And we were introduced to the fabulous talent of Mark Lenard, best remembered for his numerous later appearances as Sarek, but the story wouldn't have worked half as well without the gravitas he brings to the Commander's role here.
🎉😊I've grown to love Star Trek TOS so much that I purchased all 3 Seasons on DVD. Does anyone know if I Rip a video of a DVD and Upload it to my Channel, will I be warned that it breaks the UA-cam Policy? I don't know yet. Thank you for your attention. Have a momentous day 😊🎉
One of the first great episodes of the series, although in the episode Romulans have better weapons, the Enterprise has warp speed whereas the Romulans do not and is therefore a lot faster, so that kind of evens things out.
@@davidcraig9938 It is in the episode, Scotty says they have only impulse engines.The implication is that the Romulans home planets are not very far from the Neutral Zone. They are only featured on two episodes of the original series, this one and a third season episode " The Enterprise Incident ".
@@aligborat It's also possible that using the cloaking device and warp engines at the same time was not possible with Romulan technology at that point. Perhaps later, their technology improved.
For some reason, while I'd always loved Balance of Terror, it never really twigged with me that this was THE first time Star Trek had shown a proper ship-to-ship battle. It really is not only one of the best episodes of TOS, but one of the most influential episodes of television in the history of science fiction.
For me, the best episode was "Operation Anihalate". Look past the dismal flying ravioli, and I see the best performance from De Forest and the other two main characters. Bones was the main character, you all know that right?
BoT is, in my estimation, one of the best episodes in the franchise. It's too bad that so many other shows, including other iterations of Star trek, forgot that battles are stories too, not just eye candy.
Absolutely and it's really sad, when you think about it. The actual action-shots of BoT aren't that spectacular on their own, but the audience is glued to the screen, cause they are invested in the characters and everything that's going on in between and leading up to the action scenes. What makes the action so entertaining isn't the spectacle, it's the character and atmosphere. Too many shows and movies try to replace that with (admittedly good looking) CGI. All new Star Trek have an insanely high level of quality when it comes to CGI space battles, but visually, they usually are just sensory overload clusterfucks. And it might just be me, but somehow these newer movies and shows just don't have the same emotional weight to them. The duel between Kirk and Khan works, cause everything surrounding that space battle is multi-layered, emotional and interesting. STD/STP clusterfuck space battles seem like they just go through the motions and present us with (again: admittedly nice looking) CGI battles, but there's no heart in them. Know what I mean?
You have to admit, the writer of BoT made the battle into a story by have each commander talk to someone about what was going on in their minds. Without that, it's just old eye candy. By the end of the episode, was just a kid when I saw it, I wanted both ships to survive somehow and was greatly saddened by the Romulan ship loosing. Obviously did not want the enterprise to loose either. Great drama!
This episode cemented in my mind what deep space warfare would be like. You’d never “see” your enemy. You would fight using sensors (radar, sonar, etc), ships didn’t zip around like biplanes. The Romulan ship might have been more maneuverable, but it was also smaller and weaker and had to use stealth to compete and survive. There were also tactics, deceit, and long periods of time where nothing but tension existed. There was also the emotional and physical impact on the people crewing these ships. Loss of friends and the threat of an ever escalating war that could cost millions of people their lives. The perfect Star Trek episode.
My view on space combat is a bit different, assuming the lack of cloaks among all contenders. Space combat would have to be a knife fight in a telephone both. Otherwise there would be no combat; you're firing a weapon at me? *poof* I just warped somewhere else and there goes your shot... Computers would be designed around simply NOT being where a weapon is targeted by the time it gets there. Any combat would have to happen on the dirt, or toe to toe in space like ships of the line hundreds of years ago, or at most world war era battleships. The only alternative would be sniping and sneak attacks. Obliterate the foe from subspace, at warp, from behind a cloak, etc. THAT would have consequences for any species involved that would make space travel almost impossible...
@@scottysgarage4393 The best space combat I have seen has been in “The Expanse”. They take into consideration momentum, gravitational influences on ships and crew, kinetic weaponry. Start Trek still has its roots in “50’s sci-fi”, but there are aspects that I enjoy about it.
This is on point. It is difficult to portray the vast distances of battles on a TV screen when you need to show two ships slugging it out. They often say it with words, stating distances to other ships in terms of hundreds of kilometers and being in range of weapons. But those concepts are harder to grasp with words than with images. Yes, the other ship would be a blip on the sensor screen and nobody looking out a viewport would know they are there. Phasers would have effective ranges for this type of battle because they are columnated energy beams, and photon torpedoes have their own sublight drive which is probably comparable to impulse drive speeds and are launched from torpedo tubes much like a railgun. Heck, I play the old Star Wars X-Wing series games, and a fighter at 2.5km away (the edge of your warhead targeting range) is barely a pixel.
@@sherpajones Never be combat at that range for FTL ships. Your target would be long gone by the time your ordnance arrived. The only way for combat among ships at this technological level is if all parties have agreed this is where they duke it out, up close and personal. Or sneak attacks and stealth on unsuspecting victims. Even then, with instant warp jumps and near instant computing getting the jump on someone would be tough. Now sublight ships are a whole other thing with "conventional" long range combat being the same concept, relatively speaking, as planet-side.
Exactly. One person said that fighting would be like a "knife fight in a telephone booth," but in my book, "point blank" range for an anti-matter weapon is still better than a city block, and then you'd still have some piddly little weapons, like 3 stage thermonuclear implosion devices. The original series thought of space weapons as big enough you had to maintain a little distance. As special effects improved, the power of weapons had to be diminished to fit the TV frame.
Just recently rewatched Balance of Terror, and it absolutely holds up. I love the performance of Mark Lenard and Shatner especially. Lenard brings a sort of "Roman commander in a Shakespearean play" vibe, and I'm here for it. Great video.
This episode is one of the best because it also shows that not everyone survives a space battle. One of the most poignant scenes is when Captain Kirk tries to console Angela Martine when she just lost her fiance, knowing that nothing he says will console her but he has to show he cares. That's one of the hardest duties of a Captain, as opposed as to one of the happiest duties that Kirk said at the beginning of the episode when he was about to perform a wedding ceremony.
Incredible contrast between the beginning and end of the episode, that's why the episode trounces "The Enemy Below" in dramatizing the terror of war ...
@@Nebris I find the TNG episodes "Lower Decks" and "The Bonding" to hit much harder because the acting of all of the bereaved is a lot more convincing, but the story in BoT is a hard twist for sure.
And not only that, we get to empathize a bit with the Romulan crew as well, as the centurion (and long-time friend of the Commander) is also killed saving his life.
@@sherpajones give The Original Series some slack because after all, it was the original. The writers were still finding their way, establishing canon and all.
"The City on the Edge of Forever" is a perfect example. Hardly any special effects, no violence or phaser fire blowing other ships to bits. They used existing sets to depict New York in the Great Depression, and the set for The Guardian was small and relatively simple, but tremendously effective thanks to the dialog and the skill of the actor who voiced The Guardian. Pure storytelling of the highest order.
Not to try to insert the other Star franchise, but it's the reason why the lightsaber duels in the original trilogy were so much better than everything since, despite the lack of flashy fight choreography and acrobatics. Both Star Wars and Star Trek have suffered from a filmmaker preference of special effects over substance.
I met Lawrence Montaigne at a ST convention I went to and really liked talking to him. He played Decius in the episode and also Stonn in Amok Time, another great episode. He suggested I read a book called the Ethics of Star Trek and we discussed it a via email. He was a kind and friendly fellow.
Nice! I met Mark Leonard at a ST convention in the early 80s. He had a dry sense of humor and was appreciative of ST and the fans for making him so well-known.
Mark Lenard Romulan Commander Keras Star Trek TOS Balance of Terror Vulcan Ambassador Sarek ST: TOS Journey To Babel Klingon Captain of the IKS Amar Star Trek The Motion Picture TMP
Definitely in the top-3 among all episode, a "miniature movie" compressed into 54 minutes only ... The military episodes - absolutely ALL of them - were simply brilliant!
That movie has been criticized in its realism, since a U-Boat commander would always try to escape by stealth from an alerted surface warship (like a destroyer escort); mainly because of the latter's total dominance in speed (combined with the slowness of torpedoes, mismatches in ballistic firepower and hull integrity, vulnerability of U-Boats to nearby depth charges, etc.)
One of the really clever things that the creators of Star Trek came up with was deflector shields. We're told that starships have weapons so powerful that they can quickly destroy an enemy ship, so everyone protects themselves with barriers made out of energy. These barriers become depleted as they absorb damage, so the danger to the ship can be represented just by WORDS. "Shields holding at 70%." "Shields down to 15%!" They convey the effects of the battle without having to show the damage on their expensive models. It works so well that they keep using it today when they have the budget to show the ships being damaged if they want to.
The transporters were also a way to avoid long scenes aboard a shuttle getting from one place to another. They still have shuttle scenes but only if something interesting is to happen on it.
@@HepCatJack Yeah... To be more precise, inital thought was landing the whole ship (or maybe the saucer section, the idea of it being detachable is older than often thought), but that seemed impossible or at least too expensive to pull off, so they came up with beaming instead. That they did not even consider shuttles in the beginning you can tell by the early episode "The Enemy Within"... The whole thing about the landing party being trapped on the planet due to the transporter malfunctioning would not make sense if they had shuttles as a fallback option. By the way, in a similar way, the Photon Torpedoes. They were not a thing at the time of this episode, Balance of Terror. You can tell by the part where the Phasers being out of commission means the Enterprise is helpless.
_"They convey the effects of the battle without having to show the damage on their expensive models. It works so well that they keep using it today when they have the budget to show the ships being damaged if they want to."_ That's a common - and annoying - misconception. Deflector shields are harder to visualize than simply damaging a model: OG Star Trek only visualized shields twice in 79 episodes. Star Trek showed damage yyo the Constellation by buying a cheap plastic model of the Enterprise and burning it with a torch, snd even blew a Klingon ship to visible pieces. They could show battle damage cheaply if they needed to. Deflector shields were introduced because it's futuristic, not because it was necessary to save money.
@@HepCatJack That was another idea that Roddenberry took from "The Fly" movie. Star Trek itself was taken from the movie "Forbidden Planet". Gene sold the series to NBC as a "Wagon Train" to the Stars. Gene was not all that original but was responsible for pulling it all together.
I know it's not voted as the highest episode, but it's the one I watch over and over again more than any other. It never gets boring. I truly love all of TOS but this stands out for me.
I bet you never realized that Spock's dad was the Romulan commander, Mark Lenard played both parts! So lieutenant Stiles was correct in a twisted way !! LOL ...
@@systemBuilder Yeah that turn and nod by Spock can totally confuse anyone who is familiar with later Trek but then watches this episode for the first time. It's like he is acknowledging "Yup, it's my dad", when actually it is supposed to say something like "Cool, just as some scholars suspected, Romulans are an offshoot of us Vulcans"
Great analysis. I learned about the borrowings from "The Enemy Below" and "Run Silent, Run Deep" as an adult, but my parents were Trekkies and turned me on to the series at the tender age of 6 or 7, in 1969/70, so in effect this WAS my first 'submarine cat and mouse' film. I'm still charmed by all the younger folks who insist the effects are 'cheap' when what they are is 'expensive but technologically unsophisticated': y'all, visuals like this were what prompted a generation of SFX artists to keep doing even better, because they saw how good something could look and then imagined how much better they could make it. That said, the focus is definitely on the drama, and yeah, it's slow pacing by today's standards, but it's effective as hell. I'd never really pondered the parallels between Stiles' attempts to coax Kirk into quicker action and the Romulan counterpart who goes over his Captain's head to force him into a bad decision. Great observation. But let's also talk about a very subtle but important detail that tells us a lot about where Roddenberry and the rest of the team's heads were at: Stiles is a bit bigoted about Vulcans, but when he goes down to the phaser room, nobody bats a fricking eye at Uhura just parking her miniskirt right at his station. For 1966, on mass media television, that was HUGE. Even the original version of Christopher Pike was a little touchy about "a woman on the bridge" and here comes Miss Nichelle Nichols with the calmest "hold my beer" moment in early Trek. And nobody says boo, because in the Federation, human equality is already so normal we don't even notice. Bravo.
Yes. People bemoaning the SFX budget forget that _Star Trek_ was already one of the most expensive TV shows made back then. Lots of sets, lots of costumes. Yes, big budget Hollywood films looked better, but you couldn't blow that much money on a TV show.
@@somercet1 It's a natural mistake if one hasn't encountered some of the old source materials that discussed the high budget relative to the era, like the Stephen (Poe) Whitfield book. There's also the issue that even now, science fiction on film and TV can have higher costs overall. The overhead just to get up and running is a big commitment. As you pointed out: a police procedural show from the same era could make use of existing costumes, sets, and back lots; a show like Trek, or for that matter Lost In Space or Doctor Who, had to spend at least some portion of their budget on building things that didn't already exist, like spaceship/starship/TARDIS interiors. Which is probably also why now and then Trek would do an episode that came up with a way to justify using those same 20th-century-style resources ... think "The Return of the Archons" or "Miri" or "A Piece of the Action" with their "oh, hey guess what: this world is a parallel Earth, or influenced by Earth history" setups. Suddenly you get to use the same city lot everyone else was using, the gangster clothes, and so on. We may all love the Guardian of Forever, but in "The City on the Edge of Forever" contrast the basic-ass 'ruins of an ancient civilization' set with 'we're in Depression-Era America' where everything feels a looks a lot more detailed and realistic because those are sets amortized over dozens or hundreds of other shows. Bet you the Guardian prop cost more than renting the "New York" street for a few hours. Science fiction TV tends to 'age' quickly, and it's not at all certain that contemporary sci-fi will NOT suffer the same fate, just because it's gotten so much more easy to get some of the effects done. I'm not as hostile to some of the over-reliance on big confusing space battles as others may feel ... I'm not sure a space battle wouldn't get pretty crazy pretty fast, given what I hear about the realities of combat even in this world. But it's absolutely the case that having fewer resources to fall back on technologically, since they were already pushing technological limits, gave smart writers and producers back then lots of opportunities to use solid storytelling to sell a story that couldn't be visualized as easily. But this is also no knock on younger audiences: we're all formed by the media that we grow up with. They say that early film audiences were terrified by silent black-and-white images of trains coming toward them in the theater. They completely lacked experience with something like that NOT being a real-world sight, with it being something you could merely see on a screen. It's hard to recreate that feeling of novelty amongst people who have grown up with much more complex sights at much younger ages. It's simply unwise to forget that technology itself has a history, and that the vision of the future keeps changing partly because the technology we use to depict it has changed.
@@AncientWildTV absolutely. Someone like me grew up wondering why people didn’t ALREADY listen to women or black folks, or put them in positions of authority, because Uhura was fully normal to me, and even though I grew up mostly around white folks, the black folks I did meet were peers of my middle-class, college-educated parents. Much much later on a film like “Hidden Figures” told the story of how women like Uhura were already working on the actual space program at the time, but I was ready to meet someone like her in real life from a young age. There were a lot of people still claiming it was all just a fantasy of the far future. Same with Sulu or (whoever else). Gene Roddenberry sure wasn’t perfect, nor were my own folks, but they understood the way things should change. And we know what Dr. King said to Nichols about her importance … and how she inspired someone like Whoopi Goldberg.
@@Phintasmo Absolutely. And it also shows why Khan was out of his depth when it came to starship combat. Kirk and his bridge crew were seasoned veterans at this while Khan, while smart, was really still a newb.
But the key thing none of this matters unless you have a very strong villain. The Romulan commander in BoT was played by an obviously Shakespearian trained actor, and Ricardo Montalban playing an evil guy just rocks. I guess the Borg as villains were an exception to this rule, but in that case the fight was more ideological - between the forced collective and a group of individuals voluntarily working as a team. Who will win? Fascinating premise.
@@aquamarine99911Until they introduced the Borg Queen and basically turned them into mindless zombies obeying their master, who was basically just lonely and horny for Picard, Data and Seven.
Strange New Worlds had its own remarkably good ship battle or two, including one where they navigate a nebula for a long time. The episode title escapes me though
Legit point - although even pricey tv was way cheaper than equivalent movies of the time (and even accounting for inflation, I reckon modern prestige tv has far more money to play with.) Also really basic effects were extremely time consuming and costly back then. Apparently most of the Romulans wore helmets in this episode because applying those pointy ears was quite an undertaking! I think we can probably agree that despite it having a good budget by tv standards of the time, they still had to work around a lot of limitations on what they could reasonably afford to put on screen.
@@Phintasmo In today's money they've spent 1.85 million per Episode in 1966. You are absolutely right about the technological limitations with the effects work.
When I was 13 I began to love watching TOS original episodes (and WWII naval movies). TOS reruns were on at midnight, making Friday the only night I could watch. There was something about the dark and quiet of the night I saw Balance of Terror for the first time that accentuated the excellent suspense in that episode. Since then, it has always been my favorite. Thank you for this analysis of the episode!
The problem with "throwing a bunch of ships up on screen" is that it has always completely ignored "fleet maneuvers" which are even more important than individual ship maneuvers.
Battle lines, lines of bearing, close range/open range consistent all guns bearing, wear together, turn in succession, engage opposite number, concentrate fire enemy van/rear, etc...
I think people marvelling so much about the opening scene of Star Wars Episode III at the time may be at fault. They thought "okay, then we'll do it like that from now on"... not realizing that it's the complete package that has to fit and if you just force it it falls flat.
@@donthomson6260I’d argue that Star Trek was never meant to be military sci-fi, but there have definitely been times when the franchise went that way. The Dominion War from DS9 really comes to mind. The battle scenes were pretty nonsensical in retrospect, but they were pretty cool when I was a kid.
@@donthomson6260Maybe they work differently in Starfleet, or in a 'space navy spread out over not multiple counties, but multiple star systems with a lot more logistics, policies, and politics to consider. It probably takes a Captain and XO days of reading before they visit a star system for their first time.
It's a brilliant episode...by any measure...compared with any other...in any media format. A true classic...gripping when viewed the first time...a quality that has stood the test of time.
"Balance of Terror" earns plenty of praise-it's one of my favorite episodes of TV-but one such plaudit is that it has a perfect TV-episode title, in part because it pays off in all you explain here.
My hat to you Phintasmo, this episode was (militarily-speaking) the most realistic of the first season - it was also very expensive to produce (special effects) except for the original pilot (The Cage); this is why many episodes that feature significant special effects (expenses) are followed by two or three "lame" if not strange episodes. As a Naval Office who has seen combat, I really appreciated the dilemma that both Captains faced as they challenged one another. Great review, we need more, Ciao, L (Veteran)
_"Balance of Terror has always been in my top 5 episodes of TOS."_ -> Balance of Terror has always been in my top 5 episodes of Star Trek in general. There, fixed it for you.
I grew up watching TOS as it aired (ie, not in syndication). Balance of Terror is my absolute favorite episode. It has everything - story, battle, dealing with bigotry. It shows Kirk at his tactical best and brilliance. Mark Lenard as the Romulan commander was perfect for that role.
Thanks for posting! This was a great summation of a great ST episode. I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Leonard at a ST convention in the early 80s. He had a dry sense of humor and was very entertaining. He greatly appreciated ST and the fans for making him so well-known.
Strikes me as a working actor who had a very solid career. It must have surprised and amused him that his Star Trek appearances had such enduring appeal.
I think it was ST TNG that established the Prime Directive for fleet battles: All ships, on both sides, shall establish which end is up, and no ship shall ever fly into battle upside-down. Balance of Terror set the precident by indicating Enterprise pretending to be crippled by showing it listing to one side slightly.
this is probably the consistently dumbest mistake made in Trek.. and all the others followed its lead too. SW, Galactica, Bab5 ...everything except Ender's Game - and even that treated other orientations like some huge revelation (instead of the first thing anybody familiar with zero G would notice).
@@jv-lk7bc It's not really a "mistake", they know what they're doing. It's a conscious choice by the creators because it looks better and is less confusing to the audience, even though it's technically incorrect or at least very unlikely to ever happen.
Being a Navy submariner, This episode showed how a surface ship fought submarines in ww2. It's one of my favorite episodes, even with the racist hater! It had all the things we faced at that time! BALANCE OF TERROR
Was also why I loved the battle between Kirk and Khan emphasizing that it was a three dimensional battle. As a foormer submariner it was one of the things I loved thatthey pointed out.
@@davidmajors514 it was their indirect way of condemning the Japanese-American internment ...long before anyone else was publicly acknowledging it. One of those classic Trek moments that made it a legend.
Thank-you for pointing out what I and many others recognized from the first time this episode was aired. That 'Balance of Terror' is a space version of 'The Enemy Below'. Both are excellent.
One of the best episodes of TOS. Showing all the complexity of strategy, the restrictions of following orders, and the personal reflection on whether you're doing the right thing. And struggling with the temptation to de-humanize your "enemy."
Mark Leonard puts one of his best performances in this episode and his character would have made for a wonderfully interesting antagonist since both he and Kirk are positioned as two sides of the same coin. Whilst he would go on to play Sarek, I can't help but feel it was a missed opportunity to have a well developed counterpoint to Kirk. Imagine a world where the Romulan Commander is given a name and fleshed out over the series and effectively WOK is Kirk and the Commander have their final showdown.
Lenard is really great! His performance is very Shakespearean without crossing the line into being too stagey. I would have enjoyed seeing Kirk spar with him a few more times.
For that we have the books (yeah, that's not always ideal); in some cases interesting characters appear--one is the captain of the Romulan warbird 'Bloodwing', Ael, apparently the niece of the Romulan captain from 'The Enterprise Incident'. From what I read, the patrols along the neutral zone sometimes got quite 'bloody'.
Not only did balance of terror set the stage for space battles, but it had one of the most surprising and poignant lines from doctor McCoy you will ever hear on TV. (the completely unexpected and deep soliloquy from Bones just before saying “Don’t destroy the one named Kirk”.). That was a complete “drop the mike” moment for me in that episode).
Many years ago I discussed with like-minded family and friends how I recognized the obvious similarities between this episode of Star Trek and the movie “The Enemy Below” (my favorite WW2 film). Notwithstanding the fact that many others have already thought the same way, it’s nice to know that I wasn’t the only one to make the connection.
I really do miss writing like this. Two ship captains. Two equals. Two good men. Two doing what they believe is right. Two missions that come into conflict. Both men honor and respect one another, but neither are willing to shirk their duty, nor are they willing to shirk their morality either. When they come into conflict they act in a professional manner. They don't give into petty and juvenile emotions or baser urges. They act as adults, as professionals, as officers, as soldiers (I know they are naval here, using soldier as a generic term), and as men should. The dialogue is deliberate, calculated, and powerful. This is a story of two men who should have been friends. But their duty and duty only, made them adversaries. The limitations of the technology of special effects did nothing to detract from the story, in fact it enhanced it in a way. It wasn't a petty distraction of flashy lights and effects. But a representative of the symbolism of what failure means. Failure meaning the loss of ship and crew. That was shown in the special effects they had, and it gave its message well. Once that was established, the stakes were known, the story of these two good men who should have been friends can unfold. This is what I miss when I watch many shows and movies that came after. Sometimes we get some of this, but it has become increasingly rarer. It is too tempting to lay on the distractions, when the focus should be on the story, the conflict and the interactions between two characters. This scene should be studied and studied well.
Phintasmo credits Rbt Mitchum as the American captain , but neglects the appropriate shout-out to Curd Jürgens for his stellar performance as the U-Boat commander.
"Battleship" did the same thing. Free PR for the US Navy. Also, since the extras were 'qualified experts' and not actors, I think they were not required to join the Screen Actor's Guild and be paid according to their rules. I still think it's a cool casting decision.
The BEST episode of Star Trek - ever! Followed closely by The Doomsday Machine and then by Space Seed - where Khan first appeared! Mark Leonard was absolutely superb in his portrayal of the Romulan ship commander in The Balance of Terror episode! (Personally, I prefer the original effects to the "updated" version.) NB: the "red torpedo" was a plasma torpedo.
Balance of Terror is one of the best episodes. Glad to see someone talk about it. I wish you would use the original effects instead of the CGi remaster that doesn't fit the vibe of a 1960's television show.
Thanks for taking the time to comment - I think you're something of a pioneer here on youtube. I might be in the minority here but I quite like some of the revamped effects. What I find more distracting in the remaster is the upgraded visuals make some of the actors look positively caked in make-up!
@@PhintasmoI have to weigh in on this, having watched TOS reruns as a kid, and the remasters as an adult. I highly appreciate the remasters for making TOS watchable to a millenial audience who has never not had CG FX. That being said, I don't appreciate remastering or 'touching up' the live shots. The space shots are fine, but altering the live shots other than to change up fx damages the 'feel' of the series as an example of tv that fused the styles of Western and 'mod' rather successfully. Additionally, the original footage is very useful for film students, to study and learn how things were and could be done on a tight budget and production schedule without computer fx. TOS done today would be considered 'indie' for being low-budget and outside the mainstream in terms of both genre and writing, not too unlike "The Blair Witch Project," or "Backrooms" in its early days. It wasn't that the effects were good in the sense of being high-quality, it's that they were good in that they were done well in regards to both creativity and technique, and well-approximated the visual concepts they were meant to convey - they supported, not detracted from, immersion and suspension-of-disbelief. Some people have just been spoiled by CG and can't watch anything that's not filled with eye candy and paced for a short attention span.
Trek is so varied, I don't think its realistic to try to pick a very best. Top 10, yeah. You could pick top ep of 10 categories. BOT would be best military ep. (though Enterprise Incident would give it a run for its money. maybe arms race could be a separate category ;). Best comic ep would be Trouble with Tribbles best Vulcan ep is Amok Time best free-the=slaves ep would be Gamestersof Triskellion best war criminal ep would be Conscience of the King best war-is-obsolete ep is Errand of Mercy... Best don't make war too easy ep: A Taste of Armageddon
If the episode was primarily told from the Romulan point-of-view, "Balance of Terror" (1966) would look more like 1981's "Das Boot". (That's how good the storytelling of both are.)
This is a great example of how the overuse of modern special effects have hurt story telling. The clip you showed of the Enterprise in a maelstrom of tightly packed ‘stuff’ all around it strains credulity.
This episode and The Doomsday Machine are my favorites. Both episodes had so much else going on besides the battles. There was a lot of character elements in both episodes.
Great synopsis. This is in my top 3 favorite TOS episodes. I love how you call out how both ship Captains are evenly matched, equally wily and both dealing with up jumped subordinates. The one thing I'd also men also mention is how the stakes are equally high for both commanders. Like you said, the Romulan Captain knows what will happen once the Enterprise is destroyed; an all out Romulan attack on the Federation. Equally, when Kirk ends the conference with his officers, McCoy reminds him, "You're taking a big gamble, Jim." The implication is that millions of lives hang on every decision that Kirk makes, and Shatner plays it so well, standing there absorbing McCoy's words and their implication before he and Sulu commandingly walk back to the bridge. The juxtaposition of Kirk's private moment with his public persona is perfectly played. (Speaking as a former Marine Officer, I can relate). In the end though, I'd of also brought out the cost to the Enterprise and Kirk, that one crew member is KIA. Lt Tomlinson, who was supposed to marry Lt Angela Martine, but the service was interrupted and postponed by the Romulan attack. The episode ends with Kirk consoling Lt Marine. The acting in this episode was incredible.
Perfect example of factors limiting the "artistic vision" ultimately making the artistic vision, better. A lack of big budget effects limiting what they could do ended up forcing a much better level of creativity.
TNG season 7 had an episode where every species was simultaneously cooperating and subterfuging to get some superweapon macguffin. The romulan representative was this same type of amazing.
"Balance of Terror " is about two starship captains who show their will and mutual respect for each other. It was very well written back in 1966, and it's still fun to watch 58 years later. 😊
One of my very favorite episodes also. I do agree that the writers weren't thinking it through when they said that the Romulan ship had impulse power only; it had come a long way from home. But I think that it would have made much more sense to postulate that the Romulans couldn't use their cloaking device and their warp drives at the same time...choose one or the other. About the special effects of TOS...I don't call them "cheap" or "limited." I call them "pioneering." Compare them against anything done in feature films of the era, or before. In My Estimation, only *Forbidden Planet* tops them.
I can see the script writers would have been in a bit of a bind with the Romulan ship emulating a submarine and the Enterprise a Destroyer based on WW2 characteristics. I never liked the "impulse engines only" thing either but if they can drive the ship close enough to C for time dilation to allow for relatively long journeys from their home base, they wouldn't need FTL drive. I like your idea of having to de-cloak before engaging FTL drive. After all, the Romulans didn't have enough power to run the cloaking device and energise the plasma weapon simultaneously so yes, FTL & cloaking would be an either/or proposition. You'd also need to postulate a delay between surfacing/de-cloaking and hitting the FTL throttle as well to maintain consistency. Script-wise it's just easier to say nothing and leave it to the audience nearly 60-years down the track. I'm going to run with trans-light velocities and time dilation. I doubt if anybody involved with Star Trek at the time expected people to be discussing their work a quarter way into the 21st century. You've inspired me to pull out my DVD of Forbidden Planet and have another look.
In some respects, the Romulan ship here was essentially running on batteries, like a WW2 sub did when submerged (unless they had a snorkel and were at a depth to use it). This severely limits their speed (also technically the time they can spend submerged, not that we see any such limitations in the episode). Interestingly, by DS9 the Romulans have figured out some of the issues, given that the Defiant could run at lower warp speeds while still cloaked, which kinda emulates more modern submarines that can run at much higher speeds while still submerged, but get too fast when shallow enough and you start showing up on sonar due to cavitation. This also allows for the Enterprise to sprint at warp speeds in the episode, because a WW2 destroyer could hit much higher speeds than a sub (though that could cause them to lose the sub due to their own noise) and "sprint and drift" is an ASW tactic, and running away at full speed from incoming torpedoes until they run out of fuel is a common tactic (particularly for capital ships).
That is an excellent video on my favorite episode of my favorite television series. By the way, at the end of The Enemy Below, the two opposing commanders are rescued from the sea. The American captain helped save his opponent by throwing him a rope. In the final scene they are talking to each other, and the German commander says something that indicates he is tired of the war. The American says, "Next time, I won't throw you the rope." The German replies, "I think you will."
My wife isn't huge into military or action movies but she watched Enemy Below with me. I still remember at the end, she said, "That line made the whole movie!"
I see this episode for the first time, and i am amazed at the quality of recitation. All characters are perfectly delined and have depth, and even if the special effects are those of the time, the episode is much much more enjoyable than the last Star Trek installment. A masterpiece
Excellent analysis of the similarity between the Star Trek episode and the film The Enemy Below, which I love. I am a retired Officer in the Brazilian Navy and I loved your insight in your analysis. It was perfect, a great insight.
I think this is one of the best if not the best episode in TOS based on the superb interaction of each captain trying to outwit each other and it being a very close and hard fought match.
_Balance of Terror_ is one of my favorite episodes and this is despite the overly dramatic/long bit of not firing phasers at the end (seriously, there was no reason for the Romulan ship to delay firing upon Enterprise for so long). I don't think I cottoned on to the destroyer/sub aspect when I first watched it (I was 2), but it didn't take long to recognize it (there were a lot of WWII movies on TV in the 60's and 70's). It was also a little later when I realized having the Romulans _only_ having Impulse was ridiculous (you simply can't get anywhere with that). Now being restricted to Impulse while cloaked would've made perfect sense. One tidbit I _totally_ missed was that both captains had trouble-making young officers on their respective bridges. Indeed, you've showed me that this episode was as much a comparison between the Federation and Romulan cultures as it was a cat-and-mouse battle. Overall, I like _Strange New Worlds_ series. However, the episode _A Quality of Mercy_ disappointed me. I generally like SNW's Spock, but the difference with TOS's Spock was striking here. Like many others, I felt the Romulan Commander here was poorly done (in the script; what he did and said did NOT feel like the Romulan Commander). Finally, I disliked the visual effects because of the "need" to have ships near each other to have a space conflict when they should be out of visual range of each other. The most egregious case is when the Enterprise is rushing to the aid of Federation Outpost 4, but is still too far out to help. The exterior shot has them within sight of each other...easily within weapons range. Sorry for the rambling.
I liked that SNW episode but I agree with you about the Romulan. That actor they got was no Mark Lenard! The impulse thing in BoT makes no sense but i make some allowances - they were probably still working out the lore details on that stuff. In the same ep they talk about firing phasers to flush out the Romulan when they clearly mean photon torpedos. I also make a few concessions to realism if it makes things visually interesting. The Lost Fleet books do a good job of depicting space combat where weapon fire takes hours to hit its mark - but I don’t think that translates to film/movies too well.
They may have retconned the impulse issue since they later reveal in TNG that they use a different power source for their warp core. Maybe it wasn’t something the Enterprise’s sensors could figure out. Like I said- a retconn for sure.
Boy, could you imagine a multilevel starship like this flying through tight quarters at rapid speed, performing impossible maneuvers? I'm glad they never tried to put that on screen.
@@kicsilaci Defiant is a much smaller Vessel, it is more believable to the viewer when the Defiant or a Bird of Prey moves quick Imagine the same with a Galax Class. The Big Spacebattles in DS9 did a great job with showing a good sense of size and movement. Wish they coud bring that back, in new trek al the ships move to fast and it looks uncanny
@@Hans-Yolo I know the Defiant is a smaller ship, that is why I asked if he meant the maneuveres they did with it. Also the Defiant class is about twice as heavy as a Constitution class.
You hit the nail on the head... the story is so critical and it seems writers/producers these days have gone lazy to rely on special effects to compensate for poor writing.
And there are those of us that feel "The Conscience of the King" is one of the great TOS episodes. Almost no visual effects (except for stock), solid story and acting.
Every trope and meme was evident in the series. Practically all of sci fi owe a debt to these writers. This episode is just like a sea tale. Well done,fellow trekkie.
I always loved the dynamic of the Romulans. Culturally, they're clearly an analogy of the ancient Roman Empire on Earth. But politically, they're an analogy of Sino-American Cold War relations. The Neutral Zone is both metaphorical of the Berlin Wall and the Korean DMZ. The schism between the Vulcans and the Romulans can also be connected to the division of Tibetan Buddhism from Communist China. So there's a lot going on here. And it works! And when in DS9 the Romulans finally come to the Federation's side, it feels like it's a truly earned alliance.
Diane Duane had brilliant ideas for Romulan cultural development in "My Enemy, My Ally", first book of the Rihannsu series, but the powers that be didn't adopt it because they'd have to pay her. Then the Cardassians come around in TNG and completely steal the Roman motif away from the Romulans, leaving them with...what? Basically nothing, in terms of culture.
Balance of Terror is my absolute favorite episode of original Star Trek, which is my absolute favorite of all the Trek series. Really enjoyed your analysis. Good job!
I do love this TOS episode (it's in my top 5), and I agree completely that it set the stage for future Trek episodes. It also gave the ship-to-ship battles more of a feel where there were actual tactics and strategy to consider when fighting an enemy ship rather than just two vessels standing still and slugging it out. TNG seemed to regress on this idea since we usually saw the two ships fighting each other at point-blank range until the enemy blew up or the Enterprise ran away. I prefer the tactics and strategy aspect.
And spouting out named maneuvers that nobody in the audience can relate too. Compare the episode The Ultimate Computer where Chekhov is relaying course and speed the the M5 and other starships are taking to try and outmaneuver the other, and the TNG episode Peak Performance where Picard and Riker are using named maneuvers that we don't know. So dissatisfying.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Kuma maneuver aka "fly towards target" god that episode.... imagine bekng able to hack the ferengimbut then not shutting them down and arresting em for attacking you....
Best of Both Worlds was all about tactics, so was Peak Performance, just to name a couple. Could throw in The Arsenal of Freedom if you want. But those were all pretty early episodes. Once they invented "shields down to 32%" it was all downhill after that. Ironically, Yesterday's Enterprise, one of the series' best episodes, was probably the turning point. The episode wasn't really about fighting the Klingons (and you didn't even see the Romulans), but it seems like every episode after that adopted that episode's battle style.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Trek is full of technobabble, I will forgive some tacticbabble too. The important thing about the tactics is the battle of wits between Picard and the Ferengi captain, where the Ferengi never really understands what is actually going on, and is eventually defeated in the same way.
Balance of Terror is a classic. I did not realize how closely it was modeled on destroyer versus submarine movies. Outstanding description of this monumental episode!
DUDE! Your insights caught me by surprise several times; and I'm so old I saw this episode for the first time in the 60s. Instant sub! Oh wait... I was already subbed for your BABYLON 5 material. Oh well... ;)
It absolutely stands up today. The tension is so palpable. I’’d seen “The Enemy Below” and immediately saw its influence. The “relationship” between the opposing Captains is great in both shows.
Space battles have one of two inspirations. Either the Age of Sail duel between two ships, or the air battle between aircraft carriers. Star Trek went with the duel, most SF went with the carriers launching small fighters. Probably The Expanse will prove to have been the most accurate if we ever do have serious space battles.
the main difference between The Expanse and other soft sci-fi and space fantasy works is really just that the former displays a more realistic newtonian space setting, instead of treating space as if it's an ocean or just an atmosphere with fighter planes banking in the air, though it is quite a significant change in depiction, yeah, and definitely the most "realistic" depiction of space in popular media, just behind the interstellar spaceships from the Avatar movies, and 2001: a Space Odyssey a likely more accurate depiction of a realistic space battle is the short ongoing youtube animated series "SAVAGES" from the channel Real FR0S7, which does feature in its latest episode a properly hard sci-fi space battle, though how it depicts it might not necessarily be the best way for someone that isn't a hard sci-fi nerd to understand it
I really like how the Honor Harrington novels handle space battles, at the individual-ships level *and* the massive-fleets level. Sounds like The Expanse has a similar level of realism.
I was actually stunned by the scene of the rail gun punching through the Mars spaceship, taking off the guy's head and starting to depressive the cabin! Only quick action sealing the leaks saved them. I don't remember being this shocked by any other SF series. The Expanse was amazing. I'm so glad Jeff Bezos liked it and ordered Amazon to pick it up after SyFy canceled it!
The original Star Trek is the only series in the franchise where we get an idea of space combat. We are given courses and distances, tactics, and weapons. After the original it was this maneuver or that that nobody ever heard of or get any idea what they are. It gets worse in DS9, when capital ships fight in close quarters and maneuver like jet fighters.
@@RealKull I have seen DS 9. The flight between the Odyssey and the Jem Hadar made some sense. Although the Odyssey should have been moving some. And the K'tinga versus the Defiant is reasonable. But when two massive fleets battle it becomes ridiculous. Wings of Galaxy class starships in close combat with Cardassian ships. They are capital ships. They shouldn't have the maneuverability of fighters.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Show me the scene were a galaxy moves like a fighter in DS9? The movement in DS9 is still believable, ever seen a battleship or a carrier doing a hard turn? You might be suprised how agile those can be for their size and weight
@@Hans-YoloSacrifice Of Angels for one. Yes I have seen an aircraft carrier in a turning movement after we refueled from the U.S.S. Ameica. I wouldn't call a minimum turn radius of half a nautical mile particularly agile. Also carrier strike groups are spread out over an area of about 600 square miles and consist of a handful of ships. You're not going to see other ships in the strike group. But in DS9 you see multiple capital ships stacked on top of each other in combat and moving at fractions of the speed of light. So that is like capital ships moving like fighter jets. The ships are too close for safe navigation in any situation, and are a menace to each other. They did a better job in the original Star Trek episode The Ultimate Computer, with only four capital ships going up against the Enterprise.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 ua-cam.com/video/TN7BjeRad2I/v-deo.html i am not a sailor or live anywhere near the sea but for me this is very impressive and agile for a ship that size. Also i dont see any Capital ships in that episode zooming around like fighter jets. Are the Ships stacked to close, yes, would it look good on screen if they where kilometers away and just small blimps on the screen no. My point is the movement must be believable not realistic. In comparison to a Defiant, Akira or Miranda a Galaxy should move a bit heavier ( not slower because full impuls is the same speed for all of them ) If i want somewhat realistic spacebattles i watch the expanse
Balance of Terror and Corbomite Maneuver are my two, top favorite episodes from OG ST, first season. Sidenote: you cannot beat lines like: "I just used a hand phaser, and presto, hot coffee!" 😀 I still chuckle when I hear this line.
This is one of the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time.
Agreed. It's probably top 5 in TOS. It's a submarine battle with all of the intrigue and tension of a motion picture.
~ Caretaker
First one I ever saw.
And we were introduced to the fabulous talent of Mark Lenard, best remembered for his numerous later appearances as Sarek, but the story wouldn't have worked half as well without the gravitas he brings to the Commander's role here.
🎉😊I've grown to love Star Trek TOS so much that I purchased all 3 Seasons on DVD. Does anyone know if I Rip a video of a DVD and Upload it to my Channel, will I be warned that it breaks the UA-cam Policy? I don't know yet. Thank you for your attention. Have a momentous day 😊🎉
@@SpocksLogicalI think that is a no no. But some enterprising people can get around it.
Balance of Terror totally holds up even all these years later. It is Star Trek at its best.💫
One of the first great episodes of the series, although in the episode Romulans have better weapons, the Enterprise has warp speed whereas the Romulans do not and is therefore a lot faster, so that kind of evens things out.
@@aligborat I don't think the Romulans didn't have warp speed...where did you possibly get that idea?
@@davidcraig9938 It is in the episode, Scotty says they have only impulse engines.The implication is that the Romulans home planets are not very far from the Neutral Zone. They are only featured on two episodes of the original series, this one and a third season episode " The Enterprise Incident ".
@@aligborat It's also possible that using the cloaking device and warp engines at the same time was not possible with Romulan technology at that point. Perhaps later, their technology improved.
so much in fact Strange New Worlds decided to copy it and some of it's scenes for their dramatic nostalgia loaded 1st season finale.
For some reason, while I'd always loved Balance of Terror, it never really twigged with me that this was THE first time Star Trek had shown a proper ship-to-ship battle. It really is not only one of the best episodes of TOS, but one of the most influential episodes of television in the history of science fiction.
Balance of Terror and Space seed (because of Star Trek II), were my favorite episodes from ToS, also really liked the Horta episode.
@@Chris-ut6eqHorta are based
@@brotherhoodofsteeld.c.chap1917
Waves of searing pain......
No kill I
For me, the best episode was "Operation Anihalate". Look past the dismal flying ravioli, and I see the best performance from De Forest and the other two main characters.
Bones was the main character, you all know that right?
Balance of Terror was always my favourite space battle. TOS was a great series.
This is one of the best hours of television ever made, not just of Star Trek.
I often say that of City on the Edge of Forever.
Probably the greatest television episode of all time of any show.
100% fact
@@projektkobra2247 So many great episodes but .... when Kirk has to hold McCoy back from saving Edith Keeler in City ..... amazing.
BoT is, in my estimation, one of the best episodes in the franchise.
It's too bad that so many other shows, including other iterations of Star trek, forgot that battles are stories too, not just eye candy.
Absolutely and it's really sad, when you think about it. The actual action-shots of BoT aren't that spectacular on their own, but the audience is glued to the screen, cause they are invested in the characters and everything that's going on in between and leading up to the action scenes.
What makes the action so entertaining isn't the spectacle, it's the character and atmosphere.
Too many shows and movies try to replace that with (admittedly good looking) CGI. All new Star Trek have an insanely high level of quality when it comes to CGI space battles, but visually, they usually are just sensory overload clusterfucks. And it might just be me, but somehow these newer movies and shows just don't have the same emotional weight to them.
The duel between Kirk and Khan works, cause everything surrounding that space battle is multi-layered, emotional and interesting. STD/STP clusterfuck space battles seem like they just go through the motions and present us with (again: admittedly nice looking) CGI battles, but there's no heart in them.
Know what I mean?
There are plenty of good action scenes in star trek. So many that the newer shows are just straight up copying them now.
the ending is a bit sad the young ensign who almost got married and it deals with bigotry from one of the officers
You have to admit, the writer of BoT made the battle into a story by have each commander talk to someone about what was going on in their minds. Without that, it's just old eye candy. By the end of the episode, was just a kid when I saw it, I wanted both ships to survive somehow and was greatly saddened by the Romulan ship loosing. Obviously did not want the enterprise to loose either. Great drama!
@@adcraziness1501 The problem is when their splashy action scenes become a crutch instead of a tool.
This episode cemented in my mind what deep space warfare would be like. You’d never “see” your enemy. You would fight using sensors (radar, sonar, etc), ships didn’t zip around like biplanes. The Romulan ship might have been more maneuverable, but it was also smaller and weaker and had to use stealth to compete and survive.
There were also tactics, deceit, and long periods of time where nothing but tension existed.
There was also the emotional and physical impact on the people crewing these ships. Loss of friends and the threat of an ever escalating war that could cost millions of people their lives.
The perfect Star Trek episode.
My view on space combat is a bit different, assuming the lack of cloaks among all contenders. Space combat would have to be a knife fight in a telephone both. Otherwise there would be no combat; you're firing a weapon at me? *poof* I just warped somewhere else and there goes your shot... Computers would be designed around simply NOT being where a weapon is targeted by the time it gets there. Any combat would have to happen on the dirt, or toe to toe in space like ships of the line hundreds of years ago, or at most world war era battleships.
The only alternative would be sniping and sneak attacks. Obliterate the foe from subspace, at warp, from behind a cloak, etc. THAT would have consequences for any species involved that would make space travel almost impossible...
@@scottysgarage4393 The best space combat I have seen has been in “The Expanse”. They take into consideration momentum, gravitational influences on ships and crew, kinetic weaponry. Start Trek still has its roots in “50’s sci-fi”, but there are aspects that I enjoy about it.
This is on point. It is difficult to portray the vast distances of battles on a TV screen when you need to show two ships slugging it out. They often say it with words, stating distances to other ships in terms of hundreds of kilometers and being in range of weapons. But those concepts are harder to grasp with words than with images. Yes, the other ship would be a blip on the sensor screen and nobody looking out a viewport would know they are there. Phasers would have effective ranges for this type of battle because they are columnated energy beams, and photon torpedoes have their own sublight drive which is probably comparable to impulse drive speeds and are launched from torpedo tubes much like a railgun. Heck, I play the old Star Wars X-Wing series games, and a fighter at 2.5km away (the edge of your warhead targeting range) is barely a pixel.
@@sherpajones Never be combat at that range for FTL ships. Your target would be long gone by the time your ordnance arrived. The only way for combat among ships at this technological level is if all parties have agreed this is where they duke it out, up close and personal. Or sneak attacks and stealth on unsuspecting victims. Even then, with instant warp jumps and near instant computing getting the jump on someone would be tough.
Now sublight ships are a whole other thing with "conventional" long range combat being the same concept, relatively speaking, as planet-side.
Exactly. One person said that fighting would be like a "knife fight in a telephone booth," but in my book, "point blank" range for an anti-matter weapon is still better than a city block, and then you'd still have some piddly little weapons, like 3 stage thermonuclear implosion devices. The original series thought of space weapons as big enough you had to maintain a little distance. As special effects improved, the power of weapons had to be diminished to fit the TV frame.
I watched this as a kid, and I always remembered this line from the Romulan captain. "He is shrewd, this starship commander."
“He’s a sorcerer that one. He reads the thoughts in my brain.”
Just recently rewatched Balance of Terror, and it absolutely holds up. I love the performance of Mark Lenard and Shatner especially. Lenard brings a sort of "Roman commander in a Shakespearean play" vibe, and I'm here for it. Great video.
"Cry 'HAVOC!' and let slip the dogs of war"
It was my favorite, you almost rooted for his character because he was so good and valued honor and duty.
I miss the stage presence of old television
This episode is one of the best because it also shows that not everyone survives a space battle. One of the most poignant scenes is when Captain Kirk tries to console Angela Martine when she just lost her fiance, knowing that nothing he says will console her but he has to show he cares. That's one of the hardest duties of a Captain, as opposed as to one of the happiest duties that Kirk said at the beginning of the episode when he was about to perform a wedding ceremony.
Yeah, amid all that action and tension, that bit was a punch in the guts.
Incredible contrast between the beginning and end of the episode, that's why the episode trounces "The Enemy Below" in dramatizing the terror of war ...
@@Nebris I find the TNG episodes "Lower Decks" and "The Bonding" to hit much harder because the acting of all of the bereaved is a lot more convincing, but the story in BoT is a hard twist for sure.
And not only that, we get to empathize a bit with the Romulan crew as well, as the centurion (and long-time friend of the Commander) is also killed saving his life.
@@sherpajones give The Original Series some slack because after all, it was the original. The writers were still finding their way, establishing canon and all.
Balance of terror is hands down my favorite episode of the original series. Great to see I am not the only one to appreciate it.
"Writers had to rely on pure story telling". What a concept. That's why Star trek had some of the best stories on TV.
Star trek's stories were all ripped off from earlier classic novels, and even 50s pulp fiction.
There are similarities, however, Norman Spinrad and Harlan Ellison may disagree with you.@@AtomicPrimate-h4d
"The City on the Edge of Forever" is a perfect example. Hardly any special effects, no violence or phaser fire blowing other ships to bits. They used existing sets to depict New York in the Great Depression, and the set for The Guardian was small and relatively simple, but tremendously effective thanks to the dialog and the skill of the actor who voiced The Guardian. Pure storytelling of the highest order.
lol righto
Not to try to insert the other Star franchise, but it's the reason why the lightsaber duels in the original trilogy were so much better than everything since, despite the lack of flashy fight choreography and acrobatics. Both Star Wars and Star Trek have suffered from a filmmaker preference of special effects over substance.
Story always beats spectacle. Always.
It stands the test of time. Does a fantastic job of translating anti-submarine warfare to space.
It's really a testament to how you can convey so much story with so little, relatively
"troublesome subordinate" - perfect characterization
I met Lawrence Montaigne at a ST convention I went to and really liked talking to him. He played Decius in the episode and also Stonn in Amok Time, another great episode. He suggested I read a book called the Ethics of Star Trek and we discussed it a via email. He was a kind and friendly fellow.
Nice! I met Mark Leonard at a ST convention in the early 80s. He had a dry sense of humor and was appreciative of ST and the fans for making him so well-known.
Mark Lenard
Romulan Commander Keras
Star Trek TOS Balance of Terror
Vulcan Ambassador Sarek
ST: TOS Journey To Babel
Klingon Captain of the IKS Amar
Star Trek The Motion Picture TMP
“Balance of Terror” is my favorite TOS episode, and this video does an excellent job of explaining why.
Definitely in the top-3 among all episode, a "miniature movie" compressed into 54 minutes only ... The military episodes - absolutely ALL of them - were simply brilliant!
@@systemBuilder What are the other two you like?
My lord...it IS "The Enemy Below". That's one of my favorite movies, and this episode does exactly mimic it.
didn't they get sued because it was too similar?
@@EdwardThompson-417k I don't think so. Enough differences to make it a unique movie.
That movie has been criticized in its realism, since a U-Boat commander would always try to escape by stealth from an alerted surface warship (like a destroyer escort); mainly because of the latter's total dominance in speed (combined with the slowness of torpedoes, mismatches in ballistic firepower and hull integrity, vulnerability of U-Boats to nearby depth charges, etc.)
One of the really clever things that the creators of Star Trek came up with was deflector shields. We're told that starships have weapons so powerful that they can quickly destroy an enemy ship, so everyone protects themselves with barriers made out of energy. These barriers become depleted as they absorb damage, so the danger to the ship can be represented just by WORDS. "Shields holding at 70%." "Shields down to 15%!" They convey the effects of the battle without having to show the damage on their expensive models. It works so well that they keep using it today when they have the budget to show the ships being damaged if they want to.
That's really clever actually, I never thought about it that way. You're smart to have worked that out, it makes perfect sense
The transporters were also a way to avoid long scenes aboard a shuttle getting from one place to another. They still have shuttle scenes but only if something interesting is to happen on it.
@@HepCatJack Yeah... To be more precise, inital thought was landing the whole ship (or maybe the saucer section, the idea of it being detachable is older than often thought), but that seemed impossible or at least too expensive to pull off, so they came up with beaming instead. That they did not even consider shuttles in the beginning you can tell by the early episode "The Enemy Within"... The whole thing about the landing party being trapped on the planet due to the transporter malfunctioning would not make sense if they had shuttles as a fallback option.
By the way, in a similar way, the Photon Torpedoes. They were not a thing at the time of this episode, Balance of Terror. You can tell by the part where the Phasers being out of commission means the Enterprise is helpless.
_"They convey the effects of the battle without having to show the damage on their expensive models. It works so well that they keep using it today when they have the budget to show the ships being damaged if they want to."_
That's a common - and annoying - misconception. Deflector shields are harder to visualize than simply damaging a model: OG Star Trek only visualized shields twice in 79 episodes. Star Trek showed damage yyo the Constellation by buying a cheap plastic model of the Enterprise and burning it with a torch, snd even blew a Klingon ship to visible pieces. They could show battle damage cheaply if they needed to.
Deflector shields were introduced because it's futuristic, not because it was necessary to save money.
@@HepCatJack That was another idea that Roddenberry took from "The Fly" movie. Star Trek itself was taken from the movie "Forbidden Planet". Gene sold the series to NBC as a "Wagon Train" to the Stars. Gene was not all that original but was responsible for pulling it all together.
I know it's not voted as the highest episode, but it's the one I watch over and over again more than any other. It never gets boring. I truly love all of TOS but this stands out for me.
I bet you never realized that Spock's dad was the Romulan commander, Mark Lenard played both parts! So lieutenant Stiles was correct in a twisted way !! LOL ...
I have been a lifelong fan of TOS. I have watched this episode more than any of the others.
@@systemBuilder Yeah that turn and nod by Spock can totally confuse anyone who is familiar with later Trek but then watches this episode for the first time. It's like he is acknowledging "Yup, it's my dad", when actually it is supposed to say something like "Cool, just as some scholars suspected, Romulans are an offshoot of us Vulcans"
Great analysis. I learned about the borrowings from "The Enemy Below" and "Run Silent, Run Deep" as an adult, but my parents were Trekkies and turned me on to the series at the tender age of 6 or 7, in 1969/70, so in effect this WAS my first 'submarine cat and mouse' film. I'm still charmed by all the younger folks who insist the effects are 'cheap' when what they are is 'expensive but technologically unsophisticated': y'all, visuals like this were what prompted a generation of SFX artists to keep doing even better, because they saw how good something could look and then imagined how much better they could make it. That said, the focus is definitely on the drama, and yeah, it's slow pacing by today's standards, but it's effective as hell.
I'd never really pondered the parallels between Stiles' attempts to coax Kirk into quicker action and the Romulan counterpart who goes over his Captain's head to force him into a bad decision. Great observation. But let's also talk about a very subtle but important detail that tells us a lot about where Roddenberry and the rest of the team's heads were at: Stiles is a bit bigoted about Vulcans, but when he goes down to the phaser room, nobody bats a fricking eye at Uhura just parking her miniskirt right at his station. For 1966, on mass media television, that was HUGE. Even the original version of Christopher Pike was a little touchy about "a woman on the bridge" and here comes Miss Nichelle Nichols with the calmest "hold my beer" moment in early Trek. And nobody says boo, because in the Federation, human equality is already so normal we don't even notice. Bravo.
Yes. People bemoaning the SFX budget forget that _Star Trek_ was already one of the most expensive TV shows made back then. Lots of sets, lots of costumes. Yes, big budget Hollywood films looked better, but you couldn't blow that much money on a TV show.
@@somercet1 It's a natural mistake if one hasn't encountered some of the old source materials that discussed the high budget relative to the era, like the Stephen (Poe) Whitfield book. There's also the issue that even now, science fiction on film and TV can have higher costs overall. The overhead just to get up and running is a big commitment. As you pointed out: a police procedural show from the same era could make use of existing costumes, sets, and back lots; a show like Trek, or for that matter Lost In Space or Doctor Who, had to spend at least some portion of their budget on building things that didn't already exist, like spaceship/starship/TARDIS interiors. Which is probably also why now and then Trek would do an episode that came up with a way to justify using those same 20th-century-style resources ... think "The Return of the Archons" or "Miri" or "A Piece of the Action" with their "oh, hey guess what: this world is a parallel Earth, or influenced by Earth history" setups. Suddenly you get to use the same city lot everyone else was using, the gangster clothes, and so on. We may all love the Guardian of Forever, but in "The City on the Edge of Forever" contrast the basic-ass 'ruins of an ancient civilization' set with 'we're in Depression-Era America' where everything feels a looks a lot more detailed and realistic because those are sets amortized over dozens or hundreds of other shows. Bet you the Guardian prop cost more than renting the "New York" street for a few hours.
Science fiction TV tends to 'age' quickly, and it's not at all certain that contemporary sci-fi will NOT suffer the same fate, just because it's gotten so much more easy to get some of the effects done. I'm not as hostile to some of the over-reliance on big confusing space battles as others may feel ... I'm not sure a space battle wouldn't get pretty crazy pretty fast, given what I hear about the realities of combat even in this world. But it's absolutely the case that having fewer resources to fall back on technologically, since they were already pushing technological limits, gave smart writers and producers back then lots of opportunities to use solid storytelling to sell a story that couldn't be visualized as easily.
But this is also no knock on younger audiences: we're all formed by the media that we grow up with. They say that early film audiences were terrified by silent black-and-white images of trains coming toward them in the theater. They completely lacked experience with something like that NOT being a real-world sight, with it being something you could merely see on a screen. It's hard to recreate that feeling of novelty amongst people who have grown up with much more complex sights at much younger ages. It's simply unwise to forget that technology itself has a history, and that the vision of the future keeps changing partly because the technology we use to depict it has changed.
do you think the portrayal of characters like Uhura challenged societal norms of the 1960s?
@@AncientWildTV absolutely. Someone like me grew up wondering why people didn’t ALREADY listen to women or black folks, or put them in positions of authority, because Uhura was fully normal to me, and even though I grew up mostly around white folks, the black folks I did meet were peers of my middle-class, college-educated parents. Much much later on a film like “Hidden Figures” told the story of how women like Uhura were already working on the actual space program at the time, but I was ready to meet someone like her in real life from a young age. There were a lot of people still claiming it was all just a fantasy of the far future. Same with Sulu or (whoever else). Gene Roddenberry sure wasn’t perfect, nor were my own folks, but they understood the way things should change.
And we know what Dr. King said to Nichols about her importance … and how she inspired someone like Whoopi Goldberg.
Nothing in Balance of Terror comes from Run Silent Run Deep.
it holds up because of the personalities, not because of the weapons
It was the same with Star Trek 2 with Kahn not just mindless action but purpose and cunning.
The hallmark of the series 😁
Almost 60 years old, and it still hold up. Even when Wrath of Khan came out, you can see the cat and mouse maneuvering in the Mutara Nebula.
Wrath of Khan owes so much to this while definitely being itself the next evolution.
@@Phintasmo Absolutely. And it also shows why Khan was out of his depth when it came to starship combat. Kirk and his bridge crew were seasoned veterans at this while Khan, while smart, was really still a newb.
But the key thing none of this matters unless you have a very strong villain. The Romulan commander in BoT was played by an obviously Shakespearian trained actor, and Ricardo Montalban playing an evil guy just rocks.
I guess the Borg as villains were an exception to this rule, but in that case the fight was more ideological - between the forced collective and a group of individuals voluntarily working as a team. Who will win? Fascinating premise.
@@aquamarine99911Until they introduced the Borg Queen and basically turned them into mindless zombies obeying their master, who was basically just lonely and horny for Picard, Data and Seven.
Strange New Worlds had its own remarkably good ship battle or two, including one where they navigate a nebula for a long time. The episode title escapes me though
I try to rewatch 'Balance of Terror' every so often. Best Star Trek episode, in my view.
I think "Doomsday machine" is right there with it.
I'm tired of people claiming that TOS was a cheap show. As I understand it, TOS was one of the most expensive shows of its time.
I think its more it's visual style looks unrealistic and the general aesthetics dated very fast.
Legit point - although even pricey tv was way cheaper than equivalent movies of the time (and even accounting for inflation, I reckon modern prestige tv has far more money to play with.)
Also really basic effects were extremely time consuming and costly back then. Apparently most of the Romulans wore helmets in this episode because applying those pointy ears was quite an undertaking!
I think we can probably agree that despite it having a good budget by tv standards of the time, they still had to work around a lot of limitations on what they could reasonably afford to put on screen.
Yeah. I totally agree. It's become a bit of a cheap talking point.
@@Phintasmo In today's money they've spent 1.85 million per Episode in 1966.
You are absolutely right about the technological limitations with the effects work.
The lack of good modern special effects turns out to be a plus, as then storyline and character development have to hold the audience's attention.
When I was 13 I began to love watching TOS original episodes (and WWII naval movies). TOS reruns were on at midnight, making Friday the only night I could watch. There was something about the dark and quiet of the night I saw Balance of Terror for the first time that accentuated the excellent suspense in that episode. Since then, it has always been my favorite. Thank you for this analysis of the episode!
Many episodes of Star Trek are enhanced by watching at night in a dark room.
It was marvelous to grow up watching these develop from the beginning to now.
The problem with "throwing a bunch of ships up on screen" is that it has always completely ignored "fleet maneuvers" which are even more important than individual ship maneuvers.
ST:TNG bantied about terms like fleet and flagship with absolutely no idea how those two concepts work in a real navy.
Battle lines, lines of bearing, close range/open range consistent all guns bearing, wear together, turn in succession, engage opposite number, concentrate fire enemy van/rear, etc...
I think people marvelling so much about the opening scene of Star Wars Episode III at the time may be at fault. They thought "okay, then we'll do it like that from now on"... not realizing that it's the complete package that has to fit and if you just force it it falls flat.
@@donthomson6260I’d argue that Star Trek was never meant to be military sci-fi, but there have definitely been times when the franchise went that way. The Dominion War from DS9 really comes to mind. The battle scenes were pretty nonsensical in retrospect, but they were pretty cool when I was a kid.
@@donthomson6260Maybe they work differently in Starfleet, or in a 'space navy spread out over not multiple counties, but multiple star systems with a lot more logistics, policies, and politics to consider. It probably takes a Captain and XO days of reading before they visit a star system for their first time.
It's a brilliant episode...by any measure...compared with any other...in any media format. A true classic...gripping when viewed the first time...a quality that has stood the test of time.
"Balance of Terror" earns plenty of praise-it's one of my favorite episodes of TV-but one such plaudit is that it has a perfect TV-episode title, in part because it pays off in all you explain here.
My hat to you Phintasmo, this episode was (militarily-speaking) the most realistic of the first season - it was also very expensive to produce (special effects) except for the original pilot (The Cage); this is why many episodes that feature significant special effects (expenses) are followed by two or three "lame" if not strange episodes. As a Naval Office who has seen combat, I really appreciated the dilemma that both Captains faced as they challenged one another. Great review, we need more, Ciao, L (Veteran)
Solid essay on the importance of Balance of Terror, perhaps my favorite episode on all of Star Trek.
Fantastic analysis of the episode! Balance of Terror has always been in my top 5 episodes of TOS. So good, on so many levels!
_"Balance of Terror has always been in my top 5 episodes of TOS."_
-> Balance of Terror has always been in my top 5 episodes of Star Trek in general.
There, fixed it for you.
I grew up watching TOS as it aired (ie, not in syndication). Balance of Terror is my absolute favorite episode. It has everything - story, battle, dealing with bigotry. It shows Kirk at his tactical best and brilliance. Mark Lenard as the Romulan commander was perfect for that role.
You never watched TOS in syndication? That's amazing, Science, because TOS has been in syndication now for almost 60 years!
Balance of Terror more than holds up. One of the best original series episodes along with the Doomsday Machine.
Thanks for posting! This was a great summation of a great ST episode.
I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Leonard at a ST convention in the early 80s. He had a dry sense of humor and was very entertaining. He greatly appreciated ST and the fans for making him so well-known.
Strikes me as a working actor who had a very solid career. It must have surprised and amused him that his Star Trek appearances had such enduring appeal.
I think it was ST TNG that established the Prime Directive for fleet battles: All ships, on both sides, shall establish which end is up, and no ship shall ever fly into battle upside-down.
Balance of Terror set the precident by indicating Enterprise pretending to be crippled by showing it listing to one side slightly.
Lol!
Come on, us planetsiders need to preserve a sense of orientation here!
this is probably the consistently dumbest mistake made in Trek.. and all the others followed its lead too. SW, Galactica, Bab5 ...everything except Ender's Game - and even that treated other orientations like some huge revelation (instead of the first thing anybody familiar with zero G would notice).
@@jv-lk7bc It's not really a "mistake", they know what they're doing. It's a conscious choice by the creators because it looks better and is less confusing to the audience, even though it's technically incorrect or at least very unlikely to ever happen.
Being a Navy submariner, This episode showed how a surface ship fought submarines in ww2. It's one of my favorite episodes, even with the racist hater! It had all the things we faced at that time! BALANCE OF TERROR
Was also why I loved the battle between Kirk and Khan emphasizing that it was a three dimensional battle. As a foormer submariner it was one of the things I loved thatthey pointed out.
I liked the scene with the racist hater. Kirk really put him in his spot.
@@davidmajors514 it was their indirect way of condemning the Japanese-American internment ...long before anyone else was publicly acknowledging it. One of those classic Trek moments that made it a legend.
Thank-you for pointing out what I and many others recognized from the first time this episode was aired. That 'Balance of Terror' is a space version of 'The Enemy Below'.
Both are excellent.
One of the best episodes of TOS. Showing all the complexity of strategy, the restrictions of following orders, and the personal reflection on whether you're doing the right thing. And struggling with the temptation to de-humanize your "enemy."
Balance of tear has been my favorite episode of the original series as long as I can remember. Outstanding job and deconstructing the episode.
The script was excellent - better than CGI every time.
Mark Leonard puts one of his best performances in this episode and his character would have made for a wonderfully interesting antagonist since both he and Kirk are positioned as two sides of the same coin. Whilst he would go on to play Sarek, I can't help but feel it was a missed opportunity to have a well developed counterpoint to Kirk. Imagine a world where the Romulan Commander is given a name and fleshed out over the series and effectively WOK is Kirk and the Commander have their final showdown.
Lenard is really great! His performance is very Shakespearean without crossing the line into being too stagey. I would have enjoyed seeing Kirk spar with him a few more times.
@@Phintasmo *LENARD,* not Leonard.
*LENARD,* not Leonard.
For that we have the books (yeah, that's not always ideal); in some cases interesting characters appear--one is the captain of the Romulan warbird 'Bloodwing', Ael, apparently the niece of the Romulan captain from 'The Enterprise Incident'. From what I read, the patrols along the neutral zone sometimes got quite 'bloody'.
Didn’t Mark Lenard also play the Klingon commander in the first Star Trek movie?
This is one of my favorite Star Trek TOS episodes. Thank you for the great analysis!
Not only did balance of terror set the stage for space battles, but it had one of the most surprising and poignant lines from doctor McCoy you will ever hear on TV. (the completely unexpected and deep soliloquy from Bones just before saying “Don’t destroy the one named Kirk”.). That was a complete “drop the mike” moment for me in that episode).
Many years ago I discussed with like-minded family and friends how I recognized the obvious similarities between this episode of Star Trek and the movie “The Enemy Below” (my favorite WW2 film). Notwithstanding the fact that many others have already thought the same way, it’s nice to know that I wasn’t the only one to make the connection.
Wrath of Khan mirrors Moby Dick as well....
Not only was it a wonderful episode of an incredible series, but your analysis of it was multi-layered and fascinating!
Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
One of my favorite episodes. Have watched it many times, never loses its appeal.
I really do miss writing like this. Two ship captains. Two equals. Two good men. Two doing what they believe is right. Two missions that come into conflict. Both men honor and respect one another, but neither are willing to shirk their duty, nor are they willing to shirk their morality either. When they come into conflict they act in a professional manner. They don't give into petty and juvenile emotions or baser urges. They act as adults, as professionals, as officers, as soldiers (I know they are naval here, using soldier as a generic term), and as men should.
The dialogue is deliberate, calculated, and powerful. This is a story of two men who should have been friends. But their duty and duty only, made them adversaries. The limitations of the technology of special effects did nothing to detract from the story, in fact it enhanced it in a way. It wasn't a petty distraction of flashy lights and effects. But a representative of the symbolism of what failure means. Failure meaning the loss of ship and crew. That was shown in the special effects they had, and it gave its message well. Once that was established, the stakes were known, the story of these two good men who should have been friends can unfold.
This is what I miss when I watch many shows and movies that came after. Sometimes we get some of this, but it has become increasingly rarer. It is too tempting to lay on the distractions, when the focus should be on the story, the conflict and the interactions between two characters. This scene should be studied and studied well.
The Enemy Below was a brilliant movie, filmed on a US Navy ship with real sailors as extras.
Fascinating to see that the producers chose the perfect movie to make Balance of Terror.
Phintasmo credits Rbt Mitchum as the American captain , but neglects the appropriate shout-out to Curd Jürgens for his stellar performance as the U-Boat commander.
FYI: I just finished watching The Enemy Below on UA-cam. Seeing this pop up next
was great timing.
"Battleship" did the same thing. Free PR for the US Navy. Also, since the extras were 'qualified experts' and not actors, I think they were not required to join the Screen Actor's Guild and be paid according to their rules.
I still think it's a cool casting decision.
I think Red October did a similar thing, sailors as extras. I'm glad they did some of the filming in a dive trainer.
This was excellent info, analysis and insight...thanks man...
The BEST episode of Star Trek - ever! Followed closely by The Doomsday Machine and then by Space Seed - where Khan first appeared! Mark Leonard was absolutely superb in his portrayal of the Romulan ship commander in The Balance of Terror episode! (Personally, I prefer the original effects to the "updated" version.)
NB: the "red torpedo" was a plasma torpedo.
Always one of my favorite of all Star Trek episodes, since I was a kid in the 70s .
Well done exposition vid you've done here!
I remember being on the edge of my seat watching this episode. Really well written.
Balance of Terror is one of the best episodes. Glad to see someone talk about it.
I wish you would use the original effects instead of the CGi remaster that doesn't fit the vibe of a 1960's television show.
Thanks for taking the time to comment - I think you're something of a pioneer here on youtube.
I might be in the minority here but I quite like some of the revamped effects.
What I find more distracting in the remaster is the upgraded visuals make some of the actors look positively caked in make-up!
@@PhintasmoI have to weigh in on this, having watched TOS reruns as a kid, and the remasters as an adult.
I highly appreciate the remasters for making TOS watchable to a millenial audience who has never not had CG FX.
That being said, I don't appreciate remastering or 'touching up' the live shots. The space shots are fine, but altering the live shots other than to change up fx damages the 'feel' of the series as an example of tv that fused the styles of Western and 'mod' rather successfully.
Additionally, the original footage is very useful for film students, to study and learn how things were and could be done on a tight budget and production schedule without computer fx. TOS done today would be considered 'indie' for being low-budget and outside the mainstream in terms of both genre and writing, not too unlike "The Blair Witch Project," or "Backrooms" in its early days. It wasn't that the effects were good in the sense of being high-quality, it's that they were good in that they were done well in regards to both creativity and technique, and well-approximated the visual concepts they were meant to convey - they supported, not detracted from, immersion and suspension-of-disbelief. Some people have just been spoiled by CG and can't watch anything that's not filled with eye candy and paced for a short attention span.
BTW, great video. First-watch subscriber.
In my opinion it is hands down best Star Trek episode ever, as good as so many have been, this is the peak episode for excellence.
Trek is so varied, I don't think its realistic to try to pick a very best. Top 10, yeah. You could pick top ep of 10 categories.
BOT would be best military ep. (though Enterprise Incident would give it a run for its money. maybe arms race could be a separate category ;).
Best comic ep would be Trouble with Tribbles
best Vulcan ep is Amok Time
best free-the=slaves ep would be Gamestersof Triskellion
best war criminal ep would be Conscience of the King
best war-is-obsolete ep is Errand of Mercy...
Best don't make war too easy ep: A Taste of Armageddon
Does it still hold up ?
HELL YES ! ! !
If the episode was primarily told from the Romulan point-of-view, "Balance of Terror" (1966) would look more like 1981's "Das Boot". (That's how good the storytelling of both are.)
Both Captains were played two of the finest actors to ever grace the small screen. That had a lot to do with the success of this episode.
Balance of Terror is my by far FAVORITE TOS episode ever!!
A Season One highlight and one of the best
Balance of Terror is by far the best episode of Star Trek ever. A master class in storytelling.
This is a great example of how the overuse of modern special effects have hurt story telling. The clip you showed of the Enterprise in a maelstrom of tightly packed ‘stuff’ all around it strains credulity.
BEST single episode of Trek EVER MADE!!!
This episode and The Doomsday Machine are my favorites. Both episodes had so much else going on besides the battles. There was a lot of character elements in both episodes.
Nice review! I am impressed. Your point that great dramatic writing can make a battle story gripping, much more than CGI, is very much on point.
just brilliant. I was a teenage who did NOT miss any TOS shows
Great synopsis. This is in my top 3 favorite TOS episodes. I love how you call out how both ship Captains are evenly matched, equally wily and both dealing with up jumped subordinates. The one thing I'd also men also mention is how the stakes are equally high for both commanders. Like you said, the Romulan Captain knows what will happen once the Enterprise is destroyed; an all out Romulan attack on the Federation. Equally, when Kirk ends the conference with his officers, McCoy reminds him, "You're taking a big gamble, Jim." The implication is that millions of lives hang on every decision that Kirk makes, and Shatner plays it so well, standing there absorbing McCoy's words and their implication before he and Sulu commandingly walk back to the bridge. The juxtaposition of Kirk's private moment with his public persona is perfectly played. (Speaking as a former Marine Officer, I can relate). In the end though, I'd of also brought out the cost to the Enterprise and Kirk, that one crew member is KIA. Lt Tomlinson, who was supposed to marry Lt Angela Martine, but the service was interrupted and postponed by the Romulan attack. The episode ends with Kirk consoling Lt Marine. The acting in this episode was incredible.
This was the best and longest way to say "JJ Abrams Star Trek sucks" I've seen thus far.
Indeed
why is everyone so damn extreme these days? Sucks? that is over blown, quite a bit. Reel it in...
@@morbidmanmusic It would have been great if JJ Abrams had made this episode into a movie.
@@deepsixman except he is not a classic movie maker and this requires a classic director who relies on storytelling
It did suck sorry to say it
Perfect example of factors limiting the "artistic vision" ultimately making the artistic vision, better. A lack of big budget effects limiting what they could do ended up forcing a much better level of creativity.
Absolutely, story telling first, special effects second.
If you're lucky you get The Expanse with both done well.
This version of a romulan was amazing, shame no other Star Trek show explored it
Warmongering Vulcans in a more pure sense
TNG season 7 had an episode where every species was simultaneously cooperating and subterfuging to get some superweapon macguffin. The romulan representative was this same type of amazing.
Btw, who played the Romulan commander?
Oops, somebody below just answered. Mark Leonard.
@@henrybrowne7248you know he also played Spock’s father, right?
"Balance of Terror " is about two starship captains who show their will and mutual respect for each other. It was very well written back in 1966, and it's still fun to watch 58 years later. 😊
One of my very favorite episodes also. I do agree that the writers weren't thinking it through when they said that the Romulan ship had impulse power only; it had come a long way from home. But I think that it would have made much more sense to postulate that the Romulans couldn't use their cloaking device and their warp drives at the same time...choose one or the other.
About the special effects of TOS...I don't call them "cheap" or "limited." I call them "pioneering." Compare them against anything done in feature films of the era, or before. In My Estimation, only *Forbidden Planet* tops them.
I can see the script writers would have been in a bit of a bind with the Romulan ship emulating a submarine and the Enterprise a Destroyer based on WW2 characteristics.
I never liked the "impulse engines only" thing either but if they can drive the ship close enough to C for time dilation to allow for relatively long journeys from their home base, they wouldn't need FTL drive.
I like your idea of having to de-cloak before engaging FTL drive. After all, the Romulans didn't have enough power to run the cloaking device and energise the plasma weapon simultaneously so yes, FTL & cloaking would be an either/or proposition.
You'd also need to postulate a delay between surfacing/de-cloaking and hitting the FTL throttle as well to maintain consistency.
Script-wise it's just easier to say nothing and leave it to the audience nearly 60-years down the track.
I'm going to run with trans-light velocities and time dilation.
I doubt if anybody involved with Star Trek at the time expected people to be discussing their work a quarter way into the 21st century.
You've inspired me to pull out my DVD of Forbidden Planet and have another look.
In some respects, the Romulan ship here was essentially running on batteries, like a WW2 sub did when submerged (unless they had a snorkel and were at a depth to use it). This severely limits their speed (also technically the time they can spend submerged, not that we see any such limitations in the episode). Interestingly, by DS9 the Romulans have figured out some of the issues, given that the Defiant could run at lower warp speeds while still cloaked, which kinda emulates more modern submarines that can run at much higher speeds while still submerged, but get too fast when shallow enough and you start showing up on sonar due to cavitation.
This also allows for the Enterprise to sprint at warp speeds in the episode, because a WW2 destroyer could hit much higher speeds than a sub (though that could cause them to lose the sub due to their own noise) and "sprint and drift" is an ASW tactic, and running away at full speed from incoming torpedoes until they run out of fuel is a common tactic (particularly for capital ships).
You're right. Forbidden Planet simply had fantastic special effects. They hold up today!
That is an excellent video on my favorite episode of my favorite television series.
By the way, at the end of The Enemy Below, the two opposing commanders are rescued from the sea. The American captain helped save his opponent by throwing him a rope. In the final scene they are talking to each other, and the German commander says something that indicates he is tired of the war. The American says, "Next time, I won't throw you the rope." The German replies, "I think you will."
Enemy Below is a good time.
I loved that they had to shoot something like that on an actual warship back then - its quite a spectacle!
Robert Mitchum. Kurt Jurgens. Mic drop.
My wife isn't huge into military or action movies but she watched Enemy Below with me.
I still remember at the end, she said, "That line made the whole movie!"
Thanks, this was great. But I gotta tell ya..if Uhura is onscreen then I don't notice anything else..best legs ever...
I see this episode for the first time, and i am amazed at the quality of recitation. All characters are perfectly delined and have depth, and even if the special effects are those of the time, the episode is much much more enjoyable than the last Star Trek installment. A masterpiece
One of my favourite episodes
Deservedly 10/10
Excellent analysis of the similarity between the Star Trek episode and the film The Enemy Below, which I love. I am a retired Officer in the Brazilian Navy and I loved your insight in your analysis. It was perfect, a great insight.
“Who operates the ship controls?”
“CONNNN!”
lol
You steered us right into that one...
Great analysis and spot-on comments. Well done.
Great analysis. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch this episode!
I think this is one of the best if not the best episode in TOS based on the superb interaction of each captain trying to outwit each other and it being a very close and hard fought match.
_Balance of Terror_ is one of my favorite episodes and this is despite the overly dramatic/long bit of not firing phasers at the end (seriously, there was no reason for the Romulan ship to delay firing upon Enterprise for so long). I don't think I cottoned on to the destroyer/sub aspect when I first watched it (I was 2), but it didn't take long to recognize it (there were a lot of WWII movies on TV in the 60's and 70's). It was also a little later when I realized having the Romulans _only_ having Impulse was ridiculous (you simply can't get anywhere with that). Now being restricted to Impulse while cloaked would've made perfect sense.
One tidbit I _totally_ missed was that both captains had trouble-making young officers on their respective bridges. Indeed, you've showed me that this episode was as much a comparison between the Federation and Romulan cultures as it was a cat-and-mouse battle.
Overall, I like _Strange New Worlds_ series. However, the episode _A Quality of Mercy_ disappointed me. I generally like SNW's Spock, but the difference with TOS's Spock was striking here. Like many others, I felt the Romulan Commander here was poorly done (in the script; what he did and said did NOT feel like the Romulan Commander). Finally, I disliked the visual effects because of the "need" to have ships near each other to have a space conflict when they should be out of visual range of each other. The most egregious case is when the Enterprise is rushing to the aid of Federation Outpost 4, but is still too far out to help. The exterior shot has them within sight of each other...easily within weapons range.
Sorry for the rambling.
I liked that SNW episode but I agree with you about the Romulan. That actor they got was no Mark Lenard!
The impulse thing in BoT makes no sense but i make some allowances - they were probably still working out the lore details on that stuff. In the same ep they talk about firing phasers to flush out the Romulan when they clearly mean photon torpedos.
I also make a few concessions to realism if it makes things visually interesting. The Lost Fleet books do a good job of depicting space combat where weapon fire takes hours to hit its mark - but I don’t think that translates to film/movies too well.
They may have retconned the impulse issue since they later reveal in TNG that they use a different power source for their warp core. Maybe it wasn’t something the Enterprise’s sensors could figure out. Like I said- a retconn for sure.
this and the plane killer are the best 2 episodes ever for me, loved them when i was under 10 yeras old, still love them now that im 40.
Boy, could you imagine a multilevel starship like this flying through tight quarters at rapid speed, performing impossible maneuvers? I'm glad they never tried to put that on screen.
Yes, thank goodness that never happened. Ships in close quarters flying around like jet fighters! Ridiculous.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Quite right, absurd to think about. Luckily no one would ever try to show it!
by maneuvers you mean the ones done by the Defiant in DS9?
@@kicsilaci Defiant is a much smaller Vessel, it is more believable to the viewer when the Defiant or a Bird of Prey moves quick Imagine the same with a Galax Class. The Big Spacebattles in DS9 did a great job with showing a good sense of size and movement. Wish they coud bring that back, in new trek al the ships move to fast and it looks uncanny
@@Hans-Yolo I know the Defiant is a smaller ship, that is why I asked if he meant the maneuveres they did with it. Also the Defiant class is about twice as heavy as a Constitution class.
You hit the nail on the head... the story is so critical and it seems writers/producers these days have gone lazy to rely on special effects to compensate for poor writing.
And there are those of us that feel "The Conscience of the King" is one of the great TOS episodes. Almost no visual effects (except for stock), solid story and acting.
Every trope and meme was evident in the series. Practically all of sci fi owe a debt to these writers. This episode is just like a sea tale. Well done,fellow trekkie.
I always loved the dynamic of the Romulans. Culturally, they're clearly an analogy of the ancient Roman Empire on Earth. But politically, they're an analogy of Sino-American Cold War relations. The Neutral Zone is both metaphorical of the Berlin Wall and the Korean DMZ. The schism between the Vulcans and the Romulans can also be connected to the division of Tibetan Buddhism from Communist China. So there's a lot going on here. And it works! And when in DS9 the Romulans finally come to the Federation's side, it feels like it's a truly earned alliance.
Diane Duane had brilliant ideas for Romulan cultural development in "My Enemy, My Ally", first book of the Rihannsu series, but the powers that be didn't adopt it because they'd have to pay her. Then the Cardassians come around in TNG and completely steal the Roman motif away from the Romulans, leaving them with...what? Basically nothing, in terms of culture.
Balance of Terror is my absolute favorite episode of original Star Trek, which is my absolute favorite of all the Trek series. Really enjoyed your analysis. Good job!
I do love this TOS episode (it's in my top 5), and I agree completely that it set the stage for future Trek episodes. It also gave the ship-to-ship battles more of a feel where there were actual tactics and strategy to consider when fighting an enemy ship rather than just two vessels standing still and slugging it out. TNG seemed to regress on this idea since we usually saw the two ships fighting each other at point-blank range until the enemy blew up or the Enterprise ran away. I prefer the tactics and strategy aspect.
And spouting out named maneuvers that nobody in the audience can relate too. Compare the episode The Ultimate Computer where Chekhov is relaying course and speed the the M5 and other starships are taking to try and outmaneuver the other, and the TNG episode Peak Performance where Picard and Riker are using named maneuvers that we don't know. So dissatisfying.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Kuma maneuver aka "fly towards target" god that episode.... imagine bekng able to hack the ferengimbut then not shutting them down and arresting em for attacking you....
Best of Both Worlds was all about tactics, so was Peak Performance, just to name a couple. Could throw in The Arsenal of Freedom if you want. But those were all pretty early episodes.
Once they invented "shields down to 32%" it was all downhill after that. Ironically, Yesterday's Enterprise, one of the series' best episodes, was probably the turning point. The episode wasn't really about fighting the Klingons (and you didn't even see the Romulans), but it seems like every episode after that adopted that episode's battle style.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Trek is full of technobabble, I will forgive some tacticbabble too. The important thing about the tactics is the battle of wits between Picard and the Ferengi captain, where the Ferengi never really understands what is actually going on, and is eventually defeated in the same way.
Balance of Terror is a classic. I did not realize how closely it was modeled on destroyer versus submarine movies. Outstanding description of this monumental episode!
DUDE! Your insights caught me by surprise several times; and I'm so old I saw this episode for the first time in the 60s. Instant sub!
Oh wait... I was already subbed for your BABYLON 5 material. Oh well... ;)
Yep, me too. I went back through his previous videos and oops, already watched them all...
Like a favorite band... when you already own all their albums!
You are very kind!
It absolutely stands up today. The tension is so palpable. I’’d seen “The Enemy Below” and immediately saw its influence. The “relationship” between the opposing Captains is great in both shows.
Space battles have one of two inspirations. Either the Age of Sail duel between two ships, or the air battle between aircraft carriers. Star Trek went with the duel, most SF went with the carriers launching small fighters. Probably The Expanse will prove to have been the most accurate if we ever do have serious space battles.
the main difference between The Expanse and other soft sci-fi and space fantasy works is really just that the former displays a more realistic newtonian space setting, instead of treating space as if it's an ocean or just an atmosphere with fighter planes banking in the air, though it is quite a significant change in depiction, yeah, and definitely the most "realistic" depiction of space in popular media, just behind the interstellar spaceships from the Avatar movies, and 2001: a Space Odyssey
a likely more accurate depiction of a realistic space battle is the short ongoing youtube animated series "SAVAGES" from the channel Real FR0S7, which does feature in its latest episode a properly hard sci-fi space battle, though how it depicts it might not necessarily be the best way for someone that isn't a hard sci-fi nerd to understand it
I really like how the Honor Harrington novels handle space battles, at the individual-ships level *and* the massive-fleets level. Sounds like The Expanse has a similar level of realism.
I was actually stunned by the scene of the rail gun punching through the Mars spaceship, taking off the guy's head and starting to depressive the cabin! Only quick action sealing the leaks saved them. I don't remember being this shocked by any other SF series.
The Expanse was amazing. I'm so glad Jeff Bezos liked it and ordered Amazon to pick it up after SyFy canceled it!
Thank you! “Balance” has always been on my top 10 scifi battle episodes. Your analysis is spot on!
The original Star Trek is the only series in the franchise where we get an idea of space combat. We are given courses and distances, tactics, and weapons. After the original it was this maneuver or that that nobody ever heard of or get any idea what they are. It gets worse in DS9, when capital ships fight in close quarters and maneuver like jet fighters.
Then you never saw DS9
@@RealKull I have seen DS 9. The flight between the Odyssey and the Jem Hadar made some sense. Although the Odyssey should have been moving some. And the K'tinga versus the Defiant is reasonable. But when two massive fleets battle it becomes ridiculous. Wings of Galaxy class starships in close combat with Cardassian ships. They are capital ships. They shouldn't have the maneuverability of fighters.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 Show me the scene were a galaxy moves like a fighter in DS9? The movement in DS9 is still believable, ever seen a battleship or a carrier doing a hard turn? You might be suprised how agile those can be for their size and weight
@@Hans-YoloSacrifice Of Angels for one.
Yes I have seen an aircraft carrier in a turning movement after we refueled from the U.S.S. Ameica. I wouldn't call a minimum turn radius of half a nautical mile particularly agile. Also carrier strike groups are spread out over an area of about 600 square miles and consist of a handful of ships. You're not going to see other ships in the strike group. But in DS9 you see multiple capital ships stacked on top of each other in combat and moving at fractions of the speed of light. So that is like capital ships moving like fighter jets. The ships are too close for safe navigation in any situation, and are a menace to each other. They did a better job in the original Star Trek episode The Ultimate Computer, with only four capital ships going up against the Enterprise.
@@indetigersscifireview4360 ua-cam.com/video/TN7BjeRad2I/v-deo.html
i am not a sailor or live anywhere near the sea but for me this is very impressive and agile for a ship that size. Also i dont see any Capital ships in that episode zooming around like fighter jets. Are the Ships stacked to close, yes, would it look good on screen if they where kilometers away and just small blimps on the screen no.
My point is the movement must be believable not realistic. In comparison to a Defiant, Akira or Miranda a Galaxy should move a bit heavier ( not slower because full impuls is the same speed for all of them ) If i want somewhat realistic spacebattles i watch the expanse
What an awesome capture and comparison!!! Sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it!
1:43 What is that balloon for? Is that for something to make sure the colors are accurate?
Balance of Terror and Corbomite Maneuver are my two, top favorite episodes from OG ST, first season.
Sidenote: you cannot beat lines like: "I just used a hand phaser, and presto, hot coffee!"
😀 I still chuckle when I hear this line.