Post-Romulan Galaxy

[NSTrekfan]

But Spock was planning on leaving Starfleet to "rebuild our race". As well it was said "There are so few Vulcans left, we cannot afford to ignore each other."

This was said at a later time, after the Enterprise had returned to Earth. Spock Prime doesn't correct Spock's contention that he must help rebuild the Vulcan race. he gives him an "out" since he can be in two places at once.

It's obvious, given the way the situation is handled not once but twice, that the intention was that there were only 10,000 Vulcans left. If the writer has second thoughts after the film has hit the screen then he can "correct" it in a later film. But, once it's on the screen it's canon.

If the only evidence was Spocks mantion of the 10,000 was just after the destruction of Vulcan I could see how you could explain it away as him being compromised. But, with his later conversation with his older self he appears to be in control once more. Spcok does not correct his younger self in regards to the number of Vulcans left. He had just completed a search for "a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony." Why look for a whole new planet if there are already colonies out there? it would be like locating the 9/11 survivors to an empty field in Nebraska and building them a new town.

 

[Sci]

But Spock was planning on leaving Starfleet to "rebuild our race". As well it was said "There are so few Vulcans left, we cannot afford to ignore each other."

This was said at a later time, after the Enterprise had returned to Earth. Spock Prime doesn't correct Spock's contention that he must help rebuild the Vulcan race. he gives him an "out" since he can be in two places at once.

So? If there are six million Vulcans left instead of six billion, that still means that the Vulcan people have lost more than 99.9% of their species. That's still a disaster on any reasonable scale, and still represents an existential threat to the Vulcan species, since those numbers can be further depleted. It would still be perfectly reasonable to react to the loss of that many Vulcans by resigning from Starfleet and rededicating himself to the perpetuation of the Vulcan people.

Nothing about that requires that Spock's initial estimate that there are only 10,000 Vulcans left in the universe be accurate.

It's obvious, given the way the situation is handled not once but twice, that the intention was that there were only 10,000 Vulcans left. If the writer has second thoughts after the film has hit the screen then he can "correct" it in a later film. But, once it's on the screen it's canon.

Again, the novels are free to reinterpret aspects of canon, but not to contradict it. It is not a canonical fact that there were only 10,000 Vulcans left, it is a canonical fact that Alt.Spock estimated there to be only 10,000 Vulcans left while emotionally traumatized. It is not a canonical fact that Trip Tucker died in 2161, it is a canonical fact that 24th Century history recorded him as having died in 2161.

Spcok does not correct his younger self in regards to the number of Vulcans left.

Alt.Spock never mentions the 10,000 figure in his conversation with his older self; there is no number for Prime.Spock to correct.

He had just completed a search for "a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony." Why look for a whole new planet if there are already colonies out there?

In the Destinyverse, fter the destruction of Deneva -- a mostly Human-populated Federation Member State that had formerly been a colony of United Earth -- the Denevans went looking for a new world to colonize, to become the new seat of the Denevan nation within the Federation. They did this in spite of the fact that the Human species was not in any existential danger whatsoever.

It's perfectly reasonable that Vulcans would seek to establish a New Vulcan to become their new homeworld after the destruction of their old one. In particular, the Confederacy of Vulcan would need to establish a new capital planet -- especially if its colony worlds are like most Federation species' colonies: Mostly undeveloped planets with only the occasional city, located out on the periphery of Federation space far from other Federation supply routes and population centers.

it would be like locating the 9/11 survivors to an empty field in Nebraska and building them a new town.

No, it would not. It would be like seeing almost the entire State of New York destroyed and killing 99.9% of all New Yorkers, and then realizing you can't just fit all of the 20,000 survivors onto Long Island.

ETA:

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the scale of the disaster.

Even if there are more than 10,000 Vulcans left, that does not mean that this is a disaster comparable to 9/11. It is, frankly, a disaster far more comparable to the Holocaust than to 9/11. It's the sort of thing that represents an existential threat to the Vulcan people even if there are still millions left. It is not comparable to the destruction of the Twin Towers in terms of the scale of the devastation, nor even to the destruction of New Orleans. The only thing comparable would be the destruction of an entire American state.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm trying to understand how you can say the books have to acknowledge this while you have said you don't believe the 10,000 surviving Vulcans to be binding since Orci has said, in retrospect, that he didn't count count offworld Vulcans. If Orci puts a line to that effect into the next movie I can see how that would affect the way the Vulcan situation is handled but until then wouldn't the 10,000 survivors be the law of the land?

The books would not be permitted to pretend that Spock actually said 2,000. Or 100,000. Or ten million. But a novel could develop a story that assumes that the number mentioned in the film didn't include colony worlds or offworld vessels' crews. All it requires is approval from the Pocket Books editor and the CBS Licensing team.

It could also be that there a no Vulcan colony worlds. The changes to the timeline caused by Nero could have caused the Vulcans to become quite insular. In the original timeline, the connection between Vulcans and Romulans seemingly wasn't publicly known till "Balance of Terror".

 

[Christopher]

I'm trying to understand how you can say the books have to acknowledge this while you have said you don't believe the 10,000 surviving Vulcans to be binding since Orci has said, in retrospect, that he didn't count count offworld Vulcans. If Orci puts a line to that effect into the next movie I can see how that would affect the way the Vulcan situation is handled but until then wouldn't the 10,000 survivors be the law of the land?

No, because Orci wasn't retconning anything, just clarifying what he meant to say the first time. Here's what Spock specifically said in the movie:

Nero, who has destroyed my home planet and most of its six billion inhabitants. While the essence of our culture has been saved in the elders who now reside upon the ship, I estimate no more than ten thousand have survived.

Read that very carefully. In the first sentence he's clearly talking only about Vulcan itself, his home planet, and then in the next sentence he says simply that "ten thousand have survived." Since he doesn't specify any new noun to follow that "ten thousand," the most grammatically plausible reading of those two sentences is that the "ten thousand" is meant to modify the same collective noun established in the previous sentence, i.e. the inhabitants of the planet Vulcan itself.

By analogy, imagine if I said, "My cat has eaten most of the six dozen cookies I baked. I estimate no more than ten have survived." Would you conclude that I meant there were only ten cookies left in the entire universe? No. It would be obvious that I was referring specifically to the cookies I baked (not that I actually know how to bake cookies; it's just an example). And what Spock said had the exact same sentence structure (at least in the relevant portions).

So if anything, it is actually a more literal interpretation of the canonical dialogue to conclude that he was specifying ten thousand escapees from the planet. In order to read it as "only ten thousand Vulcans in the whole universe," you have to make assumptions beyond the letter of the dialogue. It's reading more into the text than is actually there. Sure, Spock then goes on about "an endangered species," but that's an opinion, so it's easier to discount.

Bottom line, there is absolutely no clear evidence in the film that there are not other Vulcans elsewhere in the universe. So asserting that there are does not contradict canon in any way. The books are not allowed to contradict canon, but they are certainly allowed to interpret it. And an interpretation which includes the existence of other Vulcan populations is completely consistent with the letter of the canonical text.

 

[NSTrekfan]

I'm trying to understand how you can say the books have to acknowledge this while you have said you don't believe the 10,000 surviving Vulcans to be binding since Orci has said, in retrospect, that he didn't count count offworld Vulcans. If Orci puts a line to that effect into the next movie I can see how that would affect the way the Vulcan situation is handled but until then wouldn't the 10,000 survivors be the law of the land?

No, because Orci wasn't retconning anything, just clarifying what he meant to say the first time. Here's what Spock specifically said in the movie:

Nero, who has destroyed my home planet and most of its six billion inhabitants. While the essence of our culture has been saved in the elders who now reside upon the ship, I estimate no more than ten thousand have survived.

Read that very carefully. In the first sentence he's clearly talking only about Vulcan itself, his home planet, and then in the next sentence he says simply that "ten thousand have survived." Since he doesn't specify any new noun to follow that "ten thousand," the most grammatically plausible reading of those two sentences is that the "ten thousand" is meant to modify the same collective noun established in the previous sentence, i.e. the inhabitants of the planet Vulcan itself.

By analogy, imagine if I said, "My cat has eaten most of the six dozen cookies I baked. I estimate no more than ten have survived." Would you conclude that I meant there were only ten cookies left in the entire universe? No. It would be obvious that I was referring specifically to the cookies I baked (not that I actually know how to bake cookies; it's just an example). And what Spock said had the exact same sentence structure (at least in the relevant portions).

So if anything, it is actually a more literal interpretation of the canonical dialogue to conclude that he was specifying ten thousand escapees from the planet. In order to read it as "only ten thousand Vulcans in the whole universe," you have to make assumptions beyond the letter of the dialogue. It's reading more into the text than is actually there. Sure, Spock then goes on about "an endangered species," but that's an opinion, so it's easier to discount.

Bottom line, there is absolutely no clear evidence in the film that there are not other Vulcans elsewhere in the universe. So asserting that there are does not contradict canon in any way. The books are not allowed to contradict canon, but they are certainly allowed to interpret it. And an interpretation which includes the existence of other Vulcan populations is completely consistent with the letter of the canonical text.

However, you ignored the next part of Spock's dialog:

"I am now a member of an endangered species."

He clearly is linking the survival of 10,000 Vulcans to his status as a member of an endangered species. Would he be thinking that if there were Vulcan colonies with millions of Vulcans on them? How few Vulcans do you need for the species to be viable? Or are we to take the part you quoted as factual while being free to write off the very next sentence as being the result of Spock not being rational?

Are you suggesting that the Enterprise has 10,000 survivors onboard? We had no indication of any other ships around Vulcan. No ships escaping the planet. It seems to me that Spock is taking the off planet Vulcans into account unless the Enterprise managed to beam up 10,000 Vulcans in just a few minutes under the same sort of conditions that led to the death of Amanda.

He certanly seems to be under the impression that the Vulcan race is endangered when he meets his older self. Spock Prime doesn't explain that Spock forgot about the Vulcan colonies. He simply says that he has located a planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony. If a suitable planet was so available wouldn't it make sense for the Vulcans to have colonized it already? Perhaps the planet Spock located is way out in the galactic boones.

Found the transcript on Trek Movie. Sounds to me like Orci was changing his mind when the 10,000 Vulcans came up:

BobOrci: Recall that in this new Universe, Romulus is still out there, as Captain Pike indicates. As for Vulcan, Spock, in his Captain’s Log, estimates that there are approximately 10,000 survivors.
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!

Sounds like he had it pointed out to him and changed his mind at that moment. The chat was held 10 days AFTER the movie opend. There's no clarification, that's a flip flop/retcon.

 

[JD]

I just watched the actual scene on my Digital Copy and I really think the dialogue is vague enough that it can be interpreted either way with no real problems. I tend to go for the 10,000 escapees from Vulcan myself.

 

[F. King Daniel]

SPOCK: While the essence of our culture has been saved in thr elders who now reside upon this ship, I estimate no more than ten thousand have survived. I am now a member of an endangered species.

...

SPOCK PRIME: There are so few Vulcans left, we cannot afford to ignore each other.

SPOCK: In the face of extinction, it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race.


Whether it's retconning Vulcan colonies into nonexistence or not, to ignore STXI in post-STXI novels would be an insult. This isn't dropping a few lines for the sake of overall consistency, this is rewriting Spock's story arc.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Hopefully, a Trek universe forever changed. Stories about surviving Romulans who actually face a struggle, instead of just catching a shuttle to Romii, replicating all their old stuff and living happily ever after with 20 billion other bowlcuts.

I still don't understand how, in order to be affecting, the destruction of the planet Romulus can't leave very substantial numbers of Romulans alive on worlds other than their homeworld. Non-plausibility of Romulan conquest not being accompanied by Romulan settlement--as explicitly described in the novelverse--aside, the destruction of he heartland of any major power on 21st century Earth that left newer acquisitions untouched would still have huge effects. Yes, there'd be plenty of United States left if the Eastern Seaboard was razed by the defense platforms, but the remaining Americans would be left reeling (as would the rest of the world).

There's still plenty of space for struggle in that environment; more space, I'd say, since there's still a point to it all from the Romulan perspective. "If nothing's left, what's the point? May as well reunify with the Vulcans."

Anyhow. Let's work from the assumption that there are very large but astrographically and culturally separated Romulan populations off of Romulus, alongside populations of various subject and allied species. (The Kevratans were conquered, the Elohsians of The Romulan Stratagem joined.) What next?

How about that Klingon takeover from the alternate future of "All Good Things"? That would be amazing.

The destruction of Romulus might well create enough chaos for the Klingons to exploit, but for that to happen you'd also need the Typhon Pact to fall apart or not intervene in the conquest of its largest member-state.

Same thing for the post-STXI Vulcans. If there are billions more Vulcans out there, the end scene where the two Spocks meet and discuss the future is rendered moot. It cheapens the events of the movie.

You've made a convincing argument in favour of Vulcan culture being pretty concentrated on the Vulcan homeworld, but the argument can't be extended to the Romulans IMHO given the documented size of their empire in TV and the documented colonization of non-Romulan worlds by Romulans in the novelverse.

Otherwise you might as well write a post-Destiny novel where you explain that none of those worlds were really destroyed - the Borg just orbited them for awhile and Picard, caught up in the moment, assumed they all would be.

Of course they were destroyed since they were explicitly described as destroyed, and they were destroyed with exceptionally high death tolls, too: only a few ships escaped Barolia, Choudhury and Wolf thought of Ramatis III as a tomb for a civilization of almost a billion people, Picard was impressed with the efficiency of a program that evacuated more than a million people from a Deneva that was home to a couple of billions, and so on.

In the case of Vulcan, you've made fairly convincing arguments that Vulcan civilization wasn't very expansionistic and that there weren't many Vulcan colonies of settlement. I'm inclined to agree with Christopher that the figure of ten thousand refers to evacuees from Vulcan as opposed to the total number of survivor, but a Vulcan survivor population totalling in the low millions is plausible to me.

Maybe Sigma Draconis V, mentioned in Cast No Shadows among other places as a new Vulcan colony, was the one selected? Sigma Draconis and 40 Eridani are in the same neighbourhood, and are even broadly similar from the perspective of stellar class and age and whatnot.

Those argument don't hold for the Romulans. Let's exclude the novelverse documentation of multiple populous colonies for a moment. For centuries the Romulans have been aggressively expanding across the galaxy, as they believe it their inherent rght. Why, if their territory extends dozens of light years from their homeworld and presumably includes many environments that are attractive destinations for settlement (environmentally, economically, et cetera), would there not be substantial numbers of Romulans living permanently off their homeworld?

Romulan civilization--starfaring, expansionistic--has made the Romulans as relatively immune to local catastrophes. Humans enjoy the same luxury, too. In an exchange in Before Dishonor between Leybenzon and Kadohata, the Cestus III-born Kadohata points out to Leybenzon that even a Borg supercube destruction of Earth wouldn't doom the human race since there were far too many humans living offworld for the species to be done in by that. (She shouldn't have had to make that point to Leybenzon, he Worf's fellow native of Galt, but that need was one of Leybenzon's many flaws.) The Romulans are in a similar position; if they didn't, you'd need a pretty compelling explanation as to why not.

I've already said the Romulans have much more "wiggle room" to survive in greater numbers without blantantly contradicting the movie as in the case of Vulcans. In fact, I liked the post-Romulus direction of The Needs of the Many, which told of the Romulans dissaray and even hinted at a few more Narada-like upgraded Romulan ships being spotted in Romulan space.

But I've always held the belief (stemming from Duane's Rihannsu novels and MJF's Crossover) that the Romulans held subjugated planets with small garrisons, ruling by fear, or held small outposts on desolete worlds. All manned by soldiers who longed for transfer back to the Heartworlds.

 

[Bellerophon26]

Well, I am glad that Christopher is patient enough to come up with thought-out arguments every time there is a discussion about the meaning of certain dialogues from STXI. And that's why it is fun to read. Even though these discussions get a bit repetetive sometimes :-)

Oh and BTW, I tend to agree with Christopher's and Sci's interpretation of the dialogue.

 

[Christopher]

I just watched the actual scene on my Digital Copy and I really think the dialogue is vague enough that it can be interpreted either way with no real problems.

Yes, of course it can. It can be interpreted either way, which is exactly why there's confusion about it. I'm not saying either interpretation can be definitively ruled out, just that it seems far more probable that they do have colonies. As I said, given their firsthand experience with near-extinction, it's logical that they'd choose to colonize other worlds to ensure their species' survival. True, it's hypothetically possible that they have some irrational societal hangup that prevents that, just as they have an irrational societal hangup about admitting the existence of pon farr even if it kills them. But there's no evidence to support that interpretation, and thus no reason to rule out the more likely interpretation that they do have colonies.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I've already said the Romulans have much more "wiggle room" to survive in greater numbers without blantantly contradicting the movie as in the case of Vulcans. In fact, I liked the post-Romulus direction of The Needs of the Many, which told of the Romulans dissaray and even hinted at a few more Narada-like upgraded Romulan ships being spotted in Romulan space.

Both the Borg and the Romulans feature green running lights, so clearly their technologies are compatible.

But I've always held the belief (stemming from Duane's Rihannsu novels and MJF's Crossover) that the Romulans held subjugated planets with small garrisons, ruling by fear, or held small outposts on desolete worlds. All manned by soldiers who longed for transfer back to the Heartworlds.

I think that there was a shift between the emergent but abortive novelverse of the 1980s and the current one. In Duane's Rihannsu books of the 1980s, the Romulans became a starfaring people only after being contacted by the Federation and in the generation after the end of the Romulan War created two dozen colonies at great expense in the relatively small amount of space available to them, some of these colonies--she explicitly mentions Hellguard--being failures. The Romulans were considerably smaller than both the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and Romulus' relatively few successful colonies were younger and smaller than those of Earth.

After TNG, there seems to have been a change, as the RSE was made a power comparable to the Klingons and Federation in size and development. Duane's Rihannsu books of the 2000s reflect this shift, with mention made of first-generation colonies and second-generation "overspill" colonies and various other conquered and client planets, implying a much larger RSE than in the first iteration. The world of Artaleirh hosts multiple large cities, these in turn able to support capital-intensive industrial works like the system's dilithium refineries, for instance, and the outermost colonies have enough population and wealth to create massive warp-driven generation starships. With the new Romulan War novels, it seems that at the time of the Romulan War, the RSE was comparable in size to the entire Coalition of Planets, implying a greater offworld presence. By the 24th century, it seems that continued growth has created Romulan populations outside the Hearthworlds large enough to support secessionist polities like the Imperial Romulan State--I can't see Donatra wanting to try to carve half the RSE off if the region's population was composed largely of subject species.

Does this make sense?

 

[NSTrekfan]

Let's assume that there are surviving Vulcan colonies. In his meeting with Spock Prime Spock says "In the face of extinction it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race."

He still believes that the Vucans face extinction, showing he still believes the 10,000 number mentioned earlier. If we assume that the colonies only have 1,000,000 Vulcans living on them, a small population still, then Spock is ignoring the exisstence of 99% of the surviving Vulcans. He's still in denial.

Givin that Spock is ignoring the reality of the situation, that calls his mental state into question. Is that the sort of person that should be second in command of a starship that can render a planet lifeless?

 

[Sci]

Let's assume that there are surviving Vulcan colonies. In his meeting with Spock Prime Spock says "In the face of extinction it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race."

He still believes that the Vucans face extinction, showing he still believes the 10,000 number mentioned earlier.

No, it shows he still believes the Vulcan people face potential extinction. The Vulcan people might have millions of survivors yet still be considered to be facing the long-term possibility of extinction.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Especially as they procreate only once every seven years.

 

[NSTrekfan]

If a population in the millions still leaves the species facing extinction then they had big problems way before Nero showed up.

And it has never been stated that Vulcans can ONLY mate at the time of Pon Farr, just that they MUST at that time.

 

[Sci]

If a population in the millions still leaves the species facing extinction then they had big problems way before Nero showed up.

In a galaxy where they're competing for space against races like the Klingons and Romulans, and God knows however many other threats that could wipe out a planet, where most colony worlds do not appear to be self-sustaining, and where they only reproduce once every seven years?

Yes, every single species that does not band together, spread out to the stars, and, frankly, join with other species in unions and alliances, is facing an existential threat. Nathan Samuels said as much in ENT's "Demons" -- that Earth's survival depended on forming alliances with other races. And that was with a population in the billions.

And it has never been stated that Vulcans can ONLY mate at the time of Pon Farr, just that they MUST at that time.

Mating habits are not the issue; reproductive habits are. There's no evidence that Vulcans reproduce outside of pon farr -- indeed, the very public nature of a pregnancy would seem to make it something that might lead Vulcans to be reluctant to reproduce out of the cycle, since everyone who knows you would therefore know you had mated without biological compulsion.

 

[NSTrekfan]

Spock didn't seem to have any problem finding a planet on where "I've already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony." Note the use of establish i.e. - not join an existing colony. This must be shortly after the return of the Enterprise because it's before we see Kirk get promoted and his face is still scarred. A matter of a week, more like a very few days. Yet in that time Spock has located aplanet already. It's not like he'd be establishing a colony out on the Klingon border. If they're in that much danger they'd better spend 90% of their GDP on defense. Or they should spread the Vulcans across the Fedeartion, not getting too may in one location. Take egg and sperm samples and repopulate the race without them having to get together. Hide the Vulcans away so nobody can hurt them again. </snark>


I was under the opinion that Vulcan had already formed an alliance with other races. I could have sworn it was called The Federation. Fat lot of good it did them though.

I have not seen anything to suggest that Vulcans would be unwilling to mate outside of Pon Farr. They only thing we know is that every seven years they must. Nothing says that the rest of the time they can't. You're not suggesting that Vulcans would be embarrased by a pregnancy, are you? They are known as private people. It would appear that they would not think to question the actions of someone in their private affairs.

 

[Sci]

Spock didn't seem to have any problem finding a planet on where "I've already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony." Note the use of establish i.e. - not join an existing colony.

Yes. And if most of the State of New York were destroyed, you wouldn't be able to fit the survivors onto Long Island. That they can't fit all the surviving Vulcans into existing Vulcan colonies does not mean there are no Vulcan colonies.

s. Yet in that time Spock has located aplanet already. It's not like he'd be establishing a colony out on the Klingon border.

Which is why I said "long-term," not "short-term." No one claimed it's an immediate crisis; frankly, Vulcans, like the Andorians, will probably be facing the long-term potential for extinction for however many generations it takes to return to the pre-Narada population level.

If they're in that much danger they'd better spend 90% of their GDP on defense.

We have no idea what percentage of the Federation's GDP is spent on defense, but it may well be quite significant, what with it facing an expansionist Klingon and Romulan Empires.

Or they should spread the Vulcans across the Fedeartion, not getting too may in one location.

Then they'd face the prospect of cultural extinction. As ever, a balance has to be found between integration and maintaining cultural identity.

I was under the opinion that Vulcan had already formed an alliance with other races. I could have sworn it was called The Federation.

Yes. I did not say that forming unions with other species is sufficient for a species to be safe, I said it's necessary. You understand the difference between a sufficient and necessary condition, right?

I have not seen anything to suggest that Vulcans would be unwilling to mate outside of Pon Farr.

Their absolute shame and refusal to even acknowledge that pon farr exists isn't a pretty good indication that they look down on the sexual act?

You're not suggesting that Vulcans would be embarrased by a pregnancy, are you?

Yes, I am. Vulcans are deeply hypocritical about sexuality, very Victorian in their shame over matters of biology.

 

[F. King Daniel]

This isn't about ignoring a couple of lines in 700+ hours of Trek in order to make it all vaguely fit together (as has to be done with Spock's speech in "Balance of Terror", or a trillion tidbits of Voyager), this is about changing the ending of the 2 hours that constitute the entirety of nuTrek. Changing the end of the one story that exists.

That one story says Spock's people are in immediate danger of extinction. That's why he was leaving Starfleet to help rebuild his race as part of the new Vulcan colony. The only reason he doesn't is because his older self takes his place. If there were planets full of Vulcans elsewhere, and his people's culture lived on there, this scene is rendered meaningless. Spock's leaving and being advised not to by his older self is rendered a complete waste of time.

 

[Sci]

That one story says Spock's people are in immediate danger of extinction.

No, it doesn't, it says they're in danger of execution.

Why would Spock succumb the Human tendency to ignore long-term threats and only respond to short-term ones?

If there were planets full of Vulcans elsewhere, and his people's culture lived on there, this scene is rendered meaningless.

1. No, it's not. His species can still be facing potential extinction, simply by virtue of having lost 99.9% of all of its members, even if there are still Vulcan worlds out there.

2. Most Star Trek colonies are small and not self-sustaining colonies on planets that are mostly undeveloped and unindustrialized. What makes you think a Vulcan colony would be any different?