The Ship that Taught Starfleet Fear

The Bird of Prey from the Romulan Star Empire was the vessel that first entered into war with Starfleet and Earth from 2156 to the founding of the United Federation of Planets in 2161. This unassuming vessel soon taught Starfleet a lot about who the Romulans were, and what they were capable of with the early stealth Cloaking technology, and the beginnings of Plasma based disruptors that would cause problems 100 years later in the Original series. Let's look at where it began.

Chapters
00:00 Intro and Origin
01:40 Lore Origin
04:49 Specifications
08:11 Summary

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This Video is for critical purposes with commentary.

Outro Animation made by @icarogabriel17

[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.

[grodysattva]

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

[christiankolbesberger]

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

[CrazyNights]

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.

[geoffreyganoe]

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

[kineuhansen]

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

[seankane]

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

[findhard]

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

[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.

[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)

[Scandic]

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

[CristySFM]

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

[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.

[StarMandoForge]

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

[stevenewman]

🖖😎👍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!👌.

[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.

[singletona]

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.

[stevengalloway]

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? 🤨

[archades]

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

[megadoomerr]

Certifiably Ingame is the David Attenborough of Star Trek.