It’s Saturday, which means: Star Trek. Or, more specifically, my project of re-watching the TOS-era episodes of Star Trek with the goal of taking a peek for ideas—scenario seeds—useful for those playing Star Trek Adventures as put out by Modiphius. 

Previous episode scenario seeds on a tab under Star Trek Adventures here on the blog, so if you want to look through, that’s where they are. Today’s episode?

The Corbomite Maneuver

Engage.

Teaser-wise this one starts with Enterprise mapping a new area of space and taking pictures and a Lieutenant Bailey being kind of bored, and then a cube appears (not a Borg cube, this one is more colourful and prefers to spin and move with one point facing down, so totally different) and Bailey has a little freak out when they can’t avoid it and Sulu calls for a Red Alert and the Captain.

After the break we see Doctor McCoy delighting in making Captain Kirk do some sort of kicky-pushy exercise in Sickbay for his physical, ignoring the red alert light and waiting until he’s done before Kirk notices the light and is annoyed, and McCoy snaps off one of his best lines with—hee—”What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle operator?”

Once Kirk gets cleaned up and arrives on the Bridge, Enterprise tries to escape the cube thing, it keeps bobbing and weaving with them, won’t leave them alone or let them go, and Bailey has some more freak-out and hesitation moments, as well as jumping the gun a few times, and the idea here is Bailey is just not working out particularly well in his role. In fact, once Enterprise decides to destroy the cube (because it’s putting out a crap-tonne of radiation and is going to kill people), Bailey hesitates in ordering the phaser to fire because he’s scared (or something like that?), and there’s also a scene where Sulu reaches over and does his job for him, and basically Bailey’s character is in over his head.

Now, there’s one major facet of this that struck me as really important. After Kirk tells Bailey to run drills until he can get a 100% efficiency rating, Bones takes Kirk aside and basically says, “You promoted him too fast, you need to ease off, and just because he reminded you of you, it doesn’t mean he’s ready for this role.” That’s your chief medical officer noting the mental condition of one of your crew, Captain. What are you going to do?

Well, you’re Captain Jerk, so you’re going to dismiss the opinion, and double-down on “he’ll toughen up” because otherwise you’d be wrong, and Captain Jerk doesn’t do wrong. This is now the third time McCoy has put forth a medical opinion to Kirk in only ten episodes and Kirk has just decided to ignore it and the third time we’ll see that McCoy is—in fact—correct. Kirk is really not good at judging the mental state of others, and really bad at listening to the experts on his ship who are there to offer him opinions. I think in the time and place he was written, we’re supposed to get the idea that Jim Kirk is a maverick who is slow-to-trust and demands excellence of his people without any softness (and is used to getting it) hitting his first real “nope, that’s not going to work” but honestly, through today’s lens he comes off like any number of bad bosses we’ve all had who don’t listen.

Now, Bones and Kirk continue this conversation in Kirk’s quarters where Kirk learns he’s been given a salad diet for a while because of his latest physical results when Rand drops it off. This is doubly important because RAND IS IN THIS EPISODE AND AT NO POINT IS SHE VICTIMIZED. That’s one out of six! Hooray! (In fact, later she shows up with coffee and McCoy is all, “I thought we had no power?” and Rand shrugs and says, “I used a phaser,” and I wish we got more using-a-phaser Rand rather than victim-Rand, but life is full of unfulfilled wishes.)

After salad and ignoring his chief medical officer, Kirk heads forward through the space where the cube was, because Enterprise is an explorer, and that’s what you do—you don’t turn back when a cube tries to kill you. I guess that’s fair.

Alas. A massive ship arrives (this one is a sphere made up of domes and tubes and it looks awesome in the remaster), grabs Enterprise, announces itself as the Fesarius of the First Federation under the control of Commander Balok and basically says since Enterprise blew up the warning buoy and disregarded the warning buoy they’ve signed their own death warrant for tresspassing. Balok gives them ten minutes. Kirk tries to talk Balok down, they refuse. Spock gets a glimpse of the alien (a wobbly view of a scary looking big-brained alien). The countdown ticks on and Sulu seems to enjoy letting people know how much time is left.

Bailey. Loses. His. Shit.

And, I mean, fair? But Kirk relieves him of duty, has McCoy take him to his quarters, Spock notes that in chess sometimes you just lose, and afterwards McCoy comes back and delivers a not-so-subtle “What part of ‘You need to let up on him’ was unclear, Captain Jerk?” and he and Kirk had an argument where McCoy notes he’s going to weaponize his medical log to make Captain Kirk respond (again, I might add), and Kirk snaps about McCoy trying to bluff him and then—

Oh! Lightbulb moment.

Okay, the transition here is clever and I like the writing. Basically, Kirk thinks of what Spock says—in chess, when you’re going to lose, that’s it—and decides to swap games to poker, because in poker you can have a shit hand and still win. He bluffs. He has Uhura hail, pretends there’s a “corbomite device” on the ship that explodes in an equal reaction way to any attacker—and that they don’t keep a record of it in their ship tapes (which Balok has read by now, by the way)—as a last-ditch “if you harm us, we’re taking you down with us” sort of deal.

The timer runs down. No boom. Bailey comes back and is all, “Can I please have my station back?” and Kirk lets him—it’s an interesting choice: a shot at redemption? Recognition he asked too much of him? Just wanting to let him die at his post? It’s not clear.

Balok, having fallen for the bluff—at least a little—has a smaller ship pop out of the sphere and starts dragging Enterprise to a planet where it intends to maroon everyone and then destroy the ship (given that way it won’t blow up Fesarius, just a little ship, I guess?) and Enterprise does some techobabble to overwhelm the energy output of the little ship, which loses power, Enterprise breaks free and they’ve done it!

Only then the little ship is putting out a faint distress signal saying its lost life support and Uhura points out that little signal would never reach the big ship and then Kirk notes it’s time to send over a landing party to help out the alien.

McCoy points out this dude tried to kill them, but Kirk says this is an opportunity to live up to their ideals—yes, yes it is—and so he, McCoy, and Bailey beam over and it turns out Balok is a puppet—he admits it’s because the real him isn’t scary—and the real Balok is… a little kid. I mean, not actually, of course: just an alien that looks like a little kid, but is a grown member of his species. (Said little kid, by the way, is Clint Howard, who will grow up to star in multiple future iterations of Star Trek. Seriously! He’s in The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, Discovery and Strange New Worlds.) They chat, and it turns out this is the first of many a powerful alien actually testing humans to see if they’re worthy. Balok’s ship is fine, it’s all a bluff (which makes two!) and he read the Enterprise tapes but wanted to make sure they were as good as they said they were, they passed the tests. Oh, also he’s lonely because that massive ship is only crewed by him, and how about handing over someone to talk to for a cultural exchange?

So Kirk asks Bailey if he can think of anyone who’d like to stay with Balok and Bailey is all “pick me, I’m a garbage lieutenant who makes lots of mistakes!” and Kirk is all, “he super is, please let me have a better officer!” and Balok laughs and says he and Kirk are so alike and offers them all a tour of his little ship.

Credits. (McCoy was right.)

Oh! Also, a fun fact about this episode is it’s the episode where Sulu looks back at the Captain with a “what you make of this?” reaction at one point and it’s re-used in episode after episode whenever they need to show some thing on screen. They just change the thing on the screen. Even when I was younger, I noticed how Sulu did this a lot.

This is the first and last time we see or hear anything about the First Federation, which feels like fertile ground to play with. On maps, you sometimes get a glimpse of the First Federation marked with a ring of those warning buoys, and another time with an actual star system marked Fesarius. And that’s… about it. Now, I like the idea of these wee little alien folk who are like, “Okay, we look like helpless children to most alien species, so let’s put a border of explosive cubes around our space and also make scary puppets,” but beyond that it’s a completely blank slate to work with. Their technology is also pretty solid—they’re able to take over Enterprise in this episode. These aren’t lightweights (well, they’re tiny kid-sized aliens, but you get what I mean).

Given we never see the First Federation ever again, one is left with the impression that Bailey and Balok may have become friends, but Starfleet—or the Federation—and the First Federation didn’t really ever get anywhere, diplomatically. Was that a failure? Was it just the culture of the First Federation? Perhaps they simply don’t trust the larger species—or somewhere in the lost era between TOS and TNG, something went wrong between the two? Also, on the map, just a sector or so from where they’re located are the Ferengi.

I mean, that’d convince more than one alien to put up a fence real quick, no?

Seed One: The First Federation

A ring of buoys have been the First Federation’s message to outsiders—including the Federation—since the first contact of Enterprise in 2266, and that message has been consistent since: Keep Out. What happened, exactly?

Fences Make Good Neighbours—I imagine the First Federation had a brief flirtation with opening their borders after meeting Enterprise in 2266, offering the United Federation of Planets open lines of communication and officially declaring Bailey as part of a diplomatic officer exchange. More, the Federation was still rebuilding from the Klingon Wars of the late 2250s, and the technological advancements of the First Federation would have made for a particularly promising hope for reconstruction and defence capabilities. If the First Federation were to join the United Federation of Planets, the benefits could not be understated. The First Federation, however, shifted away from any overtures of that nature, and worse, their activity outside the protection of their buoys led to multiple altercations with other species: the Ferengi, the Nausicaans, the Tzenkethi, and the Patriarchy—and ultimately, a decision was made: they returned to their space and closed their borders. The United Federation of Planets (and Starfleet) would of course respect their wishes and attempt to keep diplomatic channels at least possible. So when the First Federation reaches out with a request for Starfleet to send a single ship past their normally inviolate borders, Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets is eager for the mission to end positively. So why are they calling? Perhaps (a) one of those antagonists earlier—Ferengi, Nausicaans, Tzenkethi or the Patriarchy—have launched some sort of attack, or worse have found a way to wrest the remote control of the buoys and are weaponizing them against the First Federation itself. The crew will have to not only avoid and handle the First Federation’s defensive and offensive technology in the hands of villains, but they’ll have to figure out a way to return control to the First Federation before it’s too late. Or, maybe (b) this is a shift in the First Federation’s openness, one that hasn’t happened in nearly a century, and one perhaps born of the struggles of the Cardassian and Dominion Wars—which very well may have touched the First Federation as well. If the Founders or the Jem’Hadar (or the Breen, perhaps) broke through the First Federation’s perimeters during the Dominion War, whatever the damage done before the end of the war may have been enough to create at least some voices to opening their borders to those who might offer mutual defence, but it’ll be up to the players to show the First Federation how much aid the ship can provide in the face of the post-war destruction. This could make for a mission of mercy crossed with politics and various First Federation factions: some thinking the UFP is the way forward, others thinking it would only invite more enemies into their territory and risk further death and destruction.

Seed Two: Alien Tests

This episode has something we see over and over in Trek, and that’s a “superior” alien in some way testing the Federation’s best and brightest to see how they react to… something. Mortality, war, violence, you name it, there’s an alien race out there apparently ready to see how Starfleet will react, and then judge all of the Federation’s species accordingly. It’s a staple of Trek and it’s a great way to shine a light on a particular facet of psychology or philosophy or sociology.

The Space Trolly Problem—An outbreak of a virus thought long-dormant at a Federation Colony has the players’ ship warping in with hope of finding a solution. The virus was thought to be eradicated by a previous and systemic vaccination effort. When the ship arrives, the medical team finds not only an ongoing outbreak, but that all previous treatments seem to be completely ineffective. Contract tracing the initial outbreak leads back to an individual who isn’t infected, but rather a carrier of this new iteration of the virus. Isolating this not-quite-Patient-Zero will at least stop things from getting immeasurably worse, but those infected with the new virus are still going to die within days. As the situation worsens the various attempts of the medical division continue to fail, until they attempt to focus on the unique immunity the isolated individual has—but all their avenues attempting to recreate the immunity continue to fail but one: testing shows bone marrow transplant seems to be potentially effective, but the moment cells are cultured outside of the individual, the immunity fails. A single humanoid only has so much bone marrow to transplant, but it soon becomes clear that’s the only solution on hand—trade one life for perhaps as many as the entirety of the colonists—in fact, the smallest viable sample works out to be exactly the amount needed to save everyone else—which is beyond statistically unlikely. Of course, the reality is everything that’s happening is a test to see how the crew and colonists react to an age-old moral question: is one life worth ten? A hundred? An entire colony? Whatever the crew decide, the arrival of non-corporeal beings to witness their decision—and take responsibility for setting it all up in the first place—should allow for the crew to enter into a heartfelt dialog about morality indeed, especially if the aliens don’t quite grasp the full impact of what they’ve been doing. What’s “exploring the concepts of morality and mortality” to them, is deadly real to the colonists and crew.