Romulan War

[bpi_jonathan]

Now according to the episode "The Balance of Terror" the Romulan War happened about 100 years prior. They said this takes place with primitive ships without visual communication. Now here is my question, Why the heck doesnt anyone in Star Trek: Enterprise ever mention the Romulans, because obviously it happened prior to Archer taking command of the NX-01?

[JALU3]

Now I never watched "ST":E continuously . . . nor am I a fan of the prequal series . . . however, from my understanding Enterprise is set in the early 2150s . . . meaning that this still leaves the until Federation Day 11 OCT 2161 . . . for which the conflict to happen.

This is imaginable.

If you asked someone in 1997 that in 2001 the US would lead an invasion of Talibanian Afghanistan . . . I am sure that most people, who you'd find walking by you on the street, wouldn't say that we would . . . If anything I am sure that a US-Iraq war was seen as far more likely . . .

I am not trying to turn this into a political conversation.
What I am saying is 5 years in the international relations is a lot of time . . . enemies have become allies in as much time. Imagine intersteller relations with faster than light communication.

[Eric R.]

Well lets see . . . Archer and company start in 2151 and ended in 2156, Romulan war starts (by fan theory anyway) in 2156 and the show did have several episodes dealing with the Romulans especially in the last season. So the show's creators just chicken out right when the show was going to have to deal with the whole issue.

[Tobian]

Well it's blatantly the case that they were going to round out the series with the Romulan war, but it got axed before they could. Season 4 dealt with the Romulans interfering with the Founder races, trying to split up their union, and sow the seeds of dissent. Had it ran it's whole 7 seaso run I think Enterprise would have had the Romulan war, but then we all know what happened to Enterprise

[Tricky]

There are alot of things in the new continuity that don't go along with "Balance of Terror": no one ever saw a romulan, the ships only communicated by "subspace radio" (?), and apparently no one but Earth was involved. It's inferred that afterward, the FED was founded. Oh, and Romulans got cloaking tech from Klingons (who got warp drive from us).

While I was looking forward to the Romulan war, it would have had to have been done like "Space:Above and Beyond" with the Romulans in the role of the mysterious alien enemy. You could never have an episode where someone saw a romulan and lived (except where the romulan pretended to be a vulcan), since that would take the wind out of the sails of the big surprise in "BoT",

 

when the romulans turn out to look just like Vulcans!

[Meteo]

There are alot of things in the new continuity that don't go along with "Balance of Terror": no one ever saw a romulan, the ships only communicated by "subspace radio" (?), and apparently no one but Earth was involved. It's inferred that afterward, the FED was founded. Oh, and Romulans got cloaking tech from Klingons (who got warp drive from us).

While I was looking forward to the Romulan war, it would have had to have been done like "Space:Above and Beyond" with the Romulans in the role of the mysterious alien enemy. You could never have an episode where someone saw a romulan and lived (except where the romulan pretended to be a vulcan), since that would take the wind out of the sails of the big surprise in "BoT",

 

when the romulans turn out to look just like Vulcans!

Yeah, no s***. There's no point in accepting this stuff, if you're going to find very few good reasons to accept it.

Face it, Enterprise just doesn't take place in the same continuity, with nuclear missiles and such. The Earth-Romulan Wars in ENT would have had renamed normal trek weapons and other tech, and like season 4, we get a bunch of
TOS references in place of a real prequel.

[tonyg]

Yeah, the writers did rewrite or reinterpret a lot of Trek history when they created Enterprise. Enterprie advanced the Tech level significantly over what had been previouslyt established. Things like transporters, subspace communications, cloaked Romulan ships, sneaky Vulcans, all conflict with the Trek continutiy. Most of the problems are between TOS and Enterprise.

A GM sort of has to decide what version of history to go with. The let the players know, and just drop or modify the stuff that doesn't mesh. I used to ignore certain bits of Trek lore that contradicted other things that were more established, and didn't bother to address them unless they came up in play.

[bpi_jonathan]

So the show's creators just chicken out right when the show was going to have to deal with the whole issue.

I only saw a couple of the S4 Episodes of Enterprise, so I didnt really know. Then I guess my initial post was also in error, I was going from memory on the date of STE, but was wrong. Then continuity goes all to hell when you put STE into the mix. It was said it used no visual communication (well Archer puts people on screen all the time). Maybe starbases (earth) and the NX-01 are the only Earth ships with visual. I am probably just blowing smoke on this one.

[bpi_jonathan]

Yeah, the writers did rewrite or reinterpret a lot of Trek history when they created Enterprise. Enterprie advanced the Tech level significantly over what had been previouslyt established. Things like transporters, subspace communications, cloaked Romulan ships, sneaky Vulcans, all conflict with the Trek continutiy. Most of the problems are between TOS and Enterprise.

A GM sort of has to decide what version of history to go with. The let the players know, and just drop or modify the stuff that doesn't mesh. I used to ignore certain bits of Trek lore that contradicted other things that were more established, and didn't bother to address them unless they came up in play.

I was wanting to do something with the Romulan War in the STE game I was planning on starting. I guess it just depends on what I want to do, we all know that our RPG games are not canon (maybe no one will notice).

[Tobian]

It's not so much that their vessels weren't capable of visual communication, because that would be somewhat of a silly idea, but more to do with the not wanting too. Without spoiling too much of Enterprises 4th season for you, the implications are that the Romulans were heavily involved with manipulating the Vulcan high command (explaining why Vulcans were such jerks in the first few seasons), and had agents embedded on Vulcan. A fairly reasonable supposition is either the Vulcans suppressed that information, because of embarrassment, or the Romulans chose not to reveal what they were because they continued to have agents on Vucan, and exposing their appearance would have provoked a witch hunt on Vulcan for 'Romulan spies' - especially at the end of the battle of Cheron, and the humiliating defeat, they aren't likely to give that single advantage up! Retrospectively it helps to explain the long silence, because basically the Romulans were spying on us, through a clean channel haha :0

[bpi_jonathan]

It's not so much that their vessels weren't capable of visual communication, because that would be somewhat of a silly idea, but more to do with the not wanting too.

Well this allows me to splice things into continuity. I wanted to set a game set during Season 3 (which is as far as I got, thank goodness for DVDs. ). While I like cannon, I dont have to stick with it. But sometimes things just bug me. Thanks everyone for the answers and such.

[BouncyCaitian]

and nuclear space mines and missles could still be used....not everyone has tto photonic torpedoes

[First of Two]

There are alot of things in the new continuity that don't go along with "Balance of Terror": no one ever saw a romulan, the ships only communicated by "subspace radio" (?), and apparently no one but Earth was involved. It's inferred that afterward, the FED was founded. Oh, and Romulans got cloaking tech from Klingons (who got warp drive from us).

While I was looking forward to the Romulan war, it would have had to have been done like "Space:Above and Beyond" with the Romulans in the role of the mysterious alien enemy. You could never have an episode where someone saw a romulan and lived (except where the romulan pretended to be a vulcan), since that would take the wind out of the sails of the big surprise in "BoT",

 

when the romulans turn out to look just like Vulcans!

Who saw a Romulan and lived?

[Tobian]

I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone learned of the Romulan connection in the series. There was a sub-text of it, we saw the romulans, but the ship they used to sabotage peace talks, had... well, capabilities that meant no-one found out who the crew was.. I'm not going to spoil it as it's a cool episode The 4th series is the best in most people's opinions as most of it's plots have... something... to do with the history of Trek!

[Meteo]

Just a bunch of TOS references, usually. There appeared to be a few good ones and few okay ones in there.