Cloaking tech

[Kirk the Jerk]

Could it not just be explained with something as simple as:

Kirk & Spock have heard about a cloaking ship and that starfleet has records of such, but, they’ve never seen one? Hence the surprise when they see that the mythical cloaking ship is actually real?

 

[BillJ]

Quite. And that means we need to re-interpret what is shown and said there in light of what we now know from ENT and DSC.

Or simply admit either the new shows got it intentionally wrong, or that they don't take place in the same continuity with TOS.

 

[zar]

That's my point: "A cloaking device" is treated as a thing that is already established and it's assumed the audience should know what this means. From a world building perspective, if this is the very first time this sort of concept is introduced, it gets a bit of exposition to explain what it is. E.g. "I believe the Romulans have developed some sort of invisibility screen, a cloaking device, that renders their ships invisible to the naked eye as well as our tracking sensors." Later TV shows did much the same thing because the "cloaking device" was already established in Trek lore. ENT, on the other hand, went back to treating it as something new, which is why we have characters referring to it as "some kind of stealth technology" before eventually simply referring to it as "the cloaking device."

Note the first overt mention on "Discovery" in which Lorca refers to the spore drive as a "displacement activated spore-hub drive." Probably the entire crew already knows what it's called, but the AUDIENCE doesn't, so he has to establish it.

Regardless, the point is Balance of Terror has been retconned significantly by prequel/previous shows in any case, so this is a long-dead horse that needs no further beatings. Trying to make Discovery consistent with Balance of Terror would be to overtly contradict a much LARGER volume of canon; making it consistent with Enterprise incident, on the other hand, is easily doable.

This seems pretty forced, I'm sorry. Just because it has a name doesn't mean it's already established. "Developed a cloaking device which renders our tracking sensors useless" and "your new cloaking device" absolutely could be interpreted as the absolute first. And I'm sure it would be if it was the first episode. In fact, people already have interpreted it this way even as is! This is from an interview with TNG research consultant Richard Arnold in 1991, back when Gene Roddenberry was trying to decanonize stuff that supposedly didn't fit, including, namely, "The Enterprise Incident":

TL: Actually, some of the canon-stuff you were mentioning...One of the hordes
of questions I'm sure that you're getting is "Exactly what _is_ part of the
canon at this point?"
...
TL: Is it *all* of the original series? I've been hearing just the first two
seasons.
RA: Very _firmly_, except where it's contradicted and then we have to kind of
play with it...see, people can easily catch us, and say "well, wait a minute,
in 'Balance of Terror,' they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and
then in 'The Enterprise Incident,' they don't know anything about cloaking
devices, but they're gonna steal this one because it's obviously just been
developed, so how the _hell_ do you explain that?" We can't. There are some
things we just can't explain, especially when it comes from the third season.
So, _yes_, third season is canon up to the point of contradiction, or where
it's just so bad...you know, we kind of cringe when people ask us, "well, what
happened in 'Plato's Stepchildren,' and 'And the Children Shall Lead,' and
'Spock's Brain,' and so on--it's like, please, he wasn't even producing it at
that point. But, generally, it's the original series, not really the animated,
the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in certain aspects
but not in all...I know that it's very difficult to understand. It literally
is point by point. I sometimes do not know how he's going to answer a
question when I go into his office, I really do not always know, and--and I
know it better probably than anybody, what it is that Gene likes and doesn't
like.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!s...w"/rec.arts.startrek/jBbfXNMT5_o/F1jIpf92Y9wJ

Thankfully, the canon policy has gotten less nonsensical and the showrunners more creative since those days.

But here we are 25 years later, having basically the very same argument about TOS vs DSC instead of TOS vs TOS.

I would turn your argument back on itself and say that if Balance of Terror is definitely the first instance then it should have been more explicit in telling the audience that.

To compare it to the spore drive, they really drove home that this was a completely new thing. We get a whole speech calling it "a new way to fly", "the beginning", "imagine the possibilities", we get the background of the discovery and implementation with Stamets and his colleague, we're told it's the "only ship in the fleet" and so on. If 30 years from now someone wants to retcon that the Crossfield prototypes weren't the first spore drives, that's going to be a lot harder to do by comparison.

In TOS we got none of that. We got Spock telling us it was possible with great power cost, with scarcely an eyebrow raise, and then that it developed into a major Federation security risk by season 3. That's it.

From BoT and TEI we assume that the first cloaking device was discovered by Kirk, the Romulan bird of prey was a prototype, and the Klingons traded ships to Romulans for cloaking device, but all of that never actually happened anywhere in TOS. The simple truth is that TOS just didn't do very strong world building, and it's ripe for prequel interpretation as a result.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Or simply admit either the new shows got it intentionally wrong, or that they don't take place in the same continuity with TOS.

Totally unnecessary, and contrary to current production intent, to boot.

 

[BillJ]

Totally unnecessary...

From what I've seen of Discovery (first seven episodes), it is totally necessary regardless of intent. There are a lot of little things like the cloaking device and the "D-7" that just don't make sense for something that is supposed to line up with TOS.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

From what I've seen of Discovery (first seven episodes), it is totally necessary regardless of intent. There are a lot of little things like the cloaking device and the "D-7" that just don't make sense for something that is supposed to line up with TOS.

LOL. Regarding the cloak...have you actually read this thread?

"D-7" was never once used in TOS to describe any design, only added retroactively in subsequent productions, and even then as an in-joke in reference to this anecdote related by Gene Roddenberry in his and Stephen E. Whitfield's The Making of Star Trek (1968):

"I WENT ON THE STAGE ONE DAY, AND THEY WERE ALL READY AND WAITING FOR ME, BECAUSE THEY KNEW I WAS REALLY EXHAUSTED FROM SOME LONG RE-WRITE SESSIONS. AS SOON AS I WALKED UP TO THE SET, BILL AND LEONARD BLEW A SCENE, BUT THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE AND BEGAN ARGUING VERY VIOLENTLY. BILL WAS SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE, "LEONARD! WHAT DO YOU MEAN SAYING THIS IS A D-7 KLINGON SHIP! IT'S A D-6!" LEONARD SHOUTED BACK, "NO, YOU IDIOT, THE D-6 HAS FOUR DOORS OVER HERE AND THE D-7 ONLY HAS TWO!" BILL IMMEDIATELY SHOUTED BACK, "NO, NO, NO—IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND. YOU'VE GOT IT ALL WRONG."

WHILE ALL OF THIS IS GOING ON, I'M STANDING THERE, BEGINNING TO GET FRUSTRATED, WATCHING THE MINUTES TICK BY AND MENTALLY COUNTING THE MONEY WE'RE LOSING IN EXPENSIVE CREW TIME, BECAUSE THE CAMERAS AREN'T ROLLING. AND AS THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED, I'M THINKING TO MYSELF, "WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? THEY'VE GONE TOO FAR!" THEN I BEGAN THINKING THAT I SHOULD REMEMBER WHICH IS THE D-6 OR THE D-7. FINALLY I COULDN'T STAND IT ANY MORE, AND SO I WALKED IN BETWEEN THEM AND SAID, "COME ON, FELLOWS, IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER. LET'S GET ON WITH THE SCENE." THEN THE WHOLE CREW BROKE UP LAUGHING. THIS WAS THEIR WAY OF SAYING TO ME, "HEY, TIME IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. RELAX A LITTLE."

The DSC folks played the same prank on us, this time!

Besides, regardless of whether the Feds are accurate in their terminology or not, there is precedent for more than one design of vessel being referred to by the same designation. See "Starship Class"; "Antares Class"; "J Class"; and perhaps an even closer example with "D-5"! DSC is breaking no new ground on this front...

-MMoM

 

[Tuskin38]

Or simply admit either the new shows got it intentionally wrong, or that they don't take place in the same continuity with TOS.

It's the first one then.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Quite. And that means we need to re-interpret what is shown and said there in light of what we now know from ENT and DSC. And fortunately, it leaves us just enough room to do exactly that, if we only let go of our preconceptions of how it was originally intended to be taken.

That's a really weird way of thinking about it since we obviously KNOW how it was originally intended to be taking. It's not a "preconception" at all, it's just a fact. At the moment, it's a fact that no longer fits what came after it (like, for example, the name of the organization the Enterprise works for or the exact meaning of the words "time warp"). Hence we are dealing with a RETCON, not just a re-interpretation of old material. Retcon means that every time we hear Spock say or imply that this is their first time seeing a cloaking device, we just sort of imagine he's saying something else because it obviously didn't happen that way. We were basically supposed to do this with the Klingon foreheads too (a la TMP) until Enterprise threw a continuity snarl into the mix.

 

[zar]

That's a really weird way of thinking about it since we obviously KNOW how it was originally intended to be taking. It's not a "preconception" at all, it's just a fact. At the moment, it's a fact that no longer fits what came after it (like, for example, the name of the organization the Enterprise works for or the exact meaning of the words "time warp"). Hence we are dealing with a RETCON, not just a re-interpretation of old material. Retcon means that every time we hear Spock say or imply that this is their first time seeing a cloaking device, we just sort of imagine he's saying something else because it obviously didn't happen that way. We were basically supposed to do this with the Klingon foreheads too (a la TMP) until Enterprise threw a continuity snarl into the mix.

I, and I believe MMoM, are using the classic definition of "retcon" and assumed you were too. From the horse's mouth:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/rec.arts.comics/x_9N8KL0NDc/lgcGfP8-eUUJ

So yes, it's a retcon, but that doesn't mean we need to imagine Spock said something different. We actually need to imagine less as more facts are added to the timeline. I'm using "fact" in the context of the story here. In story it was never a fact that BoT was the first.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

That's a really weird way of thinking about it since we obviously KNOW how it was originally intended to be taking. It's not a "preconception" at all, it's just a fact.

A real-life, "out-of-universe" fact, which only counts for anything "in-universe" insofar as it's actually specified and established within the fiction, and actually holds outside of it. Contradicting the intent of people who no longer work on the show is not necessarily in itself a contradiction of what was actually in the show. The latter of course can be readily contradicted if desired, but my current stance is that in this case it actually, technically, hasn't been. We really don't have to imagine Kirk and Spock said anything different from what they said to make it fit. We only have to imagine they meant something different from what they were meant to have meant...if you see what I mean.

-MMoM

 

[Crazy Eddie]

A real-life, "out-of-universe" fact, which only counts for anything "in-universe" insofar as it's actually specified and established within the fiction, and actually holds outside of it. Contradicting the intent of people who no longer work on the show is not necessarily in itself a contradiction of what was actually in the show.

Only when the intent is explicit, which is the case for "Balance of Terror." Again, it's not unlike "time warp" or "Contact UESPA!" Later episodes retconned the intent of that first one so it's no longer valid, and now we just sort of mentally censor it because it doesn't matter anymore.

We really don't have to imagine Kirk and Spock said anything different from what they said to make it fit.

We kind of do. It doesn't really take much, just swap out the words "theoretically possible" for "not unheard of" and then squint really hard at the rest of the dialog.

There aren't a whole lot of ways to interpret "theoretically possible" in the context of the scene since the meaning there is pretty clear, so it's just another retcon in an episode full of them (kind of like how the "proximity blasts" can pretty easily be reinterpreted as just being photon torpedoes, which hadn't been invented yet when the episode was filmed; just replace the word "phasers" with "photons" in all the dialog and it works fine).

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

^But there are multiple ways to interpret "theoretically possible" in context. That the Romulans are using selective bending of light to achieve invisibility here is one of several theoretical possibilities for what's happening; they or others having done it before doesn't affect that statement itself, only the original intent behind it.

And there is no reason why UESPA cannot still be an entity that Kirk has to deal with at this point in time. And there is no reason why the proximity blasts need not be phasers. Space and time are the same thing, so why can't a space warp also be a called a time warp, at least colloquially by some, even if it's used to mean a more specific maneuver by others in a different context? What is wrong with any of that? I don't see the problem.

What does require "squinting" are some of the "x hundred years" references. But even some of those can be accommodated in context. Kirk is clearly already being deliberately deceptive to Balok in "The Corbomite Maneuver"; he's just cracking a joke with the guards in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"; etc.

-MMoM

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^But there are multiple ways to interpret "theoretically possible" in context.

Sure, just none that can be made consistent with Enterprise or Discovery. Especially now, since Burnham very explicitly described how the cloaking device actually works, which makes the "theoretically" no longer appropriate. It is definitely NOT theory any more at this point.

And there is no reason why UESPA cannot still be an entity that Kirk has to deal with at this point in time.

The reason is, the organization that Kirk works for is called "Starfleet," not "UESPA." There are all kinds of headcanon ways you can fit that line into place, but headcanon is not the same thing as continuity.

And to be sure, that's what you're talking about in your "re-interpretation" tango. That's all just head-canon or fanon. In the actual continuity of the show for all practical purposes, it's just a retcon. WE can come up with all kinds of ways to explain it, but in the end it's just a bunch of shit we make up to make ourselves feel better about the fact that something we saw in the past has been retconned.

And there is no reason why the proximity blasts need not be phasers. Space and time are the same thing, so why can't a space warp also be a called a time warp

Because "warp drive" isn't called "time warp" by anyone else except for Pike, in "the Cage," before the writers had figured out what they wanted the drive system to be called. It's not even called "space warp" anymore; THAT was retconned too after TOS.

Don't confuse headcanon with continuity. Retcons are part of the writers' creative decisions; our fan theories to EXPLAIN the retcons, not so much.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Sure, just none that can be made consistent with Enterprise or Discovery. Especially now, since Burnham very explicitly described how the cloaking device actually works, which makes the "theoretically" no longer appropriate. It is definitely NOT theory any more at this point.

You keep missintg the point. "Theoretically possible" needn't be in reference to the concept itself at all—despite the intent at the time that it was—but to the prospect that it's what the Romulans are currently doing. Also, as a general point of semantics, something being known in practical application doesn't actually abrogate it being described as theoretically possible; that would remain a factual statement in any case. It's not necessarily synonymous with "possible only in theory" at all—once again, despite that being what the writer meant here. There are many theories that could never be determined possible in the first place without at least some degree of practical test.

Spock could just be reminding Kirk that it's possible because Kirk seems to have forgotten (which might mean Kirk has never seen a cloak in action, but not that nobody has).

The reason is, the organization that Kirk works for is called "Starfleet," not "UESPA." There are all kinds of headcanon ways you can fit that line into place, but headcanon is not the same thing as continuity.

And to be sure, that's what you're talking about in your "re-interpretation" tango. That's all just head-canon or fanon.

They are BOTH referred to in the dialogue of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (TOS), and together on a plaque prominently displayed in "Demons"/"Terra Prime" (ENT). That much is not headcanon, it's onscreen canon.

(It's also referred to on starship dedication plaques into the 24th century, but those are never clearly seen and full of in-jokes anyway, so I didn't include those.)

Because "warp drive" isn't called "time warp" by anyone else except for Pike, in "the Cage," before the writers had figured out what they wanted the drive system to be called. It's not even called "space warp" anymore; THAT was retconned too after TOS.

There is absolutely no reason why both can't simply be colloquial shortenings of "spacetime warp drive" or "time-space warp drive"...same as "car"/"auto" from "horseless carriage"/"automobile" or "phone"/"cell" from "cellular telephone" or any number of other real life examples.

Don't confuse headcanon with continuity. Retcons are part of the writers' creative decisions; our fan theories to EXPLAIN the retcons, not so much.

Don't confuse discrepancy with discontinuity, nor fickle behind-the-scenes intent with what is actually on the screen. Anything that is, and is left unexplained, is fair game for us fans to come up with our own explanations for (until such time as the writers choose to come up with their own). And as @zar said above, a retcon doesn't necessarily erase anything already shown. In fact, ideally, retcons are "supposed" to not do that. When done "properly," they work by addition, not subtraction. Revealing something new that alters the way what came before plays and is viewed and interpreted, but not necessarily removing it from continuity. There are retcons which do that—what many would consider inept ones—but that's not the default operating principle involved.

-MMoM

 

[Timo]

Regarding what we might "expect" from DSC here, it's not actually much of a writing chore.

Invisibility in general: Maintain and boost the impression that this is something our heroes occasionally encounter, and relatively rare and thus surprising in certain contexts even if not as a concept. Refer to many sorts being out there.

Klingon cloaks specifically: Nothing wrong with them pseudohistorically, no reason to try and pretend they would be new in their "first" appearance in ST3 (because the dialogue there made the exact opposite inference), no reason to try and pretend they would not yet exist in TOS (which was neutral on the subject).

Defeating of cloaks: Show that this does not make the target ships lose their invisibility or even notice they're being spotted.

On the third bit, we're waiting for what may come. On the second, no sweat. On the first, "The Vulcan Hello" already had dubious dialogue on par with "Balance of Terror", suggesting Starfleet has forgotten all about its former brushes with invisibility, and painting the entire organization in unflattering colors. So that's two things to be retconned, basically in parallel.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

If they were no invisible ships from the NX-01 to ~2250's encountered,would it be taught in SFA?

 

[Timo]

I guess it would - because it wouldn't be something left behind in the past, but instead something to look forward to.

Invisibility as encountered in the 2150s was a "future tech" from Starfleet's point of view. Starfleet would expect to gain the ability in the future, and would also dread the day when its next enemy would obtain it. Not seeing any invisible ships between 2150 and 2250 would not reassure - it would frighten. "What are we missing? Are there invisible Klingons out there already? If not today, then when?"

No cavalry charges for a century should remove cavalry charges from the active West Point curriculum (although students would still be expected to make academic comparisons with modern tactics). But the absence of large scale chemical warfare after WWI hasn't outdated that subject matter yet - quite to the contrary.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

Or they would classify the knowledge because it's from the future.

 

[BillJ]

Or they would classify the knowledge because it's from the future.

Cloaking tech? It wasn't from the future, it was used by the Xyrelians in "Unexpected", as was holography.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, it would not be "out of time" - it would merely be in the future of Starfleet, while very much in the present of certain other players. And never in the past of any player: if some culture became advanced beyond the use of invisibility screens, it would have other "future" technologies that would keep it invisible to Starfleet.

Timo Saloniemi