As regards cloaking, we get different "hard data" points from different episodes. Are they at odds?
In terms of in-universe chronology,
- ENT has our heroes witness invisibility early on, and the tech barely makes them flinch. T'Pol calmly refers to "some sort of stealth technology", while the human heroes decline to react at all. For all we know, invisibility at the time is standard for many species known to Vulcans and possibly to humans as well - and not even a sign of said species being particularly advanced, as our heroes never jump to that conclusion.
- DSC tells us that visual tomfoolery is well known to heroes like Georgiou, even if not commonplace: it's offered as an early explanation for the oddity that turns out to be the Light of Kahless. Yet when the Ship of the Dead decloaks, the heroes go "Impossible!" and "No warp signatures detected - where did it come from?".
- ENT has, say, the Thasians appear out of nowhere right next to Kirk's ship in "Charlie X". But when the Romulans do this thing, it's "Theoretical" and surprises the hell out of Starfleet. Yet when the Klingons get the drop on the war-alert hero ship in "Errand of Mercy", nobody appears concerned or surprised.
- ST3:TSfS shows the heroes familiar with specific models of cloak, easily recognizing one for a Klingon system. ST6:TUC then introduces new capabilities to cloaking that make the heroes at least as much incredulous as the original "Balance of Terror" invisibility did, thus undermining the idea that "Incredulity = brand new phenomenon" and supporting the "Incredulity = tactically significant gradual upgrade to known technology, something SF Intel failed to give us an early warning on" version instead.
- Beyond this, references to invisibility being new or surprising cease, until we get to tech bickering about the specific nature of invisibility in TNG and DS9 - is it cloaking, holograms, or phasing, does it annoy Romulans, does it work against the Dominion?
What it looks like to me is an integral whole where invisibility is one of the known mysteries of space, a skill Earth is yet to learn but strives to either acquire or defeat - but with two interjections that don't fit the big picture, namely Klingon cloaking amazing Georgiou's crew in "The Vulcan Hello" and Romulan cloaking amazing Kirk's crew in "Balance of Terror".
Yes, both times around it's specific amazement at species X knowing the secret trick. But both times around, this amazement is expressed as "How come they are invisible?", not as "How come they are invisible?". And of course, both times around, Starfleet has prior in-universe knowledge of player X being familiar with invisibility or even using it themselves. But the TOS case is the more damning, because in in-universe terms, the going definition of Romulan prior to that episode is "the aggressive folks who can alter the looks of their ships, including making them invisible" - nothing else is known about these guys!
Where does the Romulan ship of "Balance of Terror" fit in? Is it such an archetypal Romulan design that Kirk's crew has hard time associating it with this new capacity of invisibility? Or is it such a departure from Romulan design that the association does not occur to them? Backstage info on unfilmed scenes suggests the latter - but onscreen we know the former is true, as the ship is close to the archetype of ENT "Minefield", a design confusingly famed for its invisibility and directly associated with Romulans in dialogue.
Timo Saloniemi
