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I wonder if the guy who wrote that episode ever thought about how much controversy that one line would cause.

It's funny, because it seems pretty straightforward to me.

I agree with your interpretation but I can see how others can think differently.

On the plus side, it does look like some crafty engineering on the part of the Romulans to get so much out of a weak power source. Of course, the whole idea of the ship was that it was limited in range/number of times it could fire the superweapon due to its engines. Still, the Romulan engineers did get the most out of that power source.

You make a good point, although Scotty's apparent derision of their power generation could apply more to the type of tech rather than the degree. While the TYPE of generation may have been a secondary technology to the Feds, they certainly could (and probably must have) scaled it up enough to got to warp, fight with a Fed ship at elngth, etc.

Clearly, they must have. But, (apparently) fusion reactors would have to be enormous (or numerous) and burn huge quantities of fuel to match a M/ARA; the Romulan BoP didn't look like it had that much space for the reactor or fuel. The implication is that the Romulans got a lot out of that reactor, but couldn't match the M/ARA and/or would exhaust it's fuel much more quickly - which seemed to be the case as the BoP was just about on empty by the final battle scene.

Right on. The peak a/o average output may have been similar to an M/AM reactor, but obviously there was a drawback in comparison - lack of duration.

Mikey wrote:Why you gotta bust on Zimbabwe? They'd just hitch along with whatever Moscow was doing anyway.

Don't you watch the news? They'd buy a rocket from the Chinese.

I think the only way for Earth to unite is if aliens were common and at least slightly hostile. I doubt humans will ever unite until then.

Monroe wrote:Don't you watch the news? They'd buy a rocket from the Chinese.

I suspect you're right - it would take some sort of potentially dangerous outside agency to effect that type of unification.

Mikey wrote:Right on. The peak a/o average output may have been similar to an M/AM reactor, but obviously there was a drawback in comparison - lack of duration.

Yeah. Didn't the Romulans mention a few times that they were running low on fuel?

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:
Yeah. Didn't the Romulans mention a few times that they were running low on fuel?

Yes.

The massive exust also points at high fuel consumption.

Teaos wrote:The massive exust also points at high fuel consumption.

What massive exhaust?

It looks overly large to me for a ship that size.

It may be similar to the IR supressors on modern military helicopters. Which have large outlets to disperse the exhaust so it doesn't show up as well on IR. The BoP is a stealth ship and we know that it's cloak was far from perfect, they may have been trying to get any advantage they could.