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Why do Romulans now act like...?
mattswg
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
Something seems really off when it comes to the behaviour i see in the game and then looking to the tv shows and movies. Romulans in the game are kinda annoying cry babies by comperison. I thought Romulans had pride. just my 2 cents on what i think of how this factions story turned out lmao. Desroyed home world or not, i wanted to be a romulan from from the tv shows and movies. They didnt trust others so easily and were mean as hell most of the time...
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Look to the episodes set on Romulus and you see some civilians, most just went about their business and had no issues. But some saw Picard and Data with their military stride and assumed them to be tal shi'ar.
Look to the reunificationists. After getting past initial suspicions of the pair they were down right cheerful and polite.
Now go back and look at the interactions of the romulans. To each other they are relaxed. To outsiders they are far more cool.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Here's hoping if we get a post TNG tv series some time in the future that they'll give Romulans their chance in the spotlight.
About that.....
TNG made the Klingons an idealized version of the Japanese Samurai culture as seen through Western (particularly American) eyes. A very poor imitation in my opinion.
The Romulans were suppose to be base on the Roman Empire under Augustus, Tiberius, and possibly Hadrian.
The Cardassians were modled after Totalitarian Socialist nations, particularly Red China in Asia and the Warsaw Pact nations in Europe.
The Dominion was the Anti-Federation, a psudo-facist government very loosely based on Spain(after its civil war and WW2) and Mussolini's Italy. The alliance between the Cardassians and the Dominion echoed the alliance of Nazism (a particular brand of facism) and Soviet Communism (Democratic Socialism commonly known as Leninism) in the 1930s as bone out by the "Pact of Blood" agreement between Stalin and Hitler with regards to Poland and the Baltic States.
With the Klingons we see how their society works in detail and get storylines devoted to how Klingons live and die.
We rarely get this same oppurtunity with the Romulans, which is a shame because next to humans they're probably among the strongest species in the galaxy in regards to what they could come to do.
One of the many problems when dealing with xenophobic recluses it's kind of hard to get them to sit down and tell you their life story.:p
Who said I'm a xenophobic recluse? <click> Now get off my lawn! :cool:
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
It is relevant because Gene Rodenberry often used analogies of both modern and historic cultures as a way to explore and critque the strenghts and weakeness of those cultures and governments. It was a way to explore humanity without giving direct insult to those cutures or open the show up to "lawfare" legal challenges from people who may not like having their failings openly displayed for all to laugh and ridicule.
Comming back to your point, those analogies are still relevant for exploring those same issues, but from a slighly different angle. Those culutres may have evolved or changed to address the original flaws. That gives us a chance to see if those cultures truely did become better, or simply found a new way to cover-up their shortcommings.
As for the Klingons, that "culture" again was a cheap copy of the Samurai warrior tradition divorced from the historic and cultural underpinnings. While there are many different warrior cultures, the history and the trappings of clothing, food, literature, and fighting style is was fleshes out those societies. Without these underpinnings, those fictional cultures are just cheap carbon copies or real world cultures.
I say these things because reading about a culture can never truely give one an understanding the was living in that culture does. I was fortunate to live two years in the Republic of (South) Korea, and that gave me much insight into East Asian culture that can never be learned just from reading. Visiting Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Saigons, Little Manilas, and Japantowns can give one a taste, but is but a pale reflection of the real thing.
There has never been such a thing like an alliance between national socialists or fascists and communists. A political pact, broken in a bunch of years, isn't an alliance. Fascists and Communists in the 30s fought wars AGAINST each other, in Spain first and in Russia after. How do you call this an alliance? I'm guessing this is american propaganda speaking.
Well if the intent was to shape Romulans on Romans it failed miserably. I haven't watched the TV series yet (working on it), but from the descriptions I read of Romulans pre-disaster they were the exact antithesis of Romans. The Romans were a multicultural people who absorbed so many cultures in itself, they were cool and practical to the extent that their culture is still at the base of the western civilizations thousands of years later. This thing about romance (romance in the roman era? Are we kidding?) and treachery and whatnot is all BS, the kind of BS you see in TV series like Rome, where the Romans were all a bunch of sexomaniacs, plotters and murderers. As if at those times, only in Rome did certain things happen...
A nation that is xenophobic (the Romans granted citizenship status to almost all their vassals at a later point, not to mention the cultural merges), impulsive , treacherous isn't inspired by the Roman civilization, not even partly. If anything these Romulans remind me of Drow. In fact, they are the exact copy including the split from the previous civilization (elves) and pointed ears.
You want to know whos' who and what's what?? here.. Read it and weap..
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Star Trek Crew The original series was conceived at the height of the Cold War. One of the reasons that space travel had so captured the imagination of the US television audience was that America was engaged in a desperate Space Race with the Soviet Union. Space was not just a neutral territory for humans to explore and enjoy, but the latest arena for superpower competition... Star Trek showed the possibility of a different way. Gene Roddenberry himself believed that the series promoted international co-operation and harmony - a vision of a utopian future in which all (human) races and colours have united to explore new worlds. Yes, the crew of the Enterprise did sometimes fight with the aliens they meet, but they'd much rather get off with them. In Roddenberry's view, the series was explicitly anti-Cold War.
Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek
I have no belief that Star Trek depicts the actual future. It depicts us, now... I don't ask that every programme on the air be an exercise in reality, but I would like to see other shows do more, to talk about what we are, where we should be going, and what we lack. It troubles me that there are no programmes on television, at least none that I've seen, that point out that the world is operating in a very primitive way on the basis of hate. Our own president hates the Commies, and he and his henchmen believe that therefore everything they do to defeat the Commies, whether it's illegal or not, is justified because of their hate. If we are ever to turn the corner away from that, we need our artists and poets and entertainers pointing it out.
But some see the Federation as the United States of America writ large on the universe. Although there are people of different races on board the Enterprise, the American contingent is by far the largest, and only in the second series did a Russian join the crew (Walter Koenig as navigator Pavel Chekhov). Rumour has it that he only appeared as the result of a complaint in 'Pravda' pointing out that although the Russians were the first in space, there wasn't a Russian on the Enterprise... ( This story may well have been made up by the studio publicity department...)
What are we to make of the Enterprise's interactions with each new species it finds? Kirk always wants to sort out the uncivilised aliens and get them living by the Federation's values. He didn't stand for any of that love-and-peace nonsense on the hippy planet in 'This Side of Paradise'.
Peter David, Sci-Fi Writer and Star Trek Novelist
I have a theory that you can really get a glimpse of America's state of mind by looking at Star Trek. They were always right, they always knew exactly what to do, they would go in there with guns blazing; the Prime Directive - the non-interference directive - was the thing that Kirk quoted right before he always then ignored it.
Henry Jenkins, Co-Author of Science Fiction Audiences
Kirk continually intervenes. He continually disrupts and destabilises governments. He seems to embody the Vietnam-era idea of America as a policeman that interferes in other people's business.
And what about the aliens themselves? Is it just coincidence that the Federation has an ongoing conflict with the Klingon Empire, a ruthlessly expansionist state populated by men in beards?
Michael Dorn, Lt. Commander Worf in The Next Generation
We looked at the Russians as the Communists, as the enemy, and my take on it was Klingons are the Russians because they are looked on as a particular type of race. All through twenty years they were the mean guys, the enemy to kill on sight, and we have come to find out that they are not, they are people. That image we have of them is totally wrong... We look at Klingons as barbarians: how many times in the original series did Kirk say he's gonna level a planet if they don't give him back a couple of guys, destroy a whole race if they don't give him Scotty!
Worf There is one show in particular which directly refers to the superpower conflict and plays on Americans' fear of war. In 'The Omega Glory', Kirk and chums beam down to planet Omega IV, which centuries earlier had been ravaged by a terrible bacteriological war. It is now run by the authoritarian Kohms, while a terrorist group called the Yangs fight for freedom. The Yangs worship the American flag and recite a distorted version of the Preamble to the United States Constitution!
A.A. Gill, TV Critic
The Kohms look like Oriental Russians; I mean they are the Mongol horde. The worst fear of mid-western America is that the men with snow on their boots are going to beam down into Osh Kosh and make them all sing the International. This is really where Star Trek comes clean about what it actually was all about - a good America fighting a Cold War against the forces of Communism. And the baddies, the Klingons and the other extraterrestials they meet, always epitomise the sorts of cartoon characteristics that Americans imagined Russian Communists had. They're usually big, they're militaristic, they're regimented, they don't think elliptically or laterally. Whereas the Starship Enterprise crew are always the things that Americans like about themselves, which is that they're gullible, they're hospitable, they're easy-going, they're friendly, and when the chips are down, of course, they're just as ruthless as anyone else.
This idea that the Cold War can be told in terms of the future in deep space makes it much easier for Americans to grasp, because you don't have to deal with a lot of complicated geography, and history, and current affairs.
I don't think that any of us believe anymore in the absolute good or evil of anything. The great thing about Star Trek was that nobody had any doubts.
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Gods you people TRIBBLE me off.
Well they arent carbon copies. I'll give you that but 2 things. First, Romans were backstabbing sexomaniacs nearly on par with the series, Rome. At least their own historians would lead us to believe that. Claudius, after getting rid of his first wife for being a *****, was killed by his 2nd wife so that her son, Nero, could rule who later killed his own mother. Nero also probably burned down half of Rome so he could build his mega palace, blamed it on the Christians and fed them to wild animals in the coliseum. Caligula was monster by all accounts. Caligula alone surpasses anything I saw on Rome, Tudors, or Game of Thrones. Out of the first five emperors three were murdered by mobs or close family members. Overall out of 84 emperors, 26 emperors were assasinate, murdered or executed. Thats nearly one out of three. The Romans took palace intrigue to a whole new level compared to most cultures. Part of that is because they honored adoptions into the family on equal terms as natural born children, nor was there a stong sense of divine right behind the power of the throne. So anyone who became powerful enough could have a legitimate claim to the throne.
Second, yes Romans were multicultural to conquered enemies. However, they were extremely xenophobic against rival empires. The Carthaginians, Celts, and Germans in particular are described as baby killers, devil worshippers, etc. Most Roman accounts treat their enemies with contempt, as though they are beneath true Romans. Generally, Romans never had any respect for their enemies. They also had this habit of wiping out entire populations and scattering them to the four corners of the Empire when they rose against them. Case in point the Israelites after 70 AD. For the Romans, the Empire always came first. For instance, other cultures could worship their own gods as long as they included Jupiter in their pantheon somehow. Romulans in the episodes seemed to mirror this pride in their empire IMO. Romans Emporers used secret police to keep tabs on their military and civilian leaders much like the Tal Shiar do in the TNG episodes. Both the Romulans and the Romans had Senates that squabbled and schemed, etc.
So the Romulans are not exact copies of the Romans, but you can see that the Romans served as the starting point from where the Romulan concept came from.
The Romulans appear to be following the Roman path in reverse, actually - the Romans started with a Republic, which was usurped by the first Triumvirate, led by Julius Gaius Caesar, and collapsed into an Empire. The Romulans apparently started with an Empire after the Sundering, but that later collapsed, and now a former member (leader?) in the Empire is trying to form a Republic...
Again not relevant. We know nothing of the actual Romulans, whereas with Klingons we have plenty of examples of how they actually are as a people. That was my point and you're skirting around it.
Most likely that by the point of TNG the Tal Shiar were making sure only certain types got promoted to captain. With the Tal Shiar influence diminished, that's no longer an issue.
Meanwhile we play as Romulan civilians thrust into a galactic conflict, by far the most interesting faction out of the three.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Considering the leaders of the Romulan Empire act like Roman nobility, I would say the comparison is spot on.
As for there not being enough material in canon, I think you are being rather short sighted and belittling what is there.
I have spent 5 years of my life at school translating Latin and I haven't seen any backstabbing sexomaniacs. So perhaps you will now help me by revealing which historians did what you claim, maybe with some quotes too. And the series, Rome, is pure BS of a low kind, conceived to attract 21st century people, not to depict the Romans of over 2k years ago. I went as far as 5 minutes into that show, when a random woman at the Coliseum rips open her dress yelling "I am yours!!" at a gladiator covered in human blood from head to sandals. Can you show me which Roman historian depicted such a scene? Thank you.
You must be kidding me. You are only talking of aristocrats. These SAME stories can be told of ANY other peoples from about 5000 BC to 1800 AD (as I have said in my original post). How can anyone seriously claim that such stories are distinctive of the Roman people?
OMG, you don't even know the meaning of the words xenophobic and propaganda. When you are a xenophonic people, all other peoples are enemies because they are not your people. In this case instead you are telling the story of people that since they were enemies of Rome, they were depicted as "evil monsters". You are not telling me that the Romans fought three wars against the Carthaginians (and vice versa), because both were xenophonic peoples who couldn't stand each others' cultures and that economical and political hegemony on the Mediterranean didn't have anything to do with it, are you?
It's the habit of the human species. Do you want me to list you such behaviours from the Assyrians all the way to Americans and Russians?
Now that you have done such a (bad, IMO) work in researching a pale similarity between the Romulans and the Romans, can you find me a difference between the Drow and the Romulans (perhaps religion)? Thank you.
Hmm, the problem is you are trying to look at historical parallels from the view of a historian. What you need to do is ignore that fancy education and put on the Hollywood filter glasses. Then the parallels begin to pile up. Did they try and make some parallels for us? Yes. To their sugar coated versions of how things are and were. And the thoughts of the Romans back stabbing each other goes back further than Hollywood. Look to Julius Cesear by some guy named Shakespeare. We have been ingrained to believe in that mentality. If someone were to show how it really was on screen? They would be chased out as being out of touch with reality.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Romulan culture/society as it was before the destruction of Romulus NO LONGER EXISTS.
the entire race has been decentralized, the Empire is nothing but a shadow of itself, most Romulans are just struggling to survive in a hostile Galaxy.
the entire culture has experienced a radical paradigm shift, from galactic superpower, to scattered refugees
so it doesnt matter ONE WHIT how they were portrayed in the series, because the Romulans of TNG are NOT the Romulans of 2409
Have you ever heard of a place called Pompeii? I take an archeological site's physical evidence over some trumped up college professor's opinions and theories any day.
Also, I think some of the old Hollywood movies such as Spartacus (Staring Kirk Douglas) and Ben-Hur A Tale off the Christ (Staring Charlton Hesston) did a pretty good job of making the Romans complex and dynamic characters. Examples include Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Lentulus Batiatus in the former and Quintus Arrius, Tiberius Ceasar, and Pontius Pilate in the latter. I would like to see some Roumlan characters in this game to be as compelling as them.
I was actually going to write something similar. It's good to see that I'm not alone with this sentiment, thank you.
I'd like to add the reason people want the Romulans to act like they did in TNG: tropes.
It's no wonder there's a whole danr website devoted to them on the 'net.
The Romulan as well as the Klingons must appearently satisfy two important tropes to be "acceptable": "Planet of Hats" http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats
and "Cretive Sterility", http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreativeSterility
meaning they must be totally stangant and always act the same way.
It seems tht even literally cataclysmic effects are not supposed to interfere with that in any way.
Only humans (or in this case the Federation) is supposed to have the ability to evolve.
It certainly explains why on the one hand people argue that it's okay for the Federation to do this or that, build this new starship or that one because of current circumstances while at the same time the other factions shouldn't because...they're too dumb or it doesn't fit their tropes.
Yes, there are cross overs on the political side of things. Terminology and hierarchy specifically.. it is a metaphor.. Tensions in the late sixties were so bad no one dared say a word about the chinese.. the chairman had us scared ****less.. After all, the chinese had four billion people. the didnt need nuclear weapons. We felt they could just swarm the US any time they felt and because there were so many of them we wouldnt stand a chance. mind you, we also didnt know diddly squat about the chinese, the chinese culture or its history. We knew they had an emporer which after world war 2 became the chairman ( Mao Tze Tung ). We knew they had an incredibly elaborate court hierarchy all the way down to regional governors of small areas. We knew the Japanese had decended from them and we had yet to learn that the native americans crossed the landbridge fourty thousand years ago, making them chinese/mongolian. The romans were the closest model we had of an empire to pull from, so they were used. but the base Romulan is chinese. Specifically chinese communist ( or our rather silly and naive interpretation of it during the cold war )
It's my belief that Commander donatra on the bridge of the Valdore typifies Romulan culture. Proud, Brave, Eager for challenge and battle, and yet, decidedly social an congenial. that kind of culture does not fail just because the dirt ball it resided on blew up. It continues and grows and becomes even stronger.. Only the enraged and maddened Nero broke apart in his need for revenge against the vulcans who had failed Romulus and left it to die. There wouldbe no reunification. Every surviving romulan would know that the vulcans for all their vaunted logic and knowledge: their smug supriority over all the other races, had failed, and probably, on purpose.
The romulan political mechanism is most certainly Roman, but the Culture, is Chinese in inspiration.
...and since I'm German that means I must want my country to return to the poltical system we had...well take your pick 1914 or 1933. Either I must want the Fuehrer or the Kaiser back.*facepalm*
No, not at all.. And thats the biggest mistake that most people make. they assume that culture is tied to political edict.. it is not.. It goes way deeper than politics can ever go. Certainly the Irish would never care to go back to being a tribalistic state run by chieftans, nor would the russians care to go back to Czarist times, yet those cultures are as strong today as they were hundreds of years ago.. Culture defines a people, not its politics.. Politics are the mechanics of the state which is comprised of a people, but is not, the people.. it is a mechanism: a machine; nothing more. A people, a race is not so near two dimensional as a simple mechanism.. You speak of the germans. I must openly admit i know nothing of German heritage. I know that the Romans invaded the visigoths to steal their gold, and their art ( which was equal too and in many cases superior to roman art and finances ) but beyond that, I know nothing. I'm an american. i have no cultural heritage. We're such a mixture of cultures over here it makes your head swim, but we all have a culture we came from. Irish, Belgian, Creole, German, Chinese, Japanese, English, every culture on earth, but we are not our politics, and our culture is still being created.
to a one, every single one was fundamentally altered or outright devastated to the point of never really recovering
"Home" is a defining characteristic of a culture, and LOSING that home WILL have a profound effect upon it. it is not just "the ball of dirt they live on" as you put it.
I'm not entirely sure I'm making a mistake here:
Back then were were a militaristic culture. There was also a need to bring back "the good days", one of the symptoms was precisely that willingness to believe in those who told us they would provide us with the ability to do just that: gain past glory from they days of the holy Roman Empire of German nation.
There's also a german term I'm not sure there's an equivalent term for in the English language (unlikely given our tendency to put into one word where the English one uses 5 to 10): "Obrigkeitshoerigkeit" It means a culture of putting every faith in the state and accepting everyting those "above us" do to be right allowed us to believe as readily as our ancestors did whatever stuff they told us.
That culture is no longer there, at least not in the same drastic measures as it was back then.
There were also other culturally accepted actions that are no longer acceptable so our society has changed a lot since then.
I'm not sure I'm getting my point across but it's also our culture that has changed, otherwise our nation's attitude towards various matters would still be the same as 100 years ago, irrespective of the type of government.
I'm an american of irish decent. My great grandparents on my mothers side came to this country during the great potato famine. Certainly it was a time of upheaval and devestation. It took our home away from us and made us outcasts to the entire irish race. But we still have our culture our art and our tales from old that ring through the hills like the music that we play. Our culture is fine and strong thank you very much. And it takes a bit more than a potato famine to destroy us.