Romulans were inept in The Enterprise Incident

If I could somehow learn that for some strange reason Romulans don't have shields, the episode would make so much more sense to me...

 

Klingons wouldn't be shipping that over until Tuesday.

 

What do you think, did the writers really intend to convey "Ooh, the villains have now joined forces!" with the bit about Romulans using ships of Klingon design? Or perhaps "Nasty villains, these, pretending to be other villains!", or just "Nasty villains, these, being able to steal from other villains!"?

None of the three options is a plot point further discussed in the episode. And of course the phrase is just handwaving to excuse the use of the nifty model. But the writers would still be thinking of an excuse for the use of the phrase, in case the producers asked. Would they be thinking in terms of one of the above?

Timo Saloniemi

 

I never thought of anything but a miltary alliance between the Klingons and Romulans. But in real life, I think the Russians built a knock-off of the F-15 Eagle, back in its day, and the Chinese currently have their version of the F-35 Lightning, based on stolen plans (but in some ways better than ours, because they omitted the lift fan housing that just adds extra weight and drag to the fuselage).

Also, the Russians famously built a copy of our Space Shuttle, but they didn't have the astronomical budget that we threw at ours, and wisely abandoned it as a costly white elephant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

If the Romulans stole Star Fleet design concepts for the Bird of Prey, and they stole the D-7 battle cruiser design outright, maybe their culture doesn't foster individual ideas and innovation. In the real world, most cultures don't.

 

I thought there was an alliance and exchange of technology. Klingon ship design in exchange for cloaking technology. Since I was only familiar with Star Fleet Battles map with those empires on opposite sides of the Federation, I couldn't figure out how they accomplished the trade.

 

I always thought alliance. Stealing tech wouldn't necessarily have resulted in the whole ship looking the same. A gift of a few Klingon ships because of an alliance made sense.
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In Next Gen, they went out of their way to say that the blood feud between the two had lasted 75 years. In other words, they were at least not opposed until right after TOS.

 

Can't deny that... never noticed it before, either.

At the time, it did bug me that there would be simultaneous exchange, and the two Romulan soldiers were of very high rank - enough to let Kirk wander around the place ever so freely.

I adore the story, it's one of TOS' best, but some of these issues being brought up were conveniences. Inevitable for any story, but sometimes easier to forgive if other elements are above and beyond the rest, or if the story as a whole is above average, which "The Enterprise Incident" is (IMHO).

On the flip side, editing stories without computers and word processors must have taken a ton more time to do. Sci-fi is invariably complex and dealing with items or issues that only have loose parallels in real life. Oversights are going to occur.

And while every story is going to have nitpicks, it was pretty cool to have the Romulan commander attempt to seduce and induce Spock all while expanding on the backstory of the similar origins of Romulans and Vulcans (and a Klingon/Romulan alliance! Wish more of that had been developed...) Sex is often used by military and espionage personell as means to control (look at "From Russia with Love" and "Skyfall", villains both use sex in attempts to control characters - even their own allies - not always as forms of "let's shuck the clothes" but as possible intimidation, to trip up their enemy (as per "Skyfall", not as much as "Enterprise Incident"). Either which way, it works and I appreciated what "Skyfall" was trying to do since the writers "got it" in terms of the genre and had typically not been used, unless it was Bond trying to get information from a female adversary or (far less often) a KGB agent trying to get at Bond.) But "Enterprise Incident" does seem to show a genuine interest, which is also novel because "sex as coersion" can be terribly boring as well if overused and the spy genre, which "Incident" is getting some ideas from, had already used it a number of times, so it's nice to see a change on the trope.

 

Hormones can do mysterious things; I still find a way to believe the commander was swayed for her lust over Spock, so credibility in that aspect is still there (IMHO). Even the strongest people can sometimes be swayed over the illogic of wanting the hokey pokey (you know what that's all about ).

 

A rivet-for-rivet knockoff of the B-29 bomber also, as well as a lot of other things.

 

Spy information instead of an alliance is an interesting idea for Romulans

 

In many ways, they perfected the Shuttle and got around many of the critical flaws of the US version. But a changing economic climate and the realisation a reusable spaceplane is nothing more than a boondoggle put a stake through Buran's heart.

 

...As for combat aircraft, the Russkies invented many a superior design - the Sabres of USAF could be seen as cheap copies of Mig-15/17, but the West just didn't get around to copying any of the other superior stuff. Not that there would have been actual copying going on in the other direction, either, though, not after Stalin's time.

There are humorous aspects to this. At one point, satellite imagery made educated folks guess the Mig-29 was a carbon copy of F/A-18 (and of course Tom Clancy used that as gospel, too, in a fun air combat scene). Turned out the Fulcrum was an aerodynamic marvel utterly unrelated to any of the solutions used in the Hornet (just with substandard Soviet engines), and represented a whole school of design further including the Flanker that the West never managed to create a copy of.

Timo Saloniemi