Commander Hansen had no idea how or why his outpost was being attacked. The outpost where he was stationed was suddenly up against a very powerful enemy... one he had never encountered before. Oh, he had heard of them, sure, but he never expected that he would meet them head on. They had been at peace for over a hundred years. But there they were, attacking Commander Hansen and all those under his command. It was as if they would appear out of nowhere, stage an attack, and disappear again. And it would only be a matter of time until they completely destroyed the station, killing all of the inhabitants.
Commander Hansen, with his defenses already exhausted, did the only thing he could do: he sent out a plea for help. One ship received the communication and responded to it. Commander Hansen described to them what was happening, and the ship rushed to try to get there in time to help. But they failed. They were too far away to get there in time. The unknown enemy continued their assault on the outpost until there was nothing left.
The ship that Commander Hansen had been able to contact arrived too late to be of any help to Hansen or his outpost, but they were able to pursue the unknown enemy. And what was to follow was the first encounter between the U.S.S. Enterprise and the Romulans. Didn’t know you were getting a Star Trek Sermon today, did you? That episode first aired on December 13, 1966 and revealed a device that every Romulan warship would be equipped with: a cloaking device.
In Star Trek, a cloaking device is a piece of equipment built into space ships that has the ability to bend light around the ship so that the ship essentially becomes invisible. And only when they want to use their weapons do they need to disable their cloak and risk being detected.
One of the biggest problems that
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