Without giving it out, I'll say why. The Romulans are threatening trouble potentially. Picard and his crew rendevouz with the USS Yamato, a ship that's equally first-rate and one of the newest ships on the fleet, basically, the same type of starship as the D, advanced and having numerous weapons systems. Now here's the scene - I won't specify who it is, but the Romulans hold one of the crew hostage, and the Romulan female commander (who's really one of the "bro"-saying bros in this one) says, something along the lines of, "You're going to die WITH US (add "bro" or "sis," and again I don't specify whio and it would have truly been ghetto)." If this had been a Cardassian, they'd be Allied Nordicist Yankee "Friends"-watching "Seinfeld"-hating stuck up types who wouldn't even say that. It's like "You're part of the party, bro." Cardassians are too stuck up. They'd just jeer and throw things at him. The way she says it shuts down the nonsense that Romulans are more hateful of non-Romulans than Cardassians are of non-Cardassians. Dukat had a fetish for Bajoran women, btw. That was not the rule. It's not being ghetto (which the Romulans are, being "bro"-saying Latinos based on the Romans, as opposed to white Cardassians), it's having what us Nuyoricans call "caracter fuerte" (I don't need to translate as that's pretty obvious).
Anyways, we get star cameo heaven from Thalmus Rasulala (who plays captain Donald Varley), of "Cool Breeze," who plays the captain of the Yamato. The scene we see of his logs, and the initial encounter they have with him is somewhat comical as the transmission between Picard and Varley, as the viewscreen keeps getting interrupted. The way it happens plus Varley's calm nation, makes it funny and the interruption happens as though flies are all over. Making this hilarious UPN material right from the UPN handbook (some crude humor as flies are gross). Basically something destroys his ship and its gets frightening. And being they're near the neutral zone, it makes sense to assume the worst - the Romulans are starting the trouble. This is one of their episodes where they're lethal, and not comic relief. Being try-hards like in "The Mind's Eye". Essentially a Romulan Warbird ascends, and Romulan female commander (played by the same English actress who plays the commander in "Face of the Enemy") is furious, mad that the Federation is challenging her plan to claim a planet for Romulus. She prepares to fire at the Enterprise. And the crew are scared of what's gonna happen becuase their shields are not operating. But once the plan goes, there's a brief few seconds where we really see the tone as though the Romulans are downright the threat that the Cardassians are. They are a lethal match. But Romulans are shrouded in mystery. We never explicitly see the Federation fight the Romulans ever, directly (we do see the Romulans attack the D in "The Defector" but that's it). A cloaking device is not indicative of weapons strength (which the Cardassians are far more advanced in, plus the Cardassians are first-rate scientists, and "DS9" really retconned them badly). They do not come off as threatening to the D in this episode, proving the Cardassians are more advanced than the major 3. Now they're not bumbling but they don't. It turns out that the same problem affecting the Enterprise's shields is also affect the Warbird. Teh mechanics of the episode are interesting as Geordi tries to investigate and a very interesting paradox plays out. Without giving it out, basically everything the crew believes has to be done is only worsening the problem. Basically, as a hint, some natural star force is causing the problems on the ship and rewriting the software and hardware of the ship. They're doing it too on the Romulan Warbird. It's a great episode that, in NY, aired on WWOR. See it to believe it!
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