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Like my respect for Vulcans.

Oh well, we have hashed this out many times.

I still think the Romulans ended up fighting a two front War and picked the lesser of two enemies to give a pretty good deal to. We know they had been in space much longer than Earth, some sources point to 1000 years IIRC. Their tech level is a little iffy, on the one hand they would likely not be as advanced as the Vulcans we saw in ENT since they would have likely had a smaller population base, the need to find, settle and repopulate a planet, set up new industry and chart a new area of space would take time which would set them back a bit. On the other hand it is possible that they were able to adsorb some other species whose tech level was slightly above theirs, how this would happen is unknown but its possible. This other race would then not only lend their technology but would also bring reafdy made industry and population to the Romulan Empire and thus they may not be that far behind. At any rate though I do believe that the Romulans were more advanced in terms of Technology than Earth was.

I also don't believe the War was a conventional one like DS9 showed us, its not really the Romulans style, from what we have seen they like to provoke an enemy into making a mistake and then capitalize on it. Its also possible that the war was started in a similar manner to Balance of Terror, a Romulan ship is sent to attack Earth Targets, Earth doesn't respond with force but rather tries diplomacy, the Romulans see this as a weakness and start a war, Earth equips itself with support from friendly races and their own industrial base and is able to at least hold the Romulans off. The Romulans, not willing to get into a prolonged stalemate and seeing other races helping Earth begin to worry that they may begin hostilities with them on the side of Earth and propose/agree to a ceasefire and Treaty...

While the second half of what you said makes a fair bit of sense. I think GK may be a bit closer as to where Earth gets its boots from. After the whole problem with the Xindi, Earth would have felt weak and unable to protect itself. It wouldn't shock me to see a growth in arms over the next few years if not decades. The Earth SF was a no body and learned that the hard way. So, in return the spend the next hundred years growing and building. By the time of TOS, the UFP was mostly protected by humans. That would show that their growth was so fast and so over powering that the other three founding members of the UFP just said "do what you want" and got out of the way. WW3 cost some 600 million lives and left most of Earth in ruins. They came together and started to rebuild just to have the Xindi show up. That would give people a pretty good reason to step up their plans a bit or two.

KuvahMagh wrote:Oh well, we have hashed this out many times.

I still think the Romulans ended up fighting a two front War and picked the lesser of two enemies to give a pretty good deal to. We know they had been in space much longer than Earth, some sources point to 1000 years IIRC. Their tech level is a little iffy, on the one hand they would likely not be as advanced as the Vulcans we saw in ENT since they would have likely had a smaller population base, the need to find, settle and repopulate a planet, set up new industry and chart a new area of space would take time which would set them back a bit. On the other hand it is possible that they were able to adsorb some other species whose tech level was slightly above theirs, how this would happen is unknown but its possible. This other race would then not only lend their technology but would also bring reafdy made industry and population to the Romulan Empire and thus they may not be that far behind. At any rate though I do believe that the Romulans were more advanced in terms of Technology than Earth was.

I also don't believe the War was a conventional one like DS9 showed us, its not really the Romulans style, from what we have seen they like to provoke an enemy into making a mistake and then capitalize on it. Its also possible that the war was started in a similar manner to Balance of Terror, a Romulan ship is sent to attack Earth Targets, Earth doesn't respond with force but rather tries diplomacy, the Romulans see this as a weakness and start a war, Earth equips itself with support from friendly races and their own industrial base and is able to at least hold the Romulans off. The Romulans, not willing to get into a prolonged stalemate and seeing other races helping Earth begin to worry that they may begin hostilities with them on the side of Earth and propose/agree to a ceasefire and Treaty...

But what if the Romulan style sprang forth from it's defeat in the Earth/Romulan war? What bugs me is this idea that the Romulans had always been sneaky, always used cloaking devices, always stabbed opponents in the back. More realistically they suffered a big defeat and decided to drastically change their tactics accordingly.

This is one way we can see how the Romulans of TOS differ from Romulans in TNG. In TNG they are all back stabbing and treacherous (or so it seemed to me) whereas in TOS they are still honorable (i.e. Mark Leonard blowing himself up rather than risk capture). There is a gradual shift in an honorable warrior ethic to one where we see a race beset by enemies on all sides, one that must rely upon subversion and full on treachery to survive.

katefan wrote:This is one way we can see how the Romulans of TOS differ from Romulans in TNG. In TNG they are all back stabbing and treacherous (or so it seemed to me) whereas in TOS they are still honorable (i.e. Mark Leonard blowing himself up rather than risk capture). There is a gradual shift in an honorable warrior ethic to one where we see a race beset by enemies on all sides, one that must rely upon subversion and full on treachery to survive.

Good points. Indeed, in TOS it was the Klingons who were the sneaky underhand bunch, and the Romulans who set great store by fighting honourably. By TNG those roles were reversed, and the two were treated as if it had always been that way.

Hmmm I never thought of that, and considering we are talking of a time laps of hundreds of years a shift in mind set is to be expected.

Very true. In the end any number of things could have happened during the war. I personally would rather the exact nature of the war and what happened remain unknown.

Captain Seafort wrote:

katefan wrote:This is one way we can see how the Romulans of TOS differ from Romulans in TNG. In TNG they are all back stabbing and treacherous (or so it seemed to me) whereas in TOS they are still honorable (i.e. Mark Leonard blowing himself up rather than risk capture). There is a gradual shift in an honorable warrior ethic to one where we see a race beset by enemies on all sides, one that must rely upon subversion and full on treachery to survive.

Good points. Indeed, in TOS it was the Klingons who were the sneaky underhand bunch, and the Romulans who set great store by fighting honourably. By TNG those roles were reversed, and the two were treated as if it had always been that way.

I will give Enterprise points in this case; the Klingons in Enterprise were not all that honorable, by my reckoning. So it seems that B&B were attempting to show there was a difference between Enterprise/TOS Klingons and TNG Klingons, as if there had been some sort of moral/ethical shift. TNG's handling of it could have simply been propaganda, the Klingons re-writing history and claiming that they had always been an honorable race. "Backstabbing? Us? Pshaw!"

As Ezri once pointed out, Klingons in the TNG era liked to spout off about honour, but their actions often belied their words when you got right down to it.

GrahamKennedy wrote:As Ezri once pointed out, Klingons in the TNG era liked to spout off about honour, but their actions often belied their words when you got right down to it.

I think it is about half and half. You saw a lot of Klingons attempting to adhere to an honorable code, but as many were wont to be utterly without honor and ruthless. For every Gowron there was a Martok.

But the point is taken; you could not even claim a majority of Klingons were predisposed towards practicing an honorable lifestyle with the evidence that we saw in TNG/DS9.

Even Worf acted with huge dishonour more than once. Let's not forget he shouldered the blame for a crime that his father did not commit, allowing the offspring of those who did to retain their power and position. And foisted a fake Kahless onto the Klingon people. Both done "for the Empire", but both dishonourable acts in my eyes.

You could argue that those acts were honourable.

He did it for the empire, a very honourable thing to do.

Lying to the Klingon people for political purposes?

A strange type of honour, that.

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Teaos wrote:You could argue that those acts were honourable.

He did it for the empire, a very honourable thing to do.

Before Deep gets here (and to see Reliants reaction):

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!!