That exchange to me sounds as if they're talking about much more recent wars than the one waged against Earth. We know that, at one point, there were plenty of formidable civilizations in the Romulan sphere: Lost Haakona was on par with contemporary Earth, while the Kevratans were conquered as late as the early 24th century. (There are other named subject worlds and species, too, right?) If the Romulans weren't challenging their great-power neighbours, it seems plausible enough to assume that they would have been taking on the potentially threatening civilizations in their hinterland.
Hmm, I'm not sure about "potentially threatening". I agree that they might have been expanding now and then off in the deep Beta Quadrant, in directions away from the Neutral Zone, and so there might well have been campaigns aimed at bringing smaller starfaring powers into the Star Empire. That would account for the weariness of wasteful war in soldiers like Ker- the Commander and the Centurion. It also emphasises the sense of waste, if none of those powers were really a threat and it was simply efforts by the praetor to keep peace with the expansionist factions by occasionally gifting them with a conquest out in the hinterlands. Another war with Earth and its allies - now the vast Federation - would be both the continuation of that politically-motivated policy of pointless war and an escalation of it, as this time it would be a huge number of Romulan soldiers thrown against the enemy, an enemy which would be formidable enough to force an eventual stalemate if not actually push hard enough to cripple the Romulans.
As ever, Sci, I look forward to your insight. Rise of the Federation has sketched in the early years of the UFP wonderfully; Vanguard and The Lost Era have tied the political and military relationships between the various powers together and crafted a convincing narrative as to how it all unfolds, and the late 24th Century of course has really made an effort to delve into the Federation's inner workings. The 23rd Century remains mostly focused on the frontier, though (the final frontier ), and the Federation core is a bit of an enigma - Forgotten History is an exception, I suppose, but then it's concerned with one particular matter of importance to the Federation, so its focus is rather skewed. Good point. Which might make it difficult for the fully Human characters to judge how they should react to his recommendations. Is it Spock's insight into Vulcanoids that informs his opinion here, or just pragmatism? He's being coldly logical, obviously, but what precisely informs that logic, and how much should they read into it regarding the Romulans themselves? Every wiki, role play site, community, etc., I've ever been involved with ends up like that. It's inherent, I've come to believe, to the psychology of tribal humans. I'm used to it by now, mostly because I'm always default neutral and so the politics always passes me by and no-one ever treats me as a threat. So I remain in friendly contact with everyone involved and never really have a problem with anyone even as the community splits in two or loses substantial members (I'm used to flowing around the politics like water, basically, rather than participating). People jostle for influence, certain people involved overextend themselves trying to define the community or control it, others feel offended and withdraw support when they clash with someone more entrenched or powerful - and there's just no staying power, because no-one's invested in making the community work, because the community is just a backdrop for the politics and the self-expression, rather than integral. I always sympathise with those who leave because they feel that - as you put it - certain people in administrative positions make it a chore with their unreasonable actions and attitudes, but I also find it wearying that the whole situation unfolds to begin with.
Thinking about it this way, I would say that Doctor Who (and its wiki) are the closest analogy available to Star Trek, its tie-ins, and how to (attempt to) incorporate all of them in one (more or less) cohesive whole. I tend to feel similarly (especially in online communities, where the power struggles feel even more pointless), but Memory Beta in particular only seems to have about ten people or so who do most of the updates--far less than other wikis already mentioned which deal extensively with tie-ins. It's not as if its current form and content are the only ones possible, but changing that (without even getting into the politics) requires a level of commitment from considerably more people than those who are involved now.
I don't think that's a good analogy at all, since Doctor Who takes a much looser approach to canon and continuity than Trek. Nothing is formally included or excluded, and the screen canon itself has such a loose, inconsistent continuity that the modern series has overtly incorporated the premise that time is constantly being rewritten. (And it wasn't just the original show that was loose with its continuity. I recently did a rewatch of all three modern series, roughly in release order, and they don't fit together well at all, largely ignoring each other's worldshaking events except in crossovers.) And a number of the original show's writers went on to contribute to the book line, while a lot of the novel authors from the '90s and a lot of the audio-play talent went on to work for the modern show; so there's more cross-pollination. It's really a completely different situation from Star Trek, where there are much sharper delineations between canon and apocrypha and between different flavors of apocrypha, and where the canon itself has a (relatively) more uniform continuity to begin with.
Potentially threatening in the same way that Haakona and Earth were potentially threatening? There would always be the possibility of resorting to weapons of mass destruction again. I get the feeling that genocide on a planetary scale may have been something only possible in the particular climate of the mid-22nd century.
I did. Besides, "nothing is formally included or excluded" sounds like a perfect way to describe the novelverse (especially as you get further out from the core books to the other tie-ins referenced within it), and "the borders between different continuities aren't always all that well-defined" and "there are much sharper delineations between...different flavours of apocrypha" sound like contradictory statements.
Except I was using the statement to refer to Doctor Who canon as a whole, including screen, books, comics, and audios. The BBC has no formal position on whether or not the tie-ins are part of the same canon as the shows, and the shows themselves are rather loose with continuity. That's different from the Trek situation where the tie-ins are explicitly distinct from the screen canon, and where there's very little overlap between the creators of one and the creators of the other. No, just matters of degree. It's not contradictory to say that something is darker than white but lighter than black. Most things in life are shades of gray. The Trek novelverse is unambiguously a separate reality as a whole from Star Trek Online or DC's TOS volume 1 or Marvel's Starfleet Academy or IDW's John Byrne-verse, since there are clear contradictions and incompatibilities between them. But there are still bits and pieces that the novels can borrow from the others -- for instance, Pava from Academy showing up in Titan, even though Academy's Telepathy War arc contradicts Burning Dreams in its portrayal of Talos IV. The continuities can be defined as distinct, but there's some blurring around the edges, and there are some stories that might or might not fit depending on the preferences of the reader. But there are still plenty that can't possibly fit together. But those delineations, while blurry compared to something like the distinction between the current Star Wars continuity and the so-called Legends continuity (the former Expanded Universe), are still sharper than they are in Doctor Who, where even the boundary between screen canon and tie-ins isn't clearly defined, let alone the distinction between books, comics, and audios. It's all a matter of what you're comparing it to.
Given all the races with warp power, for 200 years, has noone since the romulan war has even tried firing a warp sled into a planet? And contemporary powers were pretty shaken up over Genesis in the late 23rd century. Surely the dominion would have entertained the idea? Perhaps the Breen could blow up something like Mercury, just to say "we can" - fairly minimal casualties, rather than a pretty trivial attack on San Francisco, and far more fear-inducing. The only explanation I can think of is there is some way of trivially blocking such attacks that wasn't known about in the 2150s but was ubiquitous 100 years later.
In all their long history, the Borg have probably rammed a planet at warp at least once. We've seen them ram enemy ships in VOY - "Scorpion, Part II" and Destiny - Lost Souls. They certainly have the resources to expend on it.
Star Trek has long been inconsistent in just how much destructive power a spacefaring warp-capable species has at its disposal. Or perhaps, as with the transporter, they've tended to hold back from the threatening implications. In DS9, "The Die Is Cast", a fleet of several dozen top-of-the-line warships are confident in their ability to liquefy the crust of a terrestrial planet with a relatively swift bombardment, and that's only with their conventional weapons. In keeping with that, Altoss in A Singular Destiny notes, perhaps only slightly exaggerating if at all, that a Danube runabout could slice a continent in half. Large-scale warfare in the Trek universe, at least when it involves full-on "I want you out of the way" violence and therefore people aren't pulling their punches, should be a horrifying concept. (Menthar and Promellia seems a sensible example - near-total destruction of both and whole planets shattered). One wonders, for instance, why the Xindi didn't just launch a fleet of Aquatic dreadnoughts through the vortices and bombard Earth into ash, if they could get in their probe prototype unannounced. Obviously, in other situations I understand why people and governments would hold back. There are unspoken rules of sanity, I imagine, and people like Shinzon who threaten them get taken out by their own before they cross the unspoken line. Everyone in this universe - even the Klingons and their ilk - must have certain psychological blocks in place that keep warfare on a controlled and minimalist level, because everyone must have some inkling - on a level below everyday comprehension - of what would happen if they just went full-out. Everyone declaws themselves. Indeed, why it was that the Breen, having taken out Earth's defences, didn't just ram their ships into the planet (rather than floating dreamily through the air spitting out torpedoes on San Francisco as they did) is presumably because they weren't mad enough to commit to more than a "bloody nose"; they must have long-term plans for cultural and economic dominance that won't be served by having everyone view them as mad dogs who destroy whole worlds. Go full out and you probably risk every civilization in range turning on you to disarm you or worse. The Romulans of the 22nd Century, with their hot green blood aflame, seem to be one of the rare exceptions. That's what makes Vulcanoids unleashed so dangerous - they're not, by the usual standards, sane.
DaveGalanter portrayed in Tales of the Dominion War - "Eleven Hours Out" that the Breen attacked San Francisco with only 3 vessels slowly and with rather weak weaponry for 11 hours in order to psychologically terrorize the Federation. Also, more powerful weaponry would have been too difficult to sneak past Federation checkpoints.
Speaking about the Klingons, I would note that while a very recent conflict with the Kinshaya made the latter's homeworld uninhabitable, it was only one of the more recent conflicts in a long history of war, tension, and almost over-the-top xenophobia. Had the Klingons wanted to make the Kinshaya homeworld uninhabitable before now, they could have. That it took so long to occur suggests to me even in this extreme scenario that planetcracking was not happened. (I wonder what did happen. Accident?) I'm not sure about that. In the astropolitical environment of the time, Romulan attacks did achieve their goals. They did prevent a potentially technologically superior Coridan from joining the Coalition; they did permanently destroy the Haakonan threat; they did demonstrate to everyone with the example of Draylax that ignoring Romulan warnings was a terrible idea. If there had been only a bit more paralysis on Vulcan in the last months of the Earth-Romulan war, the Romulans would have been in a position to determine the fate of this whole region of the galaxy. With such examples and no one in a position to oppose them, what would have stopped them?
The Kinshaya became more aggressive, first conquering the Kreel, then making bolder moves against the Klingons. So since the Kinshaya upped their game, the Klingons did as well.
I'd have much preferred it if the novels had never introduced the harsh mistress concept -- in fact it makes sense a ship in warp won't actually have much kinetic energy, as it's simply bending space, and not really moving much in real space. Dropping out of warp doesn't involve dissipating lots of kinetic energy, it simply involves stopping jumping to the left and stepping to the right. This would then pit the genesis device as the "weapon of ultimate power", rather than having any two-bit trader with a shuttle able to blow up a planet - something that normally needs a starship and a few hours. There's also a question of why the tactic isn't used against large military outputs. Say something like Starbase 74, or DS9, or a borg cube, where the morals of genocide don't apply. Accelerate a shuttle (on remote control) to warp aimed at DS9, and boom, unless they get the shields up to full power in the time it takes to realise the incoming shuttle isn't really coming to dock. I know that Riker was ready to ram the Borg Cube, and Worf was in FC, but there couldn't have been any real hope otherwise they'd have done it with remote powered shuttles earlier in the day. That said, if a 24th century fleet of 20 ships can destroy "Thirty percent of the planetary crust ... on opening volley", it's clear that shields are pretty tough, and starships pack a punch. Perhaps most planets in the alpha quadrant have shields that automatically activate on detecting incoming ships at warp.
This detour into matters of war and destruction is quite appropriate actually, since I'm starting the six book series dedicated to the build-up to war between the Klingons and the Federation. I recall that sense of looming disaster being quite pronounced in the later books. I'd forgotten it said that, though it makes sense on multiple levels. Yes, it's certainly the case that the Breen's overall intent was to defeat Federation morale and sow terror. Any actual destruction of assets was secondary. It reinforces the sense that warp-capable societies, even on those occasions that they commit to overtly aggressive warfare, still operate within a political ecosystem and act accordingly. Humbling worlds like Earth would pave the way (the Breen hoped) for Breen economic and political gains; destroying them would surely just shock and outrage every civilization that feared it would be next. (I would say that the Dominion is also unlikely to appreciate the disorder that comes with excessive and unnecessary destruction, but of course Cardassia would glare pointedly at me. Still, that order came from a sick and thoroughly frustrated Founder who hadn't linked in weeks, was by her peoples' standards therefore extremely isolated, had simply had enough of all these solids making her life difficult and was spitefully motivated as much as anything. On the other hand, the very fact that the Dominion is used to being unrivalled in its home region means that it can afford a policy of extermination. Then again, the honouring of the peace treaty with Bajor, etc., shows that the Dominion is good at playing the game; its whole manner of attack in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants was attempting the political isolation of other nations so that they then had, presumably, no real choice but to accept their incorporation to the Dominion on threat of Jem'Hadar. In other words, replicating among the larger empires the policies the Dominion uses on small nations, where violence is implied and secondary, ideally non-existent, and so long as you shake the smiling Vorta's hand and sign on you get to trade with other member worlds and, more importantly, the Jem'Hadar glaring stonily at you from the back don't get unleashed. It was just the Federation and Klingons being stubborn and "unrealistic" that forced the Dominion to actually resort to large-scale violence). Still, the Breen. If they can make their point and destroy the sense of invulnerability held by those in the Federation core, then they've triumphed. They'd even earn points among other Dominion-allied nations like the Miradorn, who would be glad to see the Federation a bit bruised, and they won't have crossed any lines that would make them too many enemies. You make a very good point there, rfmcdpei. You're right, the Romulans did have achievable political goals in mind and their actions, however extreme, were often geared strategically toward achieving them; successfully, at that. Then again, I'd still say they weren't exactly being sane. They're not thoughtless berserkers - part of what makes Vulcanoids so dangerous is that they're incredibly intelligent, and politically astute. But the Romulans of this era - perhaps again because they weren't part of an established community of powers and thus had no-one to apply the breaks on their excessively bloodthirsty mores, were behaving in a manner that seems very out of place in this universe. I suppose the willingness to employ such insanely destructive tactics is itself a useful political weapon if wielded correctly, and I think you've made a good case there that the situation was such that the Romulans' actions were "reasonable" enough in light of their aims, but I can't call them sane, especially when it led to things like dumping civilization-killing viruses on their enemies with no real care for the possibility of blowback, either natural or political. There's something about Vulcanoids in full on aggressor mode that's removed from other humanoid peoples, and I think that's long intended to have been the case. In a twisted way, they were keeping the balance in check. Not an equal balance of course, but preserving a status quo. The goal seems to have been to ensure a Kinshaya nation that was at a level of military and political power that couldn't approach an actual threat to the Empire as a whole. It's almost as though the Klingons are farming reliably antagonistic nations like the Holy Order. The Klingons probably viewed the Kinshaya almost as sport. "Let's go wander around the Holy Border; why, what's this, we're being attacked by Kinshaya privateers! Outrage! (Hooray!)*glorious battle ensues, sufficiently challenging but not too overtly threatening*. That was great! Foolish Kinshaya!" It's like going on tour in Diana Wynne Jones' Fantasyland. When the Kinshaya became conquerors themselves and incorporated the Kreel, it's like the safari wildlife started massing weapons and marching on the hunting lodge. So the Klingons needed to put the Kinshaya back in their place, and thus they inflict a major blow of the kind they usually refrain from. That achieved, they were happy, I presume. In Zero Sum Game, K'mtok moans that the Kinshaya (as well as the Gorn) are using their newfound security offered by membership in the Typhon Pact to boldly harass Klingon holdings. His overall complaint seems very close to "they've gotten uppity on us, I never thought I'd see the day..."
But that's got nothing to do with warp drive. Impulse drive can easily propel a ship up to a high percentage of lightspeed, and a relativistic projectile has a huge amount of energy even with a small mass. For instance, going by Wolfram Alpha's calculator applet, if the Constitution-class Enterprise (at 190,000 metric tons) hit a planet at a mere 25% of lightspeed, it would hit with an energy equal to that released by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs (which was much more massive but much slower). The TNG Tech Manual says that .25c is the preferred maximum for normal impulse operations, but really, given how dangerous it is, the legal "speed limit" should be much slower, at least within a populated system. For that matter, space is littered with asteroids and comets. You don't need a kamikaze run with a ship. Just hang out on the outskirts of the enemy system's Oort cloud, maybe a light-year out, find a suitably dark comet or asteroid that'd be hard to see coming, point it in the right direction, accelerate it to half lightspeed, wait two years, and boom, your enemy's planet is wiped out. Well, if you have two years to wait, and if enemy spies don't learn about the plan, and if their detection and interception methods aren't good enough to stop the attack.