The Enterprise Incident - James Blish

 

For my next installment of James Blish‘s adaption of classic Star Trek, we deal with The Enterprise Incident.

This is of course the second episode that brings us face to face with the Romulans. At issue, yet again is the cloaking device, now being used in Klingon D7-Class battle cruisers, which we presume the Romulan Star Empire purchased from the Klingons.

We also meet yet another mysterious Romulan commander, this one female, and smitten with Spock.

Now here’s an episode which I think could have used a bit more fleshing out in written format. Unlike with Khan, James Blish does not provide much more details relating to either the Romulan culture, or the female Romulan Commander, played with true 60′s vamp-ish style by Joanne Linville in the episode.

I wanted more details, yet it was pretty much verbatim what appeared on-screen, though with a few of the moments glossed over.

In a way, both the vague nature of the episode itself and the written adaption might have turned out historically to be a good thing, since this vagueness allowed Diane Duane to flesh out the Romulans, as the Rihannsu,which by far out matches the canonical depiction of the Romulans in later day Star Trek.

 

 

Related articles

• James Blish’s Kahn… (raptorsclaw.wordpress.com)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch: “Unification, Part I” (tor.com)
• Worlds of Star Trek (storiesbywilliams.com)
• The Romulans are Coming! The Romulans are Coming! (geek-news.mtv.com)
• Star Trek S3D1 (garth.typepad.com)
• “FYI,” James Blish, 1953 (jennre.wordpress.com)