The Great Romulan Evacuation

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by Mars, Aug 25, 2012.

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  1. Romulus Prime

    Romulus Prime Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    It's also an alternate reality with certain changes/differences to it on a minor level. In other alternate realities, there are changes/differences which are on a major scale as well. The possibility of the NuTrek universe having both minor AND major changes/differences which alter (or even accelerate) events in their future is my point.

    Budget
    Writers
    Producer
    Film technology -

    - wait, are we talking about WTF may or may not happen in the future of an alternate fake universe, or are we talking about real life? I was under the impression we were talking about events which may or may not happen in a possible future in a movie, NOT why things happened in the movie due to real life.

    :vulcan:
     
  2. UFO

    UFO Captain Captain

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    I'm afraid I'm none the wiser as to the nature of your concern.
     
  3. Mars

    Mars Commander Red Shirt

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    If it was the star Romulus orbited, then the Romulans would have a problem if Nero imploded it, instead of getting 130 more years of light from it and then getting their planet destroyed they would have to evacuate their planet immediately before it freezes! I think even if the light would take some time to deliver the news that a star imploded in Romulan space, news would travel at the speed of subspace radio, not that of light, as the Romulans would talk and spread the news themselves. Too many people would be witnesses for this event for it to be stamped top secret, and what good is top secret if it is not shared with the military so they could do something about it? The first thing about Nero they'd learn is there is somebody out there imploding stars. I don't think Nero would do this either, he wouldn't take the chance, he wants his revenge first and then save Romulus second, he never got to do this second part and the last of the red matter went into imploding his own ship into a black hole.

    Though honestly if the Nerada was a black hole, it would make a very tiny one, about the size of an atom, and its gravitational field would not increase and threaten to suck the Enterprise in, and it would get no where near the event horizon before being torn apart by tidal forces if it strayed too close. Again apparently warp drives lose their effectiveness in intense gravitational fields, as a starship that could exceed the speed of light should easily be able to escape a black hole.
     
  4. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Umm, good point. :o

    Yet Spock doing the same to an already exploding star might not be such a bad idea. There'd be days to evacuate a freezing planet, only seconds to evacuate one being consumed and disintegrated by a fiery blast.

    But I definitely prefer the idea of this being a neighboring star to it being the immediate "homestar". Perhaps it's Romii blowing up? :vulcan:

    And we know how fast such news do travel, and what overall effect they have: shutting down the naughty star would take place more or less simultaneously with the massacre of the Klingon fleet (and might even be the very same act!), and Starfleet didn't exactly go public with that piece of intel.

    How could they learn this? A star implodes - the next assumption is not that somebody imploded it! These people don't even seem to know about red matter yet, after all; making of black holes is magic to them.

    But his odds of surviving revenge are right about zero. Fine, go kill Vulcan first and then save Romulus. But trying to take down Earth, too, when your only advantage is that Starfleet was slow to react to the first deed... Nero might as well not be interested in saving Romulus at all.

    Which is a valid interpretation of the movie, certainly. But it would also be consistent to assume he killed the threatening star before launching on his mission of destruction.

    The same is true of Vulcan becoming a black hole. Yet apparently red matter has this property of creating a hole with more pull than one would assume from the available mass alone. Which isn't such a surprise, really, if these holes reach across time itself and allow the holes to pull in matter from other realms!

    On the other hand, we saw Voyager fly out of a black hole (albeit one with an exotic "shell" around it) in "Parallax" like any good FTL-capable starship should. But again we have consistency here: gravitic pull allows for warp but makes it slow, and a lot of gravitic pull defeats warp altogether, but in a manner completely different from how a sublight spacecraft would be overcome by a black hole.

    There's a lot of unintentional consistency in this movie, especially if one starts piling it up on a rather harmless basic assumption (Nero saved Romulus) that itself happens to go against the most basic intentions of the writers. :devil:

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  5. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Spock said the supernova "threatened to destroy the galaxy." It was way bigger than Romulus and Remus, they were just the first major worlds to be obliterated. Remember that even after the destruction of the Romulan core worlds, Spock told Kirk "I had little time" - which makes no sense if the Romulan system was the extent of the destruction.

    Here's what Memory Beta has to say, mostly from the novel The Needs of the Many, set in the early 25th century: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Hobus

     
  6. Mars

    Mars Commander Red Shirt

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    I see they've taken a lot of liberties with supernova explosions here. Generally speaking a supernova leaves behind a pulsar in the center of an expanding wave of matter and radiation.
     
  7. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That would in no way invalidate the idea that Nero preemptively destroyed a star neighboring Romulus, while Spock belatedly destroyed the same star (although now more like a has-been) after it had already engulfed Romulus.

    ...Unless an already extracted droplet of red matter is unstable and will form a black hole anyway, in "little time". Better get it off the ship quickly, then - and preferably in a way that does some good.

    Alternately, red matter could be insufficient after the wavefront had expanded past Romulus, quite regardless of how fast it was going and how far it would reach eventually.

    The big question here is, how does creating a black hole near Romulus do any good against a supernova explosion that had originated either 1 AU away, or perhaps one star system away? This regardless of whether the supernova is of a semi-realistic sort, or utterly fantastic; the same questions of range apply in both cases, as we saw a like droplet create only an invisibly small hole (one that completely failed to suck in a nearby starship, even) when applied inside Vulcan.

    The talk about all this threatening the galaxy can be dismissed as referring to the political repercussions. But only after we figure out what Spock was hoping to achieve in the first place. (Perhaps black holes were an unintended side effect of some other, more relevant anti-supernova function of the stuff?)

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  8. Rhaven

    Rhaven Captain Captain

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    Forgive my naitivity here, but if the sun of Romulus is dying, wouldn't it be noticed well before the need for a solution thought up by Spock was even conceived?
    We're talking about around 140 years then? My understanding of imploding stars is small, but there would have to have been signs that this end was nearing.

    I can see the Romulans expanding out to colonize other worlds well before the end of their home world and it implodes.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Since nobody seemed to believe Spock on Romulus, we are to assume that this particular star exploded in an exotic manner that orthodox science didn't believe in. Happens all the time in disaster movies... Nobody listens to the eccentric genius.

    The fact that nobody agreed with Spock even on Vulcan may have been due to Vulcans being cool with Romulus blowing up; certainly Nero seems to think this was the case and Spock was but a Vulcan in the end.

    Well, implosion is a good way to describe a real-world supernova, but in this discussion the word has been chiefly used to describe the sucking effect of red matter. We don't actually know if the supernova (which was described purely as an explosion in the movie) involved the conventional sort of stagewise-loss-of-fusion-and-resulting-compression-until-next-type-of-fusion-kicks-in or not.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. Mars

    Mars Commander Red Shirt

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    Blame the screenwriters on this one, they said it threatens to destroy the Galaxy because it sounds cool, and let the science guys try to explain it all later. An exploding galaxy is also known as a quasar, quasars are usually the exploding cores of galaxies because too much matter is falling into the central black hole at once and it can't all fit, so we have all that matter grinding against matter as it is pulled into the black hole, that means a significant portion of that matter is converted into energy even before reaching the event horizon, typically 50% of it escapes in another direction besides the black hole, that is the science of it anyway, usually even that doesn't destroy a galaxy.
     
  11. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Theres no polluting the timeline problem. Spock is in a different reality, not the one he's seen the future of. He doesnt know the future. There's no way for him to pollute the timeline. And not to attempt to warn the Romulans would be morally untenable.

    Spock can use his knowledge of various things that are likely to occur or exist, such as the Bajoran wormhole or the likely location of the Doomsday Machine in this time perios, to help the Feds stave off disasters.

    There's no guarantee that either of those things still exist, of course. Spock can't really know just how much this timeline differs from his own, or whether his and Nero's incursions were the only diverenge. maybe there have been billions of divergences. it's a big universe and the changes would not necesarily be obvious but rather very diffuse.

    And thats not even addressing the hilarity of a supernova that sneaks up on everyone rather than being a predictable part of a star's lifecycle, or even more hilairous, a supernova capable of endangering an entire galaxy.
     
  12. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Fair enough. I suppose this new timeline is already screwed up. No sense keeping the future to himself.

    Though one wonders, just how different can he make the galaxy? What kinds of things will/should he say? What kinds of technology does Spock know about that wouldn't otherwise be invented for decades/centuries? Imagine an Alpha Quadrant that is fully prepared for a Borg attack or that can lead a pre-emptive strike against the Dominion.

    The possibilities are quite intriguing.
     
  13. Mars

    Mars Commander Red Shirt

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    Not just technology, but simple knowledge. For instance Spock knows where the Bajoran wormhole is, if not that, then he knows there is a wormhole in the Bajoran system, and a determined search will find it, that will give the 23rd century access to the Gamma Quadrant 100 years early. We know that the Bajoran system is within reach of the 23rd century Federation because in the movie Uhura orders a Cardassian drink at a bar in Iowa.
     
  14. Mars

    Mars Commander Red Shirt

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    If a supernova can do that, there would be no life in this galaxy, because many supernovas would have already exploded before there was anyone to stop them like Spock. If Spock was saving the entire galaxy by stopping this supernova, then I'm afraid there is something wrong with this logic.
     
  15. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Not really, if each supposed example was debunked. It's not a good sign when your list of things that were supposedly already different starts off with the age of a character born after Nero's appearance and an appeal to ignorance.
     
  16. UFO

    UFO Captain Captain

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    According to the majority of the movie his odds of surviving revenge are made to seem almost 100%. It is only with four years of hindsight (and a need to "explain" the Enterprise's victory) that anything approaching an alternative way of looking at things can even be contemplated. It may not seem to make much sense as presented (a problem with the film in general of course), but it is made very clear that had Nero destroyed the Enterprise at Vulcan when he should and could have, he would have easily also destroyed the Earth. Anyway, the important point is that Nero clearly thought he could destroy the Federation so he believed he had the time and abiltiy to figure out how best to save Romulus (even though one line in the movie might suggest he already had).

    We have every reason to be surprised since this aspect isn’t even mentioned but must be inferred! Indeed from what I recall there is no mention of these "red-holes" being able to "… pull in matter from other realms!", whatever a "realm" is (Or did I miss something)? The red matter black hole is pure fantasy and can do whatever the plot requires irrespective of rational foundation. Only by realising that can we avoid being surprised.
     
  17. Romulus Prime

    Romulus Prime Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    They weren't, and if you're referring to Chekov, I'm basically banking on his parents age prior to Nero being different as well since his ends up different than in TOS. Despite what others may claim, Parallels allows for the possibility that the NuTrek universe is different on many levels. It certainly is now since Nero ended up there. But if you feel all that is "appealing to ignorance," then by all means, continue to think that...
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2012
  18. RPJOB

    RPJOB Commander Red Shirt

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    That would be true if the physics of the Trek universe worked like ours does. However, it doesn't (Scalosian water, Warp Drive, One Little Ship, etc, etc.)

    Spock-Prime, as close to a trusted source as we have in that universe said "129 years from now, a star will explode and threaten to destroy the galaxy." He didn'r say part of the galaxy or half the galaxy or this section of the galaxy. Since his primary role in the movie was to bring Nu-Kirk (and us) up to speed we pretty much have to take what he said at face value. He did also tell a lie to Kirk

    "Under no circumstances...can he be made aware of my existence, you must promise me this.

    You're telling me I can't tell you...that I'm following you're own orders, why not? What happens?

    Jim, this is one rule you cannot break."

    Of course, we later got this

    "How'd you persuade him to keep your secret?

    He inferred that, universe ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise.

    You lied?

    - Oh. I... I implied."

    So Spock is capable of lying in this situation but un order to stop Nero we must assume that he told Nu-Kirk the truth.

    In a nutshell, the star exploded, pPock didn't stop it in time (whatever that entailed) and it's likely that a large chunk of at least the area around Hobus was indeed destroyed. For all we know most of the Romulan colonies were taken out as well. Trek does tend to equate a home planet with the entire empire/Federation/etc.
     
  19. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Well, his revenge supposedly consists of destroying planet after planet. He got one, he didn't get another. And the movie provided no mechanism for how he could have gotten more than Vulcan, and plenty of mechanisms for how he could have been defeated (starting with hand-held rifles!). It's like trying to win WWII by bombing Berlin night after night, only not with 5% odds of getting shot down, but with 50% ones. So that already defeats the idea of organizing your calendar on the idea of finishing revenge first...

    ...Unless you don't care one iota about whether you save Romulus or not. Which is possible - but no more or less possible than Nero neutralizing the supernova start first.

    ...From every instance the red matter is used! It never produces what could be described as a black hole with the mass of what had been there before red matter was applied. But it does produce strange long-distance pull in the end, with lots of red matter but little mass involved, and no observable pull in the teaser, with but a drop of red matter and supposedly the mass of the supernova involved. So we could consistently argue that the pull comes from the red matter.

    ...This would mean no pull from the destruction of Vulcan. Of course, our heroes feared there would be pull - but the fear might well have been baseless.

    Can't see the logic there. How would the age of the parents be relevant to when they spawn Chekov? At the very least, there'd be a range of thirty years from start to end of the mother's fertility, discounting 23rd century medical advances.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  20. RPJOB

    RPJOB Commander Red Shirt

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    It would appear that there was another, different Chekov at the academy. This one's parents probably are different people. Orci has said that the universe was trying to heal itself. It apparently didn't want the younger Chekov, the one who had the same parents as in the prime universe, so it picked a different one. This one may even have a brother named Pioter.
     
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