The Romulan Star Empire in Star Trek: Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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FWIW, two novels (A Singular Destiny, Art of the Impossible) have used Romii as the name of a separate star system / planet within the Romulan Star Empire but not within the Romulan home system. This sort of usage slips easily into what little we canonically know. Even if we take the "BoT" map to portray but a single star system, Romii could be lurking "behind" or "in front of" it at interstellar distances if need be.
A third (Captain's Blood) has Romii as the name of the system that contains Romulus and Remus. It also credits "planet Romii" as the physical origin of the twin planets in an ancient cosmic collision. This is quite a bit more difficult to fit into the few graphics we have seen on the subject. But that's Shatnerverse for you.
Timo Saloniemi
A third (Captain's Blood) has Romii as the name of the system that contains Romulus and Remus. It also credits "planet Romii" as the physical origin of the twin planets in an ancient cosmic collision. This is quite a bit more difficult to fit into the few graphics we have seen on the subject. But that's Shatnerverse for you.
Timo Saloniemi
I just assumed the Federation and Romulans made contact after the Kelvan incident, as the Romulans denied involvment, that's why there was no surprise about their appearance.
As discussed, the Romulans themselves were to blame for the revelation in the prime timeline, as they wanted to conduct those risky raids against the UFP. It wouldn't take much of a nudge in the continuum for them to try something harebrained like that a few years earlier than in Prime. So a contact and a revelation certainly feels plausible - and it could certainly go with little mention because even in Prime there was nary a visible consequence to it!
On the other hand, I won't blame Robau's heroic heroes for not associating these bald and tattooed elves with either Romulans or Vulcans on first sight - and it's a pretty clever plot twist there...
Timo Saloniemi
On the other hand, I won't blame Robau's heroic heroes for not associating these bald and tattooed elves with either Romulans or Vulcans on first sight - and it's a pretty clever plot twist there...
Timo Saloniemi
Since I made this thread, we know a lot more about Discovery, and there is no sign of the Romulans in any capacity. However, I wonder what a re-imagined Romulan ship would look like, given the designs we have seen for Starfleet and Klingon ships?
First off, there have been concepts for what primitive Romulan ships from the era of the Romulan War, a hundred years before Discovery, looked like, for decades - some of them look really appropriate, and take into account the early ideas and concepts for Earth ships of the same era, such as the SS Valiant:
So, this old style bird of prey from one of the comics looks great, given that old aesthetic for the era:
Then of course Enterprise came up with it's own version of how 22nd century ships looked, such as Earth Starfleet's 'warp delta-wing' (as well as the NX class, Intrepid type, etc):
So the Romulan ships of this era looked a bit more organic than we had previously imagined, with sweeping warp nacelles that looked very claw like and curved:
The nacelles however by the 23rd century would look tubular like on Starfleet ships, originally intended to convey reverse engineering of captures Earth vessels.
So, basically the question is what sort of designs came between that 22nd century bird of prey, and the 23rd century bird of prey seen in "Balance of Terror". I saw a nice concept model a while back, which looks very appropriate:
It could easily lead into this - the classic bird of prey, and only one of three original series starships that had a full studio model, along with the Federation Constitution-class, and the Klingon D7-class:
I just hope that any Romulan vessel would be more appropriate to the beautiful established designs than the Klingon fleet seems to be in this era, from the blurry images of the trailer, in which they look nothing like Klingon ships from any century, and very generic/unrecognisable.
In my head canon, some primitive Romulan designs were more hawk like in the past, like a Klingon bird of prey, except flipped, with the wings being above the main hull, something like this concept:
It fits with the bird-of-prey, there can even be big industrial landing gear where the hawk's feet would be:
We never saw any MotionPicture-era Romulan designs, unlike the progression we saw on Starfleet and Klingon ships. In video games like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the next step along was the same bird of prey shape as the original series, but with rectangular TMP-style nacelles, an added 'beak-like' protrusion on the front, where the plasma torpedo is fired from:
I always liked that thinking, as it implied technological parity with the Federation and Klingons - who had refitted their ships around this time - and the beak/head implied the D'Deridex-class warbirds that were to come a century later.
First off, there have been concepts for what primitive Romulan ships from the era of the Romulan War, a hundred years before Discovery, looked like, for decades - some of them look really appropriate, and take into account the early ideas and concepts for Earth ships of the same era, such as the SS Valiant:
So, this old style bird of prey from one of the comics looks great, given that old aesthetic for the era:
Then of course Enterprise came up with it's own version of how 22nd century ships looked, such as Earth Starfleet's 'warp delta-wing' (as well as the NX class, Intrepid type, etc):
So the Romulan ships of this era looked a bit more organic than we had previously imagined, with sweeping warp nacelles that looked very claw like and curved:
The nacelles however by the 23rd century would look tubular like on Starfleet ships, originally intended to convey reverse engineering of captures Earth vessels.
So, basically the question is what sort of designs came between that 22nd century bird of prey, and the 23rd century bird of prey seen in "Balance of Terror". I saw a nice concept model a while back, which looks very appropriate:
It could easily lead into this - the classic bird of prey, and only one of three original series starships that had a full studio model, along with the Federation Constitution-class, and the Klingon D7-class:
I just hope that any Romulan vessel would be more appropriate to the beautiful established designs than the Klingon fleet seems to be in this era, from the blurry images of the trailer, in which they look nothing like Klingon ships from any century, and very generic/unrecognisable.
In my head canon, some primitive Romulan designs were more hawk like in the past, like a Klingon bird of prey, except flipped, with the wings being above the main hull, something like this concept:
It fits with the bird-of-prey, there can even be big industrial landing gear where the hawk's feet would be:
We never saw any MotionPicture-era Romulan designs, unlike the progression we saw on Starfleet and Klingon ships. In video games like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the next step along was the same bird of prey shape as the original series, but with rectangular TMP-style nacelles, an added 'beak-like' protrusion on the front, where the plasma torpedo is fired from:
I always liked that thinking, as it implied technological parity with the Federation and Klingons - who had refitted their ships around this time - and the beak/head implied the D'Deridex-class warbirds that were to come a century later.
A question I have is if the Federation would even know what a Romulan vessel would look like. According to "Balance of Terror" the end of the "Earth-Romulan War" led to no contact between the two powers. Which could be interesting if the Romulans are trying to create a war between the Klingons and the Federation.
I can see there being some flashbacks from the Romulan War (perhaps a character's backstory, or a plotpoint in season 2), but if we see the Romulans themselves, the characters can not, to maintain the important plot point in Balance of Terror. We know the creators hold that episode in high esteem.
Flashbacks could be interesting, but, again, we wouldn't see the Romulans themselves, just their ships.
Flashbacks can be taken advantage of to tell events as they were, not just as the reminiscing characters saw things.
So whilst we go back to, say the bridge of a ship during combat against Romulans - we could see scenes from the Romulan crews, and make it clear they refuse to allow face to face conversations. We could hear their disembodied voices over comms, and see the reactions of the Starfleet crews.
No human or ally. The klingons can meet them.
Could be interesting.
Considering we never got to see the Romulan War even in ENT, they can still pull off all sorts of tricks with how that war looked like. Perhaps it was fought with ships very different from the ones seen in "Minefield" and "Balance of Terror" because, you know, those were the Romulan "submarines", the invisible ones?
The visible ones, with the bird art that Stiles was so aware of, might look radically different. Perhaps they could resemble the birdlike ships from TNG and the TNG movie. Perhaps they could look different altogether.
Also, we still don't know for certain why the old war was a faceless one. Romulans refusing to transmit visuals is fine, and indeed Spock glorifies the excuse with a "therefore". But there could be more to it, allowing for a more direct and visually interesting portrayal of Romulans in DSC?
Perhaps humans did find a lot of enemy corpses back in the war, and initially took those to be Romulan, but it later (somehow) became painfully clear that those were mere mercenaries or slave warriors to the actual, hidden Romulan species? Further encounters with these non-Romulans could then take place, tying the action to the old war without actually allowing Earth any greater insight into Romulans.
What the Romulan Star Empire is doing in the 2250s is anybody's guess. They seem to like being enigmatic and invisible, and indeed this is what they have been doing for the vast majority of their existence - the brief appearances in the 2260s-2310s and 2360s-2380s timeframe appear to be just an almost insignificant aberration from the millennia-long norm of Not Being Seen. They also like to try out harebrained schemes. Perhaps those two brief moments in the limelights were harebrained schemes unto themselves?
...Thus, perhaps any glimpse into Romulan dealings during the 2250s period of invisibility would be highly revealing and relevant to what it means to be Romulan in normal times?
Timo Saloniemi
The visible ones, with the bird art that Stiles was so aware of, might look radically different. Perhaps they could resemble the birdlike ships from TNG and the TNG movie. Perhaps they could look different altogether.
Also, we still don't know for certain why the old war was a faceless one. Romulans refusing to transmit visuals is fine, and indeed Spock glorifies the excuse with a "therefore". But there could be more to it, allowing for a more direct and visually interesting portrayal of Romulans in DSC?
Perhaps humans did find a lot of enemy corpses back in the war, and initially took those to be Romulan, but it later (somehow) became painfully clear that those were mere mercenaries or slave warriors to the actual, hidden Romulan species? Further encounters with these non-Romulans could then take place, tying the action to the old war without actually allowing Earth any greater insight into Romulans.
What the Romulan Star Empire is doing in the 2250s is anybody's guess. They seem to like being enigmatic and invisible, and indeed this is what they have been doing for the vast majority of their existence - the brief appearances in the 2260s-2310s and 2360s-2380s timeframe appear to be just an almost insignificant aberration from the millennia-long norm of Not Being Seen. They also like to try out harebrained schemes. Perhaps those two brief moments in the limelights were harebrained schemes unto themselves?
...Thus, perhaps any glimpse into Romulan dealings during the 2250s period of invisibility would be highly revealing and relevant to what it means to be Romulan in normal times?
Timo Saloniemi
Remans perhaps?
I wouldn't mind if they skipped over the Romulan stuff in this series. The Klingon "war" angle ought to give them enough for a season or two, then they can move on to something else.
Seconded. Although they could do "Romulans" the way TOS did Romulans - they should introduce an all-new major thing from the unknown past of the Trek universe, and experiment with it for a couple of episodes, but never elevate it into a position of importance. DSC deserves its own big thing, and not just those Klingons borrowed from preceding forms of Trek.
Leaving sleeping Romulans lie is fine and well, contradicting nothing and doing no disservice to the drama wrung out of Romulans elsewhere.
Timo Saloniemi
Leaving sleeping Romulans lie is fine and well, contradicting nothing and doing no disservice to the drama wrung out of Romulans elsewhere.
Timo Saloniemi
I wouldn't mind seeing the Romulans in Discovery.
We the audience can see them, the Federation characters can't.
How would you get around the lack of visual communications?
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