#either them at the academy in a world where they banter and argue for the fun of it and one day viktor finds himself carving out

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Mel/Viktor as in "he loved her to the point of invention"

[artxyra]

Damian Acting Like A Teenager? Impossible.

When Damian entered the halls of Gotham Academy, the first thing he notices was the change in the dark atmosphere. It felt oddly kinder and more lighthearted. Everywhere he turns, there are whispers focus around the new girl. At first, he didn’t care about the gossip, well, that was until he met her.

It was an unusual encounter, something that he would look down on.

It was the passing period, and she was running down the halls in a hurry as he was walking to his next class, one that he didn’t particularly care for; they bump into each other, causing a standstill in the halls. Everyone wondered how the dark prince would react to their newly dubbed princess of sunshine. They expected a yelling match, which, of course, occurred, but what they didn’t expect was an eventual best of the worst of alliance ever made.

Several months passed since the two had met and several weeks since the blooming of Damian and Marinette’s friendship, and not a single student could say that there weren’t surprised.

The moment Marinette had broken down any (and all) walls that the boy had placed, she was able to make the stoic teen become his age. It started small with a joke here and there; then it progressed into card games followed by video games. To this day, Damian swears that he’ll beat her at a shooting game at one point, to which Marinette would respond with a laugh and an over-the-shoulder wink. The young Wayne swears that he has never blush a day in his life, but the photographic proof on Marinette’s phone says otherwise.

The school soon became accustomed to being Daminette’s playground. At first, the teachers were opposed to the idea, but after seeing how slightly more open Damian has become, they slowly agreed to the concept of allowing the duo to have less strict rules. That and they didn't want to be sued by the Wayne family.

Which now brings us to this moment: Marinette swings on a swing set while Damian practices his form with a katana; don’t ask how he managed to get it past security-- cause there is no answer.

“You know, maybe we should do something wild?” Marinette thinks aloud, looking up to the sky with a mischief smirk on her lips.

Damian doesn’t turn to her; he only sets the blade down to his side. “What mayhem do you have in mind?”

Marinette giggles uncontrollably.

Let’s assume that whatever Marinette had in mind would rule the yearbooks for years to come.

~☾★☽~

Since his partnership with Marinette, Damian has been hiding his characteristic change at home. Surprisingly, it was simple. A few death threats here and there, maybe sneaking out moments every so often. No one at the Wayne cared enough to pay any attention to it. It only then became a shock when Damian left for school along the lines of being late. Alfred had offered to take him to school to which Damian declined and got onto his “normal” motorcycle and speeds off.

“Does anyone else seem to think that Damian is acting strange?” Dick asks, pipping his head down from the ceiling. He’s on the chandelier again. Poor Alfred, maybe Dick should dust the chandelier for him as an apology.

Tim walks in with a large, filled to the brim, coffee mug in hand, “Which one?” He absently wonders, taking a long sip. The dark circles and bags around his eyes explain it all.

“I do concur with Master Richard; the young master has been acting somewhat strange for quite some time now.” Alfred appears out of nowhere, thus starting an array of concerns.

It wasn’t long before Jason came in shouting demands with the head of the household trailing behind him. Alfred reprimands Jason for the yelling as he hands Bruce a cup of coffee.

Not caring enough about the conversation and looking like a madman, Jason shouts, “Look, I can’t explain it, but we’re going to need Demon Spawn for something huge.”

“Uh, why would we need Baby Bird?” Dick asks, dropping onto the floor and twisting his body. “Not that I don’t mind getting Damian involved.”

“Look, there’s no time to explain,” Jason facepalms and begins to push everyone towards the door despite the lack of proper wear they have on.

After several protests and one change of clothes, the Wayne household now stands in front of the gates of Gotham Academy.

“Is it me, or does this place look less you know Gotham-y and full of life?” Tim ponders, narrowing his eyes, as he takes a long sip from a to-go coffee cup with Red Robin’s emblem.

“No, no, Timmy, I see it too.” Dick whispers as Jason struts past the gates and onto the school’s property like a man on a mission.

Bruce sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “Come on, let’s go get your brother so Jason can stop being Jason.”

Tim shrugs before passing the gates himself, with Dick following him.

Upon entering the school, they could immediately see that it was either a passing period or free time from the number of students in the halls. Some student dared to pull out their phones while other whispers amongst themselves.

Bruce makes his way to the attendance office, where the attendance assistant, Joyce, resides sitting at the desk.

“Hello Joyce, I’m here to pick up Damian. He has a, uh, dentist appointment this evening.” Bruce speaks, hoping that she wouldn’t catch the lie.

“Well Mr. Wayne, Damian is, uh…” After lingering in her thoughts, Joyce turns to someone besides her. “Do you know where Damian Wayne would be at today?”

“Try the art room.” A feminine voice answers, followed by a series of typing noises.

Joyce turns back to the Wayne family and smiles, “He should be in the art room; it’s down the hall to your right, you should not miss it, as it’s in the only hallway that has a series of artwork posted on the walls. Before you go, please sign here."

Joyce hands Bruce a sign-out sheet, to which the man signs and ushers his wards to search for his youngest.

“They’re so screwed.” The same feminine voice speaks, causing Joyce to break out laughing.

It took a total of four different locations for the men to find the youngest Wayne.

First, they went to the art room like Joyce’s co-worker told them to do.

When they got there, Damian wasn't there, but the teacher did show Bruce a couple of Damian's artworks. Bruce couldn't help but feel proud.

While looking around the room, one of the art students told them they last saw Damian playing Pokémon Go near the gym; he was trying to catch a legendary Pokémon that spawned there.

So, of course, after an awkward eye contact with one another, they walk to the gym. Once again, Damian wasn’t there but a different student in his stead. He tells them that Damian was making ice sculptures out of ice cream at the cafeteria. The student then goes on to explain that Damian had some wicked skills with a knife.

Jason, with wide eyes, practically shouted at the student that he was crazy and that Damian would never, and he means NEVER would do something that stupid. The student shrugs it off like it was an everyday occurrence. It was Dick that had to hold Jason back from thrashing the teen. Bruce then apologizes to the instructor for their disturbance, as Tim walks casually behind Dick carrying Jason.

By the time they got to the cafeteria, it was damn near empty aside from a few students still eating. There were no signs of ice cream or the tools that would go into making an ice sculpture. Tim had to ask a few students to see if Damian was in here at some point in time. One of the workers overheard the question and answered him. Evidently, Damian was there earlier making sculptures out of ice cream before handing it out to students.

When they asked the question that has been slowly driving the four insane, the worker replies with: “Upstairs racing on these old colorful scooter board down the halls."

After three locations and no Damian, Tim wanted nothing more but to have a mental breakdown, and he would have if it wasn’t for Bruce holding him up and taking his coffee away.

So, they quickly found themselves on the second level of the school. There was no sight of Damian Wayne, though there were wheel tracks smudged into the flooring.

“Are you kidding me?” Jason shouts out into the ceiling. Thankfully, there were no students in the halls to hear it. Well, that might have been the case if it wasn’t for a teacher to open their door and shh the male. It took every bone in Jason's body not to show the teacher his middle finger.

After a beat of silence and walking down the hall, they overhear a familiar voice.

“Angel, you are desperately in the wrong here. The bear only wears one color, so it has to the color red.” Jason stops dead in his tracks and turns to railings.

The voice was too good to be true.

Looking over the staircase, they find an alcove, and sitting in it is none other than Damian Wayne himself, but he’s not alone.

“I’m telling you, Wayne. Pooh’s favorite color is yellow.” The female answers before taping her fingers as she makes her points, “He loves honey, which is by default a yellow color. He's never seen with a yellow background, and if yellow didn't clash with his fur, he would definitely be wearing it.”

“I disagree. Winnie the Pooh has been drawn on numerous of occasions with red items, not yellow. Case in point, the red balloon, his shirt." He counters. The conversation continues with banters and statements; whether it was true or false is up to debate.

This was not happening.

Tim.exe has stopped working.

Jason.exe has stopped working.

Jaws dropped, a low groaning sound.

They cannot be witnessing this. The most deadliest of the Wayne’s is currently arguing about Winnie, the motherfucking, Pooh’s favorite color.

Bruce has no words. He's practically in the same stance as his middle children. Dick, on the other hand, pulls out his phone and begins to record what remains of the conversation.

No one dares to move or utter out words. This version of Damian is the apocalypse. Nothing in the world is okay.

Slowly, the four Waynes exit the school; no one saw them leave.

Legend has it that Damian never went home that day despite being excused from his classes. When he had returned home, his family didn't utter a word to him. He was meet with either a profusely blinking, unwanted hug or laughter, as they were still in shock at what they just encountered. It wasn’t until a couple of months later that all hell breaks loose. Damian had introduced the family to Marinette.

----

A retouch version of Request #2

[chaoticquips]

Wrapped Up

A reminder that @linklyshow is a wonderful person! An angel, best boy.

Continuation to my Coraline AU, although this is more like the end of the movie whoops!

The door slams shut behind him. He’s too busy trying to catch his breath and slow down the mounting panic to really revel in the cold draft that washes over his back. 

It’s all normal again. No magic, no bugs, no sand filled needle creatures trying to grab at him-

It’s over.  

When he moves, there’s a slight sting to his thigh. Grazes left from their fingers-

He pulls off his- Robin’s -glove and tucks the door key inside with shaking fingers. A wave of relief comes in and settles in his stomach as nausea. Numbly, he slides down against the wall until he’s slumped against it.

He almost... died in there. In a little door in a little house in the middle of no where with no one to even realize he was gone. 

Shaky breath in. Shaky breath out. Repeat. He grips the glove tightly, feeling the outline of the key on his palm. It helps a little bit, reminding him of-

The front door opens. Wally scrambles to his feet in what can only be enthusiastic relief. 

“Mom! Dad! Oh my god, I missed you so much!” With tear-filled eyes, he barrels into them. Hugs them tightly and breaths in that wonderful, parental smell of home. They’re home. 

“Whoa! Slow down there, kiddo, you act like you haven’t seen us in ages!” 

That’s... that’s not... 

Eyes wide, he whips his head up to see none other than-

“Uncle Barry?!” 

“What am I, chopped liver?” Iris laughs at his side. She smooths a hand over his wild hair and Wally realizes what a mess he looks. 

And that he’s still clinging to them like a life line. 

He quickly lets go, sniffling. “S-Sorry! What are you guys doing here?”

“Well, your parents wanted us to come see the new place, get our opinion on it since, well...” Barry rubs the back of his head. 

“You seemed lonely, all by yourself.” Iris cuts in, giving him that soft smile of hers that makes his chest feel a little too tight. A little too loved. “Sometimes new environments can be hard to settle into, it’s easier to have some sort of familiarity around, right?”

“What better familiarity than family, right kiddo?” Barry ruffles his hair and Wally chokes back a laugh that almost shoots out of his mouth like a sob. 

“But it looks like you’ve been adjusting fine?” Iris says, shaking off her coat to hang on the rack next to the door. “Look at you, all dirtied up! What have you been up to today, Wally? Hopefully nothing too dangerous?” She shoots Barry that secret little look she sometimes does that makes him all nervous.

“What’s the look for, hun?”

“Oh, you know.” 

Wally feels the weight on his chest disappear. A laugh trickles out as he takes their- warm, soft, real -hands and leads them into the house. 

“There’s a garden outside, you wanna see it?”

“Sure! Let’s get you cleaned up first so your mother doesn’t have a fit.” 

“Iris, we’re heading outside, he’s going to get dirty anyway-”

“Barry. Need I remind you of the dog incident?”

“I’ll shut up now.” 

He can’t stop the smile on his face. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Gah!” At the sudden voice, Wally falls backwards and drops in the deep pit he had just climbed out of. 

“Oh, shi- shoot! I’m so sorry!” Hands suddenly pulling him up, too quickly too quickly, the world spinning as Wally rubs the winded feeling out of his chest. Taking a few deep breaths with his eyes closed, sitting up against the stone wall, he feels hands on his shoulders. 

When he opens his eyes, he glares. 

“Oh, you.”

“Uh, yeah. Me.” Robin says nervously. He’s wringing his hands together and actually looks a little... guilty? Wally sighs.

“Whaddya want now, gonna make fun of me again?” Wally moves to stand up but is swiftly pushed back down by Robin’s surprisingly firm hands. 

“No!” 

Rather than the firm, chunky feeling of Robin’s coat sleeves going over his palms, Wally realizes he’s looking for the soft feeling of gloves. He’s looking for warm, soft blue moonlight on a rooftop where he was taken off guard by someone surprisingly kind to him. 

His face tingles where the Other Robin had...kissed him.  

To push back the rising embarrassment and incoming blush, he immediately tries to focus on the stupidbutreallykindacute way this Robin styles his hair. 

God dammit. 

“I.. I wanted to apologize, for calling you weird.” Robin moves from a crouched position over Wally’s lap to sit with a hard thump on the ground in front of him. “I shouldn’t have said that, I really shouldn’t have. It’s just...” He sighs. 

“I dunno, I don’t really have a lot of friends.” Wally snorts.

“You don’t say?”

“Shut up.” He whines out, nudging at Wally with his foot. “Point is, I said some stupid stuff I shouldn’t have about you and I feel bad. I thought you were like the other kids.” He’s hunched over himself, taking off his glasses for once and rubbing at his eyes. 

Curiosity at what the weird kid who’s been harassing him all summer actually looks like strikes Wally like a harpoon. But he’s still kinda pissed, so he looks at Robin’s shoes instead before he sees anything.

... Jesus, those are some expensive shoes.

“What other kids?”

“The ones I go to school with. They... they say shit about me all the time and I didn’t realize you were just joking around. Defensive measures and all that.” He shrugs, voice muffled by his coat sleeves.

“Doesn’t make it all right though.” Wally says.

“Yeah, I know. It really doesn’t. Trust me, I’ve been beating myself up about this.” With a half hearted chuckle, Robin lifts up his left, bandaged hand away from his face, but stays hunched over. 

“Wha- literally? Dude, what-” 

“L-Like I said, I’m beating myself up about it and now I’m getting yelled at for doing that, so I’m apologizing.” Robin cuts in. A hot flash of sadness and anger rips through Wally. 

“... So you’re just apologizing to me so you wont be in trouble anymore? If that’s all, fine, you’re forgiven, now go-”

“God dammit, no! I don’t want-!” Robin’s voice cracks as he slams his bandaged fist on the ground. “I don’t- I didn’t mean! Look, I’m trying to apologize!”

“Yeah, and you’re really bad at it!” 

“I know!” He yells out. 

“I mean, most people would have the decency to look me in the face if they were going to apologize-”

“I know, but I-!” Suddenly he stops. Wally watches the anger flow out of his body and hears him take a deep breath. 

“You’re frustrating as hell, you know that right?” He says quietly to his expensive shoes. 

“Hey man,-”

“Let’s start over!” He yells, pouncing forward and covering Wally’s eyes with his hands before he sees his face.

“Wha- dude! What the hell!” Wally reaches up and grabs at his hands, pulling them off. Belatedly he remembers the other boy is stronger than he looks. He doesn’t get far until his head nearly hits the wall behind him with the force of the other boy’s hands returning to his face. 

“Let’s start over! First impressions are everything, right? We just got off on the wrong foot.” 

“A few dozen times.” Wally mumbles. 

“Just-!” Robin stops and sighs. “...Do you think we could be friends? If we actually tried this time? I wont call you weird, you don’t call me weird, no arguing unless it’s banter because it’s actually kinda fun with you.”

“Mm, I didn’t know friendships had rules.”  

“Less rules, more like guidelines. A, what do people call it? A bro-code?” It’s the most anyone has ever tried with Wally before. He honestly feels a little touched his creepy neighbor is trying so hard. 

“I... I think I can work with that. Y’know, considering how desperately you wanna be friends with me.” 

“Oh shut up!” He can’t help but laugh at Robin’s expense and he’s pleasantly surprised to find the other boy laughing too. 

“God, you’re a mess.” Robin laughs out.

“Me?!”

“Yes!” It takes them a second to calm down, but finally Robin’s hands pull off his face ever so slightly. 

“I...I’m gonna take my hands off, ok? Then we can start over.”

“Dude, why are you nervous? You’re not horribly disfigured or something like that, right? Like, I don’t care if you are, it’s totally fine, just-”

Robin takes his hands off Wally’s face and gives him a smile so blinding he can’t tell if it’s the sun or not. 

Wait, no, it’s definitely the sun. He had his eyes closed for too long. 

“...So?”

“So what? I can’t see anything man, gimmie a second.” He rubs at his eyes while Robin stays strangely quiet. Then he clears his throat. 

“Hi! You must be Wally West, right? I believe you’re renting one of the rooms in the Pink Palace, right? I’m the son of your landlord, Dick. It’s nice to meet you!” 

When Wally opens his eyes, he almost doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. 

Dick Grayson, acclaimed child prodigy and adopted son to billionaire Bruce Wayne, is sitting in front of him. 

Directly in the dirt he had dug up for the tulips he had been planting. 

When Wally just stares at Dick, his smile shrinks and he moves to pick at his bandages. He averts his eyes from Wally.

“I-I heard you were into science, right? That’s partially why you moved here, so you could go to the academy on scholarship? Or was it to take special summer classes? That’s pretty cool either way.” 

“You’re-”

“I’m more of a math guy myself, y’know? And, uh, acrobatics but you probably already knew that.” 

More silence. 

“...Would you like me to grab you water or something? You look kinda pale-”

“You’re telling me,” Wally cuts him off, “That the creepy little shit who kept waking me up in the middle of the night to knock on my bedroom window, who stalked me for most of the summer, and almost got me killed is none other than the Dick Grayson.” 

“Um. I resent the creepy part and... yes?” Wally takes a deep breath.

“Hoooooly shit.” Wally rubs his face with his hands because, wow. Didn’t see that one coming. 

“But you get now, why I had to-”

“Hide your identity and be a total weirdo? Yup. It’s all coming full circle.” He makes a little circle in the air with his finger and Dick punches him gently.

“Hey!” 

“Unbelievable. That’s... good God, I’m friends with a celebrity.”

“Don’t go telling the world, ok? Mostly because people are, y’know.”

“Nah man, my lips are sealed. Besides, you said it yourself, who would I tell?”

“...”

“...Too soon?” Dick gives him a half smile and helps him to his feet. 

“So, uh, what did you mean when you said I almost got you killed?” Wally snorts. 

“That is a long story that I’m 100% sure you’re not gonna believe.” Dick does his little half smile again and Wally decides that he thinks it’s fitting for the other boy. 

“Try me. We’re friends now, I’m legally obligated to believe everything you say.”

“Alright.” Wally looks the other boy up and down, hand on his chin. Dick rolls his eyes with a grin. 

“Your shoes are way too expensive for gardening.” In mock offense, Dick puts a hand on his own chest. 

“Oh yeah? Well your jeans look too new to be gardening in!” 

“My jeans?Take a look at your- dress pants? Really?”

“I might have taken a reaaaally long break from my ballroom dancing classes at the summer house. Don’t worry about it.” 

“I’m gonna, especially when your nanny yells at me for being a bad influence on a ‘high-class citizen’.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alfred would never yell at you. He’ll just give you the scariest silent treatment and cook your favorite food slightly off so that there’s something funky about it, but you don’t know what.” When Wally gives him a strange look, Dick starts laughing about how Wally looks funny when he’s confused. 

Wally realizes rich people are fucking weird.

Wally also realizes he really wants to reach out and hold his hand. 

Then Wally realizes that without the glasses, Dick has really pretty eyes. 

He’s so screwed.

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.14: Balance of Terror

AKA: Auribus Teneo Lupum 

Our episode begins with a ceremony being set up in one of the Enterprise’s many one-off rooms. There are people on benches, and a podium at the front of the room, and even a red carpet. Scotty is messing with a camera at the back, and as Kirk comes in he is assured that the ceremony will be broadcast all over the ship. It looks to be a jolly occasion, but first Kirk has to answer a message from the bridge. It’s Spock, telling him that Earth Outpost Two still hasn’t responded to them, and now Outpost Three has also gone silent. That’s less jolly. Kirk tells Spock to maintain their course to Outpost Four and keep him informed, but for now he’s still got a thing to do.

It becomes clear what kind of ceremony this is when a young goldshirt woman with flowers in her hair enters, looking nervously excited, and Scotty takes her arm and walks her down the carpet while music plays (from...somewhere). Aw, a wedding. No, she’s not marrying Scotty—he’s just walking here down the aisle (such as it is) in his official capacity as Chief Surrogate Dad.

As the blushing bride and her blushing groom—also a goldshirt—stand before the podium, Kirk begins his speech by saying, “Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all shipmasters have had one happy privilege, that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony.” That’s very sweet and poetic, and also completely wrong; the idea that ship captains can perform marriages is a total myth and always has been. Maybe they changed that by Kirk’s day, but otherwise he’d have to go get ordained on the internet like everyone else.

But I digress. These two happy folks—Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson—are gettin’ hitched, so let’s get on with it.

[ID: Kirk standing at a podium while Rand stands at his shoulder. Two goldshirts, a tall white man and a shorter white woman with flowers in her brown hair, are standing in the foreground. Kirk is saying, “In accordance with our laws...”]

Mawaigge…

Before Kirk can get much farther into his speech, though, the happy occasion is interrupted by a red alert and a call for captain to the bridge. Kirk runs over to the intercom, where Spock tells him that Earth Outpost Four is reporting that they’re under attack by an unknown vessel. Looks like the wedding is going to have to wait.

After the titles, Kirk gives a log enlightening us a bit into what’s going on. The Enterprise has been patrolling the Neutral Zone, although since this was before the Neutral Zone became a pop culture mainstay he has to elaborate that it’s what separates the planets Romulus and Remus from, well, everyone else. Routine enough—presumably they wouldn’t plan a wedding if they thought anything serious was likely to happen—until that call about Earth Outpost Four. So the Enterprise is rushing over to help at full speed.

They’re only eight minutes away, but that’s still too long for Kirk. He starts to ask Scotty for more speed—well, I doubt asking was his intention, per se—but Scotty’s way ahead of him and says they’re already working on it. In the meantime, Kirk asks Uhura if there was any info at all about the attacking vessel, but she says there was no identification. At this, the non-Sulu goldshirt at the helm darkly mutters that there’s no doubt about who’s attacking, but no one deigns to respond to this.

At Kirk’s request Spock brings up a map of the star sector on the main screen. This seems like a less than entirely useful map for navigating a large section of very tactically important space, but what do I know.

[ID: The bridge screen of the Enterprise, showing a map of a star section. Seven numbered triangles are arranged in a line along a vertical wavy gray line labeled Neutral Zone. Text on the left of the line reads Earth Outpost Sector Z-6; text on the right of it reads Romulan Star Empire. Two small orbs on that side are labeled Romulus and RomII.]

He then goes on the intercom and tells everyone that this is super important and Spock’s going to lay out the details for them, so get ready to take notes. The Earth outposts are built on asteroids and monitor the Neutral Zone, which was established after the Earth-Romulan conflict over a century ago. It was a conflict that was fought, according to Spock, with atomic weapons and starships now considered quite primitive, and since they lacked visual ship-to-ship communication, no one from the Earth side of things ever found out what the Romulans actually looked like. Actually, he says “no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other” which raises quite a few tricky questions considering the history of the Romulans that was later established, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Anyway, they eventually set up the Neutral Zone and struck a treaty over radio that said that if either side entered the NZ, it would be an act of war. So far no one’s broken that treaty...but as of today it looks as though that may have changed.

This is, of course, all very important exposition for the audience, but it does feel a bit silly that Spock has to lay all this rather basic information out for the crew. Considering what a major event that conflict was, and that these are all Academy-educated personnel, you would rather expect them to know these things. It’s a bit like watching a modern day Army officer having to explain to the troops what World War One was.

There is, however, some information which they certainly do not know, but that Kirk is about to tell them: that he has very clear, very definite orders that they are not to enter the NZ no matter what. The Enterprise can defend itself, but both it and the outposts are considered expendable if it’s necessary to avoid war. Then he immediately says “Captain out” and leaves the whole crew to just deal with that bombshell on their own.

The goldshirt at the helm—Stiles—speaks up again, starting to say, “If we intercept a Romulan vessel--” but Kirk cuts him off and points out that it’s been a century since anyone saw a Romulan ship, so at this point they really have no way of knowing what they would look like even if they did encounter one. Stiles says that they’ll know Romulan ships because they’re painted like birds of prey—a cool idea, if one that probably works a lot better on, say, airplanes than spaceships, which are a lot harder to get a close-up look at when you’re fighting them.

Apparently Stiles knows this because it’s family history—he had a bunch of ancestors that fought in the war (in the ‘Space Service’) and all of them died. Judging by Stiles’s tone, he carries a grudge about this. Considering that this was over a century ago, that’s quite a grudge. I mean, that’s not impossible—plenty of people ‘round here are still bitter about the American Civil War, and that was a hundred and sixty years ago. But personally, I couldn’t name a single ancestor of mine from a century ago, let alone tell you what they were doing--aside from a vague idea that at some point one of them left Sweden and screwed around on the Atlantic for a while before coming to America.

Kirk reminds Stiles that whatever happened to his ancestors, that was their war—not his. Man, first Bailey and now this guy. The left helm seat must be the Argue With The Captain Chair.

They come into sensor range of Outposts 2 and 3. It’s not good news—Spock picks up nothing from them but dust and debris. Both the outposts, and the asteroids they were built on, are gone. Kirk orders Uhura to get on the line to the nearest command base and start making quarter-hourly reports on their status, then calls for all hands to battle stations and all weapons to full power. At one of those battle stations we see that the person acknowledging is Martine the almost-bride. She has a bit of banter with her fiancee, both of whom seem determined not to let the interrupted ceremony and dire circumstances get them down.

At five minutes to Outpost Four they’re in sensor range, so Spock can confirm that that one’s still intact, at least. Uhura gets a message from them on speakers: it’s one Commander Hansen, sounding extremely ragged as he tells them that Outposts Two, Three and Eight were all destroyed by some unknown weapon. Outpost Four was alerted and had their deflector shield on full power, but whatever hit them was so powerful it blew the shield out, so if it hits them again they’re done for. Kirk tries to get some positive identification of the ship that hit them, but Hansen says they only got a glimpse of it. They can’t locate it, either, because it just up and disappeared after it attacked.

Hansen links the Enterprise to the outpost screen, so they can see the damage.

[ID: The bridge screen of the Enterprise, showing a white man in a tan uniform shirt, covered in dirt and sweat. There are flames in the foreground and dust and debris in the background. The man is saying, “We’re a mile deep on an asteroid.”]

As Hansen says, they’re a mile deep in an asteroid that’s almost solid iron, had their deflector shield at maximum power, and still the weapon cut through all of that to wreck the interior of the outpost. They got no identification or communication from the ship—it just showed up, fired, and vanished again. But they know it’s out there somewhere...and, sure enough, as soon as Hansen says that, something shows up on their sensors, coming at them fast.

Hansen switches the feed to the base’s viewing screen. At first, there’s nothing. Then it appears: a ship, quickly approaching. The base has no phaser capacity left and the Enterprise is still out of range; Kirk orders Uhura to hail the ship and threaten them away but it won’t acknowledge. There’s nothing anyone can do but watch as an enormous energy burst hits the outpost with a light so bright the bridge crew has to shield their eyes. Then it’s over. The ship disappears as quickly as it arrived. The viewscreen shows only an empty starfield. The outpost is gone.

The ship is gone, too, and they can’t find it now, but Kirk and Spock find it interesting how the ship became visible just before firing: perhaps it can’t fire while cloaked. A moment later, Spock picks up something on the motion detector, so Kirk orders the screen to be put at full magnification. Nothing shows up, which baffles Kirk. Now, uh, I’m hardly an expert on these things, but it seems a bit odd to me that combat between two spaceships would rely on having to look out the window and locate the other ship with your naked eye. Surely that’s what you have sensors for. I mean, even in real life, when we talk about cloaking we’re talking about hiding ships from radar detection, not making them literally invisible. But I suppose an episode where all the action takes place via people glancing at blips on tiny little screens in front of them wouldn’t make for great television, generally speaking.

Spock says that it is theoretically possible to create invisibility by selectively bending light, but it takes too much energy to be possible in practice. But perhaps this vessel has overcome that problem. They haven’t overcome the problem of installing an answering machine, though, because Uhura’s still not getting any response from them. Kirk tells her to stop bothering and to instead contact the rest of the outposts and have them signal the Enterprise if they pick up anything at all on their sensors.

It looks like the ship is heading away now, but Spock notes that it doesn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry. That suggests that maybe they’re not aware that the Enterprise is in the area, and Kirk speculates that their invisibility screen may also prevent them from seeing anyone else too. (Which, funnily enough, is probably how invisibility would work in real life; if you’re bending light away from yourself, that means no light would be hitting your eyes, and since light hitting your eyes is how you see, being invisible would probably make you blind as well. I’m not sure that’s what the writers were thinking of there, though.) Man, in that case it sure is lucky that they didn’t pick up the Enterprise’s hails, or they would have blown that stealth advantage before they even knew they had it. That’s what happens when you don’t answer your phone.

Spock says that the course the ship is taking is the exact one that would take it through the Neutral Zone and back home to Romulus. This gets a musical sting and very dramatic reaction from the rest of the bridge, although really, at this point I’m not sure who else they were expecting that ship to be piloted by if not Romulans.

Kirk orders helm to take a course parallel to the other ship, so that if the ship can see them on sensors, they’ll think the Enterprise is just a sensor echo. But they’re not to go into the Neutral Zone itself without direct orders, and the battle stations are to stand down. This seriously pisses off Stiles, who very clearly wants to go blast the Romulan ship out of the sky—well, out of the black void of space, I guess—and points out that there could be Romulan spies on the Enterprise right now! Which seems like a bit of a leap, I’m not sure how he got to that conclusion. But Sulu agrees with him and suggests (respectfully, because Sulu at least knows how to do his goddamn job) that they maintain a security alert. Kirk agrees and orders that to be done. What, exactly, a security alert entails in this context, I’m not sure; maybe everyone now has to answer a shibboleth before they can fire the weapons.

Uhura starts to intercept some coded communication from the Romulan ship, and Spock is able to get a fix on it and lock onto their screen. Everyone waits tensely. No one knows what the Romulans will look like. This is the first glimpse the human race will have of them.

Slowly, the Romulan bridge shimmers into view. It’s much closer and more cramped than the Enterprise bridge, lit mostly in red and pink. We see some crewmen wearing gold helmets (which conveniently cover their ears) and gray chainmail-ish-looking uniforms, each with a colored sort of...sash-cloak over one shoulder. One of them turns to another and gives a chest-thump salute before walking away. The other one obligingly turns to directly face the screen so that we can get a good look at him.

[ID: The bridge screen of the Enterprise, showing a headshot of a dark-haired white man with pointed ears and slanted eyebrows similar to Spock’s. Behind him the blurry shapes of two more Romulans bending over a console are just barely visible.]

That’s right—the Romulans look a whole dang lot like Vulcans. Everyone turns to look, none too subtlety, at Spock. Even Spock looks surprised, although that may be because the Romulan onscreen bears a stunning resemblance to his father.

[ID: Spock standing in front of his console and looking towards the viewscreen with a surprised expression.]

DAD???

No one says anything right away, though. Kirk asks if they’ve decoded the Romulan communications and Uhura says cryptography is working on it. At that, Stiles mutters that maybe they should give it to Spock. When Kirk asks him if he’s got something to share with the whole class Stiles tries to pass it off as nothing, but when pressed he says, “I was suggesting that Mr. Spock could probably translate it for you, sir.” Oh, says Kirk, because Spock’s really good at decoding things, right? That’s what you’re saying, right? Stiles, too dumb to know an out when he gets one, says that he’s “not sure.” As this conversation goes on we can see Spock listening, and while in typical Spock fashion he doesn’t emote very strongly about it, you can clearly see some discomfort there.

[ID: Spock, sitting at his science station, biting his lip and looking uncomfortable, while Kirk, offscreen, says, “I assume you’re complimenting Mr. Spock on his ability to decode.]

It’s a noteworthy reaction, I think. Of course no one would like to hear someone talking about them in that way, but from Spock, well, one might perhaps expect more of a stern look and a coolly raised eyebrow, some iteration of his classic ah, the humans are back on their bullshit expression. That’s generally how we’ve seen him respond to remarks about his race.

But then, most of those remarks have been poking at Spock’s, well, Vulcanness. At him not showing emotion, or having a different physiology, or whathaveyou. Some of them have been deliberately cruel and some of them have been...ill-advised, but little more than bluster in the end (not to say that any of them should have been made in the first place). None of them have been quite like this. Stiles is suggesting that Spock, either because he’s directly working with the Romulans or simply by virtue of a perceived relationship to them, cannot be trusted.

It’s hard to say what Spock thinks about things a lot of the time, but I think that he doesn’t show much reaction to people mentioning his Vulcan qualities because he is proud of those qualities and sees no problem with them. If someone makes a fuss about them, well, that’s just proof of how illogical they are. I wonder if Stiles’s comment prompts a different reaction because it hits more at a sore memory. The idea that Spock might be untrustworthy, unwanted, unreliable, purely because of his heritage, is something we know he faced from his peers growing up on Vulcan, something that affected him deeply and that he still struggles with. Hearing Stiles talk in this way, suggesting that Spock is the Other, the Enemy, one who cannot be trusted, might be bringing back memories of that experience of ostracization in a way that no amount of computer comparisons would.

But Kirk isn’t having this. He leans in, looking Stiles dead in the eye, and says, “Here’s one thing you can be sure of, Mister. Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There’s no room for it on the bridge. Do I make myself clear?” Even Stiles isn’t stupid enough to keep poking that particular hornets’ nest—not at this moment, anyway--and backs down.

The Romulan transmission has been cut off, but Uhura gives a tape of it to Spock for further study. I don’t know how he’d have time to study it with everything else that’s going on—I mean he is good at multitasking, but this seems like a stretch. Meanwhile, something comes up on visual, very far ahead: the Romulan ship, decloaked. It’s changing course, and the Enterprise follows.

We soon get a better look at the ship itself. It does, indeed, have a bird painted on the underside, so I guess the Romulans haven’t changed their ship design practices in the last century-and-a-bit. Then again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

[ID: The Romulan ship flying through space. It is a mostly oval shape with a top fin and two triangular wings. The underside of the ship is painted with a stylized yellow and red bird in flight.]

On the ship, the Romulan commander is ordering a crewman to go do something about their failing cloak. His subordinate protests that the cloaking device is taking up a lot of power when they don’t even need it right now. But the commander points out that the last outpost made contact with an Earth vessel. He knows the Enterprise is following them. The subordinate thinks, as Kirk wanted, that the Enterprise is only a sensor reflection, but the commander is more suspicious, so stop arguing already and go whack the cloaking device with a wrench until it comes on again.

The cloak comes back online, and the commander says that he’s glad they’re heading back to the Neutral Zone because frankly, he wants to go home. Incidentally, this commander never gets named in the episode (an EU source gives his name as ‘Kares’ but since that’s just the name of Spock’s dad spelled backward I’m erring on the side of that not being canon). But it’s awkward to just call him ‘the commander’ for the whole episode when he’s such a prominent figure. My immediate instinct is to call him the RomCom, but I’m afraid that might distract from the seriousness of events just a little bit. Since the Romulans are pushing the Roman theme super hard in this episode, let’s call him Marcus.

Another, older crewman asks Marcus why, if there is an Earth ship following them, it doesn’t attack them already. Marcus thinks they’re doing the same thing he would do if he was in their position: study the enemy for weakness before striking. A blue-sashed crewman enters, identifying himself as Decius and saying that he was sent for. Turns out he was sent for to get chewed out for sending a message, when they were supposed to be running silent. Decius insists that he was just informing their praetor about their “glorious mission.” Marcus, unimpressed, says that he might have ended the glorious mission with that stunt and knocks him down two ranks before sending him off.

As Decius departs, the older crewman tells Marcus that he needs to be careful, because Decius has friends in high places and Marcus might be putting himself in danger. Marcus is unperturbed: “Danger and I are old companions.”

The crewman remarks that he and Marcus “have been on a hundred campaigns together, and still I do not understand you.” But Marcus thinks he does: his friend knows as well as he does what’s going to happen if they return with proof of an advantage over the humans. The Enterprise will follow, because it must, the Romulans will destroy it, because they must, and another war will start. Maybe the Romulans are ready for war. Maybe they want a war. But Marcus doesn’t. Marcus is a tired old soldier who wishes to be done with war, done with death, done with losing comrades and done with killing the comrades of others. Ahead of him he does not see glory and victory, only the endless cycle of violence begun anew. He even admits that he’s found himself wishing that their ship will be destroyed before they can return home with news that will start another war. But he is too well trained, too dutiful, to sway from his prescribed course now.

It’s a very poignant moment, delivered wonderfully by the inimitable Mark Lenard. The episode was already turning out to be a tight, suspenseful space battle, a gripping game of cat and mouse that would have been entertaining enough on its own, but showing us the Romulan side of the situation elevates the story into something truly memorable. Just as we’re on the edge of our seats to find out how Kirk is going to beat those evil alien jerks who’ve blown our bases up, we’re forced to confront the fact that the aliens are complex individuals themselves, not all of whom truly wish for war, but are, like any soldiers, being pushed into it nonetheless by the higher powers back home. The tension remains, but now, we’re not quite sure what we want anymore. Of course we want the Enterprise to win, and yet the idea of that victory no longer feels quite as satisfying. Do we really want to watch Marcus die now that we know how he yearns for peace?

Back on the Enterprise, they’re still tailing the other ship, and Stiles says they’re an hour away from entering the Neutral Zone. “Assuming, of course,” he says pointedly, “that we don’t turn back.” Don’t push it, Stiles.

Scotty calls up to the bridge to say that they’ve got some debris from Outpost Four onboard, so Kirk gathers up Spock, Sulu and Stiles to come to the briefing room to have a look at it. I’m not really sure why he’s bringing the navigators, who surely are needed at their posts more right now, but whatever. Maybe he just really wanted to fill out the amount of people with ‘s’ names in the room.

In the briefing room, Spock shows everyone a chunk of silver material from the Outpost Shield, which he says is “cast rodinium—this is the hardest substance known to our science.” Then he squeezes it slightly in one hand and it crumples into pieces like a stale cookie. Which it presumably doesn’t usually do, or otherwise science really needs to find a new hardest substance.

Spock speculates that technobabble technobabble blah blah etc the Romulans have superior weaponry and an invisibility field and we’re kinda fucked. But are we so fucked that we have no chance of winning this one? That’s what Kirk wants to know. Apparently there is one advantage the Enterprise still has—Scotty says “their power is simple impulse,” unwittingly setting off a lengthy controversy in the EU about whether the Romulans have warp drive and if not, how did they conduct an interstellar war against people who did. But never mind that right now. The point is, the Enterprise can outrun the Romulan ship. Stiles, who can’t keep his damn mouth shut for five minutes, wants to know if Kirk intends to chase down the Romulan ship, or run away from them.

Kirk, for some reason, indulges him and asks what Stiles thinks they should do. Unsurprisingly, Stiles wants to attack the Romulan ship now, while they’re still on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone so there can be no doubt who broke the treaty first. Sulu points out that it’s a bit difficult to attack what you can’t see, especially when you’re in space where you can’t just shoot everything in front of you and hope you get lucky. Stiles thinks that they could try to aim with their sensors, and that they have to try lest the Romulans report back that the Federation saw their weapons and turned tail and ran, but Sulu points out that it’s not really any better if the Romulans report back that they destroyed the Federation ship, which they very well could do while said ship was busy firing blindly into the dark.

At that point Stiles stops pretending that he’s trying to make a serious tactical argument and breaks down into shouting about how they have to kill the Romulans now because if they run away the Romulans will see it as weakness and there’ll be another war. Then he turns on Spock, who hasn’t even said anything since he got done talking about the technobabble, and demands to know why he hasn’t brought that up, since he’s “the expert on these people.” Which is a claim that I’m assuming he’s basing on ‘the Romulans kinda look like Spock’ and nothing else, since while Spock is an expert on a frankly implausible number of subjects, Romulan culture has never been indicated to be one of them. But hey, the Romulans look like Vulcans, so the two must be related somehow. Never mind all the aliens running around that look exactly like humans. That’s totally different.

Incidentally, Scotty’s expressions throughout this whole scene are a thing of beauty.

[ID: 1. A cropped shot of Scotty, sitting behind Stiles at the briefing table, and looking sardonically in Stiles’s direction. 2. The same shot a moment later, showing Scotty now glancing off to the side, just as sardonically.]

Kirk orders Stiles to sit his butt down and stop trying to pick a fistfight with the science officer. Then Spock, to everyone’s obvious surprise, says that he agrees. They should attack. McCoy, less surprisingly, is aghast at this, pointing out that they’ve never even been face to face with the Romulans, much less have a detailed grasp of their psychology. Stiles sneers that they know what the Romulans look like now. Oh sure. That’s definitely been our biggest intelligence gap there. We know almost nothing about their culture, technology levels, or what the hell they’ve even been up to since we last saw them over a century ago, but now that we can report they look like humans with pointy ears, our tactical profile on them will be complete.

But Spock sees some significance in the resemblance between the Romulans and the Vulcans; it means they may be related. And that’s not as good a thing as you might think, because Vulcans had quite the violent period themselves, and if the Romulans are anything like that now, then the Federation cannot show weakness to them. This whole thing comes off as a bit odd as the way the Romulan-Vulcan history got fleshed out later makes it rather unlikely that the Vulcans would not know the Romulans were related to them, and how they were related. But hey, maybe Spock dozed off that day in history class.

McCoy is still against the whole thing, because of course he is. Kirk, on the other hand, is not letting much of any emotion show at all. He calls up to the bridge, where Uhura tells them their course is unchanged and they’ve got about twenty minutes until hitting the Neutral Zone. And about three hours until their first tactical report makes it back to Starfleet brass. So not much hope of getting advice from that quarter.

Spock checks their course, and sees that there’s a comet straight ahead of them which the Romulan ship is heading for. It’s got a typical comet makeup and a trail of frozen vapor...and anything that passes through that vapor is going to leave a trail behind it no matter how invisible they are at the moment. It’s just the opportunity they need.

Kirk calls all hands to battle stations and everyone files out. McCoy looks like he’s about to lay in a serious objection, but all he says is, “You’re taking a big gamble, Jim,” and leaves with the rest. From the look on Kirk’s face it’s clear that McCoy hasn’t told him anything he doesn’t already know.

Everyone heads to their stations. Battle stations are ready, phasers energized. Kirk tells the helm to swing around the comet and meet the Romulan ship as it comes out of the comet’s trail. Meanwhile, aboard said Romulan ship, Marcus is taking a moment to admire the comet’s beauty. But they haven’t come this way purely for the view: he’s hoping the comet particles will obscure the Enterprise’s sensors. Once the Enterprise is completely unable to see them, they’ll turn around and attack.

As the ship enters the comet, a Romulan helmsman tells Marcus that their screen is finally clear: their sensor shadow has vanished. Marcus, no fool, realizes exactly what that means and yells at them to execute Escape Maneuver One. The helmsmen obey, but not quite quickly enough, and a blast hits the ship that sends everyone for a tumble. And the Romulans have it even worse than the Enterprise crew for Star Trek Shakes, because they don’t even have chairs.

Onboard the Enterprise, everyone is waiting tensely for the Romulan ship to emerge from the vapor cloud. They’ll only have a moment of visibility in which to strike. But as the vapor clears from the screen, there’s...nothing there. Kirk realizes that the Romulan commander caught onto his trick and orders the helm to bank hard and lay down a pattern of phaser fire, musing as they go that, “He did exactly what I would have done. I won’t underestimate him again.”

The Enterprise starts to fire. The Romulan ship shakes with the impact. As it does, Marcus’s friend realizes that a chunk of the ceiling is about to come down on his commander. He rushes forward, shoving Marcus out of the way—and the debris falls on him instead. Aghast, Marcus rushes forward to lift the debris from his friend, while telling the crew to divert all power to weapons.

No one’s been crushed yet, but things aren’t going super great on the Enterprise either: a control circuit has burnt out, causing a phaser overload. Said circuit is, apparently, directly below Spock’s station, and on fire. Spock puts it out with his hands—not how I would advise dealing with an electrical fire, for the record—but it’s going to take time to fix, and time is not something they have a surplus of right now.

Before Kirk even has time to react to this, though, Sulu, staring in confusion at the screen, asks if the Romulans are surrendering. Sure enough, the Romulan ship is decloaking right before their eyes...but Kirk doesn’t think they’re surrendering. He yells at them to turn hard and go to emergency warp, seconds before the Romulan ship fires that same deadly burst of plasma that took out the outposts. They go to warp (not that you can tell, since absolutely nothing changes) but the plasma burst is still overtaking them. Dang, that thing is fast. Stiles says they’ve probably got about two minutes before it reaches them, but Sulu says they could detonate it with a single phaser shot. But of course, the ship’s phasers are out, and all Spock says about getting them back on in time is “Impossible.” Alright, desperate times call for desperate measures. Someone’s gonna have to take a hand phaser and climb out the window.

With the end seemingly in sight, Kirk has a crewman jettison their flight recorder. There’s not much else they can do but watch as the firey cloud bears down on them. But as they come down to the ten-second mark, the cloud seems to start breaking up. Evidently there’s a limit to how far it can go before it dissipates. But will it dissipate enough before it reaches them?

Sulu, reprising his role as Dissonantly Comforting Voice Counting Down To Your Doom,  counts down from five as the cloud approaches. It hits the Enterprise with a truly magnificent Shake that sends people flying all over the bridge. But it doesn’t disintegrate the ship and everyone in it into chunky space glitter, so we’ll call that one a victory.

Spock soon has the phaser circuitry duct-taped back together, and notes that the Romulan ship has resumed its old course, which might indicate that they’re assuming the Enterprise was a goner. But Kirk says that he wouldn’t make that assumption, so he’s not going to rely on the Romulan commander making it either. For now, he has helm resume their previous ‘sensor ghost’ course, and waits.

On the Romulan ship, Marcus is tending to his friend. Said friend is not dead yet, but judging by the way he’s struggling to breathe and his face is covered in sweat, he’s not doing great. A helmsman tells Marcus that their sensor ghost has returned, so Marcus immediately has them switch the cloak back on, overriding the protest that they’re low on fuel. Decius thinks it’s impossible that the Earth ship could still be intact and following him, but Marcus, no more about to underestimate Kirk than Kirk is to underestimate him, says that the commander of the Earth ship is not likely to repeat a mistake.

Said commander is currently facing a dilemma: they’re now about one minute from entering the Neutral Zone. The Romulans may have violated the treaty first, but, as McCoy is here to helpfully point out, if the Enterprise enters the Zone the Romulans may be able to claim the Federation broke it first, and use that as an excuse for war. Which would make for a somewhat dodgy claim since there are still several obliterated outposts on the Federation side to be accounted for, but it’s still a big risk to follow them.

Kirk would prefer not to take that risk, so he plans to strike now while they’re still in the clear. He orders them to go to maximum warp and ready the phasers. Stiles protests that they’d have to be ridiculously lucky to score a hit at this range, but Kirk tells him to shut up and get on with it. Oh, now you don’t want to shoot at the Romulans, Stiles? You’ve been champing at the bit to fire the phasers since the episode began but now you’re balking? You’re just not happy with anything, are you.

Despite Marcus’s last-minute call for evasive action, the Enterprise does, in fact, get ridiculously lucky, and the Romulan ship is hit. But it’s still intact, and now they’re only twenty seconds from the Neutral Zone. Kirk tells Uhura to contact command and tell them—despite all the previous talk about everything being expendable to avoid going into the Zone—that he has no other option but to follow the Romulan ship into the Neutral Zone.

As the Romulan ship is rocked with explosions—which, for some odd reason, appear to be shaking dirt from the ceiling as if they’re underground—Marcus is still sitting by his friend, staring ahead with dead-eyed calm. Decius, desperate for them to be doing something, says that he’ll take over looking after the falling Centurion, but Marcus says there’s no need. His friend is dead.

Decius wants to know why they aren’t firing back at the Earth ship, but Marcus is shrewder than that; he figures that Kirk has estimated they don’t have much energy left and is trying to make them waste it by returning fire. As he says that, he stops mid-sentence, evidently struck by a thought. After a moment he resignedly orders all their debris to be put into the disposal tubes...along with the body of the Centurion. As the crewmen rush to obey, Marcus asks his fallen friend’s forgiveness. It would be easy to use this—as similar narrative occurrances often are used-- to make the Romulans less sympathetic, to paint them as unsentimental to their own dead and caring only for tactical advantage, but it’s not. It is instead very clearly the desperate act of a man who knows he must do whatever it takes to get those who are still alive back home, no matter how much it hurts him.

On the Enterprise, Spock notes that the Romulan ship has stopped moving, and there’s a debris field up ahead: metal, ship parts, and a dead body. But Marcus’s hard decision has been in vain. Spock is not fooled, saying that the debris field does not have enough mass to have been a spaceship, and therefore must be a trick. But there’s nothing on the motion detector now. The Romulan ship is still out there, but they’ve lost it.

Well, Kirk’s not gonna violate an inter-species treaty for nothing. The Romulan ship must be nearby, shut down and not moving, and so the Enterprise also goes silent and prepares to play the waiting game. They even turn off most of the lights on the bridge, and when Spock says that he needs to attend to the faltering phaser circuitry, Kirk tells him to work quietly.

This whole thing is the culmination of references to submarine movies. The Romulan ship interior somewhat resembles a submarine with its cramped space, red lighting and pipes visible in the background. The Enterprise’s phaser shots function (in this episode) a lot like depth charges, detonating at a certain distance (the photon torpedoes would’ve worked better for that, but the writers hadn’t invented them yet). In particular the episode is basically a full-plot reference to The Enemy Below, which also featured a disillusioned enemy captain whose XO is also his close friend, and who enters into mutual respect with the opposing captain over the course of the story. Although I have to confess to you, I only know this because I read it on the internet. I’ve never seen any submarine movie, let alone The Enemy Below (although I have been in a submarine).

Anyway, so far, so good—the submarine tropes translate quite well from underwater battle to space battle with a little tweaking. This is the point where they maybe should have tweaked things a little more, though, because while silent running (shutting down all nonessential systems and having everyone be very quiet to evade detection) is a real submarine thing and thus a perfectly valid trope for a submarine movie, it doesn’t work quite so well when you’re IN SPACE. Having a spaceship version of silent running where they mask their emissions or heat signature or whatever would have been perfectly reasonable, but taking the idea so literally that everyone is tiptoeing around the bridge and speaking in whispers out of fear they will somehow be heard FROM INSIDE ANOTHER SPACESHIP makes no sense at all and frankly makes it rather difficult to take this bit seriously.

At least the Romulans are being good sports and also buying into the genre conventions, whispering as Decius tells Marcus he’s sure the Enterprise captain has been fooled, and Marcus replies that no, they’re still out there—he can feel it. Next thing we hear is Kirk giving a captain’s log, saying that they’ve been lurking motionless for almost ten hours. Ten hours?! That’s quite a sudden time jump after an episode that’s been running not all that far from real time so far. Oh well, at least we’ve had time to hear back from command...no? Oh.

Kirk is taking a break in his room, laying on the bed and staring gloomily at the ceiling. Rand comes in and asks if she can get him anything from the galley; Kirk doesn’t want food but accepts a cup of coffee and tells her to bring it up to the bridge. As she turns to leave, McCoy comes in. He doesn’t say anything at first, just stands and listens as Kirk muses about his responsibility. He’s feeling the weight of it real bad right now, as they sit waiting in the dark, and he wonders: what if he’s wrong?

Before McCoy can really say anything to this, Kirk says he doesn’t expect an answer anyway, and gets up to leave. But McCoy stops him, and says that he does have something to say. “In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million earth-type planets...and in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this one. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk.” To be honest I’m not really sure what that has to do with the episode, but it’s a very nice speech.

Kirk heads back up to the bridge, where Spock is still working on that phaser circuit. Ten hours later? Man, he wasn’t kidding when he said it’d take time to fix. He’s almost done now, but as he puts a hand on the console above to pull himself up, he accidentally hits the Big Conspicuous Noise button. Dammit! Why do we have that?

The alarm is quickly shut off, but too late: somehow, across the vacuum of space, the Romulans have heard it. Those ears aren’t just for show, y’know. The Romulans spring into action and, anticipating this, so does Kirk. He tells helm to reverse course and open fire, betting that the Romulans are going to try to slip back under the Enterprise—which they do, getting a phaser blast in the face for their troubles. Decius is at a spluttering loss for how this could happen. “He’s a sorcerer, that one,” Marcus mutters. “He reads the thoughts in my brain.”

Now they have barely any fuel left, and the Enterprise is out of their range. Decius is shocked and confused that “the Praetor’s finest and proudest flagship [has been]beaten!” But Marcus isn’t going to give up just yet. He orders more debris to be expelled from the ship, and asks Decius if they have some old-style nuclear warheads on the ship—y’know, laying around, maybe tucked into a closet somewhere. Decius says they do, but they’re only for self-destruction. But if you’ve got a nuke or two to spare, well, you might as well use them, so Marcus tells him to put one of them in with the debris on a proximity fuse.

The Enterprise sensors pick up the debris, and Kirk ceases fire so Spock can analyze it. It’s the same type as before, he says...except...one metal-cased object. Kirk, whose immediate ‘OH SHIT’ expression clearly shows that he knows exactly what that means, yells at the helm to swerve and fire on the object. They do, and the warhead explodes in a burst of white light and a truly impressive shake, one so big it knocks the lights on the bridge out.

The Romulans watch with satisfaction as the Enterprise sways in the explosion. Decius finds it glorious, but Marcus, watching with grim exhaustion, only says, “Now we go home.” Decius points out that the Enterprise is at their mercy now and Marcus has a duty to destroy them. Marcus only walks off without answering.

On the Enterprise, McCoy calls up to the bridge to report twenty-two casualties, mostly from radiation burns. Spock reports that most of the damage to the ship was in overloads and circuit burnouts; Scotty says that they only have one phaser room working at the moment. It’s fully operable, but Tomlinson is down there alone without any standby crew to help him out. Hearing that, Stiles finally does something useful and says that he started out in weapons control. Kirk sends him down to help Tomlinson out, while Uhura takes over his spot. Aw yeah, it’s Uhura time.

Spock tells Kirk that they have engine power back now, and could retreat to make repairs. But Kirk isn’t quite ready to give up this chase, thinking that maybe they can kite the Bird of Prey back to the Federation side of the Zone. For now, they’re going to hold position and play dead.

Decius, who still hasn’t learned the concept of a bluff, sees the Enterprise apparently dead in the void and pushes Marcus to go destroy it. Marcus is less than enthusiastic about this. One could surmise that this is because he takes no pleasure in bloodshed and would much rather just let the Enterprise go, especially now that he has come to have respect for its captain. But it’s not as if this is entirely an impractical approach either. As he points out, the Bird of Prey is heavily damaged and extremely low on fuel, and still some distance from home. Firing their mega-weapon would certainly destroy the Enterprise now that they can’t outrun it, but it might very well leave the Romulans without enough power to get home. And while the Enterprise is damaged, it’s not so out of commission that getting any closer to it to deliver a coup de grace is guaranteed to be safe, something Marcus is very well aware of after this back-and-forth with Kirk. He doesn’t trust Kirk to lay down and die nicely. Decius is over-confident and looking for glory, but Marcus would rather take this one slim chance they’ve managed to procure to get his people back home safe instead of pushing their luck any further.

But of course, Decius doesn’t listen, and asks Marcus to permit him to carry out the kill if Marcus won’t. Marcus, resigned, says that they’ll attack, but on his order. I don’t know what exactly he’s thinking, but it seems likely that he suspects Decius might take matters into his own hands and do something stupid; at least if Marcus conducts the attack he’ll have more control over it than that idiot. Even if Decius didn’t make a move on the ship, given his friends in high places as mentioned before, he could make things very bad for Marcus if he went back to Romulus with a story of a coward commander who didn’t strike against a downed foe. Or, maybe Marcus, whatever his personal beliefs, still feels bound enough by duty that he feels he has to do this. It’s hard to say.

Speaking of brash, stubborn idiots, Stiles has made it down to the phaser room with Tomlinson. When Spock comes in asking for a damage report, Stiles says they’re all good—and when asked if they’ll need assistance, he says, “This time we’ll handle things without your help, Vulcan.” Goddammit, Stiles. If an appeal to basic humanity didn’t get through to him, you’d hope at least an appeal to basic common sense would. Whatever he may think of Spock, Spock is still the XO, and Stiles is really damn lucky that Spock is a stoic, cool, emotionally controlled Vulcan, and not someone inclined to bust his ass back to the dark side of Pluto for making that stupid remark.

But Spock leaves without comment, and the two goldshirts are about to get down to some seriously awkward silence when there’s an ominous hissing noise. The phaser coolant seal has ruptured. Or at least, I think that’s what’s going on. It’s a little hard to tell.

[ID: A gray box mounted on the wall, which is spewing pink gas from both ends. Text on the wall says ‘Phaser Coolant Seal DANGER’]

Incidentally, this is the first and last episode that shows the phasers being controlled from a whole separate room relayed from the helm; after this they’re just shown as being fired straight from the helm. One could chalk that up to a quiet retcon, but my theory is that Starfleet got rid of the phaser control rooms precisely because shit like this happened.

Up on the bridge, the Romulan ship suddenly becomes visible. Kirk tells the forward phasers to stand by and then fire—but nothing happens. In desperation, Kirk gets on the comm and starts yelling at Stiles. He gets no response from Stiles, but Spock, making his way back up to the bridge, hears Kirk’s call and an alarm going off, puts two and two together, and runs back to the phaser room.

Said phaser room is now full of pink coolant gas. One of the goldshirts is down on the floor, and the other struggles to flip a switch on the console before succumbing as well. Spock runs in and hits a button, finally firing the phasers and hitting the Romulan ship dead-on. This time it’s more than a shake and some dust falling from the ceiling. This time everyone hits the floor, the bridge goes dark, and the ship spins out into space, drifting and helpless.  

Kirk tells Sulu to move in on the Romulan ship, and Uhura to open a ship-to-ship channel to it. Which she does without even having to get up from the helm. I told you Uhura could do anything.

Contact is made and the screen changes to show the Romulan bridge, badly damaged, wires sparking and fizzling and smoke everywhere. The only person remaining upright is Marcus, who staggers, gasping, towards the screen. Kirk tells him that they are standing by to beam the surviving Romulans aboard. But Marcus shakes his head. “No. No, it is not our way...I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality...”

[ID: A shot of the bridge viewscreen showing the Romulan commander, battered and exhausted and covered in sweat and soot, looking out from the smoke filling his own bridge and saying, “I could have called you friend.”]

Kirk asks him what the point is in dying now, and Marcus responds that, “We are creatures of duty, Captain. I have lived my life by it. Just one more duty to perform.”

He limps back to the console, presses some controls, and the Romulan ship detonates and is gone.

The Enterprise may have won the day, but it’s far from a jubilant victory, and not without cost. In Sickbay, McCoy is examining Stiles, with Spock standing by. When Kirk comes in and asks how they’re doing, Spock says he’s fine. Of course he is. Phaser coolant probably doesn’t affect Vulcans, just like everything else in the damn universe. Stiles is not doing so hot—but he’s alive, and as he tells Kirk, he wouldn’t be if Spock hadn’t pulled him out of the phaser room. Even after everything he said to and about Spock, Spock saved his life. Spock tells him that he just saved a trained navigator so he could return to duty; he, of course, is capable of no other feelings about it. Which is pretty much what you’d expect Spock to say, and what he kind of has to say, but it’s also a nice burn. “You saved my life!” “Nah I don’t care about you, I just didn’t want Starfleet’s time and money to go to waste.”

All in all, there was only one death on the Enterprise from the whole affair. Tomlinson never made it out of the phaser room. That morning he was prepared for the best day of his life. It turned out to be his last.

As Kirk leaves, Rand comes in to tell him that they finally got an answer back from base: that they’ll support whatever decision Kirk has to make. Well. That’s nice of them.

Kirk goes to visit Tomlinson’s fiancee, who is grieving in the ship’s chapel. He tries to comfort her, but really, what is there to say? She tells him, through her tears, that she’s alright, and turns to go. Kirk lingers alone in the chapel for a moment longer before leaving himself.

Balance of Terror is not what I would call a fun episode, but it’s a damn good one. It’s tense and exciting, but also thoughtful and melancholic. It’s not a story that leaves you comfortable at the end, having been forcefully shown that humans, for all their future advancements, are still capable of deep flaws; that the opposing aliens are not all uniformly evil and without redeeming qualities; and that the death of even one crewman will leave behind a terrible impact—one that we rarely see, but is always there, somewhere, every time.

In a lot of long-running fiction series, classic villains and monsters often only get treated with complexity when they are revisited later on, as modern writers apply retcons and rethinking to much simpler early stories. Star Trek has many examples of this of its own. But I have to give it credit for this: in the very first introduction of any classic recurring enemy of Star Trek, they were already very deliberately being written as more than cardboard bad guys. No, they didn’t exactly establish an extensive culture, history and sociopolitical perspective for the Romulans, or explain why a completely alien race from another planet are named after a human mythological figure, but there are clear indications of their own culture, their own style, and that they are a race of individuals who think and feel and have hopes and dreams and care about each other.

I realize that seems like a very low bar to meet. But it’s one that a fair amount of series don’t meet on their first go. Mostly though, I suppose it’s just a little surprising to discover after coming to know the Romulans (and Klingons) as being such stock baddies in popular culture. Everyone remembers them as being evil aliens, but even from the beginning, they were more than that. 

TREK TROPE TALLY: Crew death count for this episode is--alas--one goldshirt. Next time we’re going to have a major tone shift and kick back with some good old Shore Leave.

[boystownbirdie]

LMWTV4U: GOT S7E1

Welcome back to let me watch TV 4 U (LMWTV4U) where I watch TV shows so you don’t have to! If you’re not a GoT-watcher or you just need a review, check out my pre-season-6-GoT primer here or you can just check out the review/recap of the last ep of season 6 here

It’s GoT season 7 y’all- WHO’S EXCITED?

As always, spoiler alert. Also, I’m introducing a new segment of this blog called WHY DOES THIS SCENE EVEN MATTER or (WDTSEM?) to help us decipher when some seemingly unimportant or otherwise boring scenes actually do kind of matter. So watch for that. Now let’s get into it! 

Over in Frey-ville/ Riverlands...

So we open on Walder Frey (aka Argus Filch from Harry Potter) giving a toast to a bunch of his people, all of whom have to wear inexplicably weird hats that seem to serve no purpose. Off the bat we know something is up because Arya Stark, fresh from the face-swapping-assassin-training academy, definitely killed Filch in the last ep of season 6. He’s gathered up all of his hat-wearing friends and family and is like hey guys, here’s some NOT POISONED wine let’s have a toast. It’s pretty obvious it’s Arya doing a really good impersonation of Filch/ wearing his face, especially when he doesn’t even pretend to take a sip of his wine. He’s all, hey remember when we killed all those Stark people, especially the mom and the hottie son, Robb and his preggers wife? That was fun, right? And all the poisoned guys are like yep murder is fun you are correct. Then he’s like too bad you didn’t kill all the Starks cuz one is still alive and…. It’s ME BITCHES. 

And she rips off Filches’ face/body and is like SURPRISE! And because this is the season of the woman, she doesn’t let any of the poor servant girls (who were like 15 years old and all forced to marry Filch) drink any of wine but she’s like, I know this is confusing, because I was just wearing the face and body of your former husband but it’s me, a fellow 15-year old girl and please tell everyone THE NORTH REMEMBERS. (If you’ll recall the Stark fam is from the North and a bunch of them died at the red wedding which was FOREVER AGO)

Later in the ep, we catch up with Arya who is riding around on a horse like a boss when she happens upon ED SHEERAN. SERIOUSLY ED SHEERAN IS IN THIS EPISODE WHY? I DON’T KNOW. And he’s singing a song with some soldier bros, duh. And I guess they’re from the Lannister army (if you’ll recall the Lannisters are the incest twins) because they’re wearing their colors and they’re like ugh King’s Landing (where Queen Pixie Cut aka QPC is currently ruling after blowing up most of the city) is the worst. And Arya is like umm ya it sucks, last time I was there I saw my dad get his head chopped off, BUMMER. She doesn’t say that actually but she does listen to them talk about how they wished they were home with their family instead of fighting for QPC. 

WHY DOES THIS SCENE EVEN MATTER (WDTSEM)? This scene is pretty clearly a setup to get Arya to consider meeting up with her bro (well actually uncle) and sis in Winterfell rather than her current single-minded pursuit of killing QPC. Anyway, the strangest thing about this scene is that one of the bros is like ya my mom always said to be kind to others and they’ll be kind to you and also none of the bros say anything murder-y or even slightly assault-y for that matter toward this young girl traveling alone WHAT SHOW IS THIS? On any other season of GoT this scene would have been a literal bloodbath.

Sidenote: when the opening credits run we FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER only see Westeros rather than both sides of the globe (or is it a globe? Idk. g.r.r.r.r.r. Martin plz advise) cuz our Khween Khaleesi is no longer residing there.

Next, let’s check in up North with Bran and his pal Meera who recently narrowly escaped a zombie attack only to be rescued by his zombie-uncle.

Bran is having a vision, as he is wont to do, of the “Night King” (zombie leader guy) plus thousands of zombies marching toward the non-zombie world. Some of them are even zombie giants which is super spooky. He’s like let’s GTFO and get south of this giant ice wall so they coming a-knocking on the ice-wall-door which, if you’ll recall is manned by all those moody celibate dudes that Bae was briefly murdered by before coming back from the dead. Bae’s friend who is in charge now is like umm new phone who dis cuz IDK what “Brandon Stark” looks like but it’s probably not you. And he and his friend Meera are like we promise, we’re cool and they let them in.

WDTSEM? Bran and Meera’s next stop after passing through TSA security is probably to see his sis and bro at his home, Winterfell. Last time that poor boi was there he was paralyzed, briefly made leader, ousted, forced to watch the whole place burn down and then had to escape before he was killed. So needless to say he’ll be happy to see that it’s not only rebuilt and no longer a torture dungeon, but being ruled by his fam! AND he’s the only one who knows the truth about Bae the R+L=J theory so he needs to drop that bomb on erry’body that basically means that Bae is kind of a rightful ruler and also Khaleesi’s nephew?!?

Speaking of his home, let’s check in with Winterfell...

Bae (Jon Snow) is like wow being in charge is hard no wonder Obama turned gray lol-is-this-thing-on? And Sansa is like eye-roll and they have a little tiff in front of everyone which is EMBARRASSING. A few important things happen here: 

Bae tells everyone to dig for dragonglass cuz it’s the only way to kill the zombies. He’s like hey bois, gurls, gender-non-comforming-individuals, EVERYONE needs to get to work and dig and learn to fight

Everyone’s favorite pint-sized-ruler-of-Bear-Island, Lyanna Mormont, is all about that lyfe, as shown in gif above

Bae is like wow little kids are pretty good at being in charge so let’s put these other 2 lil’ squirts in charge over at their houses

Bae sends hottie-ginger-wildling-bae to guard part of the wall where the zombies are probably heading first. Goodbye ginger-bae. 

Sansa does not agree with the putting-kids-in-charge bit which is what they argue about but he does it anyway. They kind of makeup and then they talk about how Cersei (aka Queen Pixie Cut aka QPC) is in charge now and Sansa is like she cray but also a BAMF. 

Later we get a scene of Brienne, everyone’s fave lady-knight, training her squire how to fight and are reminded that ginger-bae has the hots for her. As Sansa watches this all play out, Littlefinger (ugh he is the WORST) comes over to tell Sansa for the 80th time that he loves her and wants to rule the world with her. And as she has done 80 times, she’s like NO THANKS DUDE. 

Speaking of Queen Pixie Cut (QPC) let’s check in on her over at King’s Landing…

QPC is ruling whatever is left of her people after she blew most of them up. She commissioned this giant map/painting on the ground and is stompin’ all around like she owns the place, which, to be fair, she does. Her twin bro/lover, Jamie, comes over and is like ummm… what’s the tea? Remember how our last living kid jumped out of a building and died last season… can we discuss? And she’s literally like yolo we gotta rule this place FOR US. And he’s like but we don’t have any heirs anymore, like who’s gonna take over after that you can’t #liveforever this ain’t the high school cafeteria in the film version of Fame. She’s like dontcha worry, I gotta plan.

So Theon’s crazy uncle shows up to see them. If you’ll recall last season, he killed his bro and then tried to become king of the wet-rock-pile by throwing up a bunch of sea water even though his niece, Theon’s sis, was totes supposed to become kween of her peeps. While he was performing his water-gagging-magic-trick, Theon and his sis ran away with a bunch of the peeps and all of the ships. Again, their entire island seemed to have about 20 people so WHO IS ON THOSE SHIPS? IDK. And he was like NBD I’ll make a bunch more ships AGAIN WHO IS BUILDING AND THEN RIDING ON THESE SHIPS IDK. So I guess the ships are built and people must be on them because they show up to QPC’s shores and she’s like whatup. Jamie is NOT HAVING IT mostly because he is jelly since Theon’s crazy uncle (TCU) is hittin on his sis. TCU manages to squeeze in a really sick burn when he’s like well at least I have 2 working hands (Jamie got one chopped off 3 seasons ago) and then he asks QPC to get with him. She’s like naw dawg so he’s like NBD I’ll be back with a “very special present” and heads off. They also banter about how his niece and nephew and Khaleesi and QPC’s other bro (Tyrion) have all teamed up and are headed that way.

WDTSEM? In the books, apparently TCU has some sort of magic horn that can call dragons? I think this might be the gift he’s going to get and bring back to QPC which would be CLUTCH because in the upcoming battle against Khaleesi, the ability to control those dragons would be really helpful.

Next, let’s see how Sam is doing over in “Oldtown” where all the maesters live...

If you’ll recall, Maesters are like doctors/librarians/historians, each of whom is assigned to either a place (like the ice wall) or a family, I guess (like the Starks). Sam wants to be one but he also is NAUGHTY and brought his gf and her bb with him (Maesters are also supposed to be celibate like the ice wall guys). He’s in maester-training-camp which includes a lot of diarrhea, apparently. He’s like cleaning bedpans, putting back library books, and doing autopsies on the reg. JIM BROADBENT aka Prof. Slughorn from HP aka Harold from Moulin Rouge shows up and is like DON’T GO IN THE RESTRICTED SECTION OF THE LIBRARY, SAM (flashes of Harry Potter, amirightladies?) so of course Sam does. He sneaks some books home and finds out that “Dragonstone” which is a castle near King’s Landing that Khaleesi is heading towards, is built on top of heaps of “dragonglass” (which, I mean, could have guessed) so he’s like I gotta tell Bae since I know bb boi is trying to stock up on that. Also, there’s a brief scene when Khaleesi’s friend who had the turning-to-stone-disease (Stoney) is like in a hospital where Sam is working and is pops his stone-hand out and is like IS SHE HERE YET? Aka Stoney wants to know if Khaleesi has made it to Dragonstone yet, which WAIT TIL THE END OF THE EPISODE, DUDE.

WDTSEM? Especially the scene with Jim Broadbent (JB) is important because he talks about how the ice wall has always held up after centuries of zombie attacks and how empires rise and fall and just like go with the flow, Sam. My guess is that they’re bringing up how strong the ice wall is and how unlikely a zombie-attack really is because this is something that may actually happen now so we can really grasp how high the stakes are nowadays.

Before we get to Khaleesi, we have to check in on “The Hound” who’s walking around with those fire-worshipping dudes these days…

Is it just me or is man-bun guy kinda hot? So he and “The Hound” come across this farm house which the Hound is having some guilt about b/c last time he was in the hood he killed the girl and her dad who lived there. They find their bodies and everyone is like IDK who killed them but ugh… that’s life. And then the fire-worshipper-guys are like here look at this fire and remember the Hound hates fire because he got half of his face burned off as a kid. But he does look at the fire and has like a premonition of zombies going around the ice wall and attacking all the living people. Then he and hottie man bun bury the dead girl and her dad outside because the Hound feels #guilty for killing them I guess?

WDTSEM? Well the Hound used to be really murder-y but then he was saved by Ian McShane and his group of like Amish people (much like Harrison Ford in the film Witness) and decided to renounce violence. He used to work for QPC’s family and then kind of kidnapped Arya but also was not the worst to her (or to her sister for that matter) so if shit’s going down he could potentially be on the Stark side of things now. 

Lastly, we check in with everyone’s fave kween and co, Khaleesi, who rolls up on Dragonstone with all her pals…

She hasn’t been to this side of the world since she was a wee babe so when she steps foot on the sand, she’s like give me a minute y’all. Then she walks into the castle and looks at the throne, which is NOT made of a bunch of swords but rather a slab of rock and is still pretty baller and walks right past it to head to the room with the giant map on it. Previously, Stannis and his friends lived there including sweet ole’ no-knuckles who is currently #teambae and he spent a lot of time strategizing and having sex with witches to produce demon babies on that table. Khaleesi looks around and then is like, let’s get it started in here #blackeyedpeas.  

WDTSEM? Well, duh, cuz Khaleesi is in it and she is basically the Beyonce of GoT. But also because she has had this single-minded pursuit on the iron throne (chair made of swords where QPC is currently sitting) so you’d think she’d like take a minute to sit on this rock-slab-throne and savor the moment, but she (unlike QPC) knows that a true kween not only sits there, but also gets shit done. And I think this scene is supposed to contrast how #woke Khaleesi is compared to QPC. Both have giant maps and thrones now, but QPC is so out of touch that she has no time for strategy or listening to other people’s advice. 

Final thoughts:

This ep was what the TV people call a “table setting” episode and it did just that. The drawback is that it was pretty boring. We just check in on all of our key players/places and see how everyone is doing which is normally quite helpful in GoT world. But the season 6 finale already did that for us, so it seems to be just an extension of that episode rather than something new and exciting. Now on to our superlatives...

Biggest surprise this ep: Sam is interning for JIM BROADBENT these days, which is pretty great. Also Ed Sheeran lives in GoT-world I guess which actually explains a lot.

Biggest letdown: We only get THREE WHOLE WORDS from Khaleesi in the entire ep!

Important fashion moments: Sansa’s new lacefront is NOT working for her. With this budget you’d think they could afford better wigs! Also, while I won’t miss the Mereen subplot, I will miss Khaleesi and co being in a warmer climate because she and her friends had some killer crop tops/ cut out dresses/ bright colors . Now that everyone is on the cold side of the world, we have much less #fashun.

Who died this ep? A bunch of Walder Frey’s main cronies

Check in next week when we’re promised someone will finally be strangling littlefinger so we may be rid of his creepy soliloquies soon! Thanks for reading tell your friends!

CORRECTION: After checking my sources, it seems like the Hound maybe didn’t kill the farmer dude and his daughter but instead stole their shit and so they were forced into the dire circumstances that led them to their death. So while it sounds like he didn’t kill them, he still feels guilty that he basically caused their deaths.

Also, I incorrectly ID’ed Bae as Khaleesi’s uncle a few times but actually she is his aunt I guess? Sorry to lead you astray!