I confess I expected to see a few Valdore still active. It was expected due to the short time passed since ST Nemesis and based upon the lifetime of other ships. Anyway, we have at least 3 new romulan ships. Nothing bad. Look at the screencaps. What bores me for now is that fighter cabin... https://imgur.com/a/U5oTgDM? Opnions?
I’m conflicted. I kinda like them, but that they’re so aerodynamic looking rubs me the wrong way. IT’S SPACE. And I don’t think these “warbirds” are atmospheric craft. Which would change things. Also, it’s unfortunate they didn’t stick with more out-there designs like the D’Deridex for the Romulans and went straight (boring) bird for the high-polygon Valdore. That tri-hull design made them more puzzling and alien.
They would have had to recreate the Valdore, since an 18 year old CGI model would not be compatible with today’s software. Same thing with the D’Deridex, which is even older. Therefore they chose to create new designs instead. However, the new warbird designs look like real-world jet fighters because the guy who designed them likes airplanes. I’m expecting that if we end up seeing the Starfleet ‘squadron’ Clancy sent, they’ll look like jets too. I liked the transport design, but the Snakehead fighter just looks like a nondescript alien design and not identifiably Romulan. And Commodore Oh’s ship looks like a green Cylon raider from nuBSG with its wings swept back instead of forward.
The ships look alright and clearly Romulan, they could be just be the ships that the Tal'Shiar use and we could see Valdore's and D'Deridex classes at some point (Laris and Zhaban to the rescue), we don't know if those ships are standard Romulan Free State Military or true Zhat Vash members, its definitely easier to build a large number of smaller ships in secret than the opposite. It looks like the majority of the ships we can see are pretty small, even the Commodore's ships doesn't look that big. They more than make up for it in numbers though. I do get the feeling that the Romulan Fleet may not be quite as powerful as it first appears though. It makes sense that the fleet would have a lot of aerodynamic fighters as they are going to have to go into the atmosphere to ensure that none of the synths survive or escape. The fleet is not really setup for a proper space battle, will be interesting to see what kind of firepower they have. I would like to see some payback for the attack on Mars.
They may not have the resources to build D’Deridex ships these days, but wouldn’t it be cool to see an old one, patched up, and in active service in some Romulan faction? Could you imagine some massive beak decloaking next to one of our smaller ones? Or La Sirena?
That's a good point about resources. Every new Romulan ship seems really small to be, tbh. That nice close up of the final ship near the end of 1x09 couldn't have been much larger than the (DS9) Defiant. Color, texture of the hull looked right to me. I was also expecting the "Snake Head" ships to combo together and form a snake-y looking thing. Maybe they'll do that to fight the Space Orchids. OP's right though. Be nice see a Valdore or two somewhere in ST:P. Christ, I still wanna see a fleet of "Antique" Romulan birds-of-prey, but I think that cameo in particular is one-and-done.
Since they described them as Warbirds I was expecting to see exactly that, was majorly disappointed when the big reveal came and they looked nothing like TNG/DS9/VOY Warbirds.
And it's stupid that Kurtzman era Trek is still running with the idea of broad, open bridge windows on larger starships for a decade now and it still doesn't look right, after the novelty worn out.
I guess the Romulans are going for pure numbers and overwhelming enemies that way now? I mean stuff like the D'deridex wouldn't really be as intimidating these days, simply because the Romulans lost their mystique in the Dominion War and their Empire being devastated. I always thought the D'dreidex was more for show than actually stronger than a Galaxy class. Perhaps the Romulans saw the effectiveness of the Jem'Hadar fighters and adapted to those kinds of tactics? I'll be very disappointed if the Federation had adopted similar, smaller fighter style ships though. Especially since their fighters were flying coffins during the Dominion War.
The D'Deridex was always considered to at least be a match for a Galaxy class, we never got to see if it was superior in an even fight although it was confirmed that the Galaxy class was faster. Neither Starfleet nor the Romulans seemed to want to find out during TNG, the Romulans have always preferred to keep it a grey area. It would make sense that the Klingons, Romulans and Starfleet learned some valuable lessons from the Dominion War, especially the value in having smaller escort ships in good numbers for tactical flexibility if nothing else, personally I think all mid sized ships should be deployed in groups of 2 or 3 and anything larger should have at least two small escorts like the Defiant class or similar. The best force is a balanced one, the Romulan fleet we see has probably been built up over time by Commodore Oh as most Romulans don't believe the Zhat Vash exist, so I don't necessarily see it as a true representation of the Romulan Military as a whole.
I gather the fleet of this secret cabal has every right to resemble that of S31 in DSC: the bulk of it is special purpose vessels, very special, optimized for the weird job the cabal has undertaken. S31 had fancy low-signature spyships for insertion and extraction and drone action and whatnot. Zhat Vash might have built up for the inevitable invasion of the AI homeworld instead. Although I don't quite see what they would hope to win by invading in winged spacecraft - surely they expect to be outgunned by this evil AI they so fear and loathe, and surely their best bet would be to deliver a WMD or a million in a maximally surprising way? Flying all the way down to the surface would appear the antithesis of that. Especially as half the force appears to consist of the glorified shuttlebuses transporting personnel to and from the Artifact. I do like the idea of Oh only commanding midget ships, even if plenty of them. But it makes me wonder what happened to all the behemoths, and why Oh isn't concerned some of those will show up and ruin her day. All that said, the winged transports are excellent for their job, dramatically, aesthetically and by in-universe logic. The two new designs from the most recent ep, perhaps not so much. And the scout just continues the long Trek tradition of building a minimal shape around a cockpit that exists as a prop, and is fine as such, plus good continuity... Timo Saloniemi
I don’t know why these wouldn’t be either 1) every single ship the Tal Shiar has, or 2) regular Romulan military. We know per Rizzo that the Tal Shiar has ships. And this mission is Zhat Vash’s entire purpose for existing, so it’s come now or forever hold your peace. At the same time, these look exactly like all the Romulan ships we saw standard guarding the Artifact. Maybe a smaller craft is all the Star Navy can afford atm. One final note on the D’Deridex: it might also be cool to see one in civilian or non-Romulan service, all patched up and in different colors or with materials. A real garbage scowl mf-er salvaged from somewhere by pirates or whomever.
Yeah, I get the impression that these are standard 2399-era Romulan warbirds, and the Tal Shiar have co-opted 218 of them for their own use. Either that, or these 218 ships are the entirety of the Romulan fleet, and the Tal Shiar is in total control of them.
Several disruptor shots lowered the Enterprise's shields by 70 percent. I'd imagine if they wanted to, with a few more shots, they could've destroyed the ship outright very easily.
...and because (as far as I know) the Valdore model from Nemesis has been lost. I like the design of the Valdore much more than any of the newly designed Romulan ships though, in fact it is my favorite alien ship from ST. I would've loved to see it recreated for PIC.
I really don’t see them recreating old designs unless there’s a specific reason for them to do so (i.e. the Enterprise-D for the dream sequence.) It’s been 20 years in-universe since Nemesis ended, and I think the days of the D’Deridex, K’t’inga, Klingon BoP, Vor’cha, Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, Nebula, Ambassador, etc. are long over.
Was there a specific reason for recreating the TOS Bird-of-Prey? The Valdore also looked like a brand-new, really modern ship when it appeared in Nemesis, and even in 2020 it looks more stylish to me than a lot of ships we've seen in the meantime.