This has probadly been asked but will Romulus be destroyed in Trek lit.Or was that just for the movie.Maybe some way of reuniting the RSE.That would be cool.
The fate of Romulus?
- Thread starter ironduke555
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What's onscreen defines the canon, and the books are obligated to reflect it. Therefore, when and if the book chronology catches up to 2387, it will acknowledge and work around the destruction of Romulus. The books may not depict that event directly, however, since the Countdown comic book miniseries has already tackled that. But the event and its ramifications will no doubt be acknowledged.
However, it may be a long time before the books catch up to that point.
However, it may be a long time before the books catch up to that point.
There's no way the supernova could've been of Romulus' own sun, because then Romulus would've been obliterated mere minutes later instead of days or weeks. Of course, it should therefore take years, but there's enough Trek precedent for such things that we can assume some kind of subspace phenomenon allowing the radiation to propagate FTL.
In that case, however, the supernova would've destroyed all life not only on Romulus and Remus, but in any other star system in similar proximity. So we may be talking about a fair chunk of the Empire, not just one planet.
On second thought, it could be that Romulus orbited the smaller component of a very wide binary system whose larger star was a supergiant; if the components were, say, a bit over 1200 AU apart, then it would take a week for the radiation burst to reach Romulus. However, such a system would be very short-lived in cosmic terms and would not be old enough to support a life-bearing planet. On the other hand, the same goes for systems like Rigel and Deneb, which are known to have inhabited planets in Trek, so maybe there's ancient alien terraforming involved.
In this scenario, Remus would be just as dead, and other systems in Romulan space would be endangered but have several years' advance warning to shield or evacuate their populations. But it offers no explanation for Spock Prime's claim that the supernova endangered the whole galaxy. Only a hypernova could do that, and if there were a hypergiant that nearby, Romulus wouldn't have been habitable to begin with, nor would any neighboring systems within dozens of light-years.
They really need you as a script editor for the next movie... or maybe they can produce a cinema release version and then a Trekkie cut for DVD where all the hokey dumbed down science can be explained by technobabble!
BTW I zipped those TMP portraits if you want a copy - 14MB though!
BTW I zipped those TMP portraits if you want a copy - 14MB though!
All XI established was that Romulus is destroyed in 2387, but we don't know the extent of the overall damage to the Empire. I'm sure it will be significant. Remus has to be toast, considering it's very very close to Romulus, and we clearly see Romulus vaporized in XI.
^I choose to see the physical disintegration of Romulus as figurative, like the shot of Spock seeing Vulcan in the sky of Delta Vega. After all, both were in a mind meld, so are probably more symbolic than strictly representational. A supernova would only physically disintegrate a planet if the planet were directly orbiting it. Anything further away would just be sterilized by its radiation. In the binary-star scenario I suggested above, the planet's atmosphere and hydrosphere would be stripped away and the crust might be at least partially molten, but I don't see the whole thing getting disintegrated.
Enterprise wasn't an alternate universe. Trek XI arguably is.
At the very least it's an alternate *timeline* which branched off at the destruction of the Kelvin. But I choose to believe that it's an entirely separate universe. Given this, I submit that Treklit has absolutely NO obligation to destroy Romulus, since for all we know Spock 'Prime' came from that same alternate universe and thus Romulus does not have to be destroyed in the prime one.
The destruction of Romulus happened in the "original" Trek universe before any time travel events changed anything. Feel free to decide that the whole movie only exists in a "different" universe, but one would be just as valid in choosing to believe that, say, DS9 happened in a different universe, or that Star Trek and Star Wars happened in the same universe, or Santa Claus exists in the Star Trek universe. Any official product line doesn't have that luxury, however, (except for, I suppose, the Santa Claus thing), at least under the current guidelines for Trek's follow-up fiction. I don't see why it is any more "arguable" that Trek XI is a different universe than to say that Enterprise is.
I've decided I want a Captain Picard meets Santa Claus novel. Preferably a trilogy.
I've decided I want a Captain Picard meets Santa Claus novel. Preferably a trilogy.
Here's a question, is that set in stone?
For example, if future onscreen Trek showed characters in a different form than they currently are in a book, for example, Riker as captain of a ship other than Titan, Dax still a counselor rather than captain, would the books alter the characters to reflect that new cannon status quo?
The original DC Comics TNG mini-series had a Christmas issue.
If they explore that time period yes. Tasha Yar disappeared from the TNG novels, coinciding with that characters death, and Pulaski had to be edited into several TNG novels and comics when Gates McFadden left after Season One. Then Crusher had to be edited back in when Muldaur did not return for Season Three. (It drove PAD crazy at the time, who got caught out and had to revise manuscripts.)
^ Man, that would suck.
I mean it's one thing to bring back a (relatively minor )character who had been written out, to a ship/setting where they had previously been, simply because new cannon shows they are still there (being a low rankin guy on one ship cant be that much different than being one on another), but to actively change an established characters dynamic back to an old one just to shoe horn in with new tv developments, that would suck.
I mean, what would you do with Dax? Have her decide that actually counselling was her true love after all and move her back? Demote her? Would the Typhon Pact suddenly dissolve if new cannon showed it had never formed? (I use Dax and the Typhon Pact as an examples as they are some of the more radical changes in status quos from the tv series).
That said, I dont honestly expect any future Trek tv shows to be close enough in the time period it is set, either before or after, to series like DS9/TNG/Voy etc to make any significant effect on those novel series.
I mean it's one thing to bring back a (relatively minor )character who had been written out, to a ship/setting where they had previously been, simply because new cannon shows they are still there (being a low rankin guy on one ship cant be that much different than being one on another), but to actively change an established characters dynamic back to an old one just to shoe horn in with new tv developments, that would suck.
I mean, what would you do with Dax? Have her decide that actually counselling was her true love after all and move her back? Demote her? Would the Typhon Pact suddenly dissolve if new cannon showed it had never formed? (I use Dax and the Typhon Pact as an examples as they are some of the more radical changes in status quos from the tv series).
That said, I dont honestly expect any future Trek tv shows to be close enough in the time period it is set, either before or after, to series like DS9/TNG/Voy etc to make any significant effect on those novel series.
In the comic, they heavily suggested that the supernova's gaseous shock wave reached other star systems - so it looks like we are gonna have to break out the word 'subspace' to explain it - something like the subspace supernova in the Destiny trilogy, but 'natural'.
sorry, this is one of my pet peeves, and I can't stand it any more. A "canon" is a body of work that's established as valid by the owners (in this case the on screen stories of Trek), or a brand of cameras. A "cannon" is a large mounted weapon that fires heavy projectiles, and is usually painted black, though sometimes they paint it red in the circus. Please do not mix them up.
So that's why I cant get the canon in my garden to participate in a 21 gun salute...
Yeah - this is the way I tend to see it - but I don't think it will be the case - the Pocket Books line will probably have to destroy Romulus in 2387 - via a supspace supernova or hypernova, or however they choose to play it.
If the comics count, then this becomes hard.
Because, I got the impression that the Hobus star was meant to be 'remote' and unsurveyed - something that could not be said of a star in the same system as Romulus itself - and something that also makes the threat to Romulus all the more implausible...
If the comics count, then the situation becomes far more complex to 'justify' - you would have to come up with something pretty novel - like a new type of supernova that ejects its outer shell along its polar axis - and was somehow amplified into subspace, or something.
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