Yeah, the point of destroying the fleet before they could do there job was.. weird.. and not mentally right.. to do.. Sacrifice there own.. litteral millions, likely billions of people to take out synths? My question.. Why did they wait till that point?? If they seen they were mass producing low inteligence synths, shouldn't they have taken that 200 strong fleet of theres and pound the synth plant to dust?? Or Infiltrate and sow distrust of synths? Make them malfunction from the start?? I mean, they are a group 1000 years old? they should have infiltrated EVERY major power long ago, and sowed synth distrust. One of many story points in Picard that don't make much sense..
No, they are not. Soong's accomplishment with Data and Lore is a secret known only to him. Maddox could make functioning androids, just not intelligent ones like Data and Lore. As for why Maddox left the Synth world, who the hell knows? Soong created his androids during the period of time when the Romulans had cut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy after the Tomed Incident.
Una McCormack's novel is pretty good at showing (much like Soviet states) that the Romulan government just didn't care for its citizens - secrecy was paramount, saving face and controlling information. This is similar to her (excellent) work on Cardassia and Tzenketh in other novels (The Never-Ending Sacrifice, The Crimson Shadow, The Missing, and Enigma Tales among others for Cardassia; Brinkmanship for the Tzenkethi) - an academic sociologist by training and a creative writing professor current, she presents excellent analyses of societal failure. Ultimately The Last Best Hope is very much worth reading as a take on the series, much better than the series perhaps
Dahj and Soji were. Didn’t he make Dahj and Soji? Other than when the Romulans destroyed the Enterprise-C in 2344. The novel isn’t canon. There’s nothing in the show that mentions that the Romulan government didn’t care about its citizens.
I thought we were talking about the Synths who were used as a labour force on Mars? Again, that was after he made the ones we saw on Mars.
I'm not convinced that the F-series androids would have been capable of killing so many people without touching the ships. It's not even clear to what extent those androids were present outside of the surface-based facilities. And who's to say that Zhat Vash didn't want to stop the evac fleet? It's entirely possible that they decided, "There are enough Romulans off-planet that the species will survive, and we'll have an easier time infiltrating and influencing a rump state or splinter governments than this giant RSE government." I think you may misunderstand. I am not suggesting that the Zhat Vash are bigots against their fellow Romulans; I am suggesting that their bigotry against Synthetic lifeforms (stemming from the severe alteration of their cognitive functions wrought upon their brains by the Admonition) is so profound that they're willing to allow millions of their fellow Romulans to die in service of their anti-Synth agenda. If the Zhat Vash honestly believe their goal is to save all organic life, they may well be willing to allow their own people to go extinct in that service. But also, clearly the Romulans did not go extinct -- and now the Zhat Vash seem to have an easier time manipulating the Tal Shiar from within the Romulan Free State than it did from within the Star Empire. I don't think it was mentioned, but it was very clearly demonstrated through their actions. The Zhat Vash honestly think of themselves as heroes who will save the galaxy from genocidal Synths, but they also very clearly were willing to accept the loss of rescue fleet vital to saving millions of Romulan lives in the name of preventing the Federation from developing Synths. They don't need to say that they hate Synths more than they love their own people for it to be pretty obvious from their actions.
or they very kindly care about all the other life more than their own kind. "Greater love hath no man..." Or Romulan. They seem again like pretty good guys. And re. posts above, Soji and Dajh are of organic material? Also the later ones on paradise? Created by Maddox. Before he left. Or by Soong III. The two that were whacked by Rios' captain -- were they created by Maddox also, on paradise planet? If this is too annoying I can stop.
Why does that even matter? "Canon" is such a misused, and abused, term. It create toxic barriers. It also creates bizarre value judgements where good works past, present and future are discounted as worthless or worth less than other things...which is silly, since it's all imaginary nonsense of variable artistic merit. As for show not showing a government not caring, I'd say those poor off romulan refuges - descended into piracy and poverty - could evidence that. And I'd say that TNG to modern Picard's suggestion of a frightening police state where the Tal Shiar is everywhere and looking for the slightest sign of infraction by its citizens is pretty good evidence of a state not valuing the lived reality of romulan citizens.
I meaning if you dont like the synth plot then you dont like it, nothing is going to change that. But if anyone wants to enjoy the show more then the novel is there for you to flesh these things out, approach with an open mind until they add more story in season 2. Its entertainment after all.
We aren't talking about CBS (which is not a monolithic entity), though, are we? My question is why 'canonicity' was an immediate reaction, why does it stop you valuing the works of other fans who happen to have that amazing job of producing officially licenced material? It's not even artistic merit, it's just that issue of 'this has merit because it might be referenced in the future' vs 'this has no merit because is exceedingly unlikely be referenced in the future or be used by future creatives' (except for things like 'Una', 'Control', 'Nyota', etc, which are relatively small). But if it does matter, it's a shame because the novel is a window into the writers room through Kirsten Beyer (who ofc originated the story idea behind Picard), who oversaw the work. As you say, it's not 'canon' (urgh). Yet it doesn't stop it even having value as a window into at least one of the key writers on the show. It's quite fab in that way, similar to how Chabon stating on Instagram that the impact of the Dominion War played a significant role in how rubbish the Federation was in the face of the Romulan crisis and its political withdrawl, but that he was advised by the room to to strip out all the Dominion/DS9-related stuff because it would be confusing. Knowing this does add more to the series, makes better sense of something which doesn't match what we say before - but equally isn't canonical either.
I never said non-canon works didn’t have any value. I’m saying that you can’t use them to prove a point about something shown on screen.
As a longtime Trek Lit fan, my take on it is this: The canon only matters insofar as it determines which is the original work and which is the derivative work based upon the original work, and insofar as it informs creators of both new and derivative works of which installments the new work must be consistent with and which it may be consistent with. That is to say, it's only meaningful insofar as you have some outstanding needs to separate which stories "count" as part of the fictional history and which don't. From a fan perspective, canonocity doesn't matter. What I would say is that, broadly speaking, a canonical installment should not need a derivative installment to make sense. If there's a truly glaring plot hole that makes your whole movie or TV show lose its verisimilitude and a novel or comic patches it up, that's a problem; in tie-in fiction, the tale should not wag the dog. (And I don't count stories that are meant to be multi-media experiences in this, because in those instances, the media tie-in is not a derivative work, but becomes part of the intended original set of works.) I do not think that anything in PIC falls apart without Una McCormack's novel to explain things; PIC as a TV series holds together just fine. I'm a longtime fan of Una's work and am looking forward to reading The Last Best Hope, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
Zhat Vash looks to me like a "For the Greater Good" takin to the Nth degree. Didn't strike me as a "Romulan Cause" as in they were just Anti Synthetics .. at the cost of anything else, including there own species. Maybe they thought, that if the synths revolt and destroy something huge, the blow back against synths would be so great, that the federation would NEVER condon it, just like genitic engineering. They probably thought.. the romulan species would survive, but we can't pass up this chance.
I got the sense the Zhat Vash think of themselves as separate or making sacrifices for greater good too, which is fair enough but it makes no sense in the end. Oh was placed high enough in just the right position to keep tabs on all artificial life research. The mars attack drives all artificial life research underground where it is harder to track. When the android envoys are encountered she orders them killed, even though establishing contact would have lead to finding their world, so killing them protected the androids from her. Based on that she is a mindless fanatic. But when faced with the android homeworld and an easy kill she shows none of that blind self defeating fanaticism. Other Romulans willingly died in stupid attacks to stop androids, she hurt her own efforts to monitor and stamp out androids, so why didn’t she attack Ender’s Game style even if she dies? Jurati was driven by her second hand vision so hard she killed a respected colleague/lover, supposedly it’s so strong is suicided the Borg cube, Oh though, well it’s a living. I had to assume Picard was assuming Dahj was organic or saying organic as short hand for in indistinguishable from organic. We never get an explanation and it goes no where. When we finally get the term “Golem” and finally get a too brief description of that it is likely Dahj wasn’t organic but some sort of synthetic biology. The Mars bots were probably as dumb as they looked. No one could make Soong class androids at that point. If they could the show never says so, and it’s strongly implied because Jurati days it’s theory, as untested theory that Data could be recovered from one neuron, and presumably that’s the key to making more Soong bots. As in use Data’s stable matrix, copy it, and make new minds. Maddox didn’t need to leave the synth planet. He could have made his girls there just fine. Maybe, just maybe he thought he needed deniability by leaving alone, so if stopped he could lie extra hard about wheee he has been. Then he makes the girls elsewhere and has an extra layer of deniability. The Romulans knew about Data, and had B4, he was famous everywhere after joining Starfleet but I suppose it was just as famous that no one knew how to replicate him. As a sole being they might not have seen him as a threat, especially after failing to make Lal. Maddox has to have figured out making positronic minds only after disappearing. On the other hand they’re such fanatics nothing should have stopped them from killing and destroying everything remotely related to Soong’s work. Also Zimmerman.
Now that the Federation know that the Zhat Vash were behind the destruction of Utopia Planitia, would that not be considered an act of war?
Are the Zhat Vash a sovereign nation? If not, then it would not be more like tracking down members of a terrorist cell?