Tomalak's intelligence?

[Avro Arrow]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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EDIT: I think also that for those of us familiar with Andreas Katsulas on Babylon Five, our sense of the Tomalak character is sometimes distorted by awareness of G'Kar. It can't help but feel...wrong...to have him come across as less than insightful...

LOL, I was going to make this exact same point. It's possible my impressions of Tomalak were influenced by G'Kar. Like the OP, I was somewhat confused when I read the PoN/RtD duology and found that Tomalak had come down with a case of the stupids. Of course, it's probably fair to say that he was depicted as somewhat of a hot-headed buffoon in AGT, which, to me, seemed to go against his previous characterization too.

[The Wormhole]

I for one never watched Babylon 5, so I didn't have that influencing how I perceived Tomalak. Based on what I saw in The Enemy, The Defector, and All Good Things I saw a a competant Romulan officer in command of a warbird who had some sort negative opinion of Starfleet/the Federation.

So while the novels present a somewhat different take on Tomalak, it's not one I am against either.

[toughlittleship]

I don't think Tomalak actually appeared in person in the series (always on a viewscreen) which somewhat lessened his impact. I neither liked nor disliked his portrayal in the novels.

[Christopher]

Tomalak did appear "in person" in "Future Imperfect," but it turned out to be an illusion.

[Deranged Nasat]

Funnily enough, Andreas Katsulas said the opposite; he thought Tomalak was effective by virtue of being a giant face on a screen, and was apparently less comfortable portraying illusion-Tomalak in "Future Imperfect".

[toughlittleship]

There always seemed to be a huge discrepancy in the sizes people appeared on the Enterprise-D viewscreen - Q for example in the pilot, and the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost". It was a weird choice.

[Captain McBain]

Novels aren't canon, of course.

[Christopher]

toughlittleship wrote:

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There always seemed to be a huge discrepancy in the sizes people appeared on the Enterprise-D viewscreen - Q for example in the pilot, and the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost". It was a weird choice.

Well, the Ferengi were deliberately made huge on the viewscreen in "The Last Outpost." It was even explicitly stated in dialogue that the image was distorted in some way. The idea was that the Ferengi were making themselves look big and scary to compensate for how small they really were (shades of Balok).

Anyway, why wouldn't there be a discrepancy? It's not as if every alien ship commander or government official would all be sitting exactly the same distance from their cameras and have them all on the exact same zoom setting.

Captain McBain wrote:

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Novels aren't canon, of course.

A: Everyone here knows that.

B: How is that in any way relevant to the conversation?

[ronny]

Captain McBain wrote:

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Novels aren't canon, of course.

Thank you Captain Obvious, uh, I mean McBain.

[rfmcdpei]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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Funnily enough, Andreas Katsulas said the opposite; he thought Tomalak was effective by virtue of being a giant face on a screen, and was apparently less comfortable portraying illusion-Tomalak in "Future Imperfect".

It's worth noting that Tomalak didn't do half-bad for himself. Not only did he becomie proconsul under two very different praetors, but the alliance he struck with Sela came very close to succeeding in its goals of acquiring Dominion technology for the Typhon Pact.

[flandry84]

And nobody ascends to the centre seat of a Romulan warbird by being stupid,dullards don't tend to last long.
Perhaps Tomalek's ambition simply exceeded his ability.

As for recasting Tomalek,it would of course be possible(Peter Coyote would IMO make a great Romulan)but Katsulas had such tremendous presence that it is his face I see whenever Tomalek gets a mention.

[rfmcdpei]

flandry84 wrote:

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And nobody ascends to the centre seat of a Romulan warbird by being stupid,dullards don't tend to last long.
Perhaps Tomalek's ambition simply exceeded his ability.

That strikes me as quite plausible.

The particular plan that took him down, the attempt to acquire Dominion technology and shuttle it through the wormhole to the Typhon Pact, did seem to be reasonably well-constructed--the planners thought the Breen merchanter had the cargo capacity to transport the material, they expected the Dominion couldn't intercept the ship's transmissions or detect it, they thought that the warbird could sneak out of the Gamma Quadrant past DS9. It's just that things went wrong that the planners couldn't control, whether we're talking of the Pact underestimating Dominion capacities or of the timing problems with DS9's bombs. It's easy to imagine circumstances where the plan did go off successfully.

Tomalak, for his part, would have benefitted enormously from Sela's successful gambit. Kamemor and her regime probably would have been tossed out, but Tomalak? Maybe he could have become Emperor, after all. He probably was quite useful to Sela as a sufficiently conventional Romulan--a half-blood could almost certainly never have become Praetor, but a Romulan military officer of note with a close ally?

[flandry84]

A full human did become praetor once,no matter how catastrophic his reign had been.
That said Shinzon's Romulan co-conspirators probably had plans to eventually do away with him and place a full-blooded Romulan on the throne,all in vain however.

[Christopher]

flandry84 wrote:

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That said Shinzon's Romulan co-conspirators probably had plans to eventually do away with him and place a full-blooded Romulan on the throne,all in vain however.

Yup. They thought they were using him, but he was using them.

[Hartzilla2007]

rfmcdpei wrote:

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The particular plan that took him down, the attempt to acquire Dominion technology and shuttle it through the wormhole to the Typhon Pact, did seem to be reasonably well-constructed--the planners thought the Breen merchanter had the cargo capacity to transport the material, they expected the Dominion couldn't intercept the ship's transmissions or detect it, they thought that the warbird could sneak out of the Gamma Quadrant past DS9. It's just that things went wrong that the planners couldn't control, whether we're talking of the Pact underestimating Dominion capacities or of the timing problems with DS9's bombs. It's easy to imagine circumstances where the plan did go off successfully.

Actually I thought that the plan only really fell apart when they decided to add the bombs as a contingency plan, I mean if their hadn't been any bombs the crew wouldn't have found them, the station wouldn't have been on alert, and the warbird could have gotten away before either the Enterprise or Robinson could warn them about the deception.