"The Enterprise Incident" is the second episode of the third season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek.
Captain Kirk orders the Federation starship USS Enterprise into Romulan space without any authorization from Starfleet of which the bridge crew are aware.
Kirk claims that instrument failure caused the ship to stray off course, but Spock divulges that the captain ordered entry into Romulan space and asserts that he is insane.
She argues that humans may have shown their disregard for his talents and capabilities by not giving him command of a ship, but the Romulans, if he were willing, would not make that mistake.
His signal is discovered and tracked, and Spock surrenders himself to the Romulan officers, but they are too late to prevent Kirk from stealing the cloaking device and returning with it to the Enterprise.
[1] The first draft of the script had Spock "raining kisses on every square inch above the shoulder" of the Romulan commander but this was changed, at Leonard Nimoy's insistence, to the more demure finger caresses.
In 2014, Gizmodo ranked "The Enterprise Incident" as the 48th best episode of Star Trek, out of the over 700 made by that time (including the spin-off series).
[6] They note Spock's interaction with the Romulan commander, and the Federation's desire for a science fiction technology, Star Trek's "cloaking device".
[6] In 2017, Comic Book Resources ranked Spock and the Romulan commander the 11th best romantic relationship of the Star Trek franchise up to that time.
[10] This episode was released in Japan on December 21, 1993 as part of the complete season 3 LaserDisc set, Star Trek: Original Series log.3.