To those who think the Feds would never betray the Romulans

[Dale Sams]

I think that even a *token* effort would had gone a long way. Starfleet ships are designed to evacuate colonies. Just go to the border, spam we want to help, just show up. Even if only a few Galaxies and Excelsiors and Constellations filled to the brim arrive and transport as much as they can, around the clock...a lot of the bad blood would had gone away. But apparently the Admirals go 'Nah we ain't got it' - maybe there's a cold war with the Breen going on (far from implausible), maybe the Tholians are doing stuff, so they can barely spare anything. But why not just throw the Merchant Marine at them if that's the case? Do something, anything, you know?



I think that, if there's a sapient species on the planet and there's a natural disaster that could be averted without them knowing, Starfleet should try, of course without them knowing. A asteroid on a collision course within 10k years? Move it slightly. A Volcano about to erupt that'll Toba them? Do what into Darkness did. A small genetic disease killing their crops or their reproduction rate? Just throw a cure down and about. Just to give them a chance due to their sapience alone. Geopolitical stuff or actions caused by their own sapience, however, gets far more trickier, and thus I can understand the hands-off approach, though it still leaves a sour aftertaste. I don't doubt for a second that immediately after FC, many people blamed the Vulcans for not interfering in WW3, the Eugenics Wars, WW2, WW1, or whatever.

For a long time it seemed to be implied that the Vulcans were barely aware of Earth....not to mention watching them...but some ENT went and contradicted that I believe.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Given what we were later told about Nog's application for membership, my reading has always been that Tarses would be in trouble because he didn't follow the correct process for getting clearance (declare his ancestry, obtain a recommendation from a command-level officer). That he failed to do so raises questions as to his honesty and personal honor. A real world equivalent might be something like a RW Yeoman being found to have avoided having a Secret/Top Secret/TS-SCI (as appropriate) check as a candidate. Even if nothing is subsequently found (as in Tarses' case), failure to follow procedure would still be grounds for termination IIRC.

 

[Kahloke]

I don't really see how the logic of letting a pre-warp civilization go extinct is all that different from the logic of letting the Romualns deal with the supernova themselves.

Scotty: “No question. Their power is simple impulse.”

They were never a warp capable civilization.

 

[cooleddie74]

For a long time it seemed to be implied that the Vulcans were barely aware of Earth....not to mention watching them...but some ENT went and contradicted that I believe.

"Carbon Creek(ENT)" revealed that an earlier Vulcan survey ship was monitoring Earth's launch of Sputnik in 1957 and that the vessel crashed onto the planet. Three of the four crewmembers survived including a maternal ancestor of T'Pol's.

 

[Charles Phipps]

From what we see of Wesley's career, getting into Starfleet is reserved for super-geniuses and careerists who have worked incredibly hard to do so. There's room for enlisted men like O'Brian and Barclay who aren't necessarily the top creme of the crop (I think Barclay was promoted from the ranks--ironically) as someone needs to program the replicators as well as clean the Jeffries tubes but if you want to be at the Academy as an officer, you have to be PERFECT.

So, my view of that guy was, "There's nothing wrong with having a Romulan grandfather ON PAPER but is that thing going to get me discarded versus the 1000 other candidates who DON'T have a Romulan grandfather. Even unconsciously, this might bias someone against me where they might not before." If he had a patron like Picard, he'd be fine but, well, he didn't. He was just a guy.

Because Starfleet is as much about who you know as what you can do. In this guy's case, he lied so he could get an even playing field and perhaps not deal with anyone wanting to ask some uncomfortable questions about HOW he has a Romulan grandfather (even if it was just "Grandma and he met at a bar.")

"Carbon Creek(ENT)" revealed that an earlier Vulcan survey ship was monitoring Earth's launch of Sputnik in 1957 and that the vessel crashed onto the planet. Three of the four crewmembers survived including a maternal ancestor of T'Pol's.

I don't think the two are actually contradictory. Earth was not a place of great interest to the Vulcans in Carbon Creek and everyone assumed after their nuclear war they were done for the next few millennia at best. Earth's big confusing thing is that they bounced back and bounced back better within a century.

Star Trek's humans went from Fallout to Mass Effect within a single lifetime.

 

[Tarek71]

The issue is one of logistics.

Separate issue. I asked here about how needed Fed worlds would be for refugee resettlement.

I did some numbers a couple of weeks back on here that showed that it would take over 50 years to evacuate 20 billion at an evac rate of 1 million per day, even if the turn around per ship was only a single day! We all agree Fed ships would be needed. The comment you replied to here though was about how needed Federation worlds would be for refugees. Maybe some would be.

On the Empire, that is indeed the normal answer. Ie they extract more, have higher military budgets, etc. It would help though to occasionally show the 60-80-100 species/worlds that they control, but which yield comparable resources to the Federation. Aside from the Remans, we dont see much in that direction. Let alone several dozen plus each with many billions, which are ruled by Romulus. I would suspect mass revolution, and declarations of independence. That would help explain the relative lawlessness that now prevails in certain areas. Something like the collapse of the Soviet Union and the freeing of the Eastern bloc nations.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, Earth is just 17 light-years from Vulcan which means the first commercial radio signals reached Vulcan no later than 1937. Plenty of time to take an interest in our development and still lose interest for about a century prior to warp drive and First Contact.