Topic: Captains on the bridge.

[762_XC]

In theater mostly. Not many had heard of him prior to the show.

Stephen

Well...you did say "noted actor".

[Sirgod]

Fair enough. And you where correct about Camelot and Dune, though to be fair, I didn't notice him in those, until after he took over the Enterprise.

Stephen

[Nemesis]

There's a ten year gap between the last two episodes of Enterprise so yes the Romulan war could have occurred then. 

Not 10 year at most 6 as it was the 10th anniversary of the launch of the NX-01.  Such a major war happened but was never referred to in the finale?

It merely shows that there isn't as much of a firm line of when the alliance actually became the federation. It could be when the initial treaty was signed, or it could have evolved into the federation later.  Cloaking devices were not common at that point in time. 

The finale itself says that the Alliance led to the Federation (Said between Riker and Deeana).

At least 4 races were shown on Enterprise having cloaks.  That is pretty darn common.

The Suliban cloaks were advanced future technology that they lost access to.

The designs came from the future yes.  The units themselves did not.  Why would they suddenly no longer be able to use the design?  Unless you are saying the everything in Enterprise before the "Alien Nazi time traveller" episode was erased?

As for the one Romulan cloak it seems to be an experimental technology that wasn't adopted.  This is evident by the fact that they were experimenting with other methods of hiding or disguising their ships such as the holoship.

They had 2 ships posted on a frontier with the cloaks and an entire minefield cloaked surrounding the planet? That is not experimental.  It is deployed on such a scale as to be standard tech.

The holoship also shows far too much advancement as even in TNG none of the major races had such tech. 

As for the Romulans not having warp drive.  That's one of the aspects of TOS that was retconned later.  Balance of terror was one of the early episodes of TOS from before they determined what exactly impulse power was going to be.  Once they determined that impulse was a sublight drive, there was no way the Romulans could have only had simple impulse power. 

I didn't say that the Romulans don't have warp in TOS.  I quite agree that just because Scotty said "Simple impulse power" it does not refer to the drive but to the power plant (no dilithium and matter/anti matter) but refer to the fact that the ship was no more than 1/3 the speed of the NCC-1701 and therefore must have been well below the Warp 5+ shown in (the show) Enterprise.

Pull out a script and show me where it says that hostilities with the Klingons began a decade later.  I went through my dvd of errand of mercy the first time you brought that up, and couldn't find it. 

In the TNG episode where Riker is caught doing a first contact preliminary survey Picard tells the alien leader that the first contact with the Klingons led to decades of war.  In Enterprise other than annoying the Duras family Archer saved the Empire from a civil war at risk to himself and his people, hardly a cause for decades of war. 

As for the borg and the Ferengi, they didn't know that those were the races they had encountered.  Also, its already been shown that the federation knew about the borg for at least 70 years before the Enterprise D encountered them, but that the information was classified.

Explain how a 3 man Ferengi freighter is so deep into the territory of the future Federation yet none return for centuries?  The freighter captain couldn't have had the authority to commit the Ferengi to never returning. 

You can't easily classify the public speeches given by a drunken Cochrane and known of by Archer.  The Denobulan doctor, the Vulcans and various other alien races would have had to go along.

[knightstorm]

There's a ten year gap between the last two episodes of Enterprise so yes the Romulan war could have occurred then. 

Not 10 year at most 6 as it was the 10th anniversary of the launch of the NX-01.  Such a major war happened but was never referred to in the finale?

It merely shows that there isn't as much of a firm line of when the alliance actually became the federation. It could be when the initial treaty was signed, or it could have evolved into the federation later.  Cloaking devices were not common at that point in time. 

The finale itself says that the Alliance led to the Federation (Said between Riker and Deeana).

At least 4 races were shown on Enterprise having cloaks.  That is pretty darn common.

The Suliban cloaks were advanced future technology that they lost access to.

The designs came from the future yes.  The units themselves did not.  Why would they suddenly no longer be able to use the design?  Unless you are saying the everything in Enterprise before the "Alien Nazi time traveller" episode was erased?

As for the one Romulan cloak it seems to be an experimental technology that wasn't adopted.  This is evident by the fact that they were experimenting with other methods of hiding or disguising their ships such as the holoship.

They had 2 ships posted on a frontier with the cloaks and an entire minefield cloaked surrounding the planet? That is not experimental.  It is deployed on such a scale as to be standard tech.

The holoship also shows far too much advancement as even in TNG none of the major races had such tech. 

As for the Romulans not having warp drive.  That's one of the aspects of TOS that was retconned later.  Balance of terror was one of the early episodes of TOS from before they determined what exactly impulse power was going to be.  Once they determined that impulse was a sublight drive, there was no way the Romulans could have only had simple impulse power. 

I didn't say that the Romulans don't have warp in TOS.  I quite agree that just because Scotty said "Simple impulse power" it does not refer to the drive but to the power plant (no dilithium and matter/anti matter) but refer to the fact that the ship was no more than 1/3 the speed of the NCC-1701 and therefore must have been well below the Warp 5+ shown in (the show) Enterprise.

Pull out a script and show me where it says that hostilities with the Klingons began a decade later.  I went through my dvd of errand of mercy the first time you brought that up, and couldn't find it. 

In the TNG episode where Riker is caught doing a first contact preliminary survey Picard tells the alien leader that the first contact with the Klingons led to decades of war.  In Enterprise other than annoying the Duras family Archer saved the Empire from a civil war at risk to himself and his people, hardly a cause for decades of war. 

As for the borg and the Ferengi, they didn't know that those were the races they had encountered.  Also, its already been shown that the federation knew about the borg for at least 70 years before the Enterprise D encountered them, but that the information was classified.

Explain how a 3 man Ferengi freighter is so deep into the territory of the future Federation yet none return for centuries?  The freighter captain couldn't have had the authority to commit the Ferengi to never returning. 

You can't easily classify the public speeches given by a drunken Cochrane and known of by Archer.  The Denobulan doctor, the Vulcans and various other alien races would have had to go along.

yes.  Its very possible that they didn't mention the war as that would be unnecessary to the plot of the episode.

What I'm saying is that the birth of the federation could be less clear cut, and depending on how you look at it the alliance could be viewed as its beginning, or as something that led to its beginning.

As for cloaks, who had them besides the Sulibans and the Romulans?  Also, its very possible that they could be field testing them there.

The future federation would have been very quick to delete any restricted data from the sulibans computers.  Without that, they would have lost the ability to maintain their future tech

As for none of the TNG races having access to such tech, I have to disagree.  In TNG, they used holograms to disguise observation posts.  And Voyager was able to generate dummy wing men by placing holoprojectors on the hull.  It wouldn't be such a strech to assume that they were easily capable of that if they felt the need.  The Romulan holoship proved to be something of a dead end because the future federation races did learn to see through it fairly quickly.

As for the Romulan's speed we don't know what kind of endurance it has at those speeds.

With the Klingons, don't you think a farmer shooting a Klingon Courier in the chest, and causing an interstellar incident was a disasterous first contact.  Archer not only offended Duras, but the Klingon high counsel.  He compounded that by escaping from Rura Pethe and getting a bounty on his head.

With regards to Cochrane, you said it.  He was drunk.  You're also assuming that Phlox and T'Paul would report the incident to their respective governments.  And like I said, its also possible that they might not have identified them as the borg.  As for why the ferengi would be so far away from their normal trading grounds, you need only look at the 75th rule of acquisition; the home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.

[Brush Wolf]

"The finale itself says that the Alliance led to the Federation (Said between Riker and Deeana).

At least 4 races were shown on Enterprise having cloaks.  That is pretty darn common."

One problem with a long running series is real world technology catching up and even surpassing the science fiction tech in the shows. When "Balance of Terror" was written we did not have stealth fighters. They knew the SR71 had a low radar profile but it was no where near as stealthy as the F117 and later aircraft.

"Explain how a 3 man Ferengi freighter is so deep into the territory of the future Federation yet none return for centuries?"

The easiest and best explanation is they never called home wanting to preserve their "hunting ground" and then ran afoul of something that stopped them from getting home.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Regarding the Klingons, don't forget the Augment Virus.  That right there is probably plenty enough for a war, and that in of itself is kinda the problem.  The Earth-Romulan War should have reached its conclusion before the Klingons came on the scene.  Otherwise, the Romulans begin their advance into Earth Space, the Klingons, peeved at what Archer has done to them, take advantage of the situation.  Game Over, no Federation.  The only thing that could save Earth, is a intra-Klingon conflict, probably between the augment infected, and the "true" Klingons.

I don't have near as much problem with the Cloaks, its always been a back and forth between stealth technology and sensor technology.  Take a step back from the air and look at naval, because that's what Star Trek was really based on.  The reliance on visual spotting made early 20th century engagements an issue of finding the enemy fleet's smoke plumes, then closing and attacking.  Emission controls and the Submersible were invented.  Then spotting aircraft were developed.  Diesel Engines.  Attack Aircraft.  True Submarines.  RADAR.  Nuclear Subs.  SONAR.  SONAR dissipating materials.  LIDAR.  Mimetic Armor.  The need to conceal your position and the need to uncover the other's position has been and always will be a constant fight within the fight.  Like juggling your ECM/ECCM in a battle.  The problem is, that there's just not that much further that you can go today without true invisibility.  And you don't want to write a story set in the future that someone watching it today can say, "But we figured that out five years ago."  If you tried to do "We have a blip on the motion sensors, Captain." Today.  If the next statement wasn't "Lock Phasers and Fire!"  The audience at home would be screaming "Just shoot them!"

[EmeraldEdge]

Okay, it's been a while since I went through all this and I've forgotten a lot, but one big one right off the bat, the location of the Klingon homeworld.  Didn't it take them 2 days at warp 5 to get there?  Just how close is it?  Why, in a war, wouldn't they be able to just wipe earth out, given superior numbers and technology, and proximity?  Just what shape is the Federation in this universe?  Remember V'ger when it was only a few days away and no ships were in range?   They were on Earth weren't they?  Kind of odd that no other armed vessels would be at earth given a hostile homeworld (the Klingons) is less that a couple days travel away.

[Dracho]

"The finale itself says that the Alliance led to the Federation (Said between Riker and Deeana).

At least 4 races were shown on Enterprise having cloaks.  That is pretty darn common."

One problem with a long running series is real world technology catching up and even surpassing the science fiction tech in the shows. When "Balance of Terror" was written we did not have stealth fighters. They knew the SR71 had a low radar profile but it was no where near as stealthy as the F117 and later aircraft.

"Explain how a 3 man Ferengi freighter is so deep into the territory of the future Federation yet none return for centuries?"

The easiest and best explanation is they never called home wanting to preserve their "hunting ground" and then ran afoul of something that stopped them from getting home.

And Kirk's communicator looks downright bulky compared to a Motorola Razor.

[EmeraldEdge]

I bet his communicator has a much bigger range than your Razor.  Especially since most alien planets don't come with cell towers and satellite infrastructure.  (and we won't bring up battery life.  That things gotta have the juice!)

[Nemesis]

yes.  Its very possible that they didn't mention the war as that would be unnecessary to the plot of the episode.

As everything I have ever read has the implication that the Earth-Romulan war led to the Federation it seems unlikely that it would not have been mentioned.  They mentioned that the NX01 had just completed its 2nd 5 year mission (which the war would have interrupted).

What I'm saying is that the birth of the federation could be less clear cut, and depending on how you look at it the alliance could be viewed as its beginning, or as something that led to its beginning.

Deanna and Riker directly referred to the Alliance leading to the Federation.  It would have to lead to it in less than 1 year after the Alliance or the dates are wrong.  Can you really believe such an important thing could be negotiated and ratified that quickly?  I can't. 

As for cloaks, who had them besides the Sulibans and the Romulans?  Also, its very possible that they could be field testing them there.

The number (100's if not 1000's) of mines and the 2 ships in an unoccupied frontier world seems a little much for just field testing.   

The sphere builders were cloaking moon sized objects and were known to a significant number of future federation races.  Then there were the race that impregnated Trip. 

There were whole religions around the sphere builders there must have been millions if not billions of people who knew of them being cloaked.  Many of which were future Federation races.

The future federation would have been very quick to delete any restricted data from the sulibans computers.  Without that, they would have lost the ability to maintain their future tech

And from their minds?  The Suliban engineers and researchers could recreate it from memory (and the 100s  perhaps 1000s of working models in their cell ships). 

As for none of the TNG races having access to such tech, I have to disagree.  In TNG, they used holograms to disguise observation posts.  And Voyager was able to generate dummy wing men by placing holoprojectors on the hull.  It wouldn't be such a strech to assume that they were easily capable of that if they felt the need.  The Romulan holoship proved to be something of a dead end because the future federation races did learn to see through it fairly quickly.

Voyager I have seen very little of so I don't know of the projected ships.  I do know just how flaky the TNG holodeck was.  It should have been condemned.

As for the Romulan's speed we don't know what kind of endurance it has at those speeds.

The holoship led them quite a chase. 

Also they knew warp 5 tech well enough to recognize the NX01 having it and didn't feel the need to take it when it was crippled, so presumably they had it in use already.

Which does bring up the suggestion that Archer would be given one of the new warp 7 ships.  The NCC1701 was only a warp 8 ship, not much improvement in a century. 

With the Klingons, don't you think a farmer shooting a Klingon Courier in the chest, and causing an interstellar incident was a disasterous first contact.  Archer not only offended Duras, but the Klingon high counsel.  He compounded that by escaping from Rura Pethe and getting a bounty on his head.

If there is anything the Klingons would recognize and respect it is fighting back from an attack.  They would be more likely to praise the farmer (and condemn the warrior incompetent enough to be beaten by a farmer, a descendent of Stephens perhaps), that would not have offended them.  The rest was not part of the first contact but later events. 

With regards to Cochrane, you said it.  He was drunk.  You're also assuming that Phlox and T'Paul would report the incident to their respective governments.  And like I said, its also possible that they might not have identified them as the borg.  As for why the ferengi would be so far away from their normal trading grounds, you need only look at the 75th rule of acquisition; the home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.

Phlox, T'Pol, the Andorians, etc, etc. 

The problem isn't just the Ferengi being so far but being so far in a relatively primitive ship but in having no one follow for centuries in their much more advanced vessels.  Where one would think to go sooner or later others would as well.

Among the problems with 1st Contact are the records.  Where are the copilot and engineer for the flight?  All the other people there who knew that they had outside aid (even if not identified as futurians that would be an anomoly).  Going back to the future with the past changed should have led to a different future UNLESS they travelled between timelines as well as time.  Enterprise is clearly on that timeline.  TOS and TNG are not.

Geordi as a fan of Cochranes did not know of the attack on the launch site or of outside aid. 

[Nemesis]

And Kirk's communicator looks downright bulky compared to a Motorola Razor.

So how many calls have you made to the ISS without a local cell tower?

[knightstorm]

yes.  Its very possible that they didn't mention the war as that would be unnecessary to the plot of the episode.

As everything I have ever read has the implication that the Earth-Romulan war led to the Federation it seems unlikely that it would not have been mentioned.  They mentioned that the NX01 had just completed its 2nd 5 year mission (which the war would have interrupted).

What I'm saying is that the birth of the federation could be less clear cut, and depending on how you look at it the alliance could be viewed as its beginning, or as something that led to its beginning.

Deanna and Riker directly referred to the Alliance leading to the Federation.  It would have to lead to it in less than 1 year after the Alliance or the dates are wrong.  Can you really believe such an important thing could be negotiated and ratified that quickly?  I can't. 

As for cloaks, who had them besides the Sulibans and the Romulans?  Also, its very possible that they could be field testing them there.

The number (100's if not 1000's) of mines and the 2 ships in an unoccupied frontier world seems a little much for just field testing.   

The sphere builders were cloaking moon sized objects and were known to a significant number of future federation races.  Then there were the race that impregnated Trip. 

There were whole religions around the sphere builders there must have been millions if not billions of people who knew of them being cloaked.  Many of which were future Federation races.

The future federation would have been very quick to delete any restricted data from the sulibans computers.  Without that, they would have lost the ability to maintain their future tech

And from their minds?  The Suliban engineers and researchers could recreate it from memory (and the 100s  perhaps 1000s of working models in their cell ships). 

As for none of the TNG races having access to such tech, I have to disagree.  In TNG, they used holograms to disguise observation posts.  And Voyager was able to generate dummy wing men by placing holoprojectors on the hull.  It wouldn't be such a strech to assume that they were easily capable of that if they felt the need.  The Romulan holoship proved to be something of a dead end because the future federation races did learn to see through it fairly quickly.

Voyager I have seen very little of so I don't know of the projected ships.  I do know just how flaky the TNG holodeck was.  It should have been condemned.

As for the Romulan's speed we don't know what kind of endurance it has at those speeds.

The holoship led them quite a chase. 

Also they knew warp 5 tech well enough to recognize the NX01 having it and didn't feel the need to take it when it was crippled, so presumably they had it in use already.

Which does bring up the suggestion that Archer would be given one of the new warp 7 ships.  The NCC1701 was only a warp 8 ship, not much improvement in a century. 

With the Klingons, don't you think a farmer shooting a Klingon Courier in the chest, and causing an interstellar incident was a disasterous first contact.  Archer not only offended Duras, but the Klingon high counsel.  He compounded that by escaping from Rura Pethe and getting a bounty on his head.

If there is anything the Klingons would recognize and respect it is fighting back from an attack.  They would be more likely to praise the farmer (and condemn the warrior incompetent enough to be beaten by a farmer, a descendent of Stephens perhaps), that would not have offended them.  The rest was not part of the first contact but later events. 

With regards to Cochrane, you said it.  He was drunk.  You're also assuming that Phlox and T'Paul would report the incident to their respective governments.  And like I said, its also possible that they might not have identified them as the borg.  As for why the ferengi would be so far away from their normal trading grounds, you need only look at the 75th rule of acquisition; the home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.

Phlox, T'Pol, the Andorians, etc, etc. 

The problem isn't just the Ferengi being so far but being so far in a relatively primitive ship but in having no one follow for centuries in their much more advanced vessels.  Where one would think to go sooner or later others would as well.

Among the problems with 1st Contact are the records.  Where are the copilot and engineer for the flight?  All the other people there who knew that they had outside aid (even if not identified as futurians that would be an anomoly).  Going back to the future with the past changed should have led to a different future UNLESS they travelled between timelines as well as time.  Enterprise is clearly on that timeline.  TOS and TNG are not.

Geordi as a fan of Cochranes did not know of the attack on the launch site or of outside aid.

Yes.  I do think its possible for them to not mention the war in the finale if the writers are trying to not clutter things with additional story lines which the series will not have time to cover.

As for the treaty, I'm saying that the federation could have evolved gradually, in which case it would be hard to pinpoint its beginning.

I still think the placement of the mine field and cloaked ships at that location is not beyond the bounds of field testing.

As for deleting the information from the Suliban's computers.  I'm running under the assumption that the future tech was too advanced for the Suliban engineers to fully understand, and that without the computer data, they wouldn't be able to recreate it, or even service it beyond minor repairs.

As for TNG holo camouflage, there was one episode of TNG where they were observing a primative vulcanoid race, where they used a hologram to disguise their observation post as a rock face.  I think it was called "who watches the watcher."

As for the endurance of Romulan ships.  The speed rating of the engine is its top speed, not its cruising speed.  Most of the alpha quadrant races at the time of Enterprise had ships with top speeds of warp 6, meaning they were able to go warp 6 for brief periods, but had to operate at lower speeds most of the time.  The TOS Enterprise was shown attaining a top speed of Warp 9 in "The Enterprise Incident," and had a cruising speed of warp 6.

Just because the Klingon warrior was a disgrace doesn't mean that miserable gutter race would be particularly happy with the race that revealed it.  Also, Klingon honor really only applies to Klingons, although those hypocrites will whine like little babies if they think their opponents are acting dishonorably.

I don't see the Ferengi being so far away from home in a primative craft as so much of a problem.  If you look at real world history, you see several incidents of pre-columbian contact between Europe and the Americas before Columbus arrived in his relatively advanced carracks.  These include evidence that stone age people might have been able to make it across, viking long boats, and the unconfirmed reports of Irish monks.  As for first contact, the Enterprise E. removed all evidence of their intervention before they left.