OT:An Observation
 

The Enemy Below

In 1957 a war movie starring Robert Mitchum and Curd Jürgens was released and decades later it was adapted for the Star Trek episode Balance of Terror.

Now there has been no, and I doubt there ever will be, any formal acknowledgment of that The Enemy Below was the guiding force behind the Star Trek Episode Balance of Terror, but the similarities cannot be ignored.

In The Enemy Below, Robert Mitchum plays the captain of a US destroyer, The Hayes, on patrol in the south Atlantic during the second world war. While on patrol, the Hayes stumbles across a German U-boat captained by Curd Jürgens. Jürgens character, Captain Von Stolberg has grown disillusioned with the war but never the less does his duty to the bitter end. A similarity to the Romulan Captain played by Mark Leonard in [i]Balance of Terror]/i].

Mitchums character, Captain Murrell, starts a cat and mouse game with the German U-boat all the while being careful not to underestimate its Captain. Likewise the U-boat Captain tried every trick in the book to evade the Hayes and time and again is out matched by the Captain of the Destroyer that pursues him. At one point the U-boat Captains tactics are anticipated by the Captain of the Hayes and Jürgens tells his First Officer, “He is the devil that one.” A very close similarity to “He is a sorcerer that one.” Said by Mark Leonard’s character, The Romulan Commander, in Balance of Terror shortly after being out smarted by Kirk.

The U-boat, like its Romulan Bird of Prey counter part, can hide from view. In the U-boats case it simply submerges and can only be tracked via under water sonar while the Bird of Prey cloaks and could only be tracked by motion sensors.

Both ships use torpedoes that are devastatingly powerful. Both ships are limited by speed barriers and can easily be over run by their opponent’s vessels. And both vessels have an energy resource issue, that is they are running out of fuel. (Batter life for the U-boat)

As it was done in the Star Trek episode where Kirk must press the attack against the Romulan ship, Mitchums must confront the U-boat before it can pull his ship into a trap with a German Raider, so he lunges forward to attack and having anticipated the tactic, Jürgens character fires his torpedoes at an opportune time striking The Hayes.

Mitchums knowing that his only chance at success now lies in luring the U-boat into a trap. He plays dead in the water and has fires set on the deck to give the appearance that his ship was heavily damaged by the attack. A tactic that Kirk uses in Balance of Terror a decade later. The U-boat Captain buys the bait and moves in close to finish The Hayes off only to shelled and ultimately rammed by The Hayes. In the end the U-Boat is destroyed by a self destruct device that also takes out The Hayes. In Star Trek the destruction of the Romulan ship was also done by measures of a self destruct device, but the Enterprise was not destroyed as that would have ended the series.

Mitchums character also had a good working relationship with the ships doctor and executive officers. You can see it in his acting and he too shares a moment of reflection with the Doctor and is given advice much like the character of McCoy, the Enterprises ship Doctor, gives to Captain Kirk.

“In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, three million, million galaxies like this. But in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us.” - Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelly)

Additionally the U-Boat Captain shares a very similar relationship with his First Officer. At one point Jürgens tells his First Officer about how he has grown to fear the war and what it has done to his beloved Germany, much like the talk between The Romulan Commander and his Centurion First Officer.

“Another war, must it always be so? How many comrades have we lost in this way?... Obedience. Duty. Death, and more death...” - Romulan Commander (Mark Leonard)

In the end both First Officers are killed as a result of battle, another strong similarity between the two.

Additionally both the movie and the Star Trek episode had a loyalist character that was for the most part tolerated with clentched teeth by the Command staff. The two characters shared a strong sense of loyalty to their government leader, one to Hitler, the other to The Praetor, and were a source of irritation to both Captains.

Both sets of Captains had respect for each other and were all men that knew their jobs. The similarities between the move and the Star Trek episode Balance of Terror, are unmistakable.

The move The Enemy Below is clearly the inspiration for the Star Trek episode Balance of Terror.

If you have not yet seen either of the movie The Enemy Below, or the Star Trek episode Balance of Terror, you should watch them both and make your own comparison. They are both excellent films of their era and I would highly recommend them.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Not to "hijack" your post but it's just kind of strange...tonight I was comparing "Shogun" to "The Last Samurai" and pointing out similarities.

(sorry, now back to our regularly-scheduled program http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

Re: OT:An Observation
 

You're not the first person to come to this conclusion. Not that that takes away from your observation at all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Another interesting observation is that the The Enemy Below, like most war movies, isn't really about what it appears. It's a fairly obvious metaphor for the cold war tensions that were coming to the fore in the 50's. Mutually assured destruction and all that.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Everytime I post about this someone asks me if I wrote this. I did. I wrote this about nine years ago and posted it on some old BBS posting system on some obsqure star trek web page way back in 1995.

Back then I had nothing better to do so I made observations like this from time to time. This is the only one that I had on floppy. Revisisted for your pleasure. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: OT:An Observation
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I noticed that the James Bond movie "Goldeneye" has a very similar story to the Steven Seagal movie "Under Siege 2".
Jean-Claude van Damme's "The Quest" is similar to "Bloodsport". (Come to think of it, there's a lot of other movies with more or less the same story. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )
Jet Li's "Fist of Legend" is very similar to Bruce Lee's "Chinese Connection".

OK, I guess a lot of action / martial arts -type movies are not very original... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I get seriously annoyed every time I see another book with a dark lord who's hordes threaten the kingdom and the only one who can save them is the prophesied king/queen, who has a band of loyal companions who's ranks include a thief and a priest+healer and some sort of outback character, either a barbarian type, a ranger type or a predatory animal that is non-theless either intelligent and loyal or just loyal.

Yes, there really are a lot of books that seem to match that description exactly, although I generally only read the back.

Although the back is generally accurate enough when it comes to the basic types of abilities the heroes have.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I gave up reading such books. TSR (or WotC, or whatever) churns out such books continuously. They just get first time authors to write books without knowing much of the continuity, or at best D&D players. My favourite Fantasy writer, David Gemmell, refers to such books with Bearded Dwarfs, slim elves and Orcs (LotR rippoffs) as "PixieS**T".

Edit: Has anyone noticed the Similarity between "Battle beyond the Stars" and "The Magnificent Seven". I'm not sure but I have my suspicions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif . Now I mentione it, they both have a coincidental resemblance to "The Seven Samurai". I wonder http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ June 10, 2004, 06:48: Message edited by: Randallw ]

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Oh, no. It's not just the elves, dwarves and orcs crowd. The plotline is spreading. Somebody needs to put most of it out of my misery.

And the sad thing is is that that kind of plotline can actually be done well, but after you see the nth book with that kind of plotline, you just don't really care anymore.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Ok now, be nice or I will delete this thread in a bitter tempor tantrum and take my ball and leave! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Ok, sorry. Didn't mean to take the thread off in a bitter direction.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Sorry. I wasn't exactly bitter, it's just that sometimes I enjoy being bitingly ironic.

Which still doesn't help. I'll stop now.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

It's not very common to run across a concept both original and (widely considered) good in a well-established media (either seperately is reasonably common, however), simply because people have been at it for a long while. When something both original and good comes along, it's often a smashing success. Others, seeing that success, copy it, and then the attack of the clones begins. For a while it works - with film, the first few copycats include their own spins and twists, often have better effects due to bigger budgets, better performers, et cetera, and the idea hasn't become old news. After a while, however, the concept is old news, the copycats have flooded the market for that style, people get sick of it, public intrest flags, and budgets folow. It can be cyclical - a copycat of a piece that hasn't been done in fifty years or more is new to the majority of the current audience.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I have been told that basically all TV and movie plots are based on the same 6 Greek Plays.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

there's theory's like that. Biggest I've heard is 37.

I've always had the sneaking suspision that that owes more to laziness than anything else.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I had a great list (I think I got it the starting list from a Dragon Magazine) for generating plots for DnD campaigns. It had a bunch of "madlib" style plots such as "A xxxxxx approaches you in a bar and asks if yyyyyy is yours" or "A xxxx approaches you to help save a yyyyy".

I built a random generator around it and had alot of fun. The second one might come up "a cleric approaches you about saving a town" or "a town approaches you about saving a cleric".

That first one came up Silver Dragon and dog. I turned it into "A Silver Dragon pokes its head into the bar and asks 'Is this someones dog?'. When you look you see he is holding out his foreleg and your dog is hanging from it growling and chewing. What do you do?"

Anyway, we had a lot of fun with that list. Everytime we heard an interesting plot-line we removed the nouns and put it in the file.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

Hey Atro, I saw another submarine movie like that. It was called the Bedford Incident. It plays out just like Enemy Below but it was a Russian Sub and in the end both vessels launch nuclear tipped torpedoes at each other. A reporter on the destroyer wonders why the Capt. isn't trying to evade. How do you evade a nuclear tipped torpedo? Double nuke boom!

Re: OT:An Observation
 

The classic remake that I remember most is "West Side Story." Many of you might not remember that one, but it was an intentional clone of "Romeo and Juliet," using two New York gangs as the feuding families. And the Star Trek episode may very well be an intentional clone of "The Enemy Below."

As far as plots go, one can, as Gandalf Parker suggests, throw a bunch of elements into a bag and draw them at random to produce a script. Odds are that every so often similar plots will result from the process.

Re: OT:An Observation
 

*shrug* how many basic plots there are is up for debate - with the primary argument being "how similar can they be before we say they are the same plot?" A lot of the cloning is due to laziness - an artist wants something that sells, and sees that this other thing is selling, so he makes his own Version of it - but when similar plots are developed on opposite sides of the world before reasonable world wide travel or communication is in place? That pretty much rules out laziness. And yet, it's happened.

As for random plots, well, you are throwing those random elements into some framework (or, perhaps, another randomly selected framework) - and most of those who categorize plots by Greek plays (or however) aren't so much looking at the specific setting (fantasy/sci-fi/Greek Gods/whatever), nor the characters (Bilbo Baggins/James T. Kirk/Hercules/whoever), nor even the species of the characters (elven/alien/human/whatever) - they tend to classify elements by how they fit into the plot (the mentor/the hero/the villian/whatever), and the whole by a general outline of the plot (the rescue/the war/the coming of age/whatever). Such a random plot is going to fit into a Category, pretty much regardless. Granted, you will get a gargantuan number of variations on those plots, many of which are interesting, and keep them fresh for a long time - but when it comes down to it, they are all variations on a limited number of themes; they aren't fundamentally new plots.

[ June 10, 2004, 18:30: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I remember the heated debates about copy-cat plots amoung the addicts of the various incarnations of Star Trek. True some seemed AWFULLY similar but some of them were majorly stretched in trying to make a connection

Re: OT:An Observation
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Apology accepted, now set course for somewhere out there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: OT:An Observation
 

I know star trek used to frequent repeat plot lines from different perspectives. Take of example the Doomsday Machine, Operation Anhillate, and that episode with that blood sucking vapor cloud. One would focus on an outsider, then on the captain (or one of the leads), and then on someone under the captain or close to him.

On top of that, it's common practice for movies and films and TV shows to rip off other movie, films, and tv shows. It's the "OH-WOW!-WE-GOTTA-DO-THAT!" factor. They do what they think makes them money thus flooding us with clones of something that may or may not be good until we tune out thier babble...

Much like the reality show fad and Terrorist Drama Shows...