Rules of Engagement

[Timo]

...And you have to gun them down before they kill you? In this analogy, the profile of a mother and a child is a more or less positive identification of a deadly enemy, with a very small possibility that it might represent a harmless enemy noncombatant instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[dupersuper]

...And you have to gun them down before they kill you? In this analogy, the profile of a mother and a child is a more or less positive identification of a deadly enemy, with a very small possibility that it might represent a harmless enemy noncombatant instead.

Timo Saloniemi

Remind me not to give you a letter of recommendation for Starfleet Academy...

 

[Timo]

The only mother-with-child in Star Trek history who didn't want to kill the heroes outright was the bunch in "Unexpected" - they only wanted to steal engineering experience with the help of their cloak. All other cloak operators were out to kill, and the heroes were only saved by their quick trigger finger and the ability to recognize in advance the threat posed.

Worf here did the same sort of recognizing. Only he got it wrong. (Only he got it right, and the passenger ship was out to kill, even if by indirect means. But telling that to the court wouldn't have helped much. And it seems the court was never told, and so the bad guys won.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kkt]

Mother and child in Star Trek.

In the original series, there was the Horta, of course. They spent most of "The Devil in the Dark" trying to kill her before realizing she was defending her eggs.

And there was Eleen and her son Leonard James Akaar from "Friday's Child".

Amanda has been shown with Spock several times.

Keiko with Molly and Yoshi.

Does the Prophet Sarah and Sisko count?

Trelane and his mother in "Squire of Gothos"

And of course there's Lwaxana and Deanna Troi in several episodes of TNG.

None of them had killing the heroes as a primary objective, although some were hostile during parts of episodes.

 

[Timo]

But our analogy here was that mother and child stands for cloaked vessel. All of those were deceitful, and all but one were murderous.

Also, no doubt some of them were commanded by mothers, and all of them were of course commanded by children.

I say death to mother and children. But only if they operate in pairs that denote cloaked vessels.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

...And you have to gun them down before they kill you? In this analogy, the profile of a mother and a child is a more or less positive identification of a deadly enemy, with a very small possibility that it might represent a harmless enemy noncombatant instead.

Timo Saloniemi

For some reason, one of my favourite scenes from the original Men in Black springs to mind:

Zed: May I ask why you felt little Tiffany deserved to die?

James Edwards: Well, she was the only one that actually seemed dangerous at the time, sir.

Zed: How'd you come to that conclusion?

James Edwards: Well, first I was gonna pop this guy hanging from the street light, and I realized, y'know, he's just working out. I mean, how would I feel if somebody come runnin' in the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on the treadmill? Then I saw this snarling beast guy, and I noticed he had a tissue in his hand, and I'm realizing, y'know, he's not snarling, he's sneezing. Y'know, ain't no real threat there. Then I saw little Tiffany. I'm thinking, y'know, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit, Zed. She's about eight years old, those books are WAY too advanced for her. If you ask me, I'd say she's up to something. And to be honest, I'd appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it.

James Edwards: Or do I owe her an apology?

Given that armed freighters are totally a thing in the Trekverse and the Defiant is already outnumber two-to-one protecting several other unarmed transports then even it genually was an operational transport ship that it wasn't a threat (in fact, this option is one of the possibilities that Odo investigates and dismisses).

 

[Timo]

...In the World Wars, it was a big thing that if you put a gun aboard a freighter or a passenger ship for protection, not only did this give the enemy perfect legitimacy for sinking that ship, it in fact put an entire category of ships in jeopardy. A bit like bolting machine guns to ambulances, only worse, due to difficulties in recognition.

Cloaking a vessel is asking for trouble. It's difficult to see why the players of Trek would not rush to sign treaties that make all cloaked ships valid targets by default. I mean, everybody would wish to shoot, and folks like Klingons wouldn't shirk away from being shot at.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Cloaking a vessel is asking for trouble.

Maybe, maybe not.

But decloaking, at point-blank range of an enemy vessel, in the middle of a battle had been going for at least several minutes... that's definitely asking for trouble.

 

[Timo]

One then wonders how the world looks like when you're inside a cloak. Can you see out

a) just fine?
b) with proper military-grade sensors?
c) only if you reduce the quality of your cloak, which is a risk you take only on occasion?

It's a bit weird that a cloak would allow the ones inside to see, because seeing in general involves catching things coming at you, meaning you leave a shadow of no-things. But perhaps the cloaks get around that somehow, and the transport would have been perfectly aware of what was going on.

...Perhaps the Klingon and Romulan bridges occasionally feature a blatantly periscope-like device for a reason?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Farscape One]

We've seen Klingon ships able to see outside while cloaked.

STAR TREK IV.
STAR TREK VI.
"A Matter Of Honor"... the Pagh.


And other instances, too.

"Face Of The Enemy"... they are cloaked while trying to evade the Enterprise.

The Defiant on "THE SEARCH, PART I", "THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR", "FOR THE CAUSE", and others.

Cloaked ships can see what's going on.

 

[Timo]

...Which is why ask the three questions. Does whatever makes it possible for these military ships to see through their own cloak also apply to civilian vessels?

Cloaks as such aren't uncommon. Even Quark can sell you one. Operators of cloaks aren't all that common in Trek, though, and we might wonder why, when the invisibility device itself is so handy and accessible a piece of machinery. Is there more to cloaking than this invisibility?

Or does everybody actually cloak, which is the very reason we don't see them doing it? Did cloaks only proliferate after the days of Harry Mudd?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Farscape One]

They would have to be able to see outside the cloak to be able to navigate, like plotting a course to another system. Even civilians need to navigate to a planet.

 

[kkt]

I wouldn't be thrilled about being at the helm of any ship that I couldn't see out of very well. My guess is they wouldn't put a cloaking device on a ship that they didn't equip with sensors that could see out through the cloak.

Yes, during WW I and II even carrying munitions made a ship a legitimate target. The British government denied for decades but eventually admitted that the Lusitania was carrying ammunition and was therefore a target - even though she carried no guns. Treaty called for a submarine to stop a ship suspected of carrying munitions, search it, and, if it was carrying munitions, allow the civilians to disembark to a place of safety (specifically NOT on the lifeboats), and then sink the ship. A completely unworkable procedure by WW I - no U-boat captain would expose his vessel to a ship that might have big guns by surfacing. It would take hours to search a liner, during which the sub would be hugely outnumbered by the liner's passengers and crew, and the suspect ship might have been able to make a radio call to a destroyer. (Might make an interesting plot for a historical fiction novel - civilian liner captures U-boat!)

But if you look at the Lusitania from the point of view on effects on the war as a whole, legitimate target or not, deliberately sinking a liner with thousands of civilians aboard helped turn the American public against the Germans and was a major contribution to the United States' entry into the war, especially when in 1917 they started unrestricted submarine warfare again.

Are they any instances in Star Trek of a civilian ship with a cloaking device? In "Rules" it turned out not to really be a civilian ship, but on the other hand no one seemed surprised that a civilian ship might be cloaked.

Quark couldn't actually sell you a cloaking device. In "The Emperor's New Cloak," he got one by stealing it from the Rotarran. Somehow Martok did not end up putting him on trial and in prison. But if Quark made a habit of it, I'm sure he would be in prison pretty quickly. He wouldn't risk that just to put it up for sale, he stole it only because it was the Grand Nagus's ransom. As a humor episode, they ignored that any ship would be keeping watch during wartime, even in a safe port.

 

[Timo]

Quark sold, or eventually donated, a cloak to his Cardassian friends in "Casabl...", uh, "Profit and Loss". He himself installed the device, or perhaps claimed credit for having Rom install it, but certainly didn't involve O'Brien or other specialists in the deal.

What he donated was actually a piece of crap - it was "not in the best of conditions" and was predicted to break down in fifteen minutes after activated. Also, we learned that possessing one of 'em was illegal in terms of Bajoran law. But the precedent is very much there.

Many a civilian has disguised his or her end of things, with holograms, false walls or, on occasion, invisibility screens. Sometimes this is to criminal ends, such as in "Seventh", sometimes for paranoid personal protection as in "Oasis". But we never quite learn whether the cloaked folks in "Unexpected" are criminals working on a scheme, or innocent klutzes whose ship does break down close to gullible potential helpers for real. Nothing about these folks was military in nature, but the connecting factor might be "obfuscation" or "crime".

Although since we're talking about an obfuscation device, the former is more or less given, and the latter automatically follows if realms other than Bajor make the device illegal.

Timo Saloniemi