I see a different reason Romulans are so upset. The Romulans and Vulcans were one people at one point with the major split being the Vulcans embracing logic and rejecting the hot-blooded and passionate Romulans. So millennia later do the Vulcans soften and embrace their emotion-having brothers? No. They find these other hot-blooded and passionate creatures called humans and then work patiently to shepherd them and their "Federation of Planets" into dominance in the Alpha quadrant of the galaxy all while still keeping Romulans at arms length. That would leave me bitter too.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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The Vulcans didn't know the Romulans were their long lost brothers until Errand of Mercy, did they? Hard to reconcile with a group who noped off thousands of years ago and may not even exist anymore.
Not to say this wouldn't factor into the Romulan's attitude, it probably would, but it would be in an irrational way.
Hard to say. There was direct Romulan meddling in the Vulcan government in the fourth season of Enterprise. Some people on both sides certainly knew, but it probably wasn't widespread knowledge.
I dunno', seems like the difference between teaching a curious child in the humans vs teaching a smartass knowitall in the Romulans. Still kinda' makes sense why they cannot kiss and make up.
Romulans didn't need to be taught. They were always technological equals (possibly superiors if you count cloaking). Yet instead of making amends with an equal, Vulcans chose to embrace the neophyte humans and grow them to technological equality instead of embracing their brother and sister Romulans.
Yes, because once again, it's far easier to teach a curious child than a smartass who thinks they've got it already.
The Romulans and Vulkans are different on a fundamental level. They both separately DO think they 'get it' and the other does not. Their story is specificially about how they cannot make up. By saying, "I don't get why they cannot be friends." you're literally ignoring their entire reason for being written in to the show as opposition to Vulkan.
Neither of them have the "correct" answer. Pure logic doesn't work out, and pure emotion doesn't, either. The entire point is that these "advanced" species still have fundamental social flaws and still conflict over silly things.
They're basically trying to say, "It takes more than intelligence and advanced technology to overcome bigotry."
Yes, because once again, it’s far easier to teach
You're doubling down on the "teaching" bit. I'm not seeing a "teaching" angle that makes any difference here. What is it that you think Vulcans taught humans than they wanted to teach Romulans?
By saying, “I don’t get why they cannot be friends.” you’re literally ignoring their entire reason for being written in to the show as opposition to Vulkan.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying it could be the perspective of the Romulans. The Romulans are less driven by logic and rationale than by their emotions and passions. Meaning, they'd make this assessment overriding logic and instead embracing emotion, envy and anger in this case.
Neither of them have the “correct” answer. Pure logic doesn’t work out, and pure emotion doesn’t, either. The entire point is that these “advanced” species still have fundamental social flaws and still conflict over silly things.
Absolutely, and humans are no exception to these conflicts. In the area of this conflict of thought process Humans, Vulcans, and Romulans are equal. There is no position that all 3 agree on 100% with each other.
The teaching angle is to emphasize the Vulkan angle since you were making arguments for the Romulan angle already. Even the "emotionless" Vulkan don't constantly reach out for the obvious logical solution because there are sociological reasons they expect no purchase. Reasons that purposefully reflect faults of humanity, and thusly are inherently illogical to some degree given the "Vulcan" prescription of excellent logic.
If you want to be charitable to the writers, it's a great way to point out how bigotry trancends logic. They might actually make headway with outreach, but they do not, because Vulkans are the know-it-all types. I sort-of stated the expected dynamic backwards, but it still works because I'm sure Romulans would still dismiss the intelligence of Vulkans for nearly the exact same reason: they think they already have it figured out.
Yes, it's illogical, but that's part of the point: Logic is not wisdom. Someone can be plenty intelligent and yet still be a fool.
It's worth not over-analyzing, though, since it is a situation set up for allegory of human folly in a TV show, not one written in to a planned book series where it might have to stand up to stronger cohesive scrutiny. All you have to do is not explain things well, and suddenly the script isn't cohesive with canon. They are written to be laughably similar species to reinforce how dumb bigotry is, so something basically HAS to make little logical sense, because bigotry is illogical.
The technology is a side-effect. The thing the Vulcans want to teach is their philosophy.
That didn't work out so well with humans.
Didn't it? Not that humans became straight up Vulcans, but Vulcans did want to get the benefits of humanity's drive without the parts where we nuke each other. Most Vulcans in the 24th century would probably consider this plan a success.
Humanity had already made it through its nuclear wars. So what Vulcan philosophy did humanity embrace through this "teaching"?
That's a very good question. I'm not sure we can discern a specific answer from canon. Rather, we infer it based on Vulcan intentions in the 22nd century and the end results in the 24th.
The canon events of Enterprise seems to suggest very little went the way the Vulcans intended for humanity. At the beginning of the series, it was the Vulcans in the leadership role over humanity, while by the end of the series, it was humanity in the leadership role with the creation of starfleet.
Because they didn't know they existed until humans had built the second Enterprise.
Also don't forget that Spock was shocked that they were cousins. The Vulcans not only broke up with them they also memoryholed them so deep that it was news that they were related.
Think of how hard it would be to cover up something in the era of computers that big. That billions of your own species are just out there and you have no idea. This is estrangement to a very high extreme.
It makes sense when you remember the whole "humans are doc brown" thing
It's kinda funny that in a way, the humans in the Trek universe, are like the Orks in WH40k
Humans are space orks.
That was a great read
I'm super surprised no one on that thread talked about stealing an enemy corvette (lower case C) by way of an oopsy-doodle switcheroo self destruct, slingshotting around the sun back a couple of hundred years, stealing the largest mammals on their home planet in a tank the corvette was never meant to have, because ya know it's basically an RV with some shotguns duct taped to the top (its name is spray painted on the side). Slingshot back around the sun to the exact millisecond they left.
And they land, perfectly, in water, right next to their home base.
Subverted by Tendi and Pelia though.
Why do you think there are so few Orions in Starfleet? Because Tendi is one of the few weirdos who Gets It. The rest are like "WTF you people are crazy!"
I mean... that and they're all pirates.
....proceeds to do the pirate criminal thing at the end of last season.
They both seem pretty well assimilated into human culture though. Maybe the crazy can rub off. I think the Vulcans definitely would have said that about T'Pol.
In actuality though, I think it's probably just that every species has these people, humans just have more for whatever reason. And so the other species' people go to join the humans
Humans in Trek seem to value individuality over conformity more than most of the other cultures. The ones most like them in that regard are probably Klingons and Bajorans. Likely contributes to the high number of crazy mavericks.
But Doc Brown was a Klingon.
IMO it makes more sense if the humans in Star Trek are unreliable narrators.
How is it possible that a teenage mechanic can improve engine efficiency by 5% messing around in his spare time? Why didn't the engineers whose full time job it is to build the engines figure that out?
In fact, cosmic radiation in space drives all humans insane. They truly believe they're doing science experiments, but stuff goes wrong because they're just jamming random household items into the engine.
Because Wesley is space magic.
My theory is that the other members of the Federation saw humans as a bunch of chaotic, violent monkeys that somehow had gotten into space and in time would spread their flavor of chaos and violence across the universe.
So it makes sense they thought better training the puppy before it grows up.
My variation was that humans were the wildcard. Everyone else had long-standing tensions, but no one had a history with humans. There is that connection to the Vulcans, but Vulcans treat humans as children so it’s neither a friendship nor enmity
And the humans breed like crazy - at least, given what we see in the different ST shows; humans FAR outnumber the quantities of any other race. Even in the Undiscovered Country, one of the Klingons remarks that the Federation is little more than a "Humans only" club. So it was like, join them, train them, or we're going to be overwhelmed by them!
"Wait, what do you mean humans do not have a breeding season? Then when do they breed? ..Always? Get me the Vulcans on screen!"
I think it's not quite as bad as it appears - it's just that despite the alliance most species still self segregate (understandably, requiring different conditions for comfort). We just see the story from the human side.
I think the question is why The Federation exists to begin with. Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites don't like each other, so how did they hold together a Federation before the Humans showed up? Was this entirely an alliance of convenience against Klingons and Romulans? Or was this a serious collaborative partnership that's just been cracking up as Humans arrive?
I'll say, one think I've really enjoyed about Lower Decks is that they have done more "What is life like on a Foreign Ship?" stories in a few seasons than a other Star Trek series have done in entire show runs. The closest episodes I can think of that take a deep dive into life on a Klingon ship was a few Worf episodes on TNG and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Your comment and the OP act like the Tellarites don't like anyone, but that's not really true. The Tellarites and Vulcans got along just fine before Humanity showed up. The Vulcans probably figured out the Tellarites' gimmick and decided that challenging each other's ideas was how they arrived at a logical conclusion. The Andorians were probably too hot headed to get along with people who challenged them on everything, leading to them being in conflict during ENT.
As for how humans fit in, humans may be crazy bastards, but they also occupy a nice middle ground between the others. We can be as emotional as Andorians one day, as logical as Vulcans the next, and a number of our political systems were built on Tellarite-style arguing. Humans can hear out one ally, then explain their position to another in terms they'll understand. We can also tell when Vulcans are secretly being driven by emotion, can leverage Andorian emotions to bring them to a more rational perspective, and debate Tellarites on even ground. Humans are the interpreters and negotiators that got these people to actually talk about their problems with each other and come to a reasonable compromise.
Exactly.
This whole discussion feels like nobody watched ENT.
The Federation exists because Archer was such a fantastic mediator. Add in his rapport with T'Pol and Shran, and his willingness to die in the place of a Tellarite ambassador, and it's little wonder he was able to knit the beginnings of this alliance together.
I really got an Archer vibe from Pike in "Spock Amok" (SNW S01E05), when he dealt with the R'ongovians.
The Federation is created at the end of Enterprise: before that there's a cold war going on between the Andorians and the Vulcans. The Coalition of Planets forms during the show and is dissolved when the Federation is created.
Huh? They didn't hold together a Federation. It didn't exist yet.
Well, the whole point of a diplomatic interplanetary body is to have a common forum of communication to soften their relationships over time, by allowing dialogue and cooperation to occur at some level in a fashion doesn't involve shooting phasers and photon torpedoes at each other. Even if the shooting still happens from time to time.
It's a parallelism with the UN. All sorts of countries who hate each other are part of it and sit at the same table, at some unequal level even. They still shoot each other and commit atrocities towards others and their own people from time to time. But still, the point is that the table exists and is available. It creates opportunities for dialogue and cooperation, that wouldn't exist otherwise, that create opportunities to solve conflict peacefully and soften their differences over time.
The Cromulents.
There's a ton of Voyager episodes of "a few crew are captured and they're working for this other set of people out here!" But those are generally not a view of another well-developed culture since they're in such foreign territory.
Isn’t this just the story of the allied powers in World War Two repackaged into science fiction? The members were:
The British who were sort of friends with the Americans but regarded them as less civilized and less experienced in running a nation.
The French who literally fought the Hundred Years’ War against the English.
The Soviets who didn’t like any of those people and proceeded to argue with all of them thereafter.
The Americans who had existed for a little over a century, invented the nuke after winning a fight with a World power in an ascendant phase, and decided it was on them to guarantee World peace.
Now I understand why the Germans always sounds so angry.
when you put it that way...
I read the first line and thought it was talking about the fediverse lol. Who else thought that? Can't just be me.