The Enterprise is quickly surrounded by spaceship models from an earlier season because it's cheaper to write a little expository dialogue and stick it in Scotty's mouth saying that Romulans are now using Klingon ships than it is to build new models. Hey, don't complain. The money for the massive special effects budget has to come from somewhere. Paper mache and silver glitter doesn't grow on trees, you know.
The Romulan commander has Kirk and Spock beam over, and we find out she's a lady. This must come as a particular shock to Kirk, since there was another episode that said women can't hold command positions in Starfleet because they'd always be sticking their hands out the windows at warp nine to dry their fingernails and dinging their starships' fenders every time they tried to parallel park in spacedock.
Romulans look just like Vulcans because it's cheaper on the makeup department's budget, and both races go heavy on the blue Maybelline eye shadow. I think it makes Spock look cheap, and just because all the tramps at the Vulcan Science Academy have to gussy themselves up like tarts to make the boys look at them doesn't mean he has to. He's pretty enough naturally. The lady Romulan thinks so, too, and she gets Spock to betray Kirk pretty darned quickly. I'd say it's as suspicious as Kirk's sudden craziness that Spock turns so fast and I'd mistrust his motives, but I'm not a super-smart and accomplished Romulan commander who's been put in charge of three ships, so what do I know?
Kirk gets mad and yells "I kill you!" at Spock, so the Romulans take him down to the brig where he sticks his finger in an electrical socket and falls down. It takes a human being about two seconds to fall over, yet somehow William Shatner can squeeze five minutes of overacting into it.
The Romulan uniforms consist of padded gold wrestling helmets, blue hockey pants and brown cable knit sweaters. They look like they got dressed in the dark in the ship's locker room.
Bones beams over to the Romulan ship and examines Kirk. He tells the Romulan lady commander that Kirk is depressed, unfocussed, irritable, lightheaded, sweaty, has a racing heart, weak bladder, night shakes, double vision, athlete's foot, halitosis, migraines, herpes, Tourette's Syndrome, itchy palms, flat feet, the bends and wig lice. Kirk lunges at Spock -- who is now inseparable from his new best pal, the Romulan commander -- and Spock flattens him with the Vulcan Death Grip. Bones is mad that Spock killed Kirk. He doesn't have to be all that mad because even I can see that Kirk is still breathing and I'm not a bigshot space-doctor.
Stop licking my hand
The Romulans allow Kirk's body to be beamed back aboard the Enterprise, where he's revived by looking at that chick who played the nurse and going, "AAAAAAHHHH!"
Kirk has Bones surgically alter him so that he looks like a Romulan, then he tells Scotty to go strip the uniform off one of two Romulans that the Enterprise is holding in the brig as exchange prisoners. Scotty says, "It'll be a pleasure" with such unbridled joy that it would make Sulu blush.
On the Romulan ship, Spock is drinking orange juice from one of those square plastic display cases pharmaceutical companies put all over your doctor's waiting rooms to hawk Viagra pamphlets. Spock then romances the Romulan lady commander by sticking his finger up her nose and telling her to change out of her hockey pants.
In the meantime, Kirk in disguise beams back to the Romulan ship. The Romulans have a new cloaking device technology that Kirk and Spock have been ordered to steal. The Federation's big plan was for Kirk to only act nutty so that they could disavow his actions if he gets caught. You know, just like the Russians would completely forgive us if we said one of our Navy captains was nuts after he sailed into their territorial waters and stole a cloaking device off one of their ships and returned it to the U.S. where we kept it. What do you mean, that's the stupidest thing you ever heard? Did you see last week's episode where they scooped out Spock's brain to make a Baskin Robbins banana split?
The cloaking device is a giant Styrofoam ball with a garbage disposal stuck on top of it. Kirk steals it and beams away.
The Romulans run into the cloaking device room. They are already on alert, which is why they ran in there to begin with. This is the top-secret room specifically for this piece of equipment, it sits on a case dead-center in the room, yet they look at all the walls, in the closets, at the buzzing florescent lights in the ceiling and in the mouse traps behind all the consoles before somebody thinks to look at the empty spot in the middle of the room where the thousand pound gorilla has gone missing. Apparently Romulans are pretty closely related to Vulcans in the smarts department.
Scotty installs the cloaking device on the Enterprise using a clear plastic ruler and some licorice. Chekov and his wig beam Spock back aboard the Enterprise, and the good guys sail away in their invisible ship, regrouping on the bridge for one last hearty guffaw before the Earth and every other planet in the Federation becomes a smoking crater in space thanks to the major international outer-space war they just precipitated.
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