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posted on January 15th, 2006, 9:11 pm

ok, i stand corrected.

posted on January 16th, 2006, 2:19 am

They had a few good points...

posted on January 16th, 2006, 3:50 pm

did they?!?!?! please i must ahve misted them, what where they??? lol

posted on January 16th, 2006, 11:26 pm

Most of the fourth season

posted on January 17th, 2006, 7:01 am

i watched like 3 episodes, and decided it was total crap. I overlooked a few things but when they said photon torpedoes came before phasers i just stopped watching.

posted on January 17th, 2006, 3:18 pm

most of the the trek comunity hated it too much controdition

posted on January 17th, 2006, 3:39 pm

True, but I believe that TrekMania explained the Photon Torpedo one quite nicely, I'm just not up to going and finding the link right now.

posted on January 17th, 2006, 4:48 pm

what about romualns and warp capable ships?

[Anonymous]

posted on January 18th, 2006, 12:52 am

Last edited by Anonymous on January 18th, 2006, 12:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

Roach,Jan 17 2006, 05:48 PM] what about romualns and warp capable ships?

Theory: The Romulans didn't have warp drive during the Earth-Romulan War.

General thought How did the Romulans get to Romulus in the first place? It would be strange if they first had warp drive when they left Vulcan and later abandoned it. Why should they lose this key technology, although their civilization must have been thriving for most of the time, considering that an empire was established and the population increased from maybe several thousand, at the very most a million people to probably billions of Romulan citizens? Therefore, if they didn't have warp drive in 2160, they couldn't have it 2000 years ago either.

Pro

1. The trail the Romulans left on planets outside their empire points to a long travel to their later homeworld Romulus, a travel with impulse-only ships.

2. A small and technologically limited civilization is more likely to go into isolation. The revelation that Vulcans are related to Romulans seems to be surprising in TOS: "Balance of Terror". Maybe the Romulans are unknown outside their star system, for the simple reason that they never had the technology to leave it.

3. The point called "Romii" on the map could be actually the planet Remus, maybe its indigenous name or an abbreviation meaning "Romulus II = Rom II = Romii". Alternatively, it might be the name of the star system in which the two planets Romulus and Remus are located. In both cases the distance between them would indicate that the Neutral Zone is still inside the Romulus/Romii star system, or directly adjacent to it.

4. In addition, the mentioned time to reach the Earth Outposts would make sense. The Enterprise was eight minutes away from Outpost 4 at first, this would have been 3.5 days at Warp 8 (=512c) if one grid point were equal to 1 ly.

5. The Romulans may have acquired warp drive through their alliance with the Klingons, and Picard would be right with his assertion "a century ago" in "Insurrection".

6. For what it's worth, the entry in the Star Trek Chronology could be correct.

Contra

1. A civilization without warp drive would not be capable of waging an interstellar war. It is highly unlikely that impulse-driven Romulan ships travel many years to attack the nearest Earth colony, let alone in a war that lasted only three years.

2. This would mean that warp-capable Earth forces first attacked outposts in the Romulus & Romii (Remus) star system, or the planets themselves. Even if they tried to declare it as a preemptive strike, they would have no reason to do so, unless Earth followed an aggressive doctrine of expansion. I don't like this idea. Moreover, if Earth forces were superior, why didn't they just continue the war until Romulus was conquered? Establishing a Neutral Zone doesn't sound like a peace treaty dictated by the victor.

3. If the Neutral Zone (NZ) is very close to Romulus, then its size must have increased from TOS to TNG. The NZ could be very thin and therefore close to Romulus in TOS, since planets in the NZ are not explicitly mentioned, but this is the case in TNG several times. Why should the prevailing Federation abandon a territory with Class-M planets that might be interesting for colonies or outposts?

4. Moreover, who should have hindered Earth from occupying all star systems around Romulus after the war in 2160? There would have been no chance to establish a multi-planet Romulan *Star* Empire after the discovery of warp drive, if Earth or the Federation had already held all the surrounding planets. The ongoing conflict between the Klingons and Romulans and especially the fact that there is a common border prove that the Romulans must be able (and have been able for a long time) to leave the Romulus system.

5. As of 2266, the physiology of Romulans was still completely unknown (TOS: "Balance of Terror"). If the war was waged inside the only Romulan star system and the Neutral Zone was very close to Romulus, it is ridiculous that the Federation couldn't find out anything about the Romulans in a hundred years. Especially if we consider the high standard of sensors established in Star Trek Enterprise.

6. While subspace radio may exist without warp drive, it is unlikely that the Romulans did have this communication technology, but no warp drive. Earth seems to have developed subspace radio much later than warp drive. The Horizon (TOS: "A Piece of the Action") only had a light speed radio beacon, while the Ferengi obviously still didn't have FTL sensing capability in the 2330's (Picard Maneuver in TNG: "The Battle"). On the other hand, maybe the Ferengi actually had FTL sensors, and these were only damaged in the battle. Enterprise NX-01, of course, possesses real-time subspace communication as soon as in 2151, but this is still another problem.

7. The scale of the map in "Balance of Terror" makes perfect sense at 1 ly per grid point. With an established maximum sensor range of a few light years and a bit of redundancy, 1 ly as on the map seems like the optimum distance for the Earth Outposts. The Neutral Zone would be 1 ly thick, easy to memorize for the humans who created it. It would also be plausible that there are several planets inside the Neutral Zone in the 24th century. Romulus and Romii might be two neighboring star systems. The many small dots could be other nearby stars, considering that the Galaxy is three-dimensional. If the region on the map were only a billion kilometers across (so one grid point might equal 1 AU), it would show totally irrelevant stars hundreds of light years "above" or "below" the Romulan star system, if the star density is that high at all.

8. The Earth Outposts are built on asteroids which would move relative to the planet Romulus and around the Romulan central star, if they were only a few hundred million kilometers away. This would invalidate the whole concept of the Neutral Zone, of course. It is unlikely that Earth forces stopped them and fixed them in space.

9. In the incident in TOS: "The Deadly Years", Romulan ships without warp drive would not have been capable of intercepting the Enterprise in the first place, and even the incompetent Commodore Stocker would have had no problem to outrun them.

10. The ultimate argument: The Romulans in Enterprise quite obviously do have warp drive. The engines even look similar to the Klingon nacelles of the time, just as they will look similar to Federation design 100 years later.

Summary of arguments There are more and much stronger arguments that the Romulans did have warp drive as of 2160 and the Bird-of-Prey should have had warp drive too. The "simple impulse power" statement by Scotty can be interpreted in that the ship has an impulse (=fusion) reactor as a *power* source, which would have nothing to do with the type of its engines. Alternatively, if the ship were really restricted to sublight speeds, this doesn't mean that no warp drive is installed or even that warp drive is unknown to the Romulans. It is just too obvious that the two cylinders are supposed to be warp engines. Perhaps the cloak or the plasma weapon drains just too much power to be able to go to warp.

The only remaining problem is that the travel time between the Earth Outposts would be much longer than suggested in "Balance of Terror", but in my opinion this should be attributed to "dramaturgic reasons", while the map alone is absolutely perfect at a scale of 1 ly per grid point. As for the ancient Romulans, it is possible that they actually had impulse-driven generational ships, if the distance from Vulcan to Romulus is no farther than about 100 light years, for the civilization must be given enough time to develop on Romulus. This would explain the Romulan ruins that can be found on several planets in Federation space. I have based my version of Romulan history on these assumptions.

posted on January 18th, 2006, 12:50 pm

The Photon Torpedo thing makes a lot of sense.
Phasers are highly advanced energy weapons that shouldn't be around until at leat the early 2200s. Photon torpedoes are matter-antimatter weaponry. Hey, guess what has been in use for energy creation since Cochrane's warp flight, possibly earlier! Antimatter!

They should have put photonic missiles as primary heavy wepons, and maybe lasers or ion beams as beam weapons, if they really needed some.

posted on January 18th, 2006, 3:29 pm

You have a very good point.
Also, you have to realize that "Photon Torpedos" and "Photonic Missles" arn't nescissarily the same thing.