Plans for Sela

[tim0122]

Just finished Unification II in my massive franchise watch and was informed that it was Sela's final episode. It's rather an anti-climatic end after so much build up and only 3 1/2 appearances. Would've thought she and the Romulans would remain the big bad throughout the rest of season five, but nope.

Were there greater plans for her that were changed during production? If they really didn't plan to use her further, I'd think they'd have made her role in Unification bigger or just not include her at all and had Redemption II be her last appearance.

 

[Dukhat]

I’m sure there were more plans for the character, but nothing came to fruition.

 

[korblborp]

perhaps another missed opportunity for Picard, given all the romulan focus

 

[Turtletrekker]

After her total, complete and utter failures during the Klingon Civil War and the Romulan invasion of Vulcan, I imagine she was probably executed.

 

[CaptChris42]

Novels have her plan to take over the Tal Shiar, and then the empire, of course.

ST: Online also has her fair... a lot more successfully, than in the books, too, considering.

And her story is still unfolding, in IDW comics - including her revolt vs her father.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

As a character, I think Sela would have been better suited to a more arc-focused writing than TNG tended to. If there were some ongoing story, Sela could have factored in more. Especially considering that despite her origin, her use in the show proper never moved out of "generic Romulan commander."

Hell, in Unification, she could have had a bigger focus, paralleling her against Spock, the hybrid in a society that looks down on them for their human heritage. Instead, nothing about her being this specific character mattered.

Personally, I blame Rick Berman - when Denise came to them about the idea of playing Tasha's daughter, she'd wanted to be Tasha and Castillo's daughter. Instead, Rick Berman made Sela into the daughter of Tasha and her Romulan captor, so reducing Tasha, already a victim of her homeworld infamous rape gangs, to being held captive by the Romulans and coerced into sex. Saying nothing of negating her avoiding that "meaningless" death that Yesterday's Enterprise made such a big deal about. So the idea ended up being hijacked, rewritten, and having no particular end goal for what having this specific character would end up meaning.

The character ended up going untapped because, with no intent and no one pushing in the writer's room, or, as would be the case over on DS9, pushing back against Rick Berman's efforts at "creative" decisions, no one was all that invested in trying to explore her further.

 

[Mojochi]

After her total, complete and utter failures during the Klingon Civil War and the Romulan invasion of Vulcan, I imagine she was probably executed.

I'll go even further, & suggest that the Romulan big wigs pulled an "Admiral Jarok" on her, & deliberately gave her the rope to hang herself. Knowing she had more to prove than anyone one else in the empire, they probably tired of her overambitious vendetta against Starfleet, & used it against her... figuring the best case scenario was she'd pull it off or make a mess for the UFP, & at worst she'd destroy herself.

It's feasible (from their perspective) that undermining the Klingon/Starfleet alliance was a decent use to put her to, to rest her loyalties. Her mother did in fact get captured defending Klingons. So brainwashing Geordi, & backing The Khitomer traitor's family, in their rise to power, makes sense for how they'd use her. That she failed miserably at both should've doomed her already

But the Vulcan Invasion? That had no chance of working at all. It may be one of the dumbest strategies ever on Star Trek lol. It's a UFP core world, for God's sake. I think they just wanted to get her killed, & use her to expose some homegrown dissidents, in the process. They had to have just executed her after a 3rd strike.

 

[somebuddyX]

I don't know what they should have exactly done with Sela but I feel like it should have been more. The idea of the actions from a collapsed alternate timeline coming back to haunt the regular timeline is fascinating to me.

 

[E-DUB]

I always thought that Sela should defect, having found out that her "origin story" was fabricated and that she was actually the product of a Romulan attempt to breed a Romulan/Human hybrid who would serve the Empire as a Spock equivalent.

 

[Riley]

No offense to Denise Crosby, but I always hated the idea of Sela, regardless of her parentage. Her existence undermines the dramatic reason that Tasha wanted to go back with the Enterprise-C: to have a "meaningful" death. Instead, she survives and is captured, etc? It doesn't work and it was a weak attempt at finding a way to bring Crosby back. I also hated the notion that Tasha's death wasn't meaningful, but that's a different thread entirely.

I would have preferred Crosby returning in a different role entirely, maybe as a new Klingon or Cardassian character with no ties to Tasha Yar.

 

[korblborp]

or pull a harry :P

 

[CoveTom]

The character ended up going untapped because, with no intent and no one pushing in the writer's room, or, as would be the case over on DS9, pushing back against Rick Berman's efforts at "creative" decisions, no one was all that invested in trying to explore her further.

Which gets back to my theory, often rebuffed here on TrekBBS, that Michael Piller was far overrated as a showrunner.

 

[Tomalak]

To assess Pillar, you need to look at what he inherited and the state of play before he joined. Safe to say he was a big hit.

As for Sela, I feel her best moments were the intriguing voice in The Mind's Eye and that reveal in Redemption 1.

Once the character is unmasked and introduced proper, she becomes significantly less interesting. Effectively making Tasha a baddie wasn't a bad idea, but "generic Romulan commander with a grudge against Picard" wasn't it.

Unification, especially Part 2, is a bit of a let-down, but the scene where Data suggests she might want a different career is very good.

I think the character had run her course at that point. There may have been scope to bring her back in a deflection storyline, or possibly even as the Romulan commander in Face of the Enemy. But they'd done the former with Jarok, and Carolyn Seymour was much better in the latter.

 

[DarKush]

For me, after the shock of seeing her at the end of Redemption Part 1, it started going downhill. It stretched credulity that a half-human Romulan, even the daughter of a general, would wield the power she had in Redemption and Unification.

It was great seeing Crosby again and I do wish they had found ways to bring her back on TNG because I wanted Picard to have a recurring Romulan nemesis. Though I liked Donatra, I would've been fine with Sela in that role in Nemesis and her having a change of heart would've been a nice full circle moment. I also would've been okay with her in the Vadic role in Picard's third season.

 

[FredH]

I was always kind of disappointed they didn’t find some way to do a gradual… not “redemption arc”, but a way to gradually “not-villain” Sela and bring her somewhat back into the family. And for that matter, to get her to reflect on what the Romulans did to her mother and finally turn away from them.

 

[Mudd]

Piller was just about the perfect showrunner for TNG. I don't know that anyone else could have stepped in when he did and got the series on track. There were minefields to navigate and big problems to handle, and he did all of that in a fashion that made TNG into the series that it ultimately became.

When Sela was conceived, it was with one mandate - bring back Denise Crosby again, for the sake of sweeps ratings. And the decision to bring her back was not made in Piller's office.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

The thing is, there WAS room to do something more with Sela, even in Unification - compare her against Spock, the outsider to a culture where she has to be more "one of them" than those around her who were born fully into that culture. Explore THAT part of her, that would have been uniquely Sela, rather than just "generic Romulan commander."

Honestly, in hindsight, I really wish that TNG had built more up with the Romulans by way of giving Sela (and probably Tomalok before her) more focus and portrayals than just "enemy bad guy." As much as the Borg were TNG's big bad that the show created (unlike the Ferengi), the Romulans probably were the more manageable regular enemy, and Sela could have been a way to explore that fact. But TNG just wasn't really built for that, with the mandates that Roddenberry came in with and then Berman rigidly imposed on them further.

TNG probably wouldn't have become what it did without Piller. Sela going nowhere honestly isn't something I'm putting on him, considering that Rick Berman seemed to be the one who was just not really interested in doing things with the character - I mean, Denise Crosby seemed willing to make time to come back, but if the guy at the head of the franchise isn't endorsing a return, you're pretty much stuck at that point.

 

[Qonundrum]

Yeah, looking up the novels is best. They might have done her better than the cartoon fluff that "Unification II" loaded her with. A shame as Sela had great potential to be a recurring threat, especially with Tomalak gone incognito over at Babylon 5 and all.

But, she had a great and unique origin that was brilliant that ultimately descended into levels of camp approaching "Lost in Space". Later Romulan episodes could have mentioned she was sentenced to death, or given false information, etc, to write her out if the intent was to only have her back for a sweeps week "extravaganza". Even her senseless death by Armus wasn't anything as hokey as that quiet ending, never mind some of the scenes, such as:

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More camp than at a tent and hunting surplus store, right down to even Data feeling out of character and that's before the neck pinch nudge-nudge wink moment because all the TOS fans who disliked TNG at the time said "Data is just a copy of Spock"). Where's the cartoon fowl yelling "beep beep" as they leave at the end?

Not to worry, it gets better:

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Cool green lamp, though, and I'll admit I chuckled when Sela mentioned "unnecessarily long words" (good acting, not the corny scene unworthy of TNG (even during season 1, which was never as outright ha-ha-bonk like this). That aside, Sela was menacing before, needed to be menacing here to keep the sweeps week extravaganza from imploding (which it did as the story received mixed reviews on original airing) but now she may as well be doing bits on "Laugh-In" as the script should be taking itself seriously if it's supposed to be as epic as all that... Sela isn't the only character turned into a prop and/or a butt of a joke.

Add in "cowboy diplomacy" homage to TOS, and "Legacy" did that a heck of a lot better too.

Speaking of "Laugh-In":

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Course, that's tons better than this episode regardless, but I digress.