#anyway this is a fancy way of saying voyager really should have invested in a counsellor program for the holodeck

[lykegenia]

I've said this already in the tags on a different post but I can't stop thinking about Janeway after the Pathfinder project is successful and she starts getting reports from Starfleet HQ about the Dominion War. How inexorable a force the Jem'Hadar seem. How world after world is falling. How the casualties mount. The Maquis have already been destroyed and she can feel the grief from those of her officers who lost friends, but beyond that there's the knowledge that the destruction didn't end with a few rebels on the edge of Federation space. The entire Alpha Quadrant is tearing itself apart, and it's all so far away. Yes, her little ship has face Borg and alien power struggles and a Void without stars - they've lost friends too - but as the numbers keep coming in, day after day, impossibly high, what goes through her mind? Does she wish harder that she hadn't destroyed the array, so that she could have stayed to fight and do her part to save the home she so desperate to get back to? Or is some part of her soothed about her decision, knowing that by putting the needs of the Ocampa before her own, she likely saved the lives of many of the people now under her command? How do you deal with loss on such an abstract yet personal scale, and how do you sit and read the reports of lost battle after lost battle, knowing that it might mean the home you were so desperate for might no longer exist by the time you get there?

What if Voyager ends up being all that's left?

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

Your Favorite NHL Team Is Going to Blow It at the Trade Deadline

It happens once a year like clockwork. The names are usually big, the expectations are always high and even though you know you will come away disappointed, you can’t avert your eyes from it. No, it’s not a big budget DC movie—it’s the NHL’s trade deadline.

Instead of wasting your time by looking at the needs of teams and potential available players and getting your hopes up, I���m going to give you the straight truth about the deadline—your GM will botch it and/or the players your team gets won’t matter. Maybe your team will acquire a draft pick that becomes the star player that leads your team to a title in 2026, but chances are, your GM will screw up the pick like he’s screwed up everything else.

So here’s why your stupid team will screw up the trade deadline.

Listen to the latest episode of Biscuits, VICE Sports’ hockey podcast

31. Arizona Coyotes

When your organizational philosophy is, “Spend as little on the team as possible so we can invest it in cryptocurrency,” the Stanley Cup isn’t in your future. John Chayka took over a team with 76 points two seasons ago and, after an offseason designed to improve the team immediately, they are on pace for 61 points this season. That would be the fewest points in team history. Look for Chayka to acquire dead salary cap money or a talented young player he will trade again in two years.

30. Buffalo Sabres

What possible trade can a team make when the team is haunted? Can it acquire a Ghostbuster? Jack Eichel has to be one of the five unhappiest millionaires in the world. Why does Stephen King set all his books in a fake New England town when Buffalo is clearly the scariest place in the world? The Sabres are somehow worse than they were two years ago when they landed Eichel.

29. Ottawa Senators

https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/embed/article/wjp8zb/ottawa-deserves-better-than-eugene-melnyk?utm_source=stylizedembed_sports.vice.com&utm_campaign=vbppmx&site=sports

We are two weeks away from owner Eugene Melnyk firing the GM, coach, trainer, a popcorn guy in the lower bowl of the Accumulated Debt Center, and a parking attendant so he can do the jobs himself and save a few bucks. I’m no hockey scientist but when your trade deadline strategy is to shed money like you’re Montgomery Brewster, the Stanley Cup isn’t in your plans. Ever. Melnyk should just put himself in the lineup for a Leafs game and get it over with. Maybe he’ll do that after he deals Erik Karlsson for 35 cents on the dollar.

28. Montreal Canadiens

Imagine being two years removed from having traded PK Subban and still being in charge of that roster? This is like Exxon letting the guy who crashed an oil tanker into an iceberg chart courses for all future tanker voyages. And now the Habs are letting Marc Bergevin make another round of franchise-altering decisions. Somehow I doubt Max Pacioretty for Ryan Callahan straight up will help the Habs end their Stanley Cup drought.

27. Vancouver Canucks

Listening to Jim Benning talk about why he re-signed Erik Gudbranson as opposed to trading him should make clear why the Canucks are doomed. Instead of fleecing a team for a second-round pick, Benning wanted to lock up a defenseman that’s never been good but people thought he’d be good a decade ago. Also, he’s tall. A professional talented evaluator is basing decisions on the length of a guy’s stick. I’m excited to see if Benning forgets to trade Thomas Vanek. “Oh, right, that guy is a UFA after this season, isn’t he? That’s on me, guys. My bad.”

26. Edmonton Oilers

Canadian teams all suck again, huh? Do you think the Oilers have a handler for Peter Chiarelli at things like the GM meetings? Like, there’s a guy with a taser that renders Chiarelli unconscious if he ever wanders into a room alone with David Poile so he doesn’t trade Connor McDavid for Nick Bonino. “The Oilers are in the market for some wingers” is a damn fun sentence to type. What a league!

25. Detroit Red Wings

This once-proud franchise is desperately and obviously in need of a rebuild, which was why after last season it was fun to hear Ken Holland say, “Nobody wants to see a rebuild.” Hey, when you’re packing 6,000 per night into a taxpayer-funded pizza joint, you have to get to 85 points any way you can. Waiting to trade Petr Mrazek until his value was at an all-time low is the type of progressive thinking you want from a general manager that’s not under contract for next season. Hanging on to Mike Green until he has a lingering upper-body injury days before the deadline? Holland is playing chess while you’re playing checkers, my friends.

24. Chicago Blackhawks

It’s hard to see a way the Blackhawks bounce back any time soon. Cap circumvention is no longer allowed and they are out of valuable players to package with bad contracts in trades that only help in the short term. What exactly would Stan Bowman have to attach to Brent Seabrook to get another team to take him? The formula for time travel? The pee tape? They say it’s wrong to take delight in the misery of others but that does not include the Blackhawks.

23. Florida Panthers

I love that the guy who let Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith go to Vegas in exchange for massage coupons is once again helming a pivotal point for the franchise. What do you think Dale Tallon would have paid for Erik Gudbranson in a trade? Aleksander Barkov and a first? Tallon is probably only still employed by the Panthers because of a human resources paperwork error. He’s Milton from Office Space but with power. He will yet again be given the opportunity to drag the team down even further because nothing matters in this organization. It’s a great reflection of America, when you think about it.

22. New York Rangers

I totally have faith in a front office that fancied itself a contender seven months ago when it gave Kevin Shattenkirk a gigantic contract and is now announcing to the world it will sell anyone that is bolted to the ice. You mean the fellas that overpaid Brendan Smith and then sent him to the AHL are plotting the course for the future? How do you not have confidence in that sort of vision?!? This is also the leadership group that chose Dan Girardi over Anton Stralman. The Rangers went 54 years between their last two Stanley Cups and it will be another 100 years before they win another one.

21. Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets could somehow acquire John Tavares, Erik Karlsson, Ryan McDonagh, Rick Nash, and sign a 24-year-old clone of Wayne Gretzky created from his DNA, and John Tortorella would still find a reason to play Jack Johnson and Brandon Dubinsky 40 minutes a night. This is also the team that let William Karlsson go in the expansion draft, so there’s no one to trust here. Either the trade will be bad or the trade will be good and Tortorella will cut the player’s ice time because he refused to block a shot with his dick in practice.

20. New York Islanders

Garth Snow has botched more picks than a greasy-handed defensive back and wasted the prime years of a Hall of Famer, but hell yeah, let’s have him in charge of the biggest decision in franchise history… what to do with John Tavares. In any other sport, the GM trades the elite talent headed for free agency when the team is at best a coin flip to make the playoffs, then pushes to re-sign him in the offseason. But this is the dumbest sport in the world, so the GM that’s underwhelmed for a decade will hang onto Tavares for the rest of the season and potentially lose him for nothing instead of reaping a bounty of futures at the deadline (that he’d probably botch, anyway). The Islanders are the Kobayashi Maru of hockey.

19. Carolina Hurricanes

This is the fourth season of Ron Francis’ reign as GM and he’s got a shot to bring the Hurricanes to the playoffs for the first time since 2009. Francis already messed up his best chance to improve the goaltending with his idiotic signing of Scott Darling (please do not search for my opinions on Darling before this season) and now the team is one or two pieces away from being a perennial playoff contender, so look for him to pull the trigger on someone like Kris Versteeg or James Wisniewski, moves that won’t help or hurt either way.

18. Colorado Avalanche

Joe Sakic is still in charge of the Avalanche, right? It’s amazing how after he netted a bunch of prospects and picks for Matt Duchene, suddenly people wondered if he was now good at his job. He is not. It’s not a great transaction history for Patrick Roy’s best buddy. He found a way to get less for Nick Holden than the Rangers did. Life is a mystery but you can be assured that Sakic will get suckered by someone that had fewer than 1,000 points in their NHL playing career.

17. Calgary Flames

Brad Treliving has done well and the Flames are headed in the right direction, but there’s still a little bit of that We Need Guys Who Will Punch Your Dicks Guys thing that doesn’t help. I could see the trade report across the scroll: “Flames acquire C Zac Rinaldo from the Coyotes in exchange for sixth-round pick.” And that will be the Flames’ only move.

16. Los Angeles Kings

Dean Lombardi’s ghost is still running things if the Kings think Dion Phaneuf on the roster for the next 100 years helps. The Kings won two Cups after robbing the Blue Jackets blind at the deadline so I will withdraw this if there is a big Kings-Blue Jackets trade on Monday that sends Artemi Panarin to the Kings for Phaneuf in a 1-for-1 deal. Maybe the Coyotes are the new Blue Jackets but somehow I don’t think Tobias Rieder is headed toward a Jeff Carter/Marian Gaborik finish to the season.

15. New Jersey Devils

It’s been an unexpectedly great season for the Devils, who look locked into a playoff spot with two months to play. But really, what did Ray Shero really do here? He answered a late night drunk dial from Peter Chiarelli and robbed him in the Adam Larsson-Taylor Hall trade; won a draft lottery that landed him Nico Hischier, and dealt Adam Henrique for Sami Vatanen in a no-brainer deal that was only possible because of winning the draft lottery. Shero is due to drop a turd on the floor. Maybe he brings Douglas Murray out of retirement.

14. Philadelphia Flyers

Ron Hextall hasn’t been a buyer since becoming a GM in 2014, as the Flyers have mostly been bad thanks to another former Flyer running the team into the ground. Hextall has made some good deals away from the deadline, and getting Petr Mrazek was one of them. I guess what I’m saying here is the Flyers suck and there’s nothing Hextall can do to help this team win a Cup this year. The Flyers have been run by an ex-player since 1994; guess how many times they’ve won the Cup over that stretch? It’s zero. That was an easy game.

13. Anaheim Ducks

Last year, Bob Murray acquired Patrick Eaves and the Ducks lost in the conference finals with Eaves missing most of the playoffs with a high-ankle sprain. Two years ago, Murray loaded up by landing Patrick Maroon, Brandon Pirri, and Jamie McGinn, who made it possible for the Ducks to lose in the first round in seven games instead of six. The list of times Murray did the wrong thing goes on and on.

12. Minnesota Wild

Some GMs get their jobs because they were awesome at hockey decades ago; others get the gig because their dads were GMs. Meet Chuck Fletcher, the guy who let Alex Tuch go to the Vegas and gave up a first- and second-round pick at last year’s trade deadline for Martin Hanzal, who legally dies before every postseason. I don’t know what Fletcher has up his sleeve this year but I bet it’s used to overpay for someone who doesn’t help the Wild win more than five playoff games.

11. St. Louis Blues

Doug Armstrong might be Batman. He’s made a lot of bad moves yet he uses these diversion tactics and people think he’s a hero. He’s adapted to the darkness. Remember the Ryan Miller deal? Goodness. That was also the Steve Ott deal. The Blues have been fading since a strong start so your only hope is he’s out fighting crime and using a weirdly deep voice instead of taking calls from other GMs.

10. San Jose Sharks

Doug Wilson has been pretty much winging it since he tried to shame Joe Thornton into accepting a trade a few years ago and then the Sharks got good again. Despite an aging core, Wilson never looked at rentals, and instead focused on getting players with term left on their contract, like Jannik Hansen. Why make your team much better in the short term when you can do virtually nothing to help it over a longer timeline with guys like Hansen? Sharks hockey, baby!

9. Dallas Stars

Jim Nill once traded a conditional first-round pick for Kris Russell. That’s the end of this section.

8. Pittsburgh Penguins

Jim Rutherford has actually made some helpful moves at the deadline to help the Penguins win Cups. But just like other wise GMs, Rutherford has already fortified his contender with [squints at roster] Riley Sheahan and [rubs eyes] Jamie Oleksiak. When you run out of cap space, you always do it for a 30-point center and the Dallas Stars’ worst defensemen. Someone should do a study on how many GMs create legacies by winning titles with another GM’s players and put Stan Bowman and Jim Rutherford statues outside the Other People’s Titles Hall of Fame.

7. Washington Capitals

Against all odds, after a summer of shedding salary and useful players, the Capitals are still near the top of the league. Objectively worse than they have been the past two years, Brian MacLellan has said he doesn’t expect the team to be buyers like they were last year, because as we all know, Alex Ovechkin will not continue to age, nor will Nicklas Backstrom. It’s also important to pin your team’s perpetual shortcomings on two months of Kevin Shattenkirk, this way you can be gun shy about landing a big name again. If at first you don’t succeed, trade for Michal Kempny.

6. Toronto Maple Leafs

https://sports.vice.com/en_ca/embed/article/yw34xw/nhl-gms-keep-their-jobs-whether-they-suck-or-not?utm_source=stylizedembed_sports.vice.com&utm_campaign=vbppmx&site=sports

From the team that brought you “Patrick Marleau for three years and $19 million” last summer comes the exciting late-winter follow-up, “some guy Mike Babcock likes that isn’t all that helpful.” I don’t know who is coming to Toronto but you know it will be someone that gets too many minutes and isn’t all that skilled. Maybe it will be Roman Polak’s cousin Greco Polak who will play 22 minutes a night because he’s “hard to play against.” Someone should let the Leafs know their window to win a title is open sooner than they expected so they should go back in time and get Marleau’s cap hit off the books so they can add an expensive defenseman.

5. Winnipeg Jets

I like to picture Kevin Cheveldayoff around deadline day like other people are when it comes to visiting the dentist. He knows he has to go but he’s constantly putting it off for silly reasons. “What’s that? Ken Holland’s on the phone? Oh, um, tell him I can’t talk trade right now because… ummm… my dog’s sick, yeah. Sorry.” Then enough time passes and instead of his teeth falling out his team falls apart. They say when a door closes, God opens a window. Maybe that window is a championship window in Winnipeg and God is Cheveldayoff, ready to land a fourth-line winger for a sixth-round pick.

4. Nashville Predators

David Poile does all his work before the deadline so he can spend deadline day doing things like signing 37-year-old men that haven’t played hockey in eight months. When it’s time to load up at the deadline, that’s when Poile lands all his playoff healthy scratches, like PA Parenteau and Mike Santorelli. The Preds lost James Neal in the expansion draft and as a Cup favorite, it’s great to see Nashville looking into offensive-minded replacements like Rick Nash, because any time you can snag a guy that hasn’t cracked 40 points in three seasons and consistently falls flat in the playoffs, you have to look into that.

3. Boston Bruins

Once you add Nick Holden to a Cup contender, isn’t your job already done? Don Sweeney can put his feet up and relax now that he added the defensemen who was run over during last year’s playoffs by the run and gun Ottawa Senators. When you have a fast moving boat, it’s always important to tie anchors to it. Look for Sweeney and Cam Neely to add to the “Bruins culture” by acquiring 100 pounds of literal grits to rub on David Pastrnak’s body.

2. Tampa Bay Lightning

Steve Yzerman is a tremendous GM when it comes to arriving at a job where the foundational pieces are already there or using a terrible CBA to leverage great RFAs into taking bad deals because other GMs are too chicken shit to use an offer sheet. At the trade deadline, this is when Yzerman lands guys like Braydon Coburn and Ryan Callahan. He’s also the guy who let Jonathan Marchessault walk for nothing and gave three-goal scorer Callahan $6 million a year through 2020. That’s the guy you want evaluating talent for a Cup favorite.

1. Vegas Golden Knights

What a season. What a time to be a sports fan. An expansion team with championship aspirations in its first year. And what other general manager would you have in charge of a team like this other than George McPhee? The guy who traded Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat and got in on the ground floor of the Capitals Can’t Get Past The Second Round movement is now tasked with getting the team over the top. Maybe a trade of Alex Tuch for Brent Seabrook? Tie McPhee to a blackjack table all day Monday. It’s the only way Vegas wins.

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports CA.

Your Favorite NHL Team Is Going to Blow It at the Trade Deadline syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

[ashroadtrek-blog]

Balance of Terror

Air Date: December 15, 1966

Writer: Paul Schneider

Director: Vincent McEveety

Balance of Terror is one of those episodes that seasoned Trekkies revere for some reason, yet new fans may have a difficult time understanding why. I thought it was a good episode, but I’m a sucker for continuity and worldbuilding and this is arguably one of the more important episodes in the franchise for that because it establishes a species so enduring they sort of bookend the Prime continuity via Nero and his gang in the 2009 film.

Why does every post-Enterprise alien antagonist need to be bald?

Romulans appear in every series in the franchise except Discovery (so far!) - they even manage to squeeze into Voyager and Enterprise a few times! The Romulans are almost always an effective counterweight to the Klingons; where the Klingons revere honor (in theory if not practice most of the time), Romulans are notoriously duplicitious; where Klingons entertain notions of peace with the Federation, Romulans openly sustain hostilities and enmity; where the Klingon warrior culture is detailed and fleshed out over the long course of the franchise and even examined from new angles time and again, the Romulans remain almost rigidly enigmatic and mysterious (and perhaps that’s part of their appeal.)

The episode establishes a basic history of the Earth-Romulan war that later canon rarely deviates from.

Not even to force a confrontation between Archer and Big Chin. Seriously, that thing was carved from a Seth MacFarlane cartoon.

On a conceptual level, I like Romulans. I listened to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast over the summer (twice), and I’d consider myself something of an armchair Roman historian, so the whole “Roman Empire IN SPACE!” thing really engages my thrusters to maximum if you detect my warp signature. 

Ahhhh

Indeed, there seems to be a bit of Roman influence in the Romulans...at first. Words like ‘centurion’ and ‘praetor’ are thrown around in this episode, but that’s really it - they’re thrown around. I guess the helmets are vaguely Roman inspired, and there’s a guy named Decius, but that’s about the extent. I’m just disappointed that the Romulans are no more Roman than the Klingons never really cling to anything except a vague medieval-inspired aesthetic and pretenses to honor. 

I can’t wait to get to this episode - and would it have been so hard to give the Romulans these costumes?

I hope you’ve enjoyed Part 1 in my 6 part series tentatively titled “How Star Trek Fucked Up the Romulans.”

Moving on.

So the episode opens wonderfully with a shipboard wedding, and in the honored tradition of offshore weddings, the captain is the officiate. Scotty assures him that the event will be broadcast over the whole ship, and Yeoman Rand carefully lights candles in the background. 

You crazy kids!

I noticed both are wearing command gold, and the male is the female’s superior officer, and both work in the phaser array section of the ship...and that’s about all the episode really needs to tell us; it’s scaffolding to heighten the tragedy of the episode, to invest the audience and give us a reason to care about the ship-to-ship battle that is coming.

Now, the Romulans (or at least, the Romulan ship that is our antagonist) in this episode appear to be attempting to bait the Federation (by attacking outposts) into crossing the Neutral Zone in order to accuse them of breaking the treaty between the two powers and, in the words of the Romulan commander, give the Romulans the gift of war with the Federation. 

Spock gives us the requisite exposition on the history of the Earth-Romulan war, and today’s navigator-of-the-week Stiles reveals a vendetta against the Romulans going back to grand-relatives killed in that war; Kirk reminds him that the war was a century ago and it was their war - not his. 

What I got about the enemy commander is that he was some hotshot dickweed Romulan with a fancy new weapon and toy (the cloak) who wanted to bring glory to Romulus and impress his boss the Praetor by making the Federation seem like the instigators. I get the impression that the Romulans were on the losing side of the treaty and wanted to get the war back on track to recover lost possessions and perhaps dominance in the region. 

Kirk broadcasts a message throughout the ship to warn the crew that they’re going to go into some deep shit, and we get a few shots of different people - like the lovebirds, and a couple of guys who I remember from other episodes but aren’t named on-screen, like this guy:

And this guy:

The former appeared in Miri and Dagger of the Mind, and this dumb looking kid showed up in the background of What Are Little Girls Made of, looking as confused and constipated as ever.

Anyways, everyone on the ship is tense and wound up because they know the stakes: the Romulan war was such a big deal that people who fought in it have grandkids who are still pissed at the Romulans. I tried putting this in perspective with a clumsy WWI analogy, but it’s different because Germany isn’t several dozen or hundred light-years away from the US. 

Spock says something I find very interesting in light of Discovery’s use of cloaking devices on Klingon ships; he says that invisibility screens are only theoretical up to that point. Naturally, Enterprise screwed this up already with Suliban Cabal cloaking technology, so I’ll give Discovery a pass on that one.

Kirk chooses strategic observation over direct confrontation, which I think it a good call and Mr. Styles thinks merits a whiny objection and fear of Romulan spies aboard the Enterprise. (This is actually because of a cut scene where the crew remarks on the similarities in Romulan ship design to Federation specs, which alludes to Romulans stealing designs or something...)

Ever notice how the Enterprise keeps losing navigators?

They technobabble a way to get a shot of the Romulan bridge, revealing that the Romulan in question is none other than...

SAREK!

Just kidding, but he is played by Mark Lenard. 

Everyone proceeds to stare at Spock like he just took the last slice of meat lover’s at a tolerant vegan buffet.

Even Leslie!

Kirk has to tap on Stiles’ console to get him back to work. Stiles is a bit racist, and Kirk shuts him down by telling him to leave his bigotry in his quarters. Spock offers some logical considerations as to the similarities in appearance between him and the Romulans; aggressive period of interstellar colonization. If I remember my TOS correctly, this shows up again with a character named Sargon, and we know Vulcanoids show up in TNG on Mintaka - the Romulans themselves are expatriates who wanted to do their own thing. 

There is then a scene on the Romulan ship to establish and characterize them, which is something that the show hasn’t done yet and I’m not sure ever does again until the movies. I get the impression that the older Romulan is on his last mission before he retires, and also that he’s the commander’s version of Bones. 

The bridge crew puts their heads together to give Kirk options. Spock says the weapon is too strong - their strongest material is castrodinium and the sample he shows them has been reduced to sheet metal. Kirk asks if they can fight the Romulans without dying, to which Scotty responds they can outrun them. Naturally, Stiles wants to fight them, only to be countered by Sulu that they can’t attack without visuals...which is dumb for a variety of reasons, but I’m not going to go into them because it’s a narrative decision. 

And then Stiles says more racist shit.

Sulu quietly rethinks his recommendation of Stiles as navigator and wonders if he should stop making suggestions altogether...

Stiles accuses Spock of being a Romulan spy, and to be fair if you’ve never seen a Romulan and you already think there might be a spy on the ship and then suddenly you see the Romulans have pointed ears like the high-ranking officer with pointed ears, well...

But this is the 23rd century, and we’re evolving past that.

Spock agrees with Stiles about attacking - and Bones is wholeheartedly against war, because he’s a contrarian when it comes to Spock. Spock then offers some logical considerations as to the similarities in appearance between him and the Romulans; aggressive period of interstellar colonization. If I remember my TOS correctly, this shows up again with a character named Sargon, and we know Vulcanoids show up in TNG on Mintaka - the Romulans themselves are expatriates who wanted to do their own thing.

The show then plays cat and mouse as the Enterprise parallels course to appear as a sensor ghost on the Romulan space radar, then they go into a comet tail, then they fire on the Romulan ship. The commander loses his buddy and gets pissed.

Rand shows up on the bridge asking Kirk if she should continue log entries, but I get the feeling she showed up because she was scared and wanted Kirk to hold her - which he does, briefly, when the Romulans fire back at the ship. 

The Romulan commander’s buddy dies, and in an example of how committed they are to getting out of the situation, he is coldly ejected with some debris in an attempt to trick the Enterprise - but it doesn’t fool Spock. 

Nine hours later...

I’m not kidding, the two ships spend 9 hours waiting each other out. Kirk is not exactly cracking under the pressure, but he is not enjoying it. He snaps at Rand so hard she transfers off the Enterprise, but when Bones walks in his entire face changes and he confides in his old friend...the Romulan commander must wish his old friend were still alive right about now. 

Spock forces the Romulans out of hiding, and the commander orders his lieutenants to prepare an old-style nuclear weapon that they apparently carry only for self-destruction purposes. It’s a dirty trick in case of compromise; obliterate their ship (and therefore technology), damage the enemy (but it’s space! they aren’t going to be close enough for it to matter!) and irradiate them to boot if the nuke overloads their shielding and hull polarization. Primitive but lucky vessels are screwed. 

The Enterprise is NOT a primitive vessel (though it is a lucky one), yet McCoy still refers to 22 casualties from radiation burns. I’m on the fence here - did they lose 22 crewmen? Googling led me to believe no, those crewmen may have been wounded but did not die. 

Unfortunately, the Romulans knock out everyone but the lonely male lovebird in the weapons array, so Kirk sends him there and has Uhura fill in navigation. To be honest, she’d probably make a better regular navigator than Stiles, or Riley, or Bailey (seeing a pattern?) - or even old Easily Wounded Ego himself, Gary Mitchell. I think Sulu may have been carefully considering this based on the long look he gave her. 

Spock passes through weapons and Stiles starts shit yet again (seriously, guy), and then there’s a coolant leak at the eleventh hour right as Kirk gives the order to fire on the Romulan ship! Spock rushes back, firing phasers and rescuing our bitter navigator so that he can learn a very special lesson in sick bay. 

Kirk offers to rescue the Romulan, who refuses because duty. He’s going to self-destruct, as every Romulan in this situation should. He then makes overtures of comraderie towards Kirk; those two have gained a mutual respect for each other’s tactical prowess in this confrontation, and only through luck did the Enterprise prevail. 

In sick bay, Bones reports that the male lovebird has died, and Stiles expresses gratitude mixed with incredulity that Spock saved him in spite of all his bullshit; Spock assures him there was no emotion behind the action, that it was done in the name of duty.

Finally, Kirk goes to confront the female lovebird, that her husband-to-be died for a reason if it makes any sense. I for one am amazed she was able to be so calm and serene about the whole affair, telling Kirk she’s alright. Maybe she’s in shock, or maybe (this is what I prefer to think) she knew the risks of serving on an exploratory vessel, of falling in love with a comrade stationed on the same vessel, of being married to someone on the same vessel. She made a choice, and this was a possible outcome that she faced, accepted, and now lives with. 

It was a good episode.

Rating: 4/5; Rewatch

Balance of Terror is an essential episode because it introduces the Romulans, and it’s also a pretty solid ship-to-ship action episode that plays like something of a precursor to Kirk’s battle in Wrath of Khan.