More reasons why Episode 57 The Enterprise Incident belongs in my top 10 Worst Star Trek episodes list.
Back in November I did my Top 10 Worst TOS episodes list to complement my 10 Best list. I received a number of comments with people either agreeing or disagreeing, which as a Star Trek fan I am always glad to see and debate. My number 4 was the Enterprise Incident and to my surprise I had one reader take issue with that.
To be fair to the reader he wasn’t so much endorsing the Enterprise Incident as questioning why I would list the Alternative Factor as a better episode. At the time I had mentioned my liking of Lazarus and anti-Lazarus fighting forever in the corridor between universes.
I have been watching the whole series over again while working on a new Warhammer army (and if any of you are Warhammer players you can expect to see it at the Alamo GT in Nov.). When I watched the Alternative Factor I realized that the reader who commented on it had some very valid points. It really was full of massive plot holes and dumb science. However, last night I watched the Enterprise Incident and that has firmly cemented it’s position in my list.
At this point I am ready to forgive the episode for the Romulans all speaking perfect English since, as another reader pointed out, pretty much every race in Star Trek speaks flawless English (even though Spock comments on how unusual it is for the aliens to speak English in Bread and Circuses). My original point about crew members of the Romulan star ship not recognizing a fellow shipmate still stands. The thing is after watching it again I have a ton of new reasons why this episodes sucks.
First of all, I’m going to give massive hell to the props department for being to lazy or cheap to make up two more Romulan Bird of Prey models, forcing them to use the Klingon ships they happened to have lying around. The excuse they gave was cursory at best, and just made them look dumb. Also as a kid I had a Romulan ship model that I liked a lot.
Second, Kirks plan was to get surrounded and captured by the Romulans??? Wasn’t it established in Balance of Terror that no contact had ever been established directly with the Romulans and then later in the Deadly Years that Romulans never take prisoners? What if the Romulan commander had opted to just obliterate the Enterprise and then sift through the wreckage for anything useful? If a ship came into my territory in a suicidal manner I would have to assume they had some massive technological advantage and nuke it at range. Also what is the deal with the Romulan commander offering amnesty for the crew as they were simply following Kirk’s orders? Doesn’t sound much like Romulans to me.
Third, Kirk has Spock induce a death-like trance so good it fools the Romulan doctors. They send his body back to the Enterprise. If you follow the history of Romulan/Federation contacts this really is the first time humans and Romulans have met face to face. What if the Romulan commander had opted to put Kirks body through a thorough post mortem in hopes of learning some natural weakness and sent his remains back to the Enterprise in a bucket? Sounds like what they would do, and is definitely what I would do in their place.
Vulcan death grip??? How dumb do you have to be to fall for that?
Finally, Kirk manages to bluff and karate chop his way to the cloaking device. He steals it and transports back to the Enterprise (by the way, don’t transporters have a hard time going through active deflector shields? Hasn’t that been established in like 100,000 episodes?). Kirk gives Scotty 15 minutes to hook it up to the ship to get them out of there. The Romulan commander finds out almost immediately and does…nothing? What if she had called the Enterprise and said something like “You have stolen our cloaking device. I will give you 30 seconds to transport it back to our ship. For every second you are late, I will kill you. Oh, by the way I’m going to execute Spock too.” That’s 15 minutes of waiting for the Enterprise to escape. Also, Kirk was betting a lot on Scotty being able to hook it up to the ship. What if the Romulans were using DC and all the Enterprise outlets were AC? Also, at the start of this fiasco he didn’t know that the Romulans didn’t have a way of defeating their own cloak. Not exactly a calculated risk
Oh, yeah. They also manage to transport Spock back on board at the last second (deflector shields again).
Oh, well. Even a bad Star Trek episode is better than watching the Kardashians bimbo their way across LA. The Romulan logo shirt is from the Star Trek t-shirt category by the way.
Thanks for reading. I saw Cold Light of Day yesterday and should have written it up today, but that movie has caused an advanced state of apathy in me. I’ll write it up tomorrow. Also I’m kind of fired up about Star Trek right now. I’m grinding through the horrible 3rd season and feel the need for an outlet and you, my beloved readers, are it. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (act now to be my 167th follower!). If you have a comment on this episode or my issues with it feel free to post here. Any off topic questions or suggests email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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