would have made his next move.

What you postulate is a meaningless prank.

No, I don't. It is a rather harsh prank, but it is a prank with a purpose. It is a very meaningful prank.

Which is a valid idea for the behavior of a by his own account bored superior alien species, of course - but in a strange bout of blindness, you seem to be thinking that the prank is my take and the test yours. It's the other way around.

No, it's a prank, a ruse, a trick, a hoax, a stunt, a ploy, which is in service of a test.

Reverend Mother Gohiam, for example, justifies her deception (when you put your hand in the pain box you can't see it, but it creates the perception of real burning, and the Reverend Mother tells hims that his flesh is burning and crisping), on the grounds that she couldn't go around maiming humans. Her case is different, of course, in that she definitely meant business with Gom Jabbar - that aspect of the test is NOT a ruse (The Lady Jessica, for example, knows what the test entails and worries that her son may very well die) - the deception lies in the perceived damage to the appendage (pain by nerve induction).

 

[Knight Templar]

On the other hand, the "test" was still pretty dangerous.

It was pretty well inferred that the Enterprise came close to blowing up during the tug of war with Balok's pilot ship (Spock: 'She'll blow soon!') so it isn't hard to see how a miscalculation by Balok (what if it had taken an extra minute for Enterprise to break free?) could've turned the Enterprise into a brightly burning star.

 

[YARN]

On the other hand, the "test" was still pretty dangerous.

It was pretty well inferred that the Enterprise came close to blowing up during the tug of war with Balok's pilot ship (Spock: 'She'll blow soon!') so it isn't hard to see how a miscalculation by Balok (what if it had taken an extra minute for Enterprise to break free?) could've turned the Enterprise into a brightly burning star.

A fair point. Then again, he probed the Enterprise so thoroughly that he had as much information about the ship as just about anyone. If, however, Kirk didn't know how to manage his own ship's performance envelope and destroyed his own ship by accident, some (if not most) of the blame would be with Kirk. This is a far cry from Balok intentionally blasting the Enterprise out of existence at the end of a countdown which is only supposed to be a test.

 

[Knight Templar]

Wonder what would've happened if at the end, Kirk had brought the Enterprise over to transporter range....and then opened up without warning with photon torpedos?

Chances are Baloks ship would've been blown away as superior or not, its systems were shut down.

I thought the test wasn't how the Enterprise crew would face death, but how they would react to having Balok helpless and at their mercy after he had repeatedly threatened and terrorized them.

 

[YARN]

Wonder what would've happened if at the end, Kirk had brought the Enterprise over to transporter range....and then opened up without warning with photon torpedos?

Chances are Baloks ship would've been blown away as superior or not, its systems were shut down.

I don't know. I always got the sense that Balok was in control. I mean, if you can shut down systems preferentially (e.g., you shut down warp power and impulse and weapons, but not life support and the computer), this implies that Balok has a great deal of knowledge of the internal states of the ship. To control something, you have to know where it is and what it is doing.

A second consideration is that Balok's strategy reflects a great deal of caution. He tells Kirk that he could not be certain of his intentions - even after probing the entirety of the Enterprise's data tapes. If Balok is being cautious, so why take such a big risk? It does not seem that Balok was taking any great risks here. He was toying with the crew.

I thought the test wasn't how the Enterprise crew would face death, but how they would react to having Balok helpless and at their mercy after he had repeatedly threatened and terrorized them.

I think that was the main point of the test. Again, he confirms that he was testing their intentions at the end, so this is the only confirmed design of his that we have on record.

There is, however, a nagging question. What was his end game going to be if Kirk didn't play his own bluff? Why would Balok paint himself into a corner with his own bluff to destroy the Enterprise? I mean, after the clock counts down to zero, he's got to deliver the goods (i.e., death) to maintain his facade. Since Balok is not malevolent, we have to assume that he had some other planned end-game. We could speculate---perhaps he would have sent another booming message announcing that the First Federation had changed it's mind and would confiscate the Enterprise and then have engine problems while towing it?--but I don't think we need to.

There are two answers I can think of as to why he would push the scenario so hard that he would have do something creative to get himself out of the "YOU ALL DIE IN 10 EARTH MINUTES" corner he painted himself into. 1. He really wanted to push them to the wall. Make them think that they were going to die, to see if they would follow their own ethical code when the tables were turned. 2. Balok had an additional interest in seeing what the crew would do during those minutes. Would they make threats? Would they beg? Would the crew mutiny? Would they try to make a desperate attempt at escape in shuttles or escape pods? Would they meet the moment serenely? Would they attempt a trick of their own?

NOTE: These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. He could have been serving both purposes at once.

I'll admit it though -- I kind of like the notion of duality with the Kobayashi Maru/Agony Box and may be projecting here.

If we go strictly be what we see on the screen, then #1 is the explanation that makes the most sense -- do you walk the walk when your aroused emotional response will be to retaliate?

What do you think?

 

[Knight Templar]

If you go by the novel by Diane Carey "Battlestations" then Baloks ship the Fesarius was not really the monstrously powerful supership that he implied to the Enterprise crew. It was just a giant ship built to tow asteroids for processing and actually had no weapons aside from the ability to selectively shut down the Enterprise systems.

If that was true, the Balok was the one who truly ran a collosal bluff on Kirk and not the other way around.

Some credence in my opinion to this idea is given in the episode where Balok refers to the Fesarius as "this entire complex" which makes me think the Fesarius was actually just some huge space going automated factory.

This would explain why despite the First Federation being on friendly terms with the Federation that apparently none of their technical innovations made it into StarFleet ships.

 

[YARN]

If you go by the novel by Diane Carey "Battlestations" then Baloks ship the Fesarius was not really the monstrously powerful supership that he implied to the Enterprise crew. It was just a giant ship built to tow asteroids for processing and actually had no weapons aside from the ability to selectively shut down the Enterprise systems.

If that was true, the Balok was the one who truly ran a collosal bluff on Kirk and not the other way around.

Some credence in my opinion to this idea is given in the episode where Balok refers to the Fesarius as "this entire complex" which makes me think the Fesarius was actually just some huge space going automated factory.

This would explain why despite the First Federation being on friendly terms with the Federation that apparently none of their technical innovations made it into StarFleet ships.

It would make Balok a bit more likeable if he wasn't in complete control the whole time. If he was taking risks of his own with this test, then he looks less like a child tormenting ants with sunlight and a magnifying glass and more of an inquisitive gambler.

It's an interesting notion, but my preference is to stay close to the text.

 

[Timo]

You deploy an all too convenient sort of skepticism.

Why should it be anything else? The purpose of the argument, after all, is to expose the fundamental hollowness of what you try to say (even if you drown it in verbosity) - there's no point in going beyond that. If it's inconvenient for you, all the better.

Despite the "arguments" you present, it appears that you simply decide that a short person who smiles a lot must be a joke rather than a threat. Hence, a complex series of tests must have a fundamentally humorous and harmless intent. And "proving" that is a fish-in-a-barrel exercise, because the complexity of the test allows for an infinite number of interpretations - none of which can be claimed to be based on "the text" (least of all when deriving from the word of the episode's explicit trickster).

We saw a test. The test pitted two players with armageddon-level weaponry against each other in artificially created animosity. The "intent of the test" aspect thus is completely unrelated to the issue of whether Kirk saved 430 bacons from rather hot fire: those lives were at mortal risk all the time, in a situation that had a greater number of negative than positive possible outcomes. Either side blinking at the wrong moment could have meant mass murder, even if neither side "intended" or desired it.

In this particular test, you fail.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

In this particular test, you fail.

Timo Saloniemi

That's an interesting point (if it was addressed in Yarn's long post, I'm sorry, but I couldn't get through all that). Sure it was a test and sure, Balok wound up being friendly because Kirk passed the test. But nobody in the episode mentioned what would happen if Kirk FAILED. If there is no penalty involved in failure then the test is meaningless. Why would Balok go to all the trouble? Balok's mission, apparently, was to intercept ships entering First Federation space and seeing if they are friendly. Hostile ships would then be destroyed. The Fesarius immobilized the Enterprise easily, so blowing it to hell it couldn't have been too difficult. Or do you think he would have said "well, you failed the test, please turn around and go home?"

Kirk may not have saved the ship with the Corbomite Maneuver specifically, but he more than likely saved the ship by passing the test. Otherwise the entire episode is just pointless.

 

[Timo]

The test would indeed be practical for screening out aggressive intruders, but it also seems to involve a major element of screening out those who have no guts. The border buoy allows the timid to turn back, but does not offer much opposition to those who persist with intruding; apparently, then, you can still get a passing grade if you destroy the buoy, and indeed ultimate friendship with Balok's people requires you to destroy that buoy!

If Balok's only purpose was to swat those who try to intrude, he'd not waste time with tests. If his only purpose was to seek out friendly folks, he would skip the part where the buoy attacks the intruder. The combination of test situations seems optimized for giving resourceful people like Kirk the passing grade. Of course, there may be other ways to pass the test, too, but the ways to fail are obvious, too: fail to respond to the buoy's aggression, fail to wriggle out of the grip of the Fesarius, fail to show mercy to the tugboat, and you have failed Balok. And it's the last failure that would clearly call for the most aggressive penalty, because at that point Balok has maneuvered himself into a corner. But since the penalty for failing with even the very first step, the buoy, is death from radiation, Balok's test is cast in an especially sinister light.

I wouldn't be worried about the episode being pointless - many a nonsensical plot still carries artistic or symbolic merit. But Balok's test itself becomes pointless if we ignore the penalty angle, and in that sense all the provocative talk about Kirk not doing anything much is simply incorrect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[YARN]

You deploy an all too convenient sort of skepticism.

Why should it be anything else?

Three reasons spring to mind.

1. If you consistently apply your level of skepticism, there is no chance for reasonable dialogue. We can't know if Balok was lying at the end. We can't know if the Fesarius could have destroyed the Enterprise. We can't know if Balok would have destroyed a distress beacon. We can't know if the center of the Fesarius is made of cheese. etc. etc. We can't know anything, so we can't say anything either. That's bad for dialogue.

This is why you don't get to be randomly skeptical of accepted facts - you have to overturn the presumption in favor of those facts. You have the burden of proof.

2. It is manifestly unfair. You choose to be skeptical on points which are not favorable to you, but not skeptical about all the extra-textual speculation you engage in. Fairness requires some level of consistency.

The problem is, you are only skilled at being contentious. But anyone can be contentious. Anyone can bring discussion to a grinding halt by strategically refusing to accept evidence and reasoning. This is not really interesting - anyone can be unfair. Skilled argument requires a certain amount of intellectual honesty and goodwill. It takes more skill, because you have to hold true not only to your claims, but also to the types of evidence and reasoning you accept (you don't get to treat it like a salad bar).

The biggest reason is

3. You wind up performatively contradicting yourself when you so lazily attempt to have your cake an eat it too. You are skeptical of one aspect, but credulous of an even more doubtful aspect. You can argue that no conclusions can be drawn from allegedly uncertain evidence and reasoning, but then draw conclusions of from evidence and reasoning which is just as (and even more so) uncertain. You, in effect, one may use uncertain evidence, but one may not use uncertain evidence.

The purpose of the argument, after all,

Arguments can have many purposes. They can be good faith attempts to find the truth. They can be dialectical contests. They can be mere contentiousness (you argument-style which is in the spirit of the Dissoi Logoi falls here). They can amount to nothing more than agonistic personal attacks. This list is not exhaustive, but it does reveal that some varieties of argument are more interesting and worthwhile than others.

is to expose the fundamental hollowness of what you try to say (even if you drown it in verbosity)

Rather, you're drowning in analysis. You're failing to respond to developed lines of argument. I thought you gave as good as you got.

- there's no point in going beyond that. If it's inconvenient for you, all the better.

No, the gold standard is not what is inconvenient for your interlocutor. It would be inconvenient for you if I stole your wallet or stole keys off your keyboard so it would be harder for you to post responses.

There is a required amount of intellectual honesty which is required to make the game work. Sophistically hopping around and being skeptical one moment and credulous the next while ignoring massive chinks of analysis of your interlocutor does not make for an interesting argument.

Despite the "arguments" you present, it appears that you simply decide that a short person who smiles a lot must be a joke rather than a threat.

Again, I am NOT committed to proving the claim that Balok posed no threat whatsoever. I am only committed to the claim that Balok would NOT have destroyed the Enterprise at the end of the countdown sequence if Kirk had done nothing.

Hence, a complex series of tests must have a fundamentally humorous and harmless intent.

No, my contention is that this was a first contact exercise. Can he trust their intentions? Are they worthy of letting in?

I don't think he was the Jigsaw Killer of space, creating elaborate death traps that he would only disable if his prey bullshitted hard enough.

And "proving" that is a fish-in-a-barrel exercise, because the complexity of the test allows for an infinite number of interpretations - none of which can be claimed to be based on "the text" (least of all when deriving from the word of the episode's explicit trickster).

You're are failing to deal with my literary/structural analysis of why we can trust Balok at that point (denouement).

You are AGAIN playing the arch-skeptic so as to deny what characters said to one another in friendship and peace.

We saw a test. The test pitted two players with armageddon-level weaponry against each other in artificially created animosity.

No, we saw the Enterprise get toyed with. Balok turned the ship off like a switch.

The "intent of the test" aspect thus is completely unrelated to the issue of whether Kirk saved 430 bacons from rather hot fire

The heck it isn't!

If Balok had not malicious intent (i.e., it was only a test), there was no bacon to save!

those lives were at mortal risk all the time, in a situation that had a greater number of negative than positive possible outcomes. Either side blinking at the wrong moment could have meant mass murder, even if neither side "intended" or desired it.

Except Balok was in control of the situation. He prevented the Enterprise from doing anything during the period when he alleged himself to pose a threat to their lives. The Enterprise could not fight. It could not flee. They had no choice but to just sit there. Then the die is glued to the table it is hardly reasonable to bit your fingernails worrying about how it might roll -- it wasn't doing anything until and how Balok determined it would.

 

[Ssosmcin]

The test would indeed be practical for screening out aggressive intruders, but it also seems to involve a major element of screening out those who have no guts. The border buoy allows the timid to turn back, but does not offer much opposition to those who persist with intruding; apparently, then, you can still get a passing grade if you destroy the buoy, and indeed ultimate friendship with Balok's people requires you to destroy that buoy!

If Balok's only purpose was to swat those who try to intrude, he'd not waste time with tests. If his only purpose was to seek out friendly folks, he would skip the part where the buoy attacks the intruder. The combination of test situations seems optimized for giving resourceful people like Kirk the passing grade. Of course, there may be other ways to pass the test, too, but the ways to fail are obvious, too: fail to respond to the buoy's aggression, fail to wriggle out of the grip of the Fesarius, fail to show mercy to the tugboat, and you have failed Balok. And it's the last failure that would clearly call for the most aggressive penalty, because at that point Balok has maneuvered himself into a corner. But since the penalty for failing with even the very first step, the buoy, is death from radiation, Balok's test is cast in an especially sinister light.

I wouldn't be worried about the episode being pointless - many a nonsensical plot still carries artistic or symbolic merit. But Balok's test itself becomes pointless if we ignore the penalty angle, and in that sense all the provocative talk about Kirk not doing anything much is simply incorrect.

Timo Saloniemi

Or, the destruction of the buoy is the trigger to get Balok's attention. If the buoy gets the ships to turn back, then there's no reason to get out of bed. So, once destroyed, Balok goes out there and see's who is coming up the driveway. I didn't imply that Balok's only mission was to swat intruders. It was to investigate and see who is a threat and who comes in peace.

So, no, it wasn't the corbomite bluff that did anything (although it may have given Balok pause and an excuse to stall and test further), it was the fact that, after they broke away, Kirk turned around and went to meet Balok even after all they'd been through. Not to destroy him, but to create a relationship.

Since Balok's test was pretty much the episode, I would hope it retains a point.

 

[T'Bonz]

Jeez, Yarn, can you shorten your posts? I have to read through all this shit...

 

[YARN]

Or, the destruction of the buoy is the trigger to get Balok's attention. If the buoy gets the ships to turn back, then there's no reason to get out of bed. So, once destroyed, Balok goes out there and see's who is coming up the driveway. I didn't imply that Balok's only mission was to swat intruders. It was to investigate and see who is a threat and who comes in peace.

So, no, it wasn't the corbomite bluff that did anything (although it may have given Balok pause and an excuse to stall and test further), it was the fact that, after they broke away, Kirk turned around and went to meet Balok even after all they'd been through. Not to destroy him, but to create a relationship.

Since Balok's test was pretty much the episode, I would hope it retains a point.

This sounds right.

 

[Knight Templar]

The Corbomite Manuever also proved pretty handy in The Deadly Years as well. Wonder how many times Kirk pulled this same stunt during his long career?

 

[Robert D. Robot]

^ "Of course... the old Corbomite in the hull trick....
.... and I fell for it!" (with apologies to Maxwell Smart)

 

[Knight Templar]

^ "Of course... the old Corbomite in the hull trick....
.... and I fell for it!" (with apologies to Maxwell Smart)

Well then again, if the Corbomite in the hull trick was pulled by Kirk several times, and then other starship captains started using it as well (once Kirk bragged about it naturally) such things can start to have a life of their own. That is, adversaries start to believe there really is such a thing as Corbomite because "the humans keep using it and why would they use something completely imaginary".

 

[YARN]

^ "Of course... the old Corbomite in the hull trick....
.... and I fell for it!" (with apologies to Maxwell Smart)

Well then again, if the Corbomite in the hull trick was pulled by Kirk several times, and then other starship captains started using it as well (once Kirk bragged about it naturally) such things can start to have a life of their own. That is, adversaries start to believe there really is such a thing as Corbomite because "the humans keep using it and why would they use something completely imaginary".

Because Romulans and Klingons (and other races) have engaged Earth vessels "since the early days of space travel," and have empirically established that when destroyed there is no equal and opposite reaction which damages attacking ships.

Anyone who has experience with Starfleet knows better. It's a trick you can play on a cautious (gullible?) adversary who does not know you. Kirk pulled one over on the Romulans in The Deadly Years by claiming the Corbomite device was "recently installed," but then after the Enterprise ran rabbit immediately after the Romulans gave ground, they'd be fools not to figure out that it was a ruse. And indeed, no Romulan ship afterward showed any qualms about being close to any Federation ship it engaged.