Romulan Officer: Sensors do not detect any life signs, minimal shielding and weapons. I can only confirm large empty areas which look like they are dedicated to carry minerals or cargo... Praetor: So the Federation has the technology to mask their vessels' true tactical capabilities... Impressive.
Making them look like simple mining vessels... Uhhh i think they are- Don't be stupid! Why would anyone jump into a fight with a mining fleet? Are they EvE players?
@@squattingheads Romulans are so fearful of AI they only allow computers to be used for math. So Romulans have a sensor tech staring at a screen watching raw data and trying to interpret it like a WWII Sonar Technician. So when dealing with ships they hadn't seen before , they wouldn't know much beyond it's location and size until they had hours to analyze the data.
...and wrote the entire Trek history completely wrong. Kirk being accurate? Kirk is NOT stupid to explain over communication when the Romulans can hear. So no they didn't get kirk right You go along and call me a racist sexes and hater of Nutrek
The actor that played Sam Kirk would have been a better James T. Kirk in terms of looks. Chris Pine wise... This Kirk looks like Jim Carrey or Bruce Campbell.
@@bookerdewitt3854 genius! Let's get Bruce to play an older Kirk. He already has the Shatner bravado, machismo and other "o" words. Where's that retired network executive when you need him!
I assume the Romulans are deliberately doing this to provoke a fight and claim "oh sure, we were in the Neutral Zone, but we weren't in Federation Space." or some such nonsense. They clearly wanted a fight and didn't care if they were in the wrong. They just wanted to see how the Federation would respond to their aggression and Pike didn't.
Technically, you could be standing a foot away from someone and be on different sides of the neutral zone: You could draw a plane down the center of it, and as long as you two were on opposite sides of it each of you would be on/in your respective side of the zone.
Loved this episode and I love the reference to Scotty and I hope that Scotty becomes the Enterprise's new chief engineer in Strange New Worlds Season 2!
@@garyscott4847 Like they did with Ariam on Discovery a different actress played her in the first season and then they created a new character for her on Discovery while someone else played Ariam in the second season.
I love how everyone is like Duhh just scan them and you'll see the ruse, but never consider that they might think that the fact they look like mining vessels could also be a ruse. Since who the hell would jump an entire fleet of civilian fleet to challenge a true armada. Also the romulans arent looking to go to war, they just want some good cold war style old saber rattling.
Romulans are so fearful of AI they dont allow computers to be used for anything but mathematics. So it takes them hours to manually analyze their sensor data for anything beyond location and size
@@jonathonrodriguezthomas6457 They can? I thought only cloaks could do that. I know some ships were made out of some materials that block or reflect scans, but not with shields alone.
When you are paranoid and under the impression that you are facing off against a "weak" opponent, it makes it far easier to bluff with a bunch of remote control empty boxes..... as long as you have a BUNCH of remote control boxes that is.
Don’t think about it too much. No Trek ship is realistic when it comes to shuttles and all of the storage and maintenance space they’d require. For the space available the Constitution class realistically has room for exactly one shuttle.
Pike was appropriate before Hitler, Kirk after. Similar to Churchill and Chamberlain. Having a skill in situation A does not always translate to situation B.
Sure is lucky for our side that the Romulan sensors are on the fritz, otherwise they might have noticed the complete lack of life forms and weapon systems on the freighters.
@@TheNerdForAllSeasons less range, positioned to give virtually no coverage. Fewer of them. Lower output and smaller heat sinks… A weapon has to optimised because it’s use is life and death. A mining laser is a tool, and with careful use it’s life can be extended. But to the Romulans, they just have to compare their sensor data of Enterprises weapons to the Mining ships. Pretty sure there is a big gulf in capability.
This was pretty much the best Episode of Nu-Trek up to that point. What would have sent it into the stratosphere would be to have this Romulan played by James Frain, who plays Spock's dad in Discovery and SNW. In the original TOS episode, Mark Leonard played the Romulan Commander, who of course also played Spock's dad.
That sounds almost like our Chief Engineer from the original Star Trek series. Only this is a scenario in which Captain Kirk is NOT in command of the Enterprise, still Captain Pike remains... Parts of the the season 1 finale came from the original episode: "Balance of Terror."
Forget the matches, the French crowd was the MVP of the night. There needs to be a Slammy for best crowd. They made what was basically a juiced up Smackdown into a phenomenal presentation . bien cuit 🇫🇷
To get it in a TV scale. Otherwise it would be size of a pixel per ship and to see the other side of the boarder you would need to go to the neighboring town
I feel like SNW is kind of doing a character reconstruction on Kirk. They're cutting through the decades of accrued pop culture stereotypes (and his characterization in the Kelvinverse movies) to restore him to the characterization that he had on TOS: brave, romantic, and a genius for improvising tactics at the last minute.
Funny how all these ships jump basically into the same space with no issues then there are other times they have issues jumping in behind something as big as a moon or even into a solar system without near crashing into a planet.
Slight problem with that example... They are jumping next to other ships with near negligible gravity... Not into a sloar system or near a planet... And ain't the first time this sort of thing happens in star trek, even of this period in time... I understand your point for planets, but all these ships would barely have enough mass to even create enough gravity to even nudge a dead fly
@@RokkitGrrl Yes. Civilian and military vessels look drastically different because they're built for very different purposes. I would look at these ships, note how different they look from the warship already known and pull the thread, revealing the entire poor charade they're trying to pull.
It would be ironic if this fleet became the reason for the Romulans perceiving the Federation as "such easy targets." Although the mining craft are abundant, they were slow, inadequately armed, and poorly shielded in the eyes of the Romulans. They were clearly overpowered by the Romulan Birds of Prey, as demonstrated by the fleet's swift decimation at the Neutral Zone. Given this situation, it is understandable why an imperial power like the Romulan Star Empire might consider declaring war. From their perspective, the UFP appeared feeble and technologically inferior.
but who is to say that the mining fleet isn't a bunch of unmanned drones/combat UAVs that are slaved together to fight with AI systems? The Romulans didn't know much about our tech yet.
I assume the Romulans are deliberately doing this to provoke a fight and claim "oh sure, we were in the Neutral Zone, but we weren't in Federation Space." or some such nonsense. They clearly wanted a fight and didn't care if they were in the wrong. They just wanted to see how the Federation would respond to their aggression and Pike didn't.
Uhura: All robotic mining crafts? Kirk: Mining, hauling, not one of them manned. But to the Romulans, who is to say we aren't a Federation Armada Praetor: You know I can hear you, right?
In Balance of Terror, the Praetor is male because Mark Lenard's Romulan Commander character says to Decius "Perhaps we can yet save your Praetor's pride for him". Now here the Praetor is female.
I love this Federation where it is so vast that captains operate like the Age of Sail, communication is slow and being out on the edge means something. On the other hand I am a bit tired of the trend that Enterprise started that everyone is more technologically advanced than the Federation. TNG gave us a Starfleet who exploration ships were on par with the warships of its neighbors. SNW/Discovery gives us a Federation that is contending with opponents left and right that are its superior.
I will say this to you: "there is no such thing as an unarmed spacecraft", and remember that while they're indeed robotic mining and hauling ship all of them at least possess shield and phases, along probably with photon torpedoes (albeit much weaker than true starfleet ship) since all of them is warp-capable, phaser have wide range of usage others than for combat and photon torpedoes will be useful to crack open asteroid. And even if they don't have anything above their impulse drive and warp core can be weaponized/rigged to explode as last resort since they're basically nuclear fusion and matter-antimatter annihilation reactors.
Romulan Commander: 'You have a bunch of unarmed robot mining and hauling craft? WTF. You really thought we would be fooled by this? We track these from deep space mining operations on a daily basis. They were the first federation ships we encountered since our re-emergence.
I hate the picket line fighting of the Abrams visuals. Think nemesis is a better way of showing actual space combat. these ships would all be moving like a start of regatta jockeying for position.
Deep Space 9 was the same way though. Just copy paste a bunch of ships and cram them together. TV format is too limited to show large scale space combat between more than a few ships.
Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Technically a spin off of Discovery, but it is almost completely independent from it and easy to watch without seeing Discovery. It does a lot to put Star Trek back on its traditional path and flavor, but still keep updated graphics and new feeling to it.
Honestly, though I really liked the episode, there were three (main) issues that I have with it: 1) The Neutral Zone is a light year wide- despite Pike claiming that both groups were on their respective side of the Neutral Zone, they were barely a few miles apart. That's just a screw up... 2) It retroactively implies the majority of the Romulan fleet was sitting around watching the weapons test DURING Balance of Terror. Have to urge to yell "bullshit" on that. 3) Also, you know what you don't do before a weapons test is completed? Manufacture and install said weapon on your most important ships- and yet, the Flagship was apparently built around a spinal mounted plasma projector.
Unfortunately, no logic is used under the Kurtzman regime. Just pretty explosions & lots of EVERYTHING, except the writing. Terry got it with PS3 when the parent came into the room for that season alone.
@@chrisdaily2077 Who, logically, would've been there in the OG BoT- and apparently was important enough to call in a massive fleet (or call someone who could do so), but *not* important enough to be commanding the ship. (Also doesn't explain how that much of the Romulan Fleet was within two hours travel time to that point of the Neutral Zone...) But it does (somewhat) explain it, so thanks for reminding me about the Subcommander.
@@Sephiroth144 It's been a whille but if I remember Balance of Terror had a Romulan soldier who had friends in high places. The commander also called him an idiot but he could do nothing due to his friends. My guess this is the Romulan in Quality of Mercy that called the fleet. Of course since no one got names we'll never know.
@@chrisdaily2077 Still would leave the issue of the fleet being close enough to get the message, stop whatever they were doing and deploy to that location within two hours (when Starfleet was days, week away...). Heck, I'd love to see the part where he's talking to his friend "in high places", going, "so, the cease fire ends in... an hour and twenty four minutes. If you could have the fleet drop out of warp right then, oh, that'd be awesome..."
I love how in this Star Trek anyone on the bridge can just chime in at any time with their opinions and emotions. Who ever writes this is clueless how command works. I don’t recall any Star Trek series being so casual on the bridge.
You mean like DS9, where people chimed in on the Defiant bridge all the time? Or Voyager, where Harry and Tom constantly commented the actions? SNW really isnt that different. The people being more casual though is due to Pikes command style. Trip was that casual aswell to Archer, when he was on the bridge
It is called characterisation my man. Pike has from episode one tried to encourage his crew to talk freely regardless of rank. You might call this a character flaw of wanting to be liked instead of respected if you choose but it's not "bad writing".
I would have set the frieghters to ramming speed and had them lock on to each romulan ships. Romulans would have thought federation ships had the balls to do suicide runs and reconsidered their choice
Can't they find writers who do research on what's canon..... ? For a start the neutral zone is a light year wide , you wouldn't be right facing the Romulans , @ 3:32
Not to be too technical about it. But he's on their side of the neutral zone, and she's on their side of the neutral zone. They are all over there. That's not being surrounded. What the hell is she talking about.
Everyone in the comments: Just scan the ships Romulans: If I could, I would totally make my armada look like useless robo-ships on enemy scanners... clever humans. Also, one of the two heads of state came personally to capture one enemy vessel? Ruling Romulus must be a light job.
Well, Romulans are styled after the Romans and during the Republic you had consular armies aka during war each army was led by a consul which is about the same.
So the romulan flagship, never mind the x amount of war birds etc, can't tell they are a fleet of empty cargo ships by scanning ?? Even after all the data of the war birds raids who they blew up for no reason since they were gonna blow up the enterprise anyway. why would the full romulan fleet show up? Between this and picard with the borg cube been so useless, it's getting silly to watch.
hold on if I remember correctly and I might be wrong, in the TOS where Kirk is in command of the Enterprise, in S1 Ep. 15 Balance of Terror, Spock said that no one has ever seen a Romulan before due the treaty was on subspace radio not until they finally saw on-screen later in the episode. Not unless this series does not align with the primary universe please correct me if I’m wrong on this. According to Spock: “As you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought by our standards today, with primate atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives, nor was there fen ship-to-ship visual communication, therefore no human, romulan or ally has ever seen has ever seen the other. Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous and only the Romulans know what they think of Earth. The treaty, set by sub-space radio established this Neutral Zone, entry into which by other side would constitute an act of war.
In TOS it is never clearly implied. Supposedly the first warp capable shuttle was in TNG. However there are some TOS episodes that do not add up if they are not. One is Gaileo 7 where the shuttle could be lost in one of 4 solar systems. At less than warp speed the shuttle would take far longer than the five year mission to get to any one of them.
The actor chosen to play Kirk is not a very convincing depiction, but otherwise this episode is the most kickass of the entire season! Hope to see more Romulan conflicts!
