^Wow, how did all my quotation marks get changed into """ in your quote of my, err, quotes?
What if Saavik was Half-Human, Instead of Half-Romulan?
- Thread starter Kamdan
- Start date
I've no idea. Curious. The telepathic link is unlikely, though. Would folks in Pon Farr create tensions in Vulcans around them. Would Vulcans in proximity to Romulan worlds become more aggressive, or Romulans passive on Vulcan worlds? I think the idea doesn't have enough support. More likely, Spock was just hot for Zarabeth.
Or that the events from Amok Time only offered a temporary release and that the presence of Zarabeth stirred those unreleased hormones up again.
I'm still not sure why Saavik not getting the normal Vulcan upbringing as a child can't be the explanation for her more Romulanesque lack of emotional control in ST II? It doesn't have to say, necessarily, that Romulans and Vulcans are separate species.
Oh, come on. Something like treachery is hardly a genetic trait. Again, Vulcan logic and integrity aren't something they're born with, they're a learned, carefully cultivated set of behaviors to compensate for the fact that Vulcans are innately an intensely passionate and violent race. Romulans are just Vulcans who don't follow Surak's teachings. And we know there are actual natives of Vulcan who don't follow Surak's teachings, such as Sybok and the V'tosh katur from ENT: "Fusion."
And it's an unrealistically idealized view of the Vulcans to assume that treachery is not in their nature. What about T'Pring? She forced her husband-to-be to fight his best friend to the death just so she could be with her boy toy -- who, by her own admission, she would've still fooled around with anyway even if Spock had married her, so she didn't even need to do it. Then there were T'Paal, the Vulcan isolationist from "Gambit" -- she was quite treacherous and indeed murderous. Then there are Vulcans like Captain Solok from DS9, who was simply a racist jerk. Trek fandom has a tendency to see the Vulcans as saintly and perfect, but the facts onscreen have always shown that they're as capable of venality and nastiness as any other species.
I speculate that the small number of Vulcans who made it to Romulus, plus any genetic engineering that was done afterwards might classify them as at least a subspecies.
They don't all have ridges, though, right? Which, if I remember correctly, would lead more to the conclusion of mating with other species.
Or maybe there was an ethnic group on Vulcan that had ridged foreheads, and they constituted a large percentage of the group that left Vulcan to form Romulan civilization.
Quitting Vulcan in ships that can probably make no faster than Warp 1, probably far more guys than gals among "those who marched beneath the raptor's wings", these guys have probably been worse than Frank Booth.
Time-travel.
She cried at Spock's funeral.
knowing the romulans, I'd guess the fore-head ridges probably occured after some kind of government mandated genetic engineering between the time of TOS and TNG, in an effort to make them mentally superior in some way. Or perhaps it was for extra cranial protection to make themselves better soldiers. It probably also became something of a statement of romulan pride... Emperor's new clothes and all that.. "If you don't have these ridges, you aren't a true romulan"
a lot could happen in the 100ish year gap between TOS and TNG. Plenty of cultures go for the body modding stuff, as an "inclusion" into the tribe.
They could have grown a dislike for the vulcans so much over time that they didn't want to look like their "inferior" cousins.
Of course we know that any in universe speculation is ultimately just a way to explain away Out of universe reasons, but it's fun and it makes enough sense to me in this case.
Link: this site has plenty of insightful commentary on the "issue"
a lot could happen in the 100ish year gap between TOS and TNG. Plenty of cultures go for the body modding stuff, as an "inclusion" into the tribe.
They could have grown a dislike for the vulcans so much over time that they didn't want to look like their "inferior" cousins.
Of course we know that any in universe speculation is ultimately just a way to explain away Out of universe reasons, but it's fun and it makes enough sense to me in this case.
Link: this site has plenty of insightful commentary on the "issue"
Or maybe they had the ridges all along. If you think about it, all but six of the Romulans we saw in the TOS era (two commanders, a subcommander, a centurion, and two ambassadors in the movies) were wearing helmets that concealed their foreheads. I tend to think that the Romulans have two ethnic groups, one with more pronouced foreheads than the other, but in the 23rd century the more Vulcan-appearing group was the ruling class, so only the lower-ranked Romulans we saw had the ridged foreheads, and they were all in the background wearing helmets. But by the 24th century, the ridged majority are the dominant class again, and the smooth-headed ones are the working class (like Nero's mining crew).
I never like "the whole race genetically engineered itself" explanations, because since when would an entire species ever agree in lockstep to do anything (unless it's the Borg)? Even if many of them were willing to undergo genetic modification, many others would resist. For that matter, of those that were willing, why would they all undergo the same change? If you have that kind of genetic engineering capability, it's a waste to do only one thing with it. A species willing to undergo deliberate genetic modification wouldn't just go from one appearance to another one, but would proliferate into a whole range of different types.
I never like "the whole race genetically engineered itself" explanations, because since when would an entire species ever agree in lockstep to do anything (unless it's the Borg)? Even if many of them were willing to undergo genetic modification, many others would resist. For that matter, of those that were willing, why would they all undergo the same change? If you have that kind of genetic engineering capability, it's a waste to do only one thing with it. A species willing to undergo deliberate genetic modification wouldn't just go from one appearance to another one, but would proliferate into a whole range of different types.
yep, thats also another theory that the site I linked to talks about a little bit. (the helmet rommies having ridges)
It doesn't go into the class-switching though, that's interesting.
That could explain the century long absence between TOS and TNG. They were busy with some kind of long civil war.
By the time they return in TNG, they proclaim "We are BACK"... And better than ever now that those smooth heads are in their proper place?
The two theories could go hand in hand though. Perhaps the Smooth heads of the 23rd century subjected the lower classes to forced genetic engineering to make them into better soldiers. They did too well of a job though, and made the lower class superior to themselves. It was only a matter of time until the lower ridged forehead class Usurped their now inferior masters.
Sorry, I should have said implicit instead of explicit.
It would also fit the theory that they're a separate species in the same genus. Hablis or Erectus vs Sapiens for ex.
Why should it mean something different in the STU than ours? Do we know Spock is fertile? Or that there wasn't genetic engineering / therapy on him as a zygote, embryo, infant, child and/or continuing through adulthood? If it wasn't a deliberate in-vitro experiment ala Spock's World. It's apparently banned on Earth after the Eugenics Wars but do we know that holds true on Vulcan?
That would depend on how exactly the Atavachron works and what technobabble the writers would have come up with to justify the change in behavior. Atoz certainly wanted to do some sort of "preparation" though the specifics weren't detailed for us to do anything other than speculate about.
How do we know Riker isn't a racist in the 24th century and the trip didn't undo it?
Maybe the atavachron WOULD have done that, but Atoz explicitly says they weren't prepared. Or maybe it does do that and the preparation would make sure it didn't change. Sounds like the intent of the "preparation" was subtle changes in biology but the timeframe doesn't seem long enough to need it. It's just the macguffin for their need to go back (other than being stranded in an ice age cave
). They should have made it 500k years ago or 500M years or something like that.
If we want to take the Roman analogy longer, maybe the smooth heads are Patrician equivalent while the ridges "went native" and are the analogy to either Latini (or Socii), if not Pelegrini...
The Real World reason is just like the Klingons and budgetary. In TOS, I think they were intended to be a separate race. By TNG, they were making the differences more pronounced. Have there been any without the ridges post TOS other than Nanclus?
But without any other support for that hypothesis, it's the less likely one.
Actually Enterprise did establish that human-Vulcan interbreeding would require some medical intervention, and DS9 established that Klingons and Trill would need assistance too. But we've definitely seen cases where hybrids had children of their own, and where interspecies conception happened without technological intervention -- the half-human K'Ehleyr giving birth to Alexander, fathered by Worf without his knowledge, is an example of the former and probably of the latter as well. There's also Tora Ziyal and the other half-Cardassian, half-Bajoran children of the occupation. Given that Cardassians saw such children as shameful, there's no way they would've deliberately arranged to engineer their birth, and the Bajoran slaves wouldn't have had the resources. So Cardassians and Bajorans must be naturally interfertile, despite how radically different they appear.
Maybe the atavachron WOULD have done that, but Atoz explicitly says they weren't prepared. Or maybe it does do that and the preparation would make sure it didn't change. Sounds like the intent of the "preparation" was subtle changes in biology but the timeframe doesn't seem long enough to need it. It's just the macguffin for their need to go back (other than being stranded in an ice age cave
Either way, the bit about Spock turning savage just because he was visiting a time when other Vulcans were savage is one of the stupidest and most poorly justified ideas in Trek history, and we're under no obligation to take the stupid ideas as immutable gospel. It's all fiction, all just pretend, and canon itself is able to pretend that bad ideas (like "The Alternative Factor"'s treatment of antimatter or the entirety of "Threshold") never happened, so we can do the same.
There was Caithlin Dar, who preceded Nanclus by one movie. And in the 24th century there was Nero and his crew (who came from the Prime universe in 2387). Also, Spock was able to pass for Romulan without cosmetic alteration, which he wouldn't have been able to do if there weren't still Romulans who looked Vulcan.
And I have to say, the '09 movie's shaved heads and tattoos were a much better solution to the question "How do we visually code Vulcans and Romulans as different civilizations for the casual viewer?" than Westmore's forehead ridges. Though it wouldn't have worked in a weekly TV series, since you can rarely get actors to shave their heads for that and bald caps always look fake. But then, they could've just used smaller, Chakotay-style tattoos without the head-shaving.
Ah yes I forgot about that. I think that's the single most important piece of (prime universe) on screen evidence to support the idea that there are still smooth headed rommies in the 24th century.
