The episode does a great job of communicating actual military considerations in space. The Enterprise locates itself in a specific location to appear to be a sensor echo in Romulan sensors, which belays an in depth understanding that the Federation has for the Romulan Star Empire. Everything that both sides do shows an understanding of what the other side can reasonably do and in that creates a chess game.
I can’t think of too many sci-fi properties today that get into the lived in reality that this episode does. This episode goes way deep into the how of war, even with a new technology disrupting it.
Not retconed per se, they just can’t make their mind up on what the series is and keep radically changing direction and dumping prior development and characters. Changes are often for the better and don’t directly contradict but there’s certainly a lack of any common thought in the story they’re trying to tell.
It’s important to remember that Earth has an outsize influence on the Federation. The capital is, and always has been, there, and will continue to be until such time as it secedes entirely from the Federation after the Burn. The Academy is there. Starfleet is headquartered there, and grew out of United Earth’s space service. Most of Starfleet is human, most Federation colonies are human. Azetbur was mistaken to call itself a “Homo sapiens-only club” but the fact is that from the beginning, as the only planet with friendly relations with Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar Prime, as the very reason the Federation exists… Earth found itself with a power dynamic that highly favored it.
As such, I don’t think it’s too surprising that a specifically Earthican problem could weigh heavily on the Federation, even as it grew larger and more cosmopolitan.
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