Saturday again, so we return to my project of re-watching the TOS-era episodes of Star Trek with the aim of finding scenario seeds useful for those playing Star Trek Adventures as put out by Modiphius. 

And today’s episode is a great one.

The Balance of Terror.

Lock on. And… Fire!

Balance of Terror (TOS Season 1, Episode 14… or 8?)

Okay, so this episode has so much going for it, and that’s not even including the sheer joy of revisiting it via the Strange New Worlds alternate-timeline episode where we got to see it again, but different. The teaser is adorable and cute: Jim Kirk is officiating a wedding! D’aww. He pauses to ask the Bridge if they’ve heard back from the Earth Outposts—they haven’t—and then starts his whole speech about how ship’s captains get to do this happy job of officiating weddings in front of the happy bride and groom only then it’s Red Alert and everyone runs off because Earth Outpost 4 is under attack.

Post-teaser, we’re on the Bridge, and we have a terse discussion of how the Earth Outposts in discussion were put in place after the Earth-Romulan War, the end of which was done over subspace radio (ie: they never saw a Romulan) and we meet one Lieutenant Stiles.

I could fix him.

Let’s pause to admire Lieutenant Stiles, this week’s Trek Hunk.

Okay, Stiles. Whilst definitely of the hunk persuasion, he’s also got some Romulan baggage: namely, lots of his family lost people to the Earth-Romulan war, at varying ranks, and he knows about as much about Romulans as anyone—but Kirk notes that was their war, not his war, and hey, score one for Kirk being hesitant to fire the first shot in what could be war. Good for him.

Stiles swallows his anger (you can tell because those brown eyes do things, and his jaw also does things and look, I get he’s an asshole. But, like many, I have that self-destructive devil on my shoulder whispering ‘You could change him!’ in my ear).

Ahem. Uh. Right. Where were we? This is a super-famous episode, so you probably don’t need a massive play-by-play here, but the short(ish) version is Earth Outpost 4 is, in fact, under attack and is destroyed in front of Enterprise, who witness a ship—one decorated exactly as Stiles said it would be, by the way—decloak, fire, and then cloak again. Goodbye Outpost 4.

Enterprise gives chase, and what follows is a really great cat-and-mouse plot thereafter. Enterprise manages to damage the Romulan ship with the equivalent of depth charges being tossed at sensor ghosts, and the Romulan Commander (played to perfection by Mark Lenard) manages a UNO reverse by disguising a bomb in detritus and luring the Enterprise closer to determine if they blew up the ship or not and basically both ships are damaged, doing their best, and the border of the Neutral Zone acts as a ticking clock counting down to what would be a declaration of war.

But before all that, Uhura does her usual magic with communications and picks up a signal and it turns out to be a feed from inside the Romulan ship and they put it on screen and… Oh. Romulans look like Vulcans.

Cue Stiles being an asshole to Spock after that. (Though, in his defense, Sulu backs him up on the whole ‘We shouldn’t rule out inside/traitor help, given the Romulans took down four outposts.’)

This episode is the foundation of “Romulans are the Vulcan splinter group who are aggressive, paranoid, colonizing warmongers” and it has a moment that’s honestly fantastic from Leonard Nimoy when Stiles is all “We have to blow these damn Romulans out of the sky or they’ll think we’re easy pickings!” and Kirk is all, “I don’t want to start a war,” (again, huh, nice to see you not be Mr. Half-Cocked) and then Spock is “No, dude, he’s right—if the Romulans are the offshot of Vulcans only still emo, we need to blow them the fuck up, Jim.”

(I’m paraphrasing.)

So, both ships are damaged, the Romulan Commander doesn’t want to start a war but he’s also doing his duty, and he has an older advisor, a Centurion, who is his advisor and honestly their platonic, respectful relationship is one of the best we see in Trek, especially after the Centurion dies saving the Commander and the Commander realizes verisimilitude in that whole “garbage trap” would be greater if they put the body in there, too and you see it on his face how much this hurts him—oof—it’s almost enough to make you sympathetic to the Romulan warmongers, is what I’m saying, and that’s a freaking feat.

Long story short, Kirk wins, Spock saves Stiles’s life (and the day) when gas fills a room and nearly stops phaser control from firing (something we never see again in the series, so maybe this is the point where they realize having to relay orders to another spot to press a button to make the phasers go pew-pew-pew is a bad idea), and the Romulan Commander offers a rather moving speech about how in another time they could have been friends before blowing up his own ship.

Oh, but it turns out the groom was also in phaser control and he died. The Bride has a sad moment, says it has to be worth something, and Kirk and she share a moment of hoping that’s true. (Also, Stiles has a moment of, wow, he saved my life even though I was a dick so see? HE CAN CHANGE!)

It’s a great episode.

Unrelated to the greatness of the episode (and also definitely not great): this is the last time we see Rand. She’s not victimized (for the third time out of eight appearances) but this is her exit, and as I mentioned before, Grace Lee Whitney was treated like shit, assaulted, and it will always leave a sour taste in my mouth—especially when you can see in quite a few future episodes where she was supposed to be present and they just shoved in a random new guest yeoman. The last thing Rand gets to do on the show is say, “Starfleet says they’ll support you in whatever you do,” to Kirk.

Scenario Seeds (and Player/Captain’s Log Seed)

Okay, when it comes down to it, this episode follows the pattern of any number of ship-or-submarine-vs-submarine plots—see: The Enemy Below, the Hunt for Red October, etc.—but there’s a reason that’s a staple. Hide-and-seek and cat-and-mouse are a solid set-up for tension in a narrative, and replicating that at a gaming table might be a challenge, but it’s doable—in Star Trek Adventures, I’d eye both the Extended Task mechanics and Creating Advantages (and then having the other side counter-creating Advantages for themselves to negate the player Advantage, and so on). So that scenario appeals right off the bat for a scenario seed.

The second seed—and this is one I’ve used in my games—is the “Romulans look like Vulcans” thing, or, rather, aliens that look like other aliens, and how you can play on that perhaps for a plot twist or two.

Seed One: Cat And Mouse

Setting up a scenario with a Cat And Mouse between the player ship and an antagonist comes down to picking an antagonist, plotting a reason why it’s not as simple as performing a sensor sweep, and then trapping both ships in reach of each other with a countdown of some kind in place. (Of note, this works just as well with opposing Away Teams from different vessels—it doesn’t have to be starship-scale.)

No Port in a Storm—Ion storms are both destructive and wreak havoc on sensors and can whip-up out of anywhere. Perhaps, (a) an enemy takes advantage of an ion storm—or the players take advantage of an ion storm if they need to escape an enemy. This can set a unique ticking-clock in the sense that you can rule any complications rolled are ion strikes (applying damage to the ship’s shields and/or causing breaches) or even an increase in the storm’s intensity (making the next strike all the more potentially damaging, or increasing the difficulty of catching glimpses of the enemy ship). There’s no going to warp in an ion storm, either, so both vessels know they’re in this until the storm breaks or one of them chooses (or has no choice but) to exit the storm (where, if you’re feeling particularly cruel, another enemy vessel might be keeping watch). During the Dominion War this could be a Federation starship taking advantage of an ion storm moving through a Dominion-held sector to get a ship close enough for recon or a strike on a Dominion facility (perhaps where they keep their Ketracel-white), in a fight against Klingons or Romulans in any era where hostilities exist between the two, the need to keep shields up in the storm would at least negate the Klingon advantage of a cloaking device—though finding them is obviously still beyond difficult. Either way, requiring Sensor Sweep Tests to locate the enemy vessel at any given time (with difficulty raised by the intensity of the ever-worsening ion storm) should push the Difficulty to the point where the crew will need to create Advantages to make the attempt possible—and targeting locks would be similarly affected… And all the while, the storm rages against the crew defenses as well. Or, (b) to add further stress, perhaps the crew pick up a distress call from a colony, arrive thinking the ion storm is the issue, only to find a hostile vessel used the storm to arrive under cover, and now they must use the same storm to not only keep the attention of the enemy vessel, but outlast it and defeat it so they can render aid to the colony.

Seed Two: Alien Misidentification

I mentioned I’ve actually used the whole aliens that look alike thing in my own game, so I’ll offer up that as an example option, with the same scenario that’s playing out in my Shackleton Expanse campaign in the form of Ero Drallen—who allows everyone to think he’s a Trill, when in actual fact he’s a Kriosian male empathic metamorph. I’ve also considered finding a way to bring in some Brekkians or Ornarans and having them misidentified as Bajoran—they’re similar in appearance enough—which would end in a shocking reveal! Sorry. I’ll see myself out.

That’s Not a Trill—When called to evacuate a planet where Starfleet was unaware there was a population, the crew meet Ero Drallen, the Trill leader of a group of miners and who’ve struck out on their own to form a small self-sufficient community. He’s handsome, a good diplomat, and strives to keep his people free and cared for above all else—and he absolutely won’t allow Starfleet to make their routine scans of his mining facility, nor will he accept them on the planet where his group has staked their claim, despite their orders (even if there’s danger, he absolutely resists moving his people). He wears gloves and a high-collared shirt most of the time, and that’s because his spots make it easy to pass for a Trill until you note they come to a point at the base of his shoulder blades rather than continuing down his sides, and his hands are rarely cold, like Trill usually are. He’s actually a Kriosian empathic metamorph—a male, which is far more common than women, but still not exactly commonplace—but thanks to members of his immediate family, he was smuggled away to live among the Iyaarans while he matured. The Iyaarans have no concept of romantic love or attraction, and so his empathic abilities never forced him to become someone’s “ideal,” and he is—to the best of his knowledge—himself as he should be. The profits he makes from his community and mining exploits fund an underground railroad he operates to get more male empathic metamorphs off Krios—which is what he’s hiding from the crew, perhaps including having a young man or two who hasn’t reached their finis’ral hiding in whatever facility the crew was sent to evacuate. Will the crew expose both his false identity and his (technically illegal) railroad that feeds these individuals through to Iyaar, or will they help him evacuate everyone and set up a new route to ensure the freedom of these young men who don’t want to be used as prizes in trade agreement deals between Kriosian aristocrats.

Player/Captain’s Log Seed

Okay, I normally don’t do this on my trek through Trek, given this is aimed at narrators, but I do have a player-specific thing I want to bring up inspired by this episode. As mentioned before, I love the Support Crew mechanic, where you can whip up a crew member for an away team or scene where your main character isn’t needed, and there’s a thing I’ve done in every game where I’ve been a player thus far.

There’s Always Been a Stiles in Starfleet—Given I’ve always tried to pick a character who allows me the flexibility of employing the Support Crew mechanic more often (I’ve played the Chief Medical Officer and the Helmsman, and both times I took the Supervisor Talent), when I create a Supporting Crew, the first opportunity I get, I create an Ensign Stiles, and make one of their Focuses “Starfleet History.” The second time I activate the character, I add the Value “There’s Always Been a Stiles in Starfleet.” Boom! A legacy character who ties into “Balance of Terror” through a family long-devoted to careers in Starfleet. Yes, I’m a nerd. But you knew that already.

Also, in Captain’s Log terms, this suits as a great Advantage or Complication opportunity. “A crew member has a family history that provides unique insight to the situation,” is great, whereas “A crew member has a family history with the situation that creates a hostile bias,” is not-so-great.