Balance of Terror

And they don't just have a Star Trek channel.

They used to run the original series and next gen.

And now they just, every episode has its own channel.

And I went, Oh my God, that's great.

And it's a wonderful vehicle for Picard because he has to navigate so much stuff.

There's this defector who's got this very provocative information that could start a war.

And it's very much like another great Romulan episode from the original series, Balance of Terror, where basically...

Whether or not the Federation goes to war is on the back of this one captain who's sailing along the neutral zone trying to figure out, okay, what the hell do I do here? And having to balance so many different needs and possibilities.

captain's log the headlines are in the coffee is hot and dave bowman has the con this is plausibly live

welcome back so i told you i was watching star trek last night next gen and i just randomly chose an episode i didn't i don't have a favorite next gen episode i just don't If I had to pick an original series episode that I liked, texture says, it would definitely be Balance of Terror.

Balance of Terror is a submarine film in a Star Trek episode.

I love that episode.

I also like Elon of Troyes, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

Pretty nice.

Next up we have Balance of Terror.

This is a two and a white enchantment saga.

Chapter one says destroy up to one other target artifact or enchantment.

So you seasoned Trekkers out there, just sit back and relax and enjoy our banter as we look at which episodes stand the test of time and remain important in the Trek scheme of things.

Today is a spotlight episode where we center our discussion on just one important episode, and that one is Balance of Terror.

That's written by Paul Schneider and directed by Vincent McEvity and originally aired on December 15th, 1966.

Let me give you a short summary of the episode.

Well, the outposts weren't, what, two miles deep? But, yeah.

So it was good what I saw of it.

But yeah, no, speaking of balance of terror, we got the Romulan bird of prey.

So we had the first of the bird of prey ships.

Amazing stuff.

I mean, I guess the closest they came was, you know, Balance of Terror, where it's basically the enemy below, which was a submarine movie.

But again, it but it puts it in a different context because the Romulans that it just has it has a very different feel, you know, and it's a great episode.

Mark Leonard's terrific.

The beauty of

Trek.

Yeah, but with the first Star Trek series, there's so many that I love, you know, Amok Time and Balance of Terror and on and on.

I mean, you know, it's like with Twilight Zone, it's an embarrassment of riches.

little one.

Season one, episode 14, Balance of Terror.

The USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, tracks and battles an invisible Romulan vessel equipped with a plasma fire cloaking device that is destroying Earth outposts along the Romulan neutral zone.

That's not a great description of the episode or the weapon, but that is what it is.

Ken? Balance of Terror.

Take it away.

Balance of Terror is one of the Star Trek classic episodes.

Introduces us, of course, to the Romulans.

It is so Trek this episode from all the reasons you gave around moral dilemmas and being of the time and talking about heavy issues in a way that allows you to be entertained and also debate internally.

One of the strengths of this, I think, is the fact that, again, referencing older episodes, this episode references balance of terror in the very threat that they are chasing.

This is the Romulans.

They show the map where it is.

Here's the pursuit of this Romulan.

craft that we can't see it is near Romulan space in balance of terror when again a ship shows up it's destroying colonies we see in that episode Kirk doggedly go toe to toe with that commander trying to hunt him down to get him to stop this from happening And this episode, like all the best of Strange New Worlds, where you and I have talked about them, about how it reframes some of the moments in the original series in ways that still feels Trek.

As I was watching this one, I was like, this is now reframing his dogged pursuit because he is looking at this as I bear some responsibility for these events.

This is the ship that got away.

Other notes to try to move on.

This suggests it leads into the story Balance of Terror, which is where we first encounter the Romulans.

Because Rieger admonishes Kirk for saying the terror will be on your head.

And the Balance of Terror was also about chasing an invisible ship.

Yeah.

Oh,