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

[Timo]

Because he moves between stars on errands that may well take him to the Romulans one day?

As already said, "Balance of Terror" already contains all the elements that make us think Spock wasn't completely candid there. He jumps to amazing conclusions about the aggressiveness of the Romulans, and then presses forth those conclusions with atypical vehemence. He goes completely against his already established minimum-force, gentlemanly approach to hostilities, let alone his later-to-be-established pacifist leanings. The thought that first comes to mind is definitely "old scores to settle"! Also, Spock has a personal stake there, being suspected of treason and sympathies with the enemy. The suspicions do warrant some speculation, IMHO...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[A beaker full of death]

oh horse-hockey. It was neither written nor played that way. Spock was always willing to get his hands dirty if need be. He - and the Romulan - realized the Romulan had to be destroyed or it meant war. This whole "Spock wa sa pacifist" thing is blown WAY out of proportion, and belongs out there with "Kirk bagged every chick he met."

 

[Plum]

Well, Kirk has made it clear to Spock that killing is necessary. As a star fleet officer, Spock must know he might have to kill to serve. The Vulcan philosophy is certainly pacifist, or so I've taken it.

As for the diaspora of Vulcan/Romulan... I think once Spock said the Romulans were of ancient or ancestral Vulcan blood. That is, from a time before Surak. Or perhaps during the last Vulcan war(?)... but it's all inferred from Spock's words in B0T.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Ronald Held said:
Why should Sarek have be told?

Ambassador to Earth seems like the sort of post that would qualify him as part of the "elite." It's just a thought - mainly because if he DID know, his pigheaded objection to Spock living among humans seems a bit more like sensible caution. He had to have known it was only a matter of time till everyone knew the truth...sure, Spock was okay, but Kirk was the captain. What if Spock had a captain who was more like Styles?

The Vulcan philosophy is certainly pacifist, or so I've taken it.

My observations are that Vulcans talk a better game than they play. They weren't so pacifist in DS9 or ENT. They believe in pacifism when it's logical, let's put it that way.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You gotta love the Vulcan spinmasters. The have the Galaxy convinced the Vulcans are pacifists who never lie. The last enemy you want to face is a Vulcan with a logical reason to kick your ass.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Surak was a pacifist, I don't think Spock was and neither was Sarek (they just have to have a logical reason to act as they do).

 

[Ronald Held]

Vulcans are pacifists, but will kill for a logical reason(that does not involve personal gain).

 

[Timo]

...And granted, in "The Corbomite Maneuver", it was Spock's argument that they shouldn't appear weak to the enemy. But OTOH, the harshest action Spock ever recommended was moving on, as opposed to standing still. And the harshest action he agreed to under Kirk's commands was destroying an automated device for self-defense.

Basically, it's the same thing in "Balance of Terror". Others paint the devil on the walls, and Spock only says that showing of weakness in front of this devil would be a bad thing. But his logic in assuming that the Romulans are one thing or another is faulty, unless he knows a bit more than he lets out.

As regards the writing of the episode, we should remember that it's just a rewriting of the original WWII movie. Certain leaps of illogic are inherent in such a thing; we must choose whether to accept this illogic as evidence that we "sit between universes" here, or whether to try and work it out within the rules of the Trek universe.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I did not read that scene as Spock was certain the Romulans were the Exiles. I thought that he was just theorizing what the Romulans would be like if they were PreSurak Vulcans.

 

[Plum]

Spock was not sure, he said "I think this likely". But, dude, it's Spock. Of course he's right!

 

[Kryton]

Plum said:
Spock was not sure, he said "I think this likely". But, dude, it's Spock. Of course he's right!

He means Spock's guesses....

Okay you know where that's going.

 

[TeutonicNights]

Actually, Spock speculates the Romulans might be the offspring of early pre-Surak Vulcan colonists.

Vulcan, like Earth, had its agressive colonization period, savage even by Earth's standards. If Romulans retain this martial philosophy then we dare not show weakness

Since the Vulcans had spacefaring tech centuries before the Awakening, the Romulans might even have split from the Vulcans a millenium before Surak- or they are what became of the Vulcan colonies when Surak came.

On the other hand, if the Debrune- an early offshoot of the Romulans (Gambit) had a piece of the stone of Gol with them, it would suggest they left Vulcan around the time of the Awakening.

 

[Plum]

Spock: "... aggressive colonization period...".

ah, righto, nice catch in dialog.

And then there are the Mintokins (spelling?) from TNG (which demonstrate Vulcan colonization perhaps?). Love that episode, btw.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It's possible. It's also possible that Sargon's people (the ancestors of the Vulcans) are responsible for the Mintakans. It's certainly possible Spock could have been referring to space colonization from an earlier dead proto-Vulcan race (I wonder if any early writers suggested something like that).

 

[TeutonicNights]

Also, some of those colonists seem to have built the monastery of P'Jem a millenium before Surak came(but of course we don't really know what P'Jem was like before the Awakening).
That would be an interesting twist:
If those colonists had actually invented the philosophies that Surak later brought to Vulcan (maybe his was an altered, more radical form), and the Romulans would see the Vulcan philosophies as heresy.

 

[TeutonicNights]

On the other hand it would make sense Spock is just misleading everyone here.
As shown in "Unification", some Romulans at least still have artifacts from Vulcan and therefore should have known about the connection.
So it would be conceivable that there may at least have been rumors and legends on Vulcan. Spock remembered the old stories about a big group of people leaving Vulcan, which were never heard of again.
But he chose not to reveal it to his captain at this time.

I mean telling the suspicious, confused Bridge crew that those agressive dudes out there might be the long-lost cousins from the Vulcan legends would not help in that situation.

We have seen Vulcans give a misleading answer to avoid lying or telling the whole truth (and it was speculation at that point anyway), so the colonization period explanation may be a decoy.

Of course the real reason was the writers hadn't figured the Romulans out at that time, but they could do cool stuff with explaining the Vulcan-Romulan connection.

 

[A beaker full of death]

TeutonicNights said:
Also, some of those colonists seem to have built the monastery of P'Jem a millenium before Surak came(but of course we don't really know what P'Jem was like before the Awakening).
That would be an interesting twist:
If those colonists had actually invented the philosophies that Surak later brought to Vulcan (maybe his was an altered, more radical form), and the Romulans would see the Vulcan philosophies as heresy.

What the fuck?
Does anyone around here want to discuss TOS? I don't know what this happy horseshit is.

TeutonicNights said:
On the other hand it would make sense Spock is just misleading everyone here.
...But he chose not to reveal it to his captain at this time.

What fucking bullshit.
If anyone wants to discuss the episode as it was written and acted, PM me. I opt out of this nonsense.

 

[Timo]

Also, we are talking about two or three millennia here. Granted that individual Vulcanoids live long and prosper, but that would still be many, many generations. Much of the schism between Vulcans and the Romulan/Debrune/whatever bunch would be myth country: even if good records of the era were kept, they would be interpreted and reinterpreted to unrecognizability by the time of Vulcan contact with humans.

Spock would hesitate to ruminate on such myths, regardless of whether they cast him and his people in good or bad light. Myths just aren't worthy of the attention of a rational Vulcan.

Although of course, Spock may have come to the realization that the now uncovered truth underlying the myths does cast all Vulcan in a particularly bad light. The myth might be of an old war where True Vulcan People drove to extinction and exile all the bulging-forehead sub-Vulcans, pissed on their mass graves, and spat after their departing skyships, and the unveiling of the Romulan faces now makes it impossible to discredit that myth like Surakians so far have done.

As for this quote:

Spock: "Vulcan, like Earth, had its agressive colonization period, savage even by Earth's standards. If Romulans retain this martial philosophy then we dare not show weakness."

Spock need not be claiming that Romulans are related to the Vulcan colonization period, or that the colonization involved space travel. Rather, Spock could simply be saying "You had Columbus and Pizarro and Cortez. Big deal. We had a hundred and sixty Genghiz Khans on each of our sandships when we colonized the far corners of our planet, and the standard way to set up a colony was to build a fort out of the skulls of natives and surround it with a moat flowing green with infant blood. We got over that, solely thanks to Surak. But if these Romulans, who grew up wholly separate from us but obviously share our physiology, had a similar colonization period on their own planet, it's quite possible they never got over their martial nature. So beware."

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I would agree that Spock would not weight the details of those historial myths highly. I would also say that he would not want to associate the Romulans with the current Vulcans.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think it should be noted that Nimoy plays it much more intense than at any other point in the series to this point. In his own way, he's matching Styles in his insistance that they have to hit the Romulans hard and fast or they are in really deep kimshi.