Nobody told you to repost it. We can discuss it right here.
Starship design history in light of Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
- Start date
Nobody told you to repost it. We can discuss it right here.
Nobody told you to question it XD
Yeah, I’m not going to go back and forth childishly with you. If you have something to contribute to the topic, feel free to say it here.
How about "neither"? Stop wasting entire pages with bickering about pointless minutiae and tit-for-tat.
Show us where I did that, and I can clarify why. I can make my points and justify them just as everyone else can, and you can't stop any of us. Attack the argument if you want, and include all who contribute, but stop telling me how and what to post here. You can ignore what you personally find annoying.
I'll wait for actual answers, and then copy some arguments and evidence from the recent discussion of exactly the same issue, if people prefer that over linking to the very same thing.
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It's a very narrow definition.
Huh?
DS9’s “Paradise Lost” implied the Romulan War was fought near Earth. So perhaps the humans didn’t have to travel that far.
But that’s not really the implication from “Balance of Terror.” The implication there was that neither side had the technology for ship-to-ship visual communication, not that they had it but just didn’t use it.
I never got that impression. Spock didn’t say the technology never existed, just that what they used was primitive.
Then we differ in our interpretation of Spock’s words. To me he was clearly implying that the tech level on both sides was far more lacking than a century since.
Before Enterprise aired I thought the same. But that show added new things to the canon, so my interpretation of it changed.
Obviously it changed. I’m not debating that. I’m saying what I believe was the context of Spock’s statement in BoT.
It's a definition of almost exclusion of what possible technologies could mean. Here's the lines:
"SPOCK [OC]: By our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels. Which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication."
So, we have a few lines to apply and read in to the long list of what it could not include. Again, "primitive" is a matter of comparison, and doesn't automatically exclude all the things listed.
Obviously, interpretation will vary.
It stretches credibility that the writer of a 1960s scifi show would hope to convince his audience that his space adventures didn't have vidiphones.
That the Romulans are secretive is the point. There "was" no communication - nobody suggests there "couldn't" have been. In contrast, taking of prisoners and showing of mercy were ruled out by the primitiveness of the old tech, by grammatical implication.
Although that latter bit might well have involved an implication that later Trek continuity outdated, unlike with the comms issue. Taking of prisoners ought to be a breeze with transporters, especially if shields weren't in use yet, but transporters being a new invention is possible in TOS (as long as they aren't brand new). Only, it no longer remains possible with ENT.
Not that it would ever have made much sense: transporters no doubt are ancient in galactic terms, and the concept of the Federation would involve sharing that tech. But ENT had the cool concept that the Vulcans weren't being all that helpful in the pre-Federation days; this could have extended to them preventing humans from acquiring transporters.
Timo Saloniemi
That the Romulans are secretive is the point. There "was" no communication - nobody suggests there "couldn't" have been. In contrast, taking of prisoners and showing of mercy were ruled out by the primitiveness of the old tech, by grammatical implication.
Although that latter bit might well have involved an implication that later Trek continuity outdated, unlike with the comms issue. Taking of prisoners ought to be a breeze with transporters, especially if shields weren't in use yet, but transporters being a new invention is possible in TOS (as long as they aren't brand new). Only, it no longer remains possible with ENT.
Not that it would ever have made much sense: transporters no doubt are ancient in galactic terms, and the concept of the Federation would involve sharing that tech. But ENT had the cool concept that the Vulcans weren't being all that helpful in the pre-Federation days; this could have extended to them preventing humans from acquiring transporters.
Timo Saloniemi
To be fair the brig aboard Enterprise NX-01 could apparently hold just a few prisoners. Earth spacecraft of that era really weren't designed to carry large numbers of people unless they were colony ships and the NX were also among the largest human-built spacecraft of that period.
"No captives" is probably close to true. Since no human ever officially saw what a Romulan looked like during the war then the chances that Earth ships would need lots of space for prisoners are pretty slim. And that's not even taking into account that starships of that era were generally smaller and more cramped than their 23rd century Federation successors.
"No captives" is probably close to true. Since no human ever officially saw what a Romulan looked like during the war then the chances that Earth ships would need lots of space for prisoners are pretty slim. And that's not even taking into account that starships of that era were generally smaller and more cramped than their 23rd century Federation successors.
And I chose to interpret Spock’s lines exactly how I stated, as far as what constituted “primitive” in the context of the 2260’s visual and technological basis as shown in TOS. I’m not sure why that’s so hard to understand.
Yet this is an utterly insufficient excuse for not having captives, if the identifying of the enemy (or, say, the getting back for Christmas, or the getting promoted, or whatever) depends on having those. If there is no brig, then space one of your own crew and give his cabin or space hammock to the all-important prisoner. Or at least sever the captive's head or other organ of suggested importance and put that in the fridge instead of the Thanksgiving turkey.
No, we need some other reason for why the very act of capturing anybody was ruled out. Then the issue of holding them becomes academic, as it always was: it shouldn't affect the heroes' inability to identify the enemy in any way.
The way Spock words it is perfectly acceptable: if one cannot show mercy/quarter, then the obvious suggestion is that the war is not fought with futuro-cutlasses in face-to-face boarding action but with weapons of mass destruction that annihilate the party that shoots last. But we learn nothing specific about this future way of waging war (that is, the past way that eventually went away and allowed our TOS heroes to return to their futuro-cutlasses). Which is good and well, and need not even contradict what we saw in ENT: perhaps ships that lack forcefield shielding can never survive a battle that involves boarding or conditions facilitating said?
Timo Saloniemi