The First One
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed
Member # 35
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Took care of the extras. . .
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
jh
Ex-Member
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A quick sidenote re: the Vulcan-Romulan split
We've gone over this one before but I think that it's worth pointing out that in Balance of Terror Spock was surprised by the Romulan claim of kinship to the Vulcans. This suggests that the V-R split happened a WAY long time before (which, IMHO, lends creedence to the theory that both civs had FTL travel but lost it in the great war that split them - probably over Surak's philosophies) and that the Vulcans and other 'alliance' planets were not involved in the Earth Romulan wars.
------------------ Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
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The Vulcan/Romulan split happened about two millenia before the current Trek era. They said so on screen. Data said it in "The Neutral Zone", IIRC...
------------------ "I think you people have proven something to the world: that a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun and music� and have nothing but fun and music." -Max Yasgur; Woodstock, NY; August, 1969
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To TerraZ: All comments are welcome. It's better than working without any feedback.
As with the existence of Starfleet Marines, I think that the possibility of ejectable warp cores is a reasonable conjecture based on the canon. As far as I know, the absence of ejectable warp cores has not been established. It's the same thing with lifeboats: although none are visible on the hull of the Constitution class or the refit or on models of Daedalus, they are likely to be somewhere on board. True, this principle that "if something has not been shown to not exist, its existence is possible" can be carried to extremes. For example, it's never been established that Mr. Scott does not have three nipples, so I write in my conjectural article that he does have three nipples. But since ejectable warp cores certainly exist at a later time, they might have existed earlier than we know.
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I don't know if I'd call my theory Vulcan "bashing". I just happen to think that Vulcans would consider it logical to keep track of what the anti-Surakian renegades were up to, and they would consider it illogical (or at least rather unwise) to inform their allies of the connection at that time. Whether they judged humans correctly or not is a matter of historical debate.
------------------ "Quadrilateral I was, now I warp like a smile." -- Soul Coughing
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Masao: I agree with you all the way. If it's not on screen, it's not canon, but do I really give a d*mn? As long as it's not contradicted specifically, I'm ok with it.
I personally think that lifeboats (or at least escape pods) would have to be present on older ships, unless they didn't and eventually had a "Titanic" kind of situation which woke up everyone.
*Another nit-pick*: I also think ejectable warp core are logical but given their (poor) reliability on something as modern as a Galaxy class starship, I wonder just how effective they were in the old days...
Sol: Well, I wouldn't really say Vulcan "bashing", but I kind of think that it would have been more beneficial to the Earth Alliance (temporary name) to know just who they ware up against. It might have given them an advantage in the war and hiding that particular info kind of seems selfish to me. On the subject of weither they should have trusted us at the time, I'd like to say yes, but given the nature of man, they probably made the right choice.
Don't take everything I say to the letter, I'm always trying to find something to critizise on but that's because I enjoy nitpicking. I'm seldom serious.
------------------ -Doctor: We'll defend ourselves! They won't get what they're after! -Aliens: Huh? -Doctor: I mean, YOU won't get what you're after! ECH to Hierarchy vessel in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"
-Seven: *Kissing the doctor* It was a platonic gesture. Don't espect me to pose for you. -Doctor: *Embarassed* Understood. Seven to the Doctor in VOY "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor Spy"
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TerraZ: Yes, I agree with your suggestion that warp cores were probably extremely unreliable. In fact, in my first article for the Starfleet Museum (http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/sfmuseum/wasp.htm) (shameless plug) I write that primary hulls with impulse drives served as separable life boats in the Wasp class because warp cores kept destroying Daedalus-class ships and their crews. At that time I think that warp cores were too integrated with the rest of the ship to be easily ejectable. They probably needed to be cut out of the ship. After all, aside from the environmental effects, nuclear subs don't have ejectable reactors.
Also, I'm trying a new signature. Excuse me if it's unintelligable or inoperative
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the [http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/sfmuseum/]Starfleet Museum[/URL]
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I really like the ideas that you've come up with for your site, Masao. No one has ever really done anything for the period between the end of the Romulan War, and "The Cage". Nice to see that someone is finally going to start exploring that area of the Trek universe. Personally speaking, I think that Sol has the best theory about the war. So far. Someone might come up with something better.
BTW, to make your link functional, all you need to do is put url= before the http in the address. That should make the link work. Hope that helps.
------------------ "I see you have the ring. And that your Schwartz is as big as mine! -Dark Helmet, Spaceballs
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Thanks for the kind word, Warped. Well, the reason I decided to work in this era is that few other people were. Basically, I'm antisocial and try to avoid human contact. In truth, other than a few birthdays of TOS crew, there are few established events from 2160 to 2260, and even those are poorly described. I didn't want to work in the movie era because I felt that there were few further possible variations on the Constitution refit hulls. Also, I think TNG and DS9 era ships are too big and too complex. They require a lot more surface detail work for your illustrations to look good. Since these shows were recently in production, everywhere you try to go (in terms of conjecture) you run into an established canon fact. It's too restictive.
PS: I rearranged my signature per your advice. I'll see if it works now.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum [url=http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/sfmuseum/]
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Masao: Regarding your signature... Take what you have there in brackets and put it before "Starfleet Museum". Then, after "Starfleet Museum", put the [/url], like you had before.
------------------ "I think you people have proven something to the world: that a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun and music� and have nothing but fun and music." -Max Yasgur; Woodstock, NY; August, 1969
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I have heard a lot of theories regarding whether the Romulans actually had warp drives prior to BoT. It makes sense to me that the Bird-of-Prey we see in that episode was warp-capable, but was running at impulse power because the cloaking device drew so much power that they could not go into warp.
It's possible that they were hoping to withdraw from the sensor range of the Enterprise before disengaging the cloak and using the warp drives. If their primary power source was a fusion generator, rather than a matter/antimatter reactor, this lends credence to the theory that there was just not enough power to operate both at the same time.
Just like submarines during WW II were (usually) much faster on the surface than they were when submerged, the Romulans may have felt that their best strategy for escape lay in remaining concealed until they could decloak and make a run for it. Judging by the events of the episode, that makes sense.
Since the romulans' ancestors left Vulcan approximately 2 millennia ago, they could very well have used sleeper ships (as in "Space Seed") that accelerated to high sublight velocities, then coasted to their destination. It is also possible that the (eventual) Romulans ran into one of those mysterious plot twists that allowed so many human colonists to arrive at destinations far beyond their projected range and well ahead of schedule.
One theory that has been proposed is that the Romulans did not originally possess warp drives, but had a good theoretical knowledge of how they might work. Perhaps they already used something that harnessed warp fields to enable them to travel at extremely high sublight velocities without incurring excessive time dilation effects, and only needed a working model of a warp drive to examine, to realize that their theoretical faster-than-light drive might actually work. I expanded upon this theory myself in the Fourth Report in VIVA LAS VEGAS.
As far as the peace treaty being negotiated by subspace radio, I am uncertain. I haven't seen BoT in a long while, and thought they negotiated the peace treaty by ordinary radio. The theory that subspace radio technology was present, but too bulky and power-consuming for installation aboard starships makes sense. Otherwise, why didn't the Archon or Horizon have it aboard?
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Baloo: Your suggestion about standard radio vs subspace radio is interesting. However, a possible problem is that radio travels at only light speed. Interstellar communication would take years, and the war lasted only about 5 years. Although the peace treaty was supposedly signed by radio (or, more likely some combination of voice and picture), we don't know at what distance. Maybe the representatives of Earth and Romulus were in separate ships only a few meters away from each other. They were too pissed off to meet face to face. In such a situation, standard radio could have been used.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
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