No evidence but strong suggestion. They probably went into the system, got "tagged", and then got invited down then disintegrated.
A question about the episode 'A Taste of Armageddon'.
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No evidence but strong suggestion. They probably went into the system, got "tagged", and then got invited down then disintegrated.
Wouldn't there be a clearer mention, then, that the ship went missing at Eminiar, rather than some time after reaching Eminiar?
It's also pretty difficult to see how the inviting down thing would have worked any better on the other ship. And it's not as if the Eminians could have done anything had the Valiant opted to depart.
But it's possible they would have fired upon the ship on orbit when the shields were down - which in turn would mean there were no hostilities, which in turn would mean we lack any motivation on firing at the ship... Plus we lack any rationale for why Anan 7 didn't do the same thing to Kirk's ship but went with this silly "please beam down to your deaths" scheme instead.
Timo Saloniemi
It's also pretty difficult to see how the inviting down thing would have worked any better on the other ship. And it's not as if the Eminians could have done anything had the Valiant opted to depart.
But it's possible they would have fired upon the ship on orbit when the shields were down - which in turn would mean there were no hostilities, which in turn would mean we lack any motivation on firing at the ship... Plus we lack any rationale for why Anan 7 didn't do the same thing to Kirk's ship but went with this silly "please beam down to your deaths" scheme instead.
Timo Saloniemi
...I have to take that back. When Kirk's ship is "destroyed", the Eminians specifically gasp "Just as it happened fifty years ago!".
One wonders, though - didn't they learn anything from that previous event? Anan 7 feels they might need "a security detachment", supposedly as per his previous experiences (or familiarity with historical records). Why not immediately fire at the unshielded starship to destroy it for real?
Timo Saloniemi
One wonders, though - didn't they learn anything from that previous event? Anan 7 feels they might need "a security detachment", supposedly as per his previous experiences (or familiarity with historical records). Why not immediately fire at the unshielded starship to destroy it for real?
Timo Saloniemi
Most Captains aren't quite as savvy as Kirk and it's very likely they were a bit smarter about the subject the first time around.
In general I would think it impossible to beam through shields either way – a rather delicate operation requiring a clear signal. Phasers and torpedoes can likely go through them with relative ease since they are not so delicate or intricate or easy to disrupt or carrying kiloquads (or whatever) of information. Though Scotty does seem to think Phaser power would be lessened if shooting through the screens.
DEPAUL: All stations reporting. Deflector screens rigged at full power. Phaser crews ready. Sensors reading zero. Correction. Mister Scott.
SCOTT: Yes, Mister DePaul?
DEPAUL: Sensor readings just shot off the scale.
SCOTT: Well, now. They're taking pot shots at us. Holding, Mister DePaul?
DEPAUL: Screens firm, sir. Extremely powerful sonic vibrations. Decibels eighteen to the twelfth power. If those screens weren't up, we'd be totally disrupted by now.
MCCOY: Well, I guess that answers our questions, Mister Scott. They're not very friendly, are they?
SCOTT: Aye, but what about our Captain and the landing party down there somewhere?
MCCOY: We get them out.
SCOTT: If they're alive, and if we can find them. That's a big planet.
MCCOY: Not too big for the Enterprise to handle if it has to.
SCOTT: We can't fire full phasers with our screens up, and We can't lower our screens with their disruptors on us. Of course I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes.
FOX: (entering the Bridge) You'll do no such thing, Mister Scott.
SCOTT: Mister Fox, we're under attack. They're trying to knock us down.
FOX: You have taken defensive measures.
SCOTT: Of course, but
FOX: There are no buts. Obviously it's a misunderstanding, and one of my jobs is to clear up misunderstandings.
While the Enterprise eventually orbited out of range of the sonic weapons (which might not work in space at all since they are sonic, but might have worked before if they were at the edge of the atmosphere or in lower orbit) the transporter beam has greater range than those sonic weapons. Fox wanted them lowered as a sign of good faith, but Scott refused. I always just assumed the Enterprise went out of range of the sonic weapons, lowered the screens, and beamed Fox down from there. As for their incredible power, the shield's easily shrugged those off as pretty inconsequential, even when they were in range.
Injured? I always assumed Fox's aid was killed. He wasn't moving at all when they left him, IIRC.
Never understood why the leaders of that society couldn't just order 430 extra citizens to the disintegration chambers to prevent war (sure, they might have to lie and say, sorry, you were killed in the last attack, even though they really weren't, how are those willing lambs to the slaughter going to find out or object? They're already killing 8 to 9 thousand every day on average (3 million a year) – what's 430 more?
He couldn't just target the ship and destroy it outright since they might have failed (Fed shields easily outmatch their puny weapons) so that would have alerted the Feds to their hostile actions.
I've often assumed general order 24 was a well-played bluff. Scott would act the part, but we don't actually see him giving orders to lock on those targets – just the verbal message to the planet, which isn't necessary if you are just going to destroy them, but is absolutely necessary if it's a bluff. Even when Kirk says if they don't hear from them in 10 minutes, to carry out order 24 as ordered – he might be doing it for the benefit of the councilmen.
Uhura's surprise reaction could just mean she (and probably anybody not in the direct chain off command) wasn't in the loop. But if it isa bluff, you have to make such assumptions.
However, after they appear to have won, Kirk cancels the order. This suggests it's a real thing and not just a bluff. And there is no good reason to tell Scott to stop bluffing since they were going right home, and Kirk could tell him in person.
The reason I dislike the likelihood it is NOT a bluff is because it's a horribly unethical thing to do. In fact, it's so bad, I think the official word is general order 24 is no longer on the books as an option (but that's non canon stuff).
It is a wonder, and inconsistent, probably, the Enterprise can't locate the "humans" or a vulcan and beam them to safety most any time, so this whole idea of easily using scanners to find such minute differences is probably not as easy as it sounds. For a ship right there with nothing but space between, maybe, but for a planet, through atmosphere, through buildings, through underground complexes, it's probably impossible to discern that level of detail and just recuse them with transporters, and that's why it isn't happening left and right. And that assumes you know about where to look. With transporter tech, the planet's transporters or whatever transportation device they use could move the landing party thousands of miles away, so where do you look on a huge planet? Looking at one ship is incredibly easy in comparison.
The subcutaneous things were in Patterns of Force – Not Bread and Circuses, but I see somebody mentioned that. TOS Transporters need to normally lock on to a communicator signal or be given exact coordinates – or lock on to a transponder. For a close ship, like in The Enterprise Incident, they could find the vulcan since there was no interference between the transporter and scanners – but normally there is.
Weird, though, that with the beaming going on in the episode The Enterprise Incident, it would seem everybody's shields are always down, and I kind of doubt that would be the likely position with war ships facing each other – so that's a writer's screw up, IMO.
DEPAUL: All stations reporting. Deflector screens rigged at full power. Phaser crews ready. Sensors reading zero. Correction. Mister Scott.
SCOTT: Yes, Mister DePaul?
DEPAUL: Sensor readings just shot off the scale.
SCOTT: Well, now. They're taking pot shots at us. Holding, Mister DePaul?
DEPAUL: Screens firm, sir. Extremely powerful sonic vibrations. Decibels eighteen to the twelfth power. If those screens weren't up, we'd be totally disrupted by now.
MCCOY: Well, I guess that answers our questions, Mister Scott. They're not very friendly, are they?
SCOTT: Aye, but what about our Captain and the landing party down there somewhere?
MCCOY: We get them out.
SCOTT: If they're alive, and if we can find them. That's a big planet.
MCCOY: Not too big for the Enterprise to handle if it has to.
SCOTT: We can't fire full phasers with our screens up, and We can't lower our screens with their disruptors on us. Of course I could treat them to a few dozen photon torpedoes.
FOX: (entering the Bridge) You'll do no such thing, Mister Scott.
SCOTT: Mister Fox, we're under attack. They're trying to knock us down.
FOX: You have taken defensive measures.
SCOTT: Of course, but
FOX: There are no buts. Obviously it's a misunderstanding, and one of my jobs is to clear up misunderstandings.
While the Enterprise eventually orbited out of range of the sonic weapons (which might not work in space at all since they are sonic, but might have worked before if they were at the edge of the atmosphere or in lower orbit) the transporter beam has greater range than those sonic weapons. Fox wanted them lowered as a sign of good faith, but Scott refused. I always just assumed the Enterprise went out of range of the sonic weapons, lowered the screens, and beamed Fox down from there. As for their incredible power, the shield's easily shrugged those off as pretty inconsequential, even when they were in range.
Injured? I always assumed Fox's aid was killed. He wasn't moving at all when they left him, IIRC.
Never understood why the leaders of that society couldn't just order 430 extra citizens to the disintegration chambers to prevent war (sure, they might have to lie and say, sorry, you were killed in the last attack, even though they really weren't, how are those willing lambs to the slaughter going to find out or object? They're already killing 8 to 9 thousand every day on average (3 million a year) – what's 430 more?
He couldn't just target the ship and destroy it outright since they might have failed (Fed shields easily outmatch their puny weapons) so that would have alerted the Feds to their hostile actions.
I've often assumed general order 24 was a well-played bluff. Scott would act the part, but we don't actually see him giving orders to lock on those targets – just the verbal message to the planet, which isn't necessary if you are just going to destroy them, but is absolutely necessary if it's a bluff. Even when Kirk says if they don't hear from them in 10 minutes, to carry out order 24 as ordered – he might be doing it for the benefit of the councilmen.
Uhura's surprise reaction could just mean she (and probably anybody not in the direct chain off command) wasn't in the loop. But if it isa bluff, you have to make such assumptions.
However, after they appear to have won, Kirk cancels the order. This suggests it's a real thing and not just a bluff. And there is no good reason to tell Scott to stop bluffing since they were going right home, and Kirk could tell him in person.
The reason I dislike the likelihood it is NOT a bluff is because it's a horribly unethical thing to do. In fact, it's so bad, I think the official word is general order 24 is no longer on the books as an option (but that's non canon stuff).
It is a wonder, and inconsistent, probably, the Enterprise can't locate the "humans" or a vulcan and beam them to safety most any time, so this whole idea of easily using scanners to find such minute differences is probably not as easy as it sounds. For a ship right there with nothing but space between, maybe, but for a planet, through atmosphere, through buildings, through underground complexes, it's probably impossible to discern that level of detail and just recuse them with transporters, and that's why it isn't happening left and right. And that assumes you know about where to look. With transporter tech, the planet's transporters or whatever transportation device they use could move the landing party thousands of miles away, so where do you look on a huge planet? Looking at one ship is incredibly easy in comparison.
The subcutaneous things were in Patterns of Force – Not Bread and Circuses, but I see somebody mentioned that. TOS Transporters need to normally lock on to a communicator signal or be given exact coordinates – or lock on to a transponder. For a close ship, like in The Enterprise Incident, they could find the vulcan since there was no interference between the transporter and scanners – but normally there is.
Weird, though, that with the beaming going on in the episode The Enterprise Incident, it would seem everybody's shields are always down, and I kind of doubt that would be the likely position with war ships facing each other – so that's a writer's screw up, IMO.
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Something like that, though in Operation Annihilate there were still people down there they were trying to rescue. I do suppose if they determined it was impossible to save them, then they might kill the whole planet rather than let the infestation/infection/whatever move on to other worlds.
I'm confused, though, if they mean "all life" literally. To wipe everything out down to the smallest microbe? Incredible, and I suspect beyond the power of a starship. Well, without something like an illegal biogenic weapon or a genesis torpedo.
Garth gave General Order 24. His crew refused to obey.
Kirk gave it more than once, I think, but didn't call it that in Where No Man Has Gone Before. He just ordered a lethal concentration of radiation.
KIRK: If you have not received a signal from me within twelve hours, you'll proceed at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with my recommendation that this entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation. No protest on this, Mark. That's an order.
I gather it was used in a non canon novel or two and actually carried out, but I don't think it's canon fact they have ever used it.
I can't remember where I read they no longer had that order on the books as a viable option.
I'm confused, though, if they mean "all life" literally. To wipe everything out down to the smallest microbe? Incredible, and I suspect beyond the power of a starship. Well, without something like an illegal biogenic weapon or a genesis torpedo.
Garth gave General Order 24. His crew refused to obey.
Kirk gave it more than once, I think, but didn't call it that in Where No Man Has Gone Before. He just ordered a lethal concentration of radiation.
KIRK: If you have not received a signal from me within twelve hours, you'll proceed at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with my recommendation that this entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation. No protest on this, Mark. That's an order.
I gather it was used in a non canon novel or two and actually carried out, but I don't think it's canon fact they have ever used it.
I can't remember where I read they no longer had that order on the books as a viable option.
They wouldn't have shot at the Enterprise with real weapons because that was against their entire philsophy. It had to be computer controlled and voluntary, to protect the physical artifacts of their civilization. They were completely owned by this philosophy, and were trying to make everyone else follow it with equal conviction.
If this was made in the modern day, a dark twist would be fun - something like they haven't used that phone to the other side in so long, they never realized that they were fighting (and committing suicide) at the whim of a war computer - that its own population was already dead, extinct...... or had stopped playing for whatever reason... centuries before.... Whose people had an uprising about the death boxes and were like, oh hell no.
If this was made in the modern day, a dark twist would be fun - something like they haven't used that phone to the other side in so long, they never realized that they were fighting (and committing suicide) at the whim of a war computer - that its own population was already dead, extinct...... or had stopped playing for whatever reason... centuries before.... Whose people had an uprising about the death boxes and were like, oh hell no.
I though it might be darker to learn the other side had long ago found a way to cheat, and they never sent their own people to disintegration machines any more. They just said they were, and could fool the computers.
I like the idea they might want the ENT crew to volunteer, but they did have real sonic weapons at the ready, and knew quite well how to use them. It wasn't like they were, what, now how do we work these things again?
I like the idea they might want the ENT crew to volunteer, but they did have real sonic weapons at the ready, and knew quite well how to use them. It wasn't like they were, what, now how do we work these things again?
Except they did. At the drop of a hat. That is, right after hearing that Kirk had escaped. It's not much of a philosophical hurdle if it's also their Plan B all along, and if they're on a ten-second readiness to perform the act!
Why Anan 7 tried the "please beam down to your doom" approach first is unclear, as it couldn't have worked all that well with the Valiant crew, either. OTOH, if the Eminians had fired at the Valiant off the bat and destroyed her that way, they'd not know for sure that the beam-down lure would not work, so they might in theory be inclined to try it out. But it's a catch-22: why even bother to try when firing at 'em assuredly works?
As for it being difficult to locate the landing party, well, probably not. Generally, it would be against Scotty's orders to beam up the landing party whenever it went missing. Having Kirk killed by enraged natives would probably in the general case be less disastrous than having him dematerialize in the middle of his speech of "And as proof of my commitment to this cause and the sincerity of my words, I offer you this -".
Locating the party (that is, Spock) isn't difficult in "The Enterprise Incident". It's not even attempted in "A Taste of Armageddon". In which episode would it actually have been an issue?
Timo Saloniemi
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They can't beam up through the shields in "Arena," but later stories do allow it. They must have gotten a tech upgrade. The new shields might be able to open a small hole, and a transporter upgrade is sync'd to beam through that hole. It's no big deal safety-wise, like opening a keyhole in a suit of armor.
That's a good idea, and just what they would surely do in-universe.
The Enterprise's technology is either fast-improving, like hardware and software in our era, or just inconsistent as the show goes on.
As I've said elsewhere, "The Enterprise Incident" does not work as a plausible story unless the Romulan commander and at least several other Romulans were outright traitors working on the same mission that Kirk was sent on.
Maybe The Romulans just didn't think the crew had enough cojones to pull off such a feat that or they really believed that Spock and all Vulcans couldn't lie!
JB
JB
To open fire on a modern starship that you couldn't be sure you'd destroy is not what I'd expect somebody to try to do since that would alert the starship you were hostile, and when they have the power to destroy you in retaliation, you don't want to try that unless you have no choice. It's only after they fail to con them and Kirk is destroying their disintegration machines that they have lost the option and are obviously hostile (to all but Fox) that they might as well use that option, even if it probably won't work (and it doesn't). And not just barely doesn't work but doesn't even come close since their screens easily shrug off their feeble attacks. Pot shots, Scotty calls them. Oh they might have gotten lucky, but I've seen automated systems put up their screens before, too, just when some targeting scanner locks on them. And that ship might have endured a shot or two without screens long enough to put up screens even if they had been caught unaware, though they say if they had been hit and for that long without screens they would have been totally disrupted. So philosophy had little to do with it, and given the ready nature of their disrupters, I think that's clear.
The Valiant's crew may have been fooled and came down willingly, or its older design and tech may have succumbed to their disrupters, perhaps having been caught off guard with screens down. They do actually make note of the fact Scotty distrust them since he lost contact with the landing party so he put the screens in place beforehand.
I agree one should not yank the landing party out simply because you lost contact (unless previously told to do just that). Regular check in times, however, would and should be observed unless there is a problem, but without knowing the nature of the problem, you could make it worse by yanking them out. Here, however, they make note they wouldn't know where to start looking on such a large planet, so they can't scan for them, or there are reasons why. This isn't too surprising. How often do we see orders to maintain transporter lock on those they don't want to lose contact with? This active process is not normally done, and without reason to do it, they don't. And once you lose track of them, you assume the landing party will contact you with their communicators and you can lock in on that or be given new coordinates. Short of wearing transponders, there isn't much else you can do, and wearing transponders in high tech areas might just make you that much easier for the enemy to find you, too, if they have good tech, and cut it out of you, so this isn't normally done. In Patterns of Force, they were obviously primitive enough that the transponders wouldn't have been detected. In The Enterprise Incident, they were looking at one very small ship, and even that took time. Generally, they have no idea where to look.
I'm not sure in what stories they allow one to beam through shields, except when O'Brian knew the cycle of the ship's shields and had plenty of time to wait for it. Or are you saying you can name a story where they just beam up or over through shields? Seriously, the shields need to prevent stuff like that to prevent the enemy from beaming a nuke on board your shielded ship, so I find it hard to believe they just do that. In Abram's movies, when the Enterprise is light years away and traveling at warp, they probably have shields up or deflectors up or even a warp bubble up that should prevent that, but Abrams obviously doesn't care too much about Trek lore or any ideas that would get in the way of his story needs, so Transwarp beaming (a horrible idea) doesn't count in my book. I mean in TOS, or if you must, TNG or another made for TV Trek series, have they just casually beamed through shields?
Why do you think there were Romulans traitors in The Enterprise Incident? I could hunt for it, maybe, assuming it's in this thread, but I don't recall why it must be a traitor or couldn't be explained another way. Incompetence, for example.
The Valiant's crew may have been fooled and came down willingly, or its older design and tech may have succumbed to their disrupters, perhaps having been caught off guard with screens down. They do actually make note of the fact Scotty distrust them since he lost contact with the landing party so he put the screens in place beforehand.
I agree one should not yank the landing party out simply because you lost contact (unless previously told to do just that). Regular check in times, however, would and should be observed unless there is a problem, but without knowing the nature of the problem, you could make it worse by yanking them out. Here, however, they make note they wouldn't know where to start looking on such a large planet, so they can't scan for them, or there are reasons why. This isn't too surprising. How often do we see orders to maintain transporter lock on those they don't want to lose contact with? This active process is not normally done, and without reason to do it, they don't. And once you lose track of them, you assume the landing party will contact you with their communicators and you can lock in on that or be given new coordinates. Short of wearing transponders, there isn't much else you can do, and wearing transponders in high tech areas might just make you that much easier for the enemy to find you, too, if they have good tech, and cut it out of you, so this isn't normally done. In Patterns of Force, they were obviously primitive enough that the transponders wouldn't have been detected. In The Enterprise Incident, they were looking at one very small ship, and even that took time. Generally, they have no idea where to look.
I'm not sure in what stories they allow one to beam through shields, except when O'Brian knew the cycle of the ship's shields and had plenty of time to wait for it. Or are you saying you can name a story where they just beam up or over through shields? Seriously, the shields need to prevent stuff like that to prevent the enemy from beaming a nuke on board your shielded ship, so I find it hard to believe they just do that. In Abram's movies, when the Enterprise is light years away and traveling at warp, they probably have shields up or deflectors up or even a warp bubble up that should prevent that, but Abrams obviously doesn't care too much about Trek lore or any ideas that would get in the way of his story needs, so Transwarp beaming (a horrible idea) doesn't count in my book. I mean in TOS, or if you must, TNG or another made for TV Trek series, have they just casually beamed through shields?
Why do you think there were Romulans traitors in The Enterprise Incident? I could hunt for it, maybe, assuming it's in this thread, but I don't recall why it must be a traitor or couldn't be explained another way. Incompetence, for example.
Strange how a couple of them Romulan guys looked like Starfleet personnel though isn't it? 
JB
JB
It cuts the other way, too, though. If the Eminians knew that Starfleet ships are more resilient to attack if alerted, they'd certainly fire without trying subterfuge - they couldn't be sure the subterfuge would work, either, and if that failed, then the enemy would be alerted.
It appears the ship would have gone up in a fireball if Scotty had not kept the shields up. What we don't know is whether the shields ever were down. First Kirk orders them raised before they even approach the planet. Then Kirk beams down. Then Scotty says he's taking standard precautions, and then DePaul says the ship is shielded.
Did Kirk lower the shields for beaming down, and did Scotty only re-raise them when stating he's taking the precautions? In that case, the Eminians were idiots for not firing immediately, but merely unlucky, rather than idiotic, in firing at a shielded ship - they aimed at an unshielded one but ten seconds later hit shields anyway.
Did Kirk beam down through shields, like Fox later apparently did? It is only in that case that the Eminian choice of not firing immediately gets justification, especially if they know for a fact that their superguns can't hurt shields.
But trying to appear non-hostile is failure-prone in all cases, and if it fails, it's irrelevant whether firing at the ship failed or whether luring the people in failed.
Oh, they do know where to start - at the beam-down spot. And it's told multiple times the ship has the entire planet under surveillance. So what Scotty is specifically worried about here must be that he lost sensor contact with the Captain (not surprising, considering the adventure takes place in a bunker!) and considers the worst case scenarion that he has been whisked to some other location on the planet.
But barring active hiding measures, locating somebody is generally trivial in TOS. Spock among Romulans aboard a hostile starship? Two and a half lines of dialogue, if we include the command to start searching!
I mean, we need a bona fide example of heroes going missing without having been whisked to another dimension altogether. Does TOS have any to offer? In "Bread and Circuses", Scotty doesn't say he lost track of Kirk, only that he can't interfere - OTOH, he can "pinpoint" all sorts of stuff down on the planet. In pretty much every other adventure, the starship is prevented from doing either scanning or beaming, typically because she's under attack (say, "Return of the Archons") but sometimes because she's under orders ("Mark of Gideon").
There are quite a few TNG, DS9 and VOY eps where they don't specifically mention dropping the shields, but those eps don't actually spell out that the shields could not have been dropped. Say, "Relics" has plenty of time windows for briefly dropping the Jenolan shields even at the risk of letting the big doors trundle a bit closer to crushing the ship (indeed, most of the necessarily multi-minute flight of the E-D away from the central star is cut for brevity). Or "Dragon's Teeth" has ample opportunity for Tuvok to drop the shields even in the middle of combat, as the hero ship isn't in much danger even if getting hit unshielded a couple of times.
"A Taste of Armageddon" is different in that dropping of shields should spell immediate doom. It's possible that there was an unseen maneuver in which the ship left the range of the Eminian guns first, but this would be a strange thing for Scotty to do - because afterwards, he explicitly executesd departure to the maximum range of the ship's own guns. Why would he first order a lesser withdrawing?
No explication in the dialogue, at any rate. The one reason one might need a traitor in the mix is because a Mission: Impossible plot needs advance intel to work, and Starfleet can't get advance intel on the Star Empire without traitors. But one might instead see the adventure as utter ad hoc, in which case it really becomes Impossible to swallow but at least can remain traitor-free...
Timo Saloniemi
Depending on what they said, it could be taken more than one way. But it's hard to interpret a lethal attack on the ship as anything other than hostile.
Naturally Kirk goes in with shields up. But we should assume, I think, they dropped them to beam down even if not explicitly told. Later after the landing party is out of contact and a false message is given, the shields are put up again. Later, after they orbit out of range of the sonic cannons, they beam down Fox and never mention being hit again. In fact they say below the ship is now out of range. While every thing is not explicitly spelled out, that's how I always assumed it was working, and it keeps my faith in the belief you can't beam through shields either way (normally).
I never saw once their ability to detect if the ship's shields were up or not. Considering the shields have sometimes been said to virtually cloak the ship from primitive tech, it may not be that easy to see if they are up with lesser tech, even if you can still see the ship's position.
I just don't think it would have been wise to open fire on the ship the instant they were declared dead and just hope your weapons tech (that hasn't been improving much for hundreds of years) would outclass what was probably the largest war ship ever to visit the planet. And their own mind set was working against them. Declared dead – voluntarily kill yourself – it's the civilized thing to do. We can only speculate exactly what happened to the Valiant. I think they probably got them with their sonic disrupters after they were declared dead but didn't report – not being as suspicious as Scotty, and so since that worked before, it would work again. They were just wrong.
There was no reason to fire on them when Kirk beamed down – they hadn't been killed yet. And when Fox beams down, they had already orbited out of range, it seems to me.
I think a lure is easier to explain as a mistake – depending on the lure. Even an overt attack is explainable – opps, our old systems can't discern if you are our enemy or a friendly – which is why you were told to stay away, so it's not really our fault.
They missed their check in time, and they don't know where they are. They might start looking at the beam down point, but if they have transporter tech on the planet, or other rapid transit, they could have gone from there to anywhere on the planet. They even say it's a large planet. But even assuming they are still in the main city with a population of millions, that's a huge place to look compared to a relatively tiny space ship.
Having the planet under surveillance doesn't mean much. It certainly doesn't mean they were maintaining a transporter lock on the landing party or even tracking them in any way. And they admit they don't know where they are, so I'm satisfied the place is too big, there are too many security screens or features or natural barriers, so finding them in an emergency isn't likely, and hunting for them with sensors would take hours or even days.
A tiny ship of 400 compared to a city of millions, and it still took Chekov considerable time to find Spock. Remember, the whole point is to beam them up for emergencies, but if hours of scanning have to be done first, what's the point? Emergency over – landing party already dead.
Pin pointing power sources is child's play. In Bread, Kirk and the communicator had Scotty tell how many were in the area around the active communicator. I didn't get the impression he could tell which one was Kirk or which ones were alien (though with time, they may have been able to). In Dove, they could sort out the Klingons well enough, but they had an active communicator again and knew right where to look, so it was quick. I think in TOS you can find and discern certain things, but it usually takes a lot of time if you don't have active communicator/transponder assistance, so for most emergencies, you have already lost the men by the time to get a transporter lock.
Even when they don’t explicitly mention dropping shields, if somebody is beaming up through them, you can be pretty sure they are dropping them for at least the fraction of a second it takes to do this. It's usually only when continuous fire is upon them, or a high tech opponent can detect split second stuff and already has weapons armed, they need to keep shields up 100% of the time. I'd rather it took several seconds or the better part of a minute to transport since it seems like it should, but however fast they do it, they don't do it through shields, so one should assume they were dropped long enough to do it.
Actually, though Spock ordered him out to maximum phaser range, for all he knew Scotty was already there. Or he may have been out of range of the sonic weapons, but could still go farther out. I'm pretty sure to beam down Fox Scotty had already moved out of range of the sonic weapons. There is nothing to say he didn't, and he sure should have the second they started firing at him. Though it is less dramatic then since he should have told Fox he'd lower the screens, fine, but first orbit out of range. My guess is they weren't sure what the range was at that point, but determined it later and went there and discovered it was still in transporter range, so poppin' Jay could go, and did.
There may have been "traitors" or just spies feeding them intelligence reports on the cloaking tech, but I don't see the need for an active traitor on the Romulan ship. It was risky, sure, but if caught, Kirk would take the blame, and the Enterprise would be blown up rather than captured. Huge risk, but they needed the cloaking device to prevent war since we all know what Romulans do when they think they have the upper hand. Risk one ship to prevent war? Yet bet.
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