The Ship that Taught Starfleet Fear

[@geoffreyganoe5246]

The 'early' limits on cloaked Romulan ships really show the submarine roots of cloaking in Trek.

[@christiankolbesberger2980]

So many shiny Toys, yet so little Energy to use... I know that Feeling...

[@seankane8628]

In the novelization of Balance of Terror the Romulan ships of the 1st Romulan War were described as "clumsy, cylindrical ships"

[@Meritania]

Starfleet had similar designs and you spent a long time in them because the war took into account the large distances between stars at slow speeds. They were very ‘jolty’ because their initial dampeners were primitive.

[@seankane8628]

I love seeing articles on the early pre antimatter warp driven starships

[@megadoomerr]

Certifiably Ingame is the David Attenborough of Star Trek.

[@brendansweeney7601]

The T'varo is the most beautiful ship in Trek. This ship ties for First (with the Springfield-Refit) as the ship I'd most like for my own.

[@deaks25]

This is one of my favourite non-Starfleet designs. While I know about Balance of Terror and the Bird of Prey from that episode, I grew up on TNG and this design is quintessentially Romulan to me and is obviously designed to suit the typical Romulan methods and tactics. I also think it's a design that doesn't get the love it deserves.

[@toryunaminosaki1022]

these ships are part of the reason why i absolutely adore the Malem bop in sto... well, that..and Balance of Terror is one of my fav trek episodes ever, which led me to turning my Malem into a stealth bomber xD

[@gerardoosores7470]

Does the original saga of Star Trek need a new version? Taking into account that Star Trek Strange New Worlds has new technology to show?

[@SSFighter1701]

In-universe nothing on SNW is considered new tech.

[@user-roninwolf1981]

SSFighter1701 is correct; Strange New Worlds should not showcase any "new" technology that was never shown by the time of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. An example being the Spore Drive; Voyager could have utilized the Spore Drive to get back home in a quicker amount of time, yet none of the characters were ever privvy to the knowledge (let alone details) of the Spore Drive, despite this technology being at least 100 years old. So how do you account for Voyager's ignorance on Spore tech? Erase it from the timeline, or shunt it forward into a future time period. So, some of this "new" tech to be shown in Strange New Worlds needs to be technology that we should already be familiar with by the time of Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

[@jaklinhyde]

@@user-roninwolf1981 It was my understanding that the spore drive was experimental and only the discovery and uss glen had it

[@UGNAvalon]

Any “new” tech has to be limited to stuff that could plausibly exist at that era (but couldn’t be portrayed due to practical effects limitations at the time of the Original Series’ airing). An example could be all the “new” species that were introduced in ENT & TAS that could plausibly be explained as “existing offscreen” during TOS.

[@dupersuper1938]

@@user-roninwolf1981 The only ship that had the experimental tech was lost in time and its' mission classified? It may be a silly explanation, but at least we got one. That's a lot more than we usually get in Star Trek. Why does no one use force field belts any more? Why didn't Riker and Troi take their dying son to the planet from Insurrection? Why is the transporter not used to de-age every one like it did Pulaski? Why does every one in Starfleet not have telekinesis after Plato's Stepchildren? Do we still know how to build the neural interface and subspace portal Barclay made in The Nth Degree? The Borg time travel Geordi easily copied in First Contact? Whatever happened to the androids from I, Mudd who had the tech to transfer minds into immortal android bodies? How did no one know who the Gorn were in Arena when the Federation was negotiating borders with them 5 or 6 years earlier and Spock himself had fought them? Why did Spock need so much convincing when Lester and Kirk swapped bodies after the same thing had happened to him and T'Pring less than 10 years ago? What's the First Federation up to? Has no one really ever found more of those de-aging drugs Admiral Jaimeson used? Or the love pills Mudd used in TAS? Can holodecks still *accidentally* create sapient life? Does Starfleet still have a serum that speeds people up enough to make them invisible? Or the body switching device from Turnabout Intruder? Why aren't all Starfleet officers immortal, super fast, telekinetic and force fielded by now?

[@ThisIsMeAndNotYou]

20

[@martinwebb-jy4im]

great original Star Trek ship

[@find2hard]

It was a beast when it came out in STO with the cluster torpedo.

[@singletona082]

power creep happens but i mean like. She's still my favorite ship.

[@johanstrohman4465]

i got the t5 and used my event token to get the t6 last month and it's a menace. i use the cluster and that destabilized torp from the t5(cant remember the whole name)

[@gmradio2436]

I need to pick one up. I am saving for the Legendary one. I want that trait, and item set.

[@UncleNavi]

It's still a monster, and one of my most effective ships. DSC defensive set, Romulan Rep (plasma) in the front, Lukari Rep (plasma) in the back, plasma and quantum cluster torpedo (because it's the only ship that can mount both), torpedo point defense, Fek'Iri torment generator, and the B'Rel stealth fighter set.

[@gmradio2436]

@@UncleNavi And the Legendary can fire while cloaked for more fun and death.

[@adrianjorgensen3750]

Enterprise was one long continuity error. But man what a great ship design, John always hit it out of the park.

[@ImNtDead]

I like the design I just don't like that it was used in Star Trek Enterprise. It looks more advanced than the Bird of Prey Kirk faced off against in the original series which bothers me. Even though it has design features to make it look like a prototype it just doesn't look like it belongs in the time of Enterprise. Looks like it came later in the timeline after the original but before the Warbird of Next Generation.

[@grahamturner1290]

🖖

[@samwalker8893]

What always made me question cloaking was that romulans were allowed to use it after the treaty.. either both or none. The second was that even if starfleet chose not to, then that didnt apply outside romulans space.. surely they could use it in the alpha, delta and gamma quadrant etc, instead they chose to openly ignore it.. how much of voyagers issues could have been solved or ignored using cloak millions of years away from the romulans where it made no difference to them whatsoever

[@warhawk4494]

There is a KZbin channel called The Romulan War that covers the Earth Romulan war in dept and with geeat visuals of all the ships used by both sides. I think yall would like. Im not affiliated with them just a fan.

[@NoBudjetFilms]

I always assumed that the Romulans having a Cloaking Device that early in the timeline was due to machinations of the Temporal Cold War editing and rewriting history (just like why we never heard of the NX-01 Enterprise, it was never part of the timeline until First Contact and Zefram Cochrane meeting the Enterprise crew, learning the name, and favoring it for a potential ship down the line which affected the time stream)

[@TheAmyRoseGroupie]

Huh, that's actually great explanation for the retcons

[@iona2225]

@@TheAmyRoseGroupieAgreed, that's pretty good.

[@Zeithri]

The cloaking in ENT is just visual for the viewer. What it actually does is hide itself from sensors. If you stand outside on the hull for example, you'll see them. Or at least that's how I interpreted how it worked.

[@chrisjohnson1146]

Except I believe we literally see ships vanish with personnel able to SEE the ship vanish in Enterprise. AND we see in Star Trek 4 that the Klingon BoP Kirk hyjacked was LITERALLY invisible. Dr. Gillian Taylor literally smacked face first into the invisible landing foot before Kirk beamed her aboard.

[@gmradio2436]

In ENT there are about 3 different cloaks used. The Suliban might be the simplest, but the Romulan is a visual cloak. Minefield shows that well enough.

[@UGNAvalon]

Nope, the view screen of the mines literally showed empty space until they deployed the anti-cloak scanners. Plus Reed literally says “our friends disappeared” (“doesn't mean they’re not still nearby”). That would’ve been a nice visual cue (or just showing the image getting “shimmery” when under primitive cloak) but that’s not at all how the characters saw it.

[@UGNAvalon]

While it definitely would’ve been less impressive visually (& audially, considering the iconic cloaking sound), it would’ve been nice if ENT’s Romulans didn’t have “full cloaks”, and instead simply scrambled a wide spectrum of scanning frequencies while remaining visually “uncloaked” (kinda like BSG’s Blackbird, or Expanse’s stealth cruisers). It would force the crew to either track the BoP visually (hard to do in 3D space at great distances) or to modify their sensors to exploit a gap in the jamming spectra (something that the Feds would become masters in in the centuries to come). And for the sake of nostalgia, maybe the “jammers online” mode could be accompanied by a more primitive version of the classic “cloaking sound effect”, with the visual appearance of the BoP being “flickery” &/or “semi-translucent” to indicate its prototypical nature.

[@nsr-ints]

Or even more passive stealth, like IRL F22 fighters.

[@CordialH]

I think in the Star Trek universe, you'd absolutely need to have it invisible to the visible light spectrum. Unless the sensors have some kind of huge gap, they should be able to detect the whole electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light. So anything that can distinguish a ship's radiation from background radiation should be able to ping off that visible light as well. It's just another form of energy emission, albeit one we take for granted because our own very limited sensors are good at tracking it. It'd be like having really sensitive receptors that can detect "small vibrations in the air" but can't detect sounds. Which are...small vibrations in the air.

[@SnakePlissken98]

Adding more than one warp core would and give the cloaking device and other important starship systems it's own power source plus backups would solve the ship's power problems.

[@thaen9346]

But adds the problems of mass and constructing a stable nacelle design for warp geometry. And power surges.

[@SnakePlissken98]

@@thaen9346 It was never mentioned in the show for some reason and I highly doubt the writers forgot about it on the schematics Voyager had two warp cores and I would've used that core for tactical.

[@gmradio2436]

Probably fuel, redundancy, cost, and diminishing returns. Burn fuel faster, losing range. A second core is redundant for the mission profile. The cost of a second core in on ship is a second ship not being built. Is deploying one ship with two cores better than two ships? The Romulans probably looked at their desired power projection plans and decided that more ships with longer range is better for growing their empire.

[@CraigLYoung]

Thanks for sharing 👍

[@1aikane]

I miss genuine Trek.

[@dupersuper1938]

I always ignore Enterprise featuring the cloaking device. That, the set design in Discovery, even the use of the Gorn in my beloved Strange New Worlds...if Star Trek insists on continuing to do prequels, I wish they'd get the history right, otherwise why not just do sequels?

[@avs813]

I would've liked this design to be a bit less obviously related to the TOS BoP, if just because I really like the idea that the "later" ship was heavily influenced by stolen Starfleet engineering. Retaining the saucer shape kinda messes with that.

[@colinconnolly892]

I personally didn’t like this version of the Bird of Prey, seemed too advanced looking for the 22nd Century and seems like it could belong more in the 24th Century, but that’s just me

[@gmradio2436]

That is probably the green. A white or silver grey might have fit better.

[@Revkor]

this ship should not bedd ENT era ship at all. just use the TOS T Liss since its supposed to be this era

[@CrazyNights1015]

One of my biggest issues with the whole cloaking thing. Starfleet knew the tech existed for literally centuries but almost never seemed to develop methods or tactics for dealing with it.

[@Timberwolf69]

I'm pretty sure they did. But this was another arms race, in the end.

[@CrazyNights1015]

@Timberwolf69 did they though? Enterprise had the future tech, TOS had the Discovery "detection algorithm" that we never actually saw after that one time, TNG had the tachyon grid that sort of worked. Seems like starfleet is always 2 steps behind cloaking in terms of technology and I can't think of a single tactic that could successfully counter it.

[@Timberwolf69]

@@CrazyNights1015 Do you mean Daniels' tech? That was off limits for Archer and his crew, as far as I know. He would provide them with the means to counter other future tech from other players of that temporal war, but nothing that would give them the edge against contemporary tech, as it would have major implications on crucial historic events. Most of Discovery's tech went to the future with her and all knowledge of the events Discovery was part of was placed under the highest level of confidentiality. But you are right, StarFleet was on its back foot most of the time, regarding cloaking technology. Though it deems me quite difficult to work out the properties of something you can only study from afar, if at all. After all, it's not like Klingons or Romulans would share the results of their cloaking technology development with StarFleet. And since the treaty of Algeron, StarFleet wasn't allowed to develop cloaking technology by themselves.

[@chrisjohnson1146]

@@CrazyNights1015 Well... there was also the Treaty of Algeron that gimped Starfleet hardcore. They were literally BANNED from developing their own Cloaking tech by the Star Empire. Which the Romulans were probably hoping would weaken them as they improved their own Cloak tech, and the Klingons would improve theirs. But then Starfleet started improving their sensor tech as a response. By 2379 Starfleet even had specialized sensors to detect cloaked ships (which were totally ineffective against the Scimitar's Perfect Cloak). It wouldn't be until the collapse of the Star Empire that Starfleet was probably freed from the restrictions of the Treaty of Algeron, thus the 32nd Century Federation Cloak tech we see in Discovery. I don't know when Starfleet would start developing their own cloaking tech, but I'm guessing sometime after 2402, as the Star Empire was probably still a thing but in a heavily fractured state after the 2385 Supernova and in decline.

[@gmradio2436]

Daniel's tech I think it is safe to say was unable to be replicated and was the an engineering black box. That is black box as in a component that preforms a function, but you don't know how, not a damage recorder. It makes since for the time cop to not leave tech capable of polluting the time line more than necessary. I think the first time Starfleet actually gets a cloak to study is off the Bounty, the bird of prey Kirk stole the carried whales with. Before that the primary source was Romulans, and they take their secrets to the grave. Klingon light screens are technically a different system and function on a different level.A Discovery retcon, but it deserves mention. After TOS the Romulans go quite for a while and advance their tech tree. Starfleet would be busy dealing with Klingon BoPs and their less advanced cloaking. The tachyon grid being developed is actually impressive. Before hand you had environment clues and tactical guessing to fight cloaks. Now there is a way to actually detect a cloaked ship before it has a chance to fire. As TNG and DS9 advance, new technology, tactics and weaknesses found.

[@LucianLacroix]

Looks way better than the TOS ship. Should have entirely retconned it to be this version.

[@CRYOKnox]

I always wondered ehy blind firing isnt a thing in the Star Trek universe. But i guess its to power hungry?

[@dupersuper1938]

I mean, that's largely what the Enterprise does in the first Romulan episode.

[@gmradio2436]

Blind firing is hard. Without sensor feedback, the tactical officer has to visually identify a ships speed and bearing, predict where that ship will be, manually enter the intercept coordinates, and fire, while calculating travel time of munitions. That is a lot of quick mental math in three dimensions where any errors is a miss. If the target ship is cloaked, all of the above and more random variables. Grid patterns are also unlikely to help as a methodical search takes time, would be predictable, and a cloaked ship can move rendering most the work moot. It is harder to do on a Federation vessel than on a Klingon. Klingon vessels have dedicated targeting scopes. They are set up to make programing attacks quicker.

[@CristySFM1234]

I love the design but tbh it feels more like a TNG era ship then a 22nd cen ship

[@Mark_of_the_Bear_Studios]

I have to say I agree, it’s a beee-utiful vessel. But looks like it would eat the NX for lunch. Though, you have to think that if they were dealing with the Vulcans covertly, the two cultures had to be somewhat on par, and warp systems were never shown to be a Romulan focus. I mean why be faster if you can be devastatingly sneaky and utterly ruthless?

[@RedCascadian]

@@Mark_of_the_Bear_Studios I think it probalby would have eaten the NX for lunch. United Earth was very much a 3rd rate power, not leap-frogging ahead until the formation of the Federation and all of its technology-sharing of Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite technology. The others had larger established fleets and ships in construction. Starfleet got to enter its new era of ship design with the most advanced aspects of her allies technology, then it leap-frogged ahead of the Klingon and Romulan Empire outside of a couple niche technologies.

[@chrisjohnson1146]

@@RedCascadian I don't know... Starfleet seemed to surprise everyone they came across. Yea they didn't have shields, but that Hull Polarization mimicked shields quite effectively, and the NX class would go on to showcase one of the greatest strengths of Starfleet. Adaptability. Even against ships with shields, the NX Enterprise was a surprising contender in a fight.

[@gmradio2436]

I think it is the green making it feel TNG era, white or silver grey might fit the era better. I don't think that this would eat an NX for breakfast. Not saying it would lose either, just the NX is stupid tough. The "doom hockey puck" would be chewing on the NX for a while before the kill or taking a lucky shot.

[@CristySFM1234]

@@gmradio2436 you can make it white in sto still feels too advanced for its time

[@DOOMocrat]

Just wanted to leave an encouraging comment that years on, this is still my favorite one house shop fan content online anywhere.

[@StarMandoForge]

The bird of prey was so dangerous that Starfleet built the Daedalus Class ship to combat them

[@stevengalloway8052]

Very good video (as usual). So really what's you're saying is that the Romulans really were the main catalysts in creating the Federation, as opposed to the Klingons? 🤨

[@gmradio2436]

I think that may have been the drone ship incident.

[@UGNAvalon]

I mean, have you seen his Romulan War series of videos?

[@stevengalloway8052]

@@UGNAvalon - Some, not all...

[@FattyMcFox]

My Fan theory is that since ENT was a timeline that was polluted with Temporal cold war interference, that the Romulans having cloaking tech was just a byproduct of that. The Events of ENT are thus a different timeline than Kirk's TOS, or that records were edited or timeline was reset after the Finale of ENT season3, meaning that what we saw on screen never happened for anyone but the NX-Enterprise crew. In the immortal words of Miles O'Brian "I hate temporal mechanics."

[@wesleyhoward5599]

Every single series and half of the movies invinvolved time travel. My theory is that time in the Star Trek universe is hopelessly broken.

[@gmradio2436]

Nobody likes Roddenberry's explanation? I found it to funnily meta.

[@FattyMcFox]

@@wesleyhoward5599 I mean there have been temporal agents in Star-Trek that have litterally gone crazy and sought revenge on specific captains. Namely Janeway. So, you are extremely right.

[@theodoremccarthy4438]

Great stuff, as always.

[@JcBravo8]

Daedalus: Exists. BOP: No.

[@keithallver2450]

Interesting that the 22nd-century Bird of Prey had a warp drive but the 23rd-century one in Balance of Terror was impulse only.

[@Hartzilla2007]

I just take that as warp power being diverted to power the cloaking device so they were stuck moving at impulse when it was on.

[@ImNtDead]

Yeah Im betting they just couldn't detect its warp signature because it doesn't make any sense not to give an intergalactic warship any warp engines.

[@Hartzilla2007]

@@ImNtDead Well also back then Impulse sounded like it was treated as a kind of FTL drive, since they were able to limp under it to a nearby star system in Where No Man has Gone Before.

[@ImNtDead]

@@Hartzilla2007 True impulse is definitely not slow; but it still just doesn't make any sense not to have warp. Especially when considering that the Romulans have a massive empire and all their rivals use warp and have had warp for a long time by that point.

[@singletona082]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Rick's covering my doom hockey puck! *happy romfed noises* Torpedos, more torpedos, oh hey here's some more torpedos on top of that, and the big giant happy fun ball for your trouble.

[@Scandic45]

What i wanted from academy was after the earth romulan war to see the very first of the Federations new explorers working with alien crews discovering future members of the federation , a hopeful time, still filled with it's fair share of danger fear , hate , and tension. closest i thought we could get to the earth romulan war. I love seeing a good prequels story

[@Meritania]

I think even a 100 years later, crews were still on the whole down species lines, it’s only in the TMP-era do crews start diversifying.

[@valor1omega]

This is just an example why I hate ent, it breaks canon just like std. Don't get me wrong its a nice ship just not part of the prime timeine.

[@enisra_bowman]

TNG broke canon, TAS broke canon, DS9 broke canon, VOY broke canon, TOS broke canon even every week look maybe don't look like a Simpsons Meme

[@UGNAvalon]

Newbie question: break canon how? The only thing I could identify was “cloaks too early”, but as Ric said, it’s kinda hard to imagine Romulans _Without_ cloaks, even if history argues otherwise. 🤷‍♂️

[@dupersuper1938]

@@UGNAvalon It's very easy to imagine Romulans without cloaks. I do it every time I watch that episode of Enterprise and imagine a non-cloaked Romulan ship sneaking up on them as they should have filmed...

[@gmradio2436]

UGNAvalon Mostly it is the green, warp, and cloaks. In TOS, Romulan did not have those. Roddenberry actually commented on the canon, I want to say I say this on a PBS or History channel documentary. TOS is not true canon, it is a in universe retelling of events by a production crew with limited time and budget. There are errors made. Besides be a good meta joke about making the show, it hand waves some of the continuity errors. Double Red Alert, Warp 14, and the simple design of the Enterprise. The Enterprise specifically was something pointed out. Apparently it was always supposed to be similar to the motion picture design. Considering Enterprise's retcons are relatively minor, I personally don't mind. Romulans have warp to be a Star Empire, they have Romulan Green. The Cloak is a bigger retcon, but is on theme for the Romulans. Compare to Discovery's Klingons being massively retconned, down to the iconic elements. Sorry for the tangents. Short version is it doesn't exactly line up in a perfect canon.

[@UGNAvalon]

@@gmradio2436 Thanks for the explanation! It helps a lot! And on the topic of Klingons: "TOS Klingons always looked like TMP Klingons" _-ExceptWhenWorfMentionedIt.-_

[@WhyUbrown]

Sad we never got Romulan War Enterprise Seasons. Since we had a Picard show, why not do an Archer show. Scotts still around in great shape and still acting.

[@TonyStark-wr7ob]

How it should have been instead of the xindi

[@vic5015]

Problem is Scott is currently starring on NCIS: New Orleans if I'm not mistaken. Its very hard to revive shows because the cast moves on. And it only gets harder with the passage of time.

[@jaklinhyde]

@@TonyStark-wr7ob Why not both? I really thought s4 was setting up for the romulan war

[@adikmen007]

Im still pissed off about that! Would have been really good for sure!

[@UGNAvalon]

Now just hear me out… is voice acting easier on actors’ schedules? It would allow us to bring back characters whose actors are unavailable &/or less able to act in-person, allow lines to be recorded without everyone being in the same place at the same time, and can allow for bigger &/or more complex action set pieces that can’t be done physically.

[@adriancarroll2926]

Typo @1:50 "aslo"

[@kineuhansen8629]

man i would love to see the earth romulan war on screen

[@warhawk4494]

There is a KZbin channel called The Romulan War. They did an in-depth multiple episode series on the Earth Romulan war with great custom visuals and deep lore.

[@kineuhansen8629]

@@warhawk4494 i think ive seen that but i am thinking like a tv series set in the enterprise era

[@stevieturner9338]

Thank you Rick

[@lnutt677]

I always thought the "cloaking system" aboard older Romulan ships was some 22nd century combination of electronic warfare and stealth technology similar to our stealth jet planes.

[@UGNAvalon]

Would’ve been nice, but we (& more importantly, the characters) literally see the ship disappearing in front of them.

[@Marvin_R]

in star trek fleet command(mobile game) this is referred to as a "gladius"(most of their romulan ships have latin names) and it's the lowest level "bird of prey" type ship in that game, wedged alongside a valdore precursor between 2 d'deridex precursor warbirds.

[@stevenewman1393]

🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely greatly wonderfully well done and nicely informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on The Ship That Taught Starfleet Fear: The T'Varo Romulan Bird of Prey!, A job very fabulously nicely well done indeed Sir!👌.

[@ErikWarhammer]

I really like this ship, Though now I'm mad it didn't have the painted bird on it's underside. That would have been a cool nod.

[@feralprocessor9853]

Right off the bat, some pretty sharp wings.

[@Optimistprime.]

I absolutely love this ship!

[@XHunter442]

Ty for the video and LLAP!

[@keithtorgersen9664]

When I first saw Balance of Terror, I wondered why I was seeing Sarek on board a Romulan ship. Took me a little while to figure out that the actor was playing a completely different character.

[@philly83]

One of the rejected scripts for the Enterprise finale would have had it that the cloak on the 22nd century BOPs was due to temporal cold war interference

[@UncleNavi]

Headcanon is that the ENT Romulan cloak is a similar quality to the DSC Klingon cloak. It's not perfect, eventually Starfleet distributed countermeasures (or just Vulcan quality sensors) across the fleet until the Romulans stopped using the mk1 cloak for the intervening years. Like the Klingon ship Voyager bapped. We'll see how that plays out in SNW.

[@drthompson65]

Ric, one of these, a case of Romulan Ale and we'd have a great time!

[@roneyeam]

I like this ship better than the new one

[@Allosaurus87]

for what i know, 22nd century romulan ships use only advance fusion warp core, and that bird of prey can't go over warp 3

[@Thor13332]

It looks more advanced than the tos Romulan warbird. Overall i like the designs though.

[@SKy_the_Thunder]

You can square the circle for TOS cloaking tech as the "first time" they see it if you assume older versions barely counts at their current tech level. Even Archer's Enterprise in its first encounter them could detect the cloaked mines at least at close range - and while the ship cloaks were more sophisticated, it's not a stretch to assume they weren't _much_ more advanced. Could fall under the same category as the holographic "cloak" the evacuation ship in the TNG movie "Insurrection" used (along with the observation equipment). While it could convincingly fool someone without technological aid, even hand tricorders were able to detect the ship. More "camouflage" than "cloaking", since there are still emissions that can be detected, if you know how to look. "Modern" Romulan cloaking can still be detected to some degree if you know _precisely_ what to look for - like minimal aberrations in the gravitational fields, slightly imperfect light refraction, or traces of warp plasma in the vicinity. But those are very indirect methods that require you to have _very_ sophisticated scanners trimmed at the right spot at the right time.

[@michaelanderson2166]

Surprised they never did cloaked ramming. Make a kamikaze attack with unmanned ships that were cloaked and full of explosive material/ antimatter.

[@marcelszpak1460]

Do we ignore that the nacelles are a copy of those on the Jem'Haddar batlle cruiser?

[@nsr-ints]

I'm pretty sure the thing uses fusion reactor, no M-ARC reactor, that's why in Balance of Terror, they said the Romulans have no warp. It's not that they lack a warp _drive,_ it's that they lack a warp _reactor._

[@SithisLich]

Enterprise would be such a hit if it came out now.

[@GiraffeSweaters]

I thought the Klingon ships were Bird of Prey and Romulan ships were War Birds? I could be wrong.

[@archades115]

I resent that this class was not a modern version of the original warbird and used in TNG and DS9.

[@TK199999]

ENT sorta gotta around the 'Cloak' thing by saying its was not a true like seen in TOS and later. But a type of sensor blind that made appear like it was cloaked.

[@Jay-Sage]

What if, the Romulan Star Empire was also part of the Temporal wars. And that the Temporal benefacter that helped the Suliban was also trying this with the Romulans by encouraging the Romulans to go to war with United Earth. And that they got the Cloaking device from him. Meaby this benefacter did try it again but then with the Romulans. And used a different approach because previous approache with Suliban failed.

[@zimmejoc]

correct if I am recalling incorrectly. I haven't watched balance of terror since the 1980's, but I am 99% sure they specifically say something about when the original war was fought, the Romulans did NOT have warp technology. How does this ship do warp 3? I'm confused, or maybe I am recalling the no warp thing incorrectly, and there isn't a conflict between what was said in Balance of Terror and this vid.

[@StevenNaylor-l9s]

And they only had nuclear weapons, yet the NX class had photon torpedoes.

[@zimmejoc]

@@StevenNaylor-l9s I should go back and watch ToS. It has been years…

[@nsr-ints]

​@@StevenNaylor-l9sMy ideas are that the Romulans not having warp actually doesn't mean they don't have warp drives, the ideas of interstellar wars doesn't make sense without them, but actually, it means they don't have warp reactors, instead using copiously huge fusion reactors to power their warp drives (rather ineffectively.) And the fact that the war was fought with nuclear weapons, well, my idea is that the NX era's photon warheads are insanely expensive to manufacture, and only issued to top of the line ships only, but in the grand scale of things, nuclear based torpedoes are the name of the game.

[@nsr-ints]

​@@StevenNaylor-l9sAlso, the cloaks we see used in Enterprise aren't "true cloaks", they're an extremely advanced form of sensor scramblers, kinda like passive jammer systems. That's why the TOS crew was so surprised at the cloak. That's because the so called "cloak" that was deployed in the Romulan war was largely obsolete and defeated by Starfleet sensors. They aren't shocked at a cloak, they're shocked that they have ones that actually works now, which also explains why during The Enterprise Incident, Starfleet sanctioned a mission to steal the new cloak.

[@greytooth898]

The name of your channel really makes me not want to watch your videos, but this was a decent one.

[@starbrand3726]

Why does the "older" Star Trek Enterprise Bird of Prey look more modern than the TOS version?

[@TheWonderfuloz]

Star Trek fleet command call this a ‘Gladius’

[@TheMrPeteChannel]

This thing looks more advanced then the ToS BoP. Not less. Maybe if it had cylindrical nacels & visible greebles it would look older.

[@feralprocessor9853]

SPACE!!!

[@Merrimack_Jack]

Perhaps it was lightly armed because its primary role was to lay minefields? Something had to do it.

[@usprulse]

Its sad that they nerfed the romulans with the supernova crap. I remember that in VOY janeway said that supernova is such a rare event it's unusual. The Nutrek is bleh....

[@90lancaster]

If the Romulan Star Empire & the Coalition of Planets hate each other very much....

[@LordTalax]

Funny how the 22nd century bird of prey looked way better than the 23rd century version.

[@Phil-D83]

A kin to a wood klipper whip being used in 2024 ...😅

[@adikmen007]

Damn a bit slow and weak for being a romulan ship knowing they always have very strong ships. I always thought this ship was one of the stronger ships in enterprise. Easily being able to take out a kumari or xindi ship.

[@gmradio2436]

Why does this ship existence being a retcon feel better than the Klingons in Discovery? I theorize that while this ship is a retcon of Romulan capability, it is not a retcon of Romulan identity. This brings cloaking forward almost a hundred years, but the Romulans were, well Romulan. If anything this retcon was used to embrace the iconic identity of the Romulans, the Masters of Cloaking. The hat that the Romulans had since TOS.

[@feralprocessor9853]

SCIENCE!!!

[@skywise001]

Ah I see your error you thought Enterprise was made first. No this toy isnt the one that taught Star Fleet anything.;

[@Max_Flashheart]

Comment for the algorithm

[@john-lenin]

Belongs in Flash Gordon not Trek.