"The Next Phase"/"The Pegasus" link

[balls]

I apologize if this has been asked/answered before. While watching "The Next Phase" last night, Geordi mentions a molecular phase inverter. It's supposed to change the the structure of matter so it can pass through normal matter. He goes on to say that a few years ago there were some intelligence reports that the Klingons were trying to combine a phase inverter with a cloaking device so a ship could hide anywhere, even in a planet. Is this a link to "The Pegasus?" It would seem if information came to Starfleet about the possibility of such a device, that maybe Pressman and others started their own research on it. I see that both episodes were written by Ron Moore, so my guess is that it might have been somewhat deliberate (or at least, followed up on when he wrote "The Pegasus" the next season.

 

[Dukhat]

I’m guessing they got the idea to use the phase cloak from “The Next Phase” for “The Pegasus.” But I doubt that there was some master plan about linking the two episodes together. It’s not like the events of ‘The Next Phase” were even mentioned in the latter episode, or that Riker was secretly thinking ‘hey, I remember this cloak from my old ship’ in the former.

 

[Qonundrum]

It's still a lovely thought. The Romulans were mustache-twirling their own technology when, for a couple decades, the Federation had their own malfunctioning idea that was quietly but literally buried inside solid rock. Does/would this mean that there had been inklings prior to the events of "The Pegasus"? Naah, that'd be too "small universe syndrome"*, so this episode went nowhere and we'll presume that the Treaty of Algernon continued unabated over in DS9.

But seriously - given Picard was going to cry foul at the end of "Pegasus", season 7 missed an ideal opportunity to make a mini-arc with the Romulans instead of going episode after episode of long non-existent family members, another revenge plot that was already done, a super weapon quest whose device tells you on the handle as to how to defeat it because we have guns that show drawings of people wearing Kevlar bests and hats, the ship becomes sentient for reasons, Wesley and Ro are given dumb conclusions, sex ghost with the most (definitely creepy, but not for the usual ghostacular reasons!), gem moments such as "LOVE MEEEEEEE!"**, "Attached", "Dark Page", Data's mommy, the okay-but-could-have-been-great "Force of Nature", and so on... which is odd as it's easier to sit through most of those than most of season 6! IMHO, YMMV, EIEIO, ETC...




* After all, on planet Earth, you know oodles of humans were all building their own versions of fishing poles and nobody was trading notes or anything, then some time later someone invented a net, then a net was used to scoop up oodles of fish, and then after a couple dozen centuries we end up seeing what they did in "Planet of The Apes" as nets were used by evolved apes to scoop up devolved humans with.


** You knew I was going to bring up this clip again! Dated or not, "Bedazzled" (1967, not the remake) still holds up better than "Gambit" for sure... oh wait, I mean "Liaisons" - or maybe not, it's not the best episode but enough of it is passable... oh okay then, "Sub Rosa" but that one's an easy target. That, and I was in Picard's shoes once... but that's neither here nor there...

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[Tomalak]

It's a nice link that everyone was independently playing around with this technology, but no one could really make it work reliably.

The real nugget in The Pegasus is that Starfleet was continuing to develop and research cloaking technology, despite the treaty. Presumably this was partly defensive, to develop countermeasures to Romulan and Klingon cloaks.