I Like Romulans and I Cannot Lie
May. 15th, 2009 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenNo spoilers here for the new Trek film, just something vaguely inspired by it. Expect a fair number of rambly Trek related posts in the next few days – if nothing else, the new film has reminded me I don’t post about Star Trek nearly often enough.
I’m not really criticising the new film here, but I was disappointed that for the second film in a row, the Romulans were completely wasted as villains. Eric Bana’s better than I expected, but he doesn’t get to do much, and his character doesn’t have the opportunity to show off what makes the Romulans unique. He’s a decent villain, just not a specifically Romulan one. It’s a shame, because this is probably the last time we’re going to see Romulans for a long time – I doubt they’ll show up in the sequels, and there doesn’t seem any prospect of another TV series ever being made.
Anyway, the Romulans always have been one of my favourite species in Star Trek. There’s a couple of things I really like about them. One is that they seem like a fairly civilized society – they’ve got some sort of elective government, they seem to have gender equality, they don’t glorify conquest like the Klingons do – hell, outside of Nemesis’s Remans, there’s no evidence they’ve ever conquered anyone… and I try and forget Nemesis for a variety of reasons. Commander Sela seems to rise to a very high rank despite having human ancestry. They’re not an evil society like the Cardassians or the Dominion; they’re a little too paranoid for their own good, but it does seem like they’re a decent people with a few unfortunate excesses, not something that needs to be utterly destroyed and replaced with a Federation culture like, say, the Ferengi. I've always imagined the Earth-Romulan war was the result of a miscommunication, and the Romulans would actually get on fine with the Federation as neighbours if it wasn't for centuries of mistrust and paranoia on both sides...
The other thing – and it’s something Trek has never really delved into – is that, well, Romulans *are* Vulcans. The two people split only a few thousand years ago – the shows often act as if they’re a totally different species, but really, they’re the same people, just a different culture.*
And that’s interesting, because the Vulcans always insist they needed to completely suppress their emotions, devote themselves totally to logic, or they’d have destroyed themselves. But the Romulans demonstrate that’s not true – Romulans can control their emotions, and they don’t repress them utterly. It works for them; it should work for Vulcans. Now, if the Romulans were directing their aggression outward, if they were Klingons, the Vulcans might have a point – but the Romulans are insular, they tend to go in for isolationism, not expansionism.
I’m not nitpicking, mind you – I like the contradiction. The Vulcans are, after all, for all their talk of “infinite diversity” actually pretty narrow-minded. Sarek cut off all contact with his son for almost two decades for choosing Starfleet over the Vulcan academy. It actually makes a lot of sense that they’d keep insisting their way is the only way, even when confronted with an entire empire of fellow Vulcans who demonstrate otherwise. Hell, maybe it’s the Vulcan influence that causes the rest of the Federation to treat Romulans as a different species – they’re just not willing to accept that they’re the same people, and there’s a deliberate policy of ‘othering’ Romulan civilization.
* Well, there’s the whole forehead ridge thing, but that seems to be a little inconstantly applied – Nero doesn’t have them, neither did the Romulan ambassador in Star Trek VI. I’m going to fanwank that ridged and non-ridged Vulcans are different ethnic groups, and for whatever reason, ridged Vulcans made up a disproportionate percentage of the original Romulans.
I’m not really criticising the new film here, but I was disappointed that for the second film in a row, the Romulans were completely wasted as villains. Eric Bana’s better than I expected, but he doesn’t get to do much, and his character doesn’t have the opportunity to show off what makes the Romulans unique. He’s a decent villain, just not a specifically Romulan one. It’s a shame, because this is probably the last time we’re going to see Romulans for a long time – I doubt they’ll show up in the sequels, and there doesn’t seem any prospect of another TV series ever being made.
Anyway, the Romulans always have been one of my favourite species in Star Trek. There’s a couple of things I really like about them. One is that they seem like a fairly civilized society – they’ve got some sort of elective government, they seem to have gender equality, they don’t glorify conquest like the Klingons do – hell, outside of Nemesis’s Remans, there’s no evidence they’ve ever conquered anyone… and I try and forget Nemesis for a variety of reasons. Commander Sela seems to rise to a very high rank despite having human ancestry. They’re not an evil society like the Cardassians or the Dominion; they’re a little too paranoid for their own good, but it does seem like they’re a decent people with a few unfortunate excesses, not something that needs to be utterly destroyed and replaced with a Federation culture like, say, the Ferengi. I've always imagined the Earth-Romulan war was the result of a miscommunication, and the Romulans would actually get on fine with the Federation as neighbours if it wasn't for centuries of mistrust and paranoia on both sides...
The other thing – and it’s something Trek has never really delved into – is that, well, Romulans *are* Vulcans. The two people split only a few thousand years ago – the shows often act as if they’re a totally different species, but really, they’re the same people, just a different culture.*
And that’s interesting, because the Vulcans always insist they needed to completely suppress their emotions, devote themselves totally to logic, or they’d have destroyed themselves. But the Romulans demonstrate that’s not true – Romulans can control their emotions, and they don’t repress them utterly. It works for them; it should work for Vulcans. Now, if the Romulans were directing their aggression outward, if they were Klingons, the Vulcans might have a point – but the Romulans are insular, they tend to go in for isolationism, not expansionism.
I’m not nitpicking, mind you – I like the contradiction. The Vulcans are, after all, for all their talk of “infinite diversity” actually pretty narrow-minded. Sarek cut off all contact with his son for almost two decades for choosing Starfleet over the Vulcan academy. It actually makes a lot of sense that they’d keep insisting their way is the only way, even when confronted with an entire empire of fellow Vulcans who demonstrate otherwise. Hell, maybe it’s the Vulcan influence that causes the rest of the Federation to treat Romulans as a different species – they’re just not willing to accept that they’re the same people, and there’s a deliberate policy of ‘othering’ Romulan civilization.
* Well, there’s the whole forehead ridge thing, but that seems to be a little inconstantly applied – Nero doesn’t have them, neither did the Romulan ambassador in Star Trek VI. I’m going to fanwank that ridged and non-ridged Vulcans are different ethnic groups, and for whatever reason, ridged Vulcans made up a disproportionate percentage of the original Romulans.
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no subject
on 2009-06-20 03:30 am (UTC)I've never seen the need for reunification between the Vulcans and the Romulans, as was covered in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems to me that what would happen is Vulcan culture swallowing up the Romulans, and you would be left with one single unemotional people. The Romulans have their flaws, but it's horrifying to think of an entire people's emotional identity being wiped out like that.
The Vulcans remind me of the Jedi, in that they're trying to suppress things that really shouldn't be suppressed. Yeah, people have to learn to control their emotions, but that's true for everybody. It makes me wonder if the reason the Vulcans would have destroyed themselves through emotion was because they couldn't develop a system to deal with them. The Vulcans did things rigidly and couldn't develop a system to deal with their emotions, while the Romulans did develop a system of teachings to aid them and thus prospered because of their new found wisdom.
I think perhaps the reason the Federation sides with the Vulcans is because they were the first ones to contact Earth. They helped dragged Earth out of a dark age, and really helped initiate a new era of peace and prosperity. But if had been the Romulans who had been the first to contact Earth, then it would have been a very different story. It's just speculation, of course, but it's interesting to think of what would have happened if the Romulans had been the ones to influence Earth. Perhaps their relationship would have been even better than the one between Vulcans and Earth, because their civilizations are more similar. Of course, that's assuming the Romulans didn't conquer Earth right away because it was easy pickings. That being said, the Romulans do seem to have a preference for conquest (according to what I'm reading on Wikipedia), but that doesn't necessarily mean that the suppression of emotion is a requirement. There can be conquest without emotion. The Borg have no emotions whatsoever, and yet they are undoubtedly the greatest conquerors in the Star Trek universe (Species Whatever that defeated them practically in Voyager doesn't count, for obvious reasons - since they were just fighting back).
I don't know much about Star Trek, aside from what I've seen on The Next Generation and what little I've read on Memory Alpha, along with Wikipedia, but I think the issue between the Vulcans and the Romulans is more complex than the series have portrayed, and neither side can claim to be completely clean. While the Romulans have their flaws in relations with other races and perhaps being a bit too obsessed with riches, they are better developed in the emotional area than the Vulcans, who have created what is an abomination of a system to keep their people in line. (Again, they remind me of the Jedi.)
no subject
on 2009-06-20 04:21 am (UTC)Spock's reunification efforts have always had a faint whiff of cultural imperialism to me - the 'civilized' missionary trying to uplift the barbarian 'other'.
And there are some elements of Romulan culture that seem superior to Vulcan culture - half-human Sela seems to be a lot more accepted as a Romulan than Spock was as a Vulcan.
There's some very odd little hints about Vulcan culture here and there that have never really been adressed - specifically, there's one TOS episode where Spock is thrown back in time millenia, and 'reverts' to the savage state of an ancient Vulcan... so it almost seems as if Vulcan control is maintained by the race as a whole, not by individuals.
Throw in that Romulans, unlike Vulcans, don't seem to be telepaths of any kind, and one has to ask - just what the hell did the Vulcans do to themselves to implement and enforce their new order after the Romulans left?