Romulans through the years question

[Kegek]

Possibly. It would certainly clarify what Nanclus' role is; i.e., to sabotage Sarek. His motivations are obvious (continued war between the two benefits the Romulans) but I don't recall it actually spelled out what the hell he did.

 

[Timo]

One possibility is that he promised Romulan aid to the Federation in a war against Klingons - explaining why he was a welcome insider on super-secret Federation military briefings!

Such aid would make the likes of Cartwright believe in victory where there formerly had been the balance of a cold war. Although of course, such aid would never truly be forthcoming.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[zenophite]

well, ignoring TOS gave us the ridged klingons. In a similar vein perhaps we can ignore Berman-trek and bring back the smooth romulans with non-bowl haircuts.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Don't forget the Mintakans of "Who Watches the Watchers?" (TNG): proto-Vulcans. With ridges!

 

[Kegek]

Oh, I haven't. They certainly support the idea that the ridges aren't unique to the Romulans. With the existence of the Mintakans, and a vague allusion in "Return to Tomorrow" about the Vulcans probably being a race seeded by Sargon's people, the interrelationships may be more complex than we realise.

And I'm quite interested as to how Abrams' film will handle the Romulans... with a villain named Nero, they seem to be bringing them back to their Roman roots, which IMHO is a good sign. That a Romulan is named Nero and the involvement of Michael Giacchino are the two things about which I an unapologetically optimistic.

 

[Anwar]

If they do drive the whole "Space Romans" thing further, they should have the Romulans use the Remans and other slave races for most of their fighting. This would add more credbility to the "No Romulans was ever seen" thing in TOS.

 

[Kegek]

While using Remans for fighting would make sense as regards that TOS nobody's-seen-them plot, it makes little sense as regards the Romans. One of their greatest achievements was their citizen army. The Carthaginians, by contrast, had an army with a high mercenary and foreign quotient.

Anyone care to remind me who won all three Punic Wars? They were the wars between Rome and Carthage. (Hint: Not Carthage).

So, Roman-comparison wise, it makes sense for Romulans to be in the army. It also makes sense for Remans, Romans did use non-citizens.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Kegek said:

Timo said:
I think the concept of "lack of ridged Romulans in the 23rd century" is a false one: we saw too few Romulans during that period to tell one way or the other.

That there are no ridged Romulans in the 23rd century is inductively true: All Romulans seen there had no ridges. That there were no ridge-less Romulans in the 22nd and 24th centuries is also inductively true: All Romulans seen there had ridges. As our only evidence is the information provided on the screen, quite often inductive reasoning is the only method one can use in these kinds of discussions.

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. Its not like the Klingon ridge issue, which had three episodes of DS9 indictating that there was a ridge issue. With the Romulans, its been left vague, with the vast majority of Romulans having helmets in the original series. I think you could go as far as to argue that there were only what? 5 or 6 non-ridged Romulans seen total? (I'm just guessing there, but the point remains that its very few). I don't think inductive reasoning applies, just that there's no absolute answer here.

 

[Kegek]

Alidar Jarok said:
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

It is when that's the only kind of evidence you can collect, which is the case here.

I don't think inductive reasoning applies, just that there's no absolute answer here.

I think it does, due to the limitations of the evidence. It's the one way to reach conclusions, and the conclusions reached are quite consistent, as I've outlined above.

I make no claims for absolutism - at best, inductive truth is reasonable. It can be contradicted by a single exception. But no exceptions are forthcoming.

 

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Perhaps the Romulans of the TOS era were surgically modified to appear more Human to confuse the Federation?

 

[RoJoHen]

It's not exactly a ridge issue, but did anybody else think the Vulcans in DS9's "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" had a very Romulan look to them?

 

[aridas sofia]

I think of Romulan brow ridges as being like Neanderthal brow ridges. Among Vulcans, the Neanderthals didn't die out -- they coexisted with their Vulcan "Cro Magnon" kin. On Vulcan, the "Neanderthal" ridgies are probably a distinct minority, while on Romulus, the opposite is likely true.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Thomas E. Johnson said:
Perhaps the Romulans of the TOS era were surgically modified to appear more Human to confuse the Federation?

Nah, that doesn't make sense. They were trying to avoid being seen by the Federation (they had a code of silence in Balance of Terror where they weren't even supposed to send a message back to Romulus to report of their success in case it was intercepted).