Enterprise Incident : Gulf of Tonkin incident in space ?

[DumbDumb2007]

Was the enterprise Incident supposed to be the Gullf of Tonkin Incident in space ?
I read over the weekend about a US Navy ship that was captured by the North Vietnamese during the Vietman War.
It's captain mentioned something about the reports of his death being premature.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

USS Pueblo Incident.

TGT

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

Different kettle of fish, are you sure you're not thinking perhaps of the SS Mayaguez or the USS Pueblo?

EDIT: Beaten to it I see, but I did wrap the coding up at least

 

[Outpost4]

I don't see the episode modeled after the Pueblo incident. They're two different stories. Lloyd Bucher was no Spock. In the episode, Spock played a traitor. Lloyd Bucher retired a Navy man. While his actions back then were controversial, I think he did the best he could in a tough situation. He certainly did nothing traitorous. Not even close. No action was ever taken against him by the US Navy.

Now maybe if Spock had send back a secret signal to the Enterprise, flipping off the Romulans, I'd go along with this.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

The Squire of Gothos said:
Beaten to it I see, but I did wrap the coding up at least

What a coincidence; so did I.

TGT

 

[GodThingFormerly]

DrunkenSanta said:
I don't see the episode modeled after the Pueblo incident.

David Gerrold discussed D.C. Fontana's wish to retell the event - and Fred Freiberger fucking it up - in The World of Star Trek.

TGT

 

[trevanian]

DrunkenSanta said:
I don't see the episode modeled after the Pueblo incident. They're two different stories. Lloyd Bucher was no Spock. In the episode, Spock played a traitor. Lloyd Bucher retired a Navy man. While his actions back then were controversial, I think he did the best he could in a tough situation. He certainly did nothing traitorous. Not even close. No action was ever taken against him by the US Navy.

Now maybe if Spock had send back a secret signal to the Enterprise, flipping off the Romulans, I'd go along with this.

To amplify on TGT ... Fontana's take before others messed it up was that the E would be on a spy mission, then caught. Rather than have his crew tortured and killed, Kirk would agree to sign a confession of espionage against the romulans. It was supposed to be a retelling of the Pueblo. Gerrold had some thought on how it could have ended, with Kirk squaring off against an admiral over what he had done, and it could have been dynamite stuff.

Sidebar on this for me is that reading that about the aborted history of the episode inspired me to look at another 60s-era naval, incident, the attack on the USS LIBERTY in international waters by Israelis, and use that as a very rough basis for a spec that got me in to pitch unsuccessfully at TNG. I think that even now, 40 years later, Israel only paid token damages and reparations, even though many were killed by repeated machine gun strafings and napalming by jet and a direct torpedo hit by boat (after which the american escape rafts were machine gunned.)

James Ennes' book ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY is still my favorite piece of millitary nonfiction, and it'd make a helluva movie if anyone had the guts to do it.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

^^^This must have been in Fontana's story outlining phase, as her first draft script is very close to what ended up on the air. In fact, despite her protestations over the years, the Spock/Commander "romantic interludes" are actually worse than what aired, with ol' Spock slinging a few sexual innudendos that I would have been embarrassed to try at 17, let alone as an adult. But, as I noted in my review of the script, she does claim they were added under protest. I hope to someday glom on to her first Freiberger-free outline.

Sir Rhosis

 

[trevanian]

Well, I assume standards&practices was still giving notes during 3rd season, and they may have scuttled the Pueblo idea (I'd've been astonished if they did not scuttle it) on the basis of the story premise or treatment, with Freiberger just the bearer of bad news. But if they did, I'm surprised Freiberger didn't just cut her off at that point (maybe he figured she could at least get to a revised first draft faster than an outsider?)

 

[Sir Rhosis]

One thing to note: at the time the episode was written, produced and aired, the Hawaiian peace symbol-flashing men* of the Pueblo were still being held. IIRC, it was late 68/early-69 before they were released.

Sir Rhosis

*IIRC, that was what they told their captors the extended finger meant in all of the propaganda photos showing them dining and lounging about.

 

[trevanian]

I got a tape recorder for xmas in 68, so they must have gotten released/repatriated that month, cuz Pueblo stuff (along with Apollo VIII) was among the first stuff I ever tape recorded. So yeah, that would have been well after EI was shot, as production wrapped on the series at the end of 68 or the first week of 69 (Joan Winston's set visit diary probably has the exact dates.)

 

[Captain Robert April]

An aspect that shouldn't be overlooked is that while, yes, the initial inspiration for this episode was the incident with the USS Pueblo, another big influence was Star Trek's next door neighbor on the Paramount lot, Mission: Impossible. Stealing a cloaking device right from under the Romulans' noses was a mission worthy of the IMF team (with Kirk, somewhat ironically, taking on the master-of-disguise part that Nimoy would take up later himself on M:I the next year).

 

[Plum]

^^^
That ep suddenly makes sense to me now that you say that, it's a spy story. It has all the elements, romance included as well as disguise.

 

[Wingsley]

I recall that David Gerrold objected to "The Enterprise Incident" in his mid-1980's book "The World of Star Trek", calling it a poor commentary on the Pueblo Incident, in which many people objected to the U.S. so closely spying on North Korea after the U.S.S. Pueblo was captured by the Communists. I suppose it was quite a shock for people to discover the Pueblo's intelligence-gathering mission back then, just as many people balked at the Powers/spy plane scandal a decade earlier. There are powerful arguments, pro and con, regarding the Pueblo incident. 1968 was, after all, in the middle years of the Cold War.

Having said all that, "The Enterprise Incident", the way the story is framed, does not make an allegory for the Pueblo Incident. The Pueblo was a small vessel. The only way one (in hindsight) can see a similarity in the stories would be if the North Koreans had captured one of our top-of-the-line aircraft carriers. Conversely, the only way "The Enterprise Incident" could've matched the Pueblo Incident would be if the Romulans had captured some other, smaller starship and Captain Kirk were eventually ordered to give up and not to try to recover the crew. STAR TREK's series format and FX setup was obviously unprepared (there were no other Starfleet vessel classes introduced into TREK until years later) and there would have to be a story arc in place to show Kirk knowing the characters from the smaller starship to be captured, so that the viewer would better understand who these strangers were. It is readily apparent that TOS' makers were not prepared to orchestrate all of this to properly tell the "real" story.

Having said all that, there are good arguments (again, in hindsight) for both the Pueblo Incident and "The Enterprise Incident". Both are Cold War spy stories, with American/Federation captains putting their ships at risk to keep a dangerous foe in check. We can sit back and say the Cold War is over, but obviously we also learned the Communists were a serious threat: look what they did in Afghanistan and other places. Clearly, TREK could not depict the Enterprise being either seized or destroyed by the Romulans.

I do not mind seeing the Federation using Kirk and the Enterprise to take a risk in standing up to a Romulan threat. But Gerrold does (sort of) make a point when he said that there were "plot holes big enough to fly a starship through." I do not mind the bit about Spock seducing the Romulan Commander. The Vulcans could've given them intel to set that up. What I object to is the ease with which...

1: Kirk suddenly becomes a Romulan. Is it that easy???

2: Kirk steals this doohickey called a cloaking device. That easy, huh? Just unplug the big alien light bulb and beam me up Scotty!

3: Scotty just takes the thing, plugs it in and it works just in the nick of time.

4: The Enterprise escapes at Warp 9. Since when is it that easy to run away from three Romulans ships, and that fast, no less?

The other thing I object to is the Romulans using a Klingon ship design. We go to the trouble of having another Romulan show, all those FX, and we don't even get to see Romulan ships. Why would the Romulans use Klingon designs? Why would the Romulans want anything to do with Klingons? It seemed so out-of-character. In fact, "Balance of Terror" made it clear to me that the Romulans didn't need to make deals with anyone; they conquered those who became their allies.

If you can get past those issues, then yes, "The Enterprise Incident" was a neat little outing. And fun. Nothing like risking your best ship to steal an uber-cool stealth device from an already irritable enemy.

 

[Matt]

Fun history fact: Our ships were never attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. We escalated our role in Vietnam based on fabricated reports of said attack from the Executive office of the President. This is even admitted by the officials at this point.

"Yeah, we made it up. There was no attack."

 

[DavidFalkayn]

^
There were actually two alleged attacks--on the 2nd and 4th of August. While an incident might have taken place on the 2nd, both Johnson and Giap both confirm that nothing happened on the 4th, with Johnson in a taped conversation, admitting that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never occurred, that he used it as a pretext for increased American involvement.

 

[Timo]

...To be more exact, there were real exchanges of fire at Tonkin, although mostly against imaginary rather than real opponents (the USN was piss-poor at radar fire control in littoral conditions at the time, seeing "ghosts" everywhere), and there was lots of confusion and apparently a bona fide conviction by many of those involved that they had been attacked. The higher-ups just bloated up the minor incidents, and played down the aspects of US aggression there, rather than fabricating anything out of whole cloth. (Quite probably a whole-cloth story would have been created if all that confused shooting had not happened, though.)

But that's a minor distinction. And surely Star Trek could have "told this story", or any one of the others, even when substituting Trek details - such as a big, heavily armed combat and exploration ship rather than a small, unarmed spyship in case the Pueblo story was told. That's what artistic license is all about.

1: Kirk suddenly becomes a Romulan. Is it that easy???

I don't see why not. He's not just in a convincing disguise, infiltrating a hierarchial organization where superiors are expected to be obeyed rather than questioned. He's also on a carefully planned mission, and no doubt has extensive resources to draw from. All the secret codes and ship layouts and obscure Romulan customs accumulated by agents in the preceding decades would be made available to him. Or at least as far as "need to know" went - and in this crucial mission, it would go pretty far.

2: Kirk steals this doohickey called a cloaking device. That easy, huh? Just unplug the big alien light bulb and beam me up Scotty!

I have little problem with this part. Since Starfleet knew about the new device, it's not impossible that they had some idea of what it would look like, where it would go, and how grabbable it would be. It's the next concept, that whatever Kirk stole could actually be made to work, let alone on short notice, that borders on the impossible. Far more probably, Kirk could have stolen a single crucial component that would tell Starfleet what made the new cloaks tick, but wouldn't act as a cloak on its own right.

However, we may have misunderstood the true scope of the operation. Starfleet may well have known a lot about that device, including direct inside information from a Romulan who was actually working on them. Kirk would then be briefed not only on what to grab, but actually on which screws to twist and by how many degrees so that the thing would come loose. Sort of like some of the Enigma machine captures in WWII: the British sailors raiding the German sub would know exactly what kind of a device to look for, and what accessories and books to take along with it, and also how to prevent Germany from learning that anything was taken.

4: The Enterprise escapes at Warp 9. Since when is it that easy to run away from three Romulans ships, and that fast, no less?

I wouldn't think there's any problem in breaking free from a "siege" by three enemies in 3D space as such. And a warp 9 dash "thataway" would leave the enemy no reaction time, although there would be the very real risk of them giving pursuit. The implausible part would be in powering up for that warp 9 dash without the Romulans noticing and opening fire. Surely the enemy would be aware of the risk of such an escape, and would require Scotty to shut down something crucial that takes a long time to bring up to working order again?

But Starfleet might have been prepared for that very thing, too. Even though Scotty seemingly wasn't in on the plan, his ship might have been rigged to allow for "silent power-up". Indeed, since Scotty had his hands full with the cloak, one of his underlings might have been the co-conspirator in charge of the engines, holding the secret of the quick getaway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Maurice]

^^^Given that no one seemed to know diddly squat about the Roulans in "Balance of Terror", such intel seems highly unlikely and improbable.

 

[Timo]

I rather think Kirk just wasn't Starfleet's best and brightest when it came to knowledge of Romulans in "Balance of Terror". His extensive ignorance there doesn't match later descriptions of UFP/Romulan relations; probably some other Captain would have been less in a need of a "Who the hell are these guys?" briefing in the situation.

The operation in "The Enterprise Incident" could hardly have been conducted unless Starfleet knew more than a thing or two about the Romulans: fleet deployments, technological details, personnel records, cultural data. And just like the 24th century "isolation" we hear mentioned prior to TNG "The Neutral Zone" is later revealed to have been punctuated by all sorts of intelligence gathering and aggression, the "isolation" between the old war and "BoT" may have been in name only - much like the novels would have it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

There was nothing stopping individual Vulcans (and organizations of same) from visiting the Romulans after "Balance of Terror", or even covertly before.