Was blowing up Romulus a good idea?

[Nyotarules]

Both Spocks were emotionally compromised, just as Prime's retelling of events is probably not 100% factual neither is Spock being a member of an endangered species. Even IDW comics state there are millions of Vulcans left in the galaxy. (The stubborn idiots were going to migrate to Ceti Alpha V...mmmmm)

 

[Timo]

OTOH, Spock might be 100% correct nevertheless. Nothing dictates that there be numerous Vulcans outside Vulcan, after all. While there are Vulcan merchants, Vulcan diplomats and Vulcan-crewed ships outside planet Vulcan in TOS, we never hear of a Vulcan colony world or the like. OTOH, it's a bit unlikely that any Vulcan other than Spock, Sarek and the handful of people next to them survived the loss of planet Vulcan: Nero's starship was up there (if only over one remote spot of the planet) with the intent to kill, and Pike's starship could only achieve so much. So the ten thousand figure quoted probably means offworld Vulcans already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

Ten thousand are the ones who escaped the planet, and that was an estimate. We only hear about human colony worlds in the Star trek universe yet I doubt the Federation will only allow humans to colonise the quadrant. By earth date 2258, the Federation is almost 100 years old and First Contact over 200.
Vulcan colony world - Vulcanis Lunar home of Tuvok.
Whoever wrote that line was ignorant of the world building in the Star Trek universe

 

[Timo]

Ten thousand are the ones who escaped the planet

No, the dialogue only says there are no more than 10,000 Vulcans to have "survived". Escaping the planet is not specified.

OTOH, if we want to read that as 10,000 surviving the loss of the planet, we can still choose any arbitrary number for the total number of Vulcans remaining, and keep it low enough to count as "endangered".

We only hear about human colony worlds in the Star trek universe yet I doubt the Federation will only allow humans to colonise the quadrant.

Why would allowing matter? We have little evidence Vulcans would wish to colonize.

Heck, Bajorans spent a hundred thousand years not colonizing! Not even when they had a lush Class M moon orbiting their very homeworld.

Vulcan colony world - Vulcanis Lunar home of Tuvok

Lunar = on Luna, next to Earth? This doesn't contradict the idea of fewer than 10,000 off-Vulcan Vulcans.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

This would naturally follow if the supernova were Romulan homestar blowing up. And this is exactly what the movie shows happening.

Okay Timo, I re-watched the scene, and your post is still confusing. According to Spock voice over ...

One hundred twenty-nine years from now, a star will explode, and threaten to destroy the galaxy. The star went supernova consuming everything in its path.

At this point the star has already gone supernova.

I promised the Romulans that I would save their planet.

After the star supernovas, Spock is on Romulas conferring with Romulan leaders.

We outfitted our fastest ship.

So Spock then traveled from Romulas to Vulcan, and a ship is outfitted

Using red matter, I would create a black hole, which would absorb the exploding star. I was en route ...

Now Spock is traveling from Vulcan to the supernova.

... when the unthinkable happened. The supernova destroyed Romulus.

And we see Romulas hit and broken up.

I had little time. I had to extract the red matter, and shoot it into the supernova.

Now Spock shoots the Red Goo into the supernova.

So, the star goes, then Spock has time to talk to the Romulan leaders, then Spock has time to travel from Romulas to Vulcan, then there's the time to outfit the ship, then there's the time it takes to travel back to the Empire.

How in the world do you figure the star that supernova-ed was the star Romulas orbited, only approximately 150 million kilometers (or whatever) from Romulas? The events in Spock's narrative would have taken many days, more likely weeks/months.

Even if the shockwave was moving well below light speed, Romulas would have been hit by the heat and other radiation from the supernova after just several minutes. After one revolution Romulas would have been dead.

 

[Timo]

Spock starts his narration with an introduction: This is the Story of the Supernova. He then jumps to the actual story, which starts out long before any stars explode.

The actual explosion only takes place some time after Spock has launched onto his mission. If it happened earlier, Spock would have the timetable of destruction down pat, and there would be no point in launching because he would know he's too late already. And there'd be nothing surprising about Romulus dying. But if it happens after Spock's launch, it makes perfect sense - the explosion is an event with built-in unpredictability, which is also why so few people even believe in it in the first place.

That is, the odd passivity of the Romulans, the failure to do anything besides outsourcing to a foreigner from an adversary nation, is best explained by assuming the Romulans thought Spock was a madman and his doomsday story was a filthy lie from start to finish.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

The question is, where does the information on the star being Hobus, come from?

 

[Timo]

Onscreen, nowhere. It's not in any filmed-but-cut scene, either, AFAIK. The Countdown comic mentions it, but the comic is in direct contradiction with the movie in half a dozen ways anyway.

OTOH, it's not as if we knew the name of the Romulan homestar. Perhaps it was named Hobus?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Location of Hobus from Star Trek: Stellar Cartography. Map based on Star Trek Star Charts. How did a supernova cause such damage? Read STO: The Needs of the Many.

 

[Timo]

This rather supposes that Spock would consider it "unthinkable" that Romulus dies, but unremarkable and unworthy of comment that a dozen other Romulan star systems get pulverized earlier on.

The gist of the movie would seem to be that Spock did relatively good work in trying to prevent a galactic disaster, and that Nero's hatred towards him and the Federation is at least slightly out of proportion. If Spock really thought that a blob of the above size replacing the heart of the RSE still left him "little time", I say go Nero go!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

Spock starts his narration with an introduction: This is the Story of the Supernova. He then jumps to the actual story, which starts out long before any stars explode.

Spock's narration is a list of events in sequence. Tha star exploded prior to Spock's discusions with the Romulan leaders.

 

[Timo]

But as I explained, this creates major story problems, and the assumption of linearity is by no means required.

- There's nothing "unthinkable" about a done deal. A Vulcan would not leave something outside the scope of his thinking unless he were surprised by a low-probability twist of events.
- There's no point in "outfitting" a ship to carry red matter if hurry already exists. An already fitted ship would depart faster (see the extent of teardown evident in the quick shot of the Jellyfish!).
- There's no reason for Spock to go to Vulcan if he's already on Romulus when the star blows. He should stay put and wait for the red matter to arrive, if indeed it is needed at Romulus rather than somewhere else. If the latter, he should sit back and watch while one of "them" saves the multiverse by flying red matter from Vulcan to target without delay.
- There's massive discord between the idea that Spock's ship is "fastest" and the idea that Nero somehow catches up on Spock after seeing his wife die, unless Spock's timehole and the remains of Romulus are really close to each other.
- If, OTOH, we discard the idea of Nero being at Romulus (he could have been chatting with his wife and getting a realtime report of the approaching wall of cosmic death from her), we have to ask what the hell he was doing at the heart of a supernova...
- Furthermore, to assume that the shockwave from the supernova reached across the gulf of stars means that Spock couldn't reach its heart. His ship shouldn't be any more durable than a planet, and his red matter cannot reach across lightyears.

All of the above issues and more will disappear if we simply assume the simplest: that a supernova blew like supernovae do, right next to Romulus. Which is what we see happen, in that sequence of perhaps a bit blurry but nevertheless supposedly accurate and factual visuals.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

I've always assumed that Hobus was fairly close to the Romulan system but wasn't itself the Romulan sun, FWIW.

 

[Timo]

FWIW, the visual setup at the beginning of the meld shows a "flyby" of a planet identical to the Romulus we later see destroyed (it is the very same planet in offscreen reality, that is, the same CGI construct), then onto a rubble field at what turns out to be the halfway mark, and then to this star than then blows up, expanding to reach the rubble field but not yet the planet.

We later see the wall of fire reach Romulus and smash it. We finally see Spock fly past the wall and dump the red matter vial into it; the red matter creates the black hole at the wall and starts to consume it.

Now, what about this is "real" and what is "unreal"?

- The wall of fire originally reaches the rubble field in seconds. Halfway to Romulus ought to be several lightminutes. Is the wall FTL? Just as probably the visuals are simply speeded up.
- The wall of fire is highly uneven, like a gasoline explosion a couple of meters across. Not your most realistic supernova, perhaps - but this level of unevenness remains when the wall hits Romulus and when Spock's vial hits the wall. A scaling error, or a fractal nature to the unevenness? You decide.
- It takes the wall almost a second to pulverize Romulus. Is the wall really moving at 5,000-10,000 km/s or so? In that case, Spock would have at least 15 million seconds in which to act after the star blows, that is, half a year. Just as probably the visuals are simply slowed down.
- There's some curvature to the wall when Spock's vial hits it. There shouldn't be any even if the vial hit the wall the moment it left the surface of the star. Heck, there shouldn't be curvature if the star were a kilometer across. Fisheye lens or the little-minimother of all dwarf stars? You decide - but the Romulans might not appreciate living on a planet five meters or so in diameter.

Apart from those, I see no reason to dismiss any element of the visuals. Star Trek is a visual medium; characters may blatantly lie, but our eyes should not be expected to betray us.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Nero's group would have also needed time to apply their face tattoos as a sign of their loss of Romulus. They had those when they encountered USS Kelvin, right after emerging from the rip in space-time.

 

[Timo]

...Yet another reason to disregard every part of that blasted Countdown comic as counterfactual.

We have no real reason to think Nero's tattoo was new, or related to his loss, or anything like that. The more natural assumption is that badass Romulan miners always wear tattoos like that. Perhaps long hair tends to get caught in the machinery (Nero appears to have lost one eartip, too, although which one depends on the time of the day!) yet bald heads would look dull without decoration?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'll take the story and tie-ins at face value rather than the bend-over-backwards reinterpretation. The supernova was going to continue to expand at multiwarp speeds and destroy the galaxy. Realistic as evil transporter duplicates and warp 10 salamanders, but fun larger-than-life Star Trek.

 

[Nyotarules]

No, the dialogue only says there are no more than 10,000 Vulcans to have "survived". Escaping the planet is not specified.

OTOH, if we want to read that as 10,000 surviving the loss of the planet, we can still choose any arbitrary number for the total number of Vulcans remaining, and keep it low enough to count as "endangered".



Why would allowing matter? We have little evidence Vulcans would wish to colonize.

Heck, Bajorans spent a hundred thousand years not colonizing! Not even when they had a lush Class M moon orbiting their very homeworld.



Lunar = on Luna, next to Earth? This doesn't contradict the idea of fewer than 10,000 off-Vulcan Vulcans.

Timo Saloniemi

Why do you think his colony was next to Earth? Why would Sol be the only system with a moon? And how would Spock know the amount of Vulcans off world did he work for the census office? Not even the movie writers go with the only 10,000 Vulcans exists mantra

 

[Timo]

If Spock did work for the census office, he'd say 12,345 (plus 38 pregnant, and ol' S'kreak won't see tomorrow at 67% probability). Now he estimates.

And Sol so far is the only system with a Luna, apparently.

I'll take the story and tie-ins at face value rather than the bend-over-backwards reinterpretation.

But the tie-ins specifically are bend-over-backwards reinterpretations. They have nothing to do with the movie - they are exploiting detritus left over from the process of making the movie, stuff the writers were too ashamed to include in their actual product. In that, they really are the antithesis of the movie. And there's such a wide quality gap there that it discourages me from grabbing a Trek comic ever again...

The makers of the actual story decided Hobus doesn't exist, tattoos aren't black ribbons, Nero didn't mine for the Klingons at any point, and the Borg only contributed by looking the other way. Don't you dare contradict them and ruin their good work!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

But as I explained, this creates major story problems, and the assumption of linearity is by no means required.

Okay, just so I understand your position, Spock's plan to "save" Romulas was to turn their star into a black hole.

How exactly does this save Romulas?