29 – Minefield

Grade: C+

Summary

The Enterprise discovers an uncharted planet and decides to go investigate. It turns out that the planet is surrounded by a minefield with cloaked mines. The planet’s inhabitants call themselves Romulans. One of the mines is now attached to the ship and it’s up to Reed to diffuse it.

Commentary

This episode was OK. I really don’t think it needed to be the Romulans, but hey, I guess that’s OK. One question this does raise, however, is why doesn’t T’Pol know about these people if the Romulans are actually distant cousins of the Vulcans? It’s details like this (or perhaps the lack of them) that really makes this episode weaker than it should have been.

Probably the best part of this episode was the development and background into Reed’s character. We learn a lot about his past and his family and this helps us understand him a bit more. This was done well here.

One thing that I was glad they didn’t do was they didn’t try to transport Malcolm back onto the ship. Transporter technology is still in its infancy in this time period, so this really shouldn’t have been a viable solution. But holding up a piece of metal to ward off a 300 kt bomb seemed pretty implausible too.

Something I didn’t like was that here they meet the Romulans and find out that they have cloaked mines. Yet about 100 years later, Kirk, Spock, etc., don’t know about the Romulan cloaking devices when they first meet them. This should have been known and assumed by then, if the events of this episode are to be believed.