Re: Trek XI's implications for future Trek novels (major movie spoiler
We saw an interstellar subspace transporter used by DaiMon Bok in "Bloodlines" on TNG. We know the technology exists in the early 2370s; it's just not commonly used because it's dangerous and extremely power-intensive. Which isn't inconsistent with its use in the movie, given the extreme urgency of the situation (although the power demands are hard to reconcile with beaming from a shuttlecraft).
The version used by the Dominion gives no indication that it's dangerous - but then, I suppose the Vorta and Founders would hardly want to reveal any such flaw should it exist in their version of the technology.
And that would still leave the difference that having the custom-made systems that the Dominion would have in place to make such technology operable and making do with jury-rigging a more primitive Federation model would make...
My point was that there's no reason to bring the Dominion into the matter at all, because the Federation was already familiar with interstellar transporters before the Dominion was even contacted. The question here is when Scotty (Prime) would've devised the equation for long-range beaming, and if it was before the Trek productions we're familiar with, why that technology wasn't used. "Bloodlines" provides evidence that the technology was known to the Federation but avoided due to its hazards, which helps explain the issue.
*It's not guaranteed that even the pre-Federation Vulcans had an overly large series of offworld colonies to begin with.
They may have had just enough to run whatever military outposts or listening stations they deemed necessary, as well as had the odd P'Jem (legitimate or otherwise) to provide cover - but unless they were willing to sink enough manpower, fleet assets and logistical assets into defending them, I'm not sure how many major colonies the Vulcans would have wanted to establish.
They wouldn't be in the business if setting up private colonies the way humans do - and how many worlds can they afford to build up into major colonies while ensuring their security from Andorian or Klingon occupation?
The problem we run into here is that
Star Trek is vastly more planet-centric than any realistic depiction of a spacegoing civilization would probably be. So the question is whether we limit ourselves to what Trek has assumed/suggested or conjecture a more plausible scenario where many individuals live in artificial habitats or lunar colonies scattered throughout a star system, as well as settling planets in other systems. In a plausible depiction of a spacegoing power, the Vulcans would probably have considerably more than 10,000 people living offworld just within the 40 Eridani system itself.
There's also the fact that planets tend to be subjected to cataclysms and extinction events. Even without the wholesale destruction of the planet as a whole, any inhabited world is sooner or later going to experience an event that will wipe out most life on its surface. The single overriding priority for any starfaring power should be to spread out to other worlds, other systems, in order to ensure the survival of the species. Personally I find it entirely unbelievable that a race as intelligent and logical as the Vulcans would be so naive and irrational as to keep all their eggs in one basket. I don't know whether Abrams, Kurtzman, and Orci intended for there to be a lot of Vulcans elsewhere in the galaxy, but there absolutely
should be.
*Even if there were a larger diaspora in the Federation, there's no guarantee that Vulcan society would consider them to be their own.
Now, that's an excellent way to reconcile the two ideas. There are millions of biologically vulcanoid individuals elsewhere in space, but they're not defined as members of the Vulcan culture/nation. One of the other problems of ST is a tendency to treat species and nation as interchangeable, but the reality would be more complex. You could be onto something here.
And you are confusing the words "confuse" and "conflate."
No, I'm not. To conflate is to combine two separate things into one. You claimed that the "endangered species" line from one scene was part of the conversation between two Spocks in another scene. That is a conflation.
This whole "he was so distraught he got it wrong" argument is ludicrous.
You've crossed the line into being insulting. I'm done with this.
I'm pretty sure he says 10,000 in total. Even if he's upset, I doubt he's going to get confused between 10,000 and 10,000,000.
He said that no more than 10,000 Vulcans survived. As I said before, the use of "survived" rather than "survive" implies he's referring to those who lived through the specific event itself. He never actually said "there are only 10,000 Vulcans left in the entire galaxy." He just said that he estimated no more than 10,000 Vulcans had survived the planet's destruction, which is ambiguous.
Also, what's the writer's intention here? The viewer is suppose to think that he's made a mistake and actually millions escaped? Feels like desperate reaching to me....
Obviously the writers' intention was to portray this as a devastating cataclysm with few survivors. But taken literally, that intention just doesn't fit in with what we know about the ST universe and common sense. We've certainly retconned plenty of other things in Trek over the years in defiance of authorial intention; why should this be any different?
