After Romulus

[rfmcdpei]

QUOTE=RPJOB;7513921]But why would you WANT to do something that's already been done? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see differing outcomes? Don't let other interpretations of the movie events tie you down. Surely there must be more than one way (or two or twenty) that things could progress.[/QUOTE]

One problem with that is that the near-extinction of the Romulan subset of the Vulcanoid population would require going against the canon established in the novelverse, which has stated that Romulans live in very large numbers away from the Romulan homeworld. Coming up with a way to exterminate this populations would be only somewhat less problematic than deciding to jettison the novelverse canon.

Bolding in your post added by me. Note the word human. These are NOT humans. They're aliens. If they're going to act and react and respond just like humans they why even bother making them aliens?

The settlement of conquered and/or unsettled territories by an imperial power is a basic strategy of any imperial power that wants to be successful. It's a policy that has been followed by multiple non-human empires in the Trekverse, most explicitly in the television by the Cardassians. Coming up with reasons for the Romulans not to do so, especially when they've already been established as having done so, seems futile.

I've been rereading Spock's Wold recently and there's a passage that talks about how very few Vulcans have ever left their planet, let alone their system. The number quoted was around 5% as opposed to about an average of 40% for other races. Romulans are basically Vulcans under the skin.

Biologically, yes, but culturally the Romulans are highly divergent. The proto-Romulans left 40 Eridani in the first place because of their significant cultural differences. Moreover, in her later novels Diane Duane explicitly stated that substantial Romulan populations lived throughout the star empire, and that they were sufficiently numerous to win a civil war against the homeworld.

Something about Romulus caused them to choose it. If they're the same homebodies as Vulcans are in Spock's World then they may not WANT to live elsewhere. Getting posted to another planet may be considered a punishment. Alternately, the Government, though the Tal Shiar, may not want distant colonies to grow too large. Large colonies breed dangerous ideas like freedom and independence. Keeping the populations low and transient keeps these ideas from taking root.

I'm not sure why you're making this argument, since the novels have already established that Romulans live in very large numbers away from their homeworld. Why should this be changed?

 

[Christopher]

But why would you WANT to do something that's already been done? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see differing outcomes?

Sure, but that doesn't mean this particular one is desirable or remotely plausible. The number of ad hoc rationalizations and logical convolutions you'd have to pile on top of each other to justify it makes it very unappealing, and I don't see anything to be gained by doing it. Kill every last Romulan? What the hell is the point? What do you do next? Certainly it's far more interesting to show the surviving elements of Romulan civilization coping with the loss of their homeworld.

Note the word human. These are NOT humans. They're aliens. If they're going to act and react and respond just like humans they why even bother making them aliens?

That doesn't wash. Most Trek "aliens" are blatantly humanlike in their psychology. They're allegories for facets of human behavior or for human cultures. In 46-plus years, the Romulans have never been shown to behave in a way that would seem arbitrary or incomprehensible to humans. They've been used as analogues for Earth cultures from Ancient Rome to the USSR, maybe with a bit of North Korea thrown in given their bouts of isolationism. They have consistently been portrayed as an interstellar empire, a power using military force to conquer, control, and expand their territory. The notion that they would all be living on their home planet is simply not consistent with that. What you're proposing is to ignore everything we've ever learned about the Romulans and arbitrarily impose a whole new interpretation of them in order to justify a story choice that has no evident benefit or purpose.

I've been rereading Spock's Wold recently and there's a passage that talks about how very few Vulcans have ever left their planet, let alone their system.

So? That novel isn't canonical. Enterprise showed us a Vulcan civilization with a large and active interstellar presence. That canonical evidence supersedes a decades-old novel, no matter how well-loved the novel is.

 

[JD]

As for Romulan expansionism, the whole point behind their Enterprise storyline was that Earth and her allies were a threat to their expanding empire. If their empire was that big, then there would have to be a whole lot of Romulans off planet in order to keep their territory under their control.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I've been rereading Spock's Wold recently and there's a passage that talks about how very few Vulcans have ever left their planet, let alone their system.

So? That novel isn't canonical. Enterprise showed us a Vulcan civilization with a large and active interstellar presence. That canonical evidence supersedes a decades-old novel, no matter how well-loved the novel is.

I'm not sure that novel even means what the original poster thinks it does. Spock's World is a Duaneverse novel belonging to the Rihannsu continuity. In the first novel of that continuity, My Enemy, My Ally, Ael reflects on the traditional Romulan attitude towards Vulcan and current-day Vulcan civilization: "The meek, after all, had inherited Vulcan; the Rihannsu had gone out and conquered the stars." Even there, there's evidence for a fairly significant cultural divergence.

(There also might not be such a contradiction between the depiction of Vulcan as isolationist in Spock's World and the depiction in Enterprise of a Vulcan with a substantial presence in space. How many Vulcans need to go into space, after all? An apparently prosperous and technologically advanced 22nd century Vulcan that was a status quo power presumably wouldn't need to commit very large amounts of labour to its project.)

 

[rfmcdpei]

As for Romulan expansionism, the whole point behind their Enterprise storyline was that Earth and her allies were a threat to their expanding empire. If their empire was that big, then there would have to be a whole lot of Romulans off planet in order to keep their territory under their control.

In the recent Romulan War novels, it was established that the interstellar civilization of the 22nd century Romulans was not only substantially older than the humans' but larger in the bargain. The only reason Earth lasted so long on its own was that the Haakonans were distracting the Romulans on the other side of their empire.

 

[RPJOB]

But why would you WANT to do something that's already been done? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see differing outcomes?

Sure, but that doesn't mean this particular one is desirable or remotely plausible. The number of ad hoc rationalizations and logical convolutions you'd have to pile on top of each other to justify it makes it very unappealing, and I don't see anything to be gained by doing it. Kill every last Romulan? What the hell is the point? What do you do next? Certainly it's far more interesting to show the surviving elements of Romulan civilization coping with the loss of their homeworld.

Note the word human. These are NOT humans. They're aliens. If they're going to act and react and respond just like humans they why even bother making them aliens?

That doesn't wash. Most Trek "aliens" are blatantly humanlike in their psychology. They're allegories for facets of human behavior or for human cultures. In 46-plus years, the Romulans have never been shown to behave in a way that would seem arbitrary or incomprehensible to humans. They've been used as analogues for Earth cultures from Ancient Rome to the USSR, maybe with a bit of North Korea thrown in given their bouts of isolationism. They have consistently been portrayed as an interstellar empire, a power using military force to conquer, control, and expand their territory. The notion that they would all be living on their home planet is simply not consistent with that. What you're proposing is to ignore everything we've ever learned about the Romulans and arbitrarily impose a whole new interpretation of them in order to justify a story choice that has no evident benefit or purpose.

I've been rereading Spock's Wold recently and there's a passage that talks about how very few Vulcans have ever left their planet, let alone their system.

So? That novel isn't canonical. Enterprise showed us a Vulcan civilization with a large and active interstellar presence. That canonical evidence supersedes a decades-old novel, no matter how well-loved the novel is.

Nonsense. See my earlier comment about Romulus being the British Empire and suddenly having the British Isles disappear. How much of an Empire would be left? The percentage of British citizens, as opposed to colonials such as India, was a minuscule fraction.

There would still be British bases, primarily naval ports and there would be some civilians ling amongst the colonial population but you wouldn't have an Empire to run things any longer. How is that arbitrary or incomprehensible? There's no reason, however, to portray them as humans in silly foam appliances either.

Essentially I see it as Romulus having orbital bases around planets with indigenous populations. Of course there would be a few on the surface at any time but they'd much prefer to be up above, looking doen on the natives. On wholly Romulan colonies it would essentially be country homes for the high ranking members of the government and military. A very small population, all Romulan. Why let some alien sully your worlds? We didn't see any aliens on Romulus. Where are the other members of the Empire? How about, there aren't any. They're basically slave labor and not allowed off their homeworlds or industrial planets like Remus.

I've never said that ALL Romulans would be wiped out. A large part of their empire would be by the supernova. Why else would Spock feel the need to stop it AFTER Romulus had been destroyed? He said he didn't have much time. Time for what? Letting the blast go beyond the point of no return.

In regards to Vulcan colonies this is what Memory Alpha has:

Vulcan Colonies
These colonies were established by the Vulcan High Command. Many of them are older than the Federation itself.
Paan Mokar
Vulcanis Lunar Colony

It's missing P'Jem but it was a listening post disguised as a monastery, not a full on colony.

The Vulcans wanted Paan Mokar for strategic reasons and to keep it out of Andorian control. Hardly a thriving colony world.

Vulcanis Lunar Colony could be in the Vulcan home system for all we know, perhaps on T'Khut or it's moon as seen in the initial release of TMP.

Vulcans don't seem to be the colonizing type either.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I've been rereading Spock's Wold recently and there's a passage that talks about how very few Vulcans have ever left their planet, let alone their system.

So? That novel isn't canonical. Enterprise showed us a Vulcan civilization with a large and active interstellar presence. That canonical evidence supersedes a decades-old novel, no matter how well-loved the novel is.

Nonsense. See my earlier comment about Romulus being the British Empire and suddenly having the British Isles disappear. How much of an Empire would be left? The percentage of British citizens, as opposed to colonials such as India, was a minuscule fraction.

There wouldn't be millions of British subjects in India. There would be millions of people of British descent, recent emigrants and otherwise, in various parts of the empire: Canada, Australia, South Africa ...

There would still be British bases, primarily naval ports and there would be some civilians ling amongst the colonial population but you wouldn't have an Empire to run things any longer. How is that arbitrary or incomprehensible? There's no reason, however, to portray them as humans in silly foam appliances either.

What do you think about the portrayal of Cardassians as a colonizing sort?

Essentially I see it as Romulus having orbital bases around planets with indigenous populations. Of course there would be a few on the surface at any time but they'd much prefer to be up above, looking doen on the natives. On wholly Romulan colonies it would essentially be country homes for the high ranking members of the government and military. A very small population, all Romulan. Why let some alien sully your worlds? We didn't see any aliens on Romulus. Where are the other members of the Empire? How about, there aren't any. They're basically slave labor and not allowed off their homeworlds or industrial planets like Remus.

What do you think about the novelverse's explicit establishment of your preferred version of Romulan colonization as a non-starter?

 

[RPJOB]

Prior to 1 January 1949, Indians were British subjects under United Kingdom law. See British nationality law. Between 1 January 1949 and 25 January 1950, Indians remained British subjects without citizenship unless they had already acquired citizenship of the UK & Colonies or another Commonwealth country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_nationality_law

So you're right. There weren't millions of British subjects in India. There were hundreds of millions of them. However, they were still citizens of India and not Britain. They were, however, subjects of the monarch. Now, imagine British = Romulan. Not British = not Romulan. If Britain sudden;y disappeared then Indians would no longer be British subjects because that country no longer existed. The British citizens in Didia would still be British but would have no Empire to back them up.

I think that the novelverse isn't a huge, monolithic entity like some people think it is. There's a subset that has a shared continuity but even within that there's parts that contradict. There's also stand alone novels. If you had enforced your rules on everything fitting into a single continuity then we wouldn't have gotten Diane Duane's Rihannsu or Ford's The Final Reflection.

 

[Ronald Held]

Even if there are substantial numbers of Romulans alive, as a political entity the Empire may not exist assuch.

 

[Lee Son of Pete]

I know it doesn't intrinsically imply anything, but I think it's worth remembering that the Roman Empire survived for hundreds of years after Rome fell. It's character changed and it developed*, but then every society changes over time doesn't it?





*to the extent that modern historians refer to it as the Byzantine Empire in order to distinguish it from the classical Roman Empire. The 'Byzantines' themselves though considered themselves Romans, and their nation The Roman Empire.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Prior to 1 January 1949, Indians were British subjects under United Kingdom law. See British nationality law. Between 1 January 1949 and 25 January 1950, Indians remained British subjects without citizenship unless they had already acquired citizenship of the UK & Colonies or another Commonwealth country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_nationality_law

Your terminologies are confused.

You suggested that, if something happened to the British Isles, British culture would be defunct. That is not the case. At the height of the British Empire, there were multiple large territories under nominal British rule where culturally British people of British background were a considerable minority (India, South Africa) or an outright majority (Canada, Australia). British culture would not have gone extinct if the British Isles happened to be destroyed--it would be battered, but the human community of millions of Britons belonging to the same world power would survive.

In the case of the destruction of the British Isles, would there be substantial powers shifts? Sure. Your example of India, where the overwhelming majority of the large population was not of British background, comes to mind. Canada and Australia and maybe even South Africa might well culturally British and even stay part of a post-British empire, but India? It might easily break away. Romulan subject species, like the Kevratans, might do the same after Eisn is scoured.

I think that the novelverse isn't a huge, monolithic entity like some people think it is. There's a subset that has a shared continuity but even within that there's parts that contradict. There's also stand alone novels. If you had enforced your rules on everything fitting into a single continuity then we wouldn't have gotten Diane Duane's Rihannsu or Ford's The Final Reflection.

The novel that you cited as evidence for your thesis about Romulan immobility, Spock's World, belongs to a particular continuity wherein it's made explicitly clear that the Romulans unlike the Vulcans are an expansionistic, colonizing people. In any case, the Duaneverse continuity has been mostly superseded, partly absorbed, by the current novelverse continuity. (In her later Rihannsu novels, partly written with an eye towards the current continuity, Duane described a much bigger Romulan community that she initially mentioned, with second-generation colonies and "client worlds".) So that doesn't work to support your point.

What does the current novelverse hold as canon? There are multiple large Romulan communities scattered across the Romulan Star Empire, many dating back centuries (Artaleirh), some of these sufficiently large to contend for the position of capital of the Romulan community whether after the brief split (Achernar Prime) or after the destruction of Romulus (Rator III, among others). The current praetor even comes from one of these Romulan worlds (Glintara). What incentive do authors have to revise the novelverse canon so as to eliminate these Romulan-populated worlds? Besides doubling back on a decade's worth of writing, your suggested revision doesn't make sense in light of the way imperialist powers behave and doesn't lend itself to telling interesting stories.

 

[Christopher]

I know it doesn't intrinsically imply anything, but I think it's worth remembering that the Roman Empire survived for hundreds of years after Rome fell. It's character changed and it developed*, but then every society changes over time doesn't it?

Right. The Roman Empire didn't fall when Rome fell; only the Western Roman Empire fell. For centuries before then, the empire had basicaly had two halves, a Western half with Latin as the official language, and an Eastern half with Greek as the official language (and which was in a lot of ways a continuation of the Hellenistic culture that preceded Roman rule there). The Eastern empire endured a millennium longer than the Western one (at least officially, though by the end there was little to it beyond Constantinople).

 

[Lee Son of Pete]

There were also plenty of spin-off nations that considered themselves Romans, such as the Sultanate of Rum, and even to an extent Romania. In fact the Catholic Church is arguably the Roman Empire, as most of the Western Roman nobility, when it became clear Rome was doomed, took up positions in the church.

 

[Christopher]

And then of course there's the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.

 

[Lee Son of Pete]

Haha, yeah, I didn't include them for essentially the three reasons you listed.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Now I'm getting verklempt.

 

[Freman]

You guys know too much stuff.

 

[RPJOB]

I never knew that the entire heart of the Roman Empire disappeared in a matter of seconds. I'd swear that Rome still exists. You learn something new every day.

Of course any analogy we come up with isn't going to be exact.

 

[Lee Son of Pete]

I never knew that the entire heart of the Roman Empire disappeared in a matter of seconds. I'd swear that Rome still exists. You learn something new every day.

Of course any analogy we come up with isn't going to be exact.

But Rome was not in the Roman Empire for the last 1000 years or so of it's existence, it was 'sacked' which means politically it was destroyed in a very short period of time, maybe not seconds, but allowing for poorer communications, it was politically the equivalent.

The only conceivable way that Romulans are gone after the destruction of Romulus is if they all lived on Romulus, which as we have already established, is unlikely in the extreme, and, in the novel continuity, which is likely to be the only one where the question is ever addressed, already stated not to be the case.