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.
Please humor me and refresh my memory:
1. Are these synths made of living tissue? I thought that was a big difference between them and Data. Looked on MA and couldn't find that so maybe I'm wrong.
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.
2. If Soong made a Data (and a Lore, and a B4 -yish, that name, it's like something off Lost in Space) - anyway, why are they so dumb now, working in the shipyards? Why did Maddox leave the synth paradise planet to wind up in the old West bar?
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.
3. How did the Tal or Zhat or whatever NOT just kill off the Soong line (so I would never have to see that smarmy annoying character again) and Maddox long ago? I mean if they're good enough to RUN starfleet security, they could bump off a couple scientists.
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.
