Star Trek musings

[ratcreature]

I've been wondering about what will happen with Romulan-Federation and Romulan-Vulcan relations in the future in the ST:AOS universe. (Though I'm not very knowledgeable about how things went in the TOS universe.)

On the one hand, Nero and his deranged scheme certainly is an object lesson why emotional decisions are a very bad idea, so I suspect the philosophical divide between Romulans and Vulcans will be even deeper still. OTOH there are very few Vulcans and lots of Romulans now, and they are biologically still very close.

Then there is the matter of the upcoming supernova complicating things even further. I mean, if Nero had been sane he would have tried to convince the Romulan Empire of the future disaster, given them his advanced tech first as proof of his claims (sensor readings or whatever) and then they would have a massive advantage, and would have come out on top of all conflicts with the Federation and the Klingons, instead of waiting for decades for Spock to show up. Then Nero could have gloated as the rest of the Alpha quadrant became subjugated vassal planets of the Empire or something like that. And if he had contacted the Romulans at all they most likely would have tried to make that happen and get their hands on the tech while getting rid of the crazy miner if at all possible, and since Nero didn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer they probably could have achieved that if he had talked to them, future tech or not.

But since that didn't happen I assume he completely avoided the Empire too during those decades, so that makes contact from the Federation's side to convince them to take action in time to prepare important. I mean, I assume the supernova must have been some kind of wacky event that happened without showing signs very long in advance.

Of course from the Romulans' perspective any claims about this must seem highly suspicious. I mean, their enemies claim one of their people from the future blew up Vulcan, and BTW their main planet's sun will blow up not too far in the future too, so they better start moving soonish. That has to sound like some kind of weird scheme to gain advantage and weaken them or something.

So is there any fanfic yet, about how this will shake out?

Comments

[sanj]

Let me know when you find it, because I want to read it.

Also, the future where Nero's men suborn him and take him to Ch'Rihan and then the Romulans take advantage of their technical expertise and their knowledge of the future and the weakened position of the Vulcans -- I want that, preferably in a big thick novel. (Paging Diane Duane...?)

[ratcreature]

I've been surprised that Nero's all go along with this really not well thought out scheme as well.

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Nero so could have handled things better. Maybe he didn't want to risk the Romulan Empire actually being rational and not going to war over it? Or he wanted his revenge to be personal and didn't want to risk the Romulan Empire taking all his stuff and then going "Yeah, yeah, we'll deal with the Federation. Once we've studied this stuff." or even "The future, riiiiight. Alright, hand over the shiney technology and then we've got a nice padded room for you." Or maybe he was just an idiot and didn't even think of providing superior technology to the Empire, which could explain why he was on a mining vessel and not say, in the military in his own time.

One thing that might affect Romulan/Federation relations is that the biological link between Romulans and Vulcans has been discovered a good eight years earlier (assuming that Spock, Kirk or Pike picked up on the physical resemblances). To the best of my knowledge, no one knew that Romulans were descended from Vulcans in the TOS universe until 2266. Unless they ret-conned that somehow in the Enterprise series, which I'm not familiar with.

It would be interesting to see if the Federation contacts the Empire and the Empire's reaction, especially with the whole lack of any kind of proof, aside from one elderly Vulcan. If I ever see a story about it, I'll pop back and let you know. It would be an interesting read.

[ratcreature]

I think the Vulcans might have been forced to reveal the connection even earlier if transmissions from the Kelvin and the survivors got through. They did get images of Nero after all. (Though I wonder whether the miners did the tattoo thing to throw off questions in that direction. I mean, many hominids in the Trek universe look similar, and facial tattoos draw a lot of attention and the Kelvin didn't have extensive contact.)

And yeah, Nero probably was a few cards short of a full deck. Maybe he and his crew went all mad with grief or something. Do Romulans have bonds with their partners like Vulcans? Or did they loose that with the telepathy talents? Do they have pon farr? I'm rather clueless about TOS Romulan canon. In either case having your planet blown up certainly is reason enough to go crazy especially if you have a volatile nature and an inclination towards wanting to assign blame rather than some sort zen-like acceptance.