Why the assumption that the Earth/Romulan War Was 4 years long?
- Thread starter Dayton3
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One thing regarding Trek canon and continuity I think we do too much of is attaching way too much significance to one or two statements.
Ignoring the fact that:
1) A character might've mispoke
2) A character might not know the details of what they are saying.
3) A character might be exaggerating or embellishing.
Some examples of statements I don't think should be taken that seriously:
1) The "Earth/Romulan" War. That doesn't mean necessarily only Earth was involved. Much like describing Desert Storm as the U.S. versus Iraq.
2) Spock also once said in The Changeling " not the Nomad WE launched from Earth" despite the fact that Nomad was launched decades before Vulcans ever came to Earth.
3) Scotty referring to the Romulan ship "their power is strictly impulse". This has been taken by a number of people to imply the Romulans had no faster than light capability which is utterly ridiculous.
It could mean many things:
A) Impulse engines can drive ships faster than light on occasion (something widely supported in many of the Trek series)
B) The Romulans FTL drive is powered by the same power source that drives their sublight drive (fusion engines perhaps).
C) The Romulans are going at sublight speeds in order to remain cloaked. Which makes sense given they go through the tail of a comet.
4) Kirk's comment in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" to Capt. Christopher regarding the Enterprise "There are only 12 like it in the fleet".
I can't remember how many people INCLUDING NOVEL WRITERS who have assumed that Starfleet had ONLY 12 ships..........total!!!!
That is like a Nimitz class carrier captain saying "There are only 8 like it in the fleet"...........and assuming the U.S. Navy has only 8 ships total.
Onscreen statements have to be taken with a grain of common sense
Ignoring the fact that:
1) A character might've mispoke
2) A character might not know the details of what they are saying.
3) A character might be exaggerating or embellishing.
Some examples of statements I don't think should be taken that seriously:
1) The "Earth/Romulan" War. That doesn't mean necessarily only Earth was involved. Much like describing Desert Storm as the U.S. versus Iraq.
2) Spock also once said in The Changeling " not the Nomad WE launched from Earth" despite the fact that Nomad was launched decades before Vulcans ever came to Earth.
3) Scotty referring to the Romulan ship "their power is strictly impulse". This has been taken by a number of people to imply the Romulans had no faster than light capability which is utterly ridiculous.
It could mean many things:
A) Impulse engines can drive ships faster than light on occasion (something widely supported in many of the Trek series)
B) The Romulans FTL drive is powered by the same power source that drives their sublight drive (fusion engines perhaps).
C) The Romulans are going at sublight speeds in order to remain cloaked. Which makes sense given they go through the tail of a comet.
4) Kirk's comment in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" to Capt. Christopher regarding the Enterprise "There are only 12 like it in the fleet".
I can't remember how many people INCLUDING NOVEL WRITERS who have assumed that Starfleet had ONLY 12 ships..........total!!!!
That is like a Nimitz class carrier captain saying "There are only 8 like it in the fleet"...........and assuming the U.S. Navy has only 8 ships total.
Onscreen statements have to be taken with a grain of common sense
I have been under the impression that the Earth/Romulus War was a stand off. Since the Vulcans have been less than forthcoming in several ENT episodes, they may have know who the Romulans were or could make a VERY educated guess. Who's to say the Roms weren't attacking an Earth Colony? In the Enterprise Incident the Romulans seem to be more familiar and even have first hand experience with Humans. I would even posit that maybe an ex Earth colony is one of the Romulans' Slave Worlds(or fraternal Allies for the PC minded) that Earth gave up for peace.
but, why would the Romulans retreat behind a Neutral Zone if they had a stand off or even won?
no, Earth and it's allies have to have won.
my take (seen in my Romulan War fan-fic series) is that Earth was essentially abandoned by the Coalition to start with, although the Vulcans provided some material support - helping Earth create some deep-space stations for resupplying the ships further out - before the Andorian colony Weytahn was attacked and they sent a small force to supplement the Earth forces and likewise the Tellarites...
no, Earth and it's allies have to have won.
my take (seen in my Romulan War fan-fic series) is that Earth was essentially abandoned by the Coalition to start with, although the Vulcans provided some material support - helping Earth create some deep-space stations for resupplying the ships further out - before the Andorian colony Weytahn was attacked and they sent a small force to supplement the Earth forces and likewise the Tellarites...
Very much agreed. And I accept this take on it more since as far as I'm concerned ENT is an alternate timeline anyway.
It could actually mean not a day short of 100+a day. Or maybe an hour. The exact 100 year anniversary could have happened minutes before the episode. Spock is pretty exact when he wants to be.
As much as I love Duane's Rihannsu novels, her interpretations of the war's duration are fundamentally flawed because they don't even agree with what was established in "Balance of Terror."
Given that she wrote the novel in the days before the episodes were readily available on VHS or DVD, she was forced to use James Blish's adaptation of "BOT" as a source, and Blish had mistakenly said that the war ended fifty years prior to the episode, not "over a hundred."
There's that Romulan admiral in TNG who makes reference to the "humiliating defeat at the Battle of Cheron" as well.
I think the Andorians would be very likely to help Earth, since one of their senior officers (Shran) is a good friend of Archer's. If Earth needed help, Archer would ask for help through Shran, and get it.
well, Shran could've been providing covert aid unofficially and the Andorian entry into the war led to overt official aid. i didn't depict everything that was going on and i was splitting my attention between about 5 different NX-class ships as well as some scenes with the Romulans...
I figured a much longer war simply because ships couldn't travel nearly as fast back in that time as in Kirks era.
There is a massive difference between Warp 5 & Warp 8. From the warp scale charts, the maximum normally used speed of Kirks era Warp 8 is some FIVE TIMES as fast as Warp 5, the maximum in the Archer era.
There is a massive difference between Warp 5 & Warp 8. From the warp scale charts, the maximum normally used speed of Kirks era Warp 8 is some FIVE TIMES as fast as Warp 5, the maximum in the Archer era.
I would assume that the war was fought in the areas where Romulan amd Earth interests overlapped and that given the time period involved Romulan space was close to Earth. I see the Romulans attcking Earth Colonies and shipping and Earth responding by having Starfleet providing escorts to ECS ships and beefing up colonial defenses. Though from what I recall of "BOT" it was mostly ship to ship battles in "open space" with no attacks on planetary targets.
Some random comments:
“Earth-Romulan” would make rather good sense if Earth were the prime instigator of the war, even if not a prime combatant. And as already suggested, Earth may indeed have been a prime combatant out of naïve, youthful eagerness, while the more seasoned even if more advanced and powerful Vulcans and Andorians held back their participation.
And “atomic” is a perfectly good word free for use now that it has ceased to refer to fission weapons. Today’s scientists would consider “atomic” to refer to chemical reactions, as opposed to nuclear, and future scientists might yet develop deadly chemical weapons that will be referred to as “atomic”. Perhaps the phaser is one such weapon?
It would also be perfectly logical to refer to antimatter weapons as “atomic”, since they don’t hinge on intricate interaction at the nuclear level like fission or fusion bombs do, but rather are based on a less subtle interaction between atoms and antiatoms, or even bulk matter and antimatter.
Ah, okay. I don’t have the means to listen to audio here, so I’ll have to dig up my videotapes after all...
The semantics of this are in any case fascinating, as a war being “over a century ago” may refer to it having happened more than a century ago, or to it having ended a century ago, or to its cause being something that happened a century ago. We might yet get “over” that particular word…
The thing is, Italy had no war industry to speak of. The Allied planes you list are designs from very late in the war, developed as response to the designs the Axis forces began with. Italy could not compete once the war had started. But what Italy had at the beginning of the affair was indeed optimized for speed and structurally competitive with early Hurricanes and Hawks, outperforming them in ideal conditions (which Mussolini preferred to realistic conditions in all his hardware planning) such as when the intended powerful engine for once happened to be available. Importantly, that always came at the expense of fighting ability, necessitating e.g. uselessly light armament.
Again,Iowa was one of the last ships designed for WWII, whereas Italy launched into the conflict with the fastest destroyers and light cruisers in the world - theoretically, that is. In practice, the ships were designed so that they would break speed records on test runs, basically before being fully equipped, armed and fueled, and so the 40-knot Soldati destroyers in practice could dash at little over 30 knots in operational conditions…
One might see a parallel to the high speed NX-01 here: the run-of-the-mill Earth warship production might not match the Romulan production in terms of useful speed, even if Earth "silver bullet", "Schneider Trophy" vessels theoretically could run circles around their Romulan counterparts.
Conversely, why would Earth tolerate the existence of the Neutral Zone if Romulus truly lost? And how come Earth/UFP would keep groveling in front of the Romulans on the issue of the cloaking ban in the future?
Okay, perhaps Earth won the first one fair and square, but failed to sufficiently capitalize on the victory, and allowed the embittered Romulans to regroup and become a powerful enemy in the next hundred years - one capable of dictating terms to the Federation.
Generally, however, I'd see parallels to the Korean situation here: a reasonably weak opponent nevertheless manages to fight our heroes to a standstill (perhaps with the help of external factors comparable to the Chinese involvement in Korea), and the peace is signed so that the opponent has a knife at the throat of our heroes (like North Korea threatens Seoul). Thanks to that knife, it's irrelevant whether our heroes have machine guns or phasers, as the weak and primitive knife still trumps them all, a century after the original war.
Much of the dealings with Romulus in the spinoff shows have been in terms remniscent of real-world Korean diplomacy. Lots of posturing and groveling, a fanatical emphasis on an arbitrarily drawn border that both sides hate, and all this "unification" business which both sides might want but not at the terms of the other side.
But we never learned whether that battle had anything to do with the old Earth-Romulan War. As Admiral Jarok said it was the reason for the embitterment of his generation, and possibly for the recent policy changes, it may instead have been a recent affair - perhaps something that happened after contact was reestablished between the UFP and the Romulans in TNG "The Neutral Zone"?
The episode doesn't really go into such detail. We're just left to think that this might be the case, because how else could the face of the enemy remain unseen? Planetary battles would probably leave at least some semi-intact corpses lying about, and would also involve very large numbers of personnel and bystanders, too many to be sworn to silence.
However, the use of "primitive atomic weapons", if we assume these to be fission and fusion bombs, would be the most efficient in planetary combat. The war might have been all about bombing planets to submission without ever landing any troops, and ship-to-ship action might have been relatively rare because both sides only had limited numbers of ships and those were never at the same place at the same time.
If the Romulans were xenophobic enough, it might be that they were the hands-down winners of such a war, having bombed Earth to unconditional surrendering (possibly this is the old atrocity that Sisko refers to when telling the President that the Jem'Hadar threat is the worst horror Earth would have faced "since the founding of the Federation"?). They would then dictate their terms: that they be left completely alone, protected by a Neutral Zone through which no Earth vessel could ever pass. Their alien definition of victory would leave the audience (and perhaps our heroes) in the mistaken belief that they had been locked up behind the Zone for being losers.
Timo Saloniemi
“Earth-Romulan” would make rather good sense if Earth were the prime instigator of the war, even if not a prime combatant. And as already suggested, Earth may indeed have been a prime combatant out of naïve, youthful eagerness, while the more seasoned even if more advanced and powerful Vulcans and Andorians held back their participation.
And “atomic” is a perfectly good word free for use now that it has ceased to refer to fission weapons. Today’s scientists would consider “atomic” to refer to chemical reactions, as opposed to nuclear, and future scientists might yet develop deadly chemical weapons that will be referred to as “atomic”. Perhaps the phaser is one such weapon?
It would also be perfectly logical to refer to antimatter weapons as “atomic”, since they don’t hinge on intricate interaction at the nuclear level like fission or fusion bombs do, but rather are based on a less subtle interaction between atoms and antiatoms, or even bulk matter and antimatter.
Ah, okay. I don’t have the means to listen to audio here, so I’ll have to dig up my videotapes after all...
The semantics of this are in any case fascinating, as a war being “over a century ago” may refer to it having happened more than a century ago, or to it having ended a century ago, or to its cause being something that happened a century ago. We might yet get “over” that particular word…
The thing is, Italy had no war industry to speak of. The Allied planes you list are designs from very late in the war, developed as response to the designs the Axis forces began with. Italy could not compete once the war had started. But what Italy had at the beginning of the affair was indeed optimized for speed and structurally competitive with early Hurricanes and Hawks, outperforming them in ideal conditions (which Mussolini preferred to realistic conditions in all his hardware planning) such as when the intended powerful engine for once happened to be available. Importantly, that always came at the expense of fighting ability, necessitating e.g. uselessly light armament.
Again,Iowa was one of the last ships designed for WWII, whereas Italy launched into the conflict with the fastest destroyers and light cruisers in the world - theoretically, that is. In practice, the ships were designed so that they would break speed records on test runs, basically before being fully equipped, armed and fueled, and so the 40-knot Soldati destroyers in practice could dash at little over 30 knots in operational conditions…
One might see a parallel to the high speed NX-01 here: the run-of-the-mill Earth warship production might not match the Romulan production in terms of useful speed, even if Earth "silver bullet", "Schneider Trophy" vessels theoretically could run circles around their Romulan counterparts.
Conversely, why would Earth tolerate the existence of the Neutral Zone if Romulus truly lost? And how come Earth/UFP would keep groveling in front of the Romulans on the issue of the cloaking ban in the future?
Okay, perhaps Earth won the first one fair and square, but failed to sufficiently capitalize on the victory, and allowed the embittered Romulans to regroup and become a powerful enemy in the next hundred years - one capable of dictating terms to the Federation.
Generally, however, I'd see parallels to the Korean situation here: a reasonably weak opponent nevertheless manages to fight our heroes to a standstill (perhaps with the help of external factors comparable to the Chinese involvement in Korea), and the peace is signed so that the opponent has a knife at the throat of our heroes (like North Korea threatens Seoul). Thanks to that knife, it's irrelevant whether our heroes have machine guns or phasers, as the weak and primitive knife still trumps them all, a century after the original war.
Much of the dealings with Romulus in the spinoff shows have been in terms remniscent of real-world Korean diplomacy. Lots of posturing and groveling, a fanatical emphasis on an arbitrarily drawn border that both sides hate, and all this "unification" business which both sides might want but not at the terms of the other side.
But we never learned whether that battle had anything to do with the old Earth-Romulan War. As Admiral Jarok said it was the reason for the embitterment of his generation, and possibly for the recent policy changes, it may instead have been a recent affair - perhaps something that happened after contact was reestablished between the UFP and the Romulans in TNG "The Neutral Zone"?
The episode doesn't really go into such detail. We're just left to think that this might be the case, because how else could the face of the enemy remain unseen? Planetary battles would probably leave at least some semi-intact corpses lying about, and would also involve very large numbers of personnel and bystanders, too many to be sworn to silence.
However, the use of "primitive atomic weapons", if we assume these to be fission and fusion bombs, would be the most efficient in planetary combat. The war might have been all about bombing planets to submission without ever landing any troops, and ship-to-ship action might have been relatively rare because both sides only had limited numbers of ships and those were never at the same place at the same time.
If the Romulans were xenophobic enough, it might be that they were the hands-down winners of such a war, having bombed Earth to unconditional surrendering (possibly this is the old atrocity that Sisko refers to when telling the President that the Jem'Hadar threat is the worst horror Earth would have faced "since the founding of the Federation"?). They would then dictate their terms: that they be left completely alone, protected by a Neutral Zone through which no Earth vessel could ever pass. Their alien definition of victory would leave the audience (and perhaps our heroes) in the mistaken belief that they had been locked up behind the Zone for being losers.
Timo Saloniemi
Blish based his adaptations on early script drafts and there were inevitable variations. But the fact is nothing in Blish's adaptation of BOT contradicts the aired episode. And he said the war ended senty-five years before BOT. Nothing wrong with that.
But that said Duane's details do stray into incorrect deductions as far as I'm concerned. Even so overall her work is far smarter than what the ENT writers did.
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Such as?
She postulates Romulans lost the capability for warp drive for some intervening millennia, and she thus rides the wave of fans who thought Romulans were warp-incapable because their ship had "simple impulse" (even though it fired high warp weapons!). But that as such is by no means "incorrect". She also makes a claim or two about how the war began and ended, but those, too, seem uncontradicted by the evidence. Sure, Ambassador Sarek would have been too young (something like minus three!) to take part in ending the war, but that relates to the chronology choice that you seem to accept.
What parts of "The Romulan Way" do you not agree with?
Except that then Spock would have been wrong in saying that the treaty that followed the war, and the NZ specified in it, are a century old.
It would help if the war was pushed as far into the past as possible. How recent can it be to still require the briefing Spock gives to the crew? One would expect the young servicemen being sent to Korea to be aware of the original conflict between North and South there, even if they had little idea of the political and historical background that originally led to that war. And Spock didn't provide a lead-in to the old war, he only gave a primer for the current situation.
Besides pushing the war to the distant past, we could choose to belittle it. That, too, would be a good way to ensure that it is forgotten except by the fanatical few. And it would make sense that a conflict between the primitive Earthlings of yore, and an opponent those Earthlings could handle, would be a very forgettable one. Perhaps something that ended the very moment the big boys like Vulcans or Andorians stepped in - but still something that meant a lot to Earth specifically.
Timo Saloniemi
I stand by that the Romulan conflict came to a draw. In BOT there were crew members such as LT Stiles who were bitter about it. Think how much bitterness there was on the other side with the Roms being longer lived.
Going back to that same episode. TPTB refrained from giving the reasons for the attacks on the Earth Outposts. Just suppose the Praetor had intelligence that covert aid was being given to the restive subject worlds of their star empire. They could send a dissenting commander in an old bucket of bolts. It would be enough to destroy the outposts and find out the Feds capabilities. From the Rom ruling class it would be a win/win situation. They get information and dodge any popular anger of their own people for the death of a popular commander.
Going back to that same episode. TPTB refrained from giving the reasons for the attacks on the Earth Outposts. Just suppose the Praetor had intelligence that covert aid was being given to the restive subject worlds of their star empire. They could send a dissenting commander in an old bucket of bolts. It would be enough to destroy the outposts and find out the Feds capabilities. From the Rom ruling class it would be a win/win situation. They get information and dodge any popular anger of their own people for the death of a popular commander.
Also, if the Roman/Romulan analogy is accurate enough, then the "Praetor" behind this mission would be but one of several high-level officials who would be vying for positions of power by promoting their pet projects, including technological advances and wars. What this one Praetor wanted need not have been what the Romulan Star Empire as a whole wanted, and what resources he had available for the mission need not have been all that the RSE had to offer.
Just as "Balance of Terror" may be a poor indicator of the general capabilities of the Romulans of the 2260s, the clandestine Romulan projects seen in ENT may have poorly reflected the 2150s Romulan resources, politics, plans and aims. It only takes one crazy supervillain to smear the name of a perfectly respectable Star Empire...
Timo Saloniemi
Just as "Balance of Terror" may be a poor indicator of the general capabilities of the Romulans of the 2260s, the clandestine Romulan projects seen in ENT may have poorly reflected the 2150s Romulan resources, politics, plans and aims. It only takes one crazy supervillain to smear the name of a perfectly respectable Star Empire...
Timo Saloniemi
When referring to an event that lasyed many years in the past how is best to refer to its dating, when it started or when it ended or average it out?
Example:
The Earth/Romulan war lasts twenty-five years and it was a century ago.
Did it start 125 years and end 100 years ago?
Did it start 100 years ago and end 75 years ago?
Did it start about 113 years ago and end around 88 years ago?
See what I mean? There's room for interpretation.
Example:
The Earth/Romulan war lasts twenty-five years and it was a century ago.
Did it start 125 years and end 100 years ago?
Did it start 100 years ago and end 75 years ago?
Did it start about 113 years ago and end around 88 years ago?
See what I mean? There's room for interpretation.
No, not really. Spock's exact words in "BOT" were:
"...the Neutral Zone [was] established by treaty after the Earth-Romulan conflict a century ago." (italics mine)
Furthermore, he explained that no one had breached the Neutral Zone in the time since the treaty was established. So one must allow for a full century between the end of the war and the time when the Romulans began their incursions in early 2267 (give or take a few years if you presume that Spock was rounding off the time span).
