Nero came from the prime timeline. As did the Spock in that movie.
What if the Zhat Vash had never sabotaged the rescue fleet?
- Thread starter Garak234
- Start date
True, but "the Kelvin movies" are a thing that often gets treated as something other than "Prime" anyway. Personally, I have no qualms with their backstory being the same as that of PIC, and of all the various Trek interpretations being from the same universe and timeline unless very explicitly otherwise stated, but it may still fail to convince some on the issue of the general or Prime evacuation history that we hear how Missus Nero and all the Little Neroes died in a separate movieverse.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
In the timeline, you still have Spock launching the red matter After the supernova, be it the romulan sun, or some ultra Ftl one. Why would Spock launch the red matter after the supernova? IF its just the romulan star, the damage is done. the system is destroyed, and anything within a 5-15 Ly radius will get the gamma ray burst. That wont be solved by the red matter. So I ask again, WHY Did Spock launch the red matter? Pointless at that point.
So now theres a black hole just sitting... wherever.. near the old romulan system.
Don't even know WHY Spock promised to fix it with the red matter. Could he have "Eaten" the sun before it exploded? maybe, but that causes a catastrphoe.You may have a few weeks more before the temp drops below freezing on the hole planet. the planets would be ejected into interstelar space. So some more time to rescue people, but not much.
Maybe launch it in to the sun, a small amount, that would suck up some of the sun and keep it from exploding, and just go to red giant? Who knows.
So now theres a black hole just sitting... wherever.. near the old romulan system.
Don't even know WHY Spock promised to fix it with the red matter. Could he have "Eaten" the sun before it exploded? maybe, but that causes a catastrphoe.You may have a few weeks more before the temp drops below freezing on the hole planet. the planets would be ejected into interstelar space. So some more time to rescue people, but not much.
Maybe launch it in to the sun, a small amount, that would suck up some of the sun and keep it from exploding, and just go to red giant? Who knows.
Indeed. And I think it goes back to the idea of how much help are the Romulans willing to accept from outsiders. Spock was using his pull with the Romulans to try to convince them he could actually solve the problem and at least give their overall population a chance, which is why Nero is so devastated. Similarly to the Romulan senator who was so angry with Picard.
I'm going to speculate that Spock's initial plan was to destroy part of the supernova to "recollapse" it into a normal star (however unscientific that is realistically). However, en route, the supernova destroyed Romulus (as said outright in the 2009 movie): "I was en route, when the unthinkable happened. The supernova destroyed Romulus."
So why did Spock still launch the red matter? His own words are vague: "I had little time. I had to extract the red matter, and shoot it into the supernova."
Going by the "I had little time", I suspect the supernova somehow was endangering Spock's life in an immediate manner and he just launched all his red matter to turn it into a black hole to save himself. And he would've been fine if Nero hadn't showed up out of nowhere, got in the way and stalled his escape from the black hole.
That's an interesting take, but one caveat-he didn't launch all his red matter, since that is what Nero wanted to capture the Jellyfish and destroy Vulcan with it, even Vulcan in the alternate timeline.
Save himself?
If the nova already happened.. and he was late, he could have just NOT have warped in, or if he was close, just warp away, if he was far enough, his shields would have worked, I know, grasping at straws to find a reason.
As for saving the star? If it was a typical supernova, it was a super large red giant, and it had burned out all its hydrogen fuel, and was burning helium and other heavier elements. Only way to save it would be to insert more hydrogen into the system, like a Jupiter sized or better amount.
Spock warping in to save the day works better with an FTL Hyper Nova that was aluded to in the movie. Put a blackhole it its path to save Romulas from being destroyed. with it now the romulan star itself, Spock being there doesn't make much sense. Neither does Nero's wife and kid being ON romulas at the time, I mean he had YEARS to get his family on his mining ship and get out of town.. So him blaming the federation and spock is laughable.
Spock only used a single droplet of Red Matter to absorb the wavefront from the supernova at supposed 1 AU range, and Nero likewise used just one droplet to eat all of Vulcan - yet when the entire container for the remaining Red Matter collapsed when Spock rammed the Narada, and a volume at least ten thousand times that of the droplets got the opportunity to do its very worst, it barely bent the Narada spaceframe.
It's potent stuff, but apparently there's a plateau there as regards potency from volume. Possibly volume in fact provides stability, and it's just the droplets that are dangerous. So Spock didn't jettison his remaining supply in panic - but we could argue that a droplet extracted from the main container would be as volatile as a stick of dynamite with the fuze already lit, and this is what Spock had to get rid of ASAP.
The supernova probably was as atypical as they get - not only because the homesun of Romulus probably wouldn't be a red giant, but also because the characters themselves would be far less motivated to agree on evacuation if the threat were considered atypical and perhaps unlikely. One might well argue it was an act of malice, too. (And Spock would be the one with the motivation, as this does result in reunification a few centuries or perhaps just a few decades down the line!)
Spock's timing is logical if nobody knows when exactly the star will blow, and if Spock's actions only help alleviate the effects of an already transpired explosion and will do harm in all preceding scenarios. Both conditions would seem to be met in both the movie (Spock calculates wrong, and his black hole trick appears very harmful) and PIC (there is early warning but evacuation is the only approach taken early on, and trying to fix the star is not considered possible).
With these conditions met, it makes sense for Romulus not to evacuate "in time", because this might mean leaving the planet empty for squatters and pillagers for decades and perhaps centuries. Yet the risk will be understood by most, and those with the means to evacuate will then do their utmost to dissuade those without from attempting to leave anyway. So the masses would be told propaganda about how the upcoming explosion is just a foreign lie. With Nero in the dark about the facts of the matter, it certainly would be natural for him to blame the mysterious Vulcan in his mysterious ship and with his mysterious Red Matter vials... Witchcraft, I say! Witchcraft!
Timo Saloniemi
It's potent stuff, but apparently there's a plateau there as regards potency from volume. Possibly volume in fact provides stability, and it's just the droplets that are dangerous. So Spock didn't jettison his remaining supply in panic - but we could argue that a droplet extracted from the main container would be as volatile as a stick of dynamite with the fuze already lit, and this is what Spock had to get rid of ASAP.
The supernova probably was as atypical as they get - not only because the homesun of Romulus probably wouldn't be a red giant, but also because the characters themselves would be far less motivated to agree on evacuation if the threat were considered atypical and perhaps unlikely. One might well argue it was an act of malice, too. (And Spock would be the one with the motivation, as this does result in reunification a few centuries or perhaps just a few decades down the line!)
Spock's timing is logical if nobody knows when exactly the star will blow, and if Spock's actions only help alleviate the effects of an already transpired explosion and will do harm in all preceding scenarios. Both conditions would seem to be met in both the movie (Spock calculates wrong, and his black hole trick appears very harmful) and PIC (there is early warning but evacuation is the only approach taken early on, and trying to fix the star is not considered possible).
With these conditions met, it makes sense for Romulus not to evacuate "in time", because this might mean leaving the planet empty for squatters and pillagers for decades and perhaps centuries. Yet the risk will be understood by most, and those with the means to evacuate will then do their utmost to dissuade those without from attempting to leave anyway. So the masses would be told propaganda about how the upcoming explosion is just a foreign lie. With Nero in the dark about the facts of the matter, it certainly would be natural for him to blame the mysterious Vulcan in his mysterious ship and with his mysterious Red Matter vials... Witchcraft, I say! Witchcraft!
Timo Saloniemi
WHy would Spock undertake such a risky maneuver to save his own life? If anything, he should have sacrificed himself.
It's not supposed to be rationale. Wow, it's amazing how dismissive of grief in characters reactions can be. "He had years?" I doubt it. The Romulans would not care about a mining vessel.
Not many of the Zhat Vash's actions make sense and often seem to run counter to their stated goals. Their main reason for existence is to prevent the rise of AI that could destroy the Romulan Empire, right? And yet the masterstroke of their big anti-AI plan has a primary effect of destroying the very rescue fleet that's supposed to evacuate Romulus, thus ensuring the Empire's destruction. (Of course, if the greatly diminished post-supernova Empire has enough resources for the Zhat Vash to send 200-plus ships to attack Coppelius, then why'd they need the Federation rescue fleet in the first place? And why did Commodore Oh order the Captain of the Ibn Majid to immediately kill the two Coppelius androids without trying to find out where they were from, only to go to great lengths a few years later to discover Soji and Dahj's origins? It's almost like the writers of Batman & Robin and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen teamed up on this thing.)
Because why not? As already noted on this thread, the Romulan system was already destroyed so there would be no harm in turning the Romulan sun into a full fledged black hole now to save his life.
@valkyrie013 your points about why Spock doesn't use shields/warp away to save himself--we don't know their condition at the time, they could have been inoperable
Nero's motivation was absurd even in the old non-canon explanation, where readers of Star Trek Countdown noted Nero could've just grabbed his wife and kept her aboard the Narada.
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Because priorities. Neither the Tal Shiar nor the Zhat Vash have the greater Romulus' populous' best interests at heart. They are rarely willing to ask for help, always operating with the assumption that asking for help is an opportunity to stab in the back. They are not going to use their full resources to save the most people when they want to reserve those resources for their future endeavors. They are myopic, short sighted, and narrow minded. They act irrationally out of fear, and strong paranoia, more so than the average Romulan.
The Zhat Vash are supposed to be absolute idiot extremists. They knowingly sacrificed their own world rather than have androids be part of the rescue effort.
Although Picard created a discrepancy in the supernova plotline ("threatened to destroy the galaxy" retconned to a blast radius within Romulan space, and the nonsensicality of absorbing the Romulan sun as a means to save Romulus), it does add to Nero's line when torturing Pike, that the Federation "stood by and did nothing".
Although Picard created a discrepancy in the supernova plotline ("threatened to destroy the galaxy" retconned to a blast radius within Romulan space, and the nonsensicality of absorbing the Romulan sun as a means to save Romulus), it does add to Nero's line when torturing Pike, that the Federation "stood by and did nothing".
Well, a requirement for Zhat Vash membership is to make a pilgrimage to a planet in an 8-star solar system. Between the intense radiation and the brain-scrambling they get from that alien laser table thing, those who survive might not be the ideal picture of mental health.
Ends just off the means.
Yes there romulans, but in there mind there saving the galaxy, so any sacrifice is deemed worthy.
They used an opportune time to further there goal regardless of fallout. There only goal is to get rid of synthetic life.
Yes there romulans, but in there mind there saving the galaxy, so any sacrifice is deemed worthy.
They used an opportune time to further there goal regardless of fallout. There only goal is to get rid of synthetic life.
One thing we are failing to take into account: Every day I read (or nearly every day) of astronomers discovering new hyper-energetic events that defy current understanding. We THINK we know how stars die, and we know that our grasp of physics is incomplete at best... we're mostly right and can explain how things work (we think) but we realize there is a lot more to reality.
The only part that I find implausible here -- both the Hobus event version and the Romulan homestar version, is that they were able to predict a time frame to that extent. That is completely unrealistic even for a future-tech society.
They might be able to give a range of time "It could explode any time between last Tuesday and 50 years from now" and still be right.
That's where "the unthinkable happened." They failed to accurately predict the time/date of the explosion, it's magnitude or other unforeseen effects. Subspace Problems? Certainly. In Generations, we had a madman blowing up stars to influence the track of an energetic phenomenon... Each explosion created havoc far outside the range of the blast. Ships had to change course, gravity shifted across entire sectors... who knows what kind of an effect the Romulan supernova (or Hobus supernova) had?
It's not hard to extrapolate from Generations. Whatever went wrong with the Romulan star (or Hobus) was far beyond a simple supernova. Accident with a trilithium device? Some kind of interaction with a Romulan singularity core? Deliberate act of malice by a malevolent force? Iconians?
I'm inspired now, I may sit down and write this one up from start to finish.... Thanks TrekBBS. :P
The only part that I find implausible here -- both the Hobus event version and the Romulan homestar version, is that they were able to predict a time frame to that extent. That is completely unrealistic even for a future-tech society.
They might be able to give a range of time "It could explode any time between last Tuesday and 50 years from now" and still be right.
That's where "the unthinkable happened." They failed to accurately predict the time/date of the explosion, it's magnitude or other unforeseen effects. Subspace Problems? Certainly. In Generations, we had a madman blowing up stars to influence the track of an energetic phenomenon... Each explosion created havoc far outside the range of the blast. Ships had to change course, gravity shifted across entire sectors... who knows what kind of an effect the Romulan supernova (or Hobus supernova) had?
It's not hard to extrapolate from Generations. Whatever went wrong with the Romulan star (or Hobus) was far beyond a simple supernova. Accident with a trilithium device? Some kind of interaction with a Romulan singularity core? Deliberate act of malice by a malevolent force? Iconians?
I'm inspired now, I may sit down and write this one up from start to finish.... Thanks TrekBBS. :P
The Zhat Vash hatred of AI is forced. Romulans are a species known for its isolationism. Twice. Hundred years before Balance of Terror and again decades before TNG since the Tomed Incident. Not exactly the kind of people staying involved in the galaxy to prevent AI development elsewhere.
The Romulans encountered Data gazillions of times and made no specific attempt to destroy him. Data was held captive on freaking Romulus in Unification and no Romulan officer gave him a second glance. B4 was an agent of Praetor Shinzon and again no Romulan even gave him notice. No android or Soong ever mentioned a cult of AI hating fanatics coming after them in any of their appearances. Data malfunctioned every other week and no Romulans took advantage of that to increase hatred of all synthetic life.
The Romulans encountered Data gazillions of times and made no specific attempt to destroy him. Data was held captive on freaking Romulus in Unification and no Romulan officer gave him a second glance. B4 was an agent of Praetor Shinzon and again no Romulan even gave him notice. No android or Soong ever mentioned a cult of AI hating fanatics coming after them in any of their appearances. Data malfunctioned every other week and no Romulans took advantage of that to increase hatred of all synthetic life.
With Thadious
I'm reminded of archers dad from Enterprise when genetic engineering was completely banned and the augments episode Soong thought about how genetic engineering could have saved his dad's life but the complete ban prevented it but eventually some medically needed genetic engineering was allowed.
Riker could have went to the Federation and gotten \advocated a medical exemption and went to date from and activated B4 for a cure.
I'm reminded of archers dad from Enterprise when genetic engineering was completely banned and the augments episode Soong thought about how genetic engineering could have saved his dad's life but the complete ban prevented it but eventually some medically needed genetic engineering was allowed.
Riker could have went to the Federation and gotten \advocated a medical exemption and went to date from and activated B4 for a cure.
So, because some Romulans are driven to destroy AI all Romulans must?
