As I was driving to Little Caesar's to pick up a pizza, wings, crazy bread with sauce...and the garlic butter which is really bad for you, but really good...the Mrs. and I were talking about the Trek 09 movie. She thinks that with the destruction of Vulcan will have very strong affects in regards to peace and the Federation. It also sort of dawned on me that without a strong Vulcan presence, this may thrust the Romulans into more of a prominence. I mean think about it this...at least in my thoughts...with both Romulans and Vulcans having somewhat of an equal field so to speak, there's a balance of these two races that share a common ancestry. We know that at one point the Vulcans and Romulans sort of "split" and went their different ways. Without a large Vulcan presence, would there be a much heavier influence towards the Romulan way of life to those in that Vulcan/Romulan ancestry? Does that make any sense? How much of an impact of a lesser Vulcan presence will this have for this generation, or the next generation. I know that Vulcans helped facilitate peace treaties and such, but I still tend to think that most everything will go on as planned in this alternate reality. ?????
Vulcans appear to be the species that humans have the closest ties to. Wiping most of them out will have a huge effect I'd imagine. The existing Vulcans are going to be too busy rebuilding themselves to be working with the humans on many ventures that don't tie into that.
The Vulcans with the most influence in the Federation will still be there. For instance, the ambassador and those working in the embassy in San Francisco. I do wonder if there embassy will be required to reduce in size since they now represent far few people. I bet the Vulcans are grateful now to be a part of the Federation, because they need their help now more than ever.
The Vulcans are one of the founders of the Federation. They are known for their logical minds and high degree of honesty. Maybe they're right balance for Federation business
Perhaps the Federation will display a real sense of humor without those emotionless, smug bastards influencing everything.
Not to me. They barely know each other at this point to the level that Spock was able to pass off a Vulcan Death Grip as being a totally legitimate thing, and they have had so little contact that the very idea Romulans and Vulcans are related is fairly new to the Vulcans (and if widely known, is so as a direct result of a Romulan committing genocide... not the best PR move). I think the absence of Vulcans is going to make Spock's relationship with his Vulcan identity ever lonelier. He was pretty lonely as is in a ship full of humans, but there's probably no all-Vulcan crews like the Intrepid out there, Vulcans are an endangered species and I am sure Spock and the Federation are quite conscious of that. And generally this is a major blow to the Federation it would be difficult to recover from. Not that they're the underdogs, but their galactic situation is likely not as favorable as it was during the original show.
In the back of my mind, I always assumed Vulcans were a positive influence on the Federation and held human tendencies towards stupidity and agression in check. So now the Feds will be more dangerous, perhaps a bit like Farscape's Peacekeepers. Rather than being a moderating influence, the surviving Vulcans might lose their logical equillibrium and become vengeful, making things even worse. if there were going to be more than three Abrams movies, this might be an interesting idea to explore.