Spoilers So I guess nobody's going to mention...

They're silly because they're Nosferatu rip-offs with all the subtlety of a herd of elephants and all the character of cardboard cutouts, shoved into a complex relationship with the Romulans that just doesn't make any sense at all. (They're downtrodden slaves from birth, yet capable of building and crewing that massive ship, not to mention blowing up the entire Romulan Senate without ever tipping off the Tal Shiar. Plus, if the planet of Remus is just a slave-mining hellhole, why would anyone ever mention it as relevant/central to the Romulan Empire? They'd've made more sense as a broader slave class spread around the empire including both Romulus and Remus rather than the primary inhabitants of a single slave operation which somehow rates interstellar recognition.)

Being previously unknown has nothing to do with anything.

Granted, there are other equally silly species in the franchise, and some even sillier than the Remans, but the idea that they're no worse than average is laughable. They're in the worst 10-20% easily.

 

I don't quite see the above.

Of course the Scimitar would be built by Remans in a secret base. What possible alternate method are you suggesting? It's work, and work is for slaves. And you don't build ships like that in public bases. Nothing there suggests that the Remans would have been stepping outside their role as slaves when toiling at the explicated weapons factories of Remus.

Why would the Tal'Shiar not know? Shinzon's closest allies, or handlers, are members of the block that holds true power on Romulus - that is, people who are at odds with the Senate and run the show on the background. Nothing suggests they wouldn't know. Indeed, hiring a Spartacus and staging a slave rebellion would have been an obvious move in getting rid of an inconvenient Senate, allowing the military to have their way with politics while also outsourcing any blame and nastiness to a Reman.

Why would Remus go unmentioned at the current specs? Remans were famed warriors in the last war. Their slave status would be well recognized, if not before, then certainly at the time of the adventure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

And how does a slave's existence mining dilithium prepare them for building a starship? That's not an unskilled labor job. And how can a facility large enough to build that ship be perfectly hidden from prying eyes in the literal central system of the Romulan Empire? That's like trying to build a secret aircraft carrier in Annapolis.

And it makes absolutely no sense for the Tal Shiar to know. First off, their most basic mission is to defend Romulus. A little assassination here or there of someone who they think is a danger to the Empire is one thing, but a public decimation of the entire government followed by a blatant coup d'etat is fundamentally bad for the Empire, even if their guy comes out on top. Secondly, 'their guy' is more obsessed with attacking Earth than doing anything relating to Romulus, which makes him exactly the wrong guy for the Tal Shiar (who've repeatedly shown their utter unwillingness to drag the Empire into a direct war with the Federation even when it's directly interfering with their efforts).

Plus, the idea of the Remans as a scapegoat is laughable because it's blatantly obvious that they couldn't possibly have pulled it off by themselves in the first place. If the Tal Shiar aren't powerful enough to just get away with it, then it's a crappy plan because it will be traced back. If they are powerful enough, then what do they even need the Remans for?

And Remus wasn't just 'known', it was mentioned as part of a standard pair with Romulus (long before the Dominion war). The obvious implication was that they're both vitally important to the Romulan Empire - and while there could be other potential explanations, there are none that make sense if it's literally just a slave world.

 

There were probably lots of Remans who weren't slaves in the dilithium mines or bodyguards to provide muscle for officials. Even the enslaved and exploited ethnic groups under Nazi occupation and rule across Europe had those allowed to possess just enough information and skills to help the Germans administer their communities. Hell, the SS even recruited units from places like Bosnia, France and Scandinavia so authoritarian societies do have real world track records of not treating everyone in a subservient caste or community the same.

 

Even if they don't deal with it....whatever...I wouldn't care.

Let's not OVERCOMPLICATE the show just to please every fan who feels the need for every loose thread ever left hanging in the history of Star Trek to be addressed.

That's the kind of stuff that turns people off really fast.

 

I would assume that the Remans as a slave race would do more than just mine dilithium.

Regardless, my point stands-the Remans are no more and no less silly than other races in Trek. The fact that they are in a silly story (Nemesis) doesn't change that. The fact that the Romulan Star Empire has a race of slaves doing much of the labor makes a lot of sense, given the size of their fleet and ability to command such a large area of space.

 

It's explicit that there are weapons factors on Remus. They have skilled slaves for the work. Just like they have skilled slaves for fighting, Shinzon being one of those. Thinking that Shinzon would not command the resources needed for building a fighting vessel goes against what is clearly stated in the movie: that those resources are on Remus.

They built a secret battleship, the biggest in history, in Kure, middle of Hiroshima. They kept it secret by, among other things, erecting a ginormous canvas sheet over the dock!

And that was in a nation that was not completely sealed off against foreigners at the time. At the heart of the Romulan Empire, secrecy would be much simpler.

The military runs Romulus, just like it ran Imperial Rome. The Emperors got nominated and died on the whim of the military; here, the Senate does. This is status quo. Why would the Tal Shiar not protect that?

Until then, he's ideal for the needs of the coupsters, though. And when he finally acts on his silly obsession, the coupsters simply send two warships to kill him. It's too bad that they do such a sloppy job at it, is all.

That has never stopped scapegoating in Earth history. Fall guys are very useful for the national narrative.

Why would the Remans have been unable to pull it off, though? Nations like China have succumbed time and again to "peasant uprisings". The peasants often won. They never got to rule.

However, forget China. Logan previously did a movie about Rome. Romans had their share of vast slave rebellions, and sometimes those were made major political use of. Shinzon is Spartacus, simple as that. Although whether he is that by his own heroics or by sponsorship from the military that struggles against the Senate... Well, the truth is something that never would need to come out.

Not seeing that at all. There are two planets there. Both are part of the Romulan capital. What does it matter what specific facilities are included? Great Britain had worthless Ireland grafted to it, a backward possession where slaves toiled, and was no less Great for it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think what bothered me about them (more then them just being silly) was that the film gave no clear indication that the Remans were either an alien race native to the planet, or descendants of the original Romulan settlers who evolved somehow from the Vulcanoid norm (they did have pointed ears). For like 40-some years, the fanon idea was that Remus (or Romii, or Rom II, or ch’Havran) was populated simply by other Romulans. To have that change just for shock value was a bit annoying to me.

 

Well, it did have shock value all right, which is probably good. Like the Klingon Empire having no Emperor. Or the Trill not being picky about their hosts after all. The magnitude of the surprise differs; the timescale of accumulating belief before the revelation, too. What is common is that original assumptions made by the original creators are upturned, for dramatic value.

Romulans having slave races is sort of to be expected. This could have been subverted, too, though, and the Romulans declared rabid xenophobes who eradicate all aliens within their sphere of influence. Or rabid xenophiles who absorb all species into a genetic blend to enrich themselves, and thus e.g. gain Illyrian ridges... But possibly also Nosferatu ears.

As matters stand, Remans are ripe for another round of such subverting. Although this time around, there's no clear original creator intent to be considered!

Timo Saloniemi

 

And this is why it doesn't bother me. Why wouldn't the Romulans have slave races? Why would Remus be inhabited by only Romulans?

I love the Romulans and their history, but this is an issue that baffles me. We had no one screen evidence one way or the other as to the nature of Remus. We barely see Romulus in the series.

Again, them changing something that was never presented on screen and it's "shock value" to change fanon is the most bizarre concept. It wasn't shock value to have an interstellar empire have more than one race in it. Much less a slave race.

So strange...

 

Remans are completely logical. A habitable planet would likely have some type of civilization or life on it, Romulans needed slave labour to build their new civilization and had no qualms about enslaving them, breeding them into subservience and continuing to use them thousands of years later.

 

Er, I never said anything about having a problem with the Romulans having slave races per se. I was specifically referring to this slave race. Sorry that my opinions seem so strange to you, but that can’t be helped, apparently. I thought the idea of the Remans being scary mind-raping space vampires who could build super warships right under their overseers’ noses was inherently silly. Your mileage may vary. And I especially felt that a talented actor like Ron Perlman was completely wasted in his role precisely because of that.

 

I'd like to mention, that I really like the first two episode of Star Trek: PICARD.

One could assume that at the very least, the Tal Shiar & the Romulan Senate were very aware of the Scimitar being built at the Reman shipyards.

It's just that neither suspected that Nero would kill off the Senate and steal it.

 

You had just said that the fanon argument was Romulans inhabited Remus, so the Remans being there was a "shock value" to fanon.

That's the strange part. How they were used in the story is a whole other matter. Their mere existence should be strange.

There's no arguing that.

 

I wasn’t referring to the Remans themselves as shock value. I was referring to the way they were presented. I had no problem with the idea that they were slaves. I had a problem with the idea that they were purposely meant to look and act ‘eeeeevilll’ (to quote Mermaid Man) while at the same time, we were supposed to feel sympathy for them? Didn’t compute for me.

 

Ah, I misunderstood.

That said, I never got the idea of feeling sympathy for them. I know they tried it with Shinzon but that failed absolutely miserably.

 

All the officers overseeing the construction of the Scimitar would have to tell the Romulan Senate was that the military's newest and most powerful warship was well underway to completion and that the Reman labor was performing above expectations. The Praetor and Senators would have simply applauded at their Star Empire's continued prowess just four years after the destruction of the Dominion War.

 

Of course you didn’t. Neither did I. And I’m sure the rest of the viewing audience didn’t either. And because of that, the whole idea of Shinzon doing what he did ‘for his Reman brothers’ was just a bunch of BS that the audience easily saw through. It would have made more sense for Shinzon to just have had hired guns.

 

I tried to watch a Star Trek fan film once. It had actual actors from Star Trek in it. But the minute the captain's log started going off on name-dropping all the characters who wouldn't be in the fan film to explain why they weren't there, I shut it off and never turned it on again.

 

Yup. Romulans are notoriously arrogant and would look no further than "It's on schedule."

Okie dokie.