Romulan discovery

[Peter the Younger]

4. If the Romulan and Vulcan languages are similar (a new bit of canon introduced in this movie), then that might change the scenario a great deal. Now we have to believe that nobody - human or Vulcan - saw the Romulans' faces or heard their language in all the years between the Earth-Romulan war and Balance of Terror.

I thought about this one a while back, when the NX-01 encountered the Romulans. My thought was this: clearly, the Romulans of this era seem uber-paranoid about anyone finding out who they are, so maybe, in addition to their "everyday" Vulcan dialect, they have a super-sneaky coded language to be used in communications and/or around outsiders, which bears no resemblance to anything. It would seem way too much trouble if it were any other species, but I could totally see the Romulans doing this.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

He later says "IF they are an ancient offshoot of the Vulcan race, that makes them all the more dangerous and we must prevent them from reporting what they've learned about us".

Notice...."IF".

Even then he wasn't absolutely sure, so at the time at least HE hadn't already known. (Unless he was...umm..."exaggerating"?)

But why would he equate being an "offshoot of the Vulcan race" with being "dangerous?" That's the line that made me think the anti-Surak defectors were rumored among Vulcans to have survived - but not among other cultures, who probably wouldn't give a flip about somebody else's half-assed legends.

Anti-Surak defectors would be inherently dangerous to the whole Federation for ideological reasons. Just any old random lost Vulcan colony wouldn't necessarily pose a threat. Spock suspected more than he was letting on; but I doubt he could have had any evidence either. I think he was making an educated guess that turned out to be right.

As for this movie, stuff left out includes Nero's ship (disabled by the Kelvin crashing into it) being captured by Klingons, and Nero and his men spending 25 years as prisoners and slaves. My guess is that during that time the Klingons found out who they'd captured, and word spread.

Ah ha! That explains it perfectly, and they left it on the cutting room floor!!! This has been driving me nuts. I knew something was missing.

Any Romulans who were captured for any length of time could be medically examined would be the dead giveaway that they were indeed related to Vulcans and most likely their ideology could be deduced that would link them to their ancestors. Or maybe the Vulcans would simply know how rare it had been that any Vulcans would have left to found colonies. Info about the Romulans would eventually make its way back to Federation intelligence agencies and the Vulcans would make the final deduction based on the evidence.

 

[pookha]

we also have the situation that the kelvin scans are better then what they had during the romulan war.