Defiant and cloacking device from Romulans, why?

I was wondering, why did the Federation borrow the cloak for the Defiant from the Romulans, Klingons had it too and they were an ally, not (almost) enemy.

 

Wasn't it because of the Treaty of Algeron?

 

Yes, the Treaty of Algeron forbid the Federation from using cloaking technology at all.

They had to negotiate with the Romulans for a device that would be compatible with the Defiant. And in the beginning, a Romulan officer onboard to monitor it, but when he was killed in combat, he was never replaced.

(although that demonstrated to the Romulans how dangerous the Dominion were and that they didn't mind killing anyone in the Alpha Quadrant, so they just went "keep it" and never followed it up)

 

Did the "Sao Paulo" ever cloak in violation of plot device?

 

She got a "new one" so the Romulans replaced the fully destroyed one.

 

I like the theory that the cloak was the reason the new Defiant had the same registry number as the old one, don't need to change the agreement which might take ages.

 

One wonders if the Romulan origin of the cloak was the reason for the couple of idiosyncrasies of the device. Say, Klingon cloaks don't have to be dropped for transport (see for example ST4:The Voyage Home), yet our heroes apparently always dropped theirs, from "The Search" on.

Might not be technology, might be doctrine. Klingons don't sweat perfect invisibility, while Romulans obsess about it. And a Romulan taught Sisko to use the cloak before he got a Klingon expert of his own.

Timo Saloniemi

 

He was actually a she, Sub-Commander T'Rul, portrayed by Martha Hackett who later that year would go on to potray Seska in Voyager. T'Rul wasn't killed during the episode and was never seen again with no explanation being offered. A shame as she could have been an interesting recurring character.

 

I know they aren't canon but the novels answered her fate.

 

^Which?

 

I find the concept that the Federation would tie their own hands with something like the Treaty of Algeron rather problematic.

Kor

 

T'Rul's treklit adventures are explained here http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/T'Rul

 

You can actually figure out the Treaty of Algeron and why the Federation was so rabid about following it if you watch carefully and read between the lines a bit. Pay particular attention to some of the TNG episodes dealing with the Romulans.

See everyone always sees that the Federation gave up or swore off cloaking devices, and is outraged. Why would they do that! Why disadvantage themselves so?!? Nobody ever asks what the Romulans gave up in the treaty? Yet it's right there in front of us. Going back to some early TNG episodes.

Romulans ships. Romulan Warp drives are powered not by Federation style Anti Matter Warp cores, but by contained artificial singularities. They create a small black hole in the middle of the ship. Once started it cannot be shut down, ever. In the event of any problems it will unquestionably destroy the ship. It's a wildly dangerous and unstable way of powering Warp Ships. So why do the Romulans use it?

The answer can be found in post WW I history. The Romulan Warp drives are an allegory for Helium and Germany. After WW I the treaties ending the war banned Germany from acquiring certain militarizable resources, such as Helium. Instead they had to use the much more dangerous Hydrogen for their airships. We've all heard of the Hindenberg.

Similarly the Federation traded away their nascent Stealth technology in order to prevent the enemy from developing the more dangerous (to the Federation) Anti-Matter technology.

Is it explicitly cannon? No. But it's the only thing that we see all the pieces to on screen, that explains why the Federation treats the Cloaking ban so seriously.

 

You do realize that a warp drive that wouldn't need dilithium would be a strategic advantage right? As if they decided to blow up most of the sources of it their ships would still be able to go to warp.

 

As do I.

Not to mention how the DS9 writers seemingly forgot the address the Romulan regulations regarding the cloaking device from season 3 through season 6. Rules such as the cloak must be supervised by a Romulan officer (who was never replaced), the cloak could only be used in the Gamma Quad (but Sisko used it where ever he pleased, Romulus signed a non-aggression pact with the Dominion in season 5 and yet the Romulan government never demanded the cloak be returned. Also, I don't recall the Defiant 2.0 having a cloak, but if it did that would reaffirm some of my theories.

My theories being that the Romulans don't give a damn whether the Feddies have or use cloaks. The Treaty of Algeron (from the TNG episode) seems like a concession the Feddies made to appease the Rommies, but the Rommies never really cared about enforcing such agreements. Probably another instances of the Federation willing to bend over backwards and tie themselves into a pretzel in order to gain some diplomatic agreement.

 

I still think the treaty was more what both sides gave up. But when facing an overwhelming common threat were willing to overlook a few Little Things. Things like why was the Sao Paulo renamed and renumbered as The Defiant? Without even the traditional -A? In doing so it would allow the replacement ship to be The USS Defiant as specified in the Cloaking Use Agreement with the Romulans.

As far as where Sisco was using the Cloak. I think that was more a case of the Romulans seeking Plausible Deniability for what Sisco was doing with it. Yes they may have signed a "Non Agression Pact" with the Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant. But they sure as hell were not happy to have them there. And they most certainly wanted all the information they could get on them. Romulans believe in spying. And layers conspiracies and games as such. The Defiant was likely a tool to their purposes. And when it went wrong well "Cursed Federation is Violating our treaties and agreements!". Somebody in Romulan high command wanted an off the books cloaked spy/strike ship asset that appeared on nobodies radar within the bureaucracy. Really the only hard one to explain away was the Romulan Officer requirement. Which was more a casting and writing issue than it was an in Universe one. The writers had no idea what to do with her, so she went to visit a farm with fluffy and mopsy and your pet goldfish.

 

Pariah nations that lacked sources of oil have used alternate means of creating liquid fuels. Those are in theory a "strategic advantage". In practice, they are a massive hindrance: the industry needed to synthesize the fuel is vulnerable to the extreme, the process is inefficient, and the quality of the fuel isn't all that good.

Romulan AQS systems could be a similar disadvantage, forced upon them not by a treaty but a scarcity of resources (say, no dilithium other than what little can be scraped up from the depths of Remus at great cost) or a technological shortcoming (the old Romulan variant of cloak only works with AQS). We might have reason to believe AQS precedes the Treaty of Algeron, too: Scotty appeared to fail to identify the true power source of the invisible ship in "Balance of Terror", thankfully with non-fatal consequences.

The -A doesn't appear to be traditional, but exceptional: many ship names get reused, but only reuses involving the names Enterprise and Yamato are known to involve a letter suffix.

I dig the theory that the renaming was for legal technicalities, but I wouldn't have wanted to see a NCC-74205-A happen.

Agreed on that. Although even if Romulus had a problem with it, there's not much they could do.

Apart from that, giving up cloaking sounds like a stroke of genius. "Hmm... What should we give up in order to seal this treaty? Let's see... We have photon torpedoes. We have this secret spy ring. We have these planets here. We have the Admiral's firstborn (and she's a pest). But we don't have invisible ships - let's give up those!"

Well, somebody had to teach Sisko which buttons to push.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I wouldn't mind the Treaty of Algeron if there was some good ideas of why the cloaking ban was put in place. I keep mixing it up with the Romulan War treaty so I kept thinking it was something forced on the early Federation in 2160 so as to keep the peace, but that makes no sense since "Balance of Terror" is meant to be the first appearance of Romulan cloaks 100 years later (ignoring "Minefield").
The only thing about the Sao Paulo/Defiant-A that bothers me is that I kinda wish they'd just kept the Sao Paulo name. DS9 always seemed to about changes and consequences and having the old ship name feels slighlty like a reset button. I get why they did it though.

 

There's actually a kind of sadder and sneakier reason why they renamed the ship Defiant. It avoided having to redress the model. Which was a huge issue as DS9 relied on a huge stockpile of general ship and effects shots that they largely pieced together as needed. renaming the ship to Sao Paulo made that effects library worthless and would have forced them to reshoot it all.

 

Yet why not? They were burning VFX money on extraneous shots such as a moving-camera Ops beam-in of a useless extra anyway. And they were trying to show an awesomely climatic battle, which should have been (and indeed was) largely all-new material. It wouldn't have been that difficult to edit out all the old shots where the old registry was visible, and then insert a couple where the new registry was blatantly visible.

Timo Saloniemi