"BALANCE OF TERROR" Question -- RE: Romulans?

[comicbookwriter]

I was watching Balance of Terror today and during the briefing scene when Styles was yelling at Spock, there was an exchange where Spock says something like (paraphrasing):

"If the Romulans are an offshoot of my Vulcan blood, and it appears that this is true..."

I was wondering if Spock was pretending not to know more about Romulan/Vulcan history? Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but didn't all of Vulcan know that the people who left eventually became Romulans? Or was this something hidden from the Vulcan people?

I used to know the answer to these questions, but I guess old age is catching up to me.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can explain this to me.

CBW

 

[Timo]

Nobody in the TOS era has ever hinted onscreen that Romulans would have left Vulcan. This is only speculation in "Balace of Terror", and although it becomes "fact" in various TOS novels, it never does become "factual" in the TV series and movies.

By the time of TNG, though, historians seem to agree that Romulans originated on Vulcan (as in "Gambit" et al). We don't really know when our heroes learned this truth. Heck, we don't even know if it is the truth. And even our flashbacks to the subject in ST:Enterprise provide no hard data on this. Only the Romulans themselves there ever suggest that they would have ties to Vulcans, and the exact nature of those ties is never clarified.

If the next Trek movie were to tell us that Romulans are actually a formerly godlike species that created the Vulcans in the mists of prehistory and then degraded into the current warmongers, there would be little or nothing "canonically objectionable" about it.

Personally, I like to think that Spock really didn't know - but that several high-ranking Vulcans did, as did many high-ranking humans. It just was a secret far too dangerous to be revealed to mere frontline soldiers like Spock and Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Alidar Jarok]

No, they didn't know what happened to the people who left Vulcan, just that they left (technically, at the time, the writers didn't even say that they left Vulcan at some point in the past, just that they were related, but that's the direction literature and the later shows took). So, no, there's no reason for Spock to be dishonest there, I'm sure he honestly didn't know.

 

[comicbookwriter]

Timo said:
Nobody in the TOS era has ever hinted onscreen that Romulans would have left Vulcan. This is only speculation in "Balace of Terror", and although it becomes "fact" in various TOS novels, it never does become "factual" in the TV series and movies.

By the time of TNG, though, historians seem to agree that Romulans originated on Vulcan (as in "Gambit" et al). We don't really know when our heroes learned this truth. Heck, we don't even know if it is the truth. And even our flashbacks to the subject in ST:Enterprise provide no hard data on this. Only the Romulans themselves there ever suggest that they would have ties to Vulcans, and the exact nature of those ties is never clarified.

Timo Saloniemi

Hey thanks for the quick reply.

Well, then its official... I am losing my mind

I could have sworn that I read somewhere (or watched an episode of ENT) where it stated that the Romulans were Vulcans who didn't want to sacrifice their emotions and then left on a series of colonial ships that most of the Vulcan people thought were lost forever in space.

Wait, this may have been in a novel that I guess is not cannonized.

Maybe I am confused.

CBW

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It's in novels and it's strongly suggested in Enterprise (Awakening, Babel One, and United all suggest it), but the Vulcans only knew that the Romulans left, not where they went or what they call themselves now.

Oh, and Timo, that storyline is actually a really cool idea. I don't think it's appropriate for the Romulans anymore (I think it would piss off many people), but it's still cool.

 

[Forbin]

Let's not forget "Reunification." It's pretty much settled there.

 

[Timo]

...To be sure, all that is stated there is that Romulans want unity with Vulcans on Romulan terms. Tellingly, the title of the episode is not "Reunification", but merely "Unification".

As far as the dialogue on that episode goes, it might be that Vulcans emigrated from Romulus originally. Even the dialogue of "Gambit" doesn't completely exclude that possibility.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

The Romulans are specifically described as an offshoot of the Vulcans in The Making of Star Trek. So even though it was never mentioned on screen during the production of TOS, the idea was not new then.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Why do people insist on reinterpreting TOS to make it consistent with later series?

 

[Kegek]

A beaker full of death said:
Why do people insist on reinterpreting TOS to make it consistent with later series?

It's the universe approach to Star Trek. The events of the five live-action TV shows and ten films (and sometimes also TAS) are part of an interconnected universe. Events and references from one can explain factoids in another.

In purely the context of "Balance of Terror", the Romulans had a Roman culture because that was a useful background to draw from. They looked like Vulcans so there could be a racism subplot about Mr. Spock. That's about it. But there's been dozens of episodes involving them since then and they've been in some of the movies, too...

 

[comicbookwriter]

A beaker full of death said:
Why do people insist on reinterpreting TOS to make it consistent with later series?

This is such a weird question because the later series are all called "Star Trek" as well. If someone were attempting to shoehorn the history of Romulus into "Battlestar Galactica: Razor" then I could see how this question would fit.

But considering how the 24th Century Trek universe is in the direct line of descent from the 23rd Century Trek universe, it would only make sense to seek clarity about some shadier parts of Trek history that have been fully referenced in all the Trek sequel series.

Its not a reinterpretation as much as a narrowing of historical clues and evidence spread throughout the Trek mythos.

CBW

 

[Alidar Jarok]

A beaker full of death said:
Why do people insist on reinterpreting TOS to make it consistent with later series?

Well, I don't see it as a reinterpretation and I didn't see any inconsistancies, especially with the idea that the Romulans left Vulcan, since that's an old idea (it's at least pre-TNG, since Diane Duane wrote about it).

 

[Captain Robert April]

Doesn't anybody remember the Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident" speaking almost reverently about "our distant cousins"? So the Romulans had no illusions about their connection to Vulcan.

A bit of retroactive analysis, I don't think it's stretching to say that Spock started connecting the dots the second that image cleared on the viewscreen and saw those pointed ears and helmets similar to what the ritual guards wear on Vulcan (see "Amok Time"), answering, to himself at least, "So, that's what happened to the renegades," as well as being able to point out, in no uncertain terms, that these were not folks to mess with. Remember, he was quite clear on the Romulans' martial philosophy, after just one glimpse of them on the viewscreen.

So I think what we had was a nice big Romulan-shaped hole in Vulcan history, which was filled quite nicely after "Balance of Terror".

 

[M'Sharak]

Captain Robert April said:
Doesn't anybody remember the Romulan Commander in "The Enterprise Incident" speaking almost reverently about "our distant cousins"? So the Romulans had no illusions about their connection to Vulcan.

If the transcription I'm looking at is correct:

"What earns Spock your special interest?"
"He is a Vulcan. Our forebears had the same roots and origins. Something you wouldn't understand, Captain. We can appreciate the Vulcans, our distant brothers."

 

[A beaker full of death]

JingleBell Jarok said:

Well, I don't see it as a reinterpretation

comicbookwriter said:

I was wondering if Spock was pretending not to know more about Romulan/Vulcan history?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Ah, that's what you meant. I still don't see it as reinterpretation and I don't think it necessarily has to do with the other series besides TOS.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I don't see any discrepency...it's likely that the Romulans knew more of their own origins than the Vulcans did. When the Romulans were playing the faceless enemy in the original war, the Vulcans had no way of knowing that these people were that offshoot group from 2000 years earlier. It's likely that the Romulans took such pains to avoid capture or visual contact precisely to take advantage of their resemblance to Vulcans to infiltrate the Federation. When Spock saw that the Romulans resembled Vulcans, he began to suspect that the Romulans were that old group of outcasts, and later, behind-the-scenes investigation in that direction would have proven his theory.

If one accepts continuity points established in STV, it's likely that face-to-face contact between humans, Romulans, and Klingons on Nimbus III ca. 2267 served as both the basis for the Federation having learned more of the Romulans' true nature, and for the technological exchange between the Klingons and Romulans established in Season 3.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

My assumption, just based on seeing that scene long before the issue had been revisited by other series, was that there were rumors and legends among Vulcans that the bunch who left 2000 years previously didn't die out there in space. There might even have been suspicions that the Romulans were those guys.

Probably among Vulcans, this was on par with Elvis sightings or the Loch Ness Monster - even if they didn't believe it was true, if evidence suddenly dropped in their laps, they'd already have some context for recognizing that some musty, improbable old legend was true after all. Spock sure acted like the Romulans weren't a complete surprise...

And it goes without saying that SOME Vulcans knew the whole truth. Only a small elite, and they had good reasons for keeping their mouths shut. Spock would not have been among them. But Sarek? Ambassador to Earth and all? I can see him being let in on it, with strict orders that it go no further than him, not even family members.

Spock being a smart guy and all, he might have thought it through afterwards and realized his dad probably knew and didn't tell him! Thanks a lot, Dad, the humans almost lynched me... Okay not quite like that, but it wouldn't have helped their strained relationship.

Hmmm. This might even be part of the explanation why Sarek didn't want Spock joining Starfleet in the first place? Sarek has always struck me as buttheaded and unsympathetic (not to mention illogical!) because of it, but if there was a good reason that he couldn't tell his son about, that casts it in a whole new light.

Why do people insist on reinterpreting TOS to make it consistent with later series?

In this case, it's not us. ENT took what amounts to fanon on the issue (derived from novels) and made it canon. Ditto for the notion that Vulcans have more violent emotions than humans, which is why they made a fetish of emotionlessness: not canon till T'Pol told Trip all about it. No reason not to have fun speculating (my own speculation having nothing to do with later series).

Those plot elements make good sense, so why not canonize them?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Romulans were originally Vulcans, we all know that now. What we *don't* know is WHY. Most everybody thinks that these people left Vulcan in rebellion against Surak. They may or may not have done it for that reason.

Spoiler: Vulcan's Noun novels

Indeed, in the Vulcan's Noun novels, they left Vulcan with the express approval and blessing of Surak. He reasoned that even if Vulcan tore itself apart in civil war, then some part of its people would still survive among the stars. I highly recommend these novels, BTW.

 

[Ronald Held]

In ENT some Vulcans know, but not that many. By TOS, it may be that a few knew, but we have no way to know which ones.
Why should Sarek have be told?