History Recap / StarTrekS1E10TheCorbomiteManeuver

* SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfMass: The ''Enterprise'' encounters a mysterious cube, which Sulu says is 107 metres on each side and masses just under 11,000 metric tonnes. Scotty says it must be solid metal, leaving him wondering how it could be powered and how it moves around. But the quoted measurements give a density of about 9 kilograms per cubic metre, significantly less than styrofoam--implying the cube is almost certainly hollow (they may have been aiming for 9 tonnes per cubic metre, which is between the densities of iron and lead, and dropped a factor of a thousand somewhere).
** The Fesarius itself. The ship's sensors seem to be unable to measure its mass, despite the sensors in other episodes being able to measure objects orders of magnitude larger (like moons, planets, stars, and black holes). Sure, while the ship is massive compared to the Enterprise, it's nowhere even close to a moon, let alone a planet or something bigger.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The ''Enterprise'' is 289m long, yet it dwarfs the 107m cube. The ''Fesarius'' is a mile in diameter (1609m) according to Spock, yet it dwarfs the ''Enterprise'' from 5km away, appearing a hundred times bigger.

* SmartPeoplePlayChess: In light of this episode, maybe the trope should be "Book Smart People Play Chess" and a new trope be called "Street Smart People Play Poker". Spock contextualizes their conflict with Balok as a game of chess: Balok has them in checkmate, the game is over, ''Enterprise'' loses. Kirk changes the game to poker, and bluffs his way to victory.

An ordinary day on the ''Enterprise''. Kirk is taking a required physical, so Spock has the chair. Suddenly, they run into what looks like the [[UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh Apple Spinning Beach Ball of Doom]] that they just can't seem to escape. When evasive maneuvers fail, Spock calls for a red alert. Navigator Bailey, who's struggling to deal with all this, suddenly becomes a little trigger happy until Kirk reminds him who's in charge. Kirk tells Bailey to plot a spiral course at increasing speeds to get away from this NegativeSpaceWedgie. When it starts emitting radiation, Kirk orders to open fire, destroying the object.

** Kirk gets a snark at Bailey's expense after Bailey "votes" to open fire when he tells him "I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Bailey...when this becomes a democracy."

* IfIDoNotReturn: The first time Balok threatens their vessel Kirk orders a recorder marker dispatched to warn other Earth ships, but it's destroyed on launch.

* PickyEater: Kirk doesn't really want salad, but Bones says he's putting on weight.

* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: Spock says this of Balok's mothership when they're attempting to measure its size. Which makes no sense, given that the Enterprise's sensors are able to easily measure the mass of moons, planets, stars, and even black holes, and that ship is nowhere even close to the size/mass of a small moon, let alone something larger.
* RecklessGunUsage: No matter how badly you want the captain to notice you, a phaser is a weapon, not a kitchen gadget!

** The fake Balok's voice, portrayed by [[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0144252/ Ted Cassidy]].