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Post-Romulan Galaxy

Sorry, people teleporting, with or without technological help IS fantasy. There's many fantasy elements in Trek (human/alien cross-breeding, ray guns that make tons of material simply disappear with no ash, debris, etc, faster than light travel) along with many parts that are scientifically based. That doesn't make it one or the other, it makes it it's own thing. A thing called trek. Other shows have different mixes and fall elsewhere along the Science-Fantasy axis.

I'll be taking a break from this topic for a while. We don't seem to be making progress one way or the other.
 
Sorry, people teleporting, with or without technological help IS fantasy.

No, not as the term is formally defined as a label for a literary genre. If it is explained as the result of magic or supernatural forces, then it is fantasy. If it is explained as the result of conjectural technology or physics, even if that technology or physics is imaginary, then it is science fiction. If it is explained in the context of a reasonably plausible and detailed theoretical framework, such as extrapolating from the real-life research on quantum teleportation or wormholes and taking into account all the significant physical and technical issues that would have to be dealt with such as circumventing the Uncertainty Principle, compensating for differences in velocity and altitude, etc., then that is hard science fiction.

Whether it's actually possible is absolutely irrelevant. We're talking about fiction, about conjectural realities.
 
I'm starting to think NSTrekfan should provide some examples of science fiction with absolutely no "fantasy" elements...
 
From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:
Definition of SCIENCE FICTION

: fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component
 
Also, it's important to distinguish between a single trope and the story it's part of. "Teleportation is fantasy" isn't a valid statement because "teleportation" is a trope, a story device, rather than a story in and of itself. That trope can be incorporated into a fantasy context or a science fiction context, and that shapes how the trope is expressed and dealt with.

In the case of something like Nightcrawler in X-Men, superhero comics have long been a liberal mashup of fantasy and science-fiction tropes, so it's hard to pin them down into a single genre. But Nightcrawler's teleportation has often been handled in a scientifically literate manner, particularly in Chris Claremont's work. It was established that he conserves momentum when he teleports, and thus he can't teleport safely to the ground if he's falling from a great height, since he'd still arrive with the same velocity. The BAMF sound of his teleportation was established as the sound of air rushing to fill the gap or being displaced by his arrival. These are good, solid bits of scientific thinking, even if the underlying trope is fanciful. You can't draw an absolute line between the categories.
 
"Teleportation is fantasy" isn't a valid statement because "teleportation" is a trope, a story device, rather than a story in and of itself. That trope can be incorporated into a fantasy context or a science fiction context, and that shapes how the trope is expressed and dealt with.

In the 60s, a spray hypo like McCoy's was a fanciful trope, but haven't they actually perfected this now?
 
This has been a very interesting discussion, and I'd love to see more of it, but shouldn't this be in its own thread?

Personally, I see Star Trek as soft science fiction, since the stories are told through that viewpoint, but some are harder than others. B5 was a blend of SF (ships and gravity) and science-fantasy (biology and medicine) but it worked for the most part.

On the subject of psychic abilities, I believe that real abilities do exist but we don't have the technology to adequately define/prove their existence beyond a reasonable doubt. Perhaps there's a neurotransmitter responsible for such things and a corresponding section of the brain that is otherwise dormant, but without something like the neurological tranceiver seen in ST over the years to detect it, we'll never know.
 
In the 60s, a spray hypo like McCoy's was a fanciful trope, but haven't they actually perfected this now?

Actually jet injectors have been around since 1960. At the time of TOS, they were an uncommon, "futuristic," but very real technology.


Personally, I see Star Trek as soft science fiction, since the stories are told through that viewpoint, but some are harder than others.

Yup. It's soft by the standards of prose SF, but toward the hard side by the standards of film and television SF. And as I've said, it's been harder under some producers than others.
 
Getting this back on topic for a moment.... 2387 with Romulus gone and the Empire probably in shambles, and with Spock gone, and seemingly martyred for his cause, wouldn't this be a good time for the re-unification of Romulans and Vulcans to begin to rake place in earnest??
 
Getting this back on topic for a moment.... 2387 with Romulus gone and the Empire probably in shambles, and with Spock gone, and seemingly martyred for his cause, wouldn't this be a good time for the re-unification of Romulans and Vulcans to begin to rake place in earnest??

Some might think so, but I imagine it would meet with passionate resistance from the surviving Romulans. With their nation weakened, they'd be hostile to anything that seemed like an attempt to assimilate them back into Vulcan culture and eradicate their Romulan identity.
 
In the 60s, a spray hypo like McCoy's was a fanciful trope, but haven't they actually perfected this now?

Actually jet injectors have been around since 1960. At the time of TOS, they were an uncommon, "futuristic," but very real technology.
I actually had one of them used on me when I was getting medical treatment in Seattle 5 or 6 years ago. It was pretty much just a puff of air and no real pain or anything. (If I remember it correctly, like I said it's been several years.)
 
We haven't heard a lot about Romulan colonies. According to Memory Beta there's only 3 mentions in all televised Trek:

Chaltok IV (Time and again) - Weapons research
Carraya IV (Birthright) - Prison Planet
Unroth III - (Strange Bedfellows) - Colony

It may be that there's about the same number of Romulans left in the prime universe as there are Vulcans in the NuUnivers, about 10,000. Perhaps the Romulans simply conquered planets and prevented any of their subject races from developing space flight. Drop some orbital stations around the planets and simply beam up the materials needed. If there's a revolt, a few shots from orbit would put an end to it pretty quickly. Romulans may not exist in large numbers anywhere other than Romulus itself.

It would be an interesting switch between the universes, 10,000 Vulcans in one and 10,000 Romulans in the other. It may not be so much reunification as assimilation.
 
I did think the destruction of Romulus and Vulcan had an interesting symmetry. Maybe even as part of the "timeline repairing itself" thing (from the novelization) - with 129 years' warning, Alt-Romulus or it's people might now survive. But just like the crew of the Enterprise were destined to unite no matter what, perhaps a planet of Vulcanoids had to die...
 
It also supports the idea of few Romulan colonies as Vulcan didn't have any of significant size in the prime universe either. Vulcanoids are very much homebodies it appears.
 
We haven't heard a lot about Romulan colonies. According to Memory Beta there's only 3 mentions in all televised Trek:

Chaltok IV (Time and again) - Weapons research
Carraya IV (Birthright) - Prison Planet
Unroth III - (Strange Bedfellows) - Colony

Within the context of the Trek Lit universe, which I believe is what we're talking about in this thread, there have been multiple Romulan colony worlds established. We know the Romulan Star Empire had enough member worlds that half of them could split off and form a separate Imperial Romulan State.



It may be that there's about the same number of Romulans left in the prime universe as there are Vulcans in the NuUnivers, about 10,000.

Word of God from screenwriter Bob Orci is that the 10,000 figure referred to survivors who escaped Vulcan itself, people who were on Vulcan when the disaster started and managed to get away before the end. It's not meant to be the total number of Vulcans remaining throughout the universe.


It also supports the idea of few Romulan colonies as Vulcan didn't have any of significant size in the prime universe either. Vulcanoids are very much homebodies it appears.

We don't know they don't exist just because they aren't mentioned. We know the Vulcans do have a presence on other worlds, such as the P'Jem monastery. Sure, it was a secret listening post, but how could they effectively pass it off as a civilian site if they didn't have actual civilian populations on other worlds?
 
We haven't heard a lot about Romulan colonies. According to Memory Beta there's only 3 mentions in all televised Trek:

Chaltok IV (Time and again) - Weapons research
Carraya IV (Birthright) - Prison Planet
Unroth III - (Strange Bedfellows) - Colony

Within the context of the Trek Lit universe, which I believe is what we're talking about in this thread, there have been multiple Romulan colony worlds established. We know the Romulan Star Empire had enough member worlds that half of them could split off and form a separate Imperial Romulan State.



It may be that there's about the same number of Romulans left in the prime universe as there are Vulcans in the NuUnivers, about 10,000.

Word of God from screenwriter Bob Orci is that the 10,000 figure referred to survivors who escaped Vulcan itself, people who were on Vulcan when the disaster started and managed to get away before the end. It's not meant to be the total number of Vulcans remaining throughout the universe.


It also supports the idea of few Romulan colonies as Vulcan didn't have any of significant size in the prime universe either. Vulcanoids are very much homebodies it appears.

We don't know they don't exist just because they aren't mentioned. We know the Vulcans do have a presence on other worlds, such as the P'Jem monastery. Sure, it was a secret listening post, but how could they effectively pass it off as a civilian site if they didn't have actual civilian populations on other worlds?

If there were Romulan colonies wouldn't the supernova take out a bunch of them as well? And Spock didn't detonate his red matter thingy in time. Perhaps he didn't stop it as he had hoped. This thing was powerful enough to threaten the galaxy. If your calculations are just a little off it could still take out any number of other systems.


Robert Orci can say whatever he likes but if it ain't on the screen, it doesn't count. I remember reading a chat transcript at Trekmovie when he said that they moved Delta Vega. Dumb idea but does that mean we have to listen to him about that as well?

Besides, why would Spock belive himself to be a member of an endangerd species if of ther Vulcan colonies still exist? And why would Spock Prime have to find a suitable planet for the 10,000 if there's already colonies in place? "You just lost you planet? We're going to drop you here and have you make a new start rather than letting you go to Surak IV where they have a nice colony already in place." 10,000 people isn't that much when added to an existing colony.
 
Within the context of the Trek Lit universe, which I believe is what we're talking about in this thread, there have been multiple Romulan colony worlds established. We know the Romulan Star Empire had enough member worlds that half of them could split off and form a separate Imperial Romulan State.

In fairness, the composition of the populations of these worlds by species isn't known. I'd be ready to believe that there are some multispecies ones. Rough Beasts of Empire mentions a Terixan species (one of the many species Tomalak notes is stunned by the attractiveness of the Tzenkethi) and Spock later visits the largely Romulan capital of Terix II. Apartheid is probably a Romulan modus operandi on many worlds.

Word of God from screenwriter Bob Orci is that the 10,000 figure referred to survivors who escaped Vulcan itself, people who were on Vulcan when the disaster started and managed to get away before the end. It's not meant to be the total number of Vulcans remaining throughout the universe.

And the billions of Vulcans affliated with Romulan culture living on Romulus and its associated worlds lived, too. "Romulan" is a cultural category, not a biological one.

We know the Vulcans do have a presence on other worlds, such as the P'Jem monastery. Sure, it was a secret listening post, but how could they effectively pass it off as a civilian site if they didn't have actual civilian populations on other worlds?

The novelverse--well, pretty much everything that cannot be cited by Memory Alpha as authoritative--identifies a history of Vulcan migrations from the homeworld dating back millennia. The Rigellian Vulcanoids are only the most prominent ones.

Hmm. I wonder about the Mintakans as well.
 
If there were Romulan colonies wouldn't the supernova take out a bunch of them as well?

The problem with that is that the Romulan Star Empire circa the late 24th century is a vast polity. Maps from Star Trek Star Charts are available here.

Basically, in the case of a supernova explosion threatening the galaxy going off near Romulus and expanding to consume the entire Star Empire, you'll also have destroyed all of the core worlds of the United Federation of Planets, including Earth, Vulcan, and I'm pretty sure also Deneva and Vega. If that happened, then Spock's exclusive focus on the destruction visited on the single heavily populated world of Romulus seems unusual. Why wouldn't he have mentioned that Earth, too, was consumed by Hobus?

Robert Orci can say whatever he likes but if it ain't on the screen, it doesn't count. I remember reading a chat transcript at Trekmovie when he said that they moved Delta Vega. Dumb idea but does that mean we have to listen to him about that as well?
Why not?

Besides, why would Spock belive himself to be a member of an endangerd species if of ther Vulcan colonies still exist?
Spock was in shock after the annihilation of his homeworld and the death of his mother who fell to her death just as they were on the brink of being rescued as their fingertips touched. A few hours later, after trying to choke Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise as everyone watched in horror, he then made out with Uhura on the transporter pad before beaming over to the Narada. His objectivity at the time, based on what happened and based on his behaviour, is quite open to question.

One problem with disputes over canon like this is that it is terribly easy to adopt overly literal interpretations of statements without reference to the plausibility of the statements, the likelihood of the speaker(s) being unbiased observers with full knowledge of what happened, etc, these questionable literal interpretations in turn being identified as the only possibilities.

A very strong indication that Spock was wrong lies in the fact that dozens of light years away on the planet Romulus (and likely many others), billions of people descended from migrants from Vulcan who emigrated to try to preserve an idealized version of Vulcan and speak languages similar to standard Vulcan and who are interfertile with Vulcans still thrive. The cultural grouping of "Vulcan" might be threatened, but the Vulcanoid species is not.

And why would Spock Prime have to find a suitable planet for the 10,000 if there's already colonies in place? "You just lost you planet? We're going to drop you here and have you make a new start rather than letting you go to Surak IV where they have a nice colony already in place." 10,000 people isn't that much when added to an existing colony.
That's actually a good point.

Perhaps if there is a cultural disinclination towards extraplanetary colonization everywhere, it is not so much Vulcanoid as simply Vulcan. Every colonial empire of any duration I can think of has had, along with subjugated native populations, very substantial migrations of citizens from the core territories to the newly conquered peripheries.

Back to the Romulans.

Many Romulan colonizable worlds will be uninhabited or only thinly inhabited, ready to become Romulan colonies. Many colonizable worlds will already be densely populated, having relatively smaller Romulan populations, whether a thin patina of rulers or a large body of Romulan settlers functionally similar to South African whites under apartheid. With the Romulans' aggressively expansionistic attitude and territorialism, the idea that there wouldn't be plenty of Romulan colonists ready to leave the adopted homeworld and pioneer empty worlds and migrate to peopled ones over any number of centuries just isn't plausible.
 
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I did think the destruction of Romulus and Vulcan had an interesting symmetry. Maybe even as part of the "timeline repairing itself" thing (from the novelization) - with 129 years' warning, Alt-Romulus or it's people might now survive. But just like the crew of the Enterprise were destined to unite no matter what, perhaps a planet of Vulcanoids had to die...

It sucks, truly.

just like the crew of the Enterprise were destined to unite no matter what, perhaps a planet of Vulcanoids had to die...

And every Pike ends up in a mobility chair.

Was it the same? Leaving aside Pike's ability to function somewhat independently, speaking and moving hands and whatnot, the chair could as easily be a temporary crutch as he recovers from Nero's tortures as a permanent fixture of his life.
 
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