[Star Trek] Exposit the Dialog

[DHBirr]

Really, can you imagine trying to make first contact with a Yamato? The way that thing looks, Starfleet might be saying "We come in peace!", but
all the other side can see is "Shoot to kill."

There's a Trek novel came out in '88 titled Final Frontier (no relation to the movie) by Diane Carey. It involves a confrontation
between the Enterprise (1701) on her first mission, before she was even named, with the Romulans -- who take one look at the design and think:

Wicked white.... Its hulls were designed like weapons of war: battle shield, club, and lance. Even at this distance, they could see laser portals, a heavy
sensor disk, engines bigger than most whole ships, and a haughtiness that soldiers of their fabric understood very well.


... A single word might as well have been painted across the huge ship as clearly as the wings were painted across Raze.


And every man on the bridge knew that word.


Invasion.

Alien minds ... how can we know what they'll find threatening, and what they'll see as a gesture of peace?

As a side note, this book has the Romulans develop the cloaking device because Enterprise got out of a tight situation by tricking them into thinking
the Federation already had one. And James Kirk's father was Robert April's second in command on this first mission.

Oh, and thanks for the pictures; they were quite helpful, although I wasn't actually asking for them, just explaining my inadequacy. I can't even
envision my own designs properly without drawing them -- which I usually do only to figure out where the weapons emplacements
are.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.