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| Reviewer : |
Guybrush |
Rating : |
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| Review : |
A lot of staring at stuff happening on the screen and chewing the scenery (not to mention the over-dramatic score) stretches what should be a thirty minute story into fifty. The late appearance of Balok, a lush with an apparent pentiont for very bad pranks, and his infinantly quotable "Come, have some Tranya" voice make up for a lot of the lacking entertainment value earlier in the episode. |
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| Reviewer : |
Indefatigable |
Rating : |
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| Review : |
Certainly dramatic in its effect. We already know that the Enterprise is the first ship out this far, and we are in uncharted territory. Then we see something strange that turns out to be threatening. Then of course there is the big, dramatic, powerful ship that fills the screen and threatens our heroes with destruction. It was probably something like this that got me hooked as a child. Bailey was seemingly written in to try to show how much tension there was while making the regulars look cool under pressure, and I suppose he did his job well enough. The curious thing was the end. Kirk's bluff seemed to be effective, but when we find out that Balok was not very threatening anyway, we wonder if he really would have destroyed the ship at all. Probably not, it was all a contrived test/defence mechanism to scare the living daylights out of people. Still, one wonders. |
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| Reviewer : |
Platonian |
Rating : |
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| Review : |
"The Corbomite Maneuver" is one of my favorite episodes in all of Star Trek because of the First Federation. Yes, the crew of the Enterprise prevail (or so they think) by guile and demonstrate an admirable sense of compassion, as has been described at length elsewhere; but it's the First Federation who really shine. Here is a government, run by a species that is clearly more technologically advanced than the United Federation in the late 23rd century, that is faced with determining the intentions of these galactic "upstarts" who could become a serious threat in time. Their test -- wonderfully complex and intricate, yet beautifully elegant -- is not of technology or ideology, but of character. The United Federation pass with flying colors and earn the respect of Balok (and presumably his government). A happy ending that really is well deserved. Compare and contrast this with the nonsense of the Q a hundred years later. Compare also the First Federation and the Borg, the antithesis of the First Federation in many ways, who, in their own way, test the United Federation for the same reasons as the First Federation. It is a shame that the First Federation never played a role in Star Trek beyond this one marvelous episode. I'd trade them for the Q AND the Borg in a minute. Sadly, it seems the writers assumed audiences would rather see a Caligula than a Marcus Aurelius. |
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