"Balance of Terror" - Season 1, Episode 14
Star Trek looks back on the Cold War right in the middle of it.
John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States on January 20, 1961. His speech on that day is one of the most famous since Lincoln’s second. While his plea to “ask what you can do for your country” became ubiquitous, Kennedy’s speech contained a much more revealing and important statement. The new president declined to name his subjects, they were universally known:
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course—both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war. So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
This “balance of terror,” indistinguishable from the “balance of power” but more honestly phrased, dominated global life from 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic weapon, until 1991, when the Soviet Union officially dissolved. On both sides of the balance were large empires overseeing numerous autocratic client states who waged mass war far away from their central supporting power. The Cuban Missile Crisis, likely the closest the balance of terror ever came to failing, came two and a half years after Kennedy’s speech. This episode of Star Trek, so pointedly named, aired only three years after that.
“Balance of Terror” is the most political Star Trek has been, a focus that comes in part from its source material. The episode was acknowledged by director Vincent McEveety as “the same story” as the World War II submarine action film “The Enemy Below,” which released in 1957 to decent reviews and an Oscar for Best Special Effects. Plagarism would be an unfair descriptor; the episode takes the basic story and wraps it in Cold War context. It’s a true gift.
Lore comes fast at the beginning. A wedding aboard the Enterprise between Lt. Tomlinson and Ensign Martine is interrupted when nearby Outpost 4 comes under attack and is destroyed. Outpost 4 is one of a series of a Starfleet bases arranged along a border with the Romulan Empire, a mysterious alien culture that engaged in a nuclear war with Earth a century before. Since the war had been from a distance, humans and Romulans never saw one another, and the Empire is a blackbox locked by the “Romulan Neutral Zone.” Pointedly though, we see the Romulans, and they look almost exactly like Spock.
The Romulan Commander, played by Mark Lenard, contemplates his next move. Lenard had a long relationship with Star Trek. He was later cast as Sarek, Spock’s father, and appeared in a later episode of the original series, three original series movies, and two episodes of The Next Generation in the role. He also played a random Klingon in The Motion Picture, making him the only actor to play a Vulcan, Klingon, and Romulan in the franchise.
What follows is the most gripping moment-to-moment action in the show yet. A long cat-and-mouse game ensues. The script gives us both sides of the battle and sets the playing field quickly. The Romulan Commander, unnamed but expertly characterized by actor Mark Lenard, entered Starfleet space to test a new superweapon that can destroy nearly any object regardless of its shielding. He hopes to convince his government of Romulus’s new power and persuade them that war, tilted in their favor, is back on the table. His ship is also equipped with a cloaking device but cannot cloak while firing. The Enterprise is faster, equally strong, and can detect the Romulan ship as it moves, but not while it stand still. Kirk gathers his crew in pursuit while managing tensions between Lt. Styles, who intercepted a transmission revealing the Romulans’ appearance, and Spock, who theorizes that the Romulans are a cousin species of Vulcans who split off sometime before they renounced their war-like, colonial past.
The Romulan supership, named a “Bird of Prey” in a perhaps too-obvious flourish. The ship was created by Wah Chang, who we have discussed before, and who threw the model away after filming, thinking it was for one time use.
As the game goes on, the two commanders gain a deep respect for each other. The episode conveys each step expertly, ratcheting up the tension between two evenly matched adversaries. Between the action, much talk is had of Kirk’s responsibility. The Romulan ship begins fleeing towards the Neutral Zone and Kirk carries general orders to never breach the line. He pursues anyway, afraid that the ship may convey news of its success and upset the unnamed, but ever present, balance of terror between the two space powers. Eventually, Kirk lays a trap, exaggerating the damage from a nuclear weapon the Romulans launched to lure them in. The Romulan Commander hesitates, knowing he would pretend to be crippled after such a strike as well. But his second pressures him, asking for “the glory of the kill.” The Commander relents and pays dearly as the Enterprise fires at point-blank range, fatally damaging the enemy vessel. Kirk moves in to rescue survivors and hails the Commander, leading to the first words the two cultures have spoken face-to-face:
KIRK: Captain. Standing by to beam your survivors aboard our ship. Prepare to abandon your vessel.
COMMANDER: No. No, that is not our way. I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.
KIRK: What purpose will it serve to die?
COMMANDER: We are creatures of duty, Captain. I have lived my life by it. Just one more duty to perform.
The Commander detonates his ship. Duty called.
As the Enterprise gathers itself, Kirk asks for a report of casualties. Only one dead: Lt. Tomlinson, his wedding day now forever delayed. Kirk goes to comfort his fiancée. They exchange only three sentences.
Kirk goes to comfort Angela Martine, almost a widow. Martine was played by Barbara Baldavin, and the character appeared in episodes across all seasons of the Star Trek in minor roles. She later transitioned behind the camera and became a casting director on other shows, including Trapper John M.D., a M*A*S*H spinoff.
KIRK: It never makes any sense. We both have to know that there was a reason.
MARTINE: I’m all right.
There’s almost too much to say. Consider that Spock is quite literally “the different reality” for the Commander, a friend of Kirk’s because he embraced reason rather than war. Consider too that Kirk speaks not to Martine but with her, demonstrating an insecurity we have not yet seen, but which makes perfect sense for a man who survived a genocide and embraced command to prevent death rather than cause it. Consider that the episode demonstrates that nuclear weapons are obsolete but that these patterns of behavior still remain.
All of these could form a post in and of themselves. But what I find most interesting is the way that Star Trek makes a tragedy out of this premise by ideologically defanging its conflict and reframing current events as history.
To the first point: the conflict between Starfleet and the Romulans is described vaguely. The differences between the two are implied rather than spoken, the original war happened without any exchange. This was not an ideological conflict, there were not points to be made or sides to take, there was simply war. Sure, this is cheap. Pacifism is easy where it only opposes war rather than an enemy. Ideology complicates by providing stakes and sides and goals; suddenly outcomes are contingent and justification becomes possible, regardless of its warrant. War is the worst we do but is often, at least claimed, to be in service of something better.
The uncharitable read is that the lack of ideology makes this an inapposite, if not downright naive, commentary on the Cold War. Respect for the enemy and unconditional tragedy from violence is only possible where the enemy is unclear and the violence is senseless. But the second point above, I think, edges me away from thematically rejecting “Balance of Terror” altogether.
The wedding that gives the episode its second layer of tragedy. Tomlinson is shown to outrank his fiancee, Martine, who directly reports to him. Starfleet seems to think that love will just sort itself out, although you have to wonder how smart this is on a policy level.
Throughout the episode, these ideological concerns are framed historically. Spock notes that for Romulans, war is “imperative.” He knows this personally, as “Vulcan, like Earth, had its aggressive colonizing period; savage, even by Earth standards.” As mentioned above, nuclear weapons are now obsolete. When Lt. Styles immediately launches into racist jingoism upon seeing his first Romulan, Kirk reminds him that the old war was “Their war, Mr. Styles, not yours.” Rather than have orders to retaliate against Romulan aggression, Kirk has explicit orders to not engage, and his first response upon hearing the Commander’s suicidal final words is to ask about the “purpose” his death may serve. These sprinklings suggest not that Cold War style politics are useless or unimportant, but that they have been solved by the utopian, scientific, reasoned approach of Starfleet. In this reality, Kirk and Spock are friends. In this reality, unfortunately for Ensign Martine, there truly was no reason for Tomlinson to die.
This is perhaps its own form of naivete. Can politics be “solved”? Not entirely. But “the Balance of Terror” can be. In our world, it took countless deaths and fifty years of proxy wars to “fix,” and its legacy is not much better. The Cold War hollowed out much of the Global South, destroying infrastructure and state capacity in a delirious pursuit of global ideological domination. Nuclear weapons remain a present but backgrounded threat. In our reality, I don’t think Kirk and Spock are friends. But I find it heartening, not naive, that Star Trek imagined a better future in the midst of that awful present. It saw war as senseless tragedy in a reality where all ideology left such means behind. The loss of the wedding, that personal thing, is the only outcome fit for violence.
Stray Thoughts
Once Kirk gets to the bridge after the wedding, the first act of the episode is an almost unbroken single scene as the crew learns of the threat and engages with it. This is possibly the best paced episode so far. Even the commercial breaks do little to interrupt its real-time feel.
Superficially, the set up here contrasts with the “The Corbomite Manuever.” Both feature the Enterprise confronting an alien presence it cannot see nor communicate with. It’s interesting that the “balance” element matters quite a bit to the different outcomes. The Enterprise believes itself completely outclassed by the alien ship there and chooses a more peaceful approach, while here, the two sides are more evenly matched.
The Romulan aesthetic is kitschy and charming in the best Star Trek ways. These Roman Vulcans are obsessed with war, wear tons of gold, and have titles like “Centurion.” While some of this is probably due to costume cost (there were a lot of old Roman costumes floating around Hollywood in the mid 60s) it also adds to the historical criticism of the episode. Starfleet meets Rome and sees little worth preserving.
Photo Credits
Romulan Map: https://www.tor.com/2015/04/28/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-balance-of-terror/
Romulan Commander:
https://midnitereviews.com/2015/12/star-trek-episode-14-balance-of-terror/
Romulan ship:
https://www.metv.com//stories/original-star-trek-romulan-bird-of-prey-was-thrown-away
Kirk with Martine:
https://midnitereviews.com/2015/12/star-trek-episode-14-balance-of-terror/
Wedding:
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=15