Romulus & Vulcan
- Thread starter James Wright
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How does the loss of Romulus and Remus affect the remaining star systems within the empire?
I think the government could be reestablished and the remaining planets of the empire held together.
What happens to Vulcan in thePrime Timeline though since the planet was destroyed in the Alternate Timeline?
James
I think the government could be reestablished and the remaining planets of the empire held together.
What happens to Vulcan in thePrime Timeline though since the planet was destroyed in the Alternate Timeline?
James
That's true, but it would be really cheezy to portray the RSE as not skipping a beat after the destruction of their home system. The Rommies would have suffered devastating losses to their military, political, and economic systems. The losses in ships and technology, culture, education, wealth, and total population would be staggering. They'd be in a similar situation as the Vulcans now are in JJverse: homeless and trying to survive.
and the flow of power in an imperial structure always lives in the center and then flows outward to the peripheries....often times through force. if the center collapses in an empire, generally the whole surrounding edifice comes tumbling down....resulting in power struggles and break away movements.
The loss of Romulus/Remus might not have completely wiped the RSE out forever, but it would take several generations before the Romulan civilization --or any civilization in that situation --would really start to recover rom the loss of their home system.
i think primeVulcan is good and unaffected by the alternate verse.
Do you think the loss of Romulus and Remus would cause the remaining imperial star systems to abolish the RNZ and ask the Federation for a peace treaty and help to stabilize the empire!?
James
James
I rather doubt it. Romulans apparently moved out to Romulus in the first place because they wanted to continue their fierce and violent lifestyle undisturbed. Splintering into even further rebel groups sounds like a natural thing for a Romulan to do. With central government gone, there'd no doubt be lots and lots of such splinter groups, and little or no interest in trying to restore the past world order, least of all with the help of outsiders.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Could a Romulan republic be established instead of reestablishing the imperial government?
James
James
Depends, are they a Romulan world or subject world with a native population and a Romulan garrison? It's unlikely that the Romulan Star Empire had a equivalent to the prime directive, many of the worlds in the empire may possess large indigenous populations, resentful populations, who will recognize this as a golden opportunity to estabish an independant world. They might be the ones to approch the Federation for assistance, both economic and military.
There's no way the destruction of the Empire's home world wouldn't lead to chaos. The Federation, also the Cardassians and the Klingons, could extend protective status to the worlds closest to their territories. With a possible civil war brewing between rival faction of the surviving government and planets on the interior of the Empire causing trouble, the Romulan fleet might be in a position to stop these break away worlds. At least not for years or decades.
And there is the possibility of invasion, Trek fiction has all ways held that the Romulans and the Klingons have had a contentious border since their first contact. The Klingon, beyond simply extending protect to requesting worlds, may decide to incorporate outlaying parts of the disintergrating Romulan puzzle into their own empire.
that's possible -- but even then it would more likely be a smaller sect of Rommies in one of the empire's former systems, rather than a unified Rommie civilization that stretched across the entire former empire.
In any event, regardless of the form of government they chose to adopt, their civilization would be significantly weaker after the destruction of Romulus
it could actually open up some interesting plots and broad story arcs in a show set in the prime timeline after the events of STXI, but it would be hokey if they tried to just sweep the destruction of Romulus under the rug and proceed w/ the previous status quo.
Not having believable continuity from year to year and episode to episode is something that can really undermine a potentially good series (*cough* VOY) that would have otherwise been much stronger.
Then from this point forward in the prime timeline the Romulans are extinct after a period of time!
James
James
As long as there are Romulans, they won't be extinct. I assume some vassel worlds will rebel. Various off world Romulan leaders will claim sovereignty setting off a civil war. The Empire will either break apart or collapse with other powers stepping in to fill the void. If that happens the Romulans will become a minority population divided between the UFP and the Klingon Empire, holding on to a dream of a united Romulan people.
Umm, the original Romulan Star Empire was a republic. It had a Senate with Senators, and if there was an Emperor or Empress, he or she ruled in name only. So establishing a republic would be the same as reestablishing the imperial government.
Creating splinter republics might be a likely development, though: Romulans had found that style of government useful once, so perhaps they'd find it useful a few more times still?
And Romulans had been spewing splinters all through their history, it seems: "Gambit" mentions a host of planets that were described as "Romulan offshoots", not as colonies of the Star Empire but presumably independent reigns that had not survived the test of time. It sounds unlikely that a splintered RSE would immediately jump for foreign support in sorting out its internal problems, and plausible that there would be at least as many nationalist Romulan factions as there would be UFP or Klingon Empire sympathizers.
The original onscreen map that showed Romulus and Romii (or perhaps ROM II?) could be interpreted in two ways. It might show a single star system (as Spock's description of the RNZ as "separating Romulus and Remus from the rest of the galaxy" might suggest), or then a big star empire with two of its stars highlighted. If it's the former, then Romii or Rom II is quite likely to be a twin planet to Romulus, with the star somewhere off the map. If the latter (my preference), there's no telling the distance between the two stars - except that it must be at least as much as the thickness of the RNZ, assuming the stars are on the same plane, and perhaps more, assuming they are not.
That map doesn't force us to make any assumptions about the distance of Vulcan from the RSE, though. Only that Vulcan is farther away from the RNZ than one RNZ thickness' worth (or else it would be closer than the Earth outposts), assuming Vulcan is unlabeled, or that it's farther away than a dozen such thicknesses, assuming that it would be labeled but lies off the map.
It might be convenient to assume that the RNZ is one lightyear thick. But this is never established anywhere, and indeed the map from "Balance of Terror" has a scale bar that tells one grid square (which is also the thickness of the RNZ) is 200 units wide. We don't know what units those might be...
Timo Saloniemi
C'mon, this is TV, the distance is whatever the plot demands!
Alternatively, they viewed the Surakians as having established, or on the cusp of establishing, a totalitarian theocracy. And there's plenty of reason to think that the archaic Vulcans had overshot Vulcan's carrying capacity as well, so that leaving Vulcan need not--necessarily--have required a political dimension at all, although its existence seems to have helped.
I do agree that Romii isn't Remus--although it must be a very important center if it gets put on a map of the RSE, to the exclusion of anything else but Romulus itself.
As for the RSE being a republic, this much is pretty much canon. A Senate legislates, and a chief judge--Praetor--apparently combines executive and judicial functions. There's not actually any indication that it isn't a democracy. The only time we've been on Romulus, we've seen that the military has great influence and people who associate with foreign subsversives are persecuted. It's bad, sure, but if you were hanging out with Boris Badanov, Crimson Dynamo and Zangief from Street Fighter during the Cold War, I'd bet you'd get looked at closely, too.
Maybe in NuTrek they can portray the Romulans as an actual democracy/republic with elected officials the people choose (instead of powerful families) who just happen to have that "Manifest Destiny" difference with the Feds. So they have an enemy that's a democracy and not just another generic empire.
Finally, someone points this out, and before someone says something, yes i know you all know it's a show, and yes I am a fan, and no, I don't do the "It's a show" spiel to people. Star Trek, has never been consistent as to what is where, and how long it takes to travel from what, to what, at what speed. Take a look at TOS, the Enterprise Kirk commanded, was all over the place that TNG, DS9 and VOY would suggest literately had them going all over the galaxy that in the later series, would take years to get to.
The ridge thing is bothersome, and I take it at face value and always figure it to be some sort of awkward retcon (and thereby, never attempt some sort of explanation for it), mostly because there was no onscreen reference to it (just like the Trill, Bajorans, etc...).
As for Vulcan/Romulan FTL, ENT came right out and said that they had FTL prior to the time of awakening, and lost it because of the wars fought during it.
Seriously, what's the problem that they might have had an idea of what was where? I mean, if NASA, today, can figure out what some distant stars are (distant by today's standard, anway) and thereby also get idea what type of planets (if anything) are in the sytem, then surly a space faring race capable of building space ships able to carry hundreds of people or so, could?
Or perhaps the only other Romulan system Earth has authentic knowledge of?
Why? What's "wrong", or in need of an "explanation", with most Romulans having ridges? We didn't see most Romulans in TOS. Nor in the spinoffs, for that matter; we saw just a few examples. Quite a few WWII movies would give the impression that black Americans were only invented after May 1945...
Well, sort of. I mean, ENT established that Vulcans were interstellar before Surak's wars, and that they lost a lot in those wars, but the issue of FTL doesn't exactly arise in that context. We can still spin tales of epic STL exoduses or whatever if we want, then.
Moreover, ENT failed to give the dirt on when and how the Romulans left. Were they Romulans before leaving Vulcan? Did they leave before or after Surak's time? What made them leave? Did they leave as one group that later splintered (into the Debrune and whatnot) or did they leave as multiple groups that later assumed a single identity? Lots of possibilities there.
The problem is, our ENT heroes (or TOS heroes, for that matter) don't have any idea of what is where until they go and look. Clearly, Star Trek technology cannot establish whether a certain star system has an inhabited planet until a starship pays it a visit. Logically, the ancient Vulcanoid starfarers should have suffered from the same sort of limitations.
Probably it's easy to tell that a star system has a habitable planet. But that means squat in Star Trek, where 90% of planets are habitable anyway. What matters is whether the planet is already taken, and by whom.
Timo Saloniemi
How much power did the Romulan Senate have and do you suppose that the indigenous populations within the empire have any say in the government?
James
James
Indigenous populations in the Romulan Empire are possibly just dead.
Alternatively, they're tributary species who aren't allowed to leave their planets of origin (inasmuch as we never see 'em), but might nonetheless benefit in some ways from Romulan rule.
Alternatively, they're tributary species who aren't allowed to leave their planets of origin (inasmuch as we never see 'em), but might nonetheless benefit in some ways from Romulan rule.
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