Goofs

The Enterprise first glimpses the Romulan ship via Outpost #4's view screen. Yet, after Outpost 4 is destroyed, the Romulan ship is still visible.

When Kirk addresses the crew near the beginning of the episode, we briefly see Lt. Leslie listening in a hallway (with a green shirt). We also see him at the same time, in the background on the bridge (with a red shirt).

When the phasers are first fired at the Romulan ship, a large chunk of the ship falls on the captain's confidant and bounces off. The next scene shows the chunk on top of him.

During the initial bridge scene, Leslie, wearing a red shirt, is seated at the Engineering station. However, when Kirk addresses the crew over the intercom, the first "extras" shot in a corridor has him walking alongside extra Frank da Vinci and wearing a gold shirt.

The Romulan ship supposedly has only simple impulse power, which means slower-than-light travel. However, while the Enterprise is following them, it shows many stars passing by on the viewscreen, which means the Enterprise must be travelling many times faster than the speed of light. At sublight speeds, even nearby stars should show no perceptible motion even over a very long period of time.

When a nuclear weapon detonates in space there is no blast wave because of the vacuum. There is no reason for the crew members to have been thrown about. The effects are heat in the form of infrared radiation, sub atomic daughter particles, gamma and other radiation, and an electromagnetic pulse that damages electronics.

When the Enterprise is tracking the Romulan ship near the comet, the viewscreen shows the Enterprise passing multiple stars while the comet remains fixed on the screen. This means that the comet is either a very long distance away and light-years long (and illuminated by something other than a nearby star!), or else it is travelling with the Enterprise at many times the speed of light.

There's no need for the Romulan ship to travel through the tail of the comet. While comets are large, even a slight change of course would have resulted in the ship completely avoiding it or its tail.

The Enterprise would not be able to get a look at the Romulan bridge (via a small receive signal) without the Romulans knowing their presence.

A comet's tail is the result of radiation from the Sun or any star as well as solar wind. Comets near the edge of the Solar system have no tails. As they near the Sun their tails grow and ALWAYS point away from the Sun. A comet in deep space far from a star would have no tail. Also, the tail is not like a streamer in the wind trailing along behind the comet as shown.

While the Enterprise is lying in wait for the Romulan ship, both crews are whispering, and trying to make no other noises. As there is no sound transmission in space, this would seem to be unnecessary. However, the same equipment that can detect dust on a planet light years away is likely sensitive enough to detect the hull of a ship vibrating ever so slightly from sounds made within. This element is a "tip of the hat" to submarine war movies such as The Enemy Below (1957), which were the basis for this story.

In his initial log entry, Kirk refers to the Romulan home worlds as Romulus and Remus - after the brothers in Rome's founding legend. When Spock displays the star sector map, it shows ROMULUS and ROMII. However, it is possible that the second name was meant to be "Rom II", i.e., "Romulus 2", a star chart designation for Remus.

When the Enterprise is hit by the nuke, it is shown lopsided, drifting in space. Same depiction with the Romulan vessel when it is hit by phasers of the Enterprise. There is no off-kilter position in space and orientation is relative, although ships do have attitude control, to maintain a particular orientation, presumably for convenience. But the orientation depicted in the show is terrestrial, naval-like, where the bottom of the ship aligns with the bottom of the TV screen.

A nuclear device detonated less than 100 meters away would have destroyed the Enterprise, no matter what the Enterprise hull was made out of. The temperature of a nuclear blast is between 50 million and 150 million Kelvins, and tungsten (the metal with the highest melting point) melts at 2000 Kelvins, about 1/5000 of that temperature. Even at 100 meters, the part of the hull facing the explosion would be completely vaporized, and even the farthest part of the ship from the blast would be destroyed.

This presumes that the Enterprise was hit without its shields raised. As the ship had maintained a high security alert, it is reasonable to assume its shields were raised and spared the ship from most of the potential damage.

When the nuclear device is detonated and Enterprise crew members are thrown about the bridge, Lt. Uhura is "thrown" in the opposite direction from all the other crew.

When the order to fire phasers is given, the ship is shown firing what, in most other episodes, is called photon torpedoes.

Phasers emit two straight beams. But when Kirk orders phasers to fire, three missiles are launched and explode, which indicates they are photon torpedoes.

When the disabled Romulan ship is spinning in space, the hanging wire is visible.

The Romulans weapon is shown to be able to travel at speeds comparable to warp speeds as it's show almost overtaking the Enterprise. The problem with this is that the weapon's beam would have to generate an enormous level of power to travel distances of at least a single solar system in the time allotted.

The beam should not be able to travel faster than warp speed, especially if it was launched from a sub-light vessel.

Rand (a yeoman, not a member of Communications) should not be relaying the message to Captain Kirk that the command base supports whatever decision Kirk has to make; a critical message like this during a battle situation (even though the battle has just recently concluded) would get relayed immediately by Uhura via the intercom system.

Like any movie where a character is being chased by a car and runs down the middle of the street, the Enterprise could have avoided the plasma blast by simply moving out of the line of fire. Surely a master tactician like Kirk would have realized this.

21st century technology allows us to now communicate with visual equipment, yet it is explained that by the 22nd century, the treaty with the Romulans will be handled via radio only before viewscreen technology was realistic.

During the briefing it is pointed out that aiming weapons with sensors rather than visually is not accurate. This is centuries in the future where technology is much more advanced than today where there is no reliance on line of sight to target enemies. Even today fighter planes target enemies that are not visible, and missiles do not Necessarily rely on visual aiming.

It makes no sense for weapons to be fired from another deck at a separate location like an old time warship firing guns from a turret in another location on the ship. That far in the future everything should be controlled from the bridge by computer. Even worse is the wasted time in having the captain give the order to a crewman who relays it via radio to the weapons room where a crewman then gives the order to another crewman who fires the weapons.

It is established that the Romulan ship moves at impulse speed only. The Enterprise spends a good deal of time at warp speed, yet never manages to overtake the Romulans.

Phaser control is shown to be in a totally different room than the bridge, yet somehow a short in Spock's sensor board renders the ships phasers totally inoperable.

The Romulan captain should have realized that his weapon is designed to destroy the stationary outposts, and, as such, would be worthless against a highly mobile enemy ship. The enemy ship would simply have flown out of the way. Thus, he would never have wasted the energy required to fire the weapon on a worthless attempt to destroy the Enterprise.

While the exact parameters of impulse speed are not defined in the episode, it's clear from several conversations that the Romulan ship traveled slower than light speed and apparently does not have the capability to travel using warp drive.

If the ship could not travel at warp speed it would take weeks or even months for it to travel the stated distance to either the Earth outposts or back to the Neutral Zone. The episode clearly takes place over the space of one calendar day.

Kirk knows nothing about the Romulan ship nor its invisibility shield yet he confidently makes a statement about its power consumption, information he cannot possibly know.

Kirk should have recognized that the Romulan weapon is not capable of turning, and been able to fly laterally to the course of the weapon to avoid it.

While officiating at a wedding ceremony, Captain Kirk says, "Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship-masters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony." This is false; while the fictional Starfleet's regulations may allow captains to perform marriage ceremonies, there is no record of any maritime service in Earth's history having done so. The American, British, and Russian/Soviet navies have always specifically prohibited their commanding officers from doing this.

When Kirk complains about the responsibility that has been thrust upon him and asks 'Why me?', it should be considered that he supposedly sought starship command his entire career.

When Kirk addresses the crew, there is an immediate cut to a corridor full of personnel, when he says, "In our first action, we can risk neither miscalculation or error." At the far left is a crewman in a yellow shirt playfully nudging the person beside him as if to say, "Hey, listen up, this is important."