TOS Romulan BOP?

[James Wright]

In TOS the Enterprise was 947 feet long, 417 wide & 238 feet high, does anybody know if any such dimension were developed for the Romulan BOP?
Who designed the Romulan ship for TOS?

JDW

 

[Cary L. Brown]

In TOS the Enterprise was 947 feet long, 417 wide & 238 feet high, does anybody know if any such dimension were developed for the Romulan BOP?
Who designed the Romulan ship for TOS?

JDW

No official size was ever given. There are two basic sizes which have been toyed with, however... one based upon assuming that the little (invisible on-screen) "dots" were full-sized porthole windows which identify deck thicknesses, and one based upon Roman rank structure carried over for the Romulans which then gave a general crew complement... and then assumed the same basic billeting style as used on modern submarines.

The first gives a pretty big ship, comparable to the Enterprise, but seems inconsistent with the "cramped interior" we see on-screen, and with the relatively low ranks (assuming the Roman equivalency) of the senior personnel.

The second gives a much smaller ship, but puts the "portholes" in the wrong locations for deck layout (basically two rows of "dots" per deck).

I prefer the second approach, as well as the idea that the "portholes" aren't that at all, but are in fact sensors. The first time I saw this was on the old 1970s blueprints by Mike McMaster (which are, to this day, among my favorite Trek items in my collection).

As for who designed the ship, it was a fellow named Wah Chang. He, along with Bill Theis (for costumes), Irving Feinberger (for "generic props" and set dressing) and Matt Jeffries (for the ships and sets) created the entire look of Star Trek.

Wah Chang designed some of the aliens we saw early on in the series (I think the Salt Vampire and Balok were his, weren't they?). He designed the phaser, the communicator, and the tricorder. And he did the Romulan Bird of Prey.

My understanding is that he got to take the Romulan model with him when he left Paramount (explaining why they had to use the Klingon model or "stock footage" later on). I also have been led to believe that Mike McMaster got to inspect the model while in the possession of Mr. Chang, and to talk to Mr. Chang, in the process of doing his blueprints. But that's all rumor; I have no hard evidence of either of those things.

Your best bet to find information re: the classic Romulan Bird of Prey is to find McMaster's blueprints. I believe that there's a website where you can download reduced-resolution copies, though I won't comment on the legality of that. Unfortunately, they've been out of print for many years, and McMaster died a long time ago. Wah Chang was still alive a few years back but I believe he's since passed as well.

 

[JNG]

I have the McMaster blueprints, but not handy. I think he made it about 68 meters long or so.

Frankly, I always thought that the Romulans standing in a small room being used as an argument for a extra-small ship was pretty silly. It seems clear that the ship was intended to be a major threat against the Enterprise. There was a version of the script for "Balance of Terror" where the Romulans were flying a ship just like the Enterprise (!), having obtained the know-how to build it via espionage. In a later draft, the ship was distinctively alien, but there were still references to its using technology obtained via espionage. These lines were intended to build on the tension of the aliens resembling Mr. Spock and it is a bummer they didn't carry through, but I suspect the overall shape of the Romulan ship and particularly the easily recognizable warp nacelles were crafted with these impressions in mind.

As for the Romulan ranks, it looks to me like a full Commander was something like a Commodore and had nominal authority over several ships in "The Enterprise Incident," where a ship's commanding officer was "Subcommander." This is consistent with "Balance of Terror" in that its CO is also a Commander, as we might expect of someone commanding "the Praetor's finest and proudest flagship." In any event, I don't see anything unusual about this rank, and since this was the first appearance of Romulan command structure in any form, it is hard to imagine that much about the size of the ship can be concluded from these ranks either way.

Because of the line about being a flagship, because it was sent on a long-range mission of such importance, and because it nearly defeated the Enterprise, I certainly see no particular reason to assume it would be tiny compared some of its contemporaries. Thus I think I can get behind the size depicted on the size chart in the Star Trek Encyclopedia, which makes the ship around 131 meters long.

It is correct that Wah Chang has passed away. His contributions to Trek, and his own personal art, were impressive. The TOS Romulan Bird of Prey is one of my favorite ships and I have a Johnny Lightning toy version still stalking the Enterprise across the battleground of my shelf.

 

[Unicron]

According to The Making of Star Trek, a commander was indeed equivalent to a flag officer like a commodore or admiral, while a subcommander was equivalent to a Starfleet captain.

 

[Albertese]

...
Wah Chang designed some of the aliens we saw early on in the series (I think the Salt Vampire and Balok were his, weren't they?). He designed the phaser, the communicator, and the tricorder. And he did the Romulan Bird of Prey.

...

I might have this backwards but I thought he designed he laser used in "The Cage" and Jefferies designed the 2-in-1 phaser. Seems like that's how it was in the Star Trek Scrapbook.

 

[Robert Simmons]

The origional Lou Zocchi miniatures based off the Frans Joseph Tech manual and his 1977 Star Fleet Battle Manual game amd later for the Starline 2200 minitures line for Star Fleet Battles which packaged the Zocchi minitures, had the Romulan Bird of Prey roughly 1/3 the size of the Enterprise. This is before they revised the miniature to a larger size to about close to the length of the Enterrpise and much wider for the Starline 2400 miniatures for Star Fleet Battles. The micromachines that were released of the Trek ships in the 1990s was about hte same scale as the later SFB redo for the Romulan ship.

I personally prefer the smaller 1/3 size version to the Enterprise. Given how it was shown in BOT, I'm enclined to the interpritation that it much smaller than the Enterprise.

 

[James Wright]

If the Romulan ship seen in TOS is as small as you speculate and only capable of traveling on impulse power how did the Romulans build an empire?
It was stated in the episode that the ship appeared that the vessel only had impulse power correct?

JDW

 

[Robert Simmons]

Everything can't be reconciled. It was just a TV series. But your question does need to be addressed.

The Romulan ship is mentioned to have impulse power in "Balance Of Terror". My best guess factoring everything is the Romulans had built up an Empire in a densly populated small area of space. ( When we hear Empire we think a large area. But that isn't always the case and may not be in this instance. The Federation as a non-empire was spread out over a large area. And The Romulan Empire may not have been spread out over a large area. And their having sub-light ships point to that...) When they were at war with the Earth they did not have the propulsion superior to impulse, probably due to they felt it was not needed if the front line was on their doorstep. Even though Romulus and Remus on the map appear to be a good distance from the border, frontline ships probably wouldn't need warp if they were expected to fight in a localized campaign. That to me would point to several things to consider. First would be that the Romulans were caught off guard in the first Federo-Romulan War not expecting to have an opponent that could hold them in check, thus forcing the Treaty establishing the Neutral Zone. This would mean that Romulans as an Empire were caught unprepared without the ability to carry forward an offensive campaign due to the lack of a warp drive to push a capaign into enemy territory. ( Ours...) This would have mean a static war of attrition where the line was static due to limited technology at the time. Romulans lacked faster ships to press an offensive campaign, and the Federation even though having a superior ability in this regard than the Romulans lacked anything better to drive the war to Romulus to victory. So...Feds could push an long range offensive war clear out to the border ...just only to fight on the Romulans doorstep.....but short of going all the way and can't clinche it...and the Romulans having the war basically on their doorstep didn't have the long range warp speed ships to press a campaign back into Fedration territory. Thus as a result a treaty boundry was established at the outermost range of the Romulans capabilities to rule by force thus not placing themselves in a position of overextending themselves. ( No doubt they didn't let us know this in negotiating the treaty...) Best to save face by not biting off more than you can chew than embarassing yourself trying. So in this way I think the Romulan were humiliated by going to war with a superior foe technically who has much faster ships but equal armament......but NOT attaining victory for the Romulans. But it did evidently forge a desire to press beyond the limitation of the treaty boundy in the quest to expand what they could in the first war with Earth. It seems to me that the conflict came about as we were expanding out into space exploring as how we encountered the Romulans who naturally conquered everyone they came into contact with. So they ( I speculate...) true to form tried to conquer us like they did to so many other races and worlds they came into contact with. Execept in this case they went to war with a race that was far from their home and their reach. That was a saving grace for Earth, in that they Romulans could not if they tried to expand their empire much into Federation territory due to their lack of better propulsion. Bascially cutting them off at the kness in the abliity of winnning a war agaisnt Earth. So we were spared any threat by the treaty establishing the neutral zone since it was a long way from Earth. So the attack seen in "Balance Of Terror" was no doubt to test to see if they could do better than they did in the first war. In the first war they used atomic weapons an primitive ships to quote Spock. So now they come again in BOT with their new wonder weapon...the plasma...BUT no real improvement in propulsion in the 100 year interim. So the Romulans basically are trying to see if we are able to deal with their progress. Yeah they had the brand new wonder weapon. But it really didn't matter since it is a short range weapon intended for use against slower moving objects like they fought in the first war. ( Which mean they didn't factor that into designing it since it evidently worked well up to that point...which would point to a huge oversight on the Romulans to overlook this as a possabliity to consider...) But our advances in 100 years were propulsion...not weapons. But what good tactically is a huge weapon....if your opponent can go faster than you and come close to outrunning your weapon to render it virtually useless? Plus we had the benefit of the tactical insight gleaned from the battle and from the briefing prior to Kirk forcing the engagement. He stumbled.....but shrewdly adapted well on the fly as the engagement beagn to tell him clues as to how the Romulan was fighting, and how and when and in what manner based of what his weaknesses are. And weaknesses in the form of not doing more in a fight.....when determined often will spell out limitations in capability to an opponent. And that translates into tactics to adhere to that..... or compensate for that. And Kirk was able to read not only what the Romulan was doing...but how he was doing it and what he WAS NOT DOING. You can tell what your opponent can't do based off what he is avoiding to do...or won't do in a battle. And Kirk played this insight to his advantage by noting that the Romulan wasn't doing doing two distinct things he demonstrated he could do....but not together at the same time. Basically the Bird of Prey couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. Can't cloak and shoot at the same time? Okay.....that points to limitations...in this case power. Like Stiles suggested...shoot at them while they are cloaked since they are not shooting at you when they are cloaked. How do you shoot at a target you can't see? When hey leave a visible trail that uncertrainty is voided. Almost a sure kill. that is IF you don't do something STUPID and IF you are careful.

I could go on...but I think the point has been made. I think the Romulans were using a ship they expected to be the rule of thumb based off what hey expected from the first war with Earth. But they were evidently wrong in that our progress was in other areas that checked that.

As to the size. I think the size is appropriate being much smaller based on what I have typed from above. All I have based it on is looking at Balance of Terror and TOS Trek ONLY. For the sake of this I tossed everything not TOS out to keep it simple.

I hope that didn't make the answer too confusing?

Hope this helped....

 

[Mister_Atoz]

It's similar to what I was saying in the other Romulan post, the Romulans may have been "fighting the last war" in their minds as tends to be the case. Many people at the start of world war two thought it would be fought very much in the way the first world war had.

Here is another thought; what if the terms of the treaty prevented the Romulans from developing warp technology. The reference to the neutral zone in Balance of Terror really makes it sound like it's designed to prevent the Romulans from even forming an empire, a sort of galactic North Korea situation. It could be surmised that this larger Romulan empire we are so used to didn't start until acquired Klingon ships and started to become a formidable power again. This would also give some credibility to Anthony Zerbe's line in INS about Warp Drive turning Romulan thugs into an empire. Of course this is all speculation and I'm sure violates a whole whack of stuff established in later Trek. But I personally choose to ignore any 'facts' established about the Romulans from any series that would dress them in those ridiculous sqaure uniforms and shoulder pads.

 

[Unicron]

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how plausible it is. The Romulans had already been a separate people for more than two hundred years at that point (VOY's "Death Wish" established that they fought a war with the Vulcans prior to ENT), and this sort of containment would seem to require more resources than a simple demilitarized zone.

 

[Robert Simmons]

Here is another thought; what if the terms of the treaty prevented the Romulans from developing warp technology.

If it ever was the terms of the treaty which I doubt, usually any agressor would fell compelled to disregard it as a hinderance, and not abide by it in secret like so many previous historical agressors have demonstrated. The Romulans not having warp was obviously a advantage to us. But with them showing up again in BOT with now a much different weapon and a cloaking device did re-introduce them as a "potentially serious threat". But due their not having the ships to press a long range fight it was basically moot after their defeat in BOT. But with the introduction of warp capable Klingon hulls, this threw the equation radially. We figured out how to beat them with the new plasma by playing their shortcomings. They had a cloak which we did the same in return. Even combining these threats mean that they were not much of a threat beyond their local region. But introducting the warp ships now throws all that to the wind. We couldn't take any of these technologies away from them or negate them. In fact the introduction of warp to the Romulans now escalated the threat. So the only solution was to try to negate the Romulan cloak to where it was ineffective. But to do that you must get your hands on on to study how it works in how to render it useless. Hence the episode "The Enterprise Incident " to follow this line of reasoning. With the introduction of warp the Romulan plasma and cloak that are frightening TACTICALLY in a localized fight that got relegated to irreelevance in NOT, now become frightently a REAL threat strategically now that the Romulans have the means to PROJECT those capabilites STATEGICALLY over long distances fast. So for me the Romulans are to be taken more seriously not in BOT where they had impulse, but later when they got warp capabilites to where they could project their capabilites over long distances.

 

[James Wright]

After looking at the Romulan ship again I noticed how it's design and that of the Daedalus class are similar, they're both small ships, could the Romulan have seen a Daedalus class ship somewhere abouts and designed their BOP?

JDW

 

[Robert Simmons]

Beats me.....

 

[Cary L. Brown]

This is one of the things that just totally annoys me about "fannish" ideas about starship design. The EXTERIOR SHAPE isn't what makes a ship what it is. You could have two ships of identical shape which would be totally unrelated in every meaningful way.

This is why I've always held that the "refit Enterprise" was a different class of ship. In every meaningful way except what it LOOKED like, it was different. It had a different power output, a different top speed, a different cargo capacity, a different sensor suite, different weaponry... and when you get right down to it, it wasn't even the same shape, just a similar shape.

So, let's suppose that the Romulans saw the exterior configuration of a Federation starship. Would that let them replicate the TECHNOLOGY within that ship in any way? Probably not.

There are issues in "fanon" having to do with ship configurations being more, or less, "warp dynamic" (think "subspace aerodyanamics" and you'll follow). And if you look at modern MiG fighters and modern US fighters, they often look quite similar. But does that mean that one is the COPY of the other, or that they happened to be developed in-parallel (using similar approaches, perhaps) and the actual laws of physics guided them towards similar configurations? I tend to think the latter, rather than the former... because I've seen REALITY guide separate design teams to nearly identical solutions many times. And every single time, the people outside of the engineering teams always assume that one of the teams "had to have copied off of the other team."

Of course, there's also the fact that the Romulan BOP doesn't look all THAT much like the Enterprise... certainly not in any way which would be representative of "subspace aerodynamics."

If you wanted to draw parallels between the BOP and Federationships, you could, though. You might notice that the exact same hull construction was used (some combination of laminated plating with some combination of coatings on the outside, maybe?) which would look awfully familiar. You might notice the power generation of the other ship would be operating on the exact same frequency with the exact same set of harmonics. You might notice the impulse thrust system was putting out the same set of particles in the same ratio, and at the same energy levels (ie, the "exhaust is the same temperature and smells the same").

Oh, and you might notice that the FTL propulsion system nacelles are constructed similarly to, and output energy and heat in the same way, as your own.

It's not enough to be proof, but it might feel a bit coincidental.

The point I'm making is that the "look of the ship" isn't what you'd care about. You'd care about the individual bits and pieces, the materials, the detectable technologies. The "ship shape" would be the least significant thing to look at.

The TMP Enterprise couldn't have been made by "copying the shape" of the TOS one... and it wasn't in any meaningful way the original ship (from construction to technology to capabilities, everything was different).

"Same shape" isn't an indication of copying.

"Same technology" would be.

That's my point.

 

[shipfisher]

Just a related question here - Is there a majority opinion out there as to the main power source of the BoP? Over at the Starfleet Museum it's a fusion powered "Cricket" class (with maybe a constantly cloaked deuterium/tritium/helium3 tank in tow or tanker nearby to make this workable - warp capability is assumed at SFM). Could it be a m:am core (cultural strictures preventing this are suggested over at SFM) or is the romulan "quantum singularity" tech up and running in TOS?

It's a basic assumption by many in fandom that fed ships will eventually replace m:am cores with some sort of quantum zero point Lorentz field power tap some time after TNG - I'd hope this is in some way more efficient and powerful than a romulan power source that may have been in use as far back as the mid-23rd century.

 

[James Wright]

Now friend, I didn't say anything about the shape of the ship, I said the Romulan's probably saw a Daedalus class starship patrolling near their border and made extensive sensor scans of the ship and speculated as to its capabilities and decided their BOP didn't need all of the capabilities,aka warp drive!

JDW

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Regarding the (canon) statement in "Balance of Terror" that the BOP was "powered by simple impulse," there are multiple possible answers to what that means. I have my own personal favorite but I'll put others out here as well.

1) "Simple impulse" refers to the power source, not the propulsion methodology. This is unreasonable to me, since "impulse" is a term which is at the core of all motion-oriented physics aka "dynamics" to engineers. Impulse simply means the application of a force over a period of time. To attempt to redefine that is sort of like trying to redefine the word "speed." It's just not gonna happen.

2) The ship can only operate one of its high-power-requirement systems at a time. I kind of like this one... though I didn't come up with it myself, of course, it fits things pretty well (provided you don't also try to make other Trek stories involving non-warp FTL travel also make sense). The basic idea is that the reactor can power the cloak, or the FTL drive, or the main weapon, but not more than one of them at a time. This is well-supported by the idea that the ship had to decloak to fire. In other words... if they went to warp, they'd have lost their stealth capability. The only major quibbles I have with this are (a) it doesn't QUITE fit with what the in-episode dialog seems to infer, and (b) it doesn't help to explain other Trek episodes ("Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Menagerie," etc) where ships without warp drive clearly move FTL.

3) The Romulans never had warp drive 'til after "Balance of Terror." This sounds good to people who've never really done the math and don't quite get just how BIG space is. Realize that light takes the better part of a DECADE to travel from our sun to the next closest star. If this were the case... the idea of an "interstellar war" between Earth and the Romulan Empire seems... pretty implausible. There would be centuries between engagements!

4) Or, my personal favorite (because it fits EVERYTHING)... "Warp Drive" is one name for one specific form of FTL travel. There are others, and it's possible to use Newtonian thrust-based propulsion to achieve FTL speeds (albeit not with JUST thrust!) This is an idea that I came up with (and posted on here for the first time about two years ago) to reconcile all the various bits in Trek that would never work if impulse wasn't FTL, but which also allows impulse to mean what it means in reality.

The idea is that early FTL ships didn't use "warp drive," they simply wrapped themselves in a static subspace bubble (one which is not warped, but which is perfectly symmetrical). We know that in Trekdom, subspace reduces the apparent mass of objects (allowing, for instance, the 1701-D to move a massive asteroid by wrapping it in a subspace field and reducing its mass) and would seem to alter the "local speed of light" inside the bubble, allowing objects inside of it to move extraordinarily fast using simple thrusters (see the pilot to Deep Space 9).

We know that in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the 1701 lost its "warp drive" but was still able to travel to another star system in a matter of days (or maybe weeks?) without functional warp drive. We know that an "impulse only" shuttlecraft was able to pursue the 1701 out of starbase, though it fell behind, in "The Menagerie." Neither of these makes any sense if "impulse" is only sublight.

SO... FTL "impulse drive" is a hybrid system. Basically, you use your newtonian thrust-based system but you put yourself inside of a subspace bubble which allows you to move a lot faster than you'd be able to move if you were in REAL space. The reduced mass allows low fuel consumption and ridiculous accelerations (relative to real space) with minimal inertial effects. The increased local speed of light inside of the bubble allows you to move at non-relativistic speeds WITHIN SUBSPACE (far faster than it would be in real space). I chose ~75C (ie, equivalent to WF4.2) as my limit where you can travel in a subspace bubble without encountering relativistic effects... this is the "Time barrier" which Jose Tyler mentioned in "The Cage."

Some folks don't like this idea... but it's the ONLY one I've ever heard put out there which fits with everything we've seen to date. It allows for everything... including the limited survivability of separated saucers in deep space!

It makes the idea that shuttlecraft are "impulse only" fit with the fact that they have nacelles (those aren't "warp drive nacelles," only the static subspace field generators). It allows "WNMHGB" to be "true" without any retconning. It allows "Balance of Terror" to be true without any retconning. It fits with REAL physics as well as established "Treknology" physics.

It also gives a likely "path to the next technology." Presumably, it would be possible for a "static subspace field generator" to become damaged or out-of-balance. An accident may have occurred where one went out of balance and resulted in the first truly non-newtonian "surfing on subspace" event... probably scaring the hell out of the ship's crew in the process... and leading to the development of a controlled mechanism to use this effect which would be EVOLUTIONARY beyond what was seen before.

It would require a lot of computational processing to manipulate a subspace field in a useful fashion. So when the Enterprise's computers were fried out in the barrier in WNMHGB, they lost the ability to travel at "warp" but could still energize the coils in the nacelles to create a static bubble which allowed them to "limp" to a location where the necessary replacement computer hardware could be scavenged.

That's my personal "preferred explanation." Your mileage may vary... but I doubt very much anyone will come up with another explanation which better fits everything we've seen throughout the life of the "Trek" universe.

 

[shipfisher]

If I get what you're saying Cary, then the subspace field used in impulse drive "moves the goal post" so to speak, in terms of what velocity light actually has inside the local field? You'd have FTL velocity relative to "normal" space without breaking the rules - an end-run around ol' Albert E. - more plausible than quite a lot of trek tech we've all taken for granted as it is.

Might it be plausible as well that once you start "surfing" subspace with warp drive, your warp factor is actually multiplying a "subspace modified" value of c, perhaps explaining velocity variations often ascribed to "chi factors" and such?

 

[Plecostomus]

Assumption #5: Scotty could have been WRONG. It happens.

 

[James Wright]

When the script was written for "Balance of Terror", who had the idea to make the Romulan ship impulse capable and not warp capable?

JDW