Vulcan history? HUH?

[RobertScorpio]

Okay let me get this straight...I may be shakey on the facts but here it goes..

Some time around 5000 years ago a faction of Vulcans did not want to follow Surak and they left, into space, and would later become the Romulan Empire. This doesn't make any sense.

For these Vulcans to have gotten far off into space as they did, they had to have Warp Technology. 5000 yrs is not a lot of time to travel in space if you don't have faster than light speed.

But more amazing? Not only did these Vulcans (now Romulans) forget where they came from, the Vulcans who stayed forget that they left.

This is where is gets stranger. If the vulcans who left had warp speed, then we must assume the Vulcans who stayed did too. And we are supposed to believe that not only did they forget who left and who stayed, they also never bumped into each other again for the next 5000 years?

And the Vulcans are supposed to be smart?

Obviously I must be missing something here, so someone please do tell!!!

 

[Noname Given]

RobertScorpio said:
Okay let me get this straight...I may be shakey on the facts but here it goes..

Some time around 5000 years ago a faction of Vulcans did not want to follow Surak and they left, into space, and would later become the Romulan Empire. This doesn't make any sense.

For these Vulcans to have gotten far off into space as they did, they had to have Warp Technology. 5000 yrs is not a lot of time to travel in space if you don't have faster than light speed.

But more amazing? Not only did these Vulcans (now Romulans) forget where they came from, the Vulcans who stayed forget that they left.

This is where is gets stranger. If the vulcans who left had warp speed, then we must assume the Vulcans who stayed did too. And we are supposed to believe that not only did they forget who left and who stayed, they also never bumped into each other again for the next 5000 years?

And the Vulcans are supposed to be smart?

Obviously I must be missing something here, so someone please do tell!!!

In rthe ENT episode Awakening they refine it a bit. The final war that spured Surak to logic occured 1800 years prior to the 22nd century. It was stated that Vulcan had advanced spacefaring tech; and that the ones 'under the Raptor's Wings' split/left at that time. The war left the Vulcan tech in shambles, and it was 1500 years before they regained FTL space faring tech.

The Vulcan Soval stated that the reasons Vulcans were so concerned about humans was that they reminded Vulcans of themselves from that past; yet they managed to do in a little under 100 years what it took Vulcans 1500 years to accomplish.

(Of course no one has ever stated whether it was 1800 'Vulcan' years, or Earth years; and no one has ever said just how long a Vulcan year is in relation to an Earth year - but given they were speaking english when the story was told...)

 

[Mysterion]

^^^^^
Diane Duane's novel "Spock's World" posits the folks who bevcame the Romulans left in generation ships. Also that there was a lot of social upheavel at the time. The Vulcan's didn't "forget" that these people left, but didn't really know what happened to them until the Romulans started showing up.

 

[Anwar]

Yep, neither the Romulans nor the Vulcans "forgot" about each other, they just didn't know what happened to each other and didn't immediately recognize each other when contact was re-established (the Romulans realized it sooner, which led to Administrator V'Las).

 

[Timo]

It is also quite possible that the raptor-wing folks were not the first to leave Vulcan en masse. There might have been dozens of colonization efforts and splinter groups other than the Romulans. And, given the Vulcanoid temperament, most would want nothing to do with the planet they had left behind.

Vulcans had been starfaring for about a thousand years before the Big War and the Romulan exodus anyway; the interstellar monastery at P'Jem was founded that much earlier. Spock refers to a "savage colonization period" in TOS "Balance of Terror", and the ENT information makes it look as if this was a period of interstellar colonization that resulted in many splinter groups, then abruptly ended (perhaps due to a shift in policies, perhaps because Surak's war crippled the motherworld and left the colonies to their own, rather barbaric devices).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Delta1]

There is no problem in the Vulcans achieving warp flight and then maintaining a technological and social plateau for a number of centuries or millennia. The first episode of TNG was about the Q zipping around the universe telling spacefaring races to stay home. I imagine the Vulcans were visited in such a manner and, being eminently logical beings, decided to stay home and let the rest of the universe run itself.

 

[Anwar]

Or they may have just destroyed their advanced technology in one of their brutal wars.

There are some theories on just how bad the past Vulcan wars were. One says that Vulcan used to be a more Earth-like world but the wars turned it into a harsh desert.

Another one says that the current planet Vulcan isn't even their original world, and that the original Vulcan was destroyed in a particularly brutal war and is now an asteroid field in the Vulcan system.

And yes, the "Gambit" two-parter in TNG does show us that there were several Vulcan groups that left Vulcan to settle elsewhere, not just the Romulans.

 

[Brian]

The "Vulcan's Soul" trilogy (Exodus, Exiles, Epiphany) deals with this very subject, and how the Remans came to be what they are, as well.

 

[Dorothy_Zbornak]

Anwar said:
Or they may have just destroyed their advanced technology in one of their brutal wars.

There are some theories on just how bad the past Vulcan wars were. One says that Vulcan used to be a more Earth-like world but the wars turned it into a harsh desert.

Another one says that the current planet Vulcan isn't even their original world, and that the original Vulcan was destroyed in a particularly brutal war and is now an asteroid field in the Vulcan system.

And yes, the "Gambit" two-parter in TNG does show us that there were several Vulcan groups that left Vulcan to settle elsewhere, not just the Romulans.

I always interpreted these groups (which all apparently died out) as members of the Romulan "convoy" which either got lost along the way and settled where they could find a habitable sanctuary, or else opted to end their exodus sooner than the Romulans proper.

 

[Lindley]

^Yeah, and in Vulcan's Soul, the Exile ships were capable of travel at relativistic speeds (but not FTL); so despite hundreds of years passing on Vulcan during the journey, only one generation passed on board before landfall. (Of course, a Vulcan generation is fairly long.)

Also, it wasn't just those who did not wish to follow Surak who left.....

I've only read the first two, but so far, this trilogy has done a remarkable job of not overtly contradicting My Enemy, My Ally.

 

[Anwar]

I figured that the ships they left on were either early Vulcan Warp ships (warp 1) or sleeper impulse ships.

 

[Timo]

Both Diane Duane and the Sherman-Shwartz team stay nicely mum about how much the Vulcans knew about interstellar travel before the Romulan exodus. The technology for generation ships and massive colonization seems novel in both takes, but there's nothing to say Vulcan vessels (crewed or not) wouldn't have ventured to alien stars some decades or centuries preceding the events. Indeed, the factionated planet described in both works might have been running several secret interstellar programs in parallel...

To be painfully exact, the ENT three-parter doesn't specifically say that the Romulans left in the aftermath/middle of Surak's war in 350 AD or so. They might have departed earlier and left the Surakists and anti-Surakists slug it out between them for the next couple of centuries. But the onscreen evidence can be interpreted as fully supporting the novelverse Rihannsu logic, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Temis the Vorta]

But more amazing? Not only did these Vulcans (now Romulans) forget where they came from, the Vulcans who stayed forget that they left.

The Romulans knew where Vulcan was. What canon indication have we ever had of anything different?

The Vulcans knew of the people who left. They just didn't know where they'd gone or if they were even still alive.

Notice how quickly Spock assumes that the Romulans from the viewscreen were Vulcanian, perhaps the Vulcan "dissidents" from centuries before. He'd heard the legend and probably some "they're still alive" rumors. There would be no other way for him to make the connection so quickly.

There are other possibilities, such as aliens who, for their own reasons, have decided to imitate Vulcan looks surgically, or who accidentally look similar to Vulcans (just like there are a lot of alien species who accidentally look a lot like humans). Yet Spock doesn't even consider any alternate explanations.

 

[SFRabid]

It always amazes me that Romulans have an empire that rivals the Federation and Klingons, and Vulcans don't.

 

[misskim86]

Guess they can't logically justify an empire

 

[Therin of Andor]

Dorothy_Zbornak said:
I always interpreted these groups (which all apparently died out)

Maybe some regressed to Mintakans? ("Who Watches the Watchers?")

There were also Rigellians whose blood was compatible with Vulcans ("Journey to Babel").

 

[Anwar]

SFRabid said:
It always amazes me that Romulans have an empire that rivals the Federation and Klingons, and Vulcans don't.

The Vulcan "empire" combined with the Humans, Andorians and Tellarites to become the Federation.

Also, the Vulcans probably didn't see the logic in a huge Empire that would eventually become hard to manage without conquering others and being militaristic and stuff.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Just doesn't make sense to me, at all, that Spock did not know, nor did the Romulan, that they both came from the same stock. The time required for the Vulcans to have left Vulcan, and get as far away from planet Vulcan as they did, would require far more than generational ships. We're only talking 1800 years. And if they didn't have warp speed then they couldn't have gotten that far away.

If they did have warp speed, then not going back, or never coming across each other for the next nearly 2000 years is a bit silly.

This is just an example of Trek's continuity really been stretched to the limit if you ask me and Zubby

 

[Sharr Khan]

Just doesn't make sense to me, at all, that Spock did not know, nor did the Romulan, that they both came from the same stock.

I don't think its ever been implied this that was so. If anything the Vulcans had an echoing recollection of those who had left. He must have to jump to such conclusion regarding the Romulans in "Balance of Terror".

And Enterprise sure tells us the Romulans know who the Vulcans are and their relation to them.

Sharr

 

[RobertScorpio]

1800 years ago isn't that long. Heck, even lowly humans have a pretty good idea of what was going on 1800 years ago....I ain't buying it