The Imperial Romulan State seemed like an interesting proposal, a second Romulan Empire but this time seemingly friendly (if not ultimately allied) with the Federation. Spoiler: Spoiler for Typhon Pact Books But after a few mentions and it accomplishing barely anything, it's gone and the Romulan Empire was whole again... Were there editorial plans for the IRS that got lost in endless reshuffles?
I suspect that it was decided that the Romulan people should be reunited before the destruction of Romulus. Personally, I was hoping that the Romulans would still be divided when the Hobus star goes nova. That would've been an interesting dynamic to watch play out.
Because it happened on screen. Therefore it has to have happened in the books. That's simply the way it is. The details may be flexible, but it is established that a nova destroys Romulus at some point in the future. The writers have no way around that - it's a fact (within the fictional universe of Star Trek, natch).
^shanejayell Because the novels have to take into account what happens onscreen (canon) in STXI. The novels don't have a "canon" of their own. They have to be true to the onscreen canon.
If we follow that logic we can only get Trek books until Spock goes back in time, then we're all trapped in the Abramsverse. *lol* I consider Romulus' sun going nova a possible future, not THE future.
Well, then I guess it'll still be a surprise for you. I was also gunning for a divided Romulus at the time of the nova. Having a single Empire (and a moderately led one, at that) doesn't seem as interesting to see go foom. This is a slight aside, but has anyone ever discussed the possibility that the nova was the inciting incident for the Klingons conquering the Romulans in the "All Good Things" future? I mean, all things being equal, if the nova was a natural event, then it'd happen in all of the various alternate Trek timelines.
Not at all. Because it is part of the film canon that that time travel created a parallel timeline rather than altering/overwriting the Prime timeline. Note that Star Trek Online, a CBS-authorized tie-in, is set in the Prime timeline in 2409. Obviously the owners of the franchise have no problem with the idea of the Prime timeline continuing to exist in parallel with the Abramsverse. It was never the intention of the filmmakers to replace or undo the classic ST timeline, only to complement it. Well, first off, it wasn't Romulus's sun, or the planet would've been destroyed in minutes. It was some unnamed star that was presumably nearby; the Countdown tie-in comic named it Hobus. Either it was a wide companion just a few light-days or light-weeks away, or supernova blast waves can travel faster than light in the Trek universe. Second, you're talking about this as if it were real, as if it had some existence independent of the fictional franchise. Star Trek is a series of fictional tales on film and television. Star Trek tie-ins in other media are supplemetary works that are contractually required to remain consistent with those tales. Therefore, any professionally published work of Star Trek fiction set in or after 2387 will acknowledge the supernova and the destruction of Romulus. Because that's what tie-in fiction does: it expands on the original work without intentionally contradicting it. If you want to write fan fiction in which the supernova never happens, go ahead, knock yourself out. But the professional fiction does not have that option.
It's entirely possible that the Imperial Romulan State was introduced as something about which new stories could be developed, without any specific story planned in advance, only to find that when they sat down to deal with it, the story inevitably led back to the RSE. Sometimes writers will create something without any direction developed in advance, only to find that the element they created goes in a way they never anticipated.
You'd have to ask KRAD why he chose to create the Imperial Romulan State, but my guess would be that it was simply the logical outgrowth of the Donatra and Tal'Aura arcs introduced in earlier novels like Death in Winter and Taking Wing. I think it wasn't so much about setting up something for future books as paying off something from earlier books. And about creating a challenging political complication for the Bacco administration, something major enough to serve as a climax for Articles of the Federation. I'm sure "Hey, this could be an interesting seed for future stories" was a consideration too, but probably not the generative one behind the idea. Sometimes that happens -- a writer introduces something as a hook for future stories, available for anyone who wants to pick up on it, but subsequent writers choose instead to go in a different direction. In Orion's Hounds, I set up a whole new region of space and populated it with a variety of species and nations in order to give subsequent Titan writers a whole playground to operate in, but instead the very next book left it behind and there were no followups (to date). On the other hand, I never expected subsequent writers to elevate my supporting character of Torvig to such a prominent status.
It's a cool idea, but Romulus is mentioned by name in the "All Good Things" alternate future. Maybe Spock launched in time, or maybe the supernova (which may well have been unnatural - just look at "The Q and the Grey") never happened. For those interested, The Needs of the Many technobabbles the hell of of the Hobus supernova. Short answer: 20 years later, they still don't really know what happened.
Indeed. I have no idea where these events occured although I'm guessing it happened recently in one of the Typhon Pact books.
*Holds Up Hand* Sorry...my bad, I posted this fairly late last night and forgot that not everyone would be familiar with it... I've altered my first post, but if one of the mods could alter the thread title i'd appreciate it?
Also, LOTS of things were mentioned specifically in All Good Things that didn't pan out, so who knows what the deal is with that timeline? Q may have just been screwing with them and making the whole thing up, doesn't even have to have happened. Data, Ent-D, Romulus, no Picard child, etc. More examples of why it was all BS than why it was a real future glimpse. Smart money is on Q just making a point
^^Believe it or not, Christopher, you were the one who pointed out Romulus' mention in "All Good Things" to me several months ago.
Yes they do (you find out in the game which The Needs of the Many sucks at tieing into by the way just for all the game backstory stuff ON IT'S SITE that contridicts it.)
While possible, that would make AGT incredibly pointless and would be a disservice to such a cool (imo, at least) episode. I much prefer to think of it as one of a great many possible futures that won't pan out now - just like from the STXI crew's perspective TOS won't happen, or from the TNG crew's perspective, the "Yesterday's Enterprise" events won't happen, or even the various futures that Daniels showed Archer aren't "our" timeline. It's all a matter of point-of-view, in different branches of an infinitely huge multiverse tree. Or at least, that's how I see it.