Once again, our search for clues moves forward a notch. What was said or left unsaid on the subject in "TATV"?
As I understand it, there was no mention of the Romulan conflict as such. Which of the following were explicitly established, though?
-Timestamp of 2161 -This is the de facto and de jure founding of the United Federation of Planets -This is an alliance in which Earth is part -Earth is an equal partner -The alliance is military in nature -There is no war ongoing at the time of the founding speech -There hasn't been a war of note in the recent past
Is the dialogue transcript online, perhaps?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :
But all we know is that this is "alliance" that "will give birth to the Federation".
(Also, when Troi was little, NX-01 was supposedly in the museum)
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
By saying that it's the alliance that will give birth to the Federation, Troi possibly means that this is this initial formation of the Federation that will eventually become the Federation they know in their time.
Everything Daniels ever said indicated tha Archer had a part in the formation of the UFP.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Okay, seems that
-timestamp really is 2161. -the ceremony does tie into UFP founding. -Earth, Vulcan, Andor and Tellar are seemingly equal partners in it.
Nothing about the nature of the alliance, though. It certainly doesn't sound military, not with that "thousands of planets within reach" rationale. And nothing to suggest past or present war. At this point, I'd actually be happiest if the Romulan war happened AFTER these events, say, beginning with 2161 (a Romulan counterreaction to the forming of this coalition?)...
In any case, reading the transcript gave me no hint why Riker found the scenario relevant to what he was going through.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
The episode doesn't really change that. I think it had something to do with Trip being so eager to incinerate himself to kill some utterly forgetful aliens-of-the-week.
For a moment, I hoped the unexpected attack was from either Romulans or one of their proxies.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
You know, having the Romulan War occur after the founding of the UFP would fit in with established events on Enterprise. That is, the Romulan's using the holo-drones to discourage the forming of an alliance, etc.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Did they actually say "2161" at any point? I know someone said they had been on the ship for ten years, but it could be late 2160, and they were rounding up.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I say it would need to be 2161 since Broken Bow occured in 2151.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Because in Trek dialogue they've always been exact about periods of time, and never round up or down ever, no.
Posted by DoughBoy05 (Member # 1417) on :
I remember the old FASA RPG game manuals placing the Romulan Wars with the Federation as opposed to just Earth. While Okuda and the offical keepers of all things Trek say it happened before the forming of the UFP, nothing canon would really be violated with it happening afterwards either.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
1. The TATV event is clearly supposed to be the actual signing of the Federation Charter. It's the same event shown to Archer and identified as such by Daniels in last season's finale "Zero Hour," complete with UFP seal prominently displayed.
2. Someone should conduct a more thorough inspection of statements regarding the Romulan War and the Founding to determine whether or not a post-UFP RW is workable within the Canon. There is, of course, Spock's statement in "Balance of Terror" (TOS) that the war was an "Earth-Romulan conflict," though some might argue that this is in line with other "Earth" references in the first season before TPTB had come up with the UFP.
3. Even if #2 concludes in the affirmative, it should not necessarily be construed that such was the case. After all, it has been stated by such individuals as D.C. Fontana since the sixties that it was the RW which directly led to the Founding, and while ENT has not been a series to balk at repudiating long-standing popular dogma where Trek history is concerned, I doubt there was an intent to do so in this instance. More likely, the lack of mention in TATV is merely the result of poor writing or a desire to leave that area as open as possible for the next film to deal with.
4. In corollary to the above, we will undoubtedly receive more information and clarification on this issue with the continuing development and ultimate release of the next feature film.
-MMoM Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Assuming it ends up having anything to do with that topic. At this point all we've got are the vaguest of rumors. By the time they hire the last writer to write the final draft of the script and the studio agrees to make it it could be about, well, anything.
Posted by DoughBoy05 (Member # 1417) on :
Gosh I hope they get Manny involved!
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Gosh, I just hope it doesn't stink.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
quote: Someone should conduct a more thorough inspection of statements regarding the Romulan War and the Founding to determine whether or not a post-UFP RW is workable within the Canon.
It's not all that difficult. TOS has only a single monologue relevant to this: "...a line of Earth outpost stations. Constructed on asteroids, they monitor the Neutral Zone established by treaty after the Earth-Romulan conflict a century ago. As you may recall, this conflict was fought, by standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives, nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous, and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio, established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by either side would constitute an act of war. The treaty has been unbroken since that time."
"A century ago" is vague for something spoken by Spock. If we accept the coincidence that this means exactly 36,500 days (perhaps the Romulans deliberately chose to attack on the centennial?), then the war ended in 2165 at the very earliest, in 2167 at the very latest. A ten percent fudge factor would allow it to take place before 2161, though. Also, the treaty may have come several years after the war, fudging things further.
"Earth" is used to indicate one of the historical combatants, but "Earth" also clearly denotes the Kirk/Spock/Enterprise side as of the 2260s when Spock speaks of how that side sees the Romulans.
UFP founding is nailed down as 2161 by Troi's comment in "The Outcast": "The Federation was founded in twenty-one-sixty-one." No two ways about it. Earth-alien alliances preceding that date are possible, however.
Connection between the Romulan War and the UFP Founding is vague. In "Homefront", Sisko says "They'll wage the kind of war Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation". So a big war may have IMMEDIATELY followed the founding, or then preceded it by an unknown amount of time. Judging by lack of references in ENT, there was no such war prior to 2155. However, Sisko could be referring to the exceptional Xindi style of warfare, that is, merciless planeticide. Thus, no "actual", conventional war need have accompanied the UFP founding. And even if there was such war, it need not have been the Romulan one.
Was the Romulan war a big one? People of Kirk's time need to be reminded of the details - would this be true of members of today's Russian or Japanese military if queried on the Russo-Japanese war that ended a century ago? We never get overall casualty figures or mention of conquered or devastated planets. Only military casualties are ever mentioned, namely the Stiles family.
It seems to me that canon doesn't constrain us much when inserting the Romulan War into the timeline. Dates between 2155 and the late 2170s are all plausible; length and scale of conflict can be chosen rather freely; participating players may include "black horses" on both sides, implicit in Spock's reference to allies. Weapons used need to be "atomic" and "primitive" by 2260s standards, but we did see in "IaMD" that there actually is a quantum difference between ENT and TOS weaponry, so at least the latter requirement is met. All we need to do is classify photonic torps and/or phase cannon as "atomic weapons" (a term that no longer is synonymous with fission or fusion bombs in the 2000s, and thus need not be in the 2260s, either) and we're done.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
In ENT, it seems pretty clear that the Romulans know a good deal about humans, so it seems likely that the Romulans do indeed know what humans look like, despite what Spock said. But Spock really had no way of knowing that.
I'd have to go back and watch the holo-drone episode again, but did the Enterprise crew ever find out that the drones were Romulan controlled, or did it just end with them not knowing who was responsible for them?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
There's no hint that our heroes would have learned who controlled the drones. They speculate that the controller sits safely back at "their homeworld", but apparently they don't even try to guess which homeworld that would be. Which makes techno-sense, sort of - if the telecontrol signal were traceable, it would be jammable as well.
Yeah, ENT establishes pretty well that the Romulans know all there is to be known about humans and Vulcans. Also, our human heroes know zip about Romulans. T'Pol at least knows how their name is spelled, but she insists there has been no Vulcan contact with them; the true extent of her knowledge is unknown, as is that of other Vulcans or other humans. I guess everything is still possible in terms of future movie plot twists...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: There's no hint that our heroes would have learned who controlled the drones. They speculate that the controller sits safely back at "their homeworld", but apparently they don't even try to guess which homeworld that would be.
I'm almost positive there was a scene somewhere with Archer and T'Pol talking about the fact that some tech (power source?) on the drone was similar to that of the Romulan mines they ran into two years earlier. I don't know if they were ever positive it was the Romulans behind the drone, but it seemed like they at least suspected them.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Well, the V'Las administration was being manipulated by the Romulans, so it stands to reason that the Vulcans know a lot more about the Romulans than they ever officially admitted.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Well, maybe just the Vulcan High Command.
Posted by dbutler1986 (Member # 1689) on :
Here's my major question...Spock explicitly states these 'primitive space vessels' allow 'no quarter' to be given and 'no captives' to be taken...but of course, in ENT, the NX-01 had a perfectly serviceable brig and empty quarters, and did, in fact, take prisoners and guests many times. Thus it would seem that 2150/60/70's ships could indeed provide quarter. Was Spock wrong *GASP*, or are records from this time somehow fragmentary? Which neither Riker nor Troi mentioned, and in fact they were able to get an entire, workable holodeck simulation out of what records there evidently are.
Posted by dbutler1986 (Member # 1689) on :
*and as an addendum* I do love trying to explain away continuity errors, but at the same time they tire me. I'm not sure if I'd laugh or cry if some future show said "photon torpedoes weren't invented until after James Kirk died" or something like that...if that happened, do you think fans would unanimously refuse to accept taht series as canon? Posted by tricky (Member # 1402) on :
The ships used in the war may be little more than stripped down combat vessels compared to NX-01, like comparing a defiant to a galaxy class, or a spitfire to the spruce goose. In a desperate war, high tech weapons like photon torpedoes and phasers may be dropped (how much does a cruise missile cost compared to a rocket?) for lower tech weapons, out of shear necessity. We could explain away a lot of tech changes between the first and last series based on a desperate war between the two eras, as well as warp tech improvements. (Connie saucer isn't much bigger, but of more modular construction compared to NX, and saucer can separate from exploding warp core, where as NX saucer is built around warp core.)
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by dbutler1986: [QB] Here's my major question...Spock explicitly states these 'primitive space vessels' allow 'no quarter' to be given and 'no captives' to be taken...
One definition of quater is: Mercy or clemency, especially when displayed or given to an enemy.
This definition has nothing to do with room to hold people.
The constraints of the ships in terms of power and food, and the voracity of the combatants may have made it a bloody war with little to no effort to take prisoners.
I still don't see how they could have engaged in any ground combat and the Romulans still remain relatively unknown. If they used Remans as ground troops, then wouldn't Humans (and everyone else) assume the Remans WERE Romulans?
I can hear it now... "No... we're not Romulans, we're REMANS."
Of course, the Founders remained a mystery during the early stages of the Dominion War. Vorta and Jem'Hadar used as front line combatants. Everyone knew the Founders existed, but didn't know what they looked like.
But if that was the case, then why didn't they assume the Romulan ship in "Balance of Terror" would be manned by Remans.
Unless the standard tactic was that Remans were the ground troops and Romulans were the "naval" officers.
Remans... stupid idea anyway... messes continuity all up.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
"Everyone knew the Founders existed, but didn't know what they looked like."
Not necessarily. It was also quite possible that the Founders were in some way mythical, either from the beginning (there never were any Founders, but they got incorporated into a sort of state religion, ala, serendipitously, Romulus and Remus), or in the sense that they still exist. (Imagine some segment of American society believing that Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and the rest were still alive and still covertly running things.) As I recall we hear skepticism about the existence of the Founders from actual Dominion members.
(Which raises some questions about what the Dominion looks like, as a political entity, from the inside.)
Re Remans: They don't have a lot to recommend them as compelling characters, to be sure, but how exactly do they mess up continuity? I can't recall anyone saying "The Romulans got to their new planetary system and there was no one else there." For that matter, a lack of subject species has been a common criticism of the Romulans and Klingons, so at least in principle introducing a couple doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Posted by dbutler1986 (Member # 1689) on :
Heh. Maybe crossbreeding with the Remans produced the Romulan skull ridges.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Yes, I've often wanted/speculated that the Romulans (and Klingons) would have other races in their "alliance."
But introducing these big bad Remans as footsoldiers of the Empire makes one think we'd have seen or heard about them before Nemesis.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Possibly. But then again, we've never seen an all-out war with the Romulans on-screen, and any action we did see was all ship-to-ship, hardly the sort of thing that requires footsoldiers.
I guess it just depends on whether you sit in the "in 7 billion hours of Star Trek Remens/Archer/Pikachu should have been mentioned once if they were so important" camp, or the "people do not casually discuss everything about their history during weekly one hour segments" campt.
Posted by Andrew Strzyzewski (Member # 2024) on :
I searched Memory Alpha for Romulan War and found that Battle of Cheron wich was a pivotal battle in the war took place in 2160. The battle ended the Romulan War. That places the beginning of the Romulan War somewhere between 2155 and 2160.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump: Yes, I've often wanted/speculated that the Romulans (and Klingons) would have other races in their "alliance."
But introducing these big bad Remans as footsoldiers of the Empire makes one think we'd have seen or heard about them before Nemesis.
It's quite possible that Remans were only recently elevated from "Mines slaves" to "cannon fodder". We still have zero idea what "pressing matters" kept the Romulans occupied prior to TNG, but if it involved combat with some unknown enemy, it may have decimated the Romulan ranks (thus paving the way for Remans to become soldiers and to gain some slight level of autonomy or civil rights).
We've heard of planets within the Klingon Empire as far back as TOS- that whole "they're learning to speak klingonee" line in TWT. POssibly such worlds within an empire contribute economicly to the overall power structure, but are not allowed their own fleets (as that would lead to possible rebellion).
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump:
quote:Originally posted by dbutler1986: [QB] Here's my major question...Spock explicitly states these 'primitive space vessels' allow 'no quarter' to be given and 'no captives' to be taken...
One definition of quater is: Mercy or clemency, especially when displayed or given to an enemy.
This definition has nothing to do with room to hold people.
The constraints of the ships in terms of power and food, and the voracity of the combatants may have made it a bloody war with little to no effort to take prisoners.
I still don't see how they could have engaged in any ground combat and the Romulans still remain relatively unknown. If they used Remans as ground troops, then wouldn't Humans (and everyone else) assume the Remans WERE Romulans?
I can hear it now... "No... we're not Romulans, we're REMANS."
Of course, the Founders remained a mystery during the early stages of the Dominion War. Vorta and Jem'Hadar used as front line combatants. Everyone knew the Founders existed, but didn't know what they looked like.
But if that was the case, then why didn't they assume the Romulan ship in "Balance of Terror" would be manned by Remans.
Unless the standard tactic was that Remans were the ground troops and Romulans were the "naval" officers.
Remans... stupid idea anyway... messes continuity all up.
Well maybe this is where nuclear weapons comes into play. Since the Romulans may not have wanted to be seen, they could just launched nukes at ground forces from ships in orbit. To be honest though, I never liked the idea of Romulans being an unseen enemy. I mean what if a Romulan ship had a hull breach and a bunch of crew members got blown into space during battle? What if some humans(or allies)managed to board a Romulan vessel?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by dbutler1986: Heh. Maybe crossbreeding with the Remans produced the Romulan skull ridges.
My personal theory on the Remans has them being descendants of Surak-era Romulan eugenics experiments. Which would explain why they have some characteristics in common with Vulcanoids, though somewhat exaggerated and in particular, the enhanced telepathic abilities. Something that may have been the point of the Eugenics program in the first place. Consider that we've never seen Romulans display the same mental or telepathic abilities as the Vulcans, ostensibly because they don't have the mental discipline to access them. Now consider the kind of edge those abilities gave the Vulcans during the War of The Time of Awakening, especially when Surak's teachings were rendering psionic weapons like the Stone of Gol ineffective.
And yes, the presence of Romulan ridges could show some distant Reman heritage, before the Empire made them into an "lesser caste", which likely made interbreeding taboo.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
Temporal time monkey fucking... or, since we have time travel and the ability to reimagin shit, why can't we just accept that things changed? After all, the current ENT book, All the good... seems to monkey fuck how Tripp died in the last Ent episode (certainly easier to swallow than the original holoshit...)
Posted by HopefulNebula (Member # 1933) on :
My solution to all of this: TATV is not canon. Never was. There's too much that suggests that it's simply B&B's final "fuck-you" gift to the fans.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well the ultimate get-out clause is that that entire episode too place on the Enterprise-D in the 24th century. So it's easy to say that history has been recorded inaccurately, so to my mind none of it really matters. End of.
It's just a shame the series had to end like it did, I think if the episode, or at least the concept of a historical crossover was done mid season, it might have worked better. Think something similar to that Voyager episode where some race find a backup copy of the EMH years in the future (I forget the title) but with the next gen cast finding, or having to research something to do with the NX-01.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Better yet, have Terra Prime pt.2 be the last episode. I think the ending to that episode was much more fitting that TATV. I mean TATV was the filler episode to end all filler episodes.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
quote:I searched Memory Alpha for Romulan War and found that Battle of Cheron wich was a pivotal battle in the war took place in 2160. The battle ended the Romulan War. That places the beginning of the Romulan War somewhere between 2155 and 2160.
Hmm. Almost everything in that MA entry is speculation.
-Nobody ever says that Cheron was a pivotal battle. Instead, Admiral Jarok in TNG "The Defector" merely says it was a "humiliating defeat" for the Romulans. Kasserine Pass was a humiliating defeat for the US forces in WWII, but it was in no way pivotal: Rommel was doomed from the moment the US troops first landed in North Africa, all the way to his final surrender, completely regardless of what happened at Kasserine in between.
-Nobody says Cheron was in any manner connected with the old Romulan War, let alone that it was the ending clash of that war. Instead, wouldn't it be more logical to assume that the event is fairly recent, because Jarok considers it an unavenged one? It probably is something related to why the Romulans began half a century of silence in 2311.
-...Because nobody ever gives a date for Cheron. Most definitely not 2160.
-Finally, we don't see the exact spelling anywhere on screen. So if we wish, we could say the battle is unrelated to the planet Cheron which was central to the TOS episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". Or we could say that the battle took place at Charon, the moon of Pluto in our solar system.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Except that Cheron is pronounced "SHARE-on" & Charon is pronounced "CARE-on."
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Don't forget the Tomed Incident which was another conflict between the Fed's and the Rommies. Cheron could have been a battle in that conflict too.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
quote:There's too much that suggests that it's simply B&B's final "fuck-you" gift to the fans.
That's not true at all. Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about Braga or his writing, the man has stated that he really thought the series finale was a well-written episode that was supposed to be a nice sendoff for Enterprise and all the ST series that came before it. That it was anything but that is irrelevant. He didn't purposely try to piss off anyone, even though he did.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: Don't forget the Tomed Incident which was another conflict between the Fed's and the Rommies. Cheron could have been a battle in that conflict too.
Tomed Incident was the last contact between the Federation and the Romulans prior to TNG's "The Neutral Zone." It cannot have been a battle in the Romulan War.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I know it wasn't a battle in the Romulan War. I'm saying that it was another conflict besides the Romulan War and that the Battle of Cheron could have been a battle in that conflict.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Are you meaning that the Tomed Incident and the Battle of Cheron were both in the same conflict?
Hmmm....
According to Memory Alpha though, the Battle of Cheron was a conflict during the Romulan War
quote: was a pivotal battle that took place in 2160, between the Romulan Star Empire and an Earth/Andorian/Vulcan/Tellarite alliance. The outcome of the battle effectively ended the Romulan Wars, with the "humiliating defeat" of the Romulans. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" production art)
Even into the 24th century, the battle remained an intense embarrassment for the Romulans, which, according to Alidar Jarok, would be retributed by "the new leaders" on Romulus, who "vowed to discard the treaty and claim the Neutral Zone," with Nelvana III being the first step. (TNG: "The Defector")
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: I know it wasn't a battle in the Romulan War. I'm saying that it was another conflict besides the Romulan War and that the Battle of Cheron could have been a battle in that conflict.
Dialogue in "The Defector" (TNG) associated the Romulan defeat at Cheron with the establishment of the Neutral Zone, however. Also, IIRC, an article in Picard's scrapbook in Generations mentioned it in that context.
Furthermore, "The Defector" was making reference to Stan and Fred Goldstein's 1980 Spaceflight Chronology, (illustrated by Rick Sternbach) which mentioned the battle and described some details of its action.
-MMoM Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
All I'm saying is that the Battle of Cheron could have been a)a battle of the Romulan War b)a battle of the Tomed Incident(which now seems unlikely) or c)a brief skirmish unrelated to either of the two.
Posted by HopefulNebula (Member # 1933) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: Better yet, have Terra Prime pt.2 be the last episode. I think the ending to that episode was much more fitting that TATV. I mean TATV was the filler episode to end all filler episodes.
Yah, that's what I was saying. Poor Trip and T'Pol... *snif*
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: All I'm saying is that the Battle of Cheron could have been a)a battle of the Romulan War b)a battle of the Tomed Incident(which now seems unlikely) or c)a brief skirmish unrelated to either of the two.
Good for you. All I'm saying is that there was a clear intention for it to be (a).
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Except that Cheron is pronounced 'SHARE-on' & Charon is pronounced 'CARE-on.'"
Actually, if the Wikipedia can be believed (so, crapshoot, basically), a number of astronomers do pronounce "Charon" with a "sh" sound. Apparently, the guy who discovered it picked the name because his wife's name is Charlene, and he pronounced it to sound like that.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
As far as dialogue goes, Charon/Cheron could take place at just about any point of the timeline - it could even be something that happened about three months prior to "The Defector" and prompted yet another palace coup on Romulus, with the new leadership using Charon/Cheron as their rallying cry.
But if those "IaMD" computer screens really nail Cheron down as a culminating event in the original Romulan War, fine. Anybody have a link to the graphic? Or to Picard's scrapbook texts? I searched for the 2003 discussion on the latter, and found no hints on Battle of Cheron there.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
See [url= http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/It's_Federation_Day!]here[/url] for the Federation Day news clip from Picard's scrapbook.
Just for the lazy people, I'll quote the relevant passage.
quote:Today's events were but the ceremonial endgame for the often-tumultuous negotiations, which began in earnest after the defeat of hostile forces at Cheron effectively ended the Romulan War only a little more than a year ago.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
But the entry also states:
"Although the album was featured prominently in the film, the clipping itself was not seen on screen and is therefore not canon."
Also, what Timo just stated is what I was trying to say earlier.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
I'm good at that, you know.
So, the scrapbook has the goods but isn't exactly canon, not even in some future hyper-HDTV remastering of the movie. And "IaMD" supposedly has something else that may actually be visible on screen, at least at some insane resolution. So what is that? A repeat of the scrapbook passage? Something more explicit, or something more obscure?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Tim Thomason (Member # 2025) on :
The graphic, provided to MA by an ENT crew member, seen in IaMD, part II, states that the War specifically lasted from 2156 to 2160 (ending in the Battle of Cheron and the assistance of an Earth/Vulcan/Tellarite/Andorian alliance).
Unlike the scrapbook, it doesn't directly connect the Federation founding with the Romulan War. It pretty much copies the Star Trek Chronology, placing the wrong birth and disappearance year on Zefram Cochrane and maintaining a few spelling errors.
Of course, I find the 2026 WWIII/Phillip Green information more interesting.
-The computer graphic is seen in its entirety at memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Historical_archive,_Starfleet_(production_resource).jpg -Onscreen the image appeared as: memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Historical_archive,_Starfleet.jpg
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
That is some interesting info. The display makes it seem as though Earth went through four World Wars instead of three.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
See, I don't accept most of the stuff in that graphic, myself, because it was ripped directly from the pre-ENT Chronology. Most of the content was just warped to fit the context; especially the "first contact" with the Klingons in 2223, for example.
Don't forget that even TOS got confused about whether the Eugenics Wars was supposed to be the same as World War III, or if it was a separate conflict. I have no problem considering them separate conflicts; even if the conflict was on a near-global scale, I have no problem considering the Eugenics Wars as not deserving the name "World War," because it was primarily caused on one side by the small group of Augments.
Rather, then, World War III would be a "true" world war that was caused by many nations and their actual governments, rather than a small clique of tyrants causing mayhem.
Finally, I also have no problem believing that there were lots of small brush wars and assorted really nasty regions on Earth as late as 2079, without having a separate nuclear war in that time. If the original devastation present in 2053 at the end of World War III was as horrible as First Contact seemed to suggest, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that certain regions of the world wouldn't recover nearly as quickly? Southeast Asia, for example, could easily wallow in warlordism and factionalism for decades (and since most of the infrastructure would have been destroyed, the ability to wage long-range warfare beyond the region might be nil), and the geography and politics might make a recovery there (even with Vulcan assistance) much more difficult. Thus conveniently explaining why we could have Q's little drama setting from "Encounter at Farpoint" while most of the rest of the world was already on the road to recovery.
Posted by ellenbetty (Member # 2217) on :
I believe that if their had been a 5th season, the Earth Romulan War would have been center stage. As to the issue of "Atomic Weapons" and most ships not being equiped with sub space visual communication equipment, the Enterprise also carried spatchel warheads, what ever they were, and partical beam weapons. So the average vessel in Star Fleet would have more primate weapons than the Enterprise and may not been equiped with sub space visual communication equipment. Plus the average Romulan vessel may also had the same problem, being equiped with out of date equipment.
If one considers how long it was before all US navy ships were equiped with radar, from it's introduction to first battle ships and US air craft carriers at the begining of the war, to smaller vessels, down to the torpedo boats, and figher air craft, it would have been until after the end of WWII before all US navy vessels and air craft were all equiped with radar. So it may have been after the end of the Earth Romulan War before all Star Fleet vessels carried photonic torpedos and phase cannons.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Wecome to the boards ellenbetty- you make some valid points.
I think the NX is a vessel that (along with it's weapons) takes a year or more to build- dangerously long in wartime. The deadalus type ships would have been prefab and quick to slap together- useing whatever weapons worked and could be mass-produced.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Yeah, it's an excellent point that more people who complained about the technology being too advanced on ENT should have kept in mind: the NX-01 was clearly and consistently portrayed as a cutting-edge experimental vessel that was a testbed for new technologies. It stands to reason that it might have had better gadgets than the average SF vessel of the day.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
But it also assumes that the colonies have the ability to build their own starships. I think that's relatively unlikely, at least for most of the colonies. Maybe Alpha Centauri would have the industrial base to manufacture warp cores and nacelles and all that, but I'd be willing to bet that almost all starship construction still took place in the Sol system.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
True- at that point it was probabbaly the UT shipyards making everything- but there would also have been older ships in service (the J-Class for example) that operate from the colonies and could be pressed into service in an emergency for an ad-hoc defense force.
After the Xindi attack on Earth the colonies might have got on the ball with ship production for defense. Certainly a shocking attack will rally the populace into a pro-military frame of mind- just look at 9/11 (which ws obviously a parallel being drawn in season 3).
Hmmm...it's even possible stuff like the Merchantman were originally colony defense ships, decomissioned but sold into private service.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:So the average vessel in Star Fleet would have more primate weapons
Hm, got an idea for a script.
USS FOSSEY, BRIDGE, INT.: "Target the lead warbird, fire all Coco-class breach pods!" IRV CALIGULUS, DAM. CTRL, INT.: "Centurion, engineering here! We're being swamped by these big hairy things in pink jumpsui-AAARGH! -*RUAAH-ROOAAH-AAARRH*-(static)"
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