Unification Part 1

[Ghrakh]

Tasha Yar was clearly a descendant of Larry, Moe or Curly and she passed those genes onto Sela.

Interesting theory...

 

[Nebusj]

The Actual Romulan Goal: to discredit or dispose of their own dissidents who seek a reconciliation with Vulcan.

Well, okay, but...

What the Romulans tell their own dissidents: that they are going to prepare a ``peace ship'' containing thousands of members of the movement, who'll be dispatched to Vulcan in an audacious but possibly status-quo-shattering move.

What the Romulans tell Spock and Picard: that the ``peace ship'' flotilla is actually an invasion force.

What Spock and Picard conclude: that the ``peace ship'' flotilla has to be destroyed before an incalculable slaughter is done.

What the Romulans do: blow up the ``peace ship'' flotilla on their own once Spock and Picard ``reveal'' the supposed truth.

This scheme is contorted, yes, but it resolves a lot of plot holes (why did Sela leave Spock, Picard, and Data alone with a transmitter, exactly, again, unless it was to get them to send the message they did?). Since the ``peace ship'' flotilla is destroyed by the Romulans themselves somewhere near Galorndon Core there isn't even much of a casus belli; the most that the Romulans have done to the Federation is steal and destroy a couple junk spaceships. That's resolved by a reparations bill, not a war, especially if they can claim that Sela Yar was carrying out a daft scheme, as the invasion plot obviously was.

The Romulans have killed a dissident faction, rather literally, and who knows how many of the leaders of it; they can even sell it to their own populace as the Federation refusing to even let a peaceful expedition be heard.

No offense, but that's a ridiculously convoluted way for the Romulans to get rid of a few dissidents. It would be easier and more effective to just shoot them all outright.

Plus, you state that it was really a bunch of dissidents on those ships. You'd think they'd be smart enough not to trust their government and to know NOT to get on those ships in the first place. And if they were just dissidents, why the need for a cloaked warbird anyway? The Romulan government could have just set those ships to explode halfway to Vulcan.

Thus the need for a Vulcan ship, possibly manned by a legitimately Vulcan crew, possibly manned by a suicide squadron presenting itself as Vulcan: dissidents could expect a Romulan ship to be an obvious trap; but if they had what appeared to be legitimate Vulcan ships fresh from the Federation? ... Maybe a trap, sure, but what if it isn't?

The cloaked warbird is necessary to make sure the ship gets blown up, on schedule, before the ship can enter Federation space where independent experts might investigate it (or save it). It also provides the Romulan government with cover against Federation retribution: they can claim with as straight a face as plausible that while yes, there was this deranged plan by a rogue Admiral [1] to attack Vulcan, they detected the plot and destroyed the would-be assault force before anyone even entered Federation space.

[1] And given that the Federation goes roughly eleven weeks between rogue Admirals trying to provoke a war with the Cardassians or Klingons or the Romulans themselves or just overthrow the civilian government, the Federation has to be pretty lenient on claims that other polities have the same difficulties.

No, based on what we see in the episode, there's nothing to insinuate that this silly plan is anything but the actual plan the Romulan government was endorsing.

Yes, I believe I said, several times, that this rationalization requires supposing that the things we-the-viewers were supposed to accept as true were in fact lies. I have no doubt that the people making the episode wanted us to take Sela's finally-revealed plan as the actual plan, but as everyone who has ever heard it noted, it's the stupidest plan ever except for some CIA efforts to kill Fidel Castro.

So, this rationalization attempts to turn the scheme into something which makes sense. I think it's as close to sensible as we can hope to get, but it does require supposing, essentially, that the camera is an unreliable narrator. This goes mildly against TV and movie convention, and strongly against science fiction conventions, for fairly sound reasons. But it's either we take this scheme that Serpentor would have thought too ridiculous to attempt [2] at face value, or, throw out face value and try to rebuild something from the stuff we can be confident about.

[2] And lest we forget, Serpentor approved one scheme that involved genetic manipulation to turn one of the G.I.Joes into a killer whale for some reason. Probably that the research budget had too much money and they had to spend it on something before the new fiscal year started.

 

[Dukhat]

Thus the need for a Vulcan ship, possibly manned by a legitimately Vulcan crew, possibly manned by a suicide squadron presenting itself as Vulcan: dissidents could expect a Romulan ship to be an obvious trap; but if they had what appeared to be legitimate Vulcan ships fresh from the Federation? ... Maybe a trap, sure, but what if it isn't?

The cloaked warbird is necessary to make sure the ship gets blown up, on schedule, before the ship can enter Federation space where independent experts might investigate it (or save it). It also provides the Romulan government with cover against Federation retribution: they can claim with as straight a face as plausible that while yes, there was this deranged plan by a rogue Admiral [1] to attack Vulcan, they detected the plot and destroyed the would-be assault force before anyone even entered Federation space.

[1] And given that the Federation goes roughly eleven weeks between rogue Admirals trying to provoke a war with the Cardassians or Klingons or the Romulans themselves or just overthrow the civilian government, the Federation has to be pretty lenient on claims that other polities have the same difficulties.

Yes, I understand what you're trying to say here. And I agree that if someone were to come up with a crazily convoluted plan to kill a relatively few number of people, this plan would be it. All I'm saying is that there's no reason to come up with convoluted justifications for what we saw when:

Yes, I believe I said, several times, that this rationalization requires supposing that the things we-the-viewers were supposed to accept as true were in fact lies. I have no doubt that the people making the episode wanted us to take Sela's finally-revealed plan as the actual plan, but as everyone who has ever heard it noted, it's the stupidest plan ever except for some CIA efforts to kill Fidel Castro.

What I keep saying is that Sela probably had way more power and influence in the Romulan government because of her father than any normal 20 year old would ever have. And being relatively immature about military matters, her silly plan (and several previous plans that ended up going nowhere) was pushed through anyway because of that influence...not that there was some other plan going on that this one was a smokescreen for. Sometimes a dumb plan is just a dumb plan, just like your example of Castro's assassination attempts.

 

[The Old Mixer]

A simpler idea than some of the theories here....It wasn't meant to be an all-out invasion, but more of an incursion. They were hoping to establish and underground guerilla force that would bring conflict to the Vulcans' home turf, hoping to cause parts of the population to fall from the way of Surak and become more like Romulans...sort of an opposite counterpart to what Spock was doing on Romulus. Even if they could never hope to completely overthrow Vulcan, they could cause great instability on a key Federation world.

 

[bolak]

No offense, but that's a ridiculously convoluted way for the Romulans to get rid of a few dissidents. It would be easier and more effective to just shoot them all outright.

Thinking-as-a-Romulan the advantages of the 'invasion' as a means of purging dissidents include:

1. The victims are self-selecting, turning-up with bags packed and having said their farewells. Perhaps some that weren't even suspected as dissdents! A lot less work than kicking-down 20,000 doors.

2. It's an immediate decapitation; killing dissdent leadership one by one would give an opportunity for others to backfill their positions. In this case, however, there is no-one left to step-up.

3. It's very cheap, a few old ships and a reassigned Warbird. Much less costly than keeping tabs on 20,000 dissidents.

4. It keeps the UFP utterly confused, never quite sure if they were duped or not. Always good.

Edit: seems I'm out by an order of magnitude on my numbers. But I'll still contend that it was a typically Romulan 'tidy solution' to a problem.

Oh and another one:

5. Pull one over on Sela whilst producing a good solid case to have her executed.

 

[Dukhat]

1. The victims are self-selecting, turning-up with bags packed and having said their farewells. Perhaps some that weren't even suspected as dissidents! A lot less work than kicking-down 20,000 doors.

And again I will say that the dissidents (if that's who they really were), would have to be idiots in the extreme if they believed that their government would willingly allow three old Vulcan ships to leave Romulus to voyage to Vulcan completely unprotected.

2. It's an immediate decapitation; killing dissident leadership one by one would give an opportunity for others to backfill their positions. In this case, however, there is no-one left to step-up.

That's assuming that these dissidents were in any kind of authority. For all we know, they could all have been just a bunch of hippies.

3. It's very cheap, a few old ships and a reassigned Warbird. Much less costly than keeping tabs on 20,000 dissidents.

But they wouldn't have to "keep tabs" on them. Once the Romulans were able to get them all in one place (the three ships), they could have just killed them all right there before the ships even launched.

4. It keeps the UFP utterly confused, never quite sure if they were duped or not. Always good.

The Federation has absolutely nothing to do with this. Spock even said that he wanted to work behind the scenes without the Federation's knowledge, and Picard had to go undercover because the Federation couldn't actively get involved. What the Romulan government does with their own people is an internal Romulan matter.

5. Pull one over on Sela whilst producing a good solid case to have her executed.

No one need pull anything over on Sela. She was already incompetent enough that her execution was inevitable.