Sorry, I guess I'm missing something here, but aren't there roughly 17 centuries between The Sundering and Enterprise(and even more between The Sundering & TOS as it would have been at the time of Death Wish) - is that all accounted for already?
Yeah, but you'd think that if the Vulcans had been at war with the Romulans for a century in that period, then somewhere along the way they would've discovered what Romulans looked like. I can buy the Vulcan government knowing and keeping the secret if there'd been very limited interaction since the Sundering, but not if there'd been a century-long war.
Besides, the Vulcans only returned to space in the 19th century, some 300 years before
Enterprise. And yet their primary enemy from the mid-20th century onward was the Andorians.
Hmm, now that I think about it, in light of what ENT revealed about Vulcan history, it's conceivable that the High Command could've had a century of on-and-off border conflicts with the Romulans, explaining how T'Pol knew about them. Maybe it was like the UFP-Cardassian War had to be, a series of intermittent brush fires with long periods of inactivity between them. Sometimes war is a declared political relationship rather than open combat; technically North and South Korea have been in a state of war for the past 63 years, although there have only been a few periods of actual fighting in that time.
I guess Q could've simply been exaggerating to emphasize his case. He's not exactly the most reliable witness.
Also, I'm not with my books right now, but wasn't there a scene in Spock's World between T'pau & Sarek where they're discussing Sarek going to Earth for the first time, and T'pau tells him not to underestimate them given that they beat the romulans back in x number of years when it took us y number of years - maybe it arose from that?
I can find no such dialogue in that scene, or indeed anywhere in
Spock's World.
Even if there were, it is generally best to assume that the writers of the TV shows are unfamiliar with the books. Writing for TV is a rather time-consuming activity and leaves little room for recreational reading, and when TV producers do get a chance to take a break from their shows, probably the last thing they'd want to read is more stuff about their shows. So the overwhelming majority of the time, anything onscreen that reflects something from the books or comics is going to be pure and absolute coincidence.
Along those lines, I've just been re-reading Malibu's DS9 comics, and it's surprising how many things there are in the comics that anticipate developments years later on the show. There's a story with a flashback to the commander of Terok Nor (not Dukat, though) wanting Odo to execute a group of terrorists including Kira, like in "Necessary Evil." There's a story with Sisko taking Jake and Nog on a field trip to the Gamma Quadrant, like in "The Jem'hadar" (only with Keiko instead of Quark). There's a story about a half-Bajoran/half-Cardassian woman, anticipating Tora Ziyal. That sort of thing. It just goes to show how routinely different people writing about the same premise or characters come up with convergent ideas.
