Seeing the romulans (mild spoilers)

[Commander_Mills]

hi everyone,

just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this. It looks as though some of the original crew may knowingly get a glimpse of a romulan before the TOS episode balance of terror. Now, I'm not one to quibble over details. I understand this is kind of a reboot, so it's entirely possible that this is one of the cannon details that won't be taken into consideration. I may also be completely wrong since the movie isn't out yet and there may be some explanation provided we are not aware of. I do feel that this is one of the larger areas of cannon that will be ignored if it pans out the way I think it is. It's always been a challenge to bring in the romulans as foes in any kind of prequel for exactly this reason. Enterprise managed to pull it off, but this is one of the aspects of the movie I'll be curious to find out more about... thoughts?

 

[Kchunda]

With all the ship-related craziness going on, I completely forgot!

I guess there will be 3 options:

1) It's a total reboot, so there's no problem. Trekverse 2.0!

2) It's a prequel, and they just didn't know they were Romulan (didn't ask their names ala Enterprise Ferengi and Borg)

3) It's a prequel, they knew who they were and time travel fixes ALL of this somehow​

I don't think #2 is very likely after reading some descriptions, so I have to learn how to be okay with #1 or #3. I'm secretly hoping for #3 cause it would be a shame to have everything TOS be from Trekverse 1.0. . .

 

[Therin of Andor]

It's always been a challenge to bring in the romulans as foes in any kind of prequel for exactly this reason. Enterprise managed to pull it off

I don't see any problem with Starfleet people glimpsing bald, tattooed Nero - he's not your typical vulcanoid.

I also had no problem with Romulans in ENT, although your supposition that that show "managed to pull it off" will be argued by many, I would think.

There have been Starfleet people meeting Romulans in "Balance of Terror" prequels since Diane Carey's excellent novel, "Final Frontier".

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

It's always been a challenge to bring in the romulans as foes in any kind of prequel for exactly this reason. Enterprise managed to pull it off

I don't see any problem with Starfleet people glimpsing bald, tattooed Nero - he's not your typical vulcanoid.

I also had no problem with Romulans in ENT, although your supposition that that show "managed to pull it off" will be argued by many, I would think.

There have been Starfleet people meeting Romulans in "Balance of Terror" prequels since Diane Carey's excellent novel, "Final Frontier".

And Section 31 in the ENT relaunch novels.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

Not sure how they will pull it off in the movie. ENT managed to work around the Romulans, Borg, Ferengi, Tholians & Gorn. Not sure if some were upset with the fact that in TOS Zefram Cochrane was from Alpha Centauri and in FC he lived in Montana.

As for the books Trip knows the Romulans are 'kissing cousins' with the Vulcans in 'The Good That Men Do' which I think was after the Section 31 novel.

 

[Swarles Barkley]

Well, we've seen that Nero may have some sort of deformed ear from the first teaser poster. So maybe he only shows that side of his face when he's on a viewscreen or whatever. As for other Rommies, maybe they're always wearing headgear, similar to what we saw in TOS, that conceals their pointy ears. It seems pretty clear from

Spoiler: the descriptions of the screened clips

the scenes that have been screened and described that they definitely know that these are Romulans, so that's a change from the TOS timeline. But it is a time travel story after all.

But it's entirely plausible that none of the Feds could really have a good idea of what a "typical" Romulan looks like, or how similar Romulans look to Vulcans.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

It's always been a challenge to bring in the romulans as foes in any kind of prequel for exactly this reason. Enterprise managed to pull it off

I don't see any problem with Starfleet people glimpsing bald, tattooed Nero - he's not your typical vulcanoid.

I also had no problem with Romulans in ENT, although your supposition that that show "managed to pull it off" will be argued by many, I would think.

There have been Starfleet people meeting Romulans in "Balance of Terror" prequels since Diane Carey's excellent novel, "Final Frontier".

Problem is, though, that it's made absolutely clear in "Balance of Terror" that nobody's had any contact with the Romulans since the Earth/Romulan war was ended via subspace treaty.

Guess that's out the window too, huh?

 

[Tom Servo]

It's always been a challenge to bring in the romulans as foes in any kind of prequel for exactly this reason. Enterprise managed to pull it off

I don't see any problem with Starfleet people glimpsing bald, tattooed Nero - he's not your typical vulcanoid.

I also had no problem with Romulans in ENT, although your supposition that that show "managed to pull it off" will be argued by many, I would think.

There have been Starfleet people meeting Romulans in "Balance of Terror" prequels since Diane Carey's excellent novel, "Final Frontier".

Problem is, though, that it's made absolutely clear in "Balance of Terror" that nobody's had any contact with the Romulans since the Earth/Romulan war was ended via subspace treaty.

Guess that's out the window too, huh?

Well perhaps in the movie they realize they are dealing with future romulans, and not normal ones.

 

[Oso Blanco]

I guess there will be 3 options:

1) It's a total reboot, so there's no problem. Trekverse 2.0!

2) It's a prequel, and they just didn't know they were Romulan (didn't ask their names ala Enterprise Ferengi and Borg)

3) It's a prequel, they knew who they were and time travel fixes ALL of this somehow​

​

I think it will be option #2. I'm getting the feeling that the new movie is going to be be a sequel to Enterprise, rather than a prequel to TOS/TNG.

Maybe the Borg and/or Future Guy changed the timeline more than we thought ...

 

[Therin of Andor]

Problem is, though, that it's made absolutely clear in "Balance of Terror" that nobody's had any contact with the Romulans since the Earth/Romulan war was ended via subspace treaty.

Nothing "on the record".

Who knows, maybe Old Spock wipes Young Spock and Kirk's minds about seeing Romulans?

 

[Timo]

I think the initial list deserves a fourth bullet:

We already had the options of

1) total reboot, pays no attention to continuity, they don't care so why should we?
2) prequel where our heroes don't learn they fought the Romulans.
3) prequel where our heroes learn they fought the Romulans, but they conveniently forget or the timeline otherwise gets corrected so that twenty years later, they still think nobody has seen a Romulan.

but we could also plead a

4) prequel where our heroes see, fight and identify Romulans, thanks to Nero's time-tampering, as the consequence of which "Balance of Terror" never happens to them, and there are now two parallel timelines of TOS.

We don't know yet if STXI or perhaps STXII will tread on the toes of TOS, or if these movies involving this new cast will limit themselves to showing events that happened before TOS. Considering the youthful looks of the new cast, the latter might be an option. If so, we could still have option 4 without significant problems of "it didn't happen that way!"... Even though events with the new cast would invalidate events with the old cast, we would never be seeing two competing versions of the same events.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JoeZhang]

Is this shot of Nero new? It's from a different angle from the other one and I don't think I've seen it anywhere else...


http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t142/robertroberts_2007/ScreenHunter_01Nov141501.jpg

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Is this shot of Nero new? It's from a different angle from the other one and I don't think I've seen it anywhere else...


http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t142/robertroberts_2007/ScreenHunter_01Nov141501.jpg

Well, it's new to me at least.

You've gotta wonder... isn't Bana getting sick of turning green???

 

[ralph]

A question about romulans and vulcans.

Will Vulcan be destroyed in the film or pure speculation?
Why would Nero do it?​

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A question about romulans and vulcans.

Will Vulcan be destroyed in the film or pure speculation?
Why would Nero do it?​

Well, I'm not able to see any justification for doing that... except "to make Nero seem really bad." At least Nero isn't targeting Earth like his apparent predecessor, Shinzon, was.

Khan, the most successful Trek-movie villain, wasn't plotting a huge mustache-twirling act of villainy. That, more than anything else, is why he worked better.

V'Ger - Not even a person, didn't work as a villain... wasn't really a villain anyway.

Khan - a fantastic villain, because everything he did was PERSONAL in nature.

Kruge - a pretty good villain, but not well-written. His success was largely because of Christopher Lloyd making the character deeper than the writing otherwise allowed.

The "Whale-Probe." Nothing but a deus-ex-machina. Not really a villain anyway.
​

Sybok - a weak character, emotionally confusing for the audience (good guy or bad guy?). And the "God/Devil" creature was never developed, so I don't think of that as anything but a special effect... not a character in any way, much less a "villain."

Chang - a really interesting villain who could have been "stretched" much more effectively. Again, it was very personal. Anyone who ever played "Klingon Academy" will recognize just how terrific this character was. My second-favorite Trek "villain" of all time, just after Khan.

Dr. Soran - An unconvincing villain because the whole situation seemed forced and unbelievable. Why did he want to get back to the nexus in the first place? Never REALLY explained. Why couldn't he have come up with some other way of getting there besides twirling his mustache and blowing up innocent children? Never REALLY explained. (Hell, you'd think that he could have come up with a tough ship before he'd come up with a way of blowing up dozens of solar systems!)

The Borg Queen - creepy, more of a nightmare character than a believable one, IMHO. The borg were ruined by giving them a "leader," anyway. She was just supposed to be "creepy goth sexuality" and didn't really work on any other level. She was basically another mustache-twirling villain - out to "blow up the earth."

The Son'a dude... can't even remember his name. Utter waste of time... but he, again, was just twirling his mustache and threatening to blow up a planet of "nice folks (tm)" with only the slimmest of hints of logic behind it.

Shinzon - despite the "b-plot" of him having daddy issues with Picard, he was basically twirling away and trying to blow up the Earth.

And now, Nero - it seems that he thinks that if Vulcan didn't exist, reunification would never become an issue... so he wants to blow up Vulcan. Mustache-twirling all the while...

Yes, the two villains I really like were, neither of them, threatening to blow up a planet. The ones who were, generally, didn't get me very excited.

 

[M'Sharak]

Is this shot of Nero new? It's from a different angle from the other one and I don't think I've seen it anywhere else...


http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t142/robertroberts_2007/ScreenHunter_01Nov141501.jpg

Recent, but not brand-new, I think. It turns up in an October 16 TrekMovie article here about a gallery of images which accompanied the Entertainment Weekly cover story.