Pretty much, with cloaking it's a constant arms race though, a better cloak begats a better sensor...
Klingons: Where is the honor in cloaking?
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
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Pretty much, with cloaking it's a constant arms race though, a better cloak begats a better sensor...
What I meant was that Kras is Kras in the same sense as James Kirk is but an impostor and is really named William Shatner... Credits aren't part of the Star Trek universe, and thankfully so, considering the number of spelling errors there.
Umm, the TOS Romulans seemed to be a textbook case of "pragmatism" in warfare. Not only did their combat tactics depend on classic treachery (invisibility-assisted surprise strikes in "Balance of Terror", superior numbers in "The Enterprise Incident", superior numbers and an ambush in "The Deadly Years", and in all the cases the Romulans were illegally in forbidden territory without declaration of intent), but the Romulans themselves spent most of their onscreen time backstabbing and contemplating high treason!
Klingons never "inherited" such depths of dishonor in the transition to TNG, and indeed they would have a case (even by human standards) in claiming that Romulans have always set the standard for utter lack of honor.
Timo Saloniemi
I think "canon" means, essentially, "official," not "in-universe consistent." Like the Bible, you can have two completely contradicatory accounts of an event and they are both officially part of the canon. So even if J.J. Abrams' hadn't concocted some parallel timeline yadda yadda yadda and even if the two versions of the Star Trek universe don't jibe at all, they are still canon even if they are inconsistent.
Credits aren't part of the Star Trek universe, but they are part of the canon.
Not at all difficult to explain, really. Kirk wasn't "fully geared for war." He just got a memo and finished reading it, and was calmly talking to Spock when the Klingons attacked. The mission until then was simply "go to Organia and prevent the Klingons from using it as a base." The attack ship entered sensor range and fired a ton of shots. Once first blood had been drawn, then war was imminent. If sensor jamming was involved, it needn’t have been due to a cloak. A "sonar decoy" sort of device (Star Trek style) would have been sufficient.
Lot of ships "get the drop" on the Enterprise. Often nothing is noticed until the little alert light between helm and navigation goes off and deflector shields "snap on." The cloaking device allows Romulans to get within spitting distance before they are detected. The Klingons didn't get nearly that close. Even ignoring the ship was unseen due to the budgetary issues, people forget that space warfare doesn't have to be two ships firing a'broadside "Wrath of Khan" style. Aim and fire; the bolts can go close to light speed (if not faster since Romulan's bolts can hit the Enterprise at "emergency warp"), so the blast would be upon them before they could move.
Which is the one serious "cognitive disagreement" I have with TOS-R: no doubt colored by James Blish's description of a small ship the Enterprise promptly blows into very small flinders, I've always (well, since 1984) imagined the ship in the "Errand of Mercy" teaser to be a Bird of Prey. It's difficult to buy a full-sized battlecruiser, presumably with its shields up, being destroyed quite so quickly.
Yes I have. That's the one where Worf is traped with Klingons who have ABANDONED Klingon tradition (as defined in the TNG era); and in fact let their children return to the Klingon homeworld BECAUSE they (the older Klingons) realize this.
If you watch the episode, they also state said transisition took years; and in effect was somewhat forced on them (IE left to their own devices they NEVER would have accepted the way of life they had there.)
Exactly. Also Worf's lectures of smartness over brute force in a fight.
Um the Romulans attacked in "The Deadly Years" because the Enterprise crossed into the Neutral Zone.
Hunting food and battling enemies are two different things.
You've never heard a Klingon claim that the greatest honor would be to "die hunting warthogs!"
Exactly. And being in the Neutral Zone is a hideous crime, not just for the Enterprise but for the Romulans as well! Hence, them lying in ambush there (how else could their slower-than-Enterprise ships spring the trap?) means they broke the treaty first.
Ah, granted. Perhaps the odds of meeting Klingons at this particular location were low in normal circumstances, so the memo didn't warrant immediate alertness against standard threats (such as visible enemy ships)?
However, this battle remains unique in there being so little warning between the enemy appearing and his hits connecting with our hero ship. The high-warp weapon you quote, the plasma cloud from "BoT", took its sweet time crossing the seeming point-blank distance between the decloaking enemy and the hero ship, giving Kirk the chance to call for emergency warp and save the day. Bolts from NOMAD or the Klingons of "Elaan of Troyius" did not travel particularly fast, either, across the mere tens of thousands of kilometers quoted.
Granted that an engagement range of tens of thousands of klicks, as per all the TOS precedent, would leave the attacker nicely out of the frame. But the surprise attack still bears all the marks of a cloak-based ambush. Or the original submarine analogy, for that matter. Here's a mighty Federation star cruiser on a predictable patrol run, and there are the evil Klingons, already plotting war. When the balloon goes up, when the heroes attempt to make their first move, the enemy immediately strikes out at them - just like would have happened to all the surface ships or SSBNs shadowed by SSN hunters the first moment the Cold War turned Hot.
Not saying that this is proof of Klingon Kloaking. Just saying that it's a very good case of Klingon Kloaking being plausible at that date. And if we can just ignore "BoT", then invisibility quite logically and consistently is a familiar threat to our heroes, and a known Klingon quality to boot.
Timo Saloniemi
Re: Klingons: Where is the honour in cloaking?
No, but the principle is the same...you might as well ask where is the honour in battle armour, or deflector shields?
No, but the principle is the same...you might as well ask where is the honour in battle armour, or deflector shields?
Are you attempting to start a meme by spelling 'cloaking' with a K?
It's a slippery slope to come up with "Killer Klingon Kloakers" which while easily rolls off the tounge, isn't so nice with the initials.
^ It's not funny if you have to explain it! 
Addint to what Spooking Daniel was saying, one thing I wish TNG hadn't done was swap the characteristics of the Klingons and Romulans.
In TOS, it was the Romulans who seemed to have a warrior code. The Romulans and the Federation do seem to have a respect for each other, even though they are adversaries. It is the Klingons who come across as the back-stabbing, untrustworthy brutes, and they retain these characteristics throughout most of the TOS movies.
Then TNG came along, and someone decided the Klingons would be allies, and so the writers had to turn the Romulans into a race of evil bastards. Case and point is that episode where Geordi is stuck on a planet with a Romulan, that Romulan was so evil he was little more than a caricature.
If I could go back and rewrite Trek, I would have the Romulans allied with the Federation, and retain the Klingons as the adversaries. Romulan and Federation views don't seem as incompatible.
I think the best depiction of the Klingons comes from "Undiscovered Country" where it seems the writers are trying to blend the TOS and the TNG style Klingons together. As a result, I thought the Klingons came across as more complex and more realistic than they did in either of the series.
In TOS, it was the Romulans who seemed to have a warrior code. The Romulans and the Federation do seem to have a respect for each other, even though they are adversaries. It is the Klingons who come across as the back-stabbing, untrustworthy brutes, and they retain these characteristics throughout most of the TOS movies.
Then TNG came along, and someone decided the Klingons would be allies, and so the writers had to turn the Romulans into a race of evil bastards. Case and point is that episode where Geordi is stuck on a planet with a Romulan, that Romulan was so evil he was little more than a caricature.
If I could go back and rewrite Trek, I would have the Romulans allied with the Federation, and retain the Klingons as the adversaries. Romulan and Federation views don't seem as incompatible.
I think the best depiction of the Klingons comes from "Undiscovered Country" where it seems the writers are trying to blend the TOS and the TNG style Klingons together. As a result, I thought the Klingons came across as more complex and more realistic than they did in either of the series.
Actually, we only ever meet two Romulan Commanders in TOS: Mark Lenard's character was implied to be a dying breed of Romulan with power-hungry guys like Decius being the new norm.
The Female one was too enamored with Spock for us to get a better grasp of her character dealing with non-Spock Starfleet.
Truthfully, neither of them fit the "Honorable Warriors" thing exactly, though the Klingons were more often just generic bad guys except for when the writers felt like giving them depth and hiring decent actors (Jon Colicos for Kor, Michael Ansara for Kang).
I think TNG's Cardassians would've been a good fit for TOS as well, for anyone who is about to start off on the "TNG's Aliens were all one-note losers who cannot compare to the glory of TOS!" spiel.
The Female one was too enamored with Spock for us to get a better grasp of her character dealing with non-Spock Starfleet.
Truthfully, neither of them fit the "Honorable Warriors" thing exactly, though the Klingons were more often just generic bad guys except for when the writers felt like giving them depth and hiring decent actors (Jon Colicos for Kor, Michael Ansara for Kang).
I think TNG's Cardassians would've been a good fit for TOS as well, for anyone who is about to start off on the "TNG's Aliens were all one-note losers who cannot compare to the glory of TOS!" spiel.
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