YMMV / Star Trek S3 E2 "The Enterprise Incident"

• Fanfic Fuel: This episode predominantly was the jumping-off point for Diane Duanne's Rihannsu novels, exploring Romulan culture in greater detail; in particular, their rather quirky code of honorable behavior, mnhei'sahe. The main character of the Rihannsu novels, Ael t'Rllaillieu, is the aunt of the Romulan Commander from this episode. What happened to this Commander after the events of the episode is a seldom-raised but very important plot point^note She was returned to Romulan space by the Federation, where she was UnPersoned (the harshest punishment in Rihan culture) for allowing Starfleet to steal the cloaking device and take her captive. Speaking of, the Romulan Commander herself is subject to many stories wondering What Happened to the Mouse?
  • The fanfic video series, Star Trek Continues, uses characters and other aspects of this episode in their two-part finale.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Spock performs the previously unused "Vulcan Death Grip" on Kirk, and he is declared dead. But since there is no such things as the "Vulcan Death Grip", he gets better.
• Memetic Mutation: Ironically, the one-off, in-universe-fake "Vulcan Death Grip" became a much more widely-known phrase among the general public than the frequently used "Vulcan neck/nerve pinch", and often the former phrase was incorrectly applied to the latter.
• Narm: This was the first episode Alexander Courage scored on his return^note - he had gone to work on Doctor Dolittle, but it may not be a coincidence that he did not come back to the series until after Gene Roddenberry had stepped down (Roddenberry's interference with the theme annoyed Courage) - and some of his cues can be a bit... unsubtle.
• Theiss Titillation Theory: The Romulan commander dresses fairly modestly for a Star Trek gal. Still, her uniform is tight enough to reveal panty lines, and has a short skirt leading to multiple panty shots. Her casual dress, though long and showing more arm than cleavage, with its over-sized earrings looks like the big print cocktail dresses popular in The '80s. (Granted, in The '60s, this was futuristic.)
• Word of Saint Paul: Spock acknowledges that "Starfleet intelligence reports Romulans using ships of Klingon design" but goes into no specifics as to why that development occured in universe. As early as the The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry^note The very fact that Roddenberry was co-writer of this book should make this Word of God as he would have fact checked the parts that Whitfield wrote. as well as the Star Trek Concordance written by Bjo Trimble, the assumption was that there was some sort of treaty or pact between the Romulan and Klingon empires. Even in the movie era and Next Generation eras, there is no clear indication that the two Empires had any mutual alliances (in fact, in the TNG era, they are quite racist towards each other). The Starfleet gaming universe, however, does explicitly depict a loose alliance between the two explaining that the Romulans got more advanced ships from the Klingons, while the Klingons got the cloaking device from the Romulans^note The game's rulebook explicitly acknowledges that it is an alliance based on political conveinence and not friendship. This seems to be the assumption in the traditional Trek universe as well, given that the Klingons and Romulans both have Bird of Prey designated ships.

---