On its own, Remus 638 is reminiscent of the nomenclature of the classic star catalogues, catalogues that gave us star names like Wolf 359, Groombridge 34, Ross 248, and Lacaille 9352, to name a few. Not saying that was the intent by the show but the nomenclature format itself is centuries old. And it would have a format encountered by a cursory amount of research.
Balance of Terror Observations
- Thread starter Dale Sams
- Start date
Yeah, but those aren't names from mythology, they're the names of the astronomers who compiled the catalogs. For instance, Wolf 359 is the 359th star in the 1919 Catalog of High Proper Motion Stars by Max Wolf.
Besides, Remus would not be "on its own." Romulus and Remus are the mythological twins who founded the city of Rome. The whole reason to use the names is to represent a pair of twin entities. And it would be totally absurd for future astronomers to assign the exact same pair of mythological names to over 600 different twin objects. It was a stupid idea that the writer wisely abandoned, and that should be the end of it.
I know that. You, of course, know that Remus is a name used outside of mythology, right?
I meant the name, examined in isolation because I didn't parse that quote as meaning binary. Just near-identical stars (mass, spectral class, age, etc) located near each other in space.
This just makes me want to petition NASA, ESA, etc. to name the next pair of parallax-measuring telescopes Romulus and Remus, just so such a catalogue is produced.
In Star Trek, the "Rigel #" designation presents several problems that even the licensed references/sources do not resolve compatibly and consistently.
What we call Rigel in real life, the Beta Orionis star system, is 860 light years from Earth, give or take, and it consists of at least three stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigel
Assuming we're talking about a planet in the Beta Orionis star system, it's unclear whether, for instance, regarding "Rigel VII" we're talking about a planet with an S-type orbit around one star or one with a P-type orbit around two stars or even something else more complicated, and in whichever case it is which stars of the Rigel system the orbit is about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems
However, some licensed references/sources postulate that some "Rigel #" planets orbit a fictional star called Beta Rigel [sic], while others say they all orbit Beta Orionis.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rigel
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Beta_Rigel
Given all of this, @Maurice's suggestion about how to interpret "Rigel #" [within the fictional universe] is actually quite tenable, and it is certainly at least as tenable as any other suggestion.
What we call Rigel in real life, the Beta Orionis star system, is 860 light years from Earth, give or take, and it consists of at least three stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigel
Assuming we're talking about a planet in the Beta Orionis star system, it's unclear whether, for instance, regarding "Rigel VII" we're talking about a planet with an S-type orbit around one star or one with a P-type orbit around two stars or even something else more complicated, and in whichever case it is which stars of the Rigel system the orbit is about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems
However, some licensed references/sources postulate that some "Rigel #" planets orbit a fictional star called Beta Rigel [sic], while others say they all orbit Beta Orionis.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rigel
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Beta_Rigel
Given all of this, @Maurice's suggestion about how to interpret "Rigel #" [within the fictional universe] is actually quite tenable, and it is certainly at least as tenable as any other suggestion.
We're talking specifically about a line from the "Balance of Terror" outline referring to Romulus and Remus as twin bodies. Obviously that particular usage is not divorced from its mythological roots.
I wouldn't sweat "isolation vs. in combination". Surely "Romulus and Remus" is a perfectly valid single and singular proper name, to be used the same way as "Lewis and Clark" or "the Sullivans" is.
Also obvious would be the use of "Romulus and Remus" as the name of a constellation or similar formation - which in this case would no doubt mean that humans named a vague region "Romulus and Remus" first, and then encountered nasty people there, naming them Romulans because of where they were found, not vice versa. And of course we now have every reason to think the exact opposite (Romulans outright tell our ENT heroes their identity), which is a much better reason to dismiss this whole "story outline" stuff than futile adherence to today's naming conventions or their perceived limitations.
Timo Saloniemi
Also obvious would be the use of "Romulus and Remus" as the name of a constellation or similar formation - which in this case would no doubt mean that humans named a vague region "Romulus and Remus" first, and then encountered nasty people there, naming them Romulans because of where they were found, not vice versa. And of course we now have every reason to think the exact opposite (Romulans outright tell our ENT heroes their identity), which is a much better reason to dismiss this whole "story outline" stuff than futile adherence to today's naming conventions or their perceived limitations.
Timo Saloniemi
Don't worry about the guff mentioning The Romulans in ENT, this is a forum for TOS lovers! And we only count the references and appearances of the big bad eared guys in this show here! 
JB
JB
So here's something else interesting, from the minutes typed up of a meeting with writer Schneider on May 25, 1966 (emphasis mine):
Ship’s phasers: we’re playing the phasers as sending out blips
of energy, somewhat like dotted lines, which travel out of the
scene. Don’t have a bank of them. We’re planning on one
underneath the ship, one on top of the ship, and possibly one
other. We have them in such a way that we can use the same
stock again once we have shot it -- for instance, keep the enemy
vessel out of the Enterprise firing phaser blast.
Which suggests they toyed with have a phaser atop the saucer as well as the usual ones we saw. Also, this makes absolutely clear that the phaser effect of the "blips" was 100% intended to look as it did. Furthermore, note the admonition not to feature the opposing spacecraft in the same shot so that these opticals could be reused in different contexts. It's not that they couldn't depict multiple craft in a shot, it's that they chose not to for practical production reuse reasons.of energy, somewhat like dotted lines, which travel out of the
scene. Don’t have a bank of them. We’re planning on one
underneath the ship, one on top of the ship, and possibly one
other. We have them in such a way that we can use the same
stock again once we have shot it -- for instance, keep the enemy
vessel out of the Enterprise firing phaser blast.
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I think the last part would be for the blast that would appear on the view screen or the scenes of the blast near the target area. With no target shown in those effects shots, they can be reused all the time. For the later phaser beam effect I would venture that that would be just the beam(s) going across the screen with just the star field behind them, or nothing behind them so they could insert say a planet or cloud back there if needed. They didn't get as much reuse as they like I gather since they used both blue and red beams coming from the ship in different episodes, though maybe beams were easier to draw into other shots later on? Like against Vaal, or the Tholians.
Balance Of Terror
One of my favorite episodes, despite some obvious flaws, this a gripping remake of a couple of classic WWII submarine war movies, as well as the introduction of the greatest recurring antagonistic race the federation ever faces in TOS and onward - The Romulans (and wow, they're an offshoot of the Vulcan race - which itself lends an aura of much deeper time to the show). It must have been before the time of Surak when the forbearers of the Romulans left Vulcan, and war lead Vulcan to lose its spaceflight capabilities for centuries after that. How close to extinction must they have come to lose those records and forget about their long lost brothers? I did really love the suggestion in Star Trek: Enterprise that humans remind the Vulcans of only one other race - themselves - emotional, warlike, dangerous, and without the grace of the discipline of logic, there goes humanity.
The production and airing order are different, so while we've seen the Enterprise fire phasers in The Corbomite Maneuver, this is the first time they actually wrote that the ship's weapons were used - and since it was before the introduction of "photon torpedoes," they called them proximity phasers - so they acted sort of like depth charges. They transferred story elements of the cat and mouse submarine chase so well they never thought to ask if it always made sense - for example, the hush-hush run silent bits where people whisper so the enemy won't hear them. Water carries sounds very well - better than air - but space - not so much - not at all, in fact, so why the lowered voices? Sure, it makes sense to shut off equipment so you're not putting out EM signals, but whispering? I guess Spock's inadvertent hitting of a button that turned on his loud beeping equipment wasn't bad so much for the noise, but for sending out an EM (or subspace) signal or something that could be "heard."
Star Trek was always so cool for getting around hot button topics the censors didn't want anyone talking about - like the war, racial tensions, and bigotry. It was just science fiction, so not real, so who cared - right? They kept pushing the envelope and getting away with it, so it's little wonder the show was ahead of its time in more ways than one.
Back to the story now. A century earlier, Earth was at war with the Romulans, and after 4 or so years of "primitive battle," by 23rd century standards, they set up a neutral zone between Earth and Romulan space. A weird place inasmuch as there are asteroids lining it (must have been towed there) and a nearby star (otherwise, that comet wouldn't look that way with a long tail), but these things are possible. I suppose an uninhabited star system could be there.
And the Romulans have a super cool weapon and a practical cloaking device, but, apparently, no warp drive. I've come to believe the Romulans must have been using something akin to an aircraft carrier, with these impulse powered scout ships not too far away from the warp driven mother carrier, perhaps set off with months of duration, but the carrier remained safely on the other side of the neutral zone (too costly an investment to risk like that). Otherwise, you just can't get that far into space on impulse alone. And I doubt they'd do all that well against a warp driven starship, but at least their weapon was impressive. Too bad they forgot they're in 3-D space and can go in more directions than just forwards or backwards. Sidestepping such a weapon would be totes easy for a warp driven starship. The writers might have been intelligent, but not experienced, and their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking. Don't talk to me about two-dimensional thinking, boys - you're as guilty as anyone - or maybe even one-dimensional thinking, really. But then if you later think too hard on it, you can't enjoy one of the most exciting moments in the episode (or maybe the entire series) as a weapon of THAT destructive magnitude is about to hit the ship (through deflectors and over a mile of solid iron, you saw what it did to the outpost - mein Gott). And WOW, the incidental music sells it - I love all the Trek music and sound effects, and for me it's often the height of hilarity when other shows use those identical sound effects. And there's a pretty girl who needs to cling to the hero, too, so that's fun, even if it was just Rand. So long, Janice, for I think that might have been your last appearance (canned episode, recall).
Later, in The Deadly Years, the Enterprise will be hit repeatedly with dozens of those blasts (well, maybe the Romulans toned them down to conserve energy/fuel, or the Federation's shield technology had vastly improved since then, or they just found a way to tune their shields specifically to thwart that type of weapon. Live and learn, you know).
But isn't shield tech amazing? An honest to gosh nuke went off just 100 yards away and they survived it - granted, it was probably not a huge nuke since it only needed to destroy their own ship, but still. And talk about one of the most breathtaking re-mastered shots to date - the Enterprise isn't just tilted and dead looking in space like in the original, but tilting and slowly rotating on perhaps two different axes. The shot was truly, Glorious. Other cool remastered bits are a more colorful, particulate laden comet tail and some below and above shots of the Romulan war bird. I was disappointed, though, they didn't include some debris after the war bird self-destructed. Once its transmitters were gone, the viewing screen could/should have reverted from the Romulan bridge shot to an expanding debris field in space rather than an empty space shot. They HAD the room - actual viewing screen time they could have put anything there. I guess they didn't think of it, or more likely, didn't have the time or budget for it, but it would have been much better, IMO. And when they reversed to go away from the Romulan after Spock's tip off, they still showed them moving forward and not backward. Nit picks.
Note: Of course, photon torpedoes would delivery energy on the order of a nuke or more, so I guess the shields are built to take it (or more likely) deflect it around them. I'm just so impressed by shield tech, that's all. When it comes right down to it, their shield tech is always a step ahead of their weapons tech.
We wonder about the wisdom of having Kirk give an order to fire to a guy, who then sends that order down to another guy, who then pushes a button. Why not cut out a step or two? Well, they rarely show that aspect of the weapons again, and when Kirk gives the order, the command is seemingly handled from just the bridge later on. But as I understand it, that is sort of how it works on an actual submarine, so too much direct translation is still going on there.
And never forget well synchronize closed captioning - I occasionally get to learn what's actually been said that was hard to discern before or I just mistook as something else. Here, for example, when the Enterprise fires the final blow, the Romulan commander screams something. I never could make it out. It's "They're firing at us!" which, I guess, was a total surprise since he thought they were virtually dead from the nuke. Guess not, commander. But another CC version has the commander screaming "Weapons!" and that's probably closer to what was actually said. So I dunno.
And there's great acting all over the place - Kirk, the Romulan Commander and his Centurion sidekick - Bones – Spock - Rand. Scotty doesn't say much, but a few gestures made me smile and I knew he was there, too.
Lawrence Montaigne makes his first appearance in Trek: here, as one of my favorite Romulans, Decius.
We will see him gain later as the Vulcan, Stonn.
And Uhura even takes over the navigator's position - she's not just a pretty face, but also a competent bridge officer.
This isn't my favorite episode, but it is certainly one of my top 5 favorites, despite its flawed story elements. The story is a 9, but flaws bring it down, and yet the re-mastered effects raise it back to its rightful 9 out of 10 status. It's one of the best TOS episodes they made.
One of my favorite episodes, despite some obvious flaws, this a gripping remake of a couple of classic WWII submarine war movies, as well as the introduction of the greatest recurring antagonistic race the federation ever faces in TOS and onward - The Romulans (and wow, they're an offshoot of the Vulcan race - which itself lends an aura of much deeper time to the show). It must have been before the time of Surak when the forbearers of the Romulans left Vulcan, and war lead Vulcan to lose its spaceflight capabilities for centuries after that. How close to extinction must they have come to lose those records and forget about their long lost brothers? I did really love the suggestion in Star Trek: Enterprise that humans remind the Vulcans of only one other race - themselves - emotional, warlike, dangerous, and without the grace of the discipline of logic, there goes humanity.
The production and airing order are different, so while we've seen the Enterprise fire phasers in The Corbomite Maneuver, this is the first time they actually wrote that the ship's weapons were used - and since it was before the introduction of "photon torpedoes," they called them proximity phasers - so they acted sort of like depth charges. They transferred story elements of the cat and mouse submarine chase so well they never thought to ask if it always made sense - for example, the hush-hush run silent bits where people whisper so the enemy won't hear them. Water carries sounds very well - better than air - but space - not so much - not at all, in fact, so why the lowered voices? Sure, it makes sense to shut off equipment so you're not putting out EM signals, but whispering? I guess Spock's inadvertent hitting of a button that turned on his loud beeping equipment wasn't bad so much for the noise, but for sending out an EM (or subspace) signal or something that could be "heard."
Star Trek was always so cool for getting around hot button topics the censors didn't want anyone talking about - like the war, racial tensions, and bigotry. It was just science fiction, so not real, so who cared - right? They kept pushing the envelope and getting away with it, so it's little wonder the show was ahead of its time in more ways than one.
Back to the story now. A century earlier, Earth was at war with the Romulans, and after 4 or so years of "primitive battle," by 23rd century standards, they set up a neutral zone between Earth and Romulan space. A weird place inasmuch as there are asteroids lining it (must have been towed there) and a nearby star (otherwise, that comet wouldn't look that way with a long tail), but these things are possible. I suppose an uninhabited star system could be there.
And the Romulans have a super cool weapon and a practical cloaking device, but, apparently, no warp drive. I've come to believe the Romulans must have been using something akin to an aircraft carrier, with these impulse powered scout ships not too far away from the warp driven mother carrier, perhaps set off with months of duration, but the carrier remained safely on the other side of the neutral zone (too costly an investment to risk like that). Otherwise, you just can't get that far into space on impulse alone. And I doubt they'd do all that well against a warp driven starship, but at least their weapon was impressive. Too bad they forgot they're in 3-D space and can go in more directions than just forwards or backwards. Sidestepping such a weapon would be totes easy for a warp driven starship. The writers might have been intelligent, but not experienced, and their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking. Don't talk to me about two-dimensional thinking, boys - you're as guilty as anyone - or maybe even one-dimensional thinking, really. But then if you later think too hard on it, you can't enjoy one of the most exciting moments in the episode (or maybe the entire series) as a weapon of THAT destructive magnitude is about to hit the ship (through deflectors and over a mile of solid iron, you saw what it did to the outpost - mein Gott). And WOW, the incidental music sells it - I love all the Trek music and sound effects, and for me it's often the height of hilarity when other shows use those identical sound effects. And there's a pretty girl who needs to cling to the hero, too, so that's fun, even if it was just Rand. So long, Janice, for I think that might have been your last appearance (canned episode, recall).
Later, in The Deadly Years, the Enterprise will be hit repeatedly with dozens of those blasts (well, maybe the Romulans toned them down to conserve energy/fuel, or the Federation's shield technology had vastly improved since then, or they just found a way to tune their shields specifically to thwart that type of weapon. Live and learn, you know).
But isn't shield tech amazing? An honest to gosh nuke went off just 100 yards away and they survived it - granted, it was probably not a huge nuke since it only needed to destroy their own ship, but still. And talk about one of the most breathtaking re-mastered shots to date - the Enterprise isn't just tilted and dead looking in space like in the original, but tilting and slowly rotating on perhaps two different axes. The shot was truly, Glorious. Other cool remastered bits are a more colorful, particulate laden comet tail and some below and above shots of the Romulan war bird. I was disappointed, though, they didn't include some debris after the war bird self-destructed. Once its transmitters were gone, the viewing screen could/should have reverted from the Romulan bridge shot to an expanding debris field in space rather than an empty space shot. They HAD the room - actual viewing screen time they could have put anything there. I guess they didn't think of it, or more likely, didn't have the time or budget for it, but it would have been much better, IMO. And when they reversed to go away from the Romulan after Spock's tip off, they still showed them moving forward and not backward. Nit picks.
Note: Of course, photon torpedoes would delivery energy on the order of a nuke or more, so I guess the shields are built to take it (or more likely) deflect it around them. I'm just so impressed by shield tech, that's all. When it comes right down to it, their shield tech is always a step ahead of their weapons tech.
We wonder about the wisdom of having Kirk give an order to fire to a guy, who then sends that order down to another guy, who then pushes a button. Why not cut out a step or two? Well, they rarely show that aspect of the weapons again, and when Kirk gives the order, the command is seemingly handled from just the bridge later on. But as I understand it, that is sort of how it works on an actual submarine, so too much direct translation is still going on there.
And never forget well synchronize closed captioning - I occasionally get to learn what's actually been said that was hard to discern before or I just mistook as something else. Here, for example, when the Enterprise fires the final blow, the Romulan commander screams something. I never could make it out. It's "They're firing at us!" which, I guess, was a total surprise since he thought they were virtually dead from the nuke. Guess not, commander. But another CC version has the commander screaming "Weapons!" and that's probably closer to what was actually said. So I dunno.
And there's great acting all over the place - Kirk, the Romulan Commander and his Centurion sidekick - Bones – Spock - Rand. Scotty doesn't say much, but a few gestures made me smile and I knew he was there, too.
Lawrence Montaigne makes his first appearance in Trek: here, as one of my favorite Romulans, Decius.
We will see him gain later as the Vulcan, Stonn.
And Uhura even takes over the navigator's position - she's not just a pretty face, but also a competent bridge officer.
This isn't my favorite episode, but it is certainly one of my top 5 favorites, despite its flawed story elements. The story is a 9, but flaws bring it down, and yet the re-mastered effects raise it back to its rightful 9 out of 10 status. It's one of the best TOS episodes they made.
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Dude!
You posted this exact same thing, word for word, in the rewatch thread.
I've asked you not to post three or more times in a row, I've asked you to try and be more concise (your posts are really long), and now I'm asking you not to post the same thing repeatedly.
Thanks.
You posted this exact same thing, word for word, in the rewatch thread.
I've asked you not to post three or more times in a row, I've asked you to try and be more concise (your posts are really long), and now I'm asking you not to post the same thing repeatedly.
Thanks.
That's wrong? I would think not everyone follows the same threads, and the information is pertinent in both places. In fact, I'd bet most people who follow one thread don't follow the other. Even for those who happen to follow both threads, they can easily just skip over the duplicate.
Part of the length problem is trying to adhere to your no multiple posts in a row policy, too. I think many would be better if they were divided into two or more posts.
Is the problem you feel I am trying to pad my posts just to rack up my post count or something? I really don't understand the reason for some of this, but I'll try to comply.
Part of the length problem is trying to adhere to your no multiple posts in a row policy, too. I think many would be better if they were divided into two or more posts.
Is the problem you feel I am trying to pad my posts just to rack up my post count or something? I really don't understand the reason for some of this, but I'll try to comply.
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Yes, it is.
From the Board Rules:
No Spamming. You can't post the same thing multiple times on the board, or post the same thing over and over in a certain thread or forum, or continuously make posts that have no real content or relevance to what is being discussed. Spamming can even just be posting too much
Now, let's not further derail this thread with this topic.
Thanks.
From the quoted description -- "phasers as sending out blips of energy, somewhat like dotted lines" -- it sounds more like they were thinking of an effect similar to the blaster weapons in Forbidden Planet.
Yeah, the "silent running in space" bit was silly. Reminds me of the old army joke:
"How far are we from the enemy lines?"
"Two miles."
"Then why are we whispering?"
"I don't know about you guys, but I've got laryngitis!"
The whole idea of the heroes having "depth charges" when moments before they didn't even know "submarines" existed and all but one of them actually thought such things were theoretically impossible... Hmph. It's just as well that the dialogue didn't specify the weapons of this episode as a special type, since the starship wouldn't be justified in having such aboard. A "rarely used setting" is much better.
OTOH, I guess that in a similar situation, I'd be inclined to whisper, too. Apes hide in trees, not in giant starships floating in the vastness of spatial vacuum; apes need to be silent in order to hide.
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, I guess that in a similar situation, I'd be inclined to whisper, too. Apes hide in trees, not in giant starships floating in the vastness of spatial vacuum; apes need to be silent in order to hide.
Timo Saloniemi
Depth charges, for a photon torpedo, would be nothing more than a timer fuse, or a proximity fuse. The thing about those torpedoes is they can be adjusted (to various yields or other effects). The fact Kirk wanted to use them like depth charges against an invisible opponent doesn't bother me, and I think they would be well justified.
Calling them phasers, of course, is more an unfortunate effect of the show still writing some of its core stuff. I'm not sure anyone can "justify" how those photon torpedo-like pulses of energy were phasers since phasers never do anything like that later on, as far as I know. Kirk misspoke? Well . . . better to just suggest a retroactive rewrite than try to fix it another way, IMO.
But hey, if somebody can explain how those were phasers, and why they never acted that way again, I'd be interested in reading that.
Calling them phasers, of course, is more an unfortunate effect of the show still writing some of its core stuff. I'm not sure anyone can "justify" how those photon torpedo-like pulses of energy were phasers since phasers never do anything like that later on, as far as I know. Kirk misspoke? Well . . . better to just suggest a retroactive rewrite than try to fix it another way, IMO.
But hey, if somebody can explain how those were phasers, and why they never acted that way again, I'd be interested in reading that.
I always felt this episode was too contrived
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