SFDebris: The Defector

[Captain Seafort]

Blip

Another good one, and good promise for the future, especially if Chuck isn't going to treat the Klingon arc as a Klingon arc at all, but as just one aspect of the larger Romulan arc. I'm not entirely convinced by Chuck's implication that it was the events of this episode that caused the Romulans to focus on the importance of the Klingons to the AQ balance of power - they'd been pushing to infiltrate their partisans into key positions since before the Khitomer attack.

[Teaos]

I never before thought that the Romulans were the big threat in TNG.

[Captain Seafort]

Really? The Borg turned up once in a blue moon, the Klingons were allies, the Cardassians were outclassed and the Ferengi were a joke - the Romulans are the only ones left. On top of that, the only time a warbird and the E-D engaged, in Tin Man, the E-D lost most of her shields to an alpha strike.

[Teaos]

I never really thought of anyone as major threats I guess. Just a lot of occasional badies poping up. I anyone I would have said Cardassia, at the time of TNG, with out what we got in DS9, they were a much more credible threat.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I always saw the Romulans as part of the 'Big Three' with the Klingons and Federation. They're the top dogs of the Alpha/Beta Quadrants. I saw them as a threat.

[Mikey]

I think the haphazard way in which the hsow presented the Romulans led to a lack of a feeling of true, constant danger from the Romulans. A vague "we're back" and an erstwhile, at best, presence does not exactly engender the feeling of ever-present threat that Americans felt from the USSR in the late 1960's. To be truly a major antagonistic power the Romulan menace would have had to have been a thought at the heart of everything the UFP did.

[Graham Kennedy]

I've been rewatching TNG lately and one thing I noticed was that in Angel One, a mid-season episode, we're told that the ship must soon leave the planet as "Romulan battle cruisers have been detected near one of our border posts." They all talk as if the Romulans have been around all along... and then at the end of the season they're claiming that the Romulans have been absent for decades.

I guess with the Ferengi not working out they decided to bring the Romulans back, and then changed their minds about how to do it.

[kostmayer]

One of my fave episodes. No particular reason, but it was full of great scenes. Data showing Empathy towards Jarok, Picards mercilessly talking him into cooperation, Picard facing Tomalok down. Was definitely an episode where Picard played to his strengths.

Was blatantly a trap though.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Jarok was one of the best one-shot characters in the series. And although it would've been interesting to see him again, there was no other way for his story to end.

[kostmayer]

Yeah, James Sloyan is always great to watch.

[Black Jesus]

The trouble with making the Romulans a villain is that they’re treacherous, deceitful, and underhanded. It’s hard to portray that in an overt manner. They’re very subtle in their moves, which doesn’t make for great action stories. They’re good in plots requiring subterfuge and scheming, which is nice in a whodoneit sort of way. Romulans are anything but “in your face,” which is where Klingons and Jem’Hadar come in. Their nature makes the Romulans difficult to portray in a threatening way as their main goals seems to be simply to covertly destabilize others without overt actions. It’s tough to present that often when it lacks much excitement.

That said, "The Defector" was a good episode.

[Teaos]

The good thing for Roddenberry is that they are the perfect counter to the Federation ideals.

[Graham Kennedy]

This tricky/treacherous/not overtly aggressive thing is the complete opposite of what they were in TOS. Consider Balance of Terror - the whole premise is that they're testing to see if they are stronger, and if they prove to be so then this is the signal for instant all out war. And the dialogue indicates that this is standard practice :

COMMANDER: "No need to tell you what happens when we reach home with proof of the Earthmen's weakness. And we will have proof. The Earth commander will follow. He must. When he attacks, we will destroy him. Our gift to the homeland, another war."
CENTURION: "If we are the strong, isn't this the signal for war?"

Then in The Enterprise Incident, it's Kirk, Spock and the Federation who are the ones with the plots and schemes. The Romulan Commander acts in a direct straightforward manner throughout, and never tries to trick or fool anybody.

[Teaos]

Well not quite "direct".

[Black Jesus]

I don't dispute any of that. They were far more aggressive in TOS, yet they were recast from TNG onwards as a duplicitous and shady species. Even with their wartime allies they acted that way when they secretly placed armaments in a hospital on a Bajoran moon. Throughout TNG they were the shadowmen, conspiring and plotting. In VOY they still were in their handful of episodes. DS9 gave them something of a different role a couple of times, notably in "Inter Arma...". Even ENT revisioned them as cagey and underhanded. In a way, they're almost a one-deminsional character species you can count on being there when a conspiracy is afoot.

Have there been any books done on the Romulan shift from TOS aggressor to TNG fiends? It'd be interesting to explore that cultural shift. Perhaps they changed methods after the Tomed Incident either societally or in leadership?