The Enterprise Incident: An Observation

[evillouie]

Hello All,

I was just watching "The Enterprise Incident", which is one of my favorite episodes...and I just had an observation to make.

Right after Kirk steals the cloaking device and beams out, the Romulans and Spock enter the room. They go past where the cloaking device used to be and find the Romulan that Kirk beat up in the corner on the floor. Then they go back to where the cloaking device used to be and stare at the empty space for a couple of seconds and the Romulan finally says "They took the cloaking device".

Really? No kidding captain obvious, it was the biggest thing in the room and you finally noticed? It's no wonder why the Romulans never prevail over the Federation...

That part gets a chuckle every time I watch it! Anyone else ever notice that?

 

[Spock's Barber]

Yes, that and the fact that the cloaking device looks like Nomad and Sargon had a baby together.

 

[Spock's Barber]

I liked how Kirk dispatched that Romulan guard with only 2 kicks, and neither one was the patented Kirk drop kick!

 

[Kor]

He wasn't in the engineering department, so maybe it took him a moment to figure it out.

Kor

 

[JonnyQuest037]

From what I understand, the cloaking device was originally supposed to be much smaller, the kind of thing you could just slip into your pocket. Looks like the script was written with that in mind, and they never bothered to revise it when they built a larger prop.

 

[Spock's Barber]

I w

From what I understand, the cloaking device was originally supposed to be much smaller, the kind of thing you could just slip into your pocket. Looks like the script was written with that in mind, and they never bothered to revise it when they built a larger prop.

I wouldn't be surprised if future incarnations of Trek don't have a cloaking device that is strictly a software program that masks starships using the onboard computers as a platform. Geez, I need to take a break. I'm starting to talk like Geordi LaForge.

 

[johnnybear]

Yes, that and the fact that the cloaking device looks like Nomad and Sargon had a baby together.

Tan-Ru? The 'other' must have been a Romulan probe my Lord!
JB

 

[Timo]

I don't think we need to assume the Romulans failed to see the Cloaking Device was missing. I mean, the Commander went in knowing it would have been stolen.

It's just that immediately after the theft, she issues an order to search the ship for the device. Obviously, it can be hidden. It would be equally obvious to first see if it were hidden inside that very room, along with the thief.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

My immediate question is what happened to The Romulan commander after the episode? Obviously she would have eventually been released and ferried back across the Neutral Zone where she would have been demoted I'm guessing! But what sane race would go across the border and into Romulan space?
JB

 

[Kor]

I wouldn't be surprised if future incarnations of Trek don't have a cloaking device that is strictly a software program that masks starships using the onboard computers as a platform. Geez, I need to take a break. I'm starting to talk like Geordi LaForge.

The on-board hardware needs to be capable of making the ship invisible in the first place, though.

Kor

 

[Spock's Barber]

The on-board hardware needs to be capable of making the ship invisible in the first place, though.

Kor

Now you're starting to talk like Geordi LaForge.

 

[Kor]

Nah, LaForge would spew out a long stream of unintelligible pseudo-scientific gibberish.

It's like how, if you want your computer to print something on paper, you can't just take a computer by itself and install some special software that will make it print. You have to have hardware attached that will physically do the act of printing.

And so if a starship is going to cloak, there has to be some physical hardware that is specifically designed to cloak the ship. Perhaps it's a modularized unit like the cloaking device that's easily detachable, or perhaps it's a system that's so integrated into the rest of the ship that it wouldn't even be possible to extract (that would probably make more sense, actually).

Kor

 

[Spock's Barber]

Nah, LaForge would spew out a long stream of unintelligible pseudo-scientific gibberish.

It's like how, if you want your computer to print something on paper, you can't just take a computer by itself and install some special software that will make it print. You have to have hardware attached that will physically do the act of printing.

And so if a starship is going to cloak, there has to be some physical hardware that is specifically designed to cloak the ship. Perhaps it's a modularized unit like the cloaking device that's easily detachable, or perhaps it's a system that's so integrated into the rest of the ship that it wouldn't even be possible to extract (that would probably make more sense, actually).

Kor

That's very Geordi LaForge like.

 

[David cgc]

From what I understand, the cloaking device was originally supposed to be much smaller, the kind of thing you could just slip into your pocket. Looks like the script was written with that in mind, and they never bothered to revise it when they built a larger prop.

That part's ridiculous, but I love the clever staging a few minutes earlier where Kirk tells the guard that a spy is on-board trying to steal the cloaking device, because Kirk has no idea what a cloaking device looks like. So the guard glances at the device, then Kirk can knock him out.

 

[Timo]

And so if a starship is going to cloak, there has to be some physical hardware that is specifically designed to cloak the ship.

I wouldn't bet on that. In "Assignment: Earth" and "Future's End", it seems that standard shields are okay for preventing a radar from observing the ship. The basic hardware for manipulating EM waves is there, then, and all one needs is making extreme use of it. Might be a mere software patch, then.

Might be something calling for a million times higher frequency than the standard shield machinery can do, though, before one can turn a radio wave camouflage into a visible light camouflage... We just don't know for certain. Seems deflector shields and cloaking had something to do with each other in the episode at hand, but this might be a mere power allocation issue rather than a case of the shields being slaved to the cloak.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[velour]

I liked how Kirk dispatched that Romulan guard with only 2 kicks, and neither one was the patented Kirk drop kick!

Well, it was actually one kick. It took merely one lousy kick to knock the Romulan out cold. The first kick was to knock the gun out of the Romulan's hand. But who's counting anyway. In any case, that has got to be one of the lamest fights in the history of ST.

 

[Leviathan]

Yes, that and the fact that the cloaking device looks like Nomad and Sargon had a baby together.

Oh great...now everyone will know how to build a Cloaking Device.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Yes, I agree the cloaking device could use the existing shield emitters in some way - or so that's the explanation, but anything short of new specially designed hardware seems pretty unrealistic.

I also wonder if the Romulan commander would go back. To family, maybe, but if she had none, going back might just lead to disgrace, life imprisonment, maybe even death. We don't know enough about the culture. She sure wouldn't be honored or given another ship. OTOH, she might be made quite comfortable in the Federation - though they'd likely have to keep an eye on her for life.

But no one seems to care there are two romulan officers or crewmen in the brig, too. What happens to them? Those poor bastards.