Balance of Terror continuity

[DFScott]

Or, fans of both shows can simply accept the fact that they were produced decades apart, and that there's no reason to let a single line of dialogue intended to establish some rudimentary backstory for one episode to ruin their enjoyment of either show.

Long-running storytelling arcs, whether in television, novels, film series, etc., often have internal contradictions, which the creators usually allow because they'll serve the larger story.

This.

I like both series just fine, despite whatever continuity glitches. This is dramatic television, not rocket science. Effective dramatic storytelling is the top priority (whether it is achieved or not). If I care about the characters, I'll follow them anywhere. And I cared about the characters in TOS and in Enterprise. I enjoyed "Balance of Terror" for what it was, and "Minefield" for what it was. No sleep lost.

That being said, I think it's fun sometimes to come up with an explanation to reconcile continuity glitches, or fill in missing scenes. It's a great creative exercise. Do I "work" at it? Nope.

I think I've said it myself an infinite number of times before: It's impossible for multiple generations of committees to write episodes or chapters of a single story over a half-century without introducing continuity errors that at some point have to be excused.

So the question in our context really comes down to, is the plot point alluded to in Balance of Terror a critical element of the story for all time, or a continuity element introduced in a single episode? And I suppose that, in the end, the answer there depends on people's tastes. HopefulRomantic and CaptJimboJones have happily decided upon the latter, and they're fine with that decision.

My daughter grew up watching Voyager and later Enterprise once a week with us on UPN. When she was 8 and asked me what the Original Series was really all about, I showed her City on the Edge and Balance of Terror. And that hooked her on the original story. But having seen Enterprise, she asked me, "Wait a minute, that doesn't add up." And she asked me about why the Romulan story changed.

This isn't an argument about pips on the collars or whether command division should be wearing red or yellow. This is about how to tell a story to an 8-year-old. If I were to have told her, "You can't expect a 40-year-old story to keep continuity," it would have been the same as saying, "Learn to set your standards lower, dear."

Folks tend to advise me, "Scott, quit setting such high expectations and you won't be so disappointed so often." Which is what, in the end, this is actually about.

-DF "Keeps Having to Lower the Bar Every Election Year" Scott

 

[Saquist]

ships so limited that they couldn't take prisoners

The impression I received from Spock's briefing was that, it wasn't so much they couldn't take prisoners, they weren't trying to. No quarter means take no prisoners, accept no surrender.

They made no effort to rescue their enemies from space after battle.

According to the english dictionary, Quarter properly denotes living space or mercy. While the former is far less utilize in today's english it was a common use in the early to mid 20th century. In the sentence in question the string of adjectives follows the ship as the subject. According to English grammar for sentence structure all adjectives and verbs act on the subject directly.

Thus, "primitive ships" are incapable of showing mercy and therefore by process of elimination, quarter, meaning living space is the only proper description.

 

[Shatnertage]

Sometimes our heroes are just wrong.

The line of dialog that tells us the Romulan ship is impulse only or whatever? Totally wrong. Either someone misread the screen, or sensor jamming distorted the readings, or the warp-drive was powered down stone cold... or romulan ships from that era used a different form of FTL drive than the Federation did.

Say we take Enterprise as Canon here and the events of Minefield as well. Archer mentioned that the Romulan ship had advanced sensor-spoofing technology that made the ship "practically invisible" to their sensors. I don't recall if Archer associated this ship and the minefield with the Romulans in his logs. Assume that he did

Now assuming that Spock even knew about these events... and assuming that he read the logs in detail... he may have constructed that the Romulans had advanced sensor spoofing technology, but given the era in question he decided that the human tendency to exaggerate was in play here. Therefore the Romulan ship wasn't invisible-invisible, just hard to see.

I ain't even trying that hard here, and I can rationalize the differences between eras. I don't worship the characters as Gods and I realize that they can be wrong or make mistakes on screen. Not every word uttered by a character is literal truth that must be adhered to 100%

Seems reasonable to me.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The design of the Romulan ship is in question, too. Styles seems to suggest that the design of the Romulan ship could be due to spies within Starfleet and the Federation. The inference is that the design is new to Human eyes.

Then again, Stiles is a nasty racist, so anything he says should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

 

[Warped9]

The design of the Romulan ship is in question, too. Styles seems to suggest that the design of the Romulan ship could be due to spies within Starfleet and the Federation. The inference is that the design is new to Human eyes.

Then again, Stiles is a nasty racist, so anything he says should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The point is that every line of dialogue in a script is there because the writer put it there to convey something. It then becomes up to the viewer to decide how much weight to give it. Styles was biased, but then his family history kind of explains why he is. And yet it doesn't invalidate the possibility of his notion. And he doesn't give Spock a hard time until he's taken totally by surprise at the first sight they have of what the Romulans look like.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Side note: This may sound like a stupid question (and has probably been asked many times before ) but is it possible that Lt. Stiles from this episode is the same person as Captain Styles from ST III?

AFAIK, the Captain's last name was never spelled out onscreen, so the spelling difference can possibly be ignored. Or perhaps whoever wrote ST III simply didn't remember the original spelling. (For that matter, was *Lieutenant* Stiles' last name ever shown onscreen? Of course it would be in the credits, but then again, those are not exactly definitive either, since ST VI's closing credit scrawl misspelled Uhura's name.)

 

[Anwar]

I don't think so, I mean the names are spelled differently and it's possible for there to be people unrelated with similar names.

Plus, he looks nothing like the Stiles from TOS.

Stiles' line in BoT would've fit much better if the Romulan Ship design had been closer to what the script said it was: An exact copy of the Enterprise's saucer with the two "Wing" Nacelles. A real "Winged Saucer" design.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't think so, I mean the names are spelled differently and it's possible for there to be people unrelated with similar names.

But like I said, apart from the credits, their names were never used onscreen (except in speaking). And since the credits can be wrong...

Plus, he looks nothing like the Stiles from TOS.

Then again, that's a 20 year difference right there (between BoT and ST III). So that could explain the visual differences.

 

[T'Girl]

According to the english dictionary, Quarter properly denotes ...

Difficulty there is that you're looking up the word "quarter" instead of looking up the term "no quarter," especially as it pertains to military conflict and combat actions. Spock clearly used the term no quarter. He also used the word conflict, twice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_established_military_terms
No Quarter: "Take no prisoners", or "no mercy", or "kill them all": all enemy troops are to be killed, even those who surrender.

 

[blssdwlf]

My daughter grew up watching Voyager and later Enterprise once a week with us on UPN. When she was 8 and asked me what the Original Series was really all about, I showed her City on the Edge and Balance of Terror. And that hooked her on the original story. But having seen Enterprise, she asked me, "Wait a minute, that doesn't add up." And she asked me about why the Romulan story changed.

This isn't an argument about pips on the collars or whether command division should be wearing red or yellow. This is about how to tell a story to an 8-year-old. If I were to have told her, "You can't expect a 40-year-old story to keep continuity," it would have been the same as saying, "Learn to set your standards lower, dear."

Folks tend to advise me, "Scott, quit setting such high expectations and you won't be so disappointed so often." Which is what, in the end, this is actually about.

Or just set different bars for each series production

It's the same issue when it comes to the DC Comics "multiverse" with the different versions of Earth histories to account for the different versions of Superman stories (just to name one).

 

[Saquist]

According to the english dictionary, Quarter properly denotes ...

Difficulty there is that you're looking up the word "quarter" instead of looking up the term "no quarter," especially as it pertains to military conflict and combat actions. Spock clearly used the term no quarter. He also used the word conflict, twice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_established_military_terms
No Quarter: "Take no prisoners", or "no mercy", or "kill them all": all enemy troops are to be killed, even those who surrender.

We're question between the word or the phrase. I'll post the Briefing again as it appears in the grammar on the script.

SPOCK [OC]: As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought,
SPOCK [OC]: By our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels
SPOCK: Which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication. Therefore, no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous, and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio, established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by either side, would constitute an act of war. The treaty has been unbroken since that time. Captain.

So I understand your objection because how loosely people speak in regards to proper english but this script is properly written english and the subject is Atomic Weapons and primitive space vessels. He says immediately after "no quarter, no captives."

In english you don't say "The ships allowed no mercy."
Ships can't show mercy, yet his subject matter wasn't the condition of the war but ships and weapons...

Even if you think the word is mercy...it's still saying the ships allowed for no mercy and no captives which still means no room on the ship for at least captives...

 

[King Bob!]

I never minded when they fudged facts from previous series when they had a kick-ass story to tell. But Minefield sucked hard.

 

[Timo]

In english you don't say "The ships allowed no mercy."

But Spock doesn't say this. Spock says "The conflict was fought with primitive ships, which allowed no mercy". That is, "The ships were primitive, which allowed no mercy". That is, "The ships were primitive, the fact of which meant that mercy wasn't an option".

The "which" can refer to the ships, or to the fact that the conflict was fought with primitive ships. The latter makes grammatical and logical sense, the former only grammatical.

OTOH, you can't use the singular of "quarter" to indicate living spaces. It's plural for living spaces - or for that other naval concept which manifests in expressions like "general quarters" or "beat to quarters", and which refers to the theoretical division of an old naval vessel to four parts, so that the crew would move between the "crew quarter" and the "action quarter" as situation warranted. Singular "quarter" refers to mercy.

(Anyway, if "ships allowed no mercy" sounds nonsensical, then "ships allowed no prisoners" is equally nonsensical, so that argument carries us nowhere. But as said, the "which" refers to the concept of fighting the war with primitive ships, and a concept can certainly do "allowing" or "disallowing".)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

But Spock doesn't say this. Spock says "The conflict was fought with primitive ships, which allowed no mercy". That is, "The ships were primitive, which allowed no mercy". That is, "The ships were primitive, the fact of which meant that mercy wasn't an option".

Every sentence can be broken down to the subject and the predicate. It is a proper distillation of the meaning of the sentence.

The "which" can refer to the ships, or to the fact that the conflict was fought with primitive ships. The latter makes grammatical and logical sense, the former only grammatical.

The conflict allowed no mercy?
I would argue that the emphasis is not on the conflict but on the ships given the examples that follow describing the tools of the conflict.

OTOH, you can't use the singular of "quarter" to indicate living spaces. It's plural for living spaces - or for that other naval concept which manifests in expressions like "general quarters" or "beat to quarters", and which refers to the theoretical division of an old naval vessel to four parts, so that the crew would move between the "crew quarter" and the "action quarter" as situation warranted. Singular "quarter" refers to mercy.

The definition disagrees.
No quarter is a phrase that could mean "no room ", "no Boarding", "No vacancy"
It's not naval dependent.

Example
Provide No Quarter: An Argument Against War Taxes


Referring to the Third Amendment
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The wording is quite widely used in the 19th century. There are many literary works that I have read that use the phrase. While such a use is no longer common it is still a very recognized term for living space in the singular or the plural.

(Anyway, if "ships allowed no mercy" sounds nonsensical, then "ships allowed no prisoners" is equally nonsensical, so that argument carries us nowhere. But as said, the "which" refers to the concept of fighting the war with primitive ships, and a concept can certainly do "allowing" or "disallowing".)

Negative. I understand where you're going but mercy is qualitative to humans. Ships can allow for prisoners, they can allow for boarding.

 

[Timo]

Then they can allow for mercy, too. "Allowing" is an act of will when taken literally, and can never be performed by an object devoid of will; every other use, such as "allowing for boarding", is an anthropomorphization of the situation, with implied analogies between the circumstances that make boarding possible and the act of will by which boarding is allowed.

If there are technological circumstances that make boarding possible (say, there's a gangway on the ship), then there can be technological circumstances that make clemency possible (say, there's a nonlethal weapon on the ship).

Every sentence can be broken down to the subject and the predicate. It is a proper distillation of the meaning of the sentence.

But you say "ships allow no mercy" is nonsensical. In that case, the distillation where the ships are the subject represented by the "which" must be faulty, whereas the distillation where the second part of the phrase refers to the entire first part through the "which" (and not just to the subject) must be correct. That is, the second part must refer to the fact that "the conflict was fought with primitive vessels".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

Then they can allow for mercy, too. "Allowing" is an act of will when taken literally, and can never be performed by an object devoid of will; every other use, such as "allowing for boarding", is an anthropomorphization of the situation, with implied analogies between the circumstances that make boarding possible and the act of will by which boarding is allowed.

That would not be an objectionable interpretation.
However, it is not solely defined by act of will.

Allow: admit: afford possibility; Is also proper aswell and does not imply will.

If there are technological circumstances that make boarding possible (say, there's a gangway on the ship), then there can be technological circumstances that make clemency possible (say, there's a nonlethal weapon on the ship).

We could speculate endlessly on just what technological circumstances created these limitatiosn and that would serve to at least show feasibility of the idea.

But you say "ships allow no mercy" is nonsensical. In that case, the distillation where the ships are the subject represented by the "which" must be faulty, whereas the distillation where the second part of the phrase refers to the entire first part through the "which" (and not just to the subject) must be correct. That is, the second part must refer to the fact that "the conflict was fought with primitive vessels".

I'm not really sure I understood that.
"Which" always refers to what came immediately before it. It's the creation of a new subject/predicate in the midst or after the original subject predicate. It's a pronoun like he,she and it. It never references the original subject predicate.

In the sentence the original subject/ predicate is: The conflict was fought.

The conjoined subject/predicate created by "which" is:primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels allowed no quarter, no captives.

 

[T'Girl]

this conflict was fought ... by our standards today ... in primitive space vessels ... which allowed no quarter

When Spock uses the word "primitive" to describe the 22nd century space vessels, it from the perspective of comparing them to vessels like the 23rd century Enterprise. Those primitive ships he refers to are the Enterprise NX, the Vulcan defense ships and the Andorian ships. These ships, the ones that we actual saw, obviously could offer quarter and take captives.

While we could postulate that some of the ships employed during the 22nd century conflict were too small to physically to take captives aboard, like a fighter or not much bigger, It would be difficult to conceive that NONE of the space vessels had the ability to employ a storage hold or sealed off sections of corridors to admit ANY captives. Which is where captives were often keep aboard 20th century naval ships during war.

So if the Captain, officers and crews aboard these ships had the physical ability to take captives, but (according to Spock) it wasn't happening, then there was another factor involved. This returns us to the philosophy of "no quarter."

Disregarding Spock's sentence structure, it was "this conflict" "which allowed no quarter."

 

[The Badger]

When Spock uses the word "primitive" to describe the 22nd century space vessels, it from the perspective of comparing them to vessels like the 23rd century Enterprise. Those primitive ships he refers to are the Enterprise NX, the Vulcan defense ships and the Andorian ships. These ships, the ones that we actual saw, obviously could offer quarter and take captives.

I'm just speculating here, but perhaps Spock was making a reference to the Romulan vessels? An automated self destruct would at the very least prevent the taking of captives.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

Where does time warp and lasers fit in?

 

[Saquist]

this conflict was fought ... by our standards today ... in primitive space vessels ... which allowed no quarter

When Spock uses the word "primitive" to describe the 22nd century space vessels, it from the perspective of comparing them to vessels like the 23rd century Enterprise. Those primitive ships he refers to are the Enterprise NX, the Vulcan defense ships and the Andorian ships. These ships, the ones that we actual saw, obviously could offer quarter and take captives.

While we could postulate that some of the ships employed during the 22nd century conflict were too small to physically to take captives aboard, like a fighter or not much bigger, It would be difficult to conceive that NONE of the space vessels had the ability to employ a storage hold or sealed off sections of corridors to admit ANY captives. Which is where captives were often keep aboard 20th century naval ships during war.

So if the Captain, officers and crews aboard these ships had the physical ability to take captives, but (according to Spock) it wasn't happening, then there was another factor involved. This returns us to the philosophy of "no quarter."

Disregarding Spock's sentence structure, it was "this conflict" "which allowed no quarter."

Take a moment and look at the plot of the episode.
The big reveal is similarity between Vulcans and Romulans.
I think the writers were using these discriptors to reason away why a hundred years ago they would have no idea of the similarities between their closes ally and the enemy at which they were at war.

Back in the 1950's stories about rocket ships abounded. Often show like the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits and other short story out lets created situations of spaceships and stow aways in a grim reality where the stow away must be ejected because the necessary fuel was not available. I remember one in particular on a modern interpretation of a similar show was about a little girl stowaway. It was either her or all of them.

So no boarding for unexpected guess
No captives could be taken
No visuals
No ship to ship
Subspace radio only...

It was all to eliminate reasons why they would know what the Romulans looked liked. All of it is pretty solid for writing EXCEPT the contradiction of have subspace radio and ,no ship to ship.