When Will the Novels Catch Up the Events Preceding the Reboot?

[The Wormhole]

While I certainly don't subscribe to the Borg technology theory, I do believe Nero likely did do some heavy modifications to Narada. Remember, it was not his intent to go back in time, that happened accidently. If indeed he were planning to attack the 24th century Federation, he'd need something a bit more impressive than a "simple mining ship" to get past 24th century Starfleet.

 

[Christopher]

^Good point, but it's a question of how much time elapsed. The movie implied it didn't take long at all for the supernova wavefront to reach Romulus. Although, realistically, it would've been likely to take months or years at lightspeed.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Another option for the Narada design... there must be other civilizations within the Romulan sphere of influence that Romulus either trades with or subjugates or whatever... perhaps Nero simply bought his ship from one of these other civilizations. It could just be a "Romulan mining ship" because it's owned by a Romulan, not necessarily because it's a Romulan design.

Of course, I didn't think the drone ship from ENT looked very Romulan either, and it's supposedly a modified warbird, so who knows. Maybe Romulans like squid and fleas in addition to birds, so design ships to evoke them too?

 

[Christopher]

Another option for the Narada design... there must be other civilizations within the Romulan sphere of influence that Romulus either trades with or subjugates or whatever... perhaps Nero simply bought his ship from one of these other civilizations. It could just be a "Romulan mining ship" because it's owned by a Romulan, not necessarily because it's a Romulan design.

Ohh, excellent point. I usually try to avoid falling into the trap of equating political identity with cultural or species identity, but I overlooked that possibility here. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[The Wormhole]

Doesn't Narada have a variation of the Romulan bird holding Romulus and Remus on its bridge? Though I suppose Nero could have easily decorated it with Romulan banners after he purchased it.

 

[20fridge]

Doesn't Narada have a variation of the Romulan bird holding Romulus and Remus on its bridge? Though I suppose Nero could have easily decorated it with Romulan banners after he purchased it.

"The Enterprise Incident" demonstrates that the Romulans are not above using vessels/technology from other species. And if you take the remastered version of episodes as cannon, then also redecorating them (they painted the bird pattern on a Klingon D7 cruiser).

 

[laibcoms]

Ooh, Voth ships are still larger by a few kilometers. And if it was a ship bought from another civilization, that would be a story to tell.

Narada as a mining ship, if it was indeed designed to be that in the first place, is so huge it could be mining the planets itself. Or, if was used militarily, a bombardment ship? But good point, it doesn't look Romulan. It looks more like the ships from the quadrilogy "Invasion!" the Furies, if I imagined their ships correctly. (sidenote: I love that series, too bad it was written before Relaunch )

 

[Idran]

Invasion was referenced in SCE:Ring, so it's still at least "something happened".

 

[Christopher]

Narada as a mining ship, if it was indeed designed to be that in the first place, is so huge it could be mining the planets itself.

I wouldn't call 8 kilometers huge on the scale of a planet. Earth, for instance, is some 12,750 kilometers in diameter, 1600 times larger in linear size than the Narada, and more than the cube of that larger in volume.

Besides, mining planets is a step down from mining asteroids, not a step up. Most of the minerals inside a planet are trapped deep inside it, and you have to drag them up out of a gravity well. You could get thousands of times more mineral wealth by mining our system's Main Asteroid Belt than you could get if you strip-mined the entire crust of the Earth down to the mantle, and you could get it far more easily and efficiently. Indeed, it annoys me that Star Trek persistently shows mining as an almost exclusively planet-based operation, which is really a terrible idea.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

^Good point, but it's a question of how much time elapsed. The movie implied it didn't take long at all for the supernova wavefront to reach Romulus. Although, realistically, it would've been likely to take months or years at lightspeed.

I had an idea about explaining this but it might violate the 'no ideas' rule. So, edited.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, there is established Trek precedent for supernova and space-explosion effects propagating faster than light. In Generations, the gravitational shifts from the trilithium-induced supernovae are felt instantaneously, when in fact they should only propagate at the speed of light and take years or decades to be felt at interstellar distances. And in The Undiscovered Country, the Excelsior felt the blast from the Praxis explosion from beyond the Klingon border. So we can assume that the supernova effect that destroyed Romulus could have traveled through subspace at FTL speeds.

On the other hand, it's possible that, say, Romulus orbits a star that has a supergiant companion less than a light-year away, and that it was the supergiant that exploded, with the blast effects propagating at lightspeed and taking only a few months to reach Romulus. Although in that case, they should've had plenty of advance warning and plenty of time to evacuate or build shelters underground (because, despite what the visuals showed, the radiation from a supernova should not have physically shattered the planet).

 

[Sci]

But of course, the canonical depiction would seem to establish that Romulus was, indeed, shattered. The question is -- was that a literal memory of the actual event, or was that an exaggeration produced by Spock Prime's subconscious mind? (The image was, after all, from a visualization of Spock Prime's mind meld with nu-Kirk.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Doesn't Narada have a variation of the Romulan bird holding Romulus and Remus on its bridge? Though I suppose Nero could have easily decorated it with Romulan banners after he purchased it.

The Narada doesn't really have a bridge as we understand it. The interior is basically a hodge-podge of hastily connected compartments. And of course rather convenient caverns for Kirk to knock Ayel into.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

And of course rather convenient caverns for Kirk to knock Ayel into.

All ships have those. Enterprise-E has some beneath the lowest decks, for Reman disposal.

 

[laibcoms]

Besides, mining planets is a step down from mining asteroids, not a step up. Most of the minerals inside a planet are trapped deep inside it, and you have to drag them up out of a gravity well. You could get thousands of times more mineral wealth by mining our system's Main Asteroid Belt than you could get if you strip-mined the entire crust of the Earth down to the mantle, and you could get it far more easily and efficiently. Indeed, it annoys me that Star Trek persistently shows mining as an almost exclusively planet-based operation, which is really a terrible idea.

Makes sense. It's easier to mine asteroids with more minerals than a planet and the dangers it poses should it destabilized. I guess, the idea is still that there are more minerals on a planet than an asteroid.

I guess because of the size of planet? I for one was thinking on that lines until you've mentioned it

Invasion was referenced in SCE:Ring, so it's still at least "something happened".

Oooh, haven't read the SCE series. I better start now.

 

[Idran]

Invasion was referenced in SCE:Ring, so it's still at least "something happened".

Oooh, haven't read the SCE series. I better start now.

Just so your hopes aren't too raised, it's not a huge reference. Just confirmation that the Furies do exist in current Treklit, pretty much. Though it's enough that it at least lets one consider Invasion as one of those "everything happened except for the things that couldn't have happened" series. (Though I haven't read it in years, so I'm honestly not sure what incompatibilities there are with the modern Treklit universe, if even any?)

 

[Christopher]

I guess, the idea is still that there are more minerals on a planet than an asteroid.

Than an asteroid, sure, but there are hundreds of millions of asteroids, and their minerals are far easier to get to. As I said, you could strip away the entire crust of a planet and still get only a fraction of a percent of the mineral wealth you could extract far more easily from an asteroid belt.

 

[Markonian]

Just so your hopes aren't too raised, it's not a huge reference. Just confirmation that the Furies do exist in current Treklit, pretty much. Though it's enough that it at least lets one consider Invasion as one of those "everything happened except for the things that couldn't have happened" series. (Though I haven't read it in years, so I'm honestly not sure what incompatibilities there are with the modern Treklit universe, if even any?)

I read the series in late 2013 and found no incompatibilities with modern TrekLit. There may only be a detail I've overlooked.

 

[Christopher]

I still count the first three Invasion! novels in my personal continuity, and I referenced Time's Enemy in Watching the Clock, even featuring a character introduced therein. My only issues are with The Final Fury, which contains inconsistencies with the other Invasion! books. Its timing pertaining to a certain crossover character from the TNG installment is confused. Where the earlier books portrayed the "primal fear" induced by the Furies as a culturally conditioned reflex that could be resisted with knowledge and willpower, TFF portrays it as a genetically programmed instinct that's completely overpowering and all but impossible to fight. And it seems to assume that Invasion!: First Strike, which took place right after "Friday's Child," actually took place during Tuvok's time on the Excelsior under Captain Sulu 26 years later. It also has some character continuity issues with VGR in general -- it calls Janeway a former engineer rather than science officer, and B'Elanna is too conventionally Klingon at a time when she still renounced that side of her heritage. It's a good book, quite entertaining and thought-provoking, and it embraces the same kind of impossible ethical dilemmas that the show embraced in its first two seasons. But the continuity problems compel me to treat it as apocryphal, or at least as an inaccurate report of events.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Memory Beta notes, and I agree, that the Furies could possibly be the aliens who posed as gods to the early Klingons. Unfortunately, the VOY relaunch with the Kuvah'magh storyline makes no reference to this.