What the heck were the Romulans thinking?

Risking war w/the Feds (and prolly the Klingons) to shutdown the wormhole over at PERCEIVED threat from the Dominion.

Were they THAT scared of the Dominion that they would do something THAT stupid.

Of course, the Carddies might have come into any fighting on the Romulans side from attacking a Bajoran station.

 

Better question what the heck were the writers thinking?

 

I think it plays into the theme of the Romulans always being paranoid about various potential threats to their territory.

 

Bingo.

Also, Romulans aren't afraid of starting wars with anyone. They just don't do it as often as Klingons because they're more a practical people.

 

It makes perfect sense for the Romulans to collapse the wormhole by any means necessary.

 

The segue between Season 6 and 7 is the one hiccup for me in the latter half of the series, and it's specifically because of that whole Romulan debacle.

It just didn't make any sense. Even for a fictitious SciFi TV show.

It was interesting to watch, I suppose. But I shake my head at the events every time I see it. The aggressive moves on the part of the Romulans were even stupider than the things done by the Klingons while the Changling Martok was in place.

 

Good call. Had forgotten about Martok. He had been in the Dom prison camp for 2 years, so who knows how long the Romulan changeling(s) were there

 

I don't think it was that unusual for the Romulans to try and attempt to close the wormhole, based on watching how they act in general towards other threats. Look how they were prepared to start inserting clones of Federation officers as spies into Starfleet, despite the fact that the UFP hadn't made any aggressive moves towards the Romulan Empire in over a century.

 

Are we talking about the episode where O'Brien skips through time and witnesses the station exploding? If we are, the Romulan plan was a good one and it was only the fact O'Brien was time jumping that stopped them from been successful.

They were right about the threat of the Dominion and in the end even Starfleet tried to close the wormhole for good.

 

I want to know what they were thinking when they signed the non-aggression treaty with the Dominion.

 

Probably just waiting to see what would happen, then jump in near the end on the winning side and grab some cheap territory. Or the old turn on everyone if they are sufficiently weakened and claim it all!

Plus they don't like the Federation or the Klingons that much so if someone wants to come in and beat the crap out of those two but will offer/accept an offer to leave you alone why not?

 

Why did the Dominion even sign the non-aggression treaty with the Romulans in the first place who attempted an extermination attack at the Founders prior to the war with the Cardassians?
Or at least their 'secret organizations' did.

The Cardassians I can understand why they signed an alliance with.
They were closer to the wormhole, relatively weak and gaining such a close foothold in the quadrant was of an advantage ...
They were usable ... but the Romulans who were rather stereotyped as treacherous ... who also attempted an attack at the Founders homeworld ... I dunno.

Then again it's possible they didn't want to seem suspicious in waging a war which was why they did it.

 

It's all about strategy.

Nobody wants to be involved in three separate fronts at once during war. And the Dominion probably went for the Romulans because they figured the Romulans would be the most likely to go for it.

This was explained during In The Pale Moonlight.

I'm just wondering; How much of DS9 have you watched? Because I get the impression between this thread and the Borg thread that you've missed quite a bit.

 

Your impression is incorrect given the fact I've seen all of DS9.

I may not recall all of it to the finest details, but numerous parts stick out more than enough to know what I'm talking about in the Borg thread.
As for this one ... well, I have added that it's possible the Dominion did it because they didn't want to seem suspicious at starting a war.

Yes it was part of a strategy, but seriously from their display in the GQ, you'd think the Dominion would not be overly concerned about the AQ races such as the Romulans or even the Cardassians posing a threat whose shields were ineffective against the Dominion weapons.

Still ... they Dominion wanted to secure a foothold and instilled fear into the Romulans and Cardassians by eliminating their fleets in the initial attempt.

 

Here's anther take. If you recall that during The Search, the group, which included a Romulan officer responsible to take care of the Cloaking device, were captured. During that time the Founders played out a scenario of how they might approach their conquest of the AQ which Sisko and the others thought was absolutely real. They found that the Romulans were the most belligerent and mistrustful of the AQ races, and deeply mistrustful of the Federation. They discovered that the Federation would be highly resistant to a treaty of any kind, while the Romulan officer was highly incensed and suspicious that they alone were left out of the negotiations. Since there was this schism already there waiting to be exploited, they deduced that the Romulans would be the easiest to separate them from the obvious adversaries they would face, and how.

 

Also, an issue the writers probably didn't consider but we might: while the Miradorn apparently are locals, living close to the wormhole, the Romulans and presumably the Tholians have their territories farther away, behind the backs of the Feds. Their noninterference could probably be cheaply bought - and if it could be deepened into a de facto military backrub pact, as happened with the Romulans, the Dominion would have the Feds nicely surrounded.

Certainly there'd be advantages to the Dominion if they could divide the Alpha side before and during the war. And certainly Romulans were a prime target for them. And probably Romulans would be the Alpha players the most familiar with the divide-and-conquer trick, and arrogant enough to think that they were masters in that game and capable of outplaying the Dominion.

But still... The Romulans must have been considering backstabbing the Jem'Hadar from the very beginning. And I guess the timing was just right for them in "In the Pale Moonlight", even if Sisko didn't do his forgery and assassination schtick. The Feds and Klingons had already been weakened, several worlds near Romulan territory had fallen to the Dominion, but the Dominion wasn't yet invincible. When the tables were turned, Romulans could quickly capture those planets the Dominion had "softened" for them, resulting in territorial expansion. I wonder if they ever gave Benzar back?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Maybe after the heavy hit they took in Nemesis.

 

Then again, that "heavy hit" consisted of the military scheming with a Reman Spartacus in order to drive through their hardline agenda, said Spartacus assassinating all the doves, and then perishing. If anything, Romulus is now more solidly in the hands of hardliners than every before...

Timo Saloniemi

 

QTF

 

Hah, I've always thought the Rommies had it dead right. The fact that the Dominion were obviously a threat was apparent in The Jem'hadar. The Feds created the threat by refusing to stop using the wormhole, which endangered the entire quadrant.

The Rommies were probably working on their invasion plan with the Cardies for a while (the Obsidian Order machinations mentioned in The Defiant) but tried to close the wormhole as a less radical option. When the Feds screwed that up, the Rommies went to Plan B, which probably would have worked if their ranks had not been infiltrated.

By then their efforts to defend themselves had been confounded and they were going to Plan C. I can hardly blame them for "stabbing the Feds in the back" considering that the Feds had created the Dominion threat in the first place by a) finding the wormhole, b) refusing to stop using it despite clear warning from the Doms and c) interfering with the Rommie's perfectly intelligent plan to collapse the wormhole in self-defense.

Maybe some of the Senate who approved the treaty saw it as payback for the dumbass Feds. But the aftermath of In The Pale Moonlight implies that Vreenak and the pro-treaty crowd also had enemies. I don't believe for one minute that nobody could figure out that Vreenak's last pit stop was at DS9. But with his death, his allies were in disarray and the anti-treaty types had ascendancy. There was no reason for them to want the truth exposed...

From the Rommie perspective the war was 75% started by the Feds, 25% started by the Doms and 0% started by the Rommies, who were only trying to defend themselves from chaos breaking out due to the blundering of a couple truly loose-canon empires in their midst. If I'd been a Rommie, I'd have been hopping mad about the whole mess.