Post-Romulan Galaxy

[NSTrekfan]

Spock says "I am now a member of an endangered species." Just after the destruction of Vulcan. This would indicate that Vulcans were not endangered before. Having only 10,000 members would be enough, according to Spock, to threaten the viability of the Vulcan race. If adding 1,000,000 more Vulcans wouldn't improve things then the situation would have been critical and obvious to Vulcan medical researchers before the destruction of the planet.

We've seen small, rural colonies like Omicron Ceti III. We've seen well developed, urban colonies like Deneva. We've also seen well established underground colonies like Janus VI. Why must a Vulcan colony be undeveloped and unindustrialized? Since the new colony would be supporting the last survivors of Vulcan I'm sure the federation and Starfleet would put huge amounts of effort in order to have it up and running in very short order.

That they can't fit all the surviving Vulcans into existing Vulcan colonies does not mean there are no Vulcan colonies.

On 9/11 the town of Gander Newfoundland found itself with 39 transatlantic flights at its airport with a total of 6,600 passengers and crew. Gander has a population of 9,951. The town managed to house and feed the stranded passengers for three days until flights resumed. Surely, in the 23rd century it wouldn't be that difficuly to feed, clthe and house 10,000 people while a colony was established. I don't think you understand just how small a group of 10,000 people is. It's a little over half the capacity of Madison Square Garden. taking care of 10,000 people with advanced technology would not be that big of a problem.

 

[Sci]

Spock says "I am now a member of an endangered species." Just after the destruction of Vulcan. This would indicate that Vulcans were not endangered before. Having only 10,000 members would be enough, according to Spock, to threaten the viability of the Vulcan race. If adding 1,000,000 more Vulcans wouldn't improve things then the situation would have been critical and obvious to Vulcan medical researchers before the destruction of the planet.

I don't think you fully appreciate the difference between six million and six billion. Six billion, after all, is six thousand millions. Six million is literally 0.1% of six billion.

Even if there are six million Vulcans rather than 10,000, that's a lot of 99.9% of their population. That, combined with the loss of their native planet, makes them endangered, in both the purely biological sense and in the cultural sense.

In no way is the loss of 99.9% of a species's population not an existential threat to the remaining 0.1% of the original population.

We've seen small, rural colonies like Omicron Ceti III. We've seen well developed, urban colonies like Deneva.

As per Losing the Peace, Deneva was a separate Federation Member State, fully independent of United Earth, in its own right by the time it appeared in TOS, not a mere colony.

Why must a Vulcan colony be undeveloped and unindustrialized?

Given the overwhelming prevalence of underdeveloped colonies, given that ENT established that Vulcans generally aren't ones for leaving their home system, and given Spock's apparent belief that a new Vulcan capital was required, it seems reasonable to presume that Vulcan's colonies are most probably underdeveloped and inadequate to the chore of housing the survivors of the homeworld.

We also need to consider the possibility that Vulcan colonists, like colonists from many other cultures in real life, may have had specific political reasons for establishing themselves offworld. How many of them might be V'tosh ka'tur, and thus loathe to accept followers of mainstream cthia -- and thus colonies where cthia practitioners might not want to settle, in order to preserve their culture? Vulcans aren't homogenous, after all.

Since the new colony would be supporting the last survivors of Vulcan I'm sure the federation and Starfleet would put huge amounts of effort in order to have it up and running in very short order.

I'm sure they would. But they may well decide that it would be more efficient to build a new Vulcan capital from the ground up rather than trying to change an existing one.

That they can't fit all the surviving Vulcans into existing Vulcan colonies does not mean there are no Vulcan colonies.

On 9/11 the town of Gander Newfoundland found itself with 39 transatlantic flights at its airport with a total of 6,600 passengers and crew. Gander has a population of 9,951. The town managed to house and feed the stranded passengers for three days until flights resumed.

I'm reasonably certain that the survivors of the Vulcan homeworld will need to be housed for more than three days.

Surely, in the 23rd century it wouldn't be that difficuly to feed, clthe and house 10,000 people while a colony was established.

Well, according to Losing the Peace, it's pretty goddamn hard to feed, clothe, and house 10,000 people even in the 24th Century. (And that's to say nothing of how hard it is to run a real-world refugee camp, which is probably a more realistic comparison.)

People are much harder to take care of than you're giving them credit for.

I don't think you understand just how small a group of 10,000 people is. It's a little over half the capacity of Madison Square Garden.

Last time I heard about 10,000 people seeking shelter in a large stadium, the results weren't so pretty as you're implying.

 

[NSTrekfan]

In the aftermath of Destiny there were a LOT more than 10,000 refugees. There were not only entire planets wiped out and large population displaced but even the planets that surviced were heavily damaged.

The entire Federation is able to take care of 10,000 surviving Vulcans. They aren't competing with millions for food and shelter. They also don't have to take their place in line behind other construction projects.

The scale of the two events isn't even close. One deals with the loss of one planet and dealing with 10,000 survivors. The other had dozens of planets rendered uninhabitable, 60 billion dead and millions of refugees and injured.

 

[Sci]

In the aftermath of Destiny there were a LOT more than 10,000 refugees. There were not only entire planets wiped out and large population displaced but even the planets that surviced were heavily damaged.

And yet the camp featured in that novel was not particularly huge. It was located on Pacifica, a planet that was untouched by the Borg. And they had major problems taking care of the refugees.

 

[NSTrekfan]

In large part because the inhabitants didn't want them there. Dealing with an influx of 10,000 people sjouldn't be a problem. It's a fraction of what the host city of the Super Bowl deals with for instance. 10,000 really isn''t that big a number.

 

[Sci]

In large part because the inhabitants didn't want them there.

.... and we're thinking the 23rd Century Federation is going to be more welcoming than the 24th Century Federation because...?

 

[NSTrekfan]

Because there are many more places for them to go. For one thing, they're already on the Enterprise. The could stay in San Francisco and nobody would even noice they were there. In a city of that size, adding 10,000 people would be easy to do. You could even move the cadets out of the dorms at the Academy while the colony is being prepared.

 

[Sci]

Because there are many more places for them to go.

In a Federation that's maybe half the size of the 24th Century UFP and which is in the midst of vicious competition for territory with the Klingons and Romulans?

ETA: I'm not saying they wouldn't have somewhere else to go, but I think you're overestimating the ease with which 10,000 -- let alone how many thousands upon thousands of other Vulcans who may have just been off-world at the time of the attack without being permanent off-world residents -- people can be cared for. End ETA.

For one thing, they're already on the Enterprise.

Uh, no, a few dozen Vulcan elders were aboard the Enterprise. There's no evidence that any other Vulcans boarded the ship.

The could stay in San Francisco and nobody would even noice they were there. In a city of that size, adding 10,000 people would be easy to do. You could even move the cadets out of the dorms at the Academy while the colony is being prepared.

1. You're exaggerating when you say no one would notice.

2. What's your point? Last I checked, you seemed to be arguing that Vulcans wouldn't want to establish a new capital world if they already had other colonies. But that doesn't follow, for any number of reasons, up to and including perhaps the most basic:

Maybe the Vulcans just want to build a new world as their new capital.

ETA Again:

3. If your argument is that they could be housed with ease on Earth or Andor or wherever while New Vulcan is being built, and that there is therefore no reason they couldn't have been housed on a Vulcan colony, which therefore means that there must not have been any Vulcan colonies... bear in mind that housing people takes infrastructure. The second largest city on Earth surely has the infrastructure to do it. But if Vulcan colonies are anything like the P'Jem colony -- small, isolated, undeveloped -- there's no reason to think Vulcan colonies must have the same level of infrastructure needed to support 10,000 sudden new residents.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe Vulcan colonists already rejected logic, or are katra unbelievers. They may have no interest in associating with the Vulcans who escaped death when the homeworld was destroyed?

 

[NSTrekfan]

The current population of Metro San Francisco is about 7.5 million. What percentage of that is 10,000? Now think how big it will be in 300 years. Here's a reminder of how much more built up just the area around the academy is:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xihd/trekxihd0961.jpg

Seeing as San Francisco is a major city for Star Fleet and the Federation it would be likely that much of what we see in the above picture is housing for off planet vistors (hotel, etc). And that's just San Francisco.

The Federation could have a colony for 10,000 up and running in a matter of weeks once a planet is selected. After all, it just took Spock a few hours or days after returning to Earth to locate a suitable planet.

"I've already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony."

It can't have been much more than that because it happens before Kirk is promoted and his face is still scarred at that point.

That also tends to disprove your contention that every planet is up for grabs by the Feds, Klingons & Romulans. It's not like the Klingons would try to set up a colony at Alpha Centauri. Each of the governments has internal areas that are usually (i.e. not during a movie) much safer than some border would would be. The speed and ease with which Spock located a suitable planet seems to show that there's a number of planets that are not colonized yet.

We've heard of a grand total of 3 Vulcan colonies in canon:
Paan Mokar - Captured from the Andorians, not intended as a settlement.
P'Jem - Not an actual colony but a covert surveillance post.
Vulcanis Lunar Colony - The only Vulcan settlement referred to as a colony. Not information given but it could be within the Vulcan star system itself, perhaps a moon of another planet.

Not a lot of mention of Vulcan colonies for 45 years of stories.

Feel free to imagine planets with millions or billions of Vulcans that Spock simple forgot existed. Me, it makes more sense that for whatever reason the 10,000 are pretty much all that's left. They may have only gotten 100 off Vulcan proper and Spock knew of 9,900 that were off planet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I've always imagined a couple thousand people under an atmospheric dome when I've heard "Vulcanis Lunar Colony". Nothing big at all.

In older Treklit, we've had a few mixed race colonies featuring Vulcans, such as Nisus (which started as Vulcan Colony 9) from The IDIC Epidemic and Centarus (Alpha Centauri IV) from Crisis on Centaurus. But those novels aren't exactly part of the current novel continuity. Neither's STXI, for that matter.

I know Greg Cox's unreleased The Hazard of Concealing focused on Spock Prime and the new Vulcan colony. I'd be curious to know if he went with the 10,000 figure or not.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Feel free to imagine planets with millions or billions of Vulcans that Spock simple forgot existed. Me, it makes more sense that for whatever reason the 10,000 are pretty much all that's left. They may have only gotten 100 off Vulcan proper and Spock knew of 9,900 that were off planet.

But Spock doesn't belong to an endangered species. He says he does, but there are billions of other Vulcans alive safe and sound on Romulus a few light years away. In the NuTrek universe, the origins of the Romulans as Vulcan colonists have been known for a generation.

The population of Vulcans on the Vulcan homeworld may have been annihilated, but the population of Vulcans on Romulus is still thriving. No, it's not even a subspecies; two thousand years does not a subspecies make.

Why, then, does Spock talk about Vulcans being an endangered species?

There's a difference between millions and billions, BTW. Millions I can imagine, billions not.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Romulans aren't exactly Vulcans. They "share a common ancestry", but Romulans lack Vulcan psi powers and many of them have brow ridges which we've never seen on a Vulcan. Recall also that none of the Vulcans on the Enterprise-D were compatible blood doners for the Romulan in "The Enemy". 2000 years makes a difference (especially if you believe the Remans to be irradiated mutant offshoots, too)

 

[rfmcdpei]

Romulans aren't exactly Vulcans. They "share a common ancestry", but Romulans lack Vulcan psi powers and many of them have brow ridges which we've never seen on a Vulcan. Recall also that none of the Vulcans on the Enterprise-D were compatible blood doners for the Romulan in "The Enemy". 2000 years makes a difference (especially if you believe the Remans to be irradiated mutant offshoots, too)

Two thousand years makes some difference, yes, especially if the genetic tweaking done under the orders of the Ruling Queen that Diane Duane introduced in The Romulan War (and mentioned again in The Empty Chair) is taken into account. It doesn't make that much difference, though--Neanderthals and Denisova were separated from proto-homo sapiens sapiens for tens of thousands of years and seem to still have been quite interfertile. Going by the example of Saavik, she of mixed Romulan-Vulcan parentage, and of the other children at Hellguard, the Romulans aren't a separate species from their Vulcan parents.

(I'm not inclined to take the brow ridges or blood groupings as determinative. We haven't seen brow-ridged Vulcans, no; until Tuvok we didn't see black Vulcans, either. As for compatible blood donors in the Enterprise crew, how many Vulcan crew were there, and what does the Romulan gene pool look like? As a very small sample of the Vulcan population that went through a bottleneck so severe as to threaten Romulan survival, it's easy to come up with scenarios where the dominant Romulan blood groups--or the blood group of that crewmember--belonged to something vanishingly rare in the parent gene pool of Vulcan.)

The best evidence of a continued Vulcan-Romulan species identity can be found in the relationship of the two civilizations towards each other. The Romulans have made multiple efforts over several centuries to take over their parent civilization, everything from suborning the Vulcan High Command in the 22nd century to try to conquer Vulcan by stealth in the 24th century. But the Vulcans have reciprocated: the VHC was run by people who were willing to become puppets of the Romulans, I'd argue that Sela's plan to take Vulcan with two thousand troops only makes sense if there was a significant pro-Romulan faction on Vulcan, and the initiative for reunification seems to have been a Vulcan one. Vulcans and Romulans don't react to each other as separate species, but rather as people retaining close (if somewhat attenuated) biological, cultural, and historical ties.

The Remans, I grant you, are different, arguably a true offshoot species, what with the radiation-induced mutation and the hybridization with extremophiles and the even more pared-down gene pool. The Watraii might be somewhere in between. But the Romulans, so far as we can tell, are just a highly variant subpopulation of Vulcans, at very most as biologically distinctive from the population of 40 Eridani as Neanderthals and Denisova were from proto-homo sapiens sapiens, and culturally rather closer.

When NuSpock said that Vulcans were an endangered species, despite knowing about the Romulans and their relationship to Vulcans and Vulcan culture, he could only have been speaking only of "Vulcan" as a cultural grouping, not as a species. Romulus, as Pike yelled at Nero, was still doing quite fine.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Romulans lack Vulcan psi powers and many of them have brow ridges which we've never seen on a Vulcan.

The proto-Vulcans of Minktaka III ("Who Watches the Watchers?"), presumably a lost early group of colonists - or transplants by one of Trek's early advanced protector races? - have forehead ridges.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Romulans lack Vulcan psi powers and many of them have brow ridges which we've never seen on a Vulcan.

The proto-Vulcans of Minktaka III ("Who Watches the Watchers?"), presumably a lost early group of colonists - or transplants by one of Trek's early advanced protector races? - have forehead ridges.

Vulcanoids do seem to be fairly common.

Leaving aside the Mintakans, there seems to be a consensus in fanon that the Rigellians--as described here and somewhat differently and less plausibly here--are another offshoot of Vulcans contemporaneous with the post-Surak migration of the proto-Romulans. I can think of other Vulcanoid civilzations in the novels, like that of K'Trall in Blaze of Glory and those of the Sliwoni and the Romulan-leaning independent planet Quirinus in Catalyst of Sorrows. Can anyone think of others?

Many of these Vulcanoid cultures may be offshoots of Vulcan, roughly as removed from the Vulcan norm as Romulus. Maybe some are cultures which broke from Vulcan control more recently, relatively recent colonial ventures that diverged from the norms of 40 Eridani and set themelves up as independent. Others may well be Preserver transplants. And others might even date as far back as the devastated civilization of Arret a half-million years ago, though Vulcanoid populations separated that far back would have gone a long way towards speciating in that amount of time.

All this goes further against Spock's point: the Vulcan species survived Nero's destructon of the Vulcan homeworld easily, with only the culture of the homeworld's civilization suffering catastrophic damage. Who knows? If there are enough Surak-era Vulcanoid splinter cultures out there, the total genetic diversity of the remaining Vulcanoid population might not have diminished that significantly.

How do I interpret Spock's statements? Spock was concerned with the survival of the Vulcan civilization, developed by the Vulcanoids who remained in their home system and developed a very high civilization dominated by Vulcan logic. There were a significant number of other Vulcanoid civilizations elsewhere, whether Surak-era settlements, Preserver transplants, or more ancient thing still, but these civilizations saw themselves as independent entities and identified with Vulcan only to the extent that they wanted. (Presumably Vulcan, looking at these presumably non-logical peoples, chose not to identify itself with them.)

Thus, after Vulcan's destruction, those Vulcanoids who identified themselves as members of Vulcan civilization could speak honestly when they said that Vulcans were an endangered species, ignoring the other Vulcanoid populations which were not aligned with 40 Eridani's names, were independent of 40 Eridani, and tended not to interact that much. Only ten thousand people escaped Vulcan's surface in the vanishingly short time between the High Command's evacuation alert and Vulcan's implosion. Joining the few million Vulcans living elsewhere under the jurisdiction of the Vulcan government and elsewhere in the Federation, this rump population was faced with the existential challenge of developing a new homeworld, a new focus for their civilization. OldTrek Spock, venerable as any other and with knowledge of the future more than a century in advance, helped the provisional Vulcan leadership select the best candidate for new homeworld status from among the outposts and colonies remaining under Vulcan jurisdiction.

Thoughts?

 

[NSTrekfan]

Or NuSpock knew what he was talking about and for some reason Vulcans and Romulans are no longer naturally genetically compatible. Perhaps soemthing to do with radiation damage from the old ships the Romulans left Vulcan in. Or some sort of genetic alteration due to a virus on Romulus. It's not like the Vulcans would kidnap Romulan women to use their genetic matrial and wombs to repopulate the Vulcan race.

The simplest solution is simply to take the movie at it's word and actually have the Vulcans reduced to around 10,000 survivors. Let's not forget that the Vulcan masters seemed to be quite old. Depending on the male/female ratio of the survivors the situation may be just as dire as Spock says. Nothing says that it was 5,000 of each gender, all of breeding age.

 

[Sci]

Or NuSpock knew what he was talking about and for some reason Vulcans and Romulans are no longer naturally genetically compatible.

Absolute bullshit. Being separated for a mere 2,000 years is not enough time for speciation, and the two species are clearly interfertile, given both Saavik and Soleta. The Romulans and Vulcans are the same species but separate cultures.

The simplest solution is simply to take the movie at it's word and actually have the Vulcans reduced to around 10,000 survivors.

Except that that's not taking the movie at its word, that's taking the "10,000 survivors of the destruction of Vulcan" line and applying it more broadly than any other line in the film actually indicates.

 

[NSTrekfan]

"While the essence of our culture has been saved in the elders who now reside upon this ship...

I estimate no more than 10,000 have survived.

I am now a member of an endangered species."

And later

"In the face of extinction it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race."

Endangered species. Extinction. Two seperate times.

If the situation is as you claim and NuSpock still belives that the Vulcans are endangered then he's deluded and denying reality. What is he doing as second in command of a starship when he should be in therapy?


Besides, this is Star Trek not a biology lesson. If you can accept that an alien race looks like humans except for pointed ears then it's not a big jump to accept that 2,000 is more than enough time for them to drift far enough that they are non longer compatible genetically. Toss in a strange sounding alien disease or a double talk space warp and it fits just fine.

Saavik being half Romulan and Soleta are non-canon and not relevent for that reason.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Or NuSpock knew what he was talking about and for some reason Vulcans and Romulans are no longer naturally genetically compatible.

Absolute bullshit. Being separated for a mere 2,000 years is not enough time for speciation, and the two species are clearly interfertile, given both Saavik and Soleta. The Romulans and Vulcans are the same species but separate cultures.

It's Star Trek. Where any species can cross-breed.

The simplest solution is simply to take the movie at it's word and actually have the Vulcans reduced to around 10,000 survivors.

Except that that's not taking the movie at its word, that's taking the "10,000 survivors of the destruction of Vulcan" line and applying it more broadly than any other line in the film actually indicates.

If the Vulcans were facing a long term crisis, Spock wouldn't have been so eager to leave. The only reason he stays is because Spock Prime takes his place.