Review

So the Federation can't develop cloaking devices because of a treaty. That certainly explains why they've never used them, especially after TOS: The Enterprise Incident. I much enjoyed this episode, all except for a few small details. First of all, this is a much more powerful device than a simple cloaking device. Seems to me that phase cloaking goes beyond the scope of a regular cloaking device. Just how broad are the terms for that treaty? The Romulans and Klingons have never developed anything like a phased cloaking device, and the Federation completely abandons the research. The facts surrounding the usefulness of the technology leave me with a sort of sympathy for Pressman. Another detail I didn't like was the ending, where the Romulans just let the Enterprise go after a blatant violation of inter stellar treaty. The episode was good, but it could have been much better if they had chosen to handle the details a little better. I'm disappointed that we don't see this technology again. It would have been much less a disappointment if it was just a regular cloaking device, but alas they needed a reason for the Enterprise to actually use one, so they made this one uber powerful; utterly trite but still a decent episode.