Romulan Ship: “What are you doing in the neutral zone?”
Enterprise: “What are you doing in the neutral zone?”
Romulan ship: “WE ASKED YOU FIRST!”
TBF, the war never seems to happen. Even when Picard decloaked the Pegasus right in front of a warbird to show how thoroughly Starfleet was breaking the treaty, nothing really came of it.
I’m gonna be “that guy”
Starfleet didn’t break the treaty (strictly on a technicality, while it wasn’t technically a cloak, it served almost the same purpose) , and even if they did, romulans routinely wipe their ass with it anyway.
The treaty only ever limited starfleet, and only starfleet cared to follow the rules. When the contract is so blatantly and consistently broken by one side, the other is not beholden to it.
Well, Picard and Co seemed to agree it broke the treaty, so lacking access to the actual text I think we have to take their word for it. It could say something insanely general, like “any technology that renders a ship invisible to the naked eye…”
Can’t argue with everything else you said, though.
Huh. Almost as if TNG has lessons to teach us about life today just as it did in the late 80’s/early 90’s.
It’s incredible how often they run into each other when space is so big.
Almost like they both hone in on a distress call signal!
In TNG, seems like Romulans wouldn’t really respond to a distress call. At least not with helpful intent. But in later series maybe. Or maybe that is all Federation propaganda.
The Star Trek that we see is all just Federation propaganda. It’s not representative of how the events actually played out.
Not respond, just get there to see if any federation ships would answer it. Its all about posturing
And people say I go out of my way to find things to complain about.
You should get some romulan shoulder pieces, then people will take your complaints way more serious
I think the implication is that the Romulans are constantly patrolling the neutral zone. the Federation knows this and pretends it isn’t happening as they dont want to get into a conflict.
Not just an implication, isn’t this explicitly stated? Any superpowers in a cold war are constantly spying on each other and bending whatever rules they think they can get away with.
And they rightly assume their enemies are doing the same.
I’ve always viewed the Romulans as solely trying to goad the Federation into a war but not start one themselves. I can’t tell if it’s a superiority thing or they think they’ll have some twisted moral high ground.
They’re manufacturing reasons to start a conflict. Like the reason the Vietnam War started was because a Vietnamese fishing boat got too close to a US war ship which was seen as an attack, then the US war ships mistook a the sonar ping off a school of fish as an underwater attack and used that as justification to escalate a war with Vietnam.
Romulans are probably doing the same thing, they’re using their cloaking tech to secretly parol much closer than they should be, and constantly looking for the Federation breaking the neutral zone rules to turn the interstellar community against the Federation. Basically they’re itching for the Federation to throw the first real punch so the romulans look like the victims.
They are the Russians in the Cold War, or basically the Russians now. They are a despotic empire that has spats on its borders, signs treaties with no intention of adhering to them, invades their neighbors, is hyper aggressive with espionage, and sees the Federation as weak for not doing likewise without realizing that what makes the Federation strong is that they have a rule based system and a moral code.
Almost every military power in history did that, since at least the Romans. It’s just how people behave.
The distress call may have been caused by the Romulans, and/or the Romulans actually have a fuck ton of covert operations in the Neutral Zone thanks to their cloaking device.
Bruh the Romulans are deep in Federation controlled space. They don’t give a fuck.
