Some speculation about the Romulans and the Borg invasion

[rfmcdpei]

According to Memory Alpha we know of 15 Klingon planets, not counting Qo'Nos or Praxis.

The same site lists 3 Romulan planets, not counting Romulus and Remus.

Seeing as XI tells us that there's less than 10,000 Vulcans left out of 6 billion. It would appear that, for whatever reason, Vulcans (and Romulans) don't tend to colonize planets in large numbers.

Sorry to triple-post; I missed this one in my initial reading of the thread.

The number of mentions of planets doesn't say much, since Romulans have interacted with the Federation to a considerably less extent than the Klingons.

* Three of the five Trek series have had Klingon or half-Klingon protagonists, the Enterprise-D made multiple visits to Qo'Nos, the Federation was deeply involved in Klingon internal affairs and fought a year-long war with the Klingons, and there have been numerous recurring Klingon characters, including Dax's old friends who were present in two series.

* The Romulans didn't interact nearly as much with the Federation. Federation-Romulan conflicts tended to be small and low key--the fight over that medical hologram-equipped ship, or the run-ins along the neutral zone--and the only Romulan characters I can think of who appeared for more than two episodes are Tomalak and the half-human Sela. If they don't feature much in the series, why would their worlds be mentioned?

 

[rfmcdpei]

Unlike the Federation we don't see many, if any, other species in the RSM or the Klingon Empire.

I'm pretty sure that's just sampling effect. If I looked around my neighbourhood and generalized to all of Toronto, I'd say that the Portuguese constitute the city's largest ethnic minority. If I looked around my circle of friends, maybe a bit more than a third of Toronto's population would be queer and a surprisingly high proportion would be American students of medieval studies who converted to Anglicanism. (True story: three converted in the same ceremony.)

People from outside these empires are likely to interact with Romulans and Klingons more often than their subject species, numbers aside, because it's the Romulans and Klingons who are the people who matter most. The Kevratans and Phebens are well-known enough in their areas of space, and in a fairly meaningless way to people concerned with species suffering imperial domination (cf Tibet), but they just don't have anything like the size or the autonomy necessary to be important.

Perhaps once the Romulans conquer an inhabited planet they simply prevent them from leaving. Put a few armed stations in orbit and plasma bomb any attempt to build spacecraft. You beam down the raw materials and beam up the finished products. That way you don't get that "dirty alien" stink all through your nice, Romulan ship.

Heh.

You can securly rule an insterstellar empire if you're the only ones who can get out of a gravity well.

Probably a lot of the Romulan subject species are pre-warp species, maybe most. Civilizations like the Koltaai which are advanced enough to have a sizable industrial base and a workforce capable of extracting basic resources, but which can't pose a threat to Romulan security, might be preferred subject civilizations. Warp civilizations which can be subjugated would be more technologically compatible, but also more risky--at worse, you could have a civilization looking what the Haakona are shaping up to be during the Romulan War, an enemy that fought off its invaders and is now going on the offensive.

As for pre-industrial cultures? I suspect that worlds inhabited by these species are as likely to become colonies of mass Romulan immigration as uninhabited ones. They might be even more likely, since they at least have established, disposable workforces.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Well, in addition to the great case both rfmcdpei and Christopher have made for why Romulans should logically and by definition have numerous colonies, the novels have given us quite a few Romulan colony worlds:

Achernar Prime, Virinat, Xanitla, Ralatak (all now IRS, the latter three agricultural giants), Rator III, Terix II (a Romulan character in “Serpents Among the Ruins” is from here), Koruk (mentioned in “Vulcan’s Soul”), Nemor, Artalierh, Assaf Golav (a penal colony), Glintara (Another SAtR character was from here).

"Catalyst of Sorrows" stressed at several points the diversity of the Star Empire, and how some colony worlds were actually more advanced, technologically, socially, culturally, etc, than Romulus.

In addition, Romulans have always been shown as wanting expansion. Not resources. Not control. Not conquest for its own sake. Expansion. For many inhabitants of the Romulan Star Empire, their self-proclaimed “ideal” culture seems to be highly expansionist by default, and theoretically, when the economy isn’t in dire straits (which it has been since around the 2330s, apparently), Romulan national pride hinges in part on expanding the Empire. In TNG, it’s stated that at least some Romulans still believe they are destined to rule the galaxy. Evidently some branch of the government or some central tenet of the culture is promoting expansion. The fact that reality – in the form of economic concerns or powerful neighbours, or alternative ideologies within Romulan government or culture - is getting in the way of that ideal doesn’t change the fact that it’s there. There are definitely recurring expansionist movements within the Romulan government, we know that. Every few decades some coalition of frustrated nobles or officers are insisting the Romulans stop playing nice with the neighbours or hiding quietly behind the neutral zone and prepare to expand. There’s usually a strong dissenting voice, too, of course - but the expansionist movements keep cropping up. Expansion as an end in itself even seems to override hatred for aliens - the Romulan senators and officers in “Nemesis” were all for pushing past the borders and a new boost to the military might of the RSE, but had no desire to exterminate Earth. So it wasn’t a desire to lash out at aliens which was motivating them, but rather the usual recurring frustration at the lack of an expanding border.

If we consider the starchart on the Senate floor, as “Taking Wing” draws attention to - one of the Romulans’ biggest frustrations is always shown to be that in modern centuries they’re constrained by the neutral zone and other superpowers, chiefly the Federation. They clearly don’t appreciate having boundaries and barriers “imposed” on them, and every few decades there seems to arise a new crop of hotheaded leaders who want to try and test those boundaries, if the “static border” or occasional “pro-alliance” senate coalitions can’t stop them. Sure, there are long periods of relative calm and reason in between, when the Romulans typically turn inward and withdraw from galactic society - with the exception of some genuine diplomatic efforts between the 2270s and 2310s, before Vokar’s lot started up. But a significant number of Romulan leaders seem to place value on the pre-2160 days of rapid colonization and conquest. Even the very fact that they had a “Star Empire” to begin with means they looked out at those stars and desired to claim them - to reach out and establish themselves. So, in all, Romulans promote expansion. They colonize. It’s more than just a simple desire for resources (as with Cardassia); it’s an end in itself at times, at least for some Romulans. They don’t justify a conquest with “we’ll create some mines and ship this ore back to Homeworld” (though they might well do it). That’s the Cardassians, because Central Command sets itself up as the saviours of the people, the benevolent but firm guiding hand that provides Cardassia with what it requires. The military in Cardassia provides the people with their basic needs. The Romulan military is always shown as embodying something more abstract – pride, honour, glory. The people who provide Romulans with basic needs are the farmers, etc. The military has a more lofty purpose, it seems- to be the proud Romulan Eagle showing its bloody wings. Romulans glorify in the noble pride and honour of the Empire. They're the higher society and they seek to seed the rest of space with their highness.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Spock's line is meant to mean that there's 10,000 Vulcans (as opposed to Romulans) left altogether.

No, it was meant to convey an emotional impression to filmgoers. In a Q&A on TrekMovie.com in May 2009, screenwriters Orci & Kurtzman stated that the "10,000 Vulcans" figure did not include offworlders; it referred only to those who'd escaped the planet itself before its destruction.

That Nutty Fanboy: What happened to off-world Vulcans? The lines in the movie indicate 10.000 survivors overall, which seems rather low for a space-faring species – especially that very likely have off-world colonies.. or was the 10.000-line pointed towards survivors escaping Vulcan itself?

BobOrci: True. Let’s just say then that the 10,000 does not count off worlders!

http://trekmovie.com/2009/05/22/orci-and-kurtzman-reveal-star-trek-details-in-trekmovie-fan-qa/

Why else would he say he's a member of an endangered species? If China were destroyed would a surviving Chinese citizen claim to be a member of an endangered species if there were still 5 billion other humans left?

He very well might, if he were as emotionally distraught as Spock was at that point (though he'd more likely say "endangered race," keeping in mind that ST treats species as analogous to ethnic groups). Again, keep in mind the concept of the unreliable narrator. It can justify Nero's "last of the Romulan Empire" line, and it can justify this line.

Has there been any mention of Vulcan colonies that weren't in the TNG timeframe?

Yes. It's called Romulus.

"Let's just say?"` That sounds like ass covering after the fact.

If we`re going for the unreliable narrartor to explain away the odd lines, does that mean that we have to be prepared to do the same for Spock and Spock Prime through the rest of the movie? Was Spock being truthful with his emotional moment with Uhura? Was Spock Prime telling NuKirk the truth or was he telling him a line of baloney in order to get him motivated to take command from Spock and stop Nero?

Is America a colony of Great Britain?

 

[rfmcdpei]

Every few decades some coalition of frustrated nobles or officers are insisting the Romulans stop playing nice with the neighbours or hiding quietly behind the neutral zone and prepare to expand. There’s usually a strong dissenting voice, too, of course - but the expansionist movements keep cropping up. Expansion as an end in itself even seems to override hatred for aliens - the Romulan senators and officers in “Nemesis” were all for pushing past the borders and a new boost to the military might of the RSE, but had no desire to exterminate Earth.

I'm tempted to say that things have actually been improving vis-a-vis the outside universe. In the 22nd century, Valdore saw nothing wrong with launching a genocidal attack against a Coridan that hadn't done anything to the RSE, and only began to question (question) this after there was talk of doing a repeat attack, all the while not questioning the necessity of massacring the populations of enemy colony worlds. In the 24th century, after some vacillation (and after the decapitation of the previous non-crazy RSE government) Donatra ended up going out with her ships to stop Suran substantially on the grounds that the destruction of Earth would be a horror, that his "sins" (her word) would shame Romulans. Without the coup, there's no reason to believe that the Senate would have authorized military action against the Federation, never mind a decapitation event on Earth. Plus, even before that you had a growing number of top political and military leaders who were defecting to the Federation, and a popular movement in favour of reunification with the Vulcans.

This leaves aside the Rihannsuverse, possibly novelverse character of Ael, who as Empress may have triggered a fairly intimate rapprochement with the Federation. It takes something pretty significant to explain how Nanclus was able to sit in on a classified Federation briefing to the UFP president how Starfleet would raid the Klingon homeworld if the RSE wasn't pretty impressively friendly.

All of which is to say that I think there's a fair possibility towards fairly close and friendly Federation-Romulan relations. Via the Vulcans the two powers have more in common than either does with the Klingons, and there have been multiple efforts from multiple different sources (the military, the colonists, the homeworlders, the politicians) to try to get out of the pointless cold war.

Extrapolating wildly, if the IRS does hold the northeastern half of Romulan space, that ]might indicate that it holds more the colonial frontier. Judging by the Rihannsu novels, which suggest that the colonials are more liberal and humane in the idealized Romulan sense than the homeworld might like, descended from the Ship Clans which were never that invested in the myths brought by the colonists, well. Thoughts?

If we consider the starchart on the Senate floor, as “Taking Wing” draws attention to - one of the Romulans’ biggest frustrations is always shown to be that in modern centuries they’re constrained by the neutral zone and other superpowers, chiefly the Federation.

Romulus' thwarted expansion really is all Earth's fault. DS9's "Past Tense" proves it. With Earth leading the way and keeping interstellar politics peaceful, the Coalition held together; with Earth devastated, the Romulans advanced at least as far as Alpha Centauri, moving past Draylax, Benzar, and Bolarus and coming within close range of Tellar, Andor, and Vulcan itself. I can feel for the Romulans: all their meticulously laid out plans thwarted by an upstart species that within their lifetime had been a compliant Vulcan protectorate.

 

[rfmcdpei]

If we`re going for the unreliable narrartor to explain away the odd lines, does that mean that we have to be prepared to do the same for Spock and Spock Prime through the rest of the movie?

If they need to be explained that way, yes. Spock's statement doesn't make sense: colonies of Vulcan proper aside, there are huge numbers of civilizations of Vulcan background out in the wider galaxy, everything from the expansive Romulans down to the pre-industrial Mintakans. It's a logical impossibility that there could only be ten thousand Vulcans.

Anyway, the people who wrote the canon said that the figure of ten thousand applies only to the ten thousand who escaped Vulcan, not to the number of survivors of members of the Vulcan species inclined towards the cultural norms of the homeworld, never mind the number of survivors from the entire species. What more is to be said?

Was Spock being truthful with his emotional moment with Uhura? Was Spock Prime telling NuKirk the truth or was he telling him a line of baloney in order to get him motivated to take command from Spock and stop Nero?

Is there any reason, inside or outside the narrative of the universe, to suspect that either Spock was being insincere? The extraordinary pressures of the immediate past made Spock manifest a romantic interest in a woman he'd long interacted with in a close, friendly professional mode; Spock Prime told young Kirk about his long-standing friendship with Kirk Prime and his knowledge of Kirk's own abilities. There's nothing intrinsically impossible, or inaccurate, for these.

Is America a colony of Great Britain?

No, but if the United Kingdom was somehow destroyed, there would still be tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people of substantially British descent outside of the United Kingdom. Certainly the English language wouldn't become extinct.

(And what about the Commonwealth? Something like two billion people live in countries belonging to an organization with the Queen of the United Kingdom at its head, some of these countries still retaining the British monarch as their head of state.)

 

[Deranged Nasat]

This leaves aside the Rihannsuverse, possibly novelverse character of Ael, who as Empress may have triggered a fairly intimate rapprochement with the Federation. It takes something pretty significant to explain how Nanclus was able to sit in on a classified Federation briefing to the UFP president how Starfleet would raid the Klingon homeworld if the RSE wasn't pretty impressively friendly.

Indeed. One of the stronger arguments for incorporating Ael, and Rihannsu's basic story, into the mainstream novel continuity is certainly the fact that between around 2275 and 2310 (loosely) the RSE seemed to pursue genuine hopes for a good relationship, even an alliance, with the UFP. Ael and the civil war would help explain that (we have D'tran and his supporters prior to this in Vanguard, of course,but full government support for peace would come significantly easier if Rihannsu is "counted"). Then Vokar and his ideological cousins rose up, unfortunately, there was Tomed...and the borders closed.

Extrapolating wildly, if the IRS does hold the northeastern half of Romulan space, that ]might indicate that it holds more the colonial frontier. Judging by the Rihannsu novels, which suggest that the colonials are more liberal and humane in the idealized Romulan sense than the homeworld might like, descended from the Ship Clans which were never that invested in the myths brought by the colonists, well. Thoughts?

That's an interesting idea, and I really like the suggestion. It would be great to have a sense of the rate and direction of Romulan expansion, who settled where and when and where the strongholds of each ideological perspective or sub-culture are. We can dream...

 

[kkozoriz1]

If we`re going for the unreliable narrartor to explain away the odd lines, does that mean that we have to be prepared to do the same for Spock and Spock Prime through the rest of the movie?

If they need to be explained that way, yes. Spock's statement doesn't make sense: colonies of Vulcan proper aside, there are huge numbers of civilizations of Vulcan background out in the wider galaxy, everything from the expansive Romulans down to the pre-industrial Mintakans. It's a logical impossibility that there could only be ten thousand Vulcans.

Anyway, the people who wrote the canon said that the figure of ten thousand applies only to the ten thousand who escaped Vulcan, not to the number of survivors of members of the Vulcan species inclined towards the cultural norms of the homeworld, never mind the number of survivors from the entire species. What more is to be said?

Was Spock being truthful with his emotional moment with Uhura? Was Spock Prime telling NuKirk the truth or was he telling him a line of baloney in order to get him motivated to take command from Spock and stop Nero?

Is there any reason, inside or outside the narrative of the universe, to suspect that either Spock was being insincere? The extraordinary pressures of the immediate past made Spock manifest a romantic interest in a woman he'd long interacted with in a close, friendly professional mode; Spock Prime told young Kirk about his long-standing friendship with Kirk Prime and his knowledge of Kirk's own abilities. There's nothing intrinsically impossible, or inaccurate, for these.

Seeing as Spock has just seen the destruction of his home planet and the death of his mother, it's entirely possible that he simply latched onto the first person who reached out to him, that being Uhura. Or are we to assume that he was making an informed, shall we say "logical" decision, moments afterward?

This is also the Spock that counseled Kirk to attack Nero once he was defeated and helpless so i guess anything is possible.

 

[rfmcdpei]

This leaves aside the Rihannsuverse, possibly novelverse character of Ael, who as Empress may have triggered a fairly intimate rapprochement with the Federation. It takes something pretty significant to explain how Nanclus was able to sit in on a classified Federation briefing to the UFP president how Starfleet would raid the Klingon homeworld if the RSE wasn't pretty impressively friendly.

Indeed. One of the stronger arguments for incorporating Ael, and Rihannsu's basic story, into the mainstream novel continuity is certainly the fact that between around 2275 and 2310 (loosely) the RSE seemed to pursue genuine hopes for a good relationship, even an alliance, with the UFP. Ael and the civil war would help explain that (we have D'tran and his supporters prior to this in Vanguard, of course,but full government support for peace would come significantly easier if Rihannsu is "counted"). Then Vokar and his ideological cousins rose up, unfortunately, there was Tomed...and the borders closed.

Drawing from her own novels, but also from the TOS novels, Duane made a good point when her Kirk observed that the number of Romulan provocations to the Federation was rising sharply as a consequence of Romulus' increasingly deadly internal politics. The Triumvirate seem to have wanted unfettered powers for their own purposes: let them conquer vast swathes of space, use augmented telepathy to dominate the minds of their lessers, use frighteningly advanced science to deploy star-killing metaweapons and who knows what else. The Romulan Civil War, coming as it did after the Triumvirs had engaged in abundant and socially unacceptable violence at those within and without the RSE, discredited the crazy/ultraviolent school of Romulan expansionists ...

Or so I'd like to think. It took a military coup that came out of nowhere to create a Romulan government preparing to order a genocidal strike at Earth, and that government collapsed pretty quickly over the basic issue of the ethics of the thing. (That, and fear of Shinzon and the consequences of his acts. Would the RSE really be ready to take on the Federation, even after Earth's annihilation? Crazy/ultraviolent actions can as easily lead to massive retaliation as to submission.)

It would be great to have a sense of the rate and direction of Romulan expansion, who settled where and when and where the strongholds of each ideological perspective or sub-culture are. We can dream...

I think we can get an idea from the map. The Romulans seem to have started their expansion in sphere maybe thirty years across, located off-centre from Romulus (to the southeast), before embarking on two major expansions. The first took the Romulans in the general direction of Vulcan and the other Federation core worlds, coming up close to the worlds of the Debrune (whoever they were, exactly) before eventually being halted. The second, apparently more successful, went "east" and succeeded in acquiring a huge swathe of space before the movement petered out, partly because it came up against the Klingon border. At some point, the initial Romulan sphere seems to have been threatened: the Neutral Zone comes within ten light-years of Romulus, and the Battle of Cheron happened very close to Romulus and created a status quo where the ]Enterprise could make a quick fly-by scan of Cheron to determine who won the race war without starting an interstellar incident.

Maybe the Romulans of the home sphere and the Federation border region are the people most strongly wedded to the expansionist project, the home sphere out of fear and 5he border region out of tradition, while the Romulans living in what became IRS space are more traditionalist, attached to their traditional liberty and displeased with intrusions on these liberties by their government, by aggressors, and (maybe) by undue aggression on their part?

 

[rfmcdpei]

Seeing as Spock has just seen the destruction of his home planet and the death of his mother, it's entirely possible that he simply latched onto the first person who reached out to him, that being Uhura.

We could. Is there any reason why we must? We know that Spock and Uhura have a long professional relationship, one close enough that Spock's willing to respond to a bit of teasing and transfer Uhura to a new command on will, and close enough for Uhura to try to console him, even touching him physically. The idea of an emotionally strained Spock acting on romantic feelings he chose not to acknowledge is believable, and doesn't run contrary to what we know of the two characters, or of Vulcan (or human!) physiology and psychology.

Or are we to assume that he was making an informed, shall we say "logical" decision, moments afterward?

Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point.

This is also the Spock that counseled Kirk to attack Nero once he was defeated and helpless so i guess anything is possible.

It would be the rare person who, faced with the ability to annihilate the person(s) responsible for the death of the person's homeworld and home and family (including the person's mother just a metre away), wouldn't resist the desire to wish for the person(s) destruction. Nero's certainly willing to engage in massive overkill to avenge his family; why mightn't Spock be willing to do the same sort of thing?

The difference between the new possibilities for Spcok/Uhura romance fic and Spock's desire for Nero's death, on the one hand, and Spock's statement that only ten thousand Vulcans survived Nero and the assumption that Vulcanoids don't expand at all, is that there's nothing in what we know of the Star Trek universe and the dynamics of peoples and societies to forbid the first two (much the contrary), and much to suggest that the last two are ill-grounded. There are plenty of Vulcans after Nero, with the colonists of Vulcan cultural backgrounds and the numerous less prominent Vulcanoid cultures and the Romulan empire about; there's plenty of reasons to think that, in two millennia of aggressive expansion, there are numerous Romulan settlement colonies outside the Romulan homesystem, apart from conquered worlds and civilizations.

 

[kkozoriz1]

To summarize, the only thing Spock said that we should disregard is that there's 10,000 Vulcans left. Also, revenge upon a helpless enemy is a good and valid action.

Gotcha

 

[rfmcdpei]

To summarize, the only thing Spock said that we should disregard is that there's 10,000 Vulcans left.

If it's the only implausible thing, sure.

Mintaka III alone, even at a Bronze Age level of development, would support a population of tens of millions of Vulcans. Romulus, a world settled by Vulcans who've developed an expansionistic culture defined by Vulcan models will understand on the homeworld, supports a population of billions of Vulcans. What we know about the Rigelians suggests they're Vulcan-like enough that drugs used to stimulate blood production in that population work well enough on Vulcans.

The existence of these three large populations alone, well-established in canon, demonstrates that Spock's initial assertion is incorrect. His is not an endangered species.

Add to this the implausibility that a well-established interstellar civilization wouldn't have a large population away from its homeworld, and the director's own statement that the "ten thousand" figure refers only to the number of Vulcans evacuated from the planet--not the total number of survivors--and, well.

Sure, Orci said that in passing. In future movies, he may well contradict this; he left himself enough room to do that. Until then, we've got a well-documented statement of canon that's backed up by other canonical information from the film and by novelverse canon.

Also, revenge upon a helpless enemy is a good and valid action.

Who said that? Young Spock did, sure, maybe a bit more than a day after the unprovoked destruction of his homeworld and its population and his mother in front of his eyes. As I said, it'd be a rare person in that situation who wouldn't act in that way.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

In star trek XI, Nero said he is the last of the romulan empire.

Spock said there are only 10000 vulcans left, that the vulcans are an endangered species.
At the end of the movie, it is, again, established that the vulcans are experiencing a crisis due to severely limited numbers - which is not consistent with hundreds of millions of vulcans living in off-world colonies.

When they wrote the script, the scenarists' intent was to have the vulcans be an endangered species (10000 of them) and the 24th century romulans be all but extinct.

Of course, that does not really make sense when one considers the capabilities of an interstellar trek civilization.
Which is why many interpret the movie as "Nero was emotionally compromised and his words are not to be taken at face value" or "Spock was emotionally compromised and his words are not to be taken at face value".

Of course, this hand-waving interpretation does not really fit the events as presented in star trek XI, is forced - and it shows.
Nevertheless, it may be preferable.


About the rihannsu novels - it is pretty much the same situation.
The rihannsu novels - most of the events depicted therein - do not fit the main trek lit conntinuity, they were not intended to fit this main lit continuity:

Huge romulan colony ships, strong enough to defeat, almost singlehandedly, the romulan military? No inkling of this in canon (or main lit continuity) depictions of the romulans.

Zero point energy romulan tech - far more advanced shields, weapons, etc - gained by the federation, at the end? Not really.

The romulans being friendly with the federation?
In star trek V, it was obvious nobody cared about the "planet of galactic peace".
In star trek VI, the romulans were a part of the plot to kill the federation president.
This so-called 'friendship' was pretty superficial - more like a frozen war.

The romulans calling themselves/being called rihannsu? Not really.

Many on this forum try to interpret the rihannsu books as being part of the main trek lit continuity - and, inevitably, their interpretations are forced, they never quite manage to reconcile two different continuities; fuzzy logic and hand waving abound.

 

[Christopher]

Mintaka III alone, even at a Bronze Age level of development, would support a population of tens of millions of Vulcans. Romulus, a world settled by Vulcans who've developed an expansionistic culture defined by Vulcan models will understand on the homeworld, supports a population of billions of Vulcans. What we know about the Rigelians suggests they're Vulcan-like enough that drugs used to stimulate blood production in that population work well enough on Vulcans.

Mintakans weren't Vulcans, but "proto-Vulcan humanoids." A related or parallel-evolved species, but not the same species. As for Rigelians, all we know about them is that they have similar blood chemistry to Vulcans, and in Trek terms, that doesn't guarantee any greater degree of kinship.

Nonetheless, it is really rather unlikely that any civilization that's been starfaring for centuries -- either Vulcan or Romulus -- would have no significant offworld populations. Trek's tendency to portray all species (including humans) as native to their homeworlds by default is a persistent conceptual flaw, one that doesn't make sense within the greater context of the universe as it's been established. It's a case of writers not thinking through the ramifications of the universe they're working in.

Add to this the implausibility that a well-established interstellar civilization wouldn't have a large population away from its homeworld, and the director's own statement that the "ten thousand" figure refers only to the number of Vulcans evacuated from the planet--not the total number of survivors--and, well.

A producer/screenwriter's statement, not the director's.

Sure, Orci said that in passing. In future movies, he may well contradict this; he left himself enough room to do that.

Actually I think it's more likely to go the other way. As I said, screenwriters tend to overlook the idea of offworld colonization. I suspect that the line was written with the unexamined assumption that Vulcans lived only on Vulcan, and when that fan raised the question to Orci in the Q&A, Orci realized that had been an oversight and offered a correction. So I'd expect that, if the issue came up in a later movie and if there were room to mention it, Orci and Kurtzman would be more likely to clarify that there are surviving Vulcan colonies. All storytellers make mistakes, but in serial fiction one has the opportunity to correct them. (Which is one reason why it's unwise to treat every passing line of dialogue as inviolable gospel. An ongoing series is a work in progress, always subject to revision.)

 

[kkozoriz1]

So Spock is now a member of an endangered species with millions or billions of other survivors?

Have we ever heard of a Vulcan colony other that Vulcanis Lunar Colony? (absence of evidence <> evidence of absence and all that but still...)

 

[rfmcdpei]

Not so much that as Spock was shell-shocked and not making the most accurate logs. He didn't show very good judgement on any number of occasions after Vulcan's destruction: not putting Kirk in detention but sending him in a lifepod to the surface of a marginally habitable planet, trying to strangle Kirk on the latter's return on top of the conn console while the bridge crew and his father looked on aghast, making out with Uhura on the transporter pad, favouring killing Nero regardless of the possible good sense of keeping him alive.

Besides, Spock's statement is proved wrong by the simple fact billions of Romulans, as much members of he Vulcan species as any of the inhabitants of 40 Eridani, not only survived the attack on Vulcan but dominate a superpower. Vulcans are demonstrably not an endangered species.

Vulcan genetic diversity has been diminished. The Romulans were probably a genetically unrepresentative sample of the population of the planet Vulcan as much as they were ideologically unrepresentative (see founder's effect). Vulcan would house more genetically diverse lineages than the rest of Vulcan civilization; on Earth, there's far more diversity in Africa, home of the human species, than in the rest of the world combined. That's still different from saying Vulcans are endangered.

 

[rfmcdpei]

In star trek XI, Nero said he is the last of the romulan empire.

Spock said there are only 10000 vulcans left, that the vulcans are an endangered species.
At the end of the movie, it is, again, established that the vulcans are experiencing a crisis due to severely limited numbers - which is not consistent with hundreds of millions of vulcans living in off-world colonies.

And not consistent with the existence of billions of Romulans, Vulcans but for political naming conventions.

Reducing the Vulcan population of Vulcan cultural background from (say) 5 billion down to 50 million--a drop of 99%--would certainly threaten the survival of this culturally distinctive group.

Besides, the people who wrote the movie said that the ten thousand figure relates to the people living on Vulcan itself. What more needs to be said?

About the rihannsu novels - it is pretty much the same situation.
The rihannsu novels - most of the events depicted therein - do not fit the main trek lit conntinuity, they were not intended to fit this main lit continuity

Agreed. That's why I wrote that I consider the Rihannsu novels as relevant to the novelverse, canonical except where they can't be.

There's numerous references made to the Romulans as Rihannsu in the novelverse. Leaving aside the inclusion of the Rihannsu in the earlier generation of novels, particularly but perhaps not only in the novels of Margaret Wander Bonnano and Carolyn Clewes, the new integrated novelverse makes numerous explicit references to Duane's novels. The colony world of Artaleirh introduced in detail in The Empty Chair is visited in A Singular Destiny a generation later; the telecapture technology used by the Romulan colonials in the Civil War is directly connected to the telecapture technology used by the RSE at the beginning of the Romulan War; in one of the alt-hist novellas, a Romulan senator mentions how Empress Ael is disturbed by the Federation use of a Genesis Device on Praxis. The Rihannsu language is used in the novelverse when Romulans are shown talking, and name formation is clearly Rihannsu--Admiral Valdore's full name is given as Valdore i'Kaleh tr'Ihaimehn, as Rihannsu a name as ever there was one. Most of the new novels even explicitly credit the Rihannsu novels in their neat bibliographies.

The romulans being friendly with the federation?
In star trek V, it was obvious nobody cared about the "planet of galactic peace".
In star trek VI, the romulans were a part of the plot to kill the federation president.
This so-called 'friendship' was pretty superficial - more like a frozen war.

Starfleet was involved in the plot to kill the Federation president.

If we're assuming implacable hostility, there's still the question of why Nanclus was president at this briefing. If you represent a determinedly hostile power, one that made concerted efforts to conquer the core worlds of your neighbour a century ago and has since made numerous raids and petty attacks on the neighbour, why would you be invited in on a top-secret briefing showing how your neighbour's military is going to engage in the snatch-and-grab raid on the homeworld of another power? Keep in mind that the Romulans and Klingons had an alliance for some time, and it would surely be easy for the Romulans to send the information over.

Why would the Romulan ambassador be present? Assuming that the Federation isn't run by stupid people, the simplest explanation seems to be that the Romulans are close enough to the Federation to be trusted with highly sensitive information as it's being briefed to the Federation president.

Many on this forum try to interpret the rihannsu books as being part of the main trek lit continuity - and, inevitably, their interpretations are forced, they never quite manage to reconcile two different continuities; fuzzy logic and hand waving abound.

As I said, they aren't fully compatible. That hasn't stopped numerous usable elements of the Rihannsu novels from being incorporated into the new novelverse, they and their author being explicitly credited in numerous novels.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Seeing as Spock is apparently shell shocked or suffering from PTSD for the remainer of the movie, why would he be allowed to not only ship out with the Enterprise but be named First Officer? He encouraged Kirk to fire on the Romulans even though they no longer posed a threat.

"Captain, what are you doing?

You show them compassion, may be the only way to earn peace with Romulus.

It's logic Spock, thought you'd like that.

No, not really. Not this time."

Even when Kirk says it may be the only way to earn peace with the Romulans, Spock chooses revenge.

 

[Sci]

To summarize, the only thing Spock said that we should disregard is that there's 10,000 Vulcans left.

He never said there were only 10,000 Vulcans left, he said that there were only 10,000 survivors of the planet Vulcan. The "endangered species" line is one that should be seen as emotional hyperbole resulting from the extreme trauma of losing his homeworld and his mother in one swoop.

And, yes, people sometimes say stupid things when they've endured trauma. It's called being a realistically-written character.

Seeing as Spock has just seen the destruction of his home planet and the death of his mother, it's entirely possible that he simply latched onto the first person who reached out to him, that being Uhura.

We could. Is there any reason why we must? We know that Spock and Uhura have a long professional relationship, one close enough that Spock's willing to respond to a bit of teasing and transfer Uhura to a new command on will, and close enough for Uhura to try to console him, even touching him physically. The idea of an emotionally strained Spock acting on romantic feelings he chose not to acknowledge is believable, and doesn't run contrary to what we know of the two characters, or of Vulcan (or human!) physiology and psychology.

True -- although, frankly, the impression I got from the "You're transferring me to the Enterprise" scene and the turbolift scene was that Spock and Uhura had been seeing each other for quite some time.

Also, revenge upon a helpless enemy is a good and valid action.

The Narada had already demonstrated an ability to survive passage through a black hole into other timelines. Nero had been given an offer of rescue upon condition of surrender; he refused. There was no guarantee that the Narada would be destroyed by its passage through a black hole again, and if it survived, there was every indication that Nero would attack and kill more innocent people wherever he ended up.

So, in summary, you have a hostile war criminal, who has already killed billions, who has refused surrender, and for whom there is a significant chance he'd pose a threat to more innocent lives once he escapes.

Yes, it's perfectly appropriate to kill him.

Have we ever heard of a Vulcan colony other that Vulcanis Lunar Colony? (absence of evidence <> evidence of absence and all that but still...)

P'Jem, for one.

ENT also establish numerous territorial disputes with the Andorians in the pre-Federation era. So it's unavoidable that there are Vulcan colonies.

Seeing as Spock is apparently shell shocked or suffering from PTSD for the remainer of the movie, why would he be allowed to not only ship out with the Enterprise but be named First Officer?

We do not know how long after the main body of the movie that epilogue takes place. The exact time frame is left deliberately ambiguous.

Even when Kirk says it may be the only way to earn peace with the Romulans, Spock chooses revenge.

I'm sorry, but that's akin to saying that if the United States Army is in a firefight with Osama bin Ladin and he's about to escape unless they shoot him in the back, they shouldn't shoot. It's just absurd.

Yes, capturing him (be it Nero or bin Ladin) alive is preferable, but if that's not possible in combat, the logical thing is to protect innocent life by killing him.

 

[kkozoriz1]

We do not know how long after the main body of the movie that epilogue takes place. The exact time frame is left deliberately ambiguous.

Even when Kirk says it may be the only way to earn peace with the Romulans, Spock chooses revenge.

I'm sorry, but that's akin to saying that if the United States Army is in a firefight with Osama bin Ladin and he's about to escape unless they shoot him in the back, they shouldn't shoot. It's just absurd.

Yes, capturing him (be it Nero or bin Ladin) alive is preferable, but if that's not possible in combat, the logical thing is to protect innocent life by killing him.

Seeing as Kirk still has the scars on his face it would appear to be a few days at most. Spock goes through this horrible trauma and in less than a week is all better? He removed himself from duty and apparently declared himself fit again as well. Where was McCoy?

Nero wasn't going anywhere. The Narada was falling apart, pieces were falling off. It was on both sides of the wormhole, not going in one side and coming out the other in some other reality like we saw earlier.

This is akin to capturing an enemy solder who cannot run away, who has no weapons left and shooting him in the back. It's called revenge.

It's not surprising the support Spock has for his actions. How many war crimes have gone unpunished in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you take on the same actions of your foes, you become them.