Likewise they did not think through the politico-economic as astrographic aspects of the plot and jammed a city-state style plot element on top of a huge star empire (and yes it is not exactly new, TNG did the same thing all too often, mostly in throwaway dialog, but they did not make a whole season or two revolve around it either).
We know the Romulans are one of the three main players in the Alpha/Beta quadrant so they have to be at least close to the size of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Federation has at least 250 major worlds, and their colonies, along with associates and protectorates under the UFP umbrella. Since the Federation does not totally dwarf the other two that means the overall RSE population would not be in the billions, that is probably the population of just the capital star system alone, it would have to be in the trillions at least.
This isn't really how things work.
If we were talking about pre-industrial societies, the size of one's empire, and the number of people they have, would be a major factor in determining comparative strength. In a high tech future like Star Trek, the determining factor tends to be technology, and tactics. The Romulan prove so troublesome for the Federation because of their use of cloaking devices, and their mastery of espionage, not because they are militarily equal to the Federation in size or power. In fact, Romulans tend to flee from most straight battles BECAUSE they AREN'T a match for the Federation in direct one on one fights.
As for size, the Star Trek Star Charts put the Federation's total size as around 150 sectors. The Romulan Star Empire covers like 25. The Federation is around 6 times larger then the RSE. Also, the Federation is a multi-species political entity, while the Romulan Star Empire is an almost one species empire, besides the enslaved Remans. The Federation's population was, again, according to the Star Charts, around 985 billion in 2370. Even if we scale it down proportionately, the RSE would only have around 164 billion people. Most likely, far less due to being only one species that doesn't seem more quick to reproduce compared to galactic norms.
Also, where did you get 250 major worlds in the Federation from? They mention 150 in TNG and VOY, and the Star Charts ups that to 183 member worlds, but I've never seen 200+ major worlds mentioned.
Star Charts was only recently canonized, and then it was only the one map so far in the same way the smattering of Franz Joseph ships and deckplans and FASA ships were, by being on screens on the set. Unless they start mentioning the supplementary information like population in dialog I would not put too much faith in the numbers, especially since Michael Chabon said the Federation population is in the trillions so the show and the third party charts do not agree in that.
As for the RSE not taking up as much of the map space as the Federation, that makes sense since up until the mid 2260s their stardrive was very slow compared to the Federation and Klingon warp drives. That would tend to make their empire denser than the wispy sponge-like structure of the Federation with all the unexplored, primitive, and other non-Federation worlds inside of it.
And while Vulcanoids do not reproduce as rapidly as humans they have a longer lifespan and they started their expansion sometime in the fourth or very early fifth century AD depending on exactly how long their migration took so they have a considerable head start on the Federation in building up population. Also, it is implied that they are considerably more promiscuous than their Vulcan brethren which would tend to give them a higher growth rate than Vulcans.
The number of Federation worlds has never been entirely consistent, but since they have a sort of tiered membership structure I suppose it could be explained by how many of those tiers you include. All together though, in Metamorphosis Kirk says of the Federation:
We're on a thousand planets and spreading out. We cross fantastic distances and everything's alive, Cochrane. Life everywhere. We estimate there are millions of planets with intelligent life. We haven't begun to map them. Interesting?
so the Federation is not small if you take all the colonies and protectorates and whatnot into account. And to be a credible rival, (not just threat, because like the Klingons they are implied to be more than just the equivalent of a third world country with a nuke), they would need a reasonably high population to support it, especially since the Romulans have never been especially fond of automation.
The reason we cannot explore things is that it is all written in a single threaded version of the empty magic box style and if they look too closely the viewers will see that there is really nothing there. Think of the end of Blazing Saddles when the camera pulls back and it turns out the whole town is nothing but facades propped up by two by fours, but instead of shooting sets those facades are plot/world elements that have never been fleshed out and just used to set up SFX/action movie gags or to try and use random nonsense to camouflage the Chekov's Gun effect that serials have so much trouble with.
The art of using the magic box is to make people think there is really something inside of it, and CBS Trek has fallen short of that, probably because they underestimate the viewers. And the corollary to that is that the box can never truly be empty, it contains a promise, and if the writer does it right it also contains the barest seed of the story that fulfills that promise so it can be opened later. Not all viewers are as gullible as Charlie Brown when Lucy sets up the ball yet again.
In all likelihood, the writers have no idea why the cube is there beyond the fact that it is Borg and the production executives wanted Jeri Ryan to make an appearance in the series and do the two-rifle mojo thing. They may not have even considered WHY Soji/Daj/clone 13522 is The Destroyer (dun, dun, DUUUUN!), they my just have wanted one in the show because it is a "cool" old standby trope. And the flowers could be some attempt at simile or it could just have been a random herring they threw in because they needed something there and didn't bother to get clever (or it could be the deus ex machina muguffin).
Likewise they did not think through the politico-economic as astrographic aspects of the plot and jammed a city-state style plot element on top of a huge star empire (and yes it is not exactly new, TNG did the same thing all too often, mostly in throwaway dialog, but they did not make a whole season or two revolve around it either).
We know the Romulans are one of the three main players in the Alpha/Beta quadrant so they have to be at least close to the size of the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Federation has at least 250 major worlds, and their colonies, along with associates and protectorates under the UFP umbrella. Since the Federation does not totally dwarf the other two that means the overall RSE population would not be in the billions, that is probably the population of just the capital star system alone, it would have to be in the trillions at least.
you keep expecting them to flesh everything in, but... thats not how movies and TV work.
No, I don't expect them to flesh everything out, my point was that the "empty" magic box style cannot truly be empty or the viewers eventually loose interest. I do not have enough information to tell if they are having a problem balancing the Magic Box against Chekov's Gun or whether their thread timing is way off, but people are pointing out those gaps and other problems in a lot of the Trek and general sci-fi boards out there.
I do expect something less clumsy out of Chabon, but with Kurtzman in overall charge of Trek at CBS he probably does not have the freedom to do his usual intricate low-key kaleidoscope style.
Star Charts was only recently canonized, and then it was only the one map so far in the same way the smattering of Franz Joseph ships and deckplans and FASA ships were, by being on screens on the set. Unless they start mentioning the supplementary information like population in dialog I would not put too much faith in the numbers, especially since Michael Chabon said the Federation population is in the trillions so the show and the third party charts do not agree in that.
Chabon also said the T'kon left the admonition, and the show doesn't support that at all.
If so, that would not be the first time someone left a red herring in an interview in place of a spoiler, but derailing guesses about what is to come is quite different from telling what is supposed to be ordinary background information like the current Fed population. On top of that, I would consider something said by an insider like Chabon to carry more weight than some third party supplement publication.
As for the RSE not taking up as much of the map space as the Federation, that makes sense since up until the mid 2260s their stardrive was very slow compared to the Federation and Klingon warp drives. That would tend to make their empire denser than the wispy sponge-like structure of the Federation with all the unexplored, primitive, and other non-Federation worlds inside of it.
The idea that Romulan ships were slower then Federation or Klingon ones is headcanon. Romulan ships, even back in ENT, where shown to have equal speeds.
You should probably look up the definition of "headcanon", I suspect it is not what you think it is. Anyway, Romulan ships actually were slower than Fed or KDF up until the Klingon-Romulan tech exchange. In fact they make a big deal about it in "Balance of Terror", and then follow up with the reference to the tech exchange in "The Enterprise Incident".
And while Vulcanoids do not reproduce as rapidly as humans they have a longer lifespan and they started their expansion sometime in the fourth or very early fifth century AD depending on exactly how long their migration took so they have a considerable head start on the Federation in building up population. Also, it is implied that they are considerably more promiscuous than their Vulcan brethren which would tend to give them a higher growth rate than Vulcans.
Having a longer amount of time really doesn't mean anything. We know of species that have been space faring for 1-2,000 years, and don't control more then just a few systems. IIRC, its even mentioned by Phlox, or some other non-human character, that humanity's desire to expand and explore space is rather unique among known species.
True, but irrelevant since the Romulans are a major power up until PIC and they need at least a certain minimum population to do that without super-extensive automation and nothing shown of the Romulans supports the idea that they used that level of automation.
In fact, "The Enterprise Incident" shows the flagship of the Romulan squadron that captured the Enterprise was using obsolete Federation MARS displays, possibly something they bought from the Orions or whoever they got old surplus equipment from, and later in TNG and/or DS9 (I forget which atm) some Romulan throwaway dialog included the usual quip about the Federation's dependence on toys make them soft or words to that effect.
The number of Federation worlds has never been entirely consistent, but since they have a sort of tiered membership structure I suppose it could be explained by how many of those tiers you include. All together though, in Metamorphosis Kirk says of the Federation:
We're on a thousand planets and spreading out. We cross fantastic distances and everything's alive, Cochrane. Life everywhere. We estimate there are millions of planets with intelligent life. We haven't begun to map them. Interesting?
so the Federation is not small if you take all the colonies and protectorates and whatnot into account. And to be a credible rival, (not just threat, because like the Klingons they are implied to be more than just the equivalent of a third world country with a nuke), they would need a reasonably high population to support it, especially since the Romulans have never been especially fond of automation.
While there are only 183 member worlds, the Star Trek Star Charts mention there are 7,128 Federation affiliates, which would include the nonindependent colonies of member worlds like Earth.
Again, Star Trek Star Charts is a third party publication, just because CBS chose to use one of the maps from it does not automatically canonize the whole thing, especially in light of the showrunner's take on the population figure. Since they never give an exact figure on the show itself it is still essentially undefined.
I'd also warn agaisnt using TOS as a measure of Romulan tech level. by TNG (let alone Picard) that's a century in the past. 100 years is a fairly long time to catch up. especially if your rivals have hit a technological platue
I'd also warn agaisnt using TOS as a measure of Romulan tech level. by TNG (let alone Picard) that's a century in the past. 100 years is a fairly long time to catch up. especially if your rivals have hit a technological platue
Which is why it makes no sense for the Romulans need to rely on the Federation to build a fleet of rescue ships. If the Federation has enough time to build a fleet of rescue ships, then the Romulans have enough time to save themselves.
I'd also warn agaisnt using TOS as a measure of Romulan tech level. by TNG (let alone Picard) that's a century in the past. 100 years is a fairly long time to catch up. especially if your rivals have hit a technological platue
Which is why it makes no sense for the Romulans need to rely on the Federation to build a fleet of rescue ships. If the Federation has enough time to build a fleet of rescue ships, then the Romulans have enough time to save themselves.
except how do you build up a massive fleet in an evacuation zone? chances are alot of their major ship yards where in the "boom zone"
look, let's assuming a population of 5 billion (5,000.000.000)
the galaxy class is listed in the TNG tech manual as having an evacuation limit of 15,000 people. (remember that these ships need to hold the people for a length of time as well as industral support materials so this is actually a lot of people)
let's assume a romulan d'derdex cruiser is even bigger and has a evacuation limit of 20,000 (this is INSANELY generous given the galaxy class is an exploration vessel designed to carry civilians and thus has facialites for civilians, while the d'deradex is, as far as we know a dedicated warship)
to evacuate even a BILLION people, the romulans would need 50 thousand trips (not ships trips. obviously their ships could people in groups)
now let's look at the logistics here.
we know the Romulan super nova occured in 2387, starfleet according to the Picard novel learned of this in 2381, but we'll assume the Romulans would have learned in 2380, giving them 7 years of evac time.
the novel Picard tells us it takes 2 months to bring refugees to their destination worlds this would mean a round trip would take 4 months, we'll assume that tthe romulans are willing to burn their engines out etc a bit more then the feddies and make it a 3 month round trip for the transports. assuming a 7 year time period, you'd be able to amke 21 trips.
with these calculations, to sucessfully evacuate a single 1 billion person world the Romulans would need a fleet of over 2380 large "galaxy sized" ships.
The Romulans don't have that kind of fleet (we know this because if they did they'd have conquered the federation, given the feddys only had a dozen or less galaxies)
it's likely the only way they where evacuating in time was if the federation AND the Romulans worked together both pulling out all the stops.
and remember even if the romulans managed to do it by themselves they'd need to also watch their borders, the federation being involved made that a minor concern given that it means both the federation and the klingons would likely behave.
I think you're forgetting that crazy Romulan ZV XB was calling Soji the destroyer on the cube in an earlier episode. It is the entire reason they seem to be after Soji/daj in the first place. That info only came from the thing we now know is the garbled message, and also showed Data or a Soong android of some kind in one of them.
Uhh no. The crazy Romulan lady calls Soji the destroyer because all synth-organics are a threat. And that is why the Romulans are after, not only Soji, but all synth-organics.
In regards to the prophecy of the destroyer specifically, the Romulan lady mentions "are you the sister who lives, or the one who dies?" seemingly in reference to Dahj and Soji, but, with this newest episode, this pairing has been reveled to actually be about Sutra.
But she knows about them, and that is the issue. Why would she know anything about them if she went nuts at the ZV initiation with the message? Again the only thing we know she knows is the android message that made her mad. That leaves the implication that the super mega evil empire seeded it with knowledge of Soji and others because there is no reason to tell the initiates anything detailed if they may not survive.
And you miss my point about the crew. They are misfits and not particularly good at anything, yet they are apparently going to save the galaxy from a hyper mega evil big bad. How powerful can it be to be stopped by misfits? Now I doubt the big bad evil will actually get involved, but to have its plans to destroy the galaxy and rescue AI thwarted by a bunch of misfits is absurd. Worse, its still out there and not actually being dealt with, of course there's no reason it even had to be introduced.
Uhh what? All of them are VERY good at their respective things.
Picard is one of the greatest captains and diplomats the Federation has ever had
Rios is an extremely good pilot
Raffi is incredibly intelligent, and is able to spot hidden patterns in things most people miss
Jurati is the worlds leading expert on synthetic life
Elnor is an incredibly skilled warrior, even among the famously skilled Qowat Milat order.
Picard is old, feeble, and while he has his moments, including the rare channelling of old TNG picard, he's clearly past his prime.
Rios' piloting skills are of little import. His hologram menagerie is much more concerning.
Raffi is a junkie who can't get control over herself to clean up, and any computer would be even better at spotting patterns.
Jurati is a cold blooded murderer.
Elnor is a swordsman in a time of phasers and flashbangs. He has no business even being in the show if he isn't going to learn to use a phaser.
They aren't telling a story, its so disjointed at this point that it makes no sense any more, if it ever did. That we have to presume critically important things like, what is this colony about is terrible storytelling. If it were a human colony on some planet, we can assume what humans do in a colony. They farm, they eek out a living, they are driven by human curiosity to do some science, etc.
These androids are not humans, though. The whole point of Star Trek used to be exploring ideas and cultures in ways that we can find some allegory or curiosity in the way they exist. What is your favorite STO species for your captain? Why? Those traits or visuals or whatever you like about them have an actual backstory in Star Trek somewhere. So what do these androids do? What is this android society about? Yes I'm sure there is some research for Soong, but given that the premise of this show is to try and suggest androids should be treated better than tools, they have to be doing something else to make that premise seem reasonable.
The only thing they need to do to make the premise seem reasonable is show that synths have the ability to think for themselves, which has already been demonstrably proven. Once sentience, and sapience, is shown, they automatically deserve the right of being treated as more then tools. They don't need to be doing anything on their homeworld besides that.
The colony isn't "about" anything, besides being a place were Soong and Maddox could continue their work, and the synths they made can live without fear of being hunted. That was already explained in the show multiple times.
Yes the synths can "live." For what? What purpose do they find in "life?" Why should anyone care about their "lives?" Do they find some purpose or meaning in it that we should care about? This is a big problem, because if they don't find any intrinsic value to life themselves, why should anyone actually care about them? As we've seen, at least one of them is willing to call for the extermination of all real life because one person killed the stupid robot, so they clearly don't value real life, to want to punish trillions of innocent people for one person's crime.
Sure she runs Starfleet. If someone can't bypass her and question her orders to murder innocents or has enough power to push for banning the robots, she's definitely the de facto person in charge. What subordinates? We see most of her only subordinates kill themselves leaving the few alive that we know are working with her. The secrecy and coordination necessary is way beyond anything we've seen demonstrated in the show.
Where did you get that idea that Oh got the synths banned through use of her position? Synths were banned because she, and the other Romulan agents, TRIBBLE the Mars synths, and got them to attack Mars. The destruction of Mars is what got the Federation to ban synths. Again, this was clearly stated in the show.
Because the wide ranging synth ban makes no sense for the Starfleet we know. It is wildly out of character and with no apparent investigation, it seems clear this was pushed through without any rational questioning of something so draconian. This is Starfleet that had Data, a sentient exocomp, and the Doctor helping them to realize the possibilities and rights that synthetic life should be given. They continued these sentiments despite Lore's efforts to kill and destroy. So why would the Federation ban all synthetics if not for the Romulan infiltrator(s) and their power/influence?
I'd also warn agaisnt using TOS as a measure of Romulan tech level. by TNG (let alone Picard) that's a century in the past. 100 years is a fairly long time to catch up. especially if your rivals have hit a technological platue
Which is why it makes no sense for the Romulans need to rely on the Federation to build a fleet of rescue ships. If the Federation has enough time to build a fleet of rescue ships, then the Romulans have enough time to save themselves.
except how do you build up a massive fleet in an evacuation zone? chances are alot of their major ship yards where in the "boom zone"
It doesn't matter where the ships are built. In fact, it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees. Then there is the facts that people work harder to save themselves than to save someone else and there is plenty of resources in Romulan space to create as many large ships as possible. Since the worlds are going to be destroyed anyway, then it doesn't matter if Romulans use destructive mining technologies.
The only way that a Federation rescue fleet makes sense in saving Romulus is if they already have a large fleet ready to save the Romulans or if the Romulans are not able to build their own ships. Which makes absolutely no sense. Every empire has a shipping network capable of transferring large quantities of goods every day. It would just require some effort to convert their freighters to handle passengers which is far easier than creating a new ship.
It doesn't matter where the ships are built. In fact, it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees. Then there is the facts that people work harder to save themselves than to save someone else and there is plenty of resources in Romulan space to create as many large ships as possible. Since the worlds are going to be destroyed anyway, then it doesn't matter if Romulans use destructive mining technologies.
The only way that a Federation rescue fleet makes sense in saving Romulus is if they already have a large fleet ready to save the Romulans or if the Romulans are not able to build their own ships. Which makes absolutely no sense. Every empire has a shipping network capable of transferring large quantities of goods every day. It would just require some effort to convert their freighters to handle passengers which is far easier than creating a new ship.
By this same argument, any space faring civilization should be able to save themselves from ecological destruction on their homeworld... yet we see the Klingons were totally unable to do so in ST6 because their entire Empire was based around like 90% of the budget going into the military, so they didn't have the resources necessary to save Qo'nos from the problems caused by the Praxis explosion.
The Praxis explosion caught the Klingons off guard while the Romulans had at least 2 months to prepare. Also, the Klingons didn't have to evacuate, but deal with the aftermath of the Praxis explosion. So both situations are completely different and require different solutions. The Romulans need to get away from their space ASAP and then deal with the consequences while the Klingons have to pick up the pieces. If Klingons had 2 months to evacuate their population, then they would be able to create a large fleet to rescue their population from imminent destruction. A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees.
and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
> @captainbrian11 said: > (Quote) > > ........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely. > even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period > > Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups) > > (Quote) > > and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
I get a feeling making large evacuation transports would be far harder when using factories and shipyards made for warships when the overall structure romulans had was a slow moving empire clogged with beaurocracy. And possibly even depleted resource reserves they'd potentially have used for warships for a long time.
And romulan ships are always shown as gigantic and probably hungry as heck to maintain. So they likely had very little resources in reserves for rapid transport production.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees.
and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
A cloaking device is not as easy as plug and play. Creating a cloaking device is extremely complicated and likely requires extremely rare and complex materials. Then there is the problem with hooking up the cloaking device to an unfamiliar power system. A military ship also requires powerful weapon systems, targeting, shields, engines, and armor. A passenger transport ship just needs civilian shields, engines, and a good life support system. All that is necessary is creating a ship that can transport as many civilians as possible not create a warship capable of going against a Starfleet ship.
If the Romulan starships can only handle military ships, then they can remove a lot of steps in the shipbuilding process and use substandard materials and create gutted military starships. However that is extremely unlikely due to all Interstellar Empires require freighters or interstellar transporters to transport non-replicatable goods. Therefore, the Romulan Star Empire would have shipyards capable of creating Freighters and other civilian ships. The Romulans can convert their freighters to handle lots of Romulans instead of cargo or create extremely large and basic starships that only have good life support systems. When saving a civilization, comfort is the last thing to worry about. So the Romulans would be packed like sardines.
You do realize that the evacuation zone is measured in light years and not just the Romulus system. Also, there is a ton of space in the Romulus system to build lots of starships. If the Federation could build the rescue ships around Mars, then there is a ton of space for Romulans to build their rescue ships in their star system. Since everything on Romulus is going to be destroyed, then it doesn't matter if Romulans lose their infrastructure.
I just assume the Romulans don't have their huge D'Ds any more, because PIC only uses new DIS inspired designs
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees.
and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
A cloaking device is not as easy as plug and play. Creating a cloaking device is extremely complicated and likely requires extremely rare and complex materials. Then there is the problem with hooking up the cloaking device to an unfamiliar power system. A military ship also requires powerful weapon systems, targeting, shields, engines, and armor. A passenger transport ship just needs civilian shields, engines, and a good life support system. All that is necessary is creating a ship that can transport as many civilians as possible not create a warship capable of going against a Starfleet ship.
If the Romulan starships can only handle military ships, then they can remove a lot of steps in the shipbuilding process and use substandard materials and create gutted military starships. However that is extremely unlikely due to all Interstellar Empires require freighters or interstellar transporters to transport non-replicatable goods. Therefore, the Romulan Star Empire would have shipyards capable of creating Freighters and other civilian ships. The Romulans can convert their freighters to handle lots of Romulans instead of cargo or create extremely large and basic starships that only have good life support systems. When saving a civilization, comfort is the last thing to worry about. So the Romulans would be packed like sardines.
You do realize that the evacuation zone is measured in light years and not just the Romulus system. Also, there is a ton of space in the Romulus system to build lots of starships. If the Federation could build the rescue ships around Mars, then there is a ton of space for Romulans to build their rescue ships in their star system. Since everything on Romulus is going to be destroyed, then it doesn't matter if Romulans lose their infrastructure.
yes the cloaking device is a scientific marvel. but that's irrelevant. do you not know the differance between a scientific acheivement and a infastructure acheivement?
it's the differance between developing a computer and producing a million computers
A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees.
and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
A cloaking device is not as easy as plug and play. Creating a cloaking device is extremely complicated and likely requires extremely rare and complex materials. Then there is the problem with hooking up the cloaking device to an unfamiliar power system. A military ship also requires powerful weapon systems, targeting, shields, engines, and armor. A passenger transport ship just needs civilian shields, engines, and a good life support system. All that is necessary is creating a ship that can transport as many civilians as possible not create a warship capable of going against a Starfleet ship.
If the Romulan starships can only handle military ships, then they can remove a lot of steps in the shipbuilding process and use substandard materials and create gutted military starships. However that is extremely unlikely due to all Interstellar Empires require freighters or interstellar transporters to transport non-replicatable goods. Therefore, the Romulan Star Empire would have shipyards capable of creating Freighters and other civilian ships. The Romulans can convert their freighters to handle lots of Romulans instead of cargo or create extremely large and basic starships that only have good life support systems. When saving a civilization, comfort is the last thing to worry about. So the Romulans would be packed like sardines.
You do realize that the evacuation zone is measured in light years and not just the Romulus system. Also, there is a ton of space in the Romulus system to build lots of starships. If the Federation could build the rescue ships around Mars, then there is a ton of space for Romulans to build their rescue ships in their star system. Since everything on Romulus is going to be destroyed, then it doesn't matter if Romulans lose their infrastructure.
yes the cloaking device is a scientific marvel. but that's irrelevant. do you not know the differance between a scientific acheivement and a infastructure acheivement?
it's the differance between developing a computer and producing a million computers
A cloaking device adds complexity to creating military starships that isn't present in creating transport starships. A transport ship only requires substandard material not state of the art materials required for military starships. As long as it can get from point A to point B in a specific amount of time, then it is good enough.
How are rescue ships an infrastructure achievement? It is a logistical achievement creating a bunch of substandard starships and transferring billions of Romulans to another star system not an infrastructure achievement. An infrastructure achievement would be making Romulus into a starship by adding a planetary shield generator and planetary warp drive. It is not the difference between developing a computer and producing a million computers, but the difference between developing an exaflop supercomputer which should be available by 2021 and creating a million 286s.
It does not matter who was involved in making the star charts, they are still third-party since they were neither made in-house for the show nor were they directly commissioned for the show itself, they were just a bit of merchandising for sale to the public. CBS simply decided to use one of the maps as a prop on a screen the same way old Paramount did the Franz Joseph and FASA stuff.
On top of that, the writers for PIC apparently never bothered to look at the map they stuck on the screen anyway since if the supernova was "the Romulan star" and it somehow spread out cover most of the Romulan territory the Federation would have to evacuate Terra since the Sol system is about the same distance from Romulus as the center of the Romulan territory is from the Romulan capital. On the map shown in PIC, Romulus is in the "northwest" corner of Romulan territory very close to the Federation border (probably why they so aggressively patrol that particular border) so it is closer to the Federaton core worlds than it is to many of its own worlds.
For example, the star the map calls "D'deridex", which is on the lower right side of Romulan territory according to that map, is about twice the distance from Romulus as Sol is.
Likewise, the idea that rescue ships would have to travel for two months to get out of the blast zone is utterly ludicrous, it does not even take two months to travel from the neutral zone near Romulus to the Sol system or USS Enterprise would have missed fighting the Borg Cube in the solar system by a considerable margin for instance.
No matter how you slice it the idea that the supernova caused the collapse of the RSE by way of simply blowing most of it up just does not work, it is the stupidest, laziest writing possible. The only options that make sense are the ones where the capital system was destroyed but little else was and the fall was caused by factions trying to seize control for themselves (which is the way STO handles it), or that it was an economic collapse even worse than the one that rocked the Klingon empire when Praxis blew up.
And no, Klingon-Romulan tech exchange is not "head cannon". Head canon only refers to things that are not in the original material at all but some individual thinks up for their own use (like for instance the connection between Star Trek and Here Come The Brides because some of the same actors were in both shows, or even the various "slash" fiction stories that pair up characters who showed no inclination to pair up in the series itself). And that is definitely NOT the case here since not only does Spock mention that the Romulans are using Klingon designed ships, they actually show the D-7s onscreen.
A case could possibly be made for it being a fan theory, but that is entirely different from headcanon since while it was not explicitly explained at length it is still firmly grounded in dialog and visual evidence that they are using Klingon technology. Also, a tech exchange could be as simple as shipyards selling old ships and tools instead of scrapping them, while it would probably require government approval of some sort a formal alliance between the governments would not be necessary.
On top of that, in the space of a year or so they went from slow ships that the Enterprise had no trouble at all literally running rings around to ones that (in The Deadly Years) Kirk has to use the corbomite bluff again to get them to back up far enough that they cannot catch Enterprise when it starts running at warp 8 (which was a punishingly high warp factor in TOS).
As for the Tzenkethi, at no time are they implied to be anything more than an annoyance to the Federation that the Dominion sought to use as a distraction to cause trouble for the already badly overstretched Federation forces with a border brush war. In fact, since Picard was in the last Federation-Tzenkethi war sometime before TNG that would place it in the relatively peaceful period between the TOS-crew movies and the start of TNG, a time that first season TNG throwaway dialog mentions the Federation was not involved in any major wars (which implies it was just a brushwar or limited police action).
As for the mind meld thing, human/vulcan/whatever bodies are just biomachines once you get down to it, so a synthetic brain that has the same mundane capabilities would not necessarily have to be incapable of the same metaphysical ones that an organic one has in the setting.
if the supernova was "the Romulan star" and it somehow spread out cover most of the Romulan territory
It was never going to cover that much of Romulan space, nice headcanon though.
Headcanon perhaps (working from plot synopsis/analysis articles and some very horribly done transcripts I have no way of knowing for sure), but not mine. I said that in response to a commenter who asserted that was the case based on some novel. I was pointing out that basing the series on that kind of idiotic nonsense would be the height of laziness when there are more plausible (and potentially interesting) ways of handling the plot.
Yes the romulan-Klingon Tech exchange is head canon. ALL we know is the romulans where using Klingon ships. a tech exchange has been assumed, but there are plenty of other potential ways it could work.
1: Maybe the Klingons sold the romulans ships. no tech exchange simply a sale.
2: Maybe the ships where "prizes of war"
3: Maybe the ships where traded for something completely differant then tech.
4: Maybe Romulan intelligence stole the schematics for the D7.
we don't KNOW the tech exchange is what happned. it's simply a long held fan theory. and in fact discovery adds a new light to this, by suggesting the Klingons already basicly HAD cloaking devices.
This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
> @captainbrian11 said: > > This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
Yes the romulan-Klingon Tech exchange is head canon. ALL we know is the romulans where using Klingon ships. a tech exchange has been assumed, but there are plenty of other potential ways it could work.
1: Maybe the Klingons sold the romulans ships. no tech exchange simply a sale.
2: Maybe the ships where "prizes of war"
3: Maybe the ships where traded for something completely differant then tech.
4: Maybe Romulan intelligence stole the schematics for the D7.
we don't KNOW the tech exchange is what happned. it's simply a long held fan theory. and in fact discovery adds a new light to this, by suggesting the Klingons already basicly HAD cloaking devices.
This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
Like the myth about "Beam me up, Scotty". There is "Scotty, Beam me up" and "Beam me up" in TOS, "Beam us up, Scotty" in TAS, and "Scotty, Beam me up" and "Beam them out of there, Scotty" in the films, but no "Beam me up, Scotty."
Yes the romulan-Klingon Tech exchange is head canon. ALL we know is the romulans where using Klingon ships. a tech exchange has been assumed, but there are plenty of other potential ways it could work.
1: Maybe the Klingons sold the romulans ships. no tech exchange simply a sale.
2: Maybe the ships where "prizes of war"
3: Maybe the ships where traded for something completely differant then tech.
4: Maybe Romulan intelligence stole the schematics for the D7.
we don't KNOW the tech exchange is what happned. it's simply a long held fan theory. and in fact discovery adds a new light to this, by suggesting the Klingons already basicly HAD cloaking devices.
This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too.
And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief).
The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > (Quote) > > Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too. > > And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief). > > The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > (Quote) > > Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too. > > And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief). > > The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
Interesting to note I was reading memory Alpha yesterday and it was saying the Balance of Terror BOP’s design also caused speculation the Romulans stole Federation technology.
Of course the production reasons for the similarities of Klingon ships in The Enterprise incident was that the BOP model was destroyed in the making of Balance of Terror. The BOP in search for Spock was also supposed to initially be a Romulan ship....Hence the bird iconography in its design as well.
The interiors of Enterprise incident were also Enterprise redresses. The entire episode was rather cheaply made...
Maybe Tal Shiar infiltration of Star Fleet has a longer history than we have been led to believe.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Because the wide ranging synth ban makes no sense for the Starfleet we know. It is wildly out of character and with no apparent investigation, it seems clear this was pushed through without any rational questioning of something so draconian. This is Starfleet that had Data, a sentient exocomp, and the Doctor helping them to realize the possibilities and rights that synthetic life should be given. They continued these sentiments despite Lore's efforts to kill and destroy. So why would the Federation ban all synthetics if not for the Romulan infiltrator(s) and their power/influence?
Sure it does. This is the same Federation that has
long pushed for the outright forced genocide of easily saveable species(see the Prime Directive)
has sent countless mark 1 EMH holgorams to work as a forced labor in dilithium mines
was perfectly ok with Section 31 using a bioweapon to commit genocide on the Founders
has classified and or banned many lifesaving technologies ranging from augmentation, to the genesis device, simply because its easier for them to do so them actually work with the problems any technology has
attempted to forcibly take Data's daughter Lal from him even after the decision was made that Data was a living entity with rights
Not only that, but this is the same Federation that was still recovering from the massively destructive Dominion War, and was caught in a situation where many of their member worlds didn't like that they were helping the Federation's oldest enemy.
The synth ban fits perfectly within the Federation's typical response of "burn, bury, and classify" anything that goes wrong ever.
The Prime Directive exists for reasons, and doesn't apply here.
EMH miners are robots doing robot things. What is the problem? The only one that got sentience was the Doctor.
The Dominion was an existential threat. That was very much the moral conflict of DS9, do Federation principles matter if it will cease to exist?
As I recall genetic augments were banned, unless it was for medical reasons.
Genesis device I would agree on as well as Lal.
However the issue with the synth ban is it oddly doesn't apply to holograms, is absurdly broad and ignores past precedent with Data, the exocomp, and the Doctor, and demands us to believe that no one really investigated the issue to learn the truth of the matter. There would be questions, lots and lots of questions by people that the Fed can't cover up, especially in those places and people who have worked with androids in the past.
Yes the synths can "live." For what? What purpose do they find in "life?" Why should anyone care about their "lives?" Do they find some purpose or meaning in it that we should care about? This is a big problem, because if they don't find any intrinsic value to life themselves, why should anyone actually care about them? As we've seen, at least one of them is willing to call for the extermination of all real life because one person killed the stupid robot, so they clearly don't value real life, to want to punish trillions of innocent people for one person's crime.
The synths don't need to live for any reason or purpose. The fact that they live, and have intelligence, is all they should need for anyone to care about them. What a horrible standard to set for determining right.
That's also not at all the argument Sutra was using to justify her call to summon the ancient AI. So that entire pint is wrong there.
You seem to misunderstand completely. This is a major world building hole. We understand what real people do and how they live. They need to eat, they have biological drives, they have curiosities and passions, etc.
We don't have a clue what goes on in these fancy robot's minds. They are utterly alien to us because we don't understand their motivations or drivers or anything. So to create an entire colony of them with no apparent purpose is a big problem. They aren't going to the store to buy luxuries, why would they? They aren't farming, they don't need it. They don't even have biological drives, so what do they really do all day? Are they curious about the universe?
As far as I can tell they are just NPCs in some RPG game, there to add flavor, but if you were to kill them, no one misses them, you don't disrupt any sort of supply chains, at worse you break a quest. And that is because you know they aren't real people. They are robots designed to look like people and sort of act like people, but at the end of the day they are machines with programming. And it could well be so advanced and complex that they deserve to be treated like people, but that has not really been demonstrated.
Further, to add to this problem, if these robots have no purpose, if they don't find some meaning in their lives and existence what does it say about how they think of biological life? They have no reason to respect biological life, especially so if they derive no meaning from their own lives. It is bad enough when a person gets nihilistic, but when it is robots that now have the apparent power to exterminate all life, why would they not do it if they have no reason to respect life?
But she knows about them, and that is the issue. Why would she know anything about them if she went nuts at the ZV initiation with the message? Again the only thing we know she knows is the android message that made her mad. That leaves the implication that the super mega evil empire seeded it with knowledge of Soji and others because there is no reason to tell the initiates anything detailed if they may not survive.
You seem confused. Ramdha didn't go completely crazy after seeing the admonition, and was still serving with the Zhat Vash/Tal Shiar in an active capacity, hence why she was on the Tal Shiar scout craft that was assimilated by the Borg cube.
Yes I am confused, that was the whole point. I thought she lost her mind after the message, but if she didn't, then when did she? Was it a side effect of assimilation?
Comments
Star Charts was only recently canonized, and then it was only the one map so far in the same way the smattering of Franz Joseph ships and deckplans and FASA ships were, by being on screens on the set. Unless they start mentioning the supplementary information like population in dialog I would not put too much faith in the numbers, especially since Michael Chabon said the Federation population is in the trillions so the show and the third party charts do not agree in that.
As for the RSE not taking up as much of the map space as the Federation, that makes sense since up until the mid 2260s their stardrive was very slow compared to the Federation and Klingon warp drives. That would tend to make their empire denser than the wispy sponge-like structure of the Federation with all the unexplored, primitive, and other non-Federation worlds inside of it.
And while Vulcanoids do not reproduce as rapidly as humans they have a longer lifespan and they started their expansion sometime in the fourth or very early fifth century AD depending on exactly how long their migration took so they have a considerable head start on the Federation in building up population. Also, it is implied that they are considerably more promiscuous than their Vulcan brethren which would tend to give them a higher growth rate than Vulcans.
The number of Federation worlds has never been entirely consistent, but since they have a sort of tiered membership structure I suppose it could be explained by how many of those tiers you include. All together though, in Metamorphosis Kirk says of the Federation: so the Federation is not small if you take all the colonies and protectorates and whatnot into account. And to be a credible rival, (not just threat, because like the Klingons they are implied to be more than just the equivalent of a third world country with a nuke), they would need a reasonably high population to support it, especially since the Romulans have never been especially fond of automation.
No, I don't expect them to flesh everything out, my point was that the "empty" magic box style cannot truly be empty or the viewers eventually loose interest. I do not have enough information to tell if they are having a problem balancing the Magic Box against Chekov's Gun or whether their thread timing is way off, but people are pointing out those gaps and other problems in a lot of the Trek and general sci-fi boards out there.
I do expect something less clumsy out of Chabon, but with Kurtzman in overall charge of Trek at CBS he probably does not have the freedom to do his usual intricate low-key kaleidoscope style.
If so, that would not be the first time someone left a red herring in an interview in place of a spoiler, but derailing guesses about what is to come is quite different from telling what is supposed to be ordinary background information like the current Fed population. On top of that, I would consider something said by an insider like Chabon to carry more weight than some third party supplement publication.
You should probably look up the definition of "headcanon", I suspect it is not what you think it is. Anyway, Romulan ships actually were slower than Fed or KDF up until the Klingon-Romulan tech exchange. In fact they make a big deal about it in "Balance of Terror", and then follow up with the reference to the tech exchange in "The Enterprise Incident".
True, but irrelevant since the Romulans are a major power up until PIC and they need at least a certain minimum population to do that without super-extensive automation and nothing shown of the Romulans supports the idea that they used that level of automation.
In fact, "The Enterprise Incident" shows the flagship of the Romulan squadron that captured the Enterprise was using obsolete Federation MARS displays, possibly something they bought from the Orions or whoever they got old surplus equipment from, and later in TNG and/or DS9 (I forget which atm) some Romulan throwaway dialog included the usual quip about the Federation's dependence on toys make them soft or words to that effect.
Again, Star Trek Star Charts is a third party publication, just because CBS chose to use one of the maps from it does not automatically canonize the whole thing, especially in light of the showrunner's take on the population figure. Since they never give an exact figure on the show itself it is still essentially undefined.
Which is why it makes no sense for the Romulans need to rely on the Federation to build a fleet of rescue ships. If the Federation has enough time to build a fleet of rescue ships, then the Romulans have enough time to save themselves.
except how do you build up a massive fleet in an evacuation zone? chances are alot of their major ship yards where in the "boom zone"
look, let's assuming a population of 5 billion (5,000.000.000)
the galaxy class is listed in the TNG tech manual as having an evacuation limit of 15,000 people. (remember that these ships need to hold the people for a length of time as well as industral support materials so this is actually a lot of people)
let's assume a romulan d'derdex cruiser is even bigger and has a evacuation limit of 20,000 (this is INSANELY generous given the galaxy class is an exploration vessel designed to carry civilians and thus has facialites for civilians, while the d'deradex is, as far as we know a dedicated warship)
to evacuate even a BILLION people, the romulans would need 50 thousand trips (not ships trips. obviously their ships could people in groups)
now let's look at the logistics here.
we know the Romulan super nova occured in 2387, starfleet according to the Picard novel learned of this in 2381, but we'll assume the Romulans would have learned in 2380, giving them 7 years of evac time.
the novel Picard tells us it takes 2 months to bring refugees to their destination worlds this would mean a round trip would take 4 months, we'll assume that tthe romulans are willing to burn their engines out etc a bit more then the feddies and make it a 3 month round trip for the transports. assuming a 7 year time period, you'd be able to amke 21 trips.
with these calculations, to sucessfully evacuate a single 1 billion person world the Romulans would need a fleet of over 2380 large "galaxy sized" ships.
The Romulans don't have that kind of fleet (we know this because if they did they'd have conquered the federation, given the feddys only had a dozen or less galaxies)
it's likely the only way they where evacuating in time was if the federation AND the Romulans worked together both pulling out all the stops.
and remember even if the romulans managed to do it by themselves they'd need to also watch their borders, the federation being involved made that a minor concern given that it means both the federation and the klingons would likely behave.
But she knows about them, and that is the issue. Why would she know anything about them if she went nuts at the ZV initiation with the message? Again the only thing we know she knows is the android message that made her mad. That leaves the implication that the super mega evil empire seeded it with knowledge of Soji and others because there is no reason to tell the initiates anything detailed if they may not survive.
Picard is old, feeble, and while he has his moments, including the rare channelling of old TNG picard, he's clearly past his prime.
Rios' piloting skills are of little import. His hologram menagerie is much more concerning.
Raffi is a junkie who can't get control over herself to clean up, and any computer would be even better at spotting patterns.
Jurati is a cold blooded murderer.
Elnor is a swordsman in a time of phasers and flashbangs. He has no business even being in the show if he isn't going to learn to use a phaser.
Yes the synths can "live." For what? What purpose do they find in "life?" Why should anyone care about their "lives?" Do they find some purpose or meaning in it that we should care about? This is a big problem, because if they don't find any intrinsic value to life themselves, why should anyone actually care about them? As we've seen, at least one of them is willing to call for the extermination of all real life because one person killed the stupid robot, so they clearly don't value real life, to want to punish trillions of innocent people for one person's crime.
Because the wide ranging synth ban makes no sense for the Starfleet we know. It is wildly out of character and with no apparent investigation, it seems clear this was pushed through without any rational questioning of something so draconian. This is Starfleet that had Data, a sentient exocomp, and the Doctor helping them to realize the possibilities and rights that synthetic life should be given. They continued these sentiments despite Lore's efforts to kill and destroy. So why would the Federation ban all synthetics if not for the Romulan infiltrator(s) and their power/influence?
It doesn't matter where the ships are built. In fact, it makes more sense to build the ships in the evacuation zone since the rescue ships don't need to travel light years to get to their refugees. Then there is the facts that people work harder to save themselves than to save someone else and there is plenty of resources in Romulan space to create as many large ships as possible. Since the worlds are going to be destroyed anyway, then it doesn't matter if Romulans use destructive mining technologies.
The only way that a Federation rescue fleet makes sense in saving Romulus is if they already have a large fleet ready to save the Romulans or if the Romulans are not able to build their own ships. Which makes absolutely no sense. Every empire has a shipping network capable of transferring large quantities of goods every day. It would just require some effort to convert their freighters to handle passengers which is far easier than creating a new ship.
The Praxis explosion caught the Klingons off guard while the Romulans had at least 2 months to prepare. Also, the Klingons didn't have to evacuate, but deal with the aftermath of the Praxis explosion. So both situations are completely different and require different solutions. The Romulans need to get away from their space ASAP and then deal with the consequences while the Klingons have to pick up the pieces. If Klingons had 2 months to evacuate their population, then they would be able to create a large fleet to rescue their population from imminent destruction. A starship capable of transporting 100,000 Romulans or Klingons is extremely easy compared to build compared to a military ship capable of cloak.
........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
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> ........... no it isn't. Jesus there is so much wrong with that statement... once you surmount the technological issue of a cloaking device they're apparently fairly easy to install. Romulan cloaking devices are rediculasly plug and play. my proof? on TWO occasions (TOS's enterprise incident and the Defiant cloaking device) a Romulan cloaking device was installed on a federation ship, and worked nicely.
> even if you accept that Defiant was secretly built with an optimized design to cloak, it was still slapped in after the fact. And we know for a fact that the cloaking device was an evolutionary thing slowly developed over ages. it certainly wasn't designed and deployed in a quick time period
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> Meanwhile a starship capable of transporting that many ships? they'd first need to design it, including testing it, they'd then need to build it, and building ships takes some time. especially building a ship larger then previously build. do the romulans have a shipyard capable of handling a hull that size? can their supply chains handle it (I've worked in a ship yard before. I've seen first hand work on a ship outright STOP due to supply chain hickups)
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> and you lose the infastructure you've developed for it. sure by all means utilize the exisiting infastructure if you can but you'd be better off to build up outside the evac zone so that you minimize distruption (by the fact that your workers aren't evacuating) and you keep the infastructure developed.
I get a feeling making large evacuation transports would be far harder when using factories and shipyards made for warships when the overall structure romulans had was a slow moving empire clogged with beaurocracy. And possibly even depleted resource reserves they'd potentially have used for warships for a long time.
And romulan ships are always shown as gigantic and probably hungry as heck to maintain. So they likely had very little resources in reserves for rapid transport production.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
A cloaking device is not as easy as plug and play. Creating a cloaking device is extremely complicated and likely requires extremely rare and complex materials. Then there is the problem with hooking up the cloaking device to an unfamiliar power system. A military ship also requires powerful weapon systems, targeting, shields, engines, and armor. A passenger transport ship just needs civilian shields, engines, and a good life support system. All that is necessary is creating a ship that can transport as many civilians as possible not create a warship capable of going against a Starfleet ship.
If the Romulan starships can only handle military ships, then they can remove a lot of steps in the shipbuilding process and use substandard materials and create gutted military starships. However that is extremely unlikely due to all Interstellar Empires require freighters or interstellar transporters to transport non-replicatable goods. Therefore, the Romulan Star Empire would have shipyards capable of creating Freighters and other civilian ships. The Romulans can convert their freighters to handle lots of Romulans instead of cargo or create extremely large and basic starships that only have good life support systems. When saving a civilization, comfort is the last thing to worry about. So the Romulans would be packed like sardines.
You do realize that the evacuation zone is measured in light years and not just the Romulus system. Also, there is a ton of space in the Romulus system to build lots of starships. If the Federation could build the rescue ships around Mars, then there is a ton of space for Romulans to build their rescue ships in their star system. Since everything on Romulus is going to be destroyed, then it doesn't matter if Romulans lose their infrastructure.
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yes the cloaking device is a scientific marvel. but that's irrelevant. do you not know the differance between a scientific acheivement and a infastructure acheivement?
it's the differance between developing a computer and producing a million computers
A cloaking device adds complexity to creating military starships that isn't present in creating transport starships. A transport ship only requires substandard material not state of the art materials required for military starships. As long as it can get from point A to point B in a specific amount of time, then it is good enough.
How are rescue ships an infrastructure achievement? It is a logistical achievement creating a bunch of substandard starships and transferring billions of Romulans to another star system not an infrastructure achievement. An infrastructure achievement would be making Romulus into a starship by adding a planetary shield generator and planetary warp drive. It is not the difference between developing a computer and producing a million computers, but the difference between developing an exaflop supercomputer which should be available by 2021 and creating a million 286s.
On top of that, the writers for PIC apparently never bothered to look at the map they stuck on the screen anyway since if the supernova was "the Romulan star" and it somehow spread out cover most of the Romulan territory the Federation would have to evacuate Terra since the Sol system is about the same distance from Romulus as the center of the Romulan territory is from the Romulan capital. On the map shown in PIC, Romulus is in the "northwest" corner of Romulan territory very close to the Federation border (probably why they so aggressively patrol that particular border) so it is closer to the Federaton core worlds than it is to many of its own worlds.
For example, the star the map calls "D'deridex", which is on the lower right side of Romulan territory according to that map, is about twice the distance from Romulus as Sol is.
Likewise, the idea that rescue ships would have to travel for two months to get out of the blast zone is utterly ludicrous, it does not even take two months to travel from the neutral zone near Romulus to the Sol system or USS Enterprise would have missed fighting the Borg Cube in the solar system by a considerable margin for instance.
No matter how you slice it the idea that the supernova caused the collapse of the RSE by way of simply blowing most of it up just does not work, it is the stupidest, laziest writing possible. The only options that make sense are the ones where the capital system was destroyed but little else was and the fall was caused by factions trying to seize control for themselves (which is the way STO handles it), or that it was an economic collapse even worse than the one that rocked the Klingon empire when Praxis blew up.
And no, Klingon-Romulan tech exchange is not "head cannon". Head canon only refers to things that are not in the original material at all but some individual thinks up for their own use (like for instance the connection between Star Trek and Here Come The Brides because some of the same actors were in both shows, or even the various "slash" fiction stories that pair up characters who showed no inclination to pair up in the series itself). And that is definitely NOT the case here since not only does Spock mention that the Romulans are using Klingon designed ships, they actually show the D-7s onscreen.
A case could possibly be made for it being a fan theory, but that is entirely different from headcanon since while it was not explicitly explained at length it is still firmly grounded in dialog and visual evidence that they are using Klingon technology. Also, a tech exchange could be as simple as shipyards selling old ships and tools instead of scrapping them, while it would probably require government approval of some sort a formal alliance between the governments would not be necessary.
On top of that, in the space of a year or so they went from slow ships that the Enterprise had no trouble at all literally running rings around to ones that (in The Deadly Years) Kirk has to use the corbomite bluff again to get them to back up far enough that they cannot catch Enterprise when it starts running at warp 8 (which was a punishingly high warp factor in TOS).
As for the Tzenkethi, at no time are they implied to be anything more than an annoyance to the Federation that the Dominion sought to use as a distraction to cause trouble for the already badly overstretched Federation forces with a border brush war. In fact, since Picard was in the last Federation-Tzenkethi war sometime before TNG that would place it in the relatively peaceful period between the TOS-crew movies and the start of TNG, a time that first season TNG throwaway dialog mentions the Federation was not involved in any major wars (which implies it was just a brushwar or limited police action).
As for the mind meld thing, human/vulcan/whatever bodies are just biomachines once you get down to it, so a synthetic brain that has the same mundane capabilities would not necessarily have to be incapable of the same metaphysical ones that an organic one has in the setting.
Headcanon perhaps (working from plot synopsis/analysis articles and some very horribly done transcripts I have no way of knowing for sure), but not mine. I said that in response to a commenter who asserted that was the case based on some novel. I was pointing out that basing the series on that kind of idiotic nonsense would be the height of laziness when there are more plausible (and potentially interesting) ways of handling the plot.
1: Maybe the Klingons sold the romulans ships. no tech exchange simply a sale.
2: Maybe the ships where "prizes of war"
3: Maybe the ships where traded for something completely differant then tech.
4: Maybe Romulan intelligence stole the schematics for the D7.
we don't KNOW the tech exchange is what happned. it's simply a long held fan theory. and in fact discovery adds a new light to this, by suggesting the Klingons already basicly HAD cloaking devices.
This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
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> This BTW is a problem with long eistablished fan bases, we developed things as head canon that become so widely accepted that when they're contridicted we forget that... "that was never actually stated to be the fact"
Such as Rear Admiral Lower Half and Upper Half.
Like the myth about "Beam me up, Scotty". There is "Scotty, Beam me up" and "Beam me up" in TOS, "Beam us up, Scotty" in TAS, and "Scotty, Beam me up" and "Beam them out of there, Scotty" in the films, but no "Beam me up, Scotty."
Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too.
And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief).
The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
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> Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too.
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> And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief).
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> The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
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> Again, it is not "headcanon", the word does not mean what you apparently think it does. It could be called a "fan theory" except that it was not limited to fans since Roddenberry, various Paramount execs, and others involved in Star Trek productions tended to call it that too.
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> And, like I said, the term does not even require a formal government alliance or whatever. In fact, I already pointed out it could have been Klingon shipbuilders selling off old ships, manuals, tools, and whatnot. The fact that Joanne Linville's character had a Cage-era Starfleet MARS display (minus the gooseneck) in use on her desk and her squadron (right down to iconic Klingon pistols her crew carried) even supports the notion that the Romulans started buying up old tech from their neighbors, possibly in an effort to catch up with their propulsion and other technologies (just for clarity, that is not "headcanon" either, it is speculation based on things actually shown, not a statement of personal belief).
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> The important point is that they quickly started using Klingon tech, not what word is appropriate to describe how they got the the end result shown onscreen. And even that point is just a secondary consideration springing from the observation that the RSE was probably denser than the Federation because of the slowness of their stardrive (which was a key element of Balance of Terror).
Interesting to note I was reading memory Alpha yesterday and it was saying the Balance of Terror BOP’s design also caused speculation the Romulans stole Federation technology.
Of course the production reasons for the similarities of Klingon ships in The Enterprise incident was that the BOP model was destroyed in the making of Balance of Terror. The BOP in search for Spock was also supposed to initially be a Romulan ship....Hence the bird iconography in its design as well.
The interiors of Enterprise incident were also Enterprise redresses. The entire episode was rather cheaply made...
Maybe Tal Shiar infiltration of Star Fleet has a longer history than we have been led to believe.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The Prime Directive exists for reasons, and doesn't apply here.
EMH miners are robots doing robot things. What is the problem? The only one that got sentience was the Doctor.
The Dominion was an existential threat. That was very much the moral conflict of DS9, do Federation principles matter if it will cease to exist?
As I recall genetic augments were banned, unless it was for medical reasons.
Genesis device I would agree on as well as Lal.
However the issue with the synth ban is it oddly doesn't apply to holograms, is absurdly broad and ignores past precedent with Data, the exocomp, and the Doctor, and demands us to believe that no one really investigated the issue to learn the truth of the matter. There would be questions, lots and lots of questions by people that the Fed can't cover up, especially in those places and people who have worked with androids in the past.
You seem to misunderstand completely. This is a major world building hole. We understand what real people do and how they live. They need to eat, they have biological drives, they have curiosities and passions, etc.
We don't have a clue what goes on in these fancy robot's minds. They are utterly alien to us because we don't understand their motivations or drivers or anything. So to create an entire colony of them with no apparent purpose is a big problem. They aren't going to the store to buy luxuries, why would they? They aren't farming, they don't need it. They don't even have biological drives, so what do they really do all day? Are they curious about the universe?
As far as I can tell they are just NPCs in some RPG game, there to add flavor, but if you were to kill them, no one misses them, you don't disrupt any sort of supply chains, at worse you break a quest. And that is because you know they aren't real people. They are robots designed to look like people and sort of act like people, but at the end of the day they are machines with programming. And it could well be so advanced and complex that they deserve to be treated like people, but that has not really been demonstrated.
Further, to add to this problem, if these robots have no purpose, if they don't find some meaning in their lives and existence what does it say about how they think of biological life? They have no reason to respect biological life, especially so if they derive no meaning from their own lives. It is bad enough when a person gets nihilistic, but when it is robots that now have the apparent power to exterminate all life, why would they not do it if they have no reason to respect life?
Yes I am confused, that was the whole point. I thought she lost her mind after the message, but if she didn't, then when did she? Was it a side effect of assimilation?