I've known that a cloaking device 'did' for the first Enterprise since I was a young lad and before I even watched The Search for Spock, by virtue of owning the 'Read-Along' kids version cassette tape of the film.
This isn't the first appearance of a cloaking device in the show - that's "Balance of Terror", which I watched quite a while back now, but this is the first one where they're truly effective.
It also has another first, which I'll discuss later.
****
Kirk has seemingly gone crazy, ordering the Enterprise to not only go into the Neutral Zone but straight past it into Romulan space. At which point, the Romulans come out of nowhere and surround the ship. Now the crew must get out of this situation...
****
The Romulans, making their second and final TOS appearance, were very much the (then very closed off) People's Republic of China to the Klingon Soviet Union. They even use Klingon ships in this episode, the D7 making its first appearance in the series as broadcast originally here - they were added to some remastered episodes in Season 2 later. Real-life is mirrored here as the Chinese still use a lot of Soviet/Russian tech in their military to this day.
This is very much a Cold War episode, inspired by the real-life capture of an American patrol boat, USS Pueblo, by North Korea in January 1968 with the crew being held by the DPRK during nearly all of 1968 before their release. The ship remains in the Hermit Kingdom's hands as a museum ship - and is still officially a commissioned US warship to boot.
The story is a classic war movie/spy movie affair, with misdirection, infiltration, and a feeling of menace on the Romulan vessel. Or an attempt at the latter. The overall production doesn't quite work in that regard, possibly because no-one fries a redshirt.
The episode makes effective - if predictable - use of that thing in long-running TV shows where an episode apparently has one character completely betray the others, but in reality, they're doing it to get in close with the baddies. It's called Fake Defector and I was the one who came up with the title at TV Trope.
(Among some of my many contributions in the early days, not all of which involved puns)
The Fake Defector in this episode is Spock, who as a Vulcan is like Romulans in a way that's been expanded by the lore all the way up to the present day. This includes him "killing" Kirk by means of a "Vulcan death grip", which like the "nerve pinch" is something kids can safely copy in the playground. This fakery manages to convince the entire crew, including McCoy. But we'll get back to Kirk later.
When we first see the Romulan commander, she's introduced by the dramatic reveal... that she's a woman! She is the first female starship commander we see in Star Trek - she promptly does her gender few favours by dressing in a truly short dress and thigh-high boots, changing into a slinky one-shoulder dress and falling in love with Spock. Romulans are the ones that aren't completely logical, but the half-human Spock has feelings for her too and there is some intense facial stroking. Apart from that, she's a competent commander and her subordinates are OK too.
Kirk, whose earlier craziness had been faked as part of a scheme to make the whole thing plausible deniable if the operation goes pear-shaped, returns from the dead... and then has cosmetic surgery to make him look like a Romulan. This is the silliest thing in the episode by a space mile; couldn't they just use make-up. It's a pity, as Shatner is again good here. So is everyone else, Scotty in particular.
The climax sees the crew make their escape in great style, with Scotty's engineering prowess saving the day and head home with what they intended to get. Kirk needs some more surgery... but we don't get a peal of laughter. Thankfully.
****
Conclusion
This is considered one of the better episodes of TOS and indeed the franchise. I personally found the romance subplot and the Kirk surgery jarring, so I can only give this...
6/10
Discovery returns next week, but with new Trek running through for a while yet, I intend to carry these on.
No comments:
Post a Comment