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29 Days of Trek Meme: Day 10
Feb. 15th, 2012 10:19 pm10 - What's your favourite species?
For once, an easy one to answer. As I’ve said before, my favourite species is the Romulans.
To begin with, they have the best ship designs. (Well, alright, maybe not the best, but since the Klingon Bird-of-Prey in Star Trek III was originally meant to be a stolen Romulan ship, I’m going to count it as Romulan by proxy.)
I’ve been playing Star Trek Online a lot recently, and one thing I like is what they’ve done with the Romulans – it’s almost enough for me to start accepting the events of Nemesis and Trek ’09 as canon again. Basically, the game’s set a few decades after the destruction of Romulus, and the Star Empire has all but collapsed. The military and the Tal Shiar are locked in a battle for supremacy, the surviving Reman forces are trying to establish their own independence, colonies along the old neutral zone are petitioning the Federation for membership. It’s an interesting situation for storytelling (even if the game often squanders it), and it focuses on one element that separates the Romulans from the other major races in Trek.
Trek tends to treat species and citizenship as interchangeable. All Klingons are citizens of the Klingon Empire, all Ferengi answer to Ferengi law, if Bajor joined the Federation, presumably all Bajorans would gain Federation citizenship. The Romulans, though, are different. They’re an offshoot of the Vulcans, and the Romulan identity is one created by choice, not a genetic one.
(There’s an interesting idea in, of all things, one of William Shatner’s Trek novels, that the Reman identity also isn’t genetic, that it’s more of a caste status. The human Shinzon is as much Reman as the Reman natives.)
I always thought it a shame Ds9 didn’t do much with the Romulan alliance; I always felt they were a better fit for allies of the Federation than the Klingons – on the other hand, that’s what’s interesting about them, that they’ve rejected their Vulcan heritage, and have no interest in ever returning to their ancestral home – except, perhaps, on their own terms.
For once, an easy one to answer. As I’ve said before, my favourite species is the Romulans.
To begin with, they have the best ship designs. (Well, alright, maybe not the best, but since the Klingon Bird-of-Prey in Star Trek III was originally meant to be a stolen Romulan ship, I’m going to count it as Romulan by proxy.)
I’ve been playing Star Trek Online a lot recently, and one thing I like is what they’ve done with the Romulans – it’s almost enough for me to start accepting the events of Nemesis and Trek ’09 as canon again. Basically, the game’s set a few decades after the destruction of Romulus, and the Star Empire has all but collapsed. The military and the Tal Shiar are locked in a battle for supremacy, the surviving Reman forces are trying to establish their own independence, colonies along the old neutral zone are petitioning the Federation for membership. It’s an interesting situation for storytelling (even if the game often squanders it), and it focuses on one element that separates the Romulans from the other major races in Trek.
Trek tends to treat species and citizenship as interchangeable. All Klingons are citizens of the Klingon Empire, all Ferengi answer to Ferengi law, if Bajor joined the Federation, presumably all Bajorans would gain Federation citizenship. The Romulans, though, are different. They’re an offshoot of the Vulcans, and the Romulan identity is one created by choice, not a genetic one.
(There’s an interesting idea in, of all things, one of William Shatner’s Trek novels, that the Reman identity also isn’t genetic, that it’s more of a caste status. The human Shinzon is as much Reman as the Reman natives.)
I always thought it a shame Ds9 didn’t do much with the Romulan alliance; I always felt they were a better fit for allies of the Federation than the Klingons – on the other hand, that’s what’s interesting about them, that they’ve rejected their Vulcan heritage, and have no interest in ever returning to their ancestral home – except, perhaps, on their own terms.