UNTO THE QUADRANT SHALL COME A GREAT DISASTER: 2387

Not in the novelverse, where the Primeverse characters live on. And if the filmmakers didn't want it, they'd have put a stop to it.

 

Except that one of those characters is Spock Prime. If he thought that Nero's actions had unmade his home timeline, then he'd surely be attempting to undo them, and thereby erase the destruction of Vulcan in the process. And if anyone could do that, he could, having done it a few times before. The fact that Spock Prime is not attempting to undo Nero's actions demonstrates that he does not consider them to be a threat to his timeline's existence. Thus, he must have reason to conclude that the new timeline coexists safely with his own. And Spock probably has more experience with temporal physics than anyone else in the 24th century, so his judgment on the matter can be considered reliable.

Well, reportedly they did try to put a stop to the publication of Primeverse fiction, but CBS refused. Although it wasn't done for in-universe temporal-physics reasons, of course; it was because they felt having two versions of Trek being published simultaneously would confuse audiences and interfere with their brand recognition.

 

And yet at the same time we have Nero, who had 25 years to delve into temporal physics (he calculated exactly when and where Old Spock would appear, for example), and who wanted to save his home planet by changing the timeline. Old Spock simply didn't do anything because he didn't have the means to - no Jellyfish, no red matter, and no 25 years to think about it - (and because the writers turned him into a passive bystander anyways, who was ready to jeopardize Earth's existence because of his faith in Kirk's and Spock's friendship. Senile, perhaps?).

 

No. The prime timeline will exist in parallel with the Abrams timeline, so both continuities will exist following the supernova and the subsequent disappearance of Spock and Nero into the past.

I would guess something will come out of it. The destruction of an interstellar empire's home planet is a significant event. Given the tumult after the turnover of the Romulan government caused by Shonzon's actions, it's likely there will be a significant political fallout depicted in the novels.

I've always had a problem with this line of thought. The Romulans control a vast interstellar empire. Why do people assume that the destruction of their capital means the empire will collapse and Romulan civilization will end? Yes, I know Nero identified himself as "the last survivor of the Romulan Empire," but he was a delusional madman who overestimated his importance in the universe.

The loss of Romulus will no doubt be a crippling blow, but it won't be the end of the Romulan civilization.

By altering the past, Spock created a new temporal events sequence separate and distinct from the prime universe. If he traveled into the future from 2258 of the Abrams timeline, it would be the future of that reality in which he would find himself, not the future of the prime universe.

Agreed. The beauty of these novels is that the characters can be kept alive long after the actors have died.

I think you're overstating your case. Spock wasn't willing to sacrifice Earth so much as he was willing to save the rest of the quadrant by helping Kirk and Spock recognize the potential that their friendship could have for themselves and for the Federation. How many times did we see Kirk and Spock stave off disaster in the prime timeline? Spock wasn't senile because he wanted the inhabitants of the Abrams universe to have the same chance. He was being rational.

--Sran

 

Incorrect. What he was trying to do was to prevent the same thing from happening to the Romulus of this reality when 2387 rolled around again -- and, more fundamentally, to get revenge on the only available targets.

You talk about what you believe the writers did to Spock, but we know for a fact, from their statements in countless interviews, that the writers' intent is that the new timeline and the old timeline coexist, that Spock Prime knows this, and that he therefore recognizes there's no threat to his timeline and his responsibility is to take care of the Vulcans in the new timeline. So you can't have it both ways -- if you're going to make assertions about what the writers' intent was, you can't ignore what they've repeatedly said their intent was.

 

Are the tie-in comics considered canonical?

But yes. Some explanation as to how a star can go so ridiculously, catastrophically supernova without any suspecting would be nice. (I think that the proto-Romulans, stressed as they were, would have had the good sense to try for a different planet if they found out that Romulus and Remus adjoined a star that was at risk of going up anytime)

We really have no idea what, exactly, happened after Romulus was annihilated and Spock saved the remainder of the universe. All that we know is that Nero's ship and the Jellyfish were close enough to be sucked into the new timeline.

I'm strongly inclined to think that Romulan civilization has survived the destruction of the homeworld (and, perhaps, even some of the older and closer colonies). The novels particularly have established that Romulan interstellar civilization is older than human interstellar civilization, that Romulus has numerous colonies and protectorates, and that at the time of the Romulan War the Romulan sphere of influence was substantially larger and more developed than a human sphere of influence that stretched as far as Deneva. There's less reason to think that Romulan civilization will be destroyed by the loss of Romulus than there is to think that if (say) the Borg supercube had destroyed Earth human civilization would become defunct.

 

No. Indeed, the first several Abramsverse comics were contradicted by Into Darkness, in that they depicted a number of Enterprise personnel dying whereas STID said that Kirk hadn't yet lost a single member of his crew.

 

Expressing an opinion doesn't mean I expect things to go the way I wish. It simply means I'm expressing an opinion.

Which is my right.

 

I don't.

 

While we know that the Romulan state is more than Romulus, there does seem to be a pretty strong psychological identification of the homeworld with the entire empire. I'm sure part of this is from the whole "ROMAN EMPIRE IN SPAAAACE" element, but the impact of losing the homeworld would, most likely be extremely traumatic for the Romulans in a way that say the secession of Andor wasn't for the Federation.

 

That was debunked.

 

^Really? I hadn't heard that. Source/details?

 

Not so much an article as when ever this comes up in discussion someone always points out that it was debunked.

 

Sure. It will certainly be devastating to Romulan civilization in a way that the aforementioned hypothetical destruction of Earth would have been to the Federation if Before Dishonor went differently. The RSE is a much more centralized and homogeneous entity than a Federation composed of multiple freely-cooperating civilizations. It just won't be a civilization-ending thing, IMHO.

 

Hopefully the current praetor is off planet when it happens.

 

A vacation on DS9, perhaps?

 

Countdown had someone other than Gel Kaemenor in charge by 2387. Though I suppose one doesn't need to have that element. That said, Nero still has to get the sceptre somehow, right?

 

It was only in Countdown that the teral'n was identified as a praetorian sigil. As far as screen canon has established, it's just a fancy weapon. So the books wouldn't be required to interpret its origins the same way the comics did.

 

A very short Trekmovie.com tweet back when the story came out, saying it was total BS.

 

Part of the endurance of the Romulan state will depend one what exactly binds the empire together. In the novels it did not take much post Nemesis for the Empire to split into two political entities. The loss of Romulus and any other core worlds might be enough for it all to fall apart.

If the Empire is maintained with terror and fear, then the loss of the core of that fear would change the equation. remember, unlike the Federation, the bulk of Romulan space would have to be occupied by subject worlds (I've always had a problem with the idea that monocultural/ethnic empires could ever match the size and power of the multicultural Federation). Those subject worlds might take the opportunity to break free of the rump RSE….much as the occupied/subject states of the former Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact used Russia's growing weakness as an opportunity to break free.

I would also imagine that it depends on how much of the Imperial Fleet survived.