Patrick Stewart back as Picard in new series

[Dandontdare]

If they had that many ships, why didn't they mount their own evacuation?  And if they made the ships afterwards, why are Romulans just a bunch of bums now?  Why didn't they just relocate their government to one of their hundreds of planets and start over with even more restrictive government powers to capitalise on the disaster?  I mean, they're an empire and not a single planet.  I guess we, the viewers, are expected to fill in the gaps by saying "they felt sad because Romulan 1 went boom-boom so they all became space hobos" or something, but that kind of thing should ideally be in the text of the show.

Where do you get the bums and hobos bit? They may not be the power they once were, having lost the centre of their empire, but they still seem to be depicted as a force to be reckoned with, given that they 'negotiated' control of the cube with strictly controlled federation access.

[Professor Bear]

If they conceded to let the Federation into their space, I don't think that proves the Romulans are negotiating from as strong a position as they once did - in fact, it just brings up more questions: like why did they let the Federation into their space - a previously unthinkable scenario - after the Federation decided to not just renege on a promise of aid but to deliberately let the Romulans die because they hated them?

And a Romulan senator died in a dusty saloon in the asshole of nowhere with the Romulan equivalent of a "no blacks, no Irish, no dogs" sign on the front, that seem like pretty bums and hobos stuff to me, though I'm willing to cede it may just have been bad writing.

[Mardroid]

If they had that many ships, why didn't they mount their own evacuation?  And if they made the ships afterwards, why are Romulans just a bunch of bums now?  Why didn't they just relocate their government to one of their hundreds of planets and start over with even more restrictive government powers to capitalise on the disaster?  I mean, they're an empire and not a single planet.  I guess we, the viewers, are expected to fill in the gaps by saying "they felt sad because Romulan 1 went boom-boom so they all became space hobos" or something, but that kind of thing should ideally be in the text of the show.

As has been pointed out many times now, the AI plot is both a rehash of the end of the dreadful Discovery season 2, and the shittiest Mass Effect game.

200 ships isn’t much when you consider a population of billions of people. (Assuming they have earth type populations or even more.)

Twice that number isn’t much.

I’m sure they did evacuate plenty, but it wasn’t enough in the short time required hence Starfleet initially offering aid (albeit short-lived).

As for relocating the government, I assume they did just that, at least in part. The Romulan empire still appears to exist after all. And I shouldn’t judge the entire empire on the characters we met in that earlier episode where they found Nerak. That’s one colony, and I’m sure the working class and lower types feel the pressure just as everywhere from time immemorial.

Don’t get me wrong, the empire isn’t what it was. They have far from recovered. The fact Picard and co were still very concerned about entering Romulan territory when visiting the Borg cube, and all these mentions of treaties, etc suggest there’s a government of a kind, or at least secret service people holding power... which for the Romulan is pretty much the same thing. Even if they’re fragmented (which I think is quite likely) 200 ships isn’t very much considering the sheer scale of things.

As for the Palpatine comment, I won’t go into it here as this isn’t a Star Wars thread, but the answer is the same: interstellar scale. How many star destroyers are actually wrecked at the end of RotJ? About 3, I believe, although one was very big.

[Professor Bear]

200 ships isn’t much when you consider a population of billions of people. (Assuming they have earth type populations or even more.)

Your point equally applies to the Federation fleet, but my point was more about how/why the Romulans use their resources, ie: why didn't they just make loads of airtight containers, then beam loads of people into them and tractor beam the container somewhere because that's something even a tiny ship could do?  They clearly had enough notice of the supernova for Picard to be traveling to and from the Beta Quadrant, which is days - if not weeks - of time apparently spent thinking the Federation was going to take care of everything for them, which at the very least is not quite how I remember the Romulan mindset from the shows.

[TordelBack]

Even the most unexpected supernova travels at the speed of light, so there would have been many years to evacuate most affected worlds. However, we can assume that, like Earth, Cardassia and Vulcan, the majority of Romulans still lived on Romulus (and presumably Remans on nearby Remus). The maths of planetary evacuation mean that only a small proportion of the billions on the homeworld could have been saved, even with the resources of the other Alpha Quadrant powers. As a result the surviving Empire would have been heavily skewed to the population of outlying worlds and colonies, with a disproportionate amount of naval installations and planet-based primary industries. The outward population pressure that drives expansion and stresses borders would have ceased, making territory less important for a still-powerful mobile military.

[Professor Bear]

What they should have done was build some sort of artificial black hole to eat the supernova while not affecting the remaining planets in any way whatsoever, and then they could just turn the black hole off like they did with the one that opened next to Saturn.

[Mardroid]

What they should have done was build some sort of artificial black hole to eat the supernova while not affecting the remaining planets in any way whatsoever, and then they could just turn the black hole off like they did with the one that opened next to Saturn.

Heh. You’ve a point there. Romulans actually use artificially created black holes to power their warbirds, don’t they, so they’ve got that science down. (At least they used those for the big ships* from TNG/DS9/V time period.) I doubt they could control a large black hole like that, but I’d have thought, considering what a black hole actually is, even a miniature one would be formidable.

By the way, what do you all think of the design of the new warbirds in Picard? I do like them, but I miss the older style. That design was more unique. I think the new ones will grow on me, though. They’re very pretty, but maybe a bit too ‘bird-of-preyey’?

*D’eridex class, I believe. Possibly misspelled.

[Professor Bear]

I assumed they just re-used the fighter models from the old Star Trek: Invasion PS1 game.

[TordelBack]

I assumed they just re-used the fighter models from the old Star Trek: Invasion PS1 game.

 

The apparent Romulan overkill w.r.t. the Synth homeworld may be a reaction to their previous attempted-genocidal attack on the Founders' planet - a comfortably large fleet of 20 Warbirds and Galor-class starships were completely wiped out by Jem & the Hadargrams.   

[Mardroid]

The apparent Romulan overkill w.r.t. the Synth homeworld may be a reaction to their previous attempted-genocidal attack on the Founders' planet - a comfortably large fleet of 20 Warbirds and Galor-class starships were completely wiped out by Jem & the Hadargrams.

Heh. Death by Glam-Rock!

[Radbacker]

Watched the last episode and was real impressed that theykilled of Picard and then they didn’t  , overall not a bad series but I’m sure I’m probably in the minority here in the I like Discovery more and am chomping at the bit to see where they take that after the end of last season.

CU Radbacker

[pauljholden]

Watched the last episode and was real impressed that theykilled of Picard and then they didn’t  , overall not a bad series but I’m sure I’m probably in the minority here in the I like Discovery more and am chomping at the bit to see where they take that after the end of last season.

CU Radbacker

In my head canon :
Picard had a brain embolism in episode one and the entire series has been a 5 minute long death dream, and we cut to irish romulan woman tearfully saying goodbye to Picard who "died doing what he loved [walking in his garden]"

[Greg M.]

Well, that was a finale that echoed the series as a whole – a confused, frustrating mess that had some good bits (Riker) and a soupcon of superficial excitement buried amongst the debris of a weird, emotionally-manipulative, logic-free plot. Filled to the brim with terrible, terrible tossed-off ideas and god-awful clichés that seemed just randomly pulled out the writer’s collective arses – y’know, like a modern Dr. Who story. (It actually felt very Steven Moffat at times.) The more I think about it, the worse it gets. So many opportunities wasted: the series has one really likeable, clearly-defined new character in Elnor – it should try actually doing something with him! But who actually are the other characters anyway? Space-murderer, space-junkie, space-beard, some weird version of Seven, space-daughter with no consistent personality? I came to this series wanting to like it and trying to like it – maybe I’m just not in a sufficiently jovial mood at present to overlook its faults.

[shaolin_monkey]

Some stuff in space.  Some stuff on the ground. Picard died, then he didn't.  Data evaporated. Everyone flew away at the end.

Yeah, that was a bit...