Romulan Bird of Prey, Where Art Thou?

There is nothing canon that states that the Klingons got their cloaking technology from the Romulans.

 

Exactly.

"The Enterprise Incident" was an effective episode of a TV series, not a CIA report on the activities of enemy nations, which is not the purpose of screenwriting. Spock's line served its purpose, and until now--after decades of knowing ST fans, I've never heard anyone saying they needed anything else regarding Spock's line, or why the Romulans partnered with Klingons. That probably boils down to--again--Spock's line serving its purpose.

 

There were echoes of the same in James Blish's adaptation, as I recall, or at least everyone on the bridge noticed that the saucer/nacelle combination was awfully reminiscent of Federation starships.

 

Except for the many discussions I’ve had in the past with other fans on Trek bbs’s about whether there was ever an official Klingon/Romulan alliance based on both “The Enterprise Incident” and STIII.

 

Despite the fact that they never had cloaking technology before STIII and in TOS? Plus a Klingon/Romulan alliance was a fact as stated by William Riker in TNG!
JB

 

Orion Press detailed (link to archived page)The shooting script contains the following:

INSERT - SHIP'S VIEWING SCREEN


The attacking vessel can now be seen definitely to be some modified version of a starship saucer main section... but with the dark markings on its underside which suggests a bird-of-prey with half-spread wings. And centered there is a threatening-looking "weapon tube" device. We see it in full size only momentarily... then it launches a torpedo-like bolt of blinding energy from the weapons tube.

HANSON'S VOICE​

You see it, Enterprise?! Starship

design. Warn Earth...

(STATIC CRACKLE)​

... espionage, stolen our designs... traitors...​

Then later, before the reveal of the Romulans, Kirk and Stiles' exchange in the script is:

STILES​

(interrupting)​

... and in a vessel remarkably similar
to ours. The Outpost Commander
mentioned "espionage." Add to that
the fact it was a sneak attack...

KIRK​

Are you questioning my orders,
Mister Stiles?

STILES​

Negative, sir. I'm pointing out that
we don't even know what the
Romulans look like, maybe just like
us. We could have Romulans aboard
our own ship.​

.
So, by the time they SEE the Romulans, Stiles has already had suspicions of Romulan spies, and lo and behold, Spock looks just like one.

 

If DSC takes place in the prime universe as CBS states, then the sarcophagus ship had cloaking technology ten years before TOS. Mind you, I think CBS is just saying that to pander to TOS fans, but there you go.

Riker’s specific quote, please.

 

DSC is NOT in the TOS reality no matter what the shirts say! So the cloaking device question is null and void! In TNG Reunion Riker says, "A new Klingon alliance with the Romulans?" in response to worries about the two former enemies perhaps colluding again!
JB

 

DSC's timeline may well mirror TOS's in broad strokes, but certain irreconcilable differences such as the Enterprise redesign places them in different (if mostly parallel) universes, since difference in technology has knock-on effects in other areas.

 

The Romulans did not steal the Klingon ship design and Spock never said or implied, it, so logically, his intelligence comment means there's an alliance. That needed no further explanation.

 

No. not really, since as I said before there's no canon information that states that the Klingons got their cloaking tech from the Romulans.

"New" can connote two things. Either there was an "old" alliance that the adjective "new" is referring to, or simply that "new" is referring to an actual brand-new thing, and there wasn't an old alliance in the past. So it's still vague.

Yes, I get that it needs no further explanation for YOU. It needs further explanation for others, however.

 

Again, I get that. But the vagueness of the comment has been fodder for discussion about the topic for some time. Funny, I thought this was a discussion board, not a place where discussion about a Star Trek topic is verboten. I thought this was Amur'kah!

 

Actually, in real life if the first officer said that, the rest of the bridge crew would have been all, "WHAAAAT?" followed by "Say, when were you going to tell us this??"

This line would have been better: "Evidently the rumored Klingon-Romulan alliance is real. And far deeper than Starfleet suspected."

 

Considering the person speaking is Spock, the usual response is "Oh, alright", and carry on with the mission. But here there are more pressing matter. Like the ship is in Romulan Space under Kirk's orders and being surrounded by Klingon designed ships. Anything else is kind of secondary at that point after "Romulans are using Klingon designs". It becomes "fine whatever, why are we doing this anyway, Captain?"

 

arms sales do not require that a alliance be in place.

 

Trading battleship designs/technology in whole is a bit more than an arms sale and strongly implies an alliance against a mutual enemy.

 

Arms sales of hand weapons or even shoulder weapons doesn't need alliances, no. Tanks and aircraft usually need at least mutual enemies or assurances if not alliances. Ships usually need major international agreements to move if someone is buying your existing hardware.

Only slightly less so if you are commissioning a company to built you a ship (like the British, French, Germans, and Americans did around the 1860s to 1910s era), than you might not need an Alliance, but typically it was a contract between a nation and a corporation to get something built that was not always top quality goods to the standard of the nation the company was from. British built battleships for foreign sale were usually not up to the standards of the Royal Navy's newest ships, depending on the desires of the purchasing country. Sometimes the country in question did want something that was better than what the British had in the fleet, and typically the British government would stall the production of the vessel in some way so that their own navy could build something to counter it before it entered service with someone else (or they just flat out repossessed it for the Crown during the First World War). Several South American and Ottoman ships were built in this period.

The Japanese had a major agreement with the British and had ships built in England up to the Kongo-class battlecruisers, and those were technically more advanced that the HMS Queen Mary they resembled, leading somewhat to the HMS Tiger being similar in design, but also the British deciding they needed to build the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships and later ships with 15 inch guns to more than counter these 14 inch gun armed Japanese warships. The Japanese had also contracted to build what was going to be the first All Big Gun Battleship in the world in their home shipyards, the Satsuma, but needed British made parts (guns in particular) to complete it. However the Royal Navy managed to have cornered the market on the 12 inch guns the Japanese needed and delay their production so long that the Japanese changed the design to used twin 10 inch guns as the secondary wing turrets instead of single mount 12 inch guns as they had planned. The Satsuma was laid down before HMS Dreadnought, and if the guns hadn't been delayed, probably would have been finished first, though she still would have been obsolete regardless due to other innovations put into HMS Dreadnought.

 

An average adult American viewer in the '60s would know that the US had two big communist adversaries, the USSR and China, and Soviet-designed guns, tanks, jets etc. had been used by China in the Korean war. Yet by the time TOS was airing, the two communist nations had fallen out with each other with a serious possibility of armed conflict. So Spock's announcement may not have been particularly remarkable to many in the audience, it might have even had a familiar ring.

 

Oh, I like this idea, too. Doesn't necessarily require an alliance, nor (too much)