Hmm. That's one of the only Preserver theories I've heard that actually could have made sense.
Duane's Rihannsu Saga
- Thread starter PPatters
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Hmm. That's one of the only Preserver theories I've heard that actually could have made sense.
The sourcebooks did state that the first Romulans were an apparently culturally homogeneous group, deposited on their world while they were still technologically far from spaceflight. I do not think that FASA went into specific details about what threatened cultural group on Vulcan the Romulans could trace their ancestry to, but I can readily imagine that pre-Surak Vulcan could have had lots of threatened cultural groups.
^ This also tracks less well with Spock's onscreen dialogue in "Balance of Terror," describing the known history of Vulcan's early spaceflight-initiatives, and their probable connection to the eventual Romulans themselves:
"Vulcan, like Earth, had its aggressive colonizing period." Interesting. If he meant that the Romulans were the result of that aggressive colonizing period, then was the line meant to imply that Earth had also colonized space aggressively in the past? This was early in the series before the backstory had been worked out, before the Federation was created and the time frame settled on. So maybe Paul Schneider didn't see the Romulans as the exclusive aggressors in the Earth-Romulan War?
Weirdly, until this very moment I took that to mean colonizing on Earth for humans and the stars for Romulans.
It's fun to question our long-held preconceptions!
I've always thought that it wasn't, but now I've changed my mind on that.
I always took it to mean Seventeenth - Nineteenth Century style colonizing on both Earth and Vulcan - that just seemed obvious to me at the time.
Yes, of course that's what I always assumed too until yesterday. But anything that seems "obvious" should always be questioned, examined more closely to see what lies beneath the surface. Looking at Spock's line now, bringing up colonization in the context of the Romulans' possible origins, it does seem to imply that he's suggesting that the Romulans are the result of that aggressive colonizing period -- since how else would a Vulcan offshoot get to another star system except by colonization? It would be a non sequitur for him to bring up colonization in that discussion if that weren't what he meant. Aggression, sure, but colonization is too specific.
So if that's the case, if that was what the line was meant to convey, then it casts the "like Earth" part in a new light. So much was undefined that early in TOS, so it's entirely possible that Paul Schneider might have envisioned a history of aggressive interstellar colonialism for Earth. There's no way to know now, but it can't be ruled out. They were making all this up as they went, after all. It would've made Trek history interestingly different if it had developed along those lines instead. If, instead of this purely benevolent Federation that had never waged a war except in self-defense, we'd gotten a more ambiguous entity with dark deeds in its past that it had tried to grow beyond but that sometimes came back to bite it.
Come to think of it, that would've been a logical origin for the Prime Directive, wouldn't it? Such a strict rule against cultural imperialism, against intervention even with the best of intentions, is the sort of thing that would logically come into being as a reaction against a history of aggressive colonialism and imperialism that was recognized in retrospect as having done great harm.
Duane’s Romulan books are my favorite Trek lit stuff. That and DTI.
Yeah, i love these books. But i would add Peter David's Vendetta, Greg Cox's Q-Zone and David Mack's Section 31 - Control to the list of my favorite Trek novels
It’s one one the things I came to enjoy looking for and examining when I was reading some of the novels published in the eighties, seeing these ideas that became deep seated in at least some prominent fandom areas (short lived Klingons, Spock as the first Vulcan in Starfleet, the details surrounding Cochrane and first contact, and so on), because I can look back and think “really? That is so wildly different from what I know and am used to, how did that happen?”
Some of them make sense to me, or I can see the rationale behind them. But there are some things that, coming at it from a modern perspective, I don’t see how anyone could think of things happening another way - the biggest of them would probably be humanity’s first contact, it seems strange and bizarre to me that anyone would believe it WASN’T the Vulcans, they were humanity’s first alien on screen, why wouldn’t they be such in universe as well, but several pre-First Contact novels use other races.
I kinda like the idea of looking at these long held beliefs in fandom and asking questions of “is this the only interpretation of it, would others make equal sense, and, if so, is that an interesting story to explore?”
It’s kinda why I am excited about the advance of material coming from Picard (and any future Prime era series that develops the post-Nemesis timeline in divergent ways from the novels), because I LIKE multiple takes on the same idea.
I can, in part because I can remember the pre First Contact days when Cochran wasn't played that way by James Cromwell. There are things I liked about perceived Trek lore before TNG came in and insisted upon changes.
I need to re-read these again, but a thing I appreciated about Duane's novels is the care she put into illustrating the culture and the language. Watching Picard, some of the things in there (alternate names, false front doors) feel like they come from her take on the Romulans. And I think the reason this is, is because Romulan Culture has been so much out of the spotlight that the 80s fandom take on the Romulans more or less persisted.
Yep. For people coming to Trek in the 70s, though, we got the Franz Joseph (Starfleet Technical Manual) hints, when combined with Eileen Palestine's (Starfleet Technical Manual), and that led to the Alpha Centaurians of "fanon" as Earth's First Contact, cemented by the Goldsteins' "Spaceflight Chronology" (dating up to TMP), although that book specified their non-human attributes, such as high foreheads and opposable pinkies, and not enough time for evolution of a lost human colony?
I think our first hint that it didn't necessarily happen that way was the novel "Strangers from the Sky", but I like that the Vulcan First Contact in that book was a secret. As was "Carbon Creek" (ENT). And even the movie "First Contact", due to time travel, First Contact didn't happen the way that Earth history had recorded.
I suspect Trek novelist Kirsten Beyer, co-creator of "Picard", may have had influence in this.
M
marlboro
Guest
Useless trivia: Diane Duane's name popped up in an old episode of Batman the Animated Series. At a little over 9 minutes into "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne" her name can be seen on one of the files in Hugo Strange's office as Batman rifles through it. "K. Jeter" is also one of the names listed.
That episode was written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.
That episode was written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.
Duane would later co-write the final episode of B:TAS, "The Lion and the Unicorn," with Peter Morwood and Steve Perry. I believe it was the first screen production to mention Alfred Pennyworth's history in intelligence work.
M
marlboro
Guest
I didn't know that. I remember reading that she was involved with the show "Dinosaucers" but I had no idea that she contributed to Batman TAS. IMDB says that she also wrote a couple of episodes of "Gargoyles."
Was there any particular reason for so many TNG actors appearing on Gargoyles?
Was there any particular reason for so many TNG actors appearing on Gargoyles?
I'd assume the producers were fans. (And it wasn't just TNG actors -- Kate Mulgrew had a recurring role and Avery Brooks appeared once.)
Also Nichelle Nichols - she voiced Eliza’s Mom, so they got at least one performer from every Trek series at the time.
I like to amuse myself imagining that the Gargoyles casting director just set up a booth or something outside the set of All Good Things and caught them on their way off set. Silly thought, but it makes me giggle.
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