Thursday, April 09, 2015

17 to 01: Balance of Terror


The first of many times we’ll talk about The Hunt for Red October

Also, Star Trek: Punching Fire.

The movie I was thinking of was Prometheus

Explicit language.

4 comments:

SkilTao said...

[APOLOGIES FOR AGAIN DOUBLE-COMMENTING]


I like how Star Fleet dress regulations are so strict that you have to get married in your daily duty uniform, and that women's hair-dos appear to be the *only* thing that's not regulated.

Wonder if the "fought a war without ever seeing the enemy" thing was meant to parallel the depersonalization of IcBM warfare, and to thereby underscore that issue you mention about finding common ground with your enemy.

"Romii" might be "Romulus II" (i.e., Remus) though I do like the idea of multiple Romes.

Also: the planet "Vulcan" is in the Lyran Commonwealth.

With regard to visual effects: I walked past an episode of Star Trek TOS showing on broadcast TV the other day; the original planet visual had been replaced with a modern 3D model of Earth.

The fact that these orders are "inviolable" implies some of his orders *are* relatively violable?

It's a nice touch that the Romulans paint a bird of prey on the bottom of their ship. The main hull of the Bird of Prey resembles (to my mind) the main hull of the NX-01 Enterprise. Wonder if there's any similarity in their deck plans.

I wholly approve of space being noisy to spaceships. Space needs to not be boring. Corollary: I'm not opposed to ships being unable to warp laterally, or being unable to use impulse laterally while at warp.

Seatbelts, joysticks and EMERGENCY VACUUM SUITS WITH INTEGRAL AIR SUPPLY

[zoidberg writing in notebook]...Vulcanians, IMMUNE to fire...[/zoidberg]

Agreed on the "sorceror" line.

Reliability of lights vs artificial gravity: rofl

Hah, the nuke throws everybody on the left side of the screen (Kirk and Uhura) to the right, and everybody on the right of the screen to the left.

I was about to voice my admiration for how Uhura's skirt shows as much leg as possible while she's sitting; shame the costume means she can't ever lean away from the camera while standing. Wonder if that's one of the reasons she so rarely leaves her chair.

Oh, good call about Romulan Commander maybe being willing to lose his ship. I forgot he'd said that way at the beginning.

Out a torpedo tube with a boot knife in his teeth: I think there's a Star Trek / X-Men crossover comic that's basically that.

Exploring things, at least back in ye olde Age of Exploration, often involved being willing to shoot at hostile natives. Commentary cuts out at that point, so I'm not sure where to go with this; at the very least, I don't think that motivations of curiosity and wanderlust are necessarily distinct from a willingness to deal aggressively with the consequences of such adventurism.

I like that the outro scene is Kirk, still clearly burdened, walking down the corridor while crew around him return to slice-of-life.

VanVelding said...

Ha! I completely missed the duty uniform thing. Star Trek is just so bad for civilian clothes.

I hella like the Romulan's big bird painted on their ships. It makes them stand out from the mottled/glowing structure of later Star Trek ships. They have character.

Bah! Vacuum suits are more heresy.

We can see the different between negatively nuclear crew members (Kirk & Uhura) and positively nuclear crew members (everyone else).

I think Uhura rarely leaves her chair because they're like, “It's enough that you're here, Nichelle.” There are a couple of places where there's a female character that could be Uhura and they're not. I'm going to start calling them not-Uhuras.

The strangest thing about the Star Trek / X – Men crossover is that there are enough of them that I can't keep track of them all. But that probably was one, yeah.

That's a really good point about adventurism, but I do think TOS look back on the Age of Exploration with a certain acknowledgement of the errors of that time. I mean, I've always assumed that was the genesis of The Prime Directive. Y'know, protecting—and I'm quoting here—less developed cultures.

Yeah, this is another episode where we can empathize with the enemy and feel bad for killing them. Again, Shatner's acting is...distinctive, but it doesn't get enough credit. Good episode.

SkilTao said...

Yeah, it's nice to have things like the warbird paint and "sorcerer" in the sorcerer line that are there for verisimilitude rather than to move the plot or carry thematic weight.

Hah, nuclear charge.

Good point about the Prime Directive reining things in.

VanVelding said...

Yeah, The Prime Directive is just...so worth talking about. I should start priming up some sound-byte-sized discussions of it now and just keep 'em in the chamber.