By 
Title: The Terratin Incident
Airdate: 11/17/1973
Plot Summary
In The Terratin Incident, while exploring a burnt-out supernova, the Enterprise tracks a strange signal with the unrecognized word “Terratin”.
They track it to the single planet orbiting the supernova and are hit with a burst of light from the volcanic planet. The crew and all organic matter begin to shrink while the ship’s circuits are fused and the dilithium is burned out. Struggling against a ship that they will soon be unable to control, they beam Kirk down to the signal source.
The transporter recreates him from the original pattern, restoring him to normal size. The planet is plagued with volcanic activity and has a radiation that, when focused, causes organic shrinkage. Kirk finds a miniature city just before being beamed back up on automatic. He finds the ship deserted: the city below beamed the Enterprise crew, now at their same size, down.
The “shrink attack” was the only way they had to contact Enterprise, and they are about to be destroyed by volcanic activity. They were a lost colony: Terra 10 (i.e., “Terratins.”) and Kirk must restore his crew and replace the dilithium from the planet in order to save the Terratins from certain destruction.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk makes good decisions, though he has a moment where he appears to be ready to destroy the city. But no, he just used the phasers to dislodge the city and get it beamed up correctly. I think he was a little irritated at the whole thing and just wanted to fuck with them.
Logical
Spock correctly identifies that the ship isn’t growing, the crew is shrinking. He also figures out that it’s only organic matter that is affected.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones dismisses the message as just natural static. Sure, Bones, natural static just happened to form an English word randomly. Sure.
Also, Nurse Chapel has to be rescued from a fish tank.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu freaks out and wants to fire on the planet. He knocks himself off the console and gets a broken leg. Well, that’s what you get.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura has trouble reaching buttons on her console as she gets smaller and smaller. She also expresses sympathy to the terratins and pleads for them to Kirk.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty has to rewire impulse engines after the dilithium is all messed up.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, Ya Fuzzy Face
Arex scans the planet and relays information.
Getting Animated
The shrinking is an interesting idea in The Terratin Incident that gives us something we could’ve never seen on the show. I’m sure it could’ve been done, but it would’ve been tough to build out giant sets to create the illusion.
Technobabble
They say that even though they are shrinking, they aren’t losing any mass. Just the space between atoms is getting smaller. This brings up all kinds of issues. If Ant-Man taught us anything, it’s that they should be able to jump quite high and be able to move around quite well. Being so dense, I doubt Sulu would’ve broken his leg. And when Kirk rescues Christine from the fish tank, he uses thread that should’ve broken, as Chapel was still the same weight.
This is a typical issue when dealing with shrinking people. Referencing Ant-Man again, they were constantly having to go back and forth with he having all his mass, which makes him strong, to being really light when the plot calls for it. This episode has the same contradictions.
Also, why does Scotty have to rewire the impulse engines? They have their own reactors and don’t use the matter/anti-matter reactor to go. The dilithium getting destroyed wouldn’t have affected them.
The magic transporter once again comes to the rescue, as when they beam in their shrunken state, they rematerialize full size again. What luck.
I will say the automatic beam backs is a great idea, and they should think about using it more often when beaming down into dangerous situations.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
The Terratin Incident is a pretty cool episode. One, I love it that everyone just takes it all in stride. Only Sulu has an understandable freak out, but for the most part, everyone just analyzes the problem and does their best to navigate this situation. Where they got wood to make ladders, I don’t know, nor do I understand why that wood didn’t shrink being organic.
A colony that adapted to its new state was also cool. They didn’t mean to shrink the crew, or at least they didn’t mean any harm. The planet is falling apart and there are volcanoes everywhere. They just wanted some help to escape. Once again, the crew takes the proper Trek way out to resolve the situation and save the people. This reminds me of Wink Of An Eye where Kirk just fucked off and let the population die. This was a much better solution and much more in line with how Starfleet should handle situations.
Sure, the science behind the whole thing is a little wonky, but at least they made a proper attempt to explain everything, even if that explanation is pretty much tossed out the window after that.
The Terratin Incident is a true Star Trek episode, philosophically speaking. While there wasn’t much character development or something you could really sink your teeth into emotionally, that was just simply a product of being a half-hour.
While I have no faith in the current keepers of Trek, if one day they decide to reboot the original series with people who actually respect Trek this is an episode that could benefit greatly from an hour-long episode and a little bit more story thrown in. It’s a good concept.
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