2150 + 7 Years on TV = When TOS said they'd be an Earth Romulan War?

[Guy Gardener]

Back when the Bee's were ignoring the final year of Voyager to set up the ground work for the Enterprise, could it be that they firmly believed they could propel this show into another movie franchise?

Why else start their story a decade before the founding of the Federation?

Math made the universe.

 

[JNG]

Re: 2150 + 7 Years on TV = When TOS said they'd be an Earth Romulan Wa

Why else start their story a decade before the founding of the Federation?

There were lots of other creative reasons this was chosen, and if they'd been that preoccupied with doing a war, they'd simply have done one. DS9 tried an ongoing war story and its ratings grew continually worse, so I don't imagine there was much interest in doing this on the series; that considered, your idea that it could have presented a future movie possibility for ENT is well taken, but the Temporal Cold War business may also suggest that they were less interested in showing established Trek history than they were in remaking it. "Minefield" certainly doesn't suggest to me that anything about Romulans or the relevant history had been carefully considered. Anyway, I feel TOS gave plenty of wiggle room on the Romulan War timeframe in its references.

 

[JiNX-01]

Re: 2150 + 7 Years on TV = When TOS said they'd be an Earth Romulan Wa

They didn't even have to do a war arc. They could have done a series- long intermitttent version of the S4 "Romulan arc". Andorians, Tellarites and others would be catching "Vulcan" spies and saboteurs (which would have more logically fed suspicion and distrust of the Vulcans). Romulan agents, including the Suliban (an obscure species from the Romulan empire), seed distrust among the various species to ensure there can be no alliances. The humans are not distrusted because they're new to deep space travel -- in fact, being such late comers, Earth has been ignored by the Romulans as weak and irrelevant.

That gives Archer time to make first contacts and build relationships and trust with other species. The Romulans realize their mistake sometime around the end of season 6 when the coalition is formed. Then the attacks, spying and sabotage begin occurring against Earth interests (colonies, boomers, etc. and of course, Enterprise and Columbia).

The series finale ends with the appearance on Enterprise's long-range scanners of a massive invasion force from the direction of Romulus and Remus... and all Archer and Co. can do is run.