How about a super secret sci-fi cloaking suit...oh wait a minute, Starfleet already has them...
...And all they require to work is that one erects a control building and installs three holoprojector thingamabobs on the roof. How about dividing
that in tiny pieces and luring Picard to pick them up and assemble it all?
Forget the Romulans then, the Remans followed him. They may have their own ships, or could easily board Romulan ones and take control, thus giving Shinzon a small fleet to command.
Remans were
slaves - no way they would have ships of their own. And the Romulan fleet appeared to be still going strong after Shinzon's coup. Indeed, it appeared the Romulan fleet had organized Shinzon's coup in the first place. The only way Shinzon would get a private fleet of his own would be by hijacking from his benefactors. Why fight your friends when you have enemies to deal with?
Shinzon was more a puppet than a puppeteer. His masters humored him as long as he wielded the thalaron weapon. Why they had given it to him, or allowed him to keep it, is the real question here. Shinzon could have done all sorts of secret things for his rebellion without the help or knowledge of his Romulan allies, but creating the thalaron weapon was not one of those things.
I sort of like the idea used in the novels - that Shinzon obtained the technology (and B-4) from the Tal'shiar as part of the Dominion war fighting, during the confusion of a campaign that involved a Tal'shiar facility. But while he might have been able to stash it away for a while, he wouldn't have been in a position to exploit it in secret. He would need lots and lots of Romulan support to get the
Scimitar built, and the thalaron dispenser thing would be pretty obvious to anybody involved in the construction.
After showing the Romulan people how easy it was to destroy the entire Romulan Senate, in mere seconds, he proceeded to do something that the Romulan government had attempted to do several times over the years - but had failed at, miserably, every time: destroy Earth.
Calling it a demonstration doesn't give it internal logic yet.
Who would be impressed? The Romulan people already were; the Romulan fleet had indicated it would not be.
Yet Shinzon wanted it to be his last act. Even after coming to grips with the fact that he wasn't getting Picard's blood and would die soon, he ordered the course set to Earth, declaring "Some ideas (ideals?) are worth dying for".
So we're still hunting for an ideological rationale for Shinzon's actions. What
was his declared ideology? The only thing he ever confessed to was that he wanted to liberate the Remans. Destroying Romulus would have helped with that, certainly, although it might not have been what the Remans wanted, as it would have left them stuck in their hellhole of a world. Thalaron could destroy Romulans without destroying Romulus, though, as demonstrated by the assassination of the Senate...
So let's assume Shinzon lied about helping the Remans. Perhaps he really liked those guys - but felt he had already helped them enough? What possible other ideology could he be following? Even something as basic as "Complete the mission" doesn't sound good, as he evidently wasn't any good at keeping promises...
Timo Saloniemi
