This is one of my favorite TOS episodes, certainly in the top 3.

Balance of Terror is one of my favorite Star Trek TOS episodes. Thanks for covering this episode. This episode had a lot of great scenes. The episode told an overall good story. It shows the potential of war.

Yes, Balance of Terror. I've been late watching TOS, after all the other Trek shows, but I was thoroughly impressed by this episode. Not a dull moment in sight, very tight script.

This is actually the very first thing I ever remember watching in my life and what made me such a fan of Star Trek (as well as the first bonding moment I can remember with my dad as Star Trek is something we both love) Interestingly enough, in the Star Trek CCG, the Romulan Commander was named "Keras". Which I find hilarious as that's just Sarek spelt backwards. I've always made that my head canon since discovering it.

Oh man, this is an absolute CLASSIC episode. I mean, this is the episode that was the progenitor of "Submarines in space" which influenced Wrath of Khan a lot. Kirk is a commander but he's a leader who is out to CONTAIN and effectively deter war whenever he can. Hell, when the Federation-Klingon war that's coming up happens, we see how Kirk deals with war. Granted, I think Kirk gets that pragmatism and thoughtfulness because most of the writing staff were probably veterans/ex military (besides DC Fontana) who had an understanding of military protocol and how a LOT of Cold War dealings with the Soviets were a case of treading carefully because it would be effectively the end of the world if the war got hot. Plus the tragedy that Gene L Coon got cancer thanks to being at nuke tests which killed him early... Yeah, I can imagine how much fear you'd have to know that you kill people in the distance and then have the cloud of death spread further out than that, back towards you and it kills you AND your family and your loved ones and everything you've ever held dear. And it's YOUR fault. Lot of psychology that goes into the cold war fears during the TOS era. Don't think any of the staff were very gung ho about a nuclear apocalypse scenario.

Even as a kid, when I first watched this, I found the hints about the Romulan society riveting.

SO many memorable lines "Be sure of this, Mister. Keep your bigotry in your quarters. There is no room for it on my bridge. Do I make myself clear?" - "must it ALWAYS be so." " Our portion, Commander, is obedience" - "if these Romulans are on offshoot of my Vulcan heritage ..... then weakness is something we DARE NOT SHOW".

In SFB terms, it's a Warbird. After the alliance with the Klingons many were upgraded with warp engines and became the War Eagle class. They still weren't up to taking on a Constitution class unless they got the drop on one (or operated in groups), but the Romulans needed warships as fast and cheaply as they could get them, and the Klingons were only willing to sell them so many D-hulls

I like the idea that Romulans used warp capable carriers to deliver warships to the area of operations and then met up with them at pick up points to ferry them elsewhere. There is a design for a warp carrier for this ship that slots into that smooth round aft section. It means the Romulans have a no retreat policy - you have no capacity to retreat. It also means that a Romulan warship is devoting all of its power to offensive systems. Sadly the reality is (in MST3K chorus), "They just didn't care!"

8:06 I don't think it has a canon name, but STO calls it the T'liss class.

Easily one of the most important Trek episodes. The vibe of the episode, the battleships in space aesthetic, will be felt in the likes of Wrath of Khan and ever future forwards. It's kind of hard to imagine that before this the whole Hornblower in space thing hadn't really been hit home, but "Balance of Terror" really nails that tone and establishes it in Trek lore. The atmosphere here is perfect. And it's one of those handful of TOS episodes without an 'Everybody Laughs!' ending, indeed again the downbeat ending here is note perfect and, like "City on the edge of forever", sticks with you.

Possibly my all time favorite ( or at least most “quintessential” )original Star Trek episode. For instance if I knew someone who knew nothing of Star Trek I might recommend this episode as an introduction. Cheers! 🍻🖖🏼

Definitely in my top 5 star trek episodes / movies ever. It sounds like you haven't watched the Enemy Below recently, lore. No doubt that old movie was certainly the biggest influencer of this episode. I am ok with that though.

This is my favorite episode of TOS. I can bend over backwards into a triple loop to explain away and justify this stuff. For instance: the Torpedo. I always resumed Kirk acted just a hair too slowly and it got caught at the edge of the warp field. They could change the rate of closing, but to turn or drop out of warp would mean the torpedo would slam into them instantly, so Kirk is playing for time to fix the phasers.

I always just assumed the Romulan Plasma torpedo was caught in their warp bubble, meaning they couldn't gain distance on it but at least they could get away from the Warbird to prevent a 2nd shot.

It would be politically devastating for Federation citizens to know that Romulans were related to Vulcans. Thus, Starfleet may have known this, but kept it a secret. Thus, the crew of the Enterprise believes that the Federation does not know how Romulans appear.

I love this episode and the elements of story telling in this. A very solid choice for any top 10 list.

Out of all of Star Trek this has to be my favorite if not one of my top favorites, right now I can't think of any other. But when I saw Lorerunner covering this I was like OMG! I have to definitely watch this video. I think what makes this so great of an episode is because it is so relatable and mirrors so much reality, like change this from Star Trek and make it a submarine and you still have one hell of a story. Also the leadership in this episode is exceptional and how the two captains mirror each other. The Romulan Commander is Kirk except if he was a Romulan. Imagine Picard going against himself as a Romulan, errrr nevermind bad example. But the drama / suspense in this episode along with a strong story plus excellent acting is the perfect combination. A great creation when all the right pieces come together ( Story, Drama / Suspense, Acting, Directing, Production), everyone was on point with this one. Also about the Chapel, I believe it is a multifunctional area which could be used for any occasion or by any religious belief human or alien. Whatever the need it could be converted, in this case a Chapel for a wedding. Hell in The Wrath of Khan they converted the torpedo room for a funeral.

I'd love to see some ruminations on sub movies like 'Run Silent Run Deep' or naval movies like 'Damn the Defiant!' Or 'Master and Commander.' Or even a war film like Bogart's 'Sahara.' I've maintained that Red October and Master and Commander are essentially Star Trek movies.

Definitely in my top 10 Trek Episodes ever. Still doesn't beat In The Pale Moonlight.

This episode right here is why I shut off Enterprise during the pilot. Watching this as a kid I took no visual contact to mean of ANY kind, like a submarine, and so in the Enterprise era view screens weren't really a thing since sensors weren't advanced enough to generate a real time image. So when I saw the NX-01 had a view screen, I bailed. I eventually went back and glad I did, but I never got over that. I agree with there being much confusion in this episode. But I never thought the noise was the issue, always that an energy emission sent up a flare to their location. Great episode and great Rumination!

I was way too young when I saw TOS for the first time, couldn't even read the subtitles. So, maybe 5, circa 1978. When I came back to it decades later, this was the first episode that made me say "wow, this is really good!" I had liked Charlie X and Where No Man Has Gone Before, but this one just blew me away. More than 30 years after it was made.

This was a great episode.

Balance of Terror is top tier. Pinnacle of TOS. Mark Lenard brought a feeling of seriousness and professionalism that sold the episode.

Awesome! You completely nailed it! New fan!

Fantastic episode. The old submarine story works incredibly well here. Mark Lenard is great as is Shattner. The reaction on Spock seeing the Romulans is well done. Perfect tension during the episode as both captains try to outdo each other. You really see Kirk take advantage of every situation here. From this point on 1st season just gets better. Some of the best stuff Trek has to offer.

Interesting they later cast Mark Lenard as Spock's father. He was a good actor who could play each part at different times. Also the first, but not last, time we see a Starfleet female addressed as "Mister." Tomlinson being the only casualty punctuated the episode, and the end scene with Kirk and Martine was special.

I was looking forward to this episode!

One of the best episodes of anything ever! Also Perhaps the most important world building episode in Star Trekdom!

This might be my favorite TOS episode. Definitely top 5.

The Enemy Below is the submarine move this episode 'borrows extensively' from, if you are looking for one movie to list. A series of incidents - the one with both ships being silent and a mistake giving the destroyer-type vessels' position away to the submarine equivalent - is fairly directly copied. Also yes, the scene where Kirk is in his quarters with Bones saying "...I walk onto the bridge and everyone just expects me to know what to do..." is a great character piece. Bones responding by describing the mathematical probability of 100 million Earth-type worlds in JUST our galaxy but "...only one of each of us, don't destroy the one called Kirk" I memorized that speech. As to the Captain's political power, that was - according to Roddenberry - due to using sailing ship navies of the Napoleonic war era as a model, Horatio Hornblower in space as it were. Captains/Admirals had to have that sort of power because of slow communications, They were - and mostly are in the RN - pretty much by definition from politically connected families, how many British officers were/are NOT Lord something or other? In a country where the equivalent of the Senate is The House of Lords!

Indeed a legendary episode. Almost perfect.🌟 🔸The Romulans were better as based on Rome. Napoleonic France was a personal empire. Those never survive the disappearance of the dictator. Funny how so many things here like the revelation of the appearance of the Romulans were casual dramatic effects but would have to be danced around in Enterprise. The perils of doing a prequel. 🔹Don’t be shy about your world building sidebars, they’re very interesting. I agree. I’ve always thought that Deanna on TNG should have been the person in charge of ambassadorial and Fed administrative functions legitimizing her position on the bridge. Kirk definitely is also a representative of the state as the captains all were during the Age of Discovery. Columbus and Cook weren’t just mariners.

A superb episode, and in many ways the forerunner to the battle in WoK. Mark Lenard excels as the Romulan commander, and it's little wonder they brought him back to play Sarek.

One of my favorites of all star trek

Again, SFB explained this well. In the SFU it's the Romulans, not the Klingons, who have Great Houses, always maneuvering against each other for power in the Senate. Having Decius be from a different House than Commander Lenard makes sense in that context. The enemy the Romulans have been continuously fighting all along are the Gorns. The Romulan Empire is perpetually cash-strapped as a result of attempting to fight an offensive war against the Gorns with inferior technology. Economic exhaustion and political infighting kept the Romulans from being a substantial threat prior to their alliance with the Klingons.

They WERE phasers not photon torpedoes bro! But they were, as Styles himself in one scene even said, "proximity phasers"! Which were also used in the opening of Errand of Mercy. Phasers were actually very versatile weapons which could also be fired in short expanding bursts. Also even though this is the only episode where we get to see the "Phaser Control Room" they are many, many other references to the ship's "phasers crews" throughout all three seasons of the series.

I believed that the true origin of the Romulan species should have been revealed as a Federation cover up to protect the Vulcans. Higher level personnel, maybe Kirk, would be aware of the Vulcan-Romulan connection, while lower levels would not.

The math has changed based on current scientific understanding, but I absolutely love McCoy’s exchange with Kirk, another “quintessential moment” if I might say. Paraphrased dialog : Kirk 400 lives counting on me, everyone on the bridge waiting for my next move. And Bones, what if I’m wrong? McCoy : you know in the galaxy there is a probability of 3 million earth-like planets, and in all the universe 3 million million galaxies like ours. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each onef us. Don’t kill the one named Kirk” I’ll never forget that exchange. Some of Kelley’s and (certainly) Shatner’s best acting in the whole original series. PS obviously before the mirror universe episode and quantum theory which posits that there are infinite “versions of us” 😉🍻🖖🏼

To most of the humans aboard the Enterprise (or most of those who voice an opinion on the subject, in any case), the war with the Romulans a century ago was so remote as to ensure their emotional detachment. A century ago, my own grandfather was 17 years old, so the First World War, and more personal conflicts of that time, were not so distant to me but were living memory even as I reached adulthood. In Spain, when I was a child, surrounded by elders, you could still feel the Civil War looming over every sentence, though it was taboo to speak of. In some families, the bitterness that is handed down across a century is stronger than in others, but it is doubtless true that most humans on the Enterprise would not have felt the war so personally given the century of distance and silence between Earth and the Romulans. However, it occurs to me that it might have been quite different on the Romulan ship. If the Romulans had the same longevity as the Vulcans, many of the crew, including the Captain, would have been veterans of that war and their perceptions of the Federation as foes would not be an inheritance, but experience. They looked back not over generations of peace, but a momentary truce spent preparing for the resumption of combat.

I completely agree with you on this. oh one of the movies it was taken from is Enemy Below with Robert Mchuem ( sorry for the spelling)

Also it demonstrates the importance of shields. Which seems to be lost on so many, especially pinheads who are so concerned about the placement of the ship's bridge.

Actually, I never questioned the speed of the romulan's weapon relative to the speed of the ship. It was easily implemented into the SFB rules system. And I had never seen an issue with that in a dozen viewings of the show.

There is zero question that this episode was primarily influenced by the Robert Mitchum film The Enemy Below. Not just sub movies in general but THAT specific one. The uboat commander is also weary of battle he wants to go home Decius tells him he must crush his enemy. The same scene is in Enemy below. The Uboat captain's relationship with the character Hymie is so close to Enemy Below they have the parallel lines.... Romulan: The man's a sorcerer. compared to German The man's a devil Hymie. Photon torpedoes are depth charges. The cloaking device is just because its warfare with another ship you can not see. The attempt to remain silent until someone bungles and makes a noise which triggers a bombardment. The captains orders the ship to look more damaged than it is to lure the enemy in for a kill shot. The mutual respect of the two captains. The development of the plot is almost exactly the same. Run Silent run deep had a release debris scene, but Enemy Below is so closely matched beat for beat Its its not even debatable. Even Vincent McEevety the episode director said its obviously the same story. Analysis is almost futile since the choices made came from The Enemy Below. Wedding being the exception.

You might want to recheck, my understanding is The Doomsday Machine was the first to be remastered.

Balance of Terror - Purple ("We have to believe there was a reason..." I could pick any other quote from this episode and it'd be great. The only problem with this episode imo is that there's not more of it.)

One of my top five TOS episodes.

Vulcanite! 🤣🤣🤣 Love it!

the story is so good it's still quite watchable today

I can come up with an "answer" for how the torpedo stays with them. There is of course no science about how a warp drive works, but assuming it warps space around the ship, then perhaps the torpedo was within this warped space unless the warp somehow is form-fitted to the ship.

This is a great episode but this is one of my favorite ruminations.

In one of the pilots there is a scene where Captain Pike and the doctor talk, is the doctor the centurion talking to Lenard in their quarters, the same scene the same actor the same dialogue?

22:30 - "We've seen a hundred campaigns together and still I do not understand you". A hundred campaigns against who? The Cardassians?

Romulas is sounding like america maybe an intentional point

You mentioned the phaser room. What I don't understand is this: how many times do they give the command to fire before they fire? The bridge to phaser specialist one. Phaser specialist one to phaser specialist two. Phaser specialist two fires. This is repeated each time a command to fire is given. Is this some kind of fail-safe procedure? There are no little trained minions in the background, scurrying around like water bugs? Two phaser specialists is all they need?

One of the beat trek episodes of ANY Trek series. TOS had a lot of episodes that don't hold up but this one sure does

One of my all time favorite episode of ST TOS. I LOVE this episode and can't remember how many times I have watched it..it clearly est Kirk as a military gifted Captain but that's what was needed In this wild west Era of Star trek..also great look at still lingering individual racism even through Roddenberry tells us that much of that was suppose to be in the past.

Minor correction: the Federation and Romulans did communicate. Ship-to-Ship was a thing. Ship-to-Ship VISUAL communication wasn't a thing. The war still makes sense whole allowing for the reveal.

Before watching this rumination I was thinking Balance of Terror was the Nazi episode with the figurehead leader. I'm glad to see I was mistaken. This one is really good and Mark Lenard put in a terrific performance and, as you said Lore, gave the episode the necessary gravitas.

I can't believe the Romulans weren't only in two TOS episodes

The Hunt for Romulan October !

I always wondered who the Romulans were fighting during this period.

WE WANT MORE FREQUENT ENTERPRISE UPLOADSSS!!11

From what I understand of the Lore about the Romulans (and granted this is from a comic featuring the Romulan Commander and from a book I can't remember it's name) the explanation of Sarek and the Romulan Commander looking similar is coming from the same ancestry. What I mean is that at some point during The Sundering (the exile of the warlike Vulcans) Sarek and the Romulan Commander had a pair of ancestors that had "a noble lineage" but had one stay on Vulcan and embraced Logic while the other kept the emotions and left. Further in the book, it was mentioned that the Tal Shiar had considered replacing Sarek with the Romulan Commander but the Romulan Commander had refused out of a moral sense of duty...and the events leading up to the comic and this episode. Now that that's out of the way, I *love* this episode as a ship battle episode. I mean, the Constitution class Crusier vs. a T'liss class frigate with the T'liss having a tech advantage vs. the Connie having the firepower? It really is a submarine vs. surface ship fight.

Hi The speed of the warbird used to bug me until I came up with a solution that satisfied me. Limited power generation. When the Romulans attacked the outpost, and when they fired upon the Enterprise they had to drop the cloak to fire the torpedo, and from that, Kirk deduces it takes all their power to fire the weapon. The model of the warbird shows what looks likes warp nacelles on it so I'm assuming the warbird has a warp drive, and it seems reasonable, given their purpose, that warp drives are power hogs. The cloak is also power hog, which was the reason the bridge officer, gave when he decloaked the warbird. If you assume limited power generation, and 3 power hungry systems and only enough power generation to run 1 of them at a time, which given how the warbird operated in the show seems to be consistent. Then the commander would have to choose very carefully which of his power hogs he used. Since he was in a battle with an enemy ship, the cloak and plasma torpedo took priority

It was something I call The Disney Effect. Animated features in the US were about children's entertainment, even though in places like Japan, anime could have adult themes. "Video Games are not art." -- Roger Ebert (even though video games employed writers, musicians, and artists, all which were considered "artists")

There is a reason Why people like this show.

I always thought the Centurion was the political representative on board to make sure the commander and his crew stay in line. They had been together so long,, a deep respect and friendship had developed between he and the commander.

Good thing the klings & Roms never teamed up to defeat the Fed

My head canon for why there are discrepancies with some TOS episodes and Enterprise episodes is the disruption of the timeline due to the Borg traveling back in time to stop First Contact. (Spoilers) So what we see in TOS is the same timeline as TNG up until say Nemesis and if we use the Branching Timeline Theory Enterprise is a divergent branch. (I know I know the last episode of Enterprise kinda torpedoes that, lol)

Mark Lenard, Leonard Nimoy

Summary: The Enterprise battles a Romulan ship suspected of destroying outposts near the Neutral Zone. A classic submarine-battle unfolds. (The first appearance of the Romulans, thanks to the work of Mark Lenard (who later plays Spock's dad) one of the best TOS-episodes)

15:20, Fascinating.

It makes no sense that the others would not know what the Romulans looked like way before this. So in the Earth-Romulan War, no one found the body of one? Ever? Not even when a ship was destroyed and debris/bodies was thrown everywhere?

ohh, this one of my favorites, can't wait to hear what you have to say. edit: haha, no drama in video games.... Emet-Selch would like a word with you, and how many hearts he broke and tears shed. I know what your saying, just given' an example. edit 2: Mark Leonard was awesome as the Romulan commander. I love the way he was a sad antagonist in the end. edit 3: You are right about the special effects, I did let it pass that phasers were behaving like torpeds cus it was still early trek. The out-run of the Romulan plasma weapon was, in my head-cannon, not so much them going to warp, but use the power from the warp engines to provide the thrust to the impulse engines. Because had they gone to warp, that would never be able to be like that. So, as one Klingon commander said: "Emergency Power!!!!" And what's fun is how they briefly revisit this drama when Picard deals with the Romulans for the first time over in TNG. Is why that feels like such an upgrade for the Romulans, because you get the feeling that had a similar event occurred, 1701-D would not likely have fared so well like the 1701.

This is a great episode, but it borrows greatly from the movie “Run Silent, Run Deep” which is a cat and mouse game between a German U boat and American destroyer. In the movie, the German sub commander complains that Germany is being taken over by hostile people, and he just wants to go home. The German commander launches debris and garbage to try to trick the destroyer into believing the sub was hit.

In real life terms the romulan plasma torpedo, sounds a bit like a caronade. A short barreled naval gun (Earth ca 1750s-1850s) devastating firepower, but limited range.

Why would it be odd for them to not have ship to ship communication? Is the idea of two incompatible technologies that don't know how to interact _too_ far fetched? We even hear Spock talk about how primitive Earth ships were at the time. I'm sorry if Enterprise messes that up, but Enterprise didn't exist back then, hell we hadn't been to the moon when this episode came out.

One thing I want to point out. Everyone wants to depict the Romulan War as some kind of a unilateral fleet operation with all the founding members engaging in combat with the Romulans. Why does everyone make that assumption? Even the writers of Enterprise were heading in that direction. What was the war called? THE EARTH-ROMULAN WAR. I've always thought the ideal would have been to basically have the other major parties of the early Federation be victimized by the Romulans in sneak attacks. Think of a galactic Pearl Harbor situation. Earth is the only one that doesn't get torched because Earth is furthest from the Romulans and as such just out of there reach. Earth is the one that mobilizes fleets and fights the Romulans. It isn't until several years after the Earth Romulan War that the early version of the Federation is formed. 8:57 because it's not the cloaking device. It's a "practical invisibility screen" which is JUST the light bending. The cloaking device is what they come up with in Season 3's "The Enterprise Incident." Which combines the invisibility screen with sensor stealth. Which is why even the Romulans who built it can't track the Enterprise once she cloaks in that episode. 14:09 Stiles subplot got cut up a bit in editing. Originally there was to be a report that the Romulans had STOLEN the design of the Romulan ship from Federation designs, and that this strongly implied Romulan spies in Starfleet. 16:03 More nuance to this point. The effects house that they had on TOS was used to doing big ugly monster prosthetics and things like that. They could give someone a wig and some paint and poof you've got an alien. They could do things like The Gorn, Balok, or the Salt Vampire. But doing something like the fine details of Vulcan ears, getting them to blend into a human head? They just couldn't. Leonard Nimoy said they did several tries at his ears for The Cage, and they had to throw them all out because they were big, bulky, grotesque and not at all believable. If I recall correctly, Nimoy's makeup artist had to go out of pocket to another studio and have them do it on the down low. They actually cost quite ab it of money to get done. 17:06 That's the fault of Enterprise and Discovery. Not this episode. This episode makes it clear that the ships of the time were basically submarines with nukes in space. Frankly if Enterprise HAD been that it would have made it way more fun and interesting to watch the evolution of the Trek universe. Imagine an Enterprise where the ships look more like something out of 2001 A space odyssey with warp engines on them? Imagine you have no phasers, no transporters, no holograms, no shields, your warp speed is maybe Warp 2 or 3, and not Warp 5. Imagine you have no main view screen and instead have windows with blast shields. Imagine that ships way out in space have no real-time communication with Earth. MY GOD there were so many cool things they could have done. So many ways that the show could have changed and grown over five or six seasons, with the Earth-Romulan War right in the middle. The reason Enterprise failed is because its first two seasons were played safe, and acted like Voyager Season 8 and 9, only instead of being mostly harmless fluff out in the 24th Century, they were actively pissing on established Star Trek history... Berman and Braga made it very clear they did not give a shit about TOS, either. The only reason it became a continuity snag is because of Enterprise and later Discovery. TNG, and DS9 both backed up TOS on several occasions. The Romulans, being the secretive lot that they are probably never responded visually. Kept the humans guessing as to who they were. Also, have you never asked yourself why we never saw Vulcan ships or Andorian ships later on in ANY of the other shows? What if, in my reimagined Enterprise, the Romulans had destroyed the Vulcan and Andorian fleets all but entirely? What if the remnants of their fleets came to Earth and Earth used the knowledge and experience of those crews to help build the fleet that fought that war? Ships built in haste on an assembly line. Engines with guns and sensors. Sent out to patrol, and kill Romulans. Enterprise demonstrated a complete lack of creativity. So, the episode says that the ships were primitive, that they used primitive weapons, that no side took prisoners, and that there was no visual communication between the two sides... You can either look at that as a limitation, or you can look at that as an opportunity to create dramatic moments. We can never see the Romulans. Or, at least our main characters can never see the Romulans... Okay, well there's a LOT that can be done with that idea. Paranoia, rumors, distrust, all manner of tension. "I heard they're seven feet tall and bleed acid." There are SO MANY great scenes and stories you could write around that conflict while adhering to what TOS established. 19:42 Hold on. Why is it stupid? Why? I can't even begin to understand your position when you just say "They're backing away... Which is stupid." What should they have done? The way warp is depicted in TOS, you can do barrel rolls at warp. Why not? You're warping space around you. Even in TNG they used the warp field to effectively nullify the gravity of a moon. That's what warp does. We see the TOS Enterprise "pivot at warp speed" in a later episode. This is how Warp works at this time. When you watch TMP and the Klingons shoot at t he V'ger cloud? Yeah, they're moving at warp speed that whole time. They have to be, because V'ger is at Warp all the way to the Terran solar system. 26:49 They make a point of saying the phasers are set to "proximity blast" meaning they fire out a charged pulse from the phaser, and once it reaches a certain distance it releases the charge. Phasers in TOS do a lot of different things. Later series actually didn't take advantage of this. For example in "A Piece of the Action" they use ships phasers on a wide-angle stun to stun an entire block of gangsters. 31:20 Well, in modern navy terms, any ship with an admiral can be classified as a "flag ship." Particularly in fleet actions. By the by, we're never told that the Enterprise in TOS is the flag ship. I know you didn't mention that but I just thought I'd mention. It' a special ship, one of twelve, and TOS makes it very important that STARSHIP CAPTAIN is not the same as commanding any other ship. This is a plum, special assignment. Anyway, I digress. 33:01 Internal logic, the Plasma torpedo gets caught in the warp field, and they're basically pulling it alone with them. Later trek establishes that, at least in the case of Photon Torpedoes, they have a warp field sustainer coil, which allows them to stay at warp with ships that are in warp fo ruse in warp combat. 33:27 Yes, this is a bit of a head scratcher and nobody has ever been able to really come up with a satisfactory answer as to why the Romulan ship is "simple impulse." Some have suggested that Scotty wasn't saying the ship didn't have warp, but that it didn't have anything special to push it along at sub-light speeds and they could easily match it. Others have said that perhaps the Romulan ship was launched close to the border by a larger vessel. In simple terms, the idea is to say we have this advantage, they have this advantage, how can we play our strengths against theirs. The in-universe details are muddled, but narratively its perfectly understandable. I can forgive a technical failing like that when the story itself is compelling, tense, well told, etc... 35:01 likely because it has a guidance system and would simply turn to follow would be my guess. I just listened to the rest of your video. Honestly I have nothing further to directly comment on, except to say that I love Balance of Terror. Everyone gives an amazing performance. The tension is so thick you can cut it with a sword. It establishes the Romulans so vividly with just a few great moments. It establishes a big piece of Star Trek lore. I mean... What can you say? It's definitely one of the best. I don't know if i'd say it's my absolute favorite, but it's up there.

It is what I recently called it The Disney Effect. In the US back in the 50's, just about every Disney animated feature has to have cute animals, even if they weren't needed to tell the story. This was why animated features were never taken seriously, even though Anime often dealt with adult themes in Japan. For some science fiction never got the respect it deserved. Remember, CBS went with Lost in Space. Oh yes, video games. "Video games is not art." -- Roger Ebert

This is my #1 favorite episode...10? phooey

From what i heard a Flag ship is the lead ship of a fleet of coarse they would have multiple they would have multiple admirals

I didn't know Dices was Stan

Warp 9 torpedos? Why build ships? Just launch from orbit and wait.

TOS is my happy place 💕

Stiles...the same one from star trek 3?

I have to say that I have a SERIOUS problem that the stations and the Enterprise herself is EXPENDABLE to keep the peace. I really think that once blood had been spilled it's on. Of course it isn't and I'm forced to wonder what diplomatic gymnastics prevented full scale war. Of course since the T'liss's commander is DEAD and not well connected, it could be that the Romulan Government basically threw him under the bus so to speak. I wonder however what pound of flesh the Romulans had to give the Federation. Furthermore I'm curious if the Romulan Government was truly aware of what the Federation actually was. The last war was against Earth, NOT the Federation and I don't think the Romulan's realize what that change REALLY means. '

I always felt Enterprise did a good job of handling the cloaks and the Romulans in general. Yes it's a retcon that no one on ToS knew what cloak was but we're getting reasonably close to inventing something akin to a cloak as of now. So ignoring the "how the hell can it do that?" Conversation in TOS is something I'm fine with.

a serious carton? NEVAR! ... of course it can, asl the japanese, they do it for 70 odd years. Also this is one of the episodes that shows clearly, Kirk is the best CAPTAIN! Not the best leader, but the best captain!

So this is the episode with the chapel in it? I always found that utterly bizarre. Other than Bajorans and Star Trek V, it's practically the last mention of religion anywhere in Trek.

Bird of prey !

Omg

this video explains the battle in details kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mbyTmqVynJbdcn0.html

Kirk is indeed a very good captain, and this episode is not the only one where he displays his competency. How could someone like him get caught so off guard in The Wrath of Khan then? I would almost call that character assassination.

Alec was great but he couldn't sword fight worth a damn.

It's a faaake.

One of my Top 5 favorite Star Trek TOS Episodes. An easy solution to the Romulan reveal could have been done with a couple of sentences from Kirk in the briefing. Kirk could have said something to the effect of; "Romulans are humanoid beings, in all our communications with them, they always wear a Helmet. We have yet to understand the significance of this Helmet" Not perfect by any means but I think it's a bit less clunky and less damaging to the Continuity then the actual 'solution' that was used

Funny my absolute favorite episode and squire of gothos is my least favorite 😳