Agreed and the writer, Lee Cronin (Gene L.Coon) must have overlooked that small part of human nature!
JB
JB
50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread
- Thread starter dahj
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Star Trek
"The Enterprise Incident"
Originally aired September 27, 1968
Stardate 5027.3
What was going on the week the episode aired.
Historical note--The Pueblo incident, upon which this story was loosely based, was a very current thing at the time...the ship had been captured earlier that year and the crew were still being held prisoner.
This episode would be the first time that we see the D7 in airdate order...a great, classic design.
This is the first and only other major use of the Romulans since "Balance of Terror". It also occurs to me that this may be the first in-person encounter between humans and Romulans.
Spock's delivery of the line about the Romulans developing a cloaking device makes it sound like it's a new thing entirely, but ignoring his delivery, it can be read to mean that they've improved it to render the tracking sensors useless.
In general, this episode does a great job of teasing Kirk's situation...I distinctly recall that it had me going the first time that I saw it.
This episode also gives us perhaps the most fantastic Scotty moment in the series, when he threatens to destroy the Enterprise rather than let the Romulans board her. He was the highest-ranking member of the crew who wasn't in on the plan, and he couldn't have played his part better.
I don't think that the Romulan Commander comes off too badly. Yeah, she's being played, but she thinks she's playing them. And just the presence of a female commander was something at that point in time...the show didn't have the guts to give us one in Starfleet, or even to let Uhura sit in the center seat. And Joanne Linville brings a gravitas to the role that makes her not seem like somebody who would be easily duped. Overall, this feels like the show is doing Mission: Impossible, but without us being in on what the mission is at the beginning.
It is mighty conveeeeenient that on a ship that size, they happen to wander anywhere near the cloaking device chamber. I assume that Starfleet knew enough about the device to know that it had a central component that could be carried off the ship by one person.
Would the blue drink in the round glasses be the first appearance of Romulan Ale, albeit unnamed? Followed up by square glasses of what appears to be Romulan Tang.
That's one long-ass turbolift ride to Deck 2 at the end...somebody wasn't thinking.
Overall, I find this to be a good, engaging episode that contributed a lot to building the Trek mythos.
Next week:
"The Enterprise Incident"
Originally aired September 27, 1968
Stardate 5027.3
H&I said:
What was going on the week the episode aired.
Historical note--The Pueblo incident, upon which this story was loosely based, was a very current thing at the time...the ship had been captured earlier that year and the crew were still being held prisoner.
This episode would be the first time that we see the D7 in airdate order...a great, classic design.
This is the first and only other major use of the Romulans since "Balance of Terror". It also occurs to me that this may be the first in-person encounter between humans and Romulans.
Which is how it should be!Subcommander Tal said:
Spock's delivery of the line about the Romulans developing a cloaking device makes it sound like it's a new thing entirely, but ignoring his delivery, it can be read to mean that they've improved it to render the tracking sensors useless.
One of many examples in TOS of the term "starship" being reserved for the special class of ships to which the Enteprise belonged, rather than a generic term for all warp-driven vessels.Scotty said:
In other words...zey haff vays of making him talk!The Romulan Commander said:
In general, this episode does a great job of teasing Kirk's situation...I distinctly recall that it had me going the first time that I saw it.
This episode also gives us perhaps the most fantastic Scotty moment in the series, when he threatens to destroy the Enterprise rather than let the Romulans board her. He was the highest-ranking member of the crew who wasn't in on the plan, and he couldn't have played his part better.
I don't think that the Romulan Commander comes off too badly. Yeah, she's being played, but she thinks she's playing them. And just the presence of a female commander was something at that point in time...the show didn't have the guts to give us one in Starfleet, or even to let Uhura sit in the center seat. And Joanne Linville brings a gravitas to the role that makes her not seem like somebody who would be easily duped. Overall, this feels like the show is doing Mission: Impossible, but without us being in on what the mission is at the beginning.
It is mighty conveeeeenient that on a ship that size, they happen to wander anywhere near the cloaking device chamber. I assume that Starfleet knew enough about the device to know that it had a central component that could be carried off the ship by one person.
Would the blue drink in the round glasses be the first appearance of Romulan Ale, albeit unnamed? Followed up by square glasses of what appears to be Romulan Tang.
That's one long-ass turbolift ride to Deck 2 at the end...somebody wasn't thinking.
Overall, I find this to be a good, engaging episode that contributed a lot to building the Trek mythos.
Next week:
Yep. It was used almost exclusively. What does it say on the dedication plaque? STARSHIP. How was the Constellation identified? STARSHIP. No other warp capable vessel was referred to as such.
In my "head canon" the ship may have been a Heavy Cruiser or a Constitution class or whatever. But THE TWELVE ships that were like the Enterprise and on the Five Year Missions were the Starship Class.
I always remember this episode as terrific, but once Spock gets in Her quarters it just draaaaags.
Joanne Linville really made the part of the Romulan Commander her own. It seems she specialized in strong scheming women. I next watched her in Hawaii 5-0 episode 'Once Upon a Time', from a few months later. Here she is a quack faith healer, with computers, who is smitten with MacGarret, and tries to woo him to her evil side. The parallel is uncanny! The two parter is atypical of 5-0 with Jack Lord getting deeply emotional over a family matter, and chewing the scenery with Linville. Great stuff, check it out!
P.S. Lost in Space computer consoles make a cameo in the high tech doctor's lair.
P.S. Lost in Space computer consoles make a cameo in the high tech doctor's lair.
She also did a Route 66 in which she was married to Leslie Nielsen and the mother of little Ronny Howard:
https://www.metv.com/videos/route-66/poor-little-kangaroo-rat
https://www.metv.com/videos/route-66/poor-little-kangaroo-rat
A little late. Spock's Brain. I know that it is not one of the best but I still enjoy it.Good campy fun.I know that Nimoy did not think much of this episode but I was fooled. Spock had so many funny things to say, it seemed like he was having fun. It is nice to see Kirk interacting with Sulu, Chekhov and Uhura on the bridge trying to decide which planet to go to. Also, McCoy's pained reaction when he was learning all of the knowledge was always realistic to me. Not a brilliant episode, but entertaining. Not the worst episode in my opinion.
Which is how it should be!
Non-priority messages should be sent slowly to avoid using up bandwidth/frequency space. Emergency messages should be blasted through so that they're heard now by as many friendlies as possible.
The idea was that they didn’t have the option of sending real-time communications, at least in some areas. Space is big and even FTL signals would have a speed limit, however large.
That's indeed the idea, and I generally like it whenever TOS brings up the vastness of space, but in this case it's not making much sense that Starfleet wouldn't have some way of monitoring the Neutral Zone to be alerted and be able to respond to potential threats. Heck, the Romulans dispatched 3 ships there in a jiffy the second Enterprise crossed over.
This whole mission was supposed to be about stealing the cloaking device so that Romulans can't cross into Federation space undetected, but what good does it do even when they're detected crossing over if it takes three weeks to alert the nearest Starfleet people ...
I wonder if any of the asteroid bases surrounding the Neutral Zone were still manned in this episode? Considering half of them were destroyed by the Romulans in Balance of Terror surely the staff should be on danger money? 
JB
JB
In Balance it makes sense that the Zone is relatively unguarded because they haven't had any trouble with the Romulans for almost a century. But they blew up a bunch of outposts then and the whole point of this episode is that Starfleet is indeed worried about them, so it makes no sense they wouldn't have some sort of early warning system in place by which you can at least contact someone more swiftly in case of trouble, if not actually commit ships.
That always irked me, it would have made more sense for Scotty to have been involved and to have made preparatory engineering changes 'in line with the stolen specifications' or some such. Instead of just plugging-in an alien device with 15 minutes notice.
The Enterprise Incident is a good episode. It is considered one of the better episodes. I do like it but not as much as most people. I do not like the idea of the deception that the Federation is practicing. I don't like Kirk's crazy act when the crew thinks he is losing his mind.Still, even though Scotty should have been made aware of the plan before hand, it does give us one of my favorite scenes where Scotty sees that Captain Kirk is alive. Scotty looks at Kirk with his Romulan eyebrows and says that "you look like the devil himself" Scotty says it smiling. Very funny. Joanne Linville is very good as the Romulan commander. She is usually very good in whatever she is in.
Yup. Dumb.
Aliens often do have a penchant for highly impractical drinkware...
Scotty is obviously a descendant of the MacGyver Clan.
Is it? It is certainly memorable as the only other Romulan episode, the (out of order) debut of D7s, and Joanne Linville's Commander, but I'd never rank it among the better ones myself. It's alrightish I guess, but there's too much plot convenience going on for the whole caper to work as an actual viable thought out plan. The Romulans could have just blown up the Enterprise, not have invited Kirk and Spock over, had some extra security guarding the think they were trying to nick, and last but not least, done an autopsy on Kirk.
The Romulans also weren't aware that Spock was aboard, and since he's been on the Enterprise for over a decade now that's some serious slacking going on at the Tal Shiar of the time period...
Maybe the whole thing was actually orchestrated by Section 31?
It's funny how in the Star Trek universe when they have to pretend they're aliens they always have to go through actual surgery instead of just makeup like the actors do.
It is. Unfortunately. Typically, people lump it in with Tholian Web as one of the "exceptions" to the third season. In fact, it's a horribly plotted episode that makes no sense under the slightest bit of scrutiny (as you noted) and most of which reads like an embarrassing piece of Spock fanfic. I bet Nimoy loved it but it's barely above average and TOS' most overrated ep.
While I agree it has a lot of plot holes that could have been covered with some captain's log reveal like "The Federation has discovered that the Romulan Fleet is planning an attack on the Federation using a new version of the cloaking device which they have only one prototype in testing etc that will work on any modern Starship Klingon, Romulan, Federation etc. Undercover agents have spread the story that Commander Spock is unhappy working for Captain Kirk and they have sent the Enterprise out in the last known location of the prototype ship in order to bait them into a trap, blah blah blah".
They didn't blow the Enterprise up because they wanted to capture it. The Romulans wanted to play nice until they got command of the Enterprise;s bridge - returning their dead captain, etc.
I don't mind Spock's seduction scenes because they were done with a Vulcan flavour..I thought the episode was a bit stylish giving a bit of background for both Romulans and Vulcans. The Romulans in this episode and BOT were so much more interesting than anything seen on TNG or VOY.
I also hated it when they did surgery to look like an alien race. Its sort of like hitting the 4th wall.
The plot conveniences are really par for the course in an era when Mission: Impossible is one of the more popular shows on television.
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