Talk: Romulan Bird-of-Prey (22nd century)

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Whining about continuity[]

The background section reads like someone having a moan about Enterprise's continuity, and is packed with groundless speculation. I'd also suggest that the "24th century looking" BoP is merely a much-needed visual update, no more relevent or meaningful in-universe than the "too advanced" Enterprise NX-01 and USS Kelvin when compared to the TOS Enterprise. KingDaniel 19:54, December 20, 2011 (UTC)

I think there are better ways to say what is there; it may need to be tightened up a little, but I think the issue merits discussion in the article(contradictions in facts are permissible content per MA:NIT if discussed properly). The parts about Mike Sussman's comments and the novel should stay.--31dot 20:09, December 20, 2011 (UTC)

Was it Cloaking?[]

Sadly this would count as independent research, but could the apparent cloaking of the ship in fact be nothing of the sort? We see in Season4 of ENT that the Romulans have advanced holographic and sensor-deceiving technologies, allowing them to make a Romulan built drone ship appear on sensors to be Tellarite, Andorian, or even Human design. Couldn't that same technology be used to hide a ship behind an illusion of empty space? By creating a holographic shell of the space as it should look if not ship was present, and feeding the opponent's sensors false data to hide any telltale clues otherwise. This could also explain why the quantum beacon didn't pick them up.. The mines would be too small for such a system and thus used one of the systems already encountered by Enterprise, but the ship was using deception systems rather than something that altered the quantum states of matter for invisibility like the suliban and other ENT era cloaks seem to do. We see the federation using similar 'holographic cloaking' in the TNG era for their duckblind research on pre-warp societies. So the precedent is there. Presumably advances in technology would render such technology obsolete and easier to penetrate, leading to it being dropped in later centuries. Mithril (talk) 18:09, October 22, 2016 (UTC)

edit: had logged in via facebook, hadn't remembered that would create a separate account. fixed the signature to my correct account here. Mithril (talk) 18:09, October 22, 2016 (UTC)

The apparent continuity error between Minefield and Balance of Terror is explained in the novel The Good That Men Do. Scroll down to the Apocrypha section. --NetSpiker (talk) 06:43, October 22, 2016 (UTC)

Given that Novels are not main continuity, that doesn't really say anything about how it might have been in the show itself. Certainly them making use of a technology we see them employing in a later season has fewer issues that trying to shoehorn in gravity lens based cloaking a century in advance. not to mention the issue that if the mines and ships are using the same system, the quantum beacon should have either detected both of them or neither of them, not just the mines and not the ship. further you'd expect that if power consumption is the biggest hindrance, successful implementation would be on a larger platform able to carry greater power supply, not on small mines, which wouldn't have the room for much in the way of power stores or hardware. As an attempt to explain the anachronism, the novel certainly is a decent effort, but it creates rather more problems than it actually solves. Mithril (talk) 18:09, October 22, 2016 (UTC)

Removed[]

I've removed the following mix of nitpicks and bassless, uncited speculations:

"The fact that the Birds-of-Prey in the 2150s were equipped with cloaking devices constitutes an apparent continuity violation, because a comment made by Spock, in "Balance of Terror", gives the impression that cloaks were apparently unheard of before the 2266 setting of that episode. However, this is Spock's own personal notion, based on what he knows, and does not necessarily reflect the totality of the Federation's expertise on Romulan equipment. Also, Spock was familiar with the concept of cloaking and its limitations, which suggests that the Federation had seen cloaks before, but less effective ones. Alternatively, the fault could be said to lie with previous episodes, because "Minefield" was not the first time a cloaking device was seen on ENT. See also Earth-Romulan War.

"The appearance of the 22nd century Bird-of-Prey, at face value, constitutes an apparent visual continuity violation as well, in that Lt. Stiles mentioned in the same episode that, during the Earth-Romulan War, Romulan ships of the time were painted like giant birds of prey (hence the name). Some fans have speculated that the 22nd century Birds-of-Prey, with their cloaking devices and overall pseudo-24th century appearance, are the result of the Temporal Cold War. We can also assume that other classes of Romulan ships during the 22nd century were painted like giant birds, especially smaller, more easily manufactured cruisers, making a majority of their unseen fleet possibly able to validate the comments of Stiles. It is also possible that the Romulans did not adopt the Bird-of-Prey markings until the Earth-Romulan War had actually begun.

"The fact that this ship clearly has warp drive has sometimes been viewed as being at odds with "Balance of Terror", wherein Montgomery Scott states that the Romulan ship only has "simple impulse."" --Defiant (talk) 00:12, June 11, 2017 (UTC)

Having recently reread MA:NIT, I've readded a small amount of this content. Is it true, though, that this type of Romulan Bird-of-Prey "clearly has warp drive"? If so, that should be included in the in-universe info too. --Defiant (talk) 07:46, June 11, 2017 (UTC)