Enterprise Episode -spit-

[Kamakazie Sith]

Wasn't that old TOS episode supposed to be the first time the Federation learned of the Romulan's cloaking device?

In that Enterprise episode did they know those ships were Romulan?

[Oberleutnant]

Wasn't that old TOS episode supposed to be the first time the Federation learned of the Romulan's cloaking device?

Not neccessarily, although Kirck & co were certainly surprised when they faced a Romulan vessel with "an inivisiblity screen". It is possible that the Romulans perfected their cloaking technology during the time they were in isolation.

[Oberleutnant]

Wasn't that old TOS episode supposed to be the first time the Federation learned of the Romulan's cloaking device?

In that Enterprise episode did they know those ships were Romulan?

Not until they managed to translate their message. T'Pol also said that the Vulcans know very little about them.

[Solid Snake]

i thouhtit was suppposed to be the first time anyone had a cloaking device.

True, Spock was saying that the Romulans actually designed a practical invisibility screen, yet the Suliban have cloaking technology. I'm too tired to bitch right now.......

[Isolder74]

Facinating, the Romulons have more advanced looking shipd then the4 TOS did. And they are using a cloaking devise and invisible mines. sounds alot like someone from DS9 era accidentall jumped back in time to give them stuff they shouldn't have.

[Master of Ossus]

Incidentally, if the Romulans were quite nearly detected by Earth's first, blind effort at stumbling about the region, how is it possible that first contact with them was not made until TOS? And why the hell didn't Archer even figure out who the Ferengi were in Acquisitions?

[Tsyroc]

Sigh, overall, i think Enterprise is a decent show. But it shoots itself in the foot almost every episode by screwing around with the timeline. Paramount knew better than to destroy the timeline like they have done. I have a couple theories about how this is happening:

It is a rogue Q screwing everything out.

It ends up being a holodeck program gone horribly wrong.

or Crewman Daniels ends up in the last episode saying that he read the wrong history book/felt like trying to screw things around, and sends all the Enterprise crew back 20 years before their mission and makes them monks in an obscure Tibetan monestary..

More and more I am liking the idea that Enterprise takes place in the revised post First Contact timeline. The TOS timeline was the one that would have taken place without Borg interference while the new Enterprise timeline came about because of temporal contamination by the E-E's crew when they interacted with Zephram Cochran, Lilly , and who knows who else?

After seeing the E-E through a telescope Cochran influences ship building so the warp 5 project bypasses the Daedulus style of pre-Tos and ends up skipping to ships with Saucers (ie the NX Enterprise of the show).

Cochran got zapped by a phaser so now Phase pistols have come into being sooner than they would have in TOS. I believe Lilly might have been
influenced by TNG era weapons from her exposure to the Borg and combat on the E-E.

These people had some idea about a possible future so why not tweak it a bit. Certainly can see working to enhance their technology if they know that in the future there will be a threat like the Borg. Certainly a good reason to push the weapons design a little bit and not a bad excuse for doing the same with ship building.


Of course there could also be the lameassed B/B way. "What continuity?" "Strict continuity puts too many limits on the writers".

[Tsyroc]

Facinating, the Romulons have more advanced looking shipd then the4 TOS did. And they are using a cloaking devise and invisible mines. sounds alot like someone from DS9 era accidentall jumped back in time to give them stuff they shouldn't have.

Could be. Maybe the guy who is helping the Suliban has been working some other angles too?

I bet the whole idea for having the "Temperal Cold War" is so B/B can have
an out when the fury about continuity gets too much for them. They'll invoke the Trek Reset (Omega 13) button and everyone will be all happy again.

[Master of Ossus]

Incidentally, am I the only one who noticed that the Suliban ships are in almost all ways crappier than TIE Defenders? Considering that they come from the distant Trek future, that's always struck me as being kind of funny. Their only advantage appears to be the standard tactical applications of warp drive over hyperspace, but they also may have better shields than TIE Defenders.

[arctic_series]

Enterprise is playing now, and it sucks.

First off, Archer encounters Romulans. With cloaking devices. In the middle of a cloaked minefield.

Second, there's some BS about 'polarizing hull plating'

Third, Archer punched a needle through a crewmen's suit to deliever anesthetic, while in space. Wouldn't that result in explosive decompression?

Oh, and the dialouge is horrifyingly bad.

er i don't really see what's wrong about polarized hull plating ?

[Master of Ossus]

How does polarizing the hull make it more resistant, at all, to weapons fire or other conditions? How do they polarize the hull? And wouldn't it just attract weapons fire half the time, instead of deflecting it even fractionally?

[Patrick Degan]

Having caught this most recent episode with the Romulans on rebroadcast, about the most egregious continuity violations involved the redesigned Warbird with cloaking capability. The cloaked mines are pretty much part of the general technomasturbatory writing which has become de-rigeur for BragaTrek™. They did at least not have the Romulans making ship-to-ship visual communication.

Not a lot of technobabble in this one. But so, so glacially-paced. It took the episode 35 minutes to finally reach the solution to the dilemma which should have been arrived at within ten minutes. Talk about plot-stretching! Any competent officer or technician should have arrived at the solution to seperate the hull plate with a demolitions man on the spot, then to cut the spike impaling Reed's leg, then getting the hell off the plate before the mine blows. And having the Captain out there was simply asinine —that was a job you give to a specialist, not the ship's commanding officer. Not even the first officer or the chief engineer. But then, BragaTrek™ writers can't be expected to know how jobs are portioned out in the military, can they? Furthermore, the whole situation where Archer risks his entire ship and crew and possibly an interstellar incident to rescue one man is ludicrous in the extreme. If Archer isn't prepared to make hard decisions where the lives of his crew are at stake, then he is no leader.

The one aspect of the episode which spikes the Unbelievability Quotent has to be Reed's leg being impaled through the spacesuit and his survival afterward. I don't care what they say about "self-sealing spacesuits"; that is sheer bullshit. You've got a foreign object keeping the severed areas of the suit seperated and no matter how good the sealing may be in closing up a hole, it's not going to be good enough to seal around the foreign object. Reed should have lost all his air through the breach. In the novel The Forever War they had self-sealing spacesuits —which worked by having seal-joints which would close a razor-sharp iris to cleanly sever the limb in the event of suit damage in the area below the joint. The suit was also equipped with internal injectors to deliver large-dosage painkillers in said event.

The other incredible aspect of the story is Malcolm Reed saying he didn't follow the World Cup tournament. A Brit who doesn't follow football?!? Obviously that man is A SPY!

SHOOT HIM![/i]

[Typhonis 1]

Actually Earth and the Romulans fight a war about a decade before the Federation gets started

[neoolong]

The only parts I liked were the fact that you get to see some of the rest of the crew and some more details about them. Like the fact that there was a pretty diverse crew.

[Master of Ossus]

Moreover, the injured man's blood should have boiled away due to the low pressure within the space suit. Not a fun way to die, I imagine.

[Master of Ossus]

The only parts I liked were the fact that you get to see some of the rest of the crew and some more details about them. Like the fact that there was a pretty diverse crew.

Who cares about the crew? They either won't exist, or will contradict what we know of them next week. The show lacks all consistency of characters.

[neoolong]

Yeah, but it's nice for some minority actors to get some work.

[Enlightenment]

Moreover, the injured man's blood should have boiled away due to the low pressure within the space suit. Not a fun way to die, I imagine.

Space death by blood boil is an urban myth. In vaccum a human will lose consciousness in under a minute and die from lack of oxygen in 5-10 minutes. There have been a whole lot of threads on this subject in rec.arts.sf.science if anyone wants to Google for details and references.

[Admiral_K]

After seeing the E-E through a telescope Cochran influences ship building so the warp 5 project bypasses the Daedulus style of pre-Tos and ends up skipping to ships with Saucers (ie the NX Enterprise of the show).

Cochran got zapped by a phaser so now Phase pistols have come into being sooner than they would have in TOS. I believe Lilly might have been
influenced by TNG era weapons from her exposure to the Borg and combat on the E-E.

These people had some idea about a possible future so why not tweak it a bit. Certainly can see working to enhance their technology if they know that in the future there will be a threat like the Borg. Certainly a good reason to push the weapons design a little bit and not a bad excuse for doing the same with ship building.


Of course there could also be the lameassed B/B way. "What continuity?" "Strict continuity puts too many limits on the writers".

I agree. People should stop worrying about strict timeline continuity because we haven't seen that in any of the trek series (not even TOS after their first episode involving time travel). We've seen several different timelines, so why not another?

Its based in the "trek universe" so it will share similarities, but not be the exact same. I think Cochran seeing the Enterprise is a good explanation for why the saucer style starship appeared so early.

[Evil Jerk]

After seeing the E-E through a telescope Cochran influences ship building so the warp 5 project bypasses the Daedulus style of pre-Tos and ends up skipping to ships with Saucers (ie the NX Enterprise of the show).

Cochran got zapped by a phaser so now Phase pistols have come into being sooner than they would have in TOS. I believe Lilly might have been
influenced by TNG era weapons from her exposure to the Borg and combat on the E-E.

These people had some idea about a possible future so why not tweak it a bit. Certainly can see working to enhance their technology if they know that in the future there will be a threat like the Borg. Certainly a good reason to push the weapons design a little bit and not a bad excuse for doing the same with ship building.


Of course there could also be the lameassed B/B way. "What continuity?" "Strict continuity puts too many limits on the writers".

I agree. People should stop worrying about strict timeline continuity because we haven't seen that in any of the trek series (not even TOS after their first episode involving time travel). We've seen several different timelines, so why not another?

Its based in the "trek universe" so it will share similarities, but not be the exact same. I think Cochran seeing the Enterprise is a good explanation for why the saucer style starship appeared so early.

Fine, it's a seperate timeline.
Who cares? IT'S STILL A FREAKING COP OUT.

I, for one, did not want to see a seperate timeline where continuity can be fucked with at will, I wanted to see humanity's first exploits before the Federation, that would fit in with TOS in the grand scheme of things, but I guess that was to much to ask with dumb and dumber in charge.

It isn't even written well, I've said it once and I'll say it again, Enterprise wouldn't even last one season if it didn't have Star Trek to leech off of.

[arctic_series]

How does polarizing the hull make it more resistant, at all, to weapons fire or other conditions? How do they polarize the hull? And wouldn't it just attract weapons fire half the time, instead of deflecting it even fractionally?

er polarized materials usually exhibit more resilience to stress. this is actually one of the few gimicks in trek that can actually work in real life. unlike 95% of the technobable and 4% of the scientific theory crap that just "might" happen in 23497 years time.

[tharkûn]

I don't see the problem here. 1/4th of a kiloton is 250 metric tonnes of TNT. There's no way to design against that kind of blast without using magic (i.e. shields) or utterly massive quantities of armor. For once Trek is being realistic here.

Like I said piss poor warship design. Realistic warships relay on several things to keep them alive:
1. Speed. NX knows it's facing a deficit here, compared to the Vulcans, one should assume you will face it with the rest of the galaxy. Not only does NX lack this ... in combat they don't even try to fight like this is an advantage. I see no escorts to increase their perimeter, we see no fighters to extend their range, we see rapid engage/disengage tactics. In combat I've seen them wallow in front of their enemy at slow relative speeds and attempt to just stand and slug it out.
2. Firepower. Bigass weapons can save your neck. Its tolerable to be slow and lightly armored ... if you can blow most attackers away before they can get near you.
3. Loads of armor. If you can take beating you stand a better chance of walking away as the winner.
4. Stealth. What the enemy doesn't know is there can't be aimed at.

All four factor against each other to some degree ... more weapons means less room for armor, more armor means you need more to get higher speeds. Most military craft employ a mixture of the four (i.e. Tanks are somewhat fast, armored, and heavily gunned). Planes employ stealth, speed, and loads of firepower (your average AtA missile is a one-hit kill). Battleships relied most on armor and firepower. Recon units go for stealth and speed. Subs use stealth and bigass torpedos, mainly.

The problem is NX exhibits NONE of these. They are visible and actively transmitting (no stealth I've seen), poorly armed (their weapons require multiple volleys for a kill), slow (relative to enemy weapons), and piss poor armor (in comparison to say a megatonne weapon).

If it's a warship it is of piss poor design.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Nice to see we have an Enterprise appologist here on the board (Admiral_K).

Even if it is a new timeline, that doesn't make up for B&B's "Fuck Continuity" attitude.

[Master of Ossus]

Okay, your only real statement is that the Enterprise is a weak warship when compared with the other ships in the area (ie. ones from species that have been travelling space for some time). Do you have any evidence, whatsoever, that SF could do better, considering that they are designing much of their equipment as they go along, and that they needed to recalibrate their torpedoes through the ridiculous method of physically expending ammunition (before magically fixing the technical problem during mid-combat)?

The question is not whether or not the NX-01 is good against the other species that it meets--almost all of the time it sucks. The question is whether it is good for SF, and it appears that it is. It employs technology that is the best they can field. It has their best officers. It has every advantage they could give it, and it still sucks. Its armor is fairly weak, and its weapons fairly poor when compared with the species that it must fight against. This is indicative of a fairly low-level of technology, when compared with other science fiction. The presence of such large amounts of weapons is indicative of a small cruiser, by my eyeball comparison, and I must conclude that the ship was designed as a warship, originally.

[tharkûn]

Master of Ossus:
There are plenty of ways to build a better warship ... the best that comes to mind would be to go as a carrier ... lots of small ships armed with megatonne missiles that can attack in swarm. This is likely your best bet of taking down superior enemies ... lots of small fighters.

Or you go the heavy armor approach and have lots of dead mass, reactive hull plating, all the fun jazz and bulk the ship down so it has a prayer of lasting until the enemy goes down. This would at least allow the ship not to be ripped apart in one volley with megatonne weapons.

Or you take and give the thing the ability to fire massive "broadsides" from torpedo launchers, armed with (10's-100's)megatonne warheads. Ideally then you could be hitting with a good fraction a gigatonne ... it only takes a few devastating victories for people learn not to dick with you ... especially if you brag about your kills (hell this is how TNG ships have been constructed).

Last alternative is to build some outriders which extend your perimetre so the ship can run away faster/outright avoid fights. Small ships should always be more efficient so they can let you know when an alien can of whoopass is about to get opened so you can run like hell.

I'm not saying it isn't a warship, I haven't watched enough to tell that. I'm just saying that if it is a warship, it's a crappy design. There are numerous ways to make up for your technological handicaps other than build an all-around crappy ship. Its the common failing of sci-ships ... the ships have too little specialization.