TNG Rewatch: 5x08 - Unification Part 2

Picking up from where last left off, we find out that Spock is on Romulous not because he has from defected from the Federation but because he is working on reunification between the Vulcans and Romulans with the aid of a Romulan senator he met at Khitomer (Star Trek: VI.) Spock and the senator or confident in their efforts as they now have another "in" with the Romulan senate through another, younger, Romulan senator who is eager to meet with Spock and talk terms for the reunification, saying that many think that it should happen to rejoin the two people.

Spock is skeptical over the young senator's eagerness to begin reunification right away but decides to play things out to see where they end up, eventually he is captured, along with Picard and Data, as Spock's long-time friend from Khitomer was playing him all along.

The young Romulan senator, along with Sela, are eager to begin the talks of reunification but not for the reasons Spock wants, they plan to send an invasion force to Vulcan to re-conquer it and gain a foot-hold on the Federation, believing they'll have enough time to establish it before anyone realizes what is going on and take action.

Sela plans to use Spock to deliver a speech to allow the invasion force through, under the guise of being a peace envoy on Vulcan ships. Spock refuses, so Sela prepares to use a holographic Spock to deliver the message. Alone in her office for a period of time, Data, Spock and Picard manage to use the holographic imager in Sela's office to ambush her when she returns. They deliver a warning message to the Federation, rather than speech Sela had prepared, and manage to escape.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise is continuing to investigate the remains of the Vulcan ship they found in the previous episode and it leads them to a Federation border world near where they're able to intercept the Romulan invasion force but not before the ships are destroyed by Romulans.

Picard and Data prepare to leave Roumulous but Spock insists on staying still believing he can work with the young people of Romulous towards reunification. Before departing, Picard allows Spock to mind-meld with him in order to get Sarek's thoughts and feelings.

A good episode that has quite a bit going on in it from the set-up in the previous episode, but it seems like a lot happens in a very short amount of time. Namely, Spock's Romulan contact(s) being so eager to begin talks right away. Sure they end-up being skeptical over it but you'd think the Romulans would have played things out a lot more rather than rushing into this.

Sela is poorly used here and really ads nothing to the story other than as a minor callback and reuse of her character.

The episode also gives us a bit more of a connection with Star Trek VI which is a nice "extra mile" for the show to go at this point and, really, probably unprecedented for a show of the time to have such a broader universe that it connects with a recently released movie.

There's a lot of good scenes in this episode between Spock and Data and between Spock and Picard. Overall, Nimoy does a great job here.

There's some fun stuff with Riker on his investigation but, really, the Enterprise's role in this episode is pretty small and I'm not sure it was even entirely needed. (Literally everything would have turned out the same if the Enterprise did nothing.) The scenes with Riker in the Mos Eisley Cantina: Star Trek and the four-armed pianist are good.

Good couple of episodes but I think the scope of what they wanted was wider than could be contained in two episodes as it seems like a very, very truncated timeline here. Sela also seems to think, and expect, Federation retaliation to their Vulcan invasion force but seems to mostly shrug it off confident that by the time the Federation has to react they'll already be entrenched. Which, yeah, I'm sure the Federation is just going to let a core, founding, world be invaded by a major enemy power without a fight.

Some of the best scenes in the episode are between Data and Spock as they both essentially play the same role in their respective series, Data takes notice of their differences through similarity.

Again, good couple of episodes but still flawed. But they work well enough.

 

For me the biggest issue with this episode is that the invasion plan didn't make sense. Ok, Romulus gets 150 troops on Vulcan. ...Now what? Sela seems to think somehow this force will be intractable and they will be able to control Vulcan politics this way. Even though there's no chance of reinforcements and transporters, like, exist. I suppose maybe they had some kind of bombs or something on board that they could use to create a mutually assured destruction situation. Or maybe some of that magic black hole goop? Still, it didn't seem terribly much like they thought this plan through.

The Spock/Picard and Spock/Data scenes were wonderful and I always like the scenes where the Enterprise crew end up in seedy bars.

 

While not terrible, the "Unification" two-parter was probably the biggest letdown of Modern Trek's entire run.

 

Such a great build-up in part one we were bound to feel let down. Even without Sela this would have felt very rushed. I also think it would been nice if Pardeck didn't turn out to be the typical Romulan caricature.

These episodes are very much about differences between the generations - be it Spock v Sarek or TOS v TNG - the Romulan plot is just padding. I always felt sorry for Spock - that he hadn't had the chance to make things right between himself and his father. But this time I felt doubly sorry for him - this is the first time I have watched this two-parter since Trek was rebooted - and watching this time I knew how his story panned out. He never succeeded in his dreams of reunification, in fact he was possibly responsible for destroying Romulus and all her people. And then he gets stuck in a time that he doesn't recognise, one where his people and planet have been destroyed. That's a pretty poor resolution to a much-loved characters life. At least Kirk got to ride his steed and (presumably) f@ck his long lost love in the nexus before meeting with a crap death.

 

Yeah, it's ridiculous that Sela thinks their invasion force (whatever the size of it was) could get entrenched enough to dominate, take-over and occupy a Federation core world.

I dunno about that, "Nemesis" left off with the implication that there could be eased tensions between Romulous and the Federation and perhaps a dialog between the two. If this is the case then certainly something could have also happened between the Vulcans and the Romulans.

 

I liked this episode, but yeah the romulan invasion plot was not all that great. Still, it's a missed opportunity to not bring Sela back in Nemesis and pick up the unification story line, especially since the Romulans were allies in the Dominion War. Also, like I said about Part 1, I love those personal moments, like Data and Spock's' conversation on the Klingon ship, or Picard sharing to Spock Sarek's memories.

 

Given that the villains tell our heroes their plan in excruciating detail and then allow them to escape, we can probably rather safely assume that this was not the real plan.

From various other viewpoints, the plan was a splendid success: Romulans managed to execute thousands of dissidents under the very noses of the Federation, and to appear bold in doing so, seriously raising their stakes among the not-so-exclusive club of UFP enemies.

And never mind the demoralizing effect on the Romulan dissident movement when their supposed messiah appears in an interstellar broadcast to tell the world that "Romulan peace envoys are en route to Vulcan - it's a sham and they must be stopped at any cost"!

Yet the invasion plot isn't all that unrealistic, either. The invasion fleet did include at least one Warbird, after all... We could well assume that the old Vulcan tubs were merely creating noise to mask the approach of five dozen fully laden proper warships, plenty enough to conquer Vulcan and hold it hostage.

Timo Saloniemi

 

When did that happen? The only Romulans killed were the troops aboard the Vulcan ships.

 

I always wondered what Romulan ground troops would look like. I mean, they aren't exactly Klingon or Jem'Hadar. How fierce could they possibly be? I know it's *Vulcan* and all, but Romulans always seemed more imposing with their starships, not their ground game.

 

That's an interesting idea that the peace envoys were really there to mask the signatures of a fleet of cloaked warbirds.

If they had said that in the episode it would have been more believable. We've seen a Klingon science vessel destroy an entire planet's atmosphere on its own.

 

Or the dissidents. Depends on whom you believe. And since Sela wanted the heroes to believe in troops, the truth is probably dissidents.

It's difficult to see what other reason there would have been for the very existence of those ships in the first place. I mean, why would peace envoys from Romulus be traveling in "Vulcan" ships? How could Romulan peaceniks have obtained Vulcan ships in the first place? Why would they use those rather than modern Romulan ones when traveling to Vulcan? That part of the plot never made sense no matter which version one believes in, the "Sela confession" or the "cover story".

But if the purpose was to create noise, then Vulcans perhaps might be made to believe in Romulan "hippies" who use Vulcan ships (or replicas thereof) in a decidedly un-Vulcan symbolic gesture - emotional silliness that is only to be expected from the misguided Romulan brothers and sisters.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Here's the thing, if the envoy of Vulcan ships were just a ruse for a fleet of Romulan Warbirds to get into Federation space then... why do they need the Vulcan ships? I mean if the Romulans can just cloak and send a fleet of Warbirds to a Federation core-world then why wouldn't they just do this whenever they damn-well felt the need? And the idea that such a thing is even possible doesn't speak well for the Federation's defenses along their borders or around their core worlds (though there's certainly been plenty of times when the trope of the "only ship in range" is played concerning Earth, the seat of the Federation.)

So, I don't think there was any invasion force of Romulan Warbirds cloaked and following the Vulcan ships, I don't even think the Romulan ship we saw was there, it just happened to be in range when it became apparent the plan wasn't going to work.

I think we should take Sela for her word there, the Vulcan ships carried the Romulan invasion force in-order to make a strong-hold on Vulcan. Which, again, is sort of ridiculous to think that such a thing could ever work no matter how long it took the Federation to realize what is happening. I'd think they'd be able to single out and capture/eliminate any Romulans on Vulcan pretty quickly and that's even if we accept the notion that Vulcans and Romulans "look the same." Considering Romulans have additional forehead ridges I'd think it'd be pretty damn easy to find them and take them out of commission.

It really seemed the plan was poorly thought out. Between this and what happened with the Klingon Civil War, Sela is really bad at this. How did she get to such a position of power?

 

Well, the noise-making argument covers that. Cloaked warbirds will be detected eventually: in "Face of the Enemy", the Romulans are mortally afraid that UFP defensive sensors will expose them. But if the warbirds travel with ships that have legitimate business being where they are, they can sneak in despite being detectable against the background of empty space.

Now that doesn't sound like a good idea under any circumstances!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well, in "Face of the Enemy" the concern was that the "Federation Tachyon Net" would detect them, the system used by the Federation to form a "blockade" on the Romulan/Klingon border to detect cloaked ships. "Face" takes place a year or more from the events in "Redemption", enough time for a tachyon net to be cast across the entire border. This episode happens "too soon" after Redemption for the tachyon net to likely be cast over the entire border and, well, a cloaked ship STILL made it in undetected so either the detection net wasn't in place yet or there's still no reliable means to detect a cloaked ship crossing the border, even the tachyon net had its faults, requiring a tight formation of vessels to be effective.

So, if it's an invasion fleet it seems unnecessary that the Romulans would go to such lengths when if they were really dead-set on invading the Federation a fleet of Romulan Warbirds (at best evenly matched with a Galaxy-class ship) would be pretty damn effective and hard to beat.

In fact it's really a wonder why the Romulans never made good on invading the Federation as they have a fleet of Warbirds (in one episode several of them are converging on the Enterprise during a standoff) when in TNG's time there's only a handful of Galaxy-class starships, the most powerful ships in the fleet, and any other ship likely would be outmatched or still, at best, evenly matched. I would think the Romulans could dominate the Federation if they really wanted to.

Hell, "Yesterday's Enterprise" suggests that the Klingons could dominate, and defeat, the Federation and we could argue they're an even match as well. And in any confrontation between the Federation and the Romulans the Klingons likely would stay out of, much like the Federation did on the active-front of the Klingon Civil War. If the Klingons did get involved? It'd be a hell of a fight but I still kind-of think the Romulans would come out on top.

 

In The Search on the other hand we learn that cloaked Romulan warbirds can be detected when they are at warp. Just the Federation didn't know it at the time. If the Romulans invaded en masse the Federation would figure it out rather quickly.

Now, if there were peaceful vessels alongside the cloaked warbird, they would attribute the warp signature they detected to said peaceful vessels. Which I believe is Timo's idea.

I think the Romulans know their advantage isn't as good as they want their enemies to think it is.

You think the Klingons would sit out a war between the Federation and the Romulans? The Klingons would *love* an excuse to go to war with the Romulans. Even if they weren't allies with the Federation, they'd take the opportunity to attack just because the Romulans committed their fleet to attacking the Feds.

 

I dunno, I would think that the Federation could see the difference between the warp-signature of a few Vulcan scout ships and a fleet of Romulan Warbirds. I suspect that a large Romulan vessel has a different signature than a tiny scout ship, especially since the Romulans use a different warp technology than everyone else.

 

The point would be that with the noise of the visible ships there, the teeny weeny signals from carefully cloaked ships would not stand out enough for anybody to pay attention and do proper ID on. The ability to see "warp leakage" sounds really marginal in "The Search" (and may only apply to outdated cloak types anyway, like the clunker they loaned to Starfleet).

As for using the tachyon net to cover the entire RNZ, it probably isn't something you can build in one year - not if you are Starfleet that cannot outbuild the Jem'Hadar no matter how hard you try. And indeed in "Face of the Enemy", the net completely fails to expose the Romulans. It's just one more sign that Romulans take their invisibility seriously and worry about the slightest imperfection, whereas Klingons never worry about going to warp under cloak; or transporting under cloak (they apparently successfully insert operatives onto Romulus itself in "Unification"!); or even about experimenting with shielding or charging weapons under cloak. Different doctrines for different mindsets...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I even wonder if some ships cloaks are better than others. We know many things in Star Trek have a "frequency" like shields and sensors and phasers. That and each Warbird being powered by an artificial singularity, maybe it's hard to tune the cloak to the perfect frequency to cover that, but not impossible, possibly the engineer running the cloaking device skill at doing so affects it's total effectiveness.

Just saying. Many things are presented as turn it on and that's it, but some need to be adjusted and tuned and babyed and other such, as the plot dictates of course, but still there could be really good cloaking engineers that know their ship and there could be others that are capable but not as good. That seems like something that could make one ship detectable and another not.

 

Agreed on most of that - although I think the Romulans chose to power their ships with AQS systems exactly because those are very cloak-friendly.

Sort of like some nations during and after WWII experimented with dangerous "air-independent" propulsion systems for their submarines because fission-powered drives hadn't yet been invented or were not something they could afford: not the most powerful or economic system available, but the one the most compatible with stealth (in this case, with remaining underwater forever).

Until "Face of the Enemy", they probably were very stealthy. Heck, perhaps Scotty couldn't detect the warp drive on the Romulan ship in "Balance of Terror" because it was running on AQS power? But once the lid was off that particular secret, the Feds could home in on the telltale signals of the AQS itself, leading to detection successes in DS9 "Visionary" and "Improbable Cause".

Timo Saloniemi

 

Didn't Worf say in ST:GEN that one of the classes of Birds of Prey they were fighting had a small anomaly when the ship cloaked? If so, you would think sensors could be tuned to look for those variations.

Also, Data did a number of sensor sweeps and analysis when detecting the Romulan blockade running ships. And those were Romulan Warbirds, ships with supposedly the best cloaks around.