Starfleet Security after Oh/Narissa revelation

Someone needs to write the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy of the whole intelligence fiasco. It’ll win the Nobel Zee-Magnees Prize that year.

 

I don't think anyone knows that Oh was behind the Mars attack. We only know because the show told us.

 

I mean, the fact that it was Nedar/Oh who masterminded the Mars attack is pretty obvious if the characters think about the facts they already have on hand.

Picard and company pieced together that the Zhat Vash was behind the attack on Mars in "Broken Pieces," and I seem to recall that they deduced Commodore Oh was probably a Zhat Vash/Tal Shiar mole when Rios indicated the order to murder Beautiful Flower and Jana had come from Oh. Add to that the simple fact that Oh was the one who transferred the Admonition to Jurati and gave her the bio-tracking device which the La Sirena crew observed a Romulan scout ship using to track them? They already knew even before Nedar revealed herself to Captain Riker in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part II" that Oh was Zhat Vash.

And since Oh was a Starfleet commodore who had been infiltrating Starfleet for decades, and since they knew she was Zhat Vash, and since they knew the attack on Mars came from the Zhat Vash? Yeah, they probably inferred that Oh was either the mastermind or a key planner in the attack on Mars even if they didn't have direct evidence of her involvement.

 

The glaring backstory hole in all this is that the Tal Shiar -- and, by implication, the Zhat Vhash -- must have known about Data for at least a couple of decades through the TNG series and movies, and likely some time before that, given the duration of Data's service prior to TNG season 1.

There would, inevitably, have been some degree of fleet and public notoriety attached to a synthetic life form being acknowledged to have sentient / sapient status by the Federation and to then progress through Starfleet to the point of reaching Lieutenant Commander and Second Officer of the flagship. If the Romulans had any intelligence service worth more than a penny they would have picked up on this.

So how come the murderous fundamentalist fanatics made NO effort to kidnap or assassinate Data in all that time...?

 

Probably a secret Tal'Shiar fleet built on the down low over time.

We have seen them do it before.

 

Data was a singular lifeform whose creator was dead and was (possibly from their POV ) closer to robot then true synthetic life.

 

Like 6000 hulls on a tanker*, how many secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin-secret-organizations-withinin are needed?

* ask Philip J Fry

 

Sorry, nice thought but I just don’t buy that. He clearly fits the “synthetic life” of the Admonition. It’s just too convenient for Chabon and Co that the Zhat Vhash somehow managed to “overlook” a glaringly prominent example of a sapient synthetic life for twenty to thirty years and only then went homicidally nuts.

It’s still a big plot hole that they were obviously unwilling to address. It would have required either convoluted retconning or at least some degree of exposition to explain why Data was left completely unmolested by the Zhat Vhash.

 

It's called the Neutral Zone. The Romulans isolated themselves for decades and only start becoming more active at the start of the TNG. Even with all their resources the Zhat Vhash would have taken years if not decades to take out Data. By then he was already dead and Lore was disassembled.

 

Also they had B4...for...how long? Studying him may have led them astray as to how capable Data was.

 

I see little problem with the Zhat Vash achieving little.

After all, they are just a bunch of nutcases operating within the well-organized and oppressive Star Empire. For all we know, they were powerless to do anything much until the Star Empire ceased to be.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Tal Shiar having a secret fleet would be consistent with what he had seen of them.

Yup. Pretty consistent with secret societies and their supposed power within conspiracy theories across human history. Just in Star Trek they were allowed to act.

 

They were probably the first ones off Romulus when the supernova was discovered.

 

I mean, obviously the real reason is that the Zhat Vash weren't created before PIC, but I think there are a number of plausible in-universe justifications.

First and most obviously, it is actually exceedingly difficult to infiltrate the flagship of a foreign power's space force, particularly when that ship is often deployed far away from your territory or off in unexplored space.

Secondly, I think it's pretty clear that Nedar's infiltration of Starfleet under the "Oh" alias was likely at least in part a reaction to Data's presence, and likely part of a long-term plan to eventually get him killed.

Third -- and this is just spitballing here, but -- what if several of the accidents or crisis the Enterprise encountered during TNG that they'd thought were from something else, were at least in part the result of Zhat Vash manipulation? What if, for instance, the Zhat Vash managed to manipulate the ship into entering that temporal loops in "Cause and Effect," or to hit that quantum filament in "Disaster?" Maybe it was the Zhat Vash who got those alien lifeforms to colonize the quantum singularity aboard the Romulan warbird so that the Enterprise would be destroyed trying to help it in "Timescape." Maybe a Zhat Vash assassination attempt was why Data lost his memory and wandered into that prewarp village in "Thine Own Self." Etc.

Maybe they felt that assassinating Data would be too risky, given his high public profile and the no-doubt large-scale efforts being undertaken by the Daystrom Institute to re-create a Soong-type positronic brain. Maybe they felt that such a high-profile situation necessitated a political as well as special-ops-type response, and then Data went and died on them before they could act.

Maybe the Zhat Vash were not in a position to act on their own wishes as a result of the Romulan political situation before the supernova.

Finally -- maybe the Zhat Vash felt that Data would be unable to reproduce, since no one had yet figured out how to re-create a Soong-type positronic brain, and therefore they were willing to spy on him rather than destroy him until such time as they felt it likely he would be able to build a viable "son" or "daughter."

Ah, fair point. Chabon has said on Instagram that his intention was that Maddux had operated from Freecloud when he sent them off, but maybe I conflated that with building them.

Well there you have it then! The Feds know about Nedar.

Good question. I think it's highly probable that those ships were Tal Shiar rather than Free State per se. They were relatively small ships -- they looked like they only had a couple of decks. And we already know from DS9's "The Die is Cast" that the Tal Shiar has a history of building its own fleets. Add to this the fact that the Tal Shiar under the Star Empire was able to commandeer Imperial Fleet vessels for its own use but was unable to unilaterally commandeer the Artifact until they could claim they were acting against Hugh's "hostility" in PIC, and the Free State's willingness at all to allow Federation scientists to study Borg technology, and I think it's improbable the fleet in "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part II" was taking its orders from the Free State.

 

In "The Die is Cast", the Tal'Shiar controlled ships identical to regular Romulan behemoths; even though we saw no regular naval-rank CO who'd bow to the superior orders of Colonel Lovok, the ships otherwise might have been regular Navy.

In PIC, The ZV have very small ships at their beck and call. Is that the new normal for the Romulan Navy, impoverished by the supernova - or are the midget ships standard fare for the spy organization, in bountiful stock for decades already, and in good condition and free for use after all that time because they stood out the supernova incident and never engaged in evacuation, crowd control or the warlord fights?

I could see the standoff as the Trek equivalent of the Secret Society gangsters arriving in black limos and pulling out 218 automatic pistols, while the heroes arrive in 47 APCs and point assault rifles and LMGs at them. No Free States needed to be consulted in the matter of possessing and operating the 218 automatic pistols, while official Starfleet channels provided the military-standard response.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yep, that seems plausible.

I also sort of got the impression that after Picard’s frantic attempts to send updated situation reports from inside Soong’s place, Starfleet had rather upped the ante and had decided to throw a whole lot more at their response than just the “squadron” of ships that Fleet Adm. Clancy had initially dispatched to DS12.

I also suspect that Clancy was rather more than a little pissed with Oh by this point and wasn’t above taking the opportunity to make a loud-and-clear “statement” to that effect! To stretch your analogy slightly, the initial response might have been the equivalent of a dozen armed Humvees, or maybe half a dozen APCs — but this got heavily upgraded to several squadrons of main battle tanks! Not just a clear effort to help Picard but also Clancy giving Oh the middle finger with both hands...!

 

Indeed, it's worth remembering that even in spite of her anger at Picard for shitting on Starfleet in public, she still took his concerns seriously enough to have the Director of Starfleet Security investigate them. So once she got word about everything Picard had uncovered, I think it's clear that Fleet Admiral Clancy was starting to suspect "Commodore Oh."

Makes you wonder what went down at Starfleet Headquarters before Nedar got off of Earth...

 

Yep. Riker appearing as the Starfleet “deus ex machina” was an inevitable bit of fan service (we all knew it was coming the moment he mentioned he was still on “active reserve”) but in-universe, Will Riker is still a seriously experienced commanding officer and, one suspects, likely regarded as a “safe pair of hands” for such a situation — he has inescapable links to Picard, and it would not be lost on Oh that Clancy had appointed Riker to lead the fleet.

I still think they missed a trick by not making Riker a Commodore or two-pip Rear Admiral for this role, instead of keeping him at Captain. I can hear him telling Picard that he would have been happy to have been re-activated at Captain but Clancy made a point of asking him to take command of the response. Whatever; it is what it is.

I’d also love to know what went down at SFHQ, although in truth, I suspect that Oh had already gotten herself off Earth and en-route for a planned rendezvous with Narissa and her ships from the Artefact. Let’s face it, Oh would be a pretty piss-poor intelligence operative if she wasn’t able to pick up the early whispers that problems might be heading her way — and she was presumably fanatical enough that she wanted to be in at the death when it came to obliterating the Synths.

That being the case, I imagine she might well have burned her bridges behind her when she left Starfleet, anticipating a detailed forensic examination of her entire career and everything and anything she might have been involved with.