A Balance of Mercy: SNW embraces Trekkies

If you are an avid Trekkie, you loved “A Quality of Mercy”, the season final for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW).

 

The episode brought tingles of anticipation, giggles of joy, and strange new worlds of wonder.

 

If you are new to Star Trek, and have just been enjoying SNW for what it is on its own, “A Quality of Mercy” was… well… “fine”.

 

That’s what I learned when my friend and fellow SNW fan finally got a chance to watch “A Quality”.

 

I had been mooning over this episode to him for weeks and begged him to watch “Balance of Terror”, from The Original Series, first, so that he could get the full effect of just how great “A Quality” is.

 

He watched it, sans “Balance”, and thought it was “fine”. A decent episode of SNW, probably in the top half of the first season’s episodes but not even close to the best of them.

 

That forced me to accept that much of my adoration of this episode is because of the homage it pays to TOS and “Balance of Terror”, not because “A Quality of Mercy” is, on its own merits, great television.

 

But it is quite the homage.

 

Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman get writing credits for this episode on IMDB but I honestly think Paul Schneider and Gene Roddenberry, writers of “Balance of Terror”, deserve at least a third of the credit. After all, about a third of the dialogue is word for word from the TOS episode.

 

That’s not a criticism. That veneration of the original episode, that willingness to recognise how practically perfect “Balance of Terror” was as an episode of dramatic television, is one of the main reasons I love “A Quality of Mercy” so much. It is the reason for the tingles, that became giggles that became absolute wonder.

 

Meyers and Goldsman do a wonderful job of revisiting “Balance of Terror”, of rethinking it in terms of this new series, while being absolutely respectful of the original and, in fact, giving devoted viewers new ways to think about it.

 

It reminded me of the famous Deep Space Nine/TOS “Trouble with Tribbles” cross-over episode and, even more surprisingly, of Shakespeare in Love, the romcom from the early 21^st century wherein playwright Tom Stoppard stepped in to ensure the script deliciously melded elements from the Bard’s life and the Bard’s plays with a new romantic story.

 

Where the DS9 episode featured technical virtuosity but a fairly banal story and Shakespeare In Love featured a virtuoso script with rather melodramatic performances, “A Quality of Mercy” took advantage of the strength of the basic plot of “Balance of Terror” while weaving in significant emotional development for the cast of the new show.

 

As you probably already know, “A Quality of Mercy” helps Pike work through his own psychological drama by asking the question: what if, at the most pivotal moment in Federation history in a hundred years, another captain, a very different captain, sat in the centre seat of the starship Enterprise?

 

Pike for Kirk.

 

Caution vs cowboy.

 

Brilliantly, episode writers Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman actually avoid making it a tale of “caution vs cowboy”. Their Pike is not so different from the Kirk written by Paul Schneider and Gene Roddenberry in “Balance of Terror”. This isn’t a clear slow-vs-fast, thought-vs-action scenario.

 

Though SNW goes to some lengths to paint the original Captain as a “wild card” who will take unnecessary risks at the drop of a hat, they sometimes remember that Kirk actually suffers the same doubts and fears that Pike faces. Kirk endures the same worries that plague Pike: if I attack and fail, then what? If I attack and succeed, might war still follow? If I permit the Romulan ship to escape, will the Romulans return in strength? With a stark choice, with the information available, with an unknown enemy, how does a starship captain make the right choice, if there is a “right choice” at all?

 

And, as those themes are explored, “A Quality” features numerous scenes and dozens of passage of dialogue that are drawn note for note from “Balance of Terror”. New actors inhabit original roles, giving their own voices to lines that were written (and originally performed) 56 years ago. In one remarkable instance, SNW recreates shot-for-shot, line-for-line, musical cue for musical cue, a good 30 seconds of “Balance”.

 

That’s what I loved most about this episode. That’s what elevated it from “fine” to “fantastic” in the mind of this long-time Trekkie.

 

I still prefer “Balance of Terror” but, for me at least, “A Quality of Mercy” was the kind of viewing experience I crave when I turn on my television.