Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty #28 — “Balance Of Terror” And “A Quality Of Mercy”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary is here, we at Comicon are celebrating one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through the end of September, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

As we get closer to the end of our list, editor-in-chief Erik Amaya joins us to discuss one of Star Trek‘s best episodes and a great follow-up to the same tale.

“Balance of Terror”
Star Trek – Season 1, Episode 14 (12/15/1966)

Synopsis: Following Starfleet orders, the U.S.S. Enterprise arrives near the Romulan neutral zone to find several outposts destroyed and a new Romulan ship with advanced technology on the prowl. It is now up to Captain Kirk to out-think the enemy commander before he can get back into Romulan territory.

Not only is this one of the top episodes of any Star Trek series, it’s one of the five best hours of American television ever produced. In form, it is a submarine movie with William Shatner‘s Kirk and Mark Leonard‘s Romulan Commander locked in a dialogue of combat and subterfuge long before they ever see or speak to each other. On the surface, it is also a Cold War tale of incompatible civilizations butting up against one another. But, at the same time, it is also a brilliant dissection of war and the old wounds it can expose.

Just look at Navigator Stiles (Paul Comi). We’re told early on that his ancestors fought in the previous conflict between Earth and Romulus. Somehow, he is still raw about century-old events. Kirk, in response, tells him to leave his bigotry in his quarters. Unfortunately, his intolerance is only amplified when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) deciphers a Romulan message and discovers these hostile aliens are cousins to his Vulcan people. Stiles immediately suspects him of being a saboteur — a decidedly un-Starfleet attitude. Spock’s response is to ignore Stiles xenophobia entirely. It is, of course, not logical to acknowledge it while his captain attempts to prevent another war.

Then there are all the firsts: the discovery of a shared ancestry between the Vulcans and the Romulans, the cloaking device itself, a ship known as a “Bird of Prey”, and Leonard’s debut appearance on Trek. It is remarkable to go back to this episode with subsequent series history in mind as this story lays so much of the groundwork. More remarkable, this is the 14th of 30 episodes aired in the initial season and it feels so complete that one can show this to a Trek novice and they will get the program.

Sure, Kirk, McCoy (DeForest Kelly) and the other bridge crew get very little to do as only Stiles can exhibit a trait series creator Gene Roddenberry would not one of his major characters to harbor — we’ll ignore all the times Bones calls Spock a “hobgoblin” for the moment — and, therefore, he has more of an arc than any of the regulars. But Stiles exemplifies the overall theme of the story: a cooler head can prevail even when history seemingly calls for blood.

And that’s before we visit the Bird of Prey’s command deck. There, we find the Romulan Commander weary of war and the supposed glory of the empire. In these laments, he’s aided by a loyal Centurion (John Warburton) and opposed by a brash, young Romulan named Decius (Lawrence Montaigne). At once, we learn the Romulans are not a monolith. While their young may seek expansion and conquest, their elders now see the folly of constant war.

Despite these ruminations, though, the Commander is still loyal to the empire and has a mission to fulfill: test Starfleet’s technology and prowess while also delivering an experimental starship home. As the situation grows more desperate, and the Commander runs out of countermoves against Kirk, home is all he can think of even as Decius espouses a more warhawk approach.

Nevertheless, the Commander’s devotion to Romulus remains. But before he performs his last duty, he finally gets on the screen to talk with Kirk. Leonard delivers the key line: “You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.” In this moment, the actor sealed his reputation not only as a dependable Trek actor, but a performer of such a caliber, he would be called on a season later to play Spock’s father, Sarek, and cement his place in Trek lore. The line itself, meanwhile, would echo in science fiction circles for decades to come.

The story does not contain clear-cut victory. Although Kirk prevents war and maintains the security of the Federation, its underlying morality is not served by the deaths of the Romulan Commander and his crew. In that, the mission is a failure as no greater understanding can be reached. Also, there is a cost to Kirk’s win: a crewman about to get married before the Romulan attack — with Kirk officiating no less — ends up dead as a result of the battle. Kirk finds the bride-to-be alone in the chapel. Neither can articulate the loss.

Thanks to a taught war story and the characters it reveals via the tensions of a submarine battle in space, the episode is an absolute showcase of what Trek can do: entertain and illuminate a new perspective.

“A Quality of Mercy”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 1, Episode 10 (07/07/2022)

Synopsis: While Captain Pike debates letting a Starfleet hopeful know their shared doomed destiny, a version of Pike from the future comes to warn him about altering the timeline. Soon, Pike finds himself on the bridge of the Enterprise during the events of “Balance of Terror.”

After the season-long arcs of Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, Strange New Worlds offered a back-to-basics approach by returning to the Enterprise before Kirk took command. In his place, Captain Christopher Pike — the character played by Jeffrey Hunter in the original 1965 Trek pilot, “The Cage”, and now a fan-favorite captain portrayed by Anson Mount. Each episode contains a complete plot, just like the Original Series, with character arcs and ongoing conflicts simmering behind the mission of the week.

Nevertheless, SNW underscores how different Trek is after 50+ years of stories. At the time of “Balance of Terror,” nearly everything was new and unclaimed. By the time “A Quality of Mercy” debuted, Star Trek was a known quantity with histories, tech manuals, and thousands of pages dedicated to characters like Pike, Spock (played here by Ethan Peck) and Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding). The show is aware of that and tips its hat whenever possible, but for its first season finale, it returned to “Balance of Terror” to tell an compelling tale of best destinies.

And like so much of Strange New Worlds, the strengths lay in the cast. Mount, Peck, Gooding, and the rest of the crew can handle just about anything. Pitting them against the Romulan Commander (played in this episode by Matthew MacFadzean) offers each performer a chance to reveal how their character would perform under those tense conditions. Here, Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) takes Stiles’s place as the bridge officer with no love for the Romulan Empire, but her years serving with Spock blunts any of the generalized distrust and paranoia exhibited by Stiles. Spock, meanwhile, is more emotional here than in “Balance of Terror,” but still advocates for annihilating the Bird of Prey lest it inform the Romulan Praetor (Carolyn Scott) that the Federation is ripe for invasion.

In fact, both versions of the story see Spock refer to the “aggressive colonial past” of his own species as reason enough to prevent the Romulans from leaving Federation space alive. Ortegas agrees in “A Quality of Mercy”, as does the captain of the U.S.S. Farragut: James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley).

Introducing this version of Kirk via a story that never technically takes place is a masterstroke. It gives the actor room to find a Kirk detached from Shatner’s affectations. It also gives the writers — Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman — a chance to underline who he is without the resources of the Enterprise or her crew. In this, we get to see the brilliant tactician of “Balance of Terror” at his pragmatic best. Instead of preening or speechifying, this Kirk keenly sees his opponent and enters into the game of cat-and-mouse quicker than Pike would like.

Pike, meanwhile, would love nothing more than to save everyone, including the Romulans. In fact, he seems more dedicated to that premise than “Balance of Terror” Kirk, offering an even more war-weary Romulan Commander a chance to beam off the Bird of Prey before a recently arrived Romulan armada can blow it up. The Commander, of course, still performs his last duty, allowing Pike to see his quality of mercy may not be the best option in every situation.

Then there’s the costs of Pike’s choices: the Praetor declares war on the Federation, the bride-to-be dies instead of the man, and Spock is lost after an attempt to fix the phaser banks.

The final bill proves too much for Pike as he and his elder self have one last conversation. In it, the defeated Admiral Pike discloses that he has tried to alter fate many times, only for Spock to die in his placce. That is doubly tragic as the Vulcan is the only chance the Federation and the Romulan Empire will ever have to find peace. That idea, born out of various episodes of other shows, the 2009 Star Trek feature, and Discovery‘s journey to a 32nd Century Vulcan — now called Ni’Var — in “Unification III”, becomes the key thread for both Pikes. The younger version’s embrace of the seeming death he glimpsed while aboard Discovery is the only way for Spock to live and give the galaxy a chance at avoiding a costly Federation/Romulan conflict. The elder is full of regret because, as in the “Balance of Terror” scenario, his compulsion to save everyone makes him ill-fitted for the challenges the Enterprise commander will face in the mid-to-late 2260s.

Or, to make it simpler, standing down as captain of the Enterprise is Pike’s best destiny. Anything else is a waste of materials.

Although not as poignant or thought-provoking as “Balance of Terror”, “A Quality of Mercy” does what modern Trek does best: embody its ideas via its characters. In revealing the differing approaches to the same problem, Pike and Kirk becomes more distinct individual with, generally, equally valid methods. One is just better suited to the task at hand. By switching Stiles out with a series regular, we see how a drop of xenophobia can remain in even the fairest of hearts. Of course, with eight episodes of Strange New Worlds remaining before Kirk takes the center seat from Pike, it is unclear how much the latter has embraced his destiny — his is still dodging promotion, after all. Nevertheless, we see here the beginnings of a man ready to take on a fate Kirk might balk at because he doesn’t like to lose.

And, it seems, that difference was crucial in the end, even if Pike must submit to the whims of destiny.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.