We see the assassination of the Romulan senate, and it's obvious Shinzon has seized power in alliance with a Romulan political faction. We don't really need to see the nitty gritty of how that went down, because it's not what the story's about. Same with the cloning. What's important is Shinzon's existence, not the details of the cloning program.
But those details would be vital in establishing why these things dictate a specific course of action for Shinzon. If we are free to just take our own interpretation of what happened (as is good and well in most cases), there is no dictation there, and the reasons for Shinzon's actions and inactions must come from Shinzon himself.
Say, somebody kills the Senators and the Praetor. Then we learn Shinzon is the new Praetor. What happened? Did Shinzon wait till the thalaron dust cleared, then beam in and say "I did this - behold, and kneel!". Or did the two Fleet goons and Tal'Aura rub their hands together, then say "Should we call down our puppet now?", nod and wink, and pull out the PADD that would prompt Shinzon to say what he was expected to?
Either way would be telling. And dramatically bad at this early stage of the game. But we should learn
eventually, to understand what makes Shinzon tick - much the way we finally learn what makes his face tick.
Shinzon did take action against his impending death - that's why he kidnapped Picard, after all. It was after this plan failed that Shinzon became suicidally reckless.
But the thing is, we get no rationale for why Shinzon does
not take that action as a matter of priority. He stalls at
every stage, even after finally getting Picard kidnapped. Indeed, Viceroy has to drag him to the treatment, just after the nick of time.
There could be many reasons there for the stalling. Perhaps Shinzon doesn't want to see Picard dead after all. Perhaps he fears what the life-saving treatment will do to his own body or psyche. All sorts of things could be hinted at - but the writers fail to do the hinting, in a situation where the internal motivations of the villain are paramount and the plot circumstances are of no help to the audience.
Ramming the Scimitar made sense because the Enterprise was out of options.
It's the psychology of the situation that is a complete waste of time and dialogue. Picard rams; the supposedly important fact that he "understands Shinzon" plays zero role there.
His toying with Picard et al. does seem like a waste of time, but attacking within the nebula was a smart decision.
How so? It offers him no advantage whatsoever. Picard has already communicated everything he can to Starfleet. The reinforcements won't be delayed in the slightest by taking the fight into the nebula - they know the course of the E-E, and have been told to wait (supposedly because crossing the border on any pretense would be much worse for Earth and the UFP than letting Picard die).
All that Shinzon achieves by waiting until the Bassen Rift is yet another delay in his quest to kill Picard and save his own life. Which is such a major theme in his actions that it really should get some sort of an explanation.
That is a good question. Maybe it's because Shinzon is such a great leader, or because Remans have been bred to be servile. (In genre fiction, this is a problem with loyal goons in general, that they stay obedient to villains who are going to get them killed.)
Has anything actually changed for the Remans? They are supposedly let to bear arms and wander about the galaxy often enough (the "shock troops" thing), yet that doesn't give them the power to dictate their own destiny. There would appear to be mechanisms in place to stop an armed rebellion, and those might work no matter who is in command of the Remans.
For all we know, the slave mines still operate, only with a few Remans now replacing the few Romulans as the whip-wielders, while sprouting propaganda that the slaves now "work for their own good" and "are free" and whatnot. The men of Spartacus still had to row their galley...
I don't think it was constructed in secret by the rebels. Remember, Shinzon was a respected commander in the Romulan fleet. The ship was built for the Romulan fleet, they gave Shinzon its command, and then he used it to seize power.
Indeed - a "secret base" would be a given as Romulan bases go (heck, the heroes spelled out for us that Remus is full of secret weapons factories), and would tell us nothing about who was holding secrets from whom. The actual point of interest here is the timeline...
The rebels might well have dutifully built the ship first, as meek and faithful slaves, and become rebels only after that, hijacking the ship and prompting a Romulan political faction to take advantage and sign a deal with them. Or the conspiring Romulans might have ordered the building in order to create the circumstances for a plausible slave rebellion they could exploit. In the latter case at least, the Romulans would have been in a position to choose the weakest possible Spartacus, the one they could control the best - and obviously they would choose the one with the weak human blood in him.
These are plot twists we don't need spelled out for us. It's Shinzon's personal whims that call for justification, and they don't seem to be dictated by the fact that he's a Romulan tool (this would limit his options all right), or by the fact that he's leading Remans (this would limit him even worse - how to please the crowd and remain in control?). They are just whims.
The use of Thaleron radiation reminds me of that earlier war that involved "primitive atomic weapons". Maybe the Romulans have a thing for doomsday weapons that use dangerous radiation?
Indeed. We could argue the Romulans see themselves as the perpetual underdogs, and therefore are in the habit of grasping at very sharp straws. They don't believe in frontal attacks (except when they can outsource them to their enemies or their slaves), but they do believe in the use of excessive decisive force at low personal risk.
Nothing in the plot as such suggests that thalaron would have been a Shinzon thing, or a Reman thing. It's a common-knowledge thing that just happens to be wielded by Shinzon, perhaps at the behest of his true masters.
Although the novels would have us think otherwise, and their take is halfway plausible, too. Shinzon grabs power (by whichever means), and (thanks to his new Praetorial powers or his ruthless military cunning, pick your novel) gains access to some of the secret vaults of dirty things that the Star Empire naturally has everywhere. The vaults contain the secrets of thalaron, the full dirt on the cloning project, and possibly also the failed attempt at building a copy of a Soongian android... And Shinzon, that old warhammer, sees a bunch of nails and starts banging together a plan. It may seem harebrained, but only because it utilizes the specific elements he has access to!
Timo Saloniemi
