3.2 — “The Enterprise Incident”

3.2 — “The Enterprise Incident”

Plot: Captain Kirk has been acting erratically. He orders the Enterprise to penetrate the Neutral Zone, and to move from there into Romulan space. Soon the ship is surrounded by hostile ships. An exchange of hostages leaves Kirk and Spock captured on a Romulan vessel, face to face with a female Romulan commander. Will Spock betray the Federation in order to save the life of his Captain and the Enterprise crew?

Thoughts: After the last episode, “Spock’s Brain,” what a change of pace. Taut, dramatic, and positively plausible-seeming in comparison (was that the reason for selecting the episode airing order?). 

There seem to be some continuity changes between these Romulans and the Romulans of episode 1.14, “Balance of Terror.” What happened to Romulans being so secretive that no one from the Federation had ever seen what they look like? I would have liked to have seen some of the submarine-inspired ship design carried forward into the new ship, but I suspect that the declining third season show budgets made this impossible. We don’t hear any talk of their twin planets, or the other back story from season one.

Budgetary constraints may have also been behind the use of the Klingon ship model for the enemy vessels, instead of the Romulan Warbird. Is it another sign of budget limitations that they apparently couldn’t afford a complement of redshirt security officers to meet the Romulan hostages when they beam aboard the ship? The hostages could have easily taken over the Transporter Room, which would have led to a heck of a mess.

D.C. Fontana’s original teleplay called for both Kirk and McCoy to disguise themselves as Romulans and beam over, but someone pointed out that McCoy couldn’t very easily operate on himself. He does have a medical staff however–right? I wish Kirk had taken Sulu with him on this mission instead, the way he did in “Tomorrow is Yesterday.” But no, he goes it alone.

Spock’s scenes with the Commander are interesting–the high point of the episode. It’s a good thing he got that seduction practice in on “This Side of Paradise.” When Spock says “It would be illogical to assume all conditions remain stable,” Leonard Nimoy perfectly conveys the subtext, “You sexy kitten, climb onto my lap!”

The Romulan commander, unfortunately, comes off as a dupe. I can accept some compression of events due to television constraints, etc., but I think this could have been handled better. 

So–Spock now has a secret passion! Another new development for him. D.C. Fontana adds layers to the character every time she writes an episode (she also wrote “This Side of Paradise” and “Journey to Babel”). I wonder what became of the Commander? Wikipedia says that, since early Star Trek novels did not follow a consistent continuity, there are three different published versions of her story. Memory Alpha says they tried to get the actress to reprise the role in a sixth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Face of the Enemy”), but she was not available.

One lesson from this episode is that the transporter is at least as dangerous a weapon as a cloaking device.

4.5 out of 5 loyalty oaths maintained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enterprise_Incident