Spoilers Let’s talk about the destruction of Trek utopia…

It only came up in Tarses' mind. HE was the one who was paranoid about his Romulan ancestry. There is zero evidence - as in none, zip, nada - that Starfleet has a prejudice against Romulans.

Like I said, if Tarses felt the need to lie, that's his own damn fault. There's absolutely NO proof that Starfleet doesn't admit personnel with Romulan ancestry, or is prejuced against Romulans in any way. Just because Tarses is paranoid isn't Starfleet's fault.

It does, however, beg the question, exactly how did Tarses come to have a Romulan ancestor in the first place. Perhaps he felt ashamed of that situation, and therefore it made him extra skittish.

Who says there is?

Starfleet didn't ask Tarses if he was Romulan. More like, what is your family ancestry? And Tarses said, 3/4 human, 1/4 Vulcan. They didn't flat out ask him about Romulan bloodlines.

 

This does open up the can of worms as to how a partially-Romulan Starfleet officer was so readily allowed into service if the Federation and the Star Empire had no official contacts of any kind between 2311 and 2364. A human Starfleet enlistee with a Romulan parent might raise some serious eyebrows given Tarses' apparent age in the episode, but perhaps a genetic scan was classified or that's just another example of the producers gradually retconning the "no contact" line from Data at the end of Season 1 with opportunities for the Romulans to use covert operations and random deep space encounters like Narendra III in 2344 to show that the two powers weren't completely out of touch with one another during that fifty-three years.

 

The question was probably "what is your biological ancestry" or something not specifically if he was Romulan.

Side note, reading his Memory-Beta page, he was in several novel that I have read , but I have no memory of that at all.

Then again I might have not recognized his name, he was only in one episode.

 

Voyager was far from my favourite Trek, but I did watch it all, and thus saw him grow up from a teen. Seeing him tortured to death wasn't really entertainment for me.

Most of those were part of a characters backstory when we meet them (the difference between killing Jor-El and Lara and killing Jimmy Olsen), the rest were spread out over 55 years. In one season Picard was like: Like Hugh? Murdered. Like Maddix? murdered by his girlfriend. Like these new twin sisters? One exploded after watching her boyfriend murdered. Like Icheb? Tortured to death. Like Riker and Troi? Let's see them mourning their preventably dead child. It just piled on. Even the fun pleasure planet from Voyager has been assimilated.

Don't get me started on that abomination...

*snicker*

Even after all the times Picard and Sati said it? They really engrained that name into my brain.

 

We never even knew Trip had a sister until "The Expanse(ENT)." It's a perfectly fine and lovely character development that made Trip a more textured individual and her death not only made the Xindi probe attack much more personal but also upped the dramatic stakes even further from saving Earth, but up until the end of Season 2 we didn't even know who any of his siblings were much less their name.

 

IMO this is a reasonable assumption. If only because a full genetic background could easily be essential for medical reasons.

At most, we can potentially speculate a general question of: "Do you or any member of immediate family have links to any entity with belligerent status relative to the United Federation of Planets?" rather than a question specific to Romulans (it would also cover Cardassian, Tzenkenthi, Talarians, Breen etc and even Klingons during earlier eras).

 

And I'm fairly sure the Romulans were not, in fact, that.

There weren't active hostilities. There was no war, hot or cold. Hell, the Romulans had only just re-emerged after decades of isolation. There was no need to be suspicious of anyone with Romulan ancestry. And there's no proof Starfleet was. (Indeed, if they were, they wouldn't have been so ready to ally themselves with the Romulans during the Dominion War.)

Again, though, Tarses may have been embarrassed at the specific circumstances under which he came to have a Romulan ancestor. Perhaps one of his grandparents had a thing on the side with the Romulan ambassador? Tarses may have been a bit ashamed of that. It really could be something that innocuous.

And, non-canon though this may be, Saavik is half-Romulan, and she rose to a position of some importance in Starfleet...

 

That's highly debatable.

PICARD: I want all departments prepared for a warp six trip to the Neutral Zone as soon as the away team completes its mission.

STAR TREK: "Angel One" - 11/9/87 - ACT ONE 12.

WORF: Trouble, Captain?
PICARD: Insurance. Romulan battlecruisers have been detected near one of our border posts. They've requested assistance as soon as we are available.

The Romulans continue to threaten the outpost throughout the episode, and The Neutral Zone suggests that they did follow this up by destroying several outposts (although BTS info implicates the Borg, this is never confirmed in-universe so Romulans would still be suspects).

At a one simple level, it seems far to say that the Romulans virtually always present themselves as willing to engage in hostilities at the slightest pretext during the period and while there was never a period of open war after 2200, it's fair to say that passive hostilities were always the norm when there was contact.

 

The Romulans were like the Soviets flying nuclear bombers near Alaskan airspace during the Cold War. They liked to test the Federation's resolve even if there were no official contacts and both sides knew little about the other due to misunderstandings.

 

I mean, it seems pretty clear-cut to me: Tarses claimed his grandfather was Vulcan instead of Romulan, and Vulcans and Romulans are still the same species from a genetic POV. DIS "Unification III" even overtly states that they're the same species.

I'm sorry, but no, you didn't watch him "grow up from a teen."

Icheb first appeared, played by Manu Intiraymi, in season 6 episode 16, "Collective," which aired on 16 February 2000. His last appearance on VOY was in season 7 episode 26, "Endgame, Part II," which aired on 23 May 2001.

Manu Intiraymi was born 22 April 1978. He was 21 (almost 22) when "Collective" aired and 23 when "Endgame, Part II" aired.

In all, Intiraymi appeared as Icheb in 11 episodes over the course of one year, three months.

You did not "watch him grow up from a teen." You watched a 21 year old man playing a character already in his late teens become a 23 year old man playing that character still in his late teens.

It wasn't entertaining for me either! Art is not always about "entertainment." Sometimes it's about deriving aesthetic pleasure from an artistic confrontation with difficult or upsetting themes that causes us to think about our values and our relationships.

And Thad was part of Will's, Deanna's, and Kestra's backstories when we meet them in PIC! It's no different from Will's mother or Deanne's father both being dead already when we first met them in "Encounter at Farpoint."

No, killing Thad is not the same as Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy Olsen is a character who is intended as a vital and active part of Clark's life and the Superman ensemble cast. Thad is like Jor-El and Lara: He is a character meant to be already dead, important because of how his death has impacted the actual main characters.

Now you're moving the goalposts. Originally you were just complaining about PIC depicting Will and Deanna as having a deceased son. Your exact words: "(or learn their child died a preventable death because of said Federation stupidity)?" Now you're complaining about an entirely different set of characters you did not mention before.

Yeah, those were sad scenes. It is a convention of modern television that characters we like do not have plot armor anymore. This gives television programs whose primary dramatic stakes are life and death more verisimilitude and in general makes for better writing, since actions have real consequences.

I promise you, very, very, very few audience members were emotionally attached to the asshole who tried to kill Data from "The Measure of a Man." Hell, you weren't even attached to him enough to spell his name correctly!

Oh, c'mon dude. You might as well get upset at TOS for killing redshirts. (If anything, TOS was far more callous in its depiction of death as a casual event not worth being upset about.)

They're not "mourning." Their mourning period has passed years ago. They still carry that grief with them, but it's not a recent event and it's not something that has stopped them from finding happiness.

That's a really important part of the series: Learning to continue living and finding happiness after death.

PIC is a show about coping with death. It rationally follows that death is going to be a recurring theme in the show.

I'm not sure what planet you're talking about. The one that had the transwarp projector thing? Nothing indicated the entire planet had been assimilated, only that that technology had been assimilated from them.

Whether or not you think "Author, Author" (which first aired in 2001) was an abomination, the fact of the matter remains that it was canonically established that the Federation was using slave labor from sentient AIs in 2377. PIC's depiction of the UFP banning sentient AIs 8 years later is perfectly consistent with the canon as it had stood for nineteen years. It is completely inaccurate to pretend that PIC depicting the UFP as banning sentient AIs was in any way inconsistent with prior canon.

Okay, this response makes me angry. It's actively disrespectful of you to respond that way, for two reasons:

1) A work of art's possession of thematic content is entirely separate from whether you like it or whether it has high quality. Art is a form of communication, and it is disrespectful to the artist(s) to pretend that their work lacks thematic content because of your subjective enjoyment. It is entirely fair to say, "I don't think it was well-written because X." It is entirely fair to say, "I did not enjoy it because Y." It is disrespectful to claim that it lacks thematic content just because you don't enjoy it. I can't stand Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, but I respect him enough as an artist to acknowledge that he has thematic content in his film.

2) It is especially disrespectful to react this way towards PIC S1, because showrunner Michael Chabon literally wrote the show around the time his father died. I am not clear on if his father died before writing commenced or after, but Chabon's essay makes it clear his father's health had been declining for some time -- the death of his father, whether impending or recent, was clearly on his mind when he wrote PIC. That's why the entire show, from start to finish, is about coping with death, grief, and mortality -- because Chabon was going through that at the time.

So, yes, S1 of Star Trek: Picard had thematic content, and refusing to use an easy plot device to de facto bring a long-dead character back with no meaningful consequences is a demonstration of thematic integrity.

Yep. And we never knew Will and Deanna had a son until the same episode we learned he had been long dead. And just as with Trip, it was a perfectly fine and lovely character development that made both of them (and Kestra) more textured individuals.

 

It took 23 years in the real world and 21 in-universe for McCoy to reveal that he pulled the plug on his ill father and let him die from a painful degenerative disease that was cured shortly thereafter. It just made McCoy a better character and the audience more thoroughly understood him after that.

 

Apparently not, because apparently only Worf could donate something to save a sick Romulan and none of the Vulcan crewmates.

 

Mourning is not Gene's vision.

 

1) Two thousand years is not enough time for two gene pools to speciate. Hell, fourteen thousand years wasn't enough time for the inhabitants of North and South America and inhabitants of Afro-Eurasia to speciate from one-another.

2) Dialogue from DIS: "Unification III" establishes Vulcans and Romulans as the same species:

"The Romulans were considered enemies in our time."

"And for a long time after. Until Ambassador Spock brought them back. You see, history had forgot this in your time, but the Vulcans and the Romulans were two tribes of the same species that went their separate ways. Your brother started the process of reunifying them."

 

Take it up with TNG then

 

I do. It was a dumb plot device to contrive a situation where only Worf could save a Romulan using standing sets. They should have a found a different such plot device. I'm glad DIS has retconned it and re-established the common-sense fact that two thousand years is not enough time for two gene pools to speciate.

 

Did we ever see any other Vulcans on the Enterprise, other than Taurik?

It would have been easier if, for example, Taurik had been off the ship (shore leave?) at the time and there were no other Vulcans on board. Although with a crew of over a thousand, this would be rather unlikely.

 

Dr. Selar.

Also there is a Vulcan family evacuating for saucer separation in "Encounter at Farpoint."

https://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01/farpoint_hd_180.jpg

 

Oh right, I forgot about Selar.

 

Haven't they played the "it's hard to tell them apart" card on multiple occasions when trying to pick a Vulcan out of a bunch of Romulans?
They mention the subtle differences between Vulcans and Romulans in the very episode

And mentions Vulcans being on board

And the compatibility issue