Talk:Earth-Romulan War

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Contents 1 Meaning of "quarter" 2 "No quarter, no captives" 3 Less advanced vessels 4 Canon Reference - Generations

[edit] Meaning of "quarter"

The discussion section says The ships Spock describes had "no quarter, no captives" and were armed with "primitive atomic weapons", while the NX-01 and NX-02 have individual quarters for each crew member, a brig with two cells, phase cannons and photon torpedoes. It sounds as if "quarter" is being interpreted as living quarters. I don't think this is what was meant by the quote about "primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives". One of the definitions of "quarter" is "pity or mercy shown toward an enemy or opponent who is in one's power". --Jwwalker 04:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

So, "primitive space vessels which allowed no pity or mercy towards the enemy"? How does a ship prevent you from showing mercy? It's a morality decision; whether or not to kill a defeated enemy. I don't see how a ship can be too primitive to allow you to make that judgement call.
From my point of view, the living quarters and the brigs both have something in common, which is that they use space on the ship. More primitive vessels would have limited space, and therefore no room for either. I believe that's what Spock meant in that quote. -- Ritchy 13:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "No quarter, no captives"

Spock is definitely referring to mercy or clemency, not living space!

You've got at appreciate that those lines were delivered in TOS, before the rich back-history to the Star Trek franchise was developed. His words are meant to indicate that the "primitive space vessles" had no shields, no transporters, no ship to ship communication - it was a fight to the death.

You couldn't disable your opponent, you could only destroy them. Hence, no mercy.

• • • There is also the fact that the Romulans were known to destroy there own ships rather than being captured. You can't capture someone who kills himself.

[edit] Less advanced vessels

I've restored a bit of text about the vessels, which had been deleted by someone with no explaination. -- Ritchy 23:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I deleted it, as that sentence was inaccurate.NME 23:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Care to explain? The NX-class has weapons more advanced than "atomic weapons", it can (and often does) take on prisoners, and can make ship-to-ship visual communication. What part is inaccurate? -- Ritchy 01:34, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The deep-space freighters are the least advanced Earth ships in space. But even they have weapons more advanced than the atomics that Spock spoke of. The deep-space freighters also had visual ship-to-ship communications. Both those can be verified from the Enterprise season 1 episode "Fortunate Son." So already, the least advanced Earth ships are superior to what Spock described in Balance of Terror. And I seriously doubt that Starfleet would start building less advanced ships to fight a war.

As for prisoners, the NX-01's brig was only large enough for four or six people. And as far as we know, the NXs are the only ships with brigs. So, with the NX-01 and 02, and possibly the 03 and 04 if they were finished in time for the war, they were, all together, capable of holding at most 24 prisoners. And it's doubtful that the four most advanced ships would be kept together, but rather seperated to command seperate fleets. Also, the fact that Spock stated that "no quarter was given," it was a kill-or-be-killed situation. That probably also came with a "take no prisoners" order.

I admit, the brig bit is sketchy. But I am confident on the matter of weapons and visual communications.NME 03:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow, sorry, I was distracted from this page for a while. Anyway, on-topic. Yes, I am aware that ships more advanced than those described by Spock are seen being used by Earth in Enterprise. However, this does not change the fact that Spock clearly described less advanced ships being used. We cannot discard that comment simply because it does not agree with Enterprise.
I do recognised however that I made an unfounded assumption in saying that "Starfleed fielded less advanced ships". All we know from Spock is that less advanced ships were used; they might have been left over from some older fleet that was never seen in Enterprise (what makes you say that the deep-space freighters of ENT are the least advanced Earth ship?), or even brought out of retirement for the war. I've changed the wording. -- Ritchy 21:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know that the deep-space freighters are THE least advanced, but they are definitely among them. For example, the ECS Fortunate had been in service and operated by the Keene family for three generations. That means it's either 60 or 90 years old, depending on how long you consider a generation (20 or 30 years). If it's 60 years old, it launched circa 2091. If it's 90 years old, it launched very soon after First Contact with the Vulcans. For arguments sake, let's go with the 60 year figure. That leaves less than 30 years between First Contact (2063) and the final construction dates for at least some of the boomers. That's not much time to construct a fleet, when you consider how long it takes to build a single ship. Usually, at least a year. And we don't know how many shipyards they had. Of course, they may have had some earlier ships in mothballs, and brought them out, but if anything these old ships would've either had to spend months being upgraded to (at least) better engines and weapons, or remained in the Sol system as a final defense.

In any case, Starfleet would've used everything they had to fight, not just the least advanced. NME 08:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what points we're arguing here anymore. My point was that Spock's quote is quite clear regarding the use of some very primitive ships in this war. I don't think you've addressed that, or if you did I missed it completely. You're point seems to be that ENT shows that Earth had ships more advanced than those described by Spock, around the time the war occured. You're right. For that matter, Vulcan and Andor also had large fleets of more-advanced ships and a strong interest in helping Earth fight back agaist the Romulans. But the fact is, the four years of the war are never shown on-screen, and there's a one-year gap between the end of ENT and the begining of the war on which we have no information whatsoever. Any number of things could have happened to these advanced ships during those five years, which forced Earth to rely on less advanced ships that could have come from any number of sources. But Wikipedia is really not the place to debate on that - we should limit ourselves to the information we have about the ships Starfleet used in the war, and all we have on that is Spock's quote. -- Ritchy 04:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Canon Reference - Generations

Should this even be included? The clip from Picard's album is barely visible, and usually disputed. At the very least, this segment should be tagged as "possible." --NME 11:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)