Tal Shiar history in novels
- Thread starter Noddy
- Start date
Squint a bit.
Maybe the Tal Shiar was dissolved and then revived.
Or maybe the reference to the Tal Shiar in Assignment: Eternity is only a single-line reference that's not actually important to the story, and you can mentally cross it out and replace it with "Romulan Foreign Intelligence Bureau" or whatever.
Maybe the Tal Shiar was dissolved and then revived.
Or maybe the reference to the Tal Shiar in Assignment: Eternity is only a single-line reference that's not actually important to the story, and you can mentally cross it out and replace it with "Romulan Foreign Intelligence Bureau" or whatever.
Unfortunately, the Enterprise relaunch novels present us with a well-established Tal Shiar as early as the 2150s. I think it's a shame, myself - one thing I dislike in Trek is this situation wherein the same institutions and organizations exist throughout the timeline, fundamentally unchanged. It detracts from the sense of an evolving history which is part of what makes such a franchise compelling in the first place. I liked the idea of the Tal Shiar being a "recent" (2344) creation, even if it's really no different from a pre-existing bureau (something I believe Vulcan's Heart does indeed imply - that this is one of perhaps many "bright new nothing-like-the-old-corrupt-one, honest" agencies that have been spawned over modern Romulan history). That said, the suggestion that they were named for Shiarkiek seems to conflict with what are usually assumed to be the name's origin in Vulcan Tal Shaya.
Maybe both of them are true, and they're (technically) not the same Tal Shiar.
Or that naming it 'Tal Shiar' formed a pretty irresistible double meaning that they simply had to run with.
You don't get opportunities like that dropped into your lap every day.
I'm sure the Tal Shiar leaders have rewritten their history numerous times.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Tal_Shiar
Or that naming it 'Tal Shiar' formed a pretty irresistible double meaning that they simply had to run with.
What is kind of weird is that the Vulcan's Heart version of the Tal Shiar appears to be named after the two Romulans (Tal and Shiarkiek) whom I would LEAST expect such a ruthless organization to ever be named after. Then again, I'm sure that its founders had the best intentions in mind when they formed it...they had no idea what it could mutate into.
Similarly, the Romulan ship used to destroy Coridan in Kobayashi Maru was named after S'Task, who certainly would not have approved.
There's quite a bit of this in the Trek novels, and not just among the Romulans. It was never acknowledged in the book itself, but ch'Harnen in Fallen Gods was proudly commanding the Shran-class Shantherin th'Clane - quite ironic given his hostility to the Federation, since Shran and Therin are cultural heroes precisely due to their involvement in the Federation.
Hardly unprecedented for historical figures to be invoked in the name of causes they would have abhorred.
If you had said that to me in 1980, when Therin of Andor was conceived, I would never have believed it.
Ian McLean as Therin of Andor, 1980 by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
You can go far, even as a redshirt. With a cardboard phaser.
True story: The Tal Shiar business was a late addition to Assignment: Eternity. Originally, the antagonists were a bunch of well-meaning Romulan scientists and dissidents. I had this notion that I was going to write a book with no villains, just three factions of good guys with conflicting agendas, but this just wasn't working dramatically, probably because it was tricky enough generating conflict between Kirk and Seven without keeping the Romulans on the side of the angels, too, so I finally said, "screw it, let's turn these good-guy Romulans into Tal Shiar and add an assassination or two" . . . and, voila, the plot took off from there!
Similar threads
