No Romulan voice on DS9

[Voth commando1]

Having just perused the Ezri thread I found an interesting and salient point. Why didn't they have a Romulan character on the show. It seems like a good time as ever to bring a Romulan character-which the viewers could get a sympathetic/complex understanding of. It seems to me after the Pale moonlight have a Romulan supporting character would have been a good idea.

 

[Fennius]

They had one on the Defiant for one story, then she was never seen again.

Apparently they couldn't think of stories she'd work in, which is a damned shame as we could have finally had the Romulans fleshed out the way Worf fleshed out the Klingons.

 

[USS KG5]

Apparently they couldn't think of stories she'd work in, which is a damned shame as we could have finally had the Romulans fleshed out the way Worf fleshed out the Klingons.

I suspect that was rather the problem, to do her justice they would have had to make the Romulans the main focus of season 3, and they had just introduced their new dominion villains.

I think casting was also rather an issue, Martha Hackett did good sinister moustache twirling villain as Seska, but she seemed a bit passive aggressive as a Romulan.

 

[USS Firefly]

I think it is a shame that they didn't use a Romulan
They fleshed out the Cardasians and the Ferengi so good, I wonder if they could have done the same with the Romulans.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Compared to all multifaceted Cardassians we saw on DS9, Seska was one dimensional. I'm not sure that was not a reflection of the actor's skills.

 

[Paradise City]

A small Romulan office and a defacto Tal Shiar outpost.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The DS9 writers probably avoided the Romulans because they didn't want to rehash the Romulan stories in TNG.

 

[Tomalak]

Given the whole point is that the Romulans are elusive, enigmatic, mysterious and their motives are unclear, it was always easier not to have a Romulan character we could get to know. The one attempt in virtually all of Star Trek was Senator Creetak I suppose.

I think the writers preferred to just have them as a handy powerful antagonistic race who could be generic alien foe of the week when needed. That's basically how TNG used them, and even Voyager made them the enemies in a show set during the Dominion War!

 

[DS9forever]

Wasn't Message in a Bottle made before In the Pale Moonlight?

 

[Paradise City]

Have a Romulan clothier ran by an ex-Tal Shiar exile to give Garak a run for his money. They'd both drive each other to distraction and the whole one upmanship jostle would descend into a nasty proxy fight between the TS and the OO. Quark would watch on and referee of course.

 

[Sakonna]

I also always thought a Romulan character would have been a good idea, and a perfect fit with the rest of the DS9 cast. I was just posting over in the TNG forum about how I wished we had ended up with Sela in the Senator Creetak slot in the last season. The producers always talk about how the new Dax had to be a woman because Kira was the only other female regular on the show, and they couldn't have just one. I always thought a more interesting way forward would have been a female Romulan regular, and a male Dax comes through for a few episode arc... (I liked Ezri well enough, but they did overdo it with her)

Or in the final arc, when there's lots of scenes of strategizing between Martok, Ross, and Sisko, I always thought those scenes would have worked better with a more established Romulan character participating. A few dayplayer Romulan's circulated through, but they were too generic to register in any meaningful way.

And I did always think it was strange Martha Hackett's Romulan character from "The Search" just vanished.

 

[Tomalak]

Sela wouldn't have worked at all in the Creetak role. If it were Sela, we'd immediately suspect she was up to no good, whereas Creetak is a more sympathetic figure. She's supposed to be someone Kira can do business with, not the moustache twirling villain that Sela was.

I agree that an established Romulan leader would have been helpful. They always just seemed like bit-part players in the war after all the build-up in ITPM. They never has a face - even the Breen had a leader!

 

[Paradise City]

You could reposition Sela much like her Auntie Ishara Yar. Make her seem sympathetic, get her to ingratiate herself with Worf, get her to seem contrite about her pasts misdeeds.

Trying to write for Sela and Worf working together on DS9 would be one heckuva writing challenge.

 

[Sakonna]

You're right that you couldn't just slide Sela into the three Cretak episodes seamlessly, but in the fantasy version that exists only in my mind, it would be more thoroughly reimagined to work with Sela. So many of DS9's best characters started as simple antagonists before developing into complex characters... Dukat, Damar, Nog. DS9 really excelled at those "adversary to ally (and sometimes back again)" arcs, I was imagining a Sela story approached in that way.

I was just struck by the story possibilities of a station-assigned Sela discovering that it was Sisko and Garak behind the assassination of Senator Vreenak. As an episode, it would have beat crime-solving Ezri on the case of the Vulcan who hates happy photos...

Also, I forgot how Cretak was played by two actresses over her three episodes. Making the Romulan presence even flimsier! It's been awhile since I've seen those eps, but I seem to recall thinking they also changed the character enough on paper that I didn't understand why they didn't just say this was another new Romulan...

 

[Paradise City]

I was amused by the Romulan commander who with a slick cheshire cat grin said the Klingon pair belonged in a zoo. Talk about putting your life out on offer. I would've liked to have seen more of him.

 

[velour]

Whatever happened to the Romulan who escaped along with Worf, Bashir, and Garak from the Jem'Hadar internment camp in "By Inferno's Light"?

Maybe the show could have done a storyline, or a short story arc, about that Romulan after he/she (don't remember the gender) got to DS9. It could have given the viewers a small glimpse about Romulans through that character.

 

[Tomalak]

I was amused by the Romulan commander who with a slick cheshire cat grin said the Klingon pair belonged in a zoo. Talk about putting your life out on offer. I would've liked to have seen more of him.

Yes, he was great! There is another bloke who turns up towards the end - Jelal? He doesn't leave much impression.

 

[Tomalak]

Whatever happened to the Romulan who escaped along with Worf, Bashir, and Garak from the Jem'Hadar internment camp in "By Inferno's Light"?

Maybe the show could have done a storyline, or a short story arc, about that Romulan after he/she (don't remember the gender) got to DS9. It could have given the viewers a small glimpse about Romulans through that character.

I'm guessing as a Tal Shiar officer she was immediately repatriated and "debriefed" with mind probes.

 

[Reaper63]

There are a couple of Romulans that could have worked, for me, the first one I'm thinking of is the Romulan who was trapped in that planet with Geordi. the survivor of the 2 man spy ship/scout ship that crashed. it would have been a nice throw back to have him show up, now much higher in rank, and no so distrusting of humans, but still fully Romulan. I think the internal conflict of having trusted a human, a blind human, to survive, against the "don't trust the Federation" party line in the Romulan Military.

the MAJOR character I would have loved to see would have been the return of Tomalok. yes, he was busy with Babylon 5 and I love his character there, but come on, he faced off against Picard enough in the early years that a return of that character would have had a strong reaction. Seeing Fleet Actions there Sisko, Ross, Martok and Tomalok planned attacks would have been a treasure..

 

[Tomalak]

*Ahem*

It's Tomalak.