Who are the Romulans?

[TK421]

This notion is spawned from another thread but I think it's important.

The best villains can be summed up in one word.

Klingons = Warriors
Borg = Communists

The question is, until they settle on a theme, do we all agree on who the Romulans are or should be?

Romulans = ...?

Here's who I think they are:

Romulans = Racists

NAZIs, Green Supremacists. Their core belief is racial purity and superiority to all others.

But I've never seen that even hinted at in the movies.

But is this who they really are?

Because of their lack of definition I suspect that many of us here have a different idea of who the Romulans are or should be.

I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks.

Please describe who you think the Romulans are, or should be.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Actually, I see them as being more Manifest Destiny Americans.

It's clear that of all the races, the Romulans believe the most to their right of hegemony over the rest of the AQ.

 

[MvRojo]

I thought they were originally the Chinese.

 

[skep155]

After reading an interview with some of the TNG writers the latest depictions of Klingons were apparantly based on the Samurai and Imperial Japan. I.e their society is based on a strict code of honour that encourages suicide rather than capture, they use lots of hand to hand combat weapons like fancy swords and stuff.

I've always presumed the Romulans to be the Romans, with their Senate and Praetor etc and their obsessions with birds as emblems. They also seem to regard themselves as having a superior culture destined to control the galaxy.

Cardassians always seemed to be a parody of Stalinist era Russia and North Korea to me.

 

[SHCone]

After reading an interview with some of the TNG writers the latest depictions of Klingons were apparantly based on the Samurai and Imperial Japan. I.e their society is based on a strict code of honour that encourages suicide rather than capture, they use lots of hand to hand combat weapons like fancy swords and stuff.

I've always presumed the Romulans to be the Romans, with their Senate and Praetor etc and their obsessions with birds as emblems. They also seem to regard themselves as having a superior culture destined to control the galaxy.

Cardassians always seemed to be a parody of Stalinist era Russia and North Korea to me.

This seems pretty accurate to me. I mean, NEMESIS practically screams Rome, and the cuteness of the Romulan villain Nero's name in relation to the destruction of his world follows the pattern.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Like the Klingons, there are multiple elements making up the Romulans. Basically whatever take the writers have at the time. But yeah, Roman and fascist imagery is pretty prevelant. Romulans also tend to be isolationist and plotting far into the future like Communist China.

 

[xanderwess]

The are the Green Bay Packers. Bad guys.

 

[Sci]

This notion is spawned from another thread but I think it's important.

The best villains can be summed up in one word.

No, the worst and most two-dimensional villains can be summed up in one word.

The best alien cultures are the ones that are complex, with many diverse factions with different ideas about what their culture ought to be like competing for influence.

You know, like real cultures.

 

[Silversmok3]

Who are the Romulans?

They are like that ex-girlfriend that said she loved you,but who then lied and turned on you, and still wants a favor now and then. You dont know whether its an honest request-or if theres a deeper motive involved.

In that respect,the Romulans make good, complicated adversaries, in a way the Klingons or Cardassians really couldnt.

 

[TK421]

This notion is spawned from another thread but I think it's important.

The best villains can be summed up in one word.

No, the worst and most two-dimensional villains can be summed up in one world.

The best alien cultures are the ones that are complex, with many diverse factions with different ideas about what their culture ought to be like competing for influence.

You know, like real cultures.

?

I said one word, not world.

The culture can be as rich as you like. But people need a concept to hang on to up front.

 

[TK421]

Who are the Romulans?

They are like that ex-girlfriend that said she loved you,but who then lied and turned on you, and still wants a favor now and then. You dont know whether its an honest request-or if theres a deeper motive involved.

In that respect,the Romulans make good, complicated adversaries, in a way the Klingons or Cardassians really couldnt.

I agree. Which is really why I would like to finally see this aspect of them played to the fullest. We've never had that in the movies.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I think of them more as Nationalists than Racists.

They think they are better than everybody else and they are very proud, even boastful of their Empire and culture, but they don't seemed to be especially racist to me. No more than klingons and a lot of others anyway. Nationalism (and its even more annoying cousin, jingoism) can be ethnic or racial (and often is), but it's not always required. That would jive with the Roman or Chinese parallelism where allegiance is paid more along ideological and cultural lines than genetic ones.

 

[Rackon]

This notion is spawned from another thread but I think it's important.

The best villains can be summed up in one word.

Klingons = Warriors
Borg = Communists

The question is, until they settle on a theme, do we all agree on who the Romulans are or should be?

Romulans = ...?

Here's who I think they are:

Romulans = Racists

NAZIs, Green Supremacists. Their core belief is racial purity and superiority to all others.

But I've never seen that even hinted at in the movies.

But is this who they really are?

Because of their lack of definition I suspect that many of us here have a different idea of who the Romulans are or should be.

I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks.

Please describe who you think the Romulans are, or should be.

Romulans = Vulcans with attitude and no restraints

I don't do one word definitions for these races, sorry.

 

[Sci]

This notion is spawned from another thread but I think it's important.

The best villains can be summed up in one word.

No, the worst and most two-dimensional villains can be summed up in one world.

The best alien cultures are the ones that are complex, with many diverse factions with different ideas about what their culture ought to be like competing for influence.

You know, like real cultures.

?

I said one word, not world.

Thank you for pointing out my typo.

The culture can be as rich as you like. But people need a concept to hang on to up front.

No, they really don't, and trying to reduce an alien culture to a single concept only creates shallow caricatures and stereotypes instead of fully three-dimensional cultures and characters.

 

[Jeri]

I'm going with skep155 and SHCone; that's what I've thought about them, too.

 

[M'Sharak]

...

I've always presumed the Romulans to be the Romans, with their Senate and Praetor etc and their obsessions with birds as emblems. They also seem to regard themselves as having a superior culture destined to control the galaxy.

...

This seems pretty accurate to me. I mean, NEMESIS practically screams Rome, and the cuteness of the Romulan villain Nero's name in relation to the destruction of his world follows the pattern.

There's also the "Romulus and Remus" thing hinting pretty strongly at Rome.

 

[JustKate]

The culture can be as rich as you like. But people need a concept to hang on to up front.

No, they really don't, and trying to reduce an alien culture to a single concept only creates shallow caricatures and stereotypes instead of fully three-dimensional cultures and characters.

I agree. It's just too simplistic...which makes it inaccurate. So if it's inaccurate, why bother?

I think some Trek aliens might have started out almost as simple as X=Y (though Klingons didn't start out as warriors, by the way - that didn't become part of their culture, as far as we knew, until TNG), but the really interesting ones move past that very quickly. Otherwise...they're just not compelling.

 

[arch101]

The Romulans have always reminded me of the Chinese, with their closed, secretive society as well as their almost irrational paranoia.

 

[Possum]

I never liked that the Klingons and Romulans were flip-flopped from TOS to TNG. The Klingons had been the sneaky dis-honorable villians. TNG starts then all of a sudden the Klingons are honorable with a rich warrior culture- I have never bought that.

 

[Jeri]

You're right. In TOS, Mark Lenard's Romulan commander is the one who said in another life he could have called Kirk a friend. He was heroic and honorable.