What if they'd kept T'Rul?

[t_smitts]

I'm not sure why they dropped this character after "The Search". It makes perfect sense that the Romulans wouldn't trust Starfleet to have a cloaking device unsupervised (especially so soon after the Pegasus incident)

Of the many recurring characters on TNG and DS9, they never really had a major recurring Romulan character. Sela and Tomalak were in four episodes each (if you count "The Mind's Eye" and "Future Imperfect"). Cretak was only in three and not even played by the same actor.

She was pretty unfriendly to being with, but might she have ended up bonding with the crew?

How would her presence have affected episodes like "Visionary" and "Way of the Warrior"? How would she and Worf (and perhaps eventually Martok) have been around each other?

Of course, Martha Hackett then probably wouldn't have played Seska.

What do you think? Would it have been interesting to keep her around or were they better off just disappearing her like so many sitcom kids?

[Skywalker]

I think the show would have benefited from having a recurring Romulan hanging around, especially once the Dominion War got started. Maybe TPTB just didn't think they'd use T'Ruul much more beyond her monitoring the cloaking device on the Defiant, so they jettisoned her. But I think they could have gotten a lot of mileage out of her.

[King Daniel]

I would have kept laughing at her having to turn sideways to fit through the Defiant's doors in those embarrasing shoulder pads.

That's what would have happened.

[Bry_Sinclair]

Well when they changed the uniform, she'd have gotten a change of outfit as well

I really liked T'Rul. She would have been another good source of conflict for the rest of the crew, even if she'd been like Eddington and had a few appearances in the follow seasons, maybe given her a little arc. She would have helped developed the Romulans more, rather than just the sneaky, stealthy foes of the Federation.

I could just imagine that she and Quark would have been good in an episode together.

[C.E. Evans]

I think if T'Rul had stayed--with an intent to make her a regular or reoccurring character--she might have eventually established friendships among the DS9/Defiant crew and learned to view the Federation in a different light. In time, she might even have been forced to make a decision to stay with them or return home to Romulus. If she stayed, she may have been forced to resign from the Romulan navy--which might have branded her a traitor among her fellow Romulans and garnered suspicions that she's secretly a spy by some of her new Federation crewmates.

[SchwEnt]

Well, if not T'Rul, then at least some Romulan.

We've seen almost every alien race explored thru the presence of a main or continuing character. We've gotten substantial portrayals of Klingons, Ferengi, Vorta, Vulcans, Betazoids, Denobulans, even Andorians.

But as one of the major races in ST, Romulans have really been stiffed. And not even once, but again and again and again. They just never get a good shot, which sucks for me because Romulans were always very interesting to me.

Also Tellarites, but that's a whole other thing...

[bullethead]

I think that the writers making T'rul such a bitch really limited her usefulness and resulted in her getting canned. If they had written her a little more subtly, she may have been a good recurring character.

[lurok]

Prefer Seska to T'Rul. And didn't miss a Romulan equivalent of Worf or Martok. But I'd have liked more of Megan Cole's Creetak. She did sour-sweet really well.

[Jono]

I don't think I'd want her to be a long term recurring character given the already crowded cast, which only got crowded-er. She could have had an interesting arc up to "The Die is Cast", but after that I think the show would be best served by moving her on and no longer having to have constant Romulan supervision.

At the very least it would have been nice if there was some explanation as to what happened to her and why the Romulans didn't care about monitoring their cloak.

[SAndrews10]

I had heard Martha Hackett had a choice, she could recur on DS9 as T'Rul or recur on Voyager as Seska and since everyone was Voyager crazy at that point at the studios and there was so much buzz about Voyager and the launching of UPN she chose Voyager and the DS9 character was dropped.

[Mr_Homn]

At the very least it would have been nice if there was some explanation as to what happened to her and why the Romulans didn't care about monitoring their cloak.

Agreed. This made no sense. Every time the defiant use their cloak, It reminds me of this and I think "Why are the romulans cool with them having a cloak unsupervised again?.. oh yeah, no explanation."

It just seems weird that they wouldn't want to keep it supervised. With the cloak in starfleet's posession they could easily just dissect the thing and figure out new weaknesses in it, and how to exploit those weaknesses to gain an advantage on the romulans. I end up rationalizing it in my head as "The romulans gave them a shitty 20 year old out of date model of their cloak, so they dont care" but i don't even really buy that.

[Takeru]

SAndrews10 wrote:

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I had heard Martha Hackett had a choice, she could recur on DS9 as T'Rul or recur on Voyager as Seska ...

Seriously? That makes no sense, why would they make her choose, she could have played both characters.

[DonIago]

I could see it being impractical to have one actor playing recurring characters on two series that were shooting simultaneously.

[TheRoyalFamily]

Mr_Homn wrote:

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It just seems weird that they wouldn't want to keep it supervised. With the cloak in starfleet's posession they could easily just dissect the thing and figure out new weaknesses in it, and how to exploit those weaknesses to gain an advantage on the romulans. I end up rationalizing it in my head as "The romulans gave them a shitty 20 year old out of date model of their cloak, so they dont care" but i don't even really buy that.

Starfleet developed a cloak that can pass through walls/asteroids/whatever. Merely becoming invisible is soooo 23rd century

I think the advisor wasn't to keep an eye on the cloak itself, but on the application of it - basically to keep Starfleet honest that it was really only using it in the Gamma Quadrant - the Romulans sure wouldn't stick with such an agreement without strict supervision. Still doesn't explain why she disappeared without explanation, though.

[Jono]

Mr_Homn wrote:

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Agreed. This made no sense. Every time the defiant use their cloak, It reminds me of this and I think "Why are the romulans cool with them having a cloak unsupervised again?.. oh yeah, no explanation."

It just seems weird that they wouldn't want to keep it supervised. With the cloak in starfleet's posession they could easily just dissect the thing and figure out new weaknesses in it, and how to exploit those weaknesses to gain an advantage on the romulans. I end up rationalizing it in my head as "The romulans gave them a shitty 20 year old out of date model of their cloak, so they dont care" but i don't even really buy that.

I go with that T'Rul's debriefing by her superiors would have gone a long way towards the plan to destroy the wormhole. Why risk someone with a high level of technical skill on DS9 when it is on the "make explode" list of things to do? Plus once the wormhole was gone they can recall the cloaking device and the Federation is more than likely to comply with that. In the end they got found out and the Federation and maybe the Feds used that leverage to keep the Romulans at arms length from their cloaking device.

The type of cloaking device on the Defiant might be compromised enough to limit the Defiant's danger to the Star Empire. As we saw in "Defiant" Sisko had info on the antiproton beam the Jem'Hadar used in "The Search" and gave it to the Cardassians, so it would be reasonable to assume the Romulans also have that data, which they might have decided is enough to prevent the Defiant from being a serious risk to them.