The big difference is that Enterprise (and Trek) was dead at the time, so nobody really gave a damn. The new movies are ongoing big business, and I can't see TPTB being too happy with their story being rewritten by tie-in fic.
2387 Canon
- Thread starter JWolf
- Start date
The big difference is that Enterprise (and Trek) was dead at the time, so nobody really gave a damn. The new movies are ongoing big business, and I can't see TPTB being too happy with their story being rewritten by tie-in fic.
Except we're talking about the distance between Hobus and Romulus - not exactly something that would destroy continuity. TPTB might not care about a detail like that.
Which I don't agree with, but that's beside the point. And anyway, that novel took advantage of the fact that TATV was essentially a holodeck program and presented what is intended to be the "real story" that program was based on. Since the destruction of Romulus is seen directly from Spock's actual memories, it's a bit harder to sweep under the rug.
Also, with TATV being something of a hated episode among Trek fandom, it's a bit easier to get away with "reinterpreting" than a successful blockbuster movie which raked in thousands.
Although, in the end it seems I was misremembering the scene anyway, although I doubt any potential representation in a novel isn't going to be to radically different than how Countdown depicted it anyway.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
The writers of the novelverse seem to have been going by the maps of Star Trek: Star Charts in their depiction of the relative locations and sizes of the different powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. In the case of the RSE, it's difficult to get a large sphere of destruction that takes out a good-sized chunk of the RSE without also taking out much of the Federation as well. (This assumes a uniform sphere of destruction, granted.) In an extreme situation where we're assuming that most of the RSE gets vapourized, Federation core worlds will be in immediate jeopardy if not vapourized alongside Romulan core worlds.
Going by the map shown here
http://www.chartgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/star-trek-map.jpeg
even if the Romulan core worlds are destroyed, widely-separated Romulan worlds like Rator, Devoras and Archenar will be safe from Hobus. If it's a matter of Romulus-Remus being wrecked, then closer worlds like Glintara and Terix, even Romii, can escape. And if, as STO suggests, the Hobus supernova was somehow focused towards the Eisn system, that would leave the bulk of Romulan civilization beyond Eisn intact.
Wasn't Remus retconned for Romii, since as I recall from Balance Of Terror, Spock made it rather clear that Romii was Romulus' twin planet.
True, but even when I was a child it looked to me quite obviously like ROMII = Rom. II = Romulus II = Remus.
That is also what I always assumed. Seemed kinda obvious when I first saw it on screen..
^"Obvious" is relative. The possibility of interpreting "ROMII" that way never occurred to me before. I mean, planet names don't work that way. When they use Roman numerals, it's after the name of the primary star, not some other planet. Earth is Sol III, not Venus II. (Actually, by modern exoplanet naming conventions, Earth would probably be called Sol b, since it was the first planet of Sol to be observed by humans. Humans who... looked down.)
I think Hobus was added to the recent Stellar Cartography book of updated Trek star charts (One Google search later, HERE it is). The novels tend to keep to what the "nonfiction fiction" Trek books establish (Federation: 150 Years excepted)
Well, it's more a case of F150Y conflicting with things the novels had previously established, so there isn't much the novelists can do about that so long as they're working in the standing novelverse. But it's not like there's any rule against drawing on ideas from the book that the novels haven't already contradicted. The major areas of conflict are, well, mostly eras of conflict: the Eugenics Wars, WWIII, the Earth-Romulan War, and the brief UFP-Klingon War halted by the Organians. Plus some details from the 2290s, like President Roth still being alive and a different version of Curzon Dax's experiences at the Khitomer Conference. But there's a lot in F150Y that doesn't conflict with the novels, and I wouldn't be surprised if some references started showing up.
What seemed "obvious" to me was that chart that appears to be a star chart (it has little dots of different colours all over the chart, which I interpreted to be stars), and under that interpretation, Romii is in a completely different star system than Romulus, and therefore wouldn't be an alternate name for Remus.
(The whole "simple impulse" can of worms notwithstanding, of course...
)From that map, if we assume a spherical "zone of destruction", then at least Terix, Him(something), Devron, Eden, Romii, and a handful of Earth Outposts would also be destroyed... not to mention any other systems not explicitly called out on the map.
(Granted, if the destruction is more focused along a specific path, similar to a gamma-ray burst or something, then the surrounding systems could end up being fine.)
But you already provided one example where the novels diverge from the reference books... and there are others. So there's really no need for the novels to adhere to the location determined by Stellar Cartography... just as there is no need for them to even use the name Hobus, since as has been pointed out earlier, the name itself comes from IDW. All they canonically have to adhere to is "supernova destroys Romulus". Everything else is open to interpretation.
But, sure, they may indeed end up going with what the other licensees set forth. We'll just have to wait and see...
Agreed with Avro (and Christopher) -- what Paris and Markonian deem obvious never ever occurred to me at any point in the last 40 or so years.
Always seemed to me like another planet (which is how I wrote it in A Singular Destiny, as another planet in Romulan space).
I'm glad the authors did decide it was just another planet/star, as if it were Remus, then given the distances the Neutral Zone would then have to be inside the Romulan star system. Which would be pretty odd.
But yeah I'm also someone else who read it as Rom II.
I think it's just because "Romii" sounds weird. "Romulus and Remus" rolls off the tongue nicely, "Romulus and Romii" sounds kinda silly. If people pronounce it the way I do anyway- Rom-ee
And, also because on that whole map, they're the only two stars/planets listed, so why single out Romii and not any other system
But yeah I'm also someone else who read it as Rom II.
I think it's just because "Romii" sounds weird. "Romulus and Remus" rolls off the tongue nicely, "Romulus and Romii" sounds kinda silly. If people pronounce it the way I do anyway- Rom-ee
And, also because on that whole map, they're the only two stars/planets listed, so why single out Romii and not any other system
Anyone else having Crossover flashbacks, where it was Romulus and "Remii"?
But if the graphic artist who did the map intended it to be Remus, wouldn't he have just labeled it "Remus"?
And since the Romulans were basically meant to be Space Romans, the "-ii" ending isn't that strange; that was often seen in Latin as the plural form of words ending in "-ius" (like radius/radii).
I think there may have been a miscommunication somewhere between the script and the graphic deparment. Maybe the artist intended it to be the other twin planet, but misremembered the name and grossly misrepresented the separation. Whatever the intention may have been, what's actually shown on the map is irreconcilable with what we know of Remus.
And since the Romulans were basically meant to be Space Romans, the "-ii" ending isn't that strange; that was often seen in Latin as the plural form of words ending in "-ius" (like radius/radii).
I think there may have been a miscommunication somewhere between the script and the graphic deparment. Maybe the artist intended it to be the other twin planet, but misremembered the name and grossly misrepresented the separation. Whatever the intention may have been, what's actually shown on the map is irreconcilable with what we know of Remus.
It might not be the case that the subspace destruction wave velocity was isotropic. Differences in subspace might have more damage in certain directions. No way to canonically tell.
I say it as "ROM-ee-eye".
I have a theory about the nature of Romulan Star Empire that I think is a little too specific to say here, due to story idea concerns, but part of that theory involves Romii being a very important system within the empire– nearly coequal with Romulus and Remus. Perhaps the Bay Area to Romulus's Los Angeles. Hence its inclusion in the graphic.
I think the James Blish novelization stated that the neutral zone surrounded a single star system. This is obviously in conflict with what we learned later, but it may have been sourced (like the graphic) from something in the original script.
Similar threads
