Why such poor continuity?

[Captain X]

Actually Eaves' BoP looked like it would've fit better during the TOS movies than something pre-TOS, so I'd agree to that point. They also shouldn't have had cloaks for that matter. But like I said, ENT is hardly the worst offender when it came to continuity errors.

 

[Timo]

..in one of the old generation episodes (Balance of Terror) they made a big deal about not seeing a Romulan..

But they also made a big deal about seeing Romulan ships aplenty. So "Minefield" got that part right. And the part where the Romulans refused to show their faces.

Too bad they did the cloak thing, which wasn't necessary for the plot and contradicted "Balance of Terror" outright. Then again, "Unexpected" had already contradicted it, because the TOS episode stated that all invisibility devices were unheard of in the 2260s. Which is sort of silly, really: surely the Federation would have run a few experiments itself, on something of such obvious interest? And surely they would also have encountered at least a dozen alien species or cultures that had done invisibility, during the century between ENT and TOS?

Perhaps Kirk just wasn't particularly well educated in alien weapons technology, much like an officer from one of today's navies might fail to recognize the long history and tactical value of piloted explosive boats (and get a hole blown into his destroyer as the result).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DeafPoet]

Anna Yolei said:
Given the Vulcan and Romulan shared history, it didn't strike me as surprising that T'Pol would know of the Romulans and point out that it might be a Romulan ship out there.

Actually, that would be bogus since Spock didn't seem to know about any genetic relation to Romulans. They handled it perfectly on the show, I thought. T'Pol wouldn't need to know anything about what the Romulans looked like or where they originally came from to know that they're out there and don't take kindly to intruders.

I realize we're both sort of arguing different sides of the same coin, but I thought that part bore mentioning.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I dont believe anyone thinks ENTs continuity was perfect, just the terms like "poor" and "bad" are a stretch. If the continuity was consistently contradictory and sloppy on a episode to episode basis then such terms would be accurate. So far the best folks came come up with is a handful of seemigly contradictory "facts'. The rest is nonsense like Hoshi is a white knuckle space traveller and a martial artist= continuity error. What's the correlation there? Heck my dad was in the Air Force and hated to fly. He was also a black belt in Jujitsu. I dont think my Dad suffered from poor continuity. One had no bearing on the other. If anything it makes the character more complex and real. . Or all the blather about T'Pol losing emotional control for various reasons. Most of the best Spock episodes were about him losing contol for various reasons: spores, virus, mating urge, mind control, time travel, aging ect. Vulcans gone wild is a reoccuring theme in trek.

Yeah there are a few errors, but not nearly enough to say the continuity was poor or bad.

 

[commodore64]

Anna Yolei said:

commodore64 said:
Also, he noticed the usual detractors (art direction, etc.), but saw Minefield and said, "The Romulan ships don't look the same and ... in one of the old generation episodes [Balance of Terror] they made a big deal about not seeing a Romulan."

In the TOS episode you're referring to, wasn't in made clear that people knew what Romulans were (or had heard of them) before that time?

In Balance of Terror no one had seen what the Romulans look like. They also hadn't seen the Rom ships either. But, that wasn't really my point.

My point was that the ship from ENT shouldn't look like the TNG one (unless it somehow related back to the Temporal Cold War - which they never explained or used, which means to be it wasn't). If anything the ship should look more like the one in TOS.

 

[Therin of Andor]

RandyS said:
The continuity was poor simply because after fifteen years and five series, the writers were either getting tired, or running out of ideas, or both.

They'd also fired Richard Arnold ("ST Archivist") in late 1991, when Gene Roddenberry died. Richard used to comb through every script on behalf of GR, pointing out nits that were either fixed or ignored.

 

[pookha]

commodore64 said:

In Balance of Terror no one had seen what the Romulans look like. They also hadn't seen the Rom ships either. But, that wasn't really my point.

My point was that the ship from ENT shouldn't look like the TNG one (unless it somehow related back to the Temporal Cold War - which they never explained or used, which means to be it wasn't). If anything the ship should look more like the one in TOS.

it looked far more like the tos one then the tng romulan ships.

and they very much knew what a romulan spip looked like.

STILES: You'll know, sir. They're painted like a giant bird-of-prey.

tos

tos

enterprise

tng

 

[commodore64]

^ Precisely. Let the evidence speak for itself.

 

[Anna Yolei]

Here's numbers one and three of Pookah's posts:

I dunno, the ships look enough alike to me, anyway.

Here's the TNG ship:

BIg difference, IMO. The evidence speaks indeed.

 

[MattJC]

There is no bird-of-prey painted on the underside of the ENT era ship though.

 

[pookha]

well they had till the romulan war for that to happen.

and beyond a green hue the two ships dont look a lot like the tng one.
while the basic outline of enterprise and the tos are pretty similar.

 

[commodore64]

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...ficial%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...ficial%26sa%3DN

There is no bird-of-prey painted on the underside of the ENT era ship though.

I hadn't thought about that. Probably a problem -- "Under the raptor's wings" comment [from The Forge] makes more sense if there's a warbird painted there.

 

[Timo]

But the idea of the birds being "war paint only" certainly makes sense.

Now, if we only could have gotten gorgeous views of TNG-style Warbirds in the Dominion War, now with bright images of birds painted on their bellies and backs...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Myk]

commodore64 said:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...ficial%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...ficial%26sa%3DN

There is no bird-of-prey painted on the underside of the ENT era ship though.

I hadn't thought about that. Probably a problem -- "Under the raptor's wings" comment [from The Forge] makes more sense if there's a warbird painted there.

Why? It's reference to those on Vulcan with a warlike/aggressive bent, like a "hawk" in America. They might have become the Romulans who did adopt a "raptor" as a symbol.

 

[commodore64]

If these so-called Romulans adopted the raptor symbol, why isn't it clear in the ENT Romulans, but is clear in the TOS ones? Is it a fad that comes back into style?

 

[Timo]

Umm, isn't it vice versa? That is, ENT Romulans display the same two-clawed bird symbol as TNG and later Romulans, on various places like their clothes and doorways, while TOS ones only have birdlike helmets (plus some war paint)?

We might say that secret prototype vessels wouldn't feature the full Romulan regalia, so "Balance of Terror" wouldn't create an inconsistency as regards the bird symbol. Then again, we see plenty of a "regular" Romulan vessel in "The Enterprise Incident", without birds on the interior or the exterior.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[pookha]

commodore64 said:
If these so-called Romulans adopted the raptor symbol, why isn't it clear in the ENT Romulans, but is clear in the TOS ones? Is it a fad that comes back into style?

because the ones in minefield were doing research while the one in tos was a war ship as were the ones referenced from the romulan war.

 

[commodore64]

What research were the ones in Minefield doing, other than laying mines that eventually hurt Enterprise? "How humans go boom?"

 

[Nerys Myk]

Researching the effectiveness of mines on interloping aliens

 

[pookha]

or the cloaking systems.
notice the cloaks on the ships dont seem to be working very well as if they hadnt gotten them perfected yet.
they kept on being cloaked and uncloaked as if they couldnt control it.

a reasonable explantion is that enterprise stumbled across an area of space were the romulans were carrying out experiments on both cloaks on stationary objects the mines and the ships.

enterprise being able to see her way out of the field could be enough for the experiment to be considered a failure.