What exactly is the Neutral Zone?

I'm at a loss to explain the ovoid representation of the neutral zone, but as far as the travel time, it's pretty safe to assume that the bridge simulator they were in "sped things up" to get to the useful part of the test.

 

Isn't The Neutral Zone kinda like the DMZ?, like Enterprise1701 just said above.

 

You have to understand, originally the Romulans were supposed to be like the Kzin from Larry Niven's stories. They were supposed to just be this one system enemy whose home system was totally blockaded in all 3 Dimensions. Blockading one solar system sounds doable by Trek standards.

It was only when they upgraded the Romulans into some bigger Empire that the idea of big this Neutral Zone could now be and how it was possible to encompass all that space became a problem.

 

They never seemed to have trouble policing the zone in TOS. Within 60 seconds of the Enterprise crossing the zone they seemed to be on to them. Like there were 3 ships a couple of km apart all throughout the zone.

 

Spatially speaking, I think we have to assume it's just a broad territory. For better or worse, we are usually presented with this kind of information in a two-dimensional way, so thinking about it in three-dimensional terms makes it all fall apart. There's obviously some kind of commonly agreed spatial boundary from which both sides agree the territory belongs to neither side. Quite how they qualify that I can't say.

One thing that always baffled me (it still does, to be frank) is that every time one of our ships headed into a Neutral Zone on Star Trek, there would already be cloaked Klingon or Romulan ships waiting for them when they get there. So what, it's supposed to be a neutral zone, which implies that neither side has got sovereignty over it, but the Romulans just seem to hang around in there all the time, and they always take on an accusatory tone whenever they discover a Starfleet ship has entered the zone? As if Starfleet has broken some important law that the Romulans themselves haven't? I guess I just don't get it.

I keep expecting the exchange to be more like this:

ROMULAN CO: What are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

PICARD: No, what are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

ROMULAN CO: No, what are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

PICARD: No, what are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

ROMULAN CO: No, what are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

PICARD: No, what are you doing in the Neutral Zone?

(Repeat ad infinitum.)

 

Kirk said that the Neutral Zone was supposed to isolate Romulus and Remus from the rest of the Galaxy. IE, they were a one-system enemy sealed in their system.

I assumed that map was 3-D and those stars were just what we were seeing through the transparent "bottom" of the Neutral Zone Oval/Sphere.

 

You need to remember, Starfleet wanted the Enterprise to be caught in Romulan space, that was part of the mission. Kirk aimed the Enterprise directly at those three ships.

 

That's not as egregiously horrible as Star Trek Into Darkness, where the Enterprise gets all the way across the Federation-Klingon Neutral Zone into Qo'noS's system without so much as a single space patrol intercepting them. And that happens again in The Khitomer Conflict comic arc. I can't make any sense of it whatsoever.

 

Seems consistent enough to me. Space is way too big to be "patrolled": every incarnation of Trek shows that border patrol is a futile endeavor, and enemies are regularly encountered deep within UFP, Klingon and Romulan territory. But while a border may be too wide to patrol, that doesn't mean you can't concentrate your forces to create locally superior strength (indeed, that's what tactics is all about) - and the Evil Empires no doubt keep tracking and shadowing these Federation vessels that quite visibly move along the NZ on the UFP side. They then occasionally set up ambushes, by violating the Zone to create the necessary concentration of forces.

Whenever a Starfleet vessel does not blatantly display her intent and loiter next to the NZ, though, even the Evil Empires can't get a ship edgewise.

Tripwire systems at borders aren't much better than starships, either. Even the tachyon sensor net in "Face of the Enemy", feared though it was by the Romulans, failed to detect the warbird that penetrated to UFP territory; evidently, such sensors only very gradually increase the odds of the enemy being exposed if he lingers in forbidden regions of space.

It would seem semantically reasonable that that a NZ is neither the territory of A nor B, while the DMZ we saw included territorial holdings of both UFP and Cardassia (plus quite possibly a bit of neutral space, too).

We also know Starfleet cannot enter the RNZ or the KNZ under any excuse, but Calvin Hudson and later Ben Sisko strutted their stuff in full uniform inside the DMZ - they just didn't accessorize with a heavily armed starship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Here's an example of a neutral zone that separates Spain from Morocco. Neither nation "owns" the strip, although Spain put up a couple of thirteen foot barbwire fences up several years ago on the strip to keep illegal migrants out of the EU.

Some thing like this could explain the situation between the Federation and the Romulans? Their mutual borders only come together for a limited distance, and not along a broad front.

Federation in green, the Empire in orange.

The areas of blue (here being the Straight of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea) could be outside both of their territories. The parts of the Romulan Empire that doesn't touch the Federation, is none of the Federation's concern.

There's no attempt to encapsulate the entire Romulan Empire.

Maybe?

 

Originally, the Neutral Zone was supposed to isolate the Romulans from the rest of the Galaxy (Kirk says so) and the Romulans were supposed to be a one-system foe.

Obviously, this changed after "Balance of Terror".

 

It's not quite clear what was supposed in the original episode. On one hand, the Romulans are said to be contained; on the other, they are considered a formidable foe for our heroes, and thus shouldn't be belittled in terms of implied backstory or whatnot. There are bits and pieces that could be interpreted either way: Romulan characters are veterans of countless campaigns despite only campaigning behind that NZ, indicating there's a good-sized playground back there - but OTOH, the physical action with the sublight chases, the implied travel times, and the concept of an extremely low number of fixed fortifications (or was the use of single-digit Outpost identifiers a cosmic coincidence?), all point towards a tiny sandbox, just with very angry kids.

Timo Saloniemi

 

BoT seems to imply that the Romulans weren't considered a big deal by the Feds (in fact, the episode implied it was a conflict between Earth and the Romulans since the Federation was more less just an Earth Empire in early TOS) and that this new cloaked ship made them a potential big deal.

 

But as Timo points out, the Commander and the Centurion are supposed to be veterans. They were surely not supposed to be veterans of going around in circles in a strictly confined territorry. If the Romulans were isolated at this point by the Neutral zone, they would have abandon any serious space travelling because it would have been boring OR they wouldn't have waited for 100 years before attacking the Federation.

 

That's probably just holdover from the original "Enemy Below" WWII movie the episode was based off of. There, the enemy was a German U-Boat Captain who also fought in WWI (merely 20 years earlier).

The sci-fi equivalent was having the Romulan Captain be a veteran from the first Romulan War 100 years ago, as silly as that may sound.

 

Except Vulcans were later established as living over a 100 years, so a Romulan Officer who fought in the Earth/Romulan War still being around probably wouldn't be that surprising.

 

Other fans have debated this, but the TOS canon seems pretty clear to me. The Romulan Neutral Zone was a "no fly" zone between Federation and Romulan space, to be entered by neither party ("Balance of Terror").

The "neutral zone" between the Federation and the Klingon Empire was imposed by the Organians, and is open to both parties. "Errand of Mercy" did not spell any of this out. In fact, the episode implied that the Organians would (and obviously could) neutralize both fleets "wherever they may be."

"The Trouble With Tribbles" picked up the idea and detailed it into an actual zone—so that neutral zone did appear in TOS. Franz Joseph's STARFLEET TECHNICAL MANUAL contains the treaty. (The MANUAL is not "canon," and fans have highlighted the many errors in the volume.)

So, at least based on TOS episodes, the Kobayashi Maru scenario in THE WRATH OF KHAN was in error by having the Klingon Neutral Zone be a no-man's land (yet patrolled by the Klingons).

 

But when Kirk uses the term "the galaxy" it's clear that he is referring to a much smaller area the the entire Milky Way, basically the Federation and the space immediately around it..

Also consider when Spock in ST: Eleven says that a supernova in Romulan space threatens "the galaxy."

 

The difference I notice is that the Romulans get away with treating the NZ as part of their space. They fly through it and there is no Federation thought of calling that an act of war, OR of intercepting and attempting to capture those ships. When Fed ships enter the NZ, they're fair game to be captured and boarded, or destroyed.